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JEROME KERN probably wrote more music for motion pictures than any of the other well-known musical comedy composers, including Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, Sigmund Romberg, Rudolf Friml, Arthur Schwartz and Harold Arlen.

Kern was active in films – writing original scores and supervising screen versions of his stage successes – from the early days of sound to the day in 1945 he had a heart attack on a New York street.

He was one of the very few composers of popular songs who made them a kind of art. Gershwin and Rodgers are but two of many who admitted his music inspired and influenced them. Indeed, Kern, adept with melody, was one of the major influences in the development of theatrical music as it is today.

Says Rodgers: “I have never felt enough has been said about Kern’s contributions to American music through his influence on subsequent writers of music in this country. To begin with, he was the composer in that fabulous combination responsible for a form known as ‘The Princess Theatre Shows’. I use the word ‘form’ because it was a creation separate and distinct from other theatrical ventures. It employed no chorus, it rarely changed sets, but it did impart to a small audience the feeling that the whole composition had been created for the two ears of the single listener. The orchestra was tiny, as were the voices as a rule, but in this particular theatrical scheme of things the effect was one of intimacy and warmth and something quite rare and memorable.

“Kern was almost entirely a composer for the theatre, anyway. His infrequent sorties into fields outside the theatre (the symphony hall) were no more successful than were those of most of us who tried it, and he always came running back to the orchestra pit and the proscenium arch for protection. I think he was happiest there because that was where he made people happiest.”

Although Kern was born in New York City (on Jan. 27, 1885) and spent the first ten years of his childhood there, he really grew up in Newark, NJ, where his father was a successful furniture jobber.

His mother, of Bohemian descent, had aspired to he a concert pianist and she tried to quicken a musical interest in her three sons. Jerome responded, and his mother sent him to better than average piano teachers while he attended Newark’s public schools. He wrote music for his high school shows and became convinced he had discovered what he would do with his life.

His father did not approve of music as a career, but Mrs. Kern succeeded in getting Jerome enrolled in the New York College of Music. Kern liked it, and took private lessons in harmony and theory on the side. But his work was not particularly outstanding, and when he told his father he wanted to continue his studies abroad, even his mother agreed he had better go into business.

He was so inept in business his father packed him off a year later.

He went to Europe in 1903 and spent the next two years studying privately in Heidelberg and trying to compose serious music. He was finally forced to admit he couldn’t. But he was reluctant to go home and, making the rounds of the London theatres, met Charles K. Frohman, then producing musicals in the British capital. Frohman was looking for unknown composers who could write incidental music for his shows – for a small fee. Kern was adept at it, and his work for Frohman led to the publication of his first song, “How’d You Like to Spoon with Me”, which was interpolated into the Broadway musical The Earl and the Girl.

Whereupon Kern returned to the US and got a $7 a week job playing the piano in Wanamaker’s department store. He then accompanied Marie DressIer in vaudeville. And finally he went to work for Max Dreyfus at the Harms Publishing Co. in New York. Broadway producers began interpolating his songs into their imported shows. Kern did quite well, and on a European tour in 1910 he married a young music student named Eva Leale in London. They had a good life together and one daughter, Elizabeth, who at one time was married to bandleader Artie Shaw.

In 1911 Kern wrote his first complete score for a Broadway musical – The Red Peticoat and three years later his song “They Didn’t Believe Me”, interpolated into The Girl From Utah, brought him his first fame. Thereafter his reputation as a composer of superior musical comedy music grew until, with the death of Victor Herbert in 1924, he was acknowledged to he the foremost American composer of light music.

Kern was a systematic and indefatigable worker. He was also something of a perfectionist and threw away tunes other composer would have utilized. He did most of his composing at the piano and did not commit his melodies to paper until he had worked them out at the keyboard. Unlike Richard Rodgers and many others, Kern did not write music for a lyric. Lyric writers wrote word for Kern music. After Kern composed a song he made a piano recording of it which was given to the lyricist to work from. Hammerstein’s ode to France, “The Last Time I Saw Paris” was one of the very few exceptions.

Kern’s introduction to Hollywood was via the first screen version of the Broadway musical for which he ha written his best score – SHOW BOAT. Harry Pollard directed, with a cast which included Laura La Plante, Joseph Schildkraut, Alma Rubens, Otis Harlen and Emily Fitzroy. Universal released it in the summer of ’29.

It had been planned as a silent picture, and relied more on the Ferber novel than did the two subsequent film versions of SHOW BOAT. However, it suffered the misfortune of being caught in the transition to sound. At first the producers resolved to brazen it out and release it silent. But the public’s avid acceptance of sound forced them to capitulate. They inserted dialogue here and there, added background music consisting of old folk tunes, and concocted a prologue in which Helen Morgan and others sang a medley of the songs from the play. The resulting mish-mash, of course, was indifferently received.

Kern’s first all-talking picture was the film version of SALLY, which First National released in December of ’29. Marilyn Miller sang and danced the title part, as she had done on Broadway. Only a portion of the original Kern score was used, however, and several new numbers, by two staff song writers on the studio lot (Al Dubin and Joe Burke), were, to say the least, undistinguished. But for Kern’s ballad, “Look for the Silver Lining”, which is still sung, the whole of thing would have been a costly mistake.

The following year First National filmed another Marilyn Miller musical, SUNNY, which had one of Kern’s sprightliest scores, and included “Who?” Although Miss Miller was teamed with her old dancing partner, Jack Donohue, SUNNY’s stale stage plot did not film well. SUNNY was the first movie for which Kern specially wrote a song – a torch number for Miss Miller called “I Was Alone”.

In 1931 First National commissioned Kern to collaborate on the story of, and to write a score for, MEN OF THE SHY, which was to feature Irene Delroy and Jack Whiting. It’s now hard to say what the studio had in mind. MEN OF THE SKY was a routine programmer with background music, and a few snatches of song, that have never been published.

Two years later, MGM co-starred Ramon Novarro and Jeanette MacDonald in Kern’s melodious stage musical THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE. Frank Morgan and Vivienne Segal were in the cast and William K. Howard directed. A half dozen of the best numbers of the Broadway show were done justice, but a glaring finale in un-perfected Technicolor deflated most audiences. It was released in February, 1934.

Another Kern stage success, MUSIC IN THE AIR, was filmed in ’34 with Gloria Swanson and John Boles. They were well cast as a glamorous European stage couple involved with two innocents from the country. The stage play had 15 musical numbers, all of superior quality, including “I Told Every Little Star”, “The Song Is You” and “We Belong Together”. The film used six. They were well sung and the production numbers were really lush.

A third Kern show was filmed in ’34 – SWEET ADELINE. It was a turn-of-the-century period piece and established Irene Dunne as a singing actress. Kern and his collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein II, wrote two new songs for this Warner film -“We Were So Young”, a nostalgic ballad for Miss Dunne, and “Lonely Feet”, which provided the music for one of Busby Berkeley’s typically elaborate dance numbers. Mervyn LeRoy directed.

In 1935 Kern began devoting his talent exclusively to movies by writing a new number, the lilting “Lovely to Look At”, for the finale of RKO’s film version of ROBERTA. “I Won’t Dance”, which Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sang together, was a re-working of a melody Kern had written the year before for a Charlotte Greenwood show in London. ROBERTA also had Irene Dunne in the cast, and the sung which Kern liked best of all his songs – “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”.

In 1935 Kern and Hammerstein wrote the title song for the Jean Harlow musical RECKLESS, but the other songs were by studio songwriters. The hook was rather serious and concerned a musical comedy star who married into a wealthy family and lived to regret it. It didn’t come off, due in large part to Miss Harlow’s song and dance limitations. The song “Reckless”, a torch number, was not well received but is one of Kern’s most interesting tunes. The quality of the music is touching, and its melodic pattern is smooth and ingenious. Hammerstein’s lyric was quite literate.

Kern then did four songs with Dorothy Fields for RKO’s I DREAM TOO MUCH, in which Lily Pons was introduced to the screen. The lightweight plot – a little French girl with operatic aspirations falls in love with a young composer (Henry Fonda) – was arranged so there could be several arias, most notably the Bell Song from Lakme Though the Metropolitan Opera Star was unable to cope with some of the intricacies of their lyrics, the Kern songs made the show, especially “Jockey on the Carousel”, the gay song story Pons performed for a group of children. It was probably the most involved and longest song (ten pages) Kern ever wrote, Miss Puns also did well with “I Got Love”, a quasi-blues.

In 1936 Universal re-did SHOW BOAT as a spectacular musical drama with rousing success. James Whale, who hitherto had directed horror films, made it a beautiful piece of musical Americana. Irene Dunne was a perfect Magnolia (she had played the part in the ’20s in the national company of the show). Helen Morgan repeated her original stage role, and Paul Robeson, Allan Jones, Charles Winninger, Helen Westley, Queenie Smith, Hattie McDaniel and Donald Cook were all appropriately cast, Three new numbers were written for this film: the sly Robeson-McDaniel duet, “Ah Still Suits Me”, a delicious bit of nonsense; “Gallivantin’ Around”, a jaunty comedy routine for Robeson and Miss Dunne (in blackface); and Allan Jones’ “I Have the Room Above”, one of the loveliest of the least remembered Kern songs.

One of the most anticipated films of 1936 was the Astaire-Rogers vehicle SWING TIME, with an original score by Kern and Dorothy Fields. “The Way You Look Tonight” and “A Fine Romance” are still popular, and the clever novelty, “Pick Yourself Up”, originally neglected, was revived a few years ago and has come into its own. There is much to be said for “Waltz in Swingtime”, which is admirably constructed with many deft changes of tempo and is largely instrumental (lyrics were written for the introduction only). Also for the haunting “Never Gonna Dance”, one of the most striking and original songs ever written for a movie. The infectious “Bojangles of Harlem”, a rhythmical production number in modified march tempo, completed Swing Time’s memorable score.

“The Way You Look Tonight”, which won the Academy Award for the best screen song of the year, is not one of Kern’s most original melodies. The first few bars are identical with those of “Softly Thru the Summer Night”, a song composed by the gifted Hungarian Emmerich Kalman for the 1914 operetta, Sari. (And it might be mentioned in passing that “I Have the Room Above” in SHOW BOAT bears a resemblance to Victor Schertzinger’s “Dream Lover” from the film THE LOVE PARADE.)

In 1937 Kern and Fields did two songs for Grace Moore’s WHEN YOU’RE IN LOVE, which were sandwiched in between Ernesto Lecuonas “Siboney”, Duke Ellington’s “Minnie the Moocher”, and assorted classical and operatic airs. Kern’s “Our Song” was the big romantic ballad Miss Moore sang to Cary Grant, but the charming “Whistling Boy” tune, which she rendered with some small children, was much more inventive.

That year Kern collaborated with Hammerstein on an elaborate operetta about railroad-building in the West – Paramount’s HIGH, WIDE AND HANDSOME, directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Irene Dunne played the stir performer in a traveling circus, and Randolph Scott was her railroad-building suitor. Kern’s score was full-bodied and varied, and included the simple and expressive quasi-folk tune, ‘”The Folks Who Live on the Hill”. No less ingratiating was the plaintive ”Can Forget You”, modeled after the traditional ballad “In the Gloaming”. The title song and “Allegheny Al” were vigorous chorus numbers, and the tune of ”Will You Marry Me Tomorrow, Maria?” was appropriately rural. Miss Dunne, in fine voice, carried the major singing burden. The song for Dorothy Lamour, “The Things I Want”, had a sad, yearning tune that was unusually good, though difficult to sing.

In 1938 Irene Dunne switched to screwball farce with JOY OF LIVING, a sleek, polished tour-de-force that also enabled her to sing and play urbane romantic comedy with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Kern and Dorothy Fields wrote four songs for it. Two were shamefully wasted in this featherweight tale about a musical comedy star and her irresponsible family: “A Heavenly Party” and “What’s Good About Goodnight”. The other songs got the full treatment and were Kern at his best – “Just Let Me Look You” and “You Couldn’t Be Cuter”, which was one of the most tuneful numbers ever to come from the screen.

Kern returned to Broadway in ’30 to do his first stage show since Roberta in ’33. It was the ill-fated Very Warm for May, which didn’t last two months. MGM bought the screen rights but made no use of them until 1944, when they produced BROADWAY RHYTHM, which only remotely resembled the original and used only the show’s hit song, ”All the Things You Are”, and a few bars of ”All in Fun” and “That Lucky Fellow” (sung by Ginny Simms and George Murphy).

In 1940 Kern was back in Hollywood working on the score for Universal’s ONE NIGHT IN THE TROPICS, the least impressive of all Kern’s pictures. The film helped the budding comedy team of Abbott and Costello, but did little else. Kern’s “You and Your Kiss” was very hummable, and “Remind Me” (written in Latin-American beguine tempo) has since found its way into the repertoire of smart supper club singers.

That year Kern and Hammerstein wrote “The Last Time I Saw Paris”, which was popularized by Hildegarde, then the reigning chanteuse in the US. MGM bought the screen rights and featured it in LADY BE GOOD with Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern and Robert Young. Though this filmusical used some of the old Gershwin standbys, it was not a screen version of Gershwin’s stage hit of the same name. “The Last Time I Saw Paris” won the Academy Award for the best screen song of the year, over protests that it had not been written for a motion picture.

RKO’s undistinguished re-make of SUNNY in 1940 starred the British dramatic actress Anna Neagle, who, with her producer-husband Herbert Wilcox, had plunged into American musical comedy by digging up some old chestnuts. Such delightful favorites as ”Who” and ”D’Ya Love Me” held up better than the creaking libretto. Even John Carroll, Ray Bolger and the Hartmans could not compensate for Miss Neagle’s modest singing and dancing talent.

In 1942 Kern and Johnny Mercer wrote the score for Columbia’s YOU WERE NEVER LOVELIER, starring Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth. It was a gay frolic about an American wooing a wealthy Spanish senorita, with Adolphe Menjou and Xavier Cugat and his band. Astaire did two terrific dance specialties for “On the Beam” and the swingy “Shorty George”. The title song had graceful sweep and “I’m Old Fashioned” was in Kern’s simplest, sweetest style. “Dearly Beloved”, however, was the hit of the film and is now frequently played at weddings. It was inspired by a passage from the love duet in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.

One of Kern’s contributions to World War II was a song called “And Russia Is Her Name”, written for MGM’s propaganda film SONG OF RUSSIA (1943). E. Y. Harburg wrote the words. The film dealt with poignant love affair between an American (Robert Taylor) and a Russian peasant (Susan Peters).

Kern then collaborated with Ira Gershwin on one of the landmarks in the evolution of the fllmusical – Columbia’s COVER GIRL (1944). It had some of the most inventive choreography ever seen in a film and made Gene Kelly one of the screen’s foremost dancers. The decor and costume were lavish but tasteful, the songs were introduced with unusual naturalness, and the Technicolor photography was beautiful. The Kern songs included the Gershwinesque “Put Me to the Test”, the tender but deceptively titled “Sure Thing”, the buoyant march “Make Way for Tomorrow”, and the transfixing “Long Ago and Far Away”.

In 1944 Kern also did the score for a Deanna Durbin vehicle called CAN’T HELP SINGING. The music was not from Kern’s top drawer, and quite a few critics thought Kern and his lyricist (Harburg) were trying to imitate Rodgers and Hammerstein’s OKLAHOMA!, especially in the flowing title song and in “Californi-ay”. Miss Durbin and her leading man (Robert Paige) did the music full justice.

In 1945 Kern supervised the production of a film about himself which MGM titled after a tune Kern had written in 1917 -“Till the Clouds Roll By”. As is customary in such filmusicals, the biographical facts were distorted and glamorized.

The picture, essentially, is a cavalcade of Kern melodies. Robert Walker portrayed Kern and an all-star cast, including Judy Garland (as Marilyn Miller), June Allyson, Van Johnson, Frank Sinatra and Lucille Bremer, interpreted the Kern songs. A good capsule presentation of SHOW BOAT opened the film and featured Kathryn Grayson, Lena Home, Tony Martin and Virginia O’Brien. The picture ended with a gigantic medley performed before a fantastic impressionistic setting. This overwhelming star-studded climax was further vulgarized by an ill-advised rendition of “Ol’ Man River” by Frank Sinatra.

The last film for which Kern wrote a complete score was CENTENNIAL SUMMER, a turn-of-the-century costume piece starring Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Cornel Wildc, William Eythe and Constance Bennett. The Critics did not think much of the music, which nevertheless found favor With the public, especially ”All Through the Day”, ”In Love In Vain” and “Up With the Lark”. Hammerstein, Hamburg and Leo Robin wrote the lyrics.

Then, while Kern was putting the finishing touches to a stage revival of SHOW BOAT, and was thinking of what he and Dorothy Fields would do for a score for ANNIE GET YOUR GUN (an assignment taken over by Irving Berlin), he was stricken by a heart attack on Park avenue near his apartment house. His identity could not at first be established and he was taken to a city hospital on Welfare Island, where, six days later, on November 11, 1945, he died (he was too ill to be moved). MGM’s biopic about him had not yet been premiered.

Since Kern’s death there have been film re-makes of SHOW BOAT and ROBERTA, the latter under the title of LOVELY TO LOOK AT with freshened lyrics by Dorothy Fields. Also the use of Kern music in the pseudo-biography of Marilyn Miller called LOOK FOR THE SILVER LINING (1949); in Ida Lupino’s THE MAN I LOVE (1947), which featured “Bill”; and, of course, in the recent THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS.

It is safe to assume that Kern music will be used in movies for many years to come.

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