Jule Styne was a British-American song writer and composer best known for a series of Broadwaymusicals, including several famous frequently-revived shows that also became successful films: Gypsy,Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Funny Girl.
Early life
Styne was born to a Jewish family in London, England. His parents, Anna Kertman and Isadore Stein, were emigrants from Ukraine, the Russian Empire and ran a small grocery. Even before his family left Britain, he did impressions on the stage of well-known singers, including Harry Lauder who saw him perform and advised him to take up the piano. At the age of eight, he moved with his family to Chicago where he began piano lessons. He proved to be a prodigy and performed with the Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit Symphonies before he was ten years old.
Career
Before Styne attended Chicago Musical College, he had already attracted the attention of another teenager, Mike Todd, later a successful film producer, who commissioned him to write a song for a musical act that he was creating. It was the first of over 1,500 published songs Styne composed in his career. His first hit, "Sunday," was written in 1926. In 1929, Styne was playing with the Ben Pollack band. Styne was a vocal coach for 20th Century Fox until Darryl F. Zanuck fired him because vocal coaching was "a luxury, and we're cutting out those luxuries." Zanuck told him he should write songs because "that's forever." Styne established his own dance band, which got him noticed in Hollywood where he was championed by Frank Sinatra and began a collaboration with lyricist Sammy Cahn. He and Cahn wrote many songs for the movies, including "It's Been a Long, Long Time", "Five Minutes More," and the Oscar-winning title song for Three Coins in the Fountain. Ten of his songs were Oscar-nominated, many of them written with Cahn, including "I've Heard That Song Before", "I'll Walk Alone," "It's Magic", and "I Fall In Love Too Easily." He collaborated with Leo Robin on the score for the 1955 musical film My Sister Eileen. In 1947, Styne wrote his first score for a Broadway musical, High Button Shoes, with Cahn, and over the next several decades wrote the scores for many Broadway shows, most notably Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,Peter Pan, Bells Are Ringing,,Do Re Mi,Funny Girl,Lorelei,Sugar, and the Tony-winning Hallelujah, Baby!. Styne wrote original music for the short-lived themed amusement park Freedomland U.S.A. that opened on June 19, 1960. His collaborators included Sammy Cahn, Leo Robin, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Stephen Sondheim, and Bob Merrill. Carol Channing was the lead in many of his musicals. He was the subject of This Is Your Life for British television in 1978 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in New York's Time Square. Styne died of heart failure in New York City at the age of 88. His archiveincluding original hand-written compositions, letters, and production materialsis housed at the Harry Ransom Center.
