Gus Kahn is among America’s most prolific popular song lyricists. In a career of some 35 years, his lyrical output was more than 800 songs and he wrote an average of about five hit songs each year. However, although Kahn was highly regarded in the music business, he was not particularly well known by the public.
Kahn was born on November 6, 1886, in Koblenz, Germany. His parents emigrated to Chicago in 1891, and he started writing songs in high school. After collaborating with his future wife, composer Grace LeBoy, he had some success with “I Wish I Had a Girl, ” in 1908.
Kahn was called “The King of Sheet Music” for a succession of popular songs circulating prior to the advent and widespread adoption of radio. He began his career by writing speciality music for vaudeville, most of his very early songs being written with the assistance of LeBoy. Although he had a light, playful way with words, Kahn was not oblivious to social issues of the day, as evidenced by his 1910 song “It’s Tough When Izzy Rosenstein Loves Genevieve Malone,” about Jewish-Catholic relations. His first big hit came in 1915 with “Memories,” written with composer Egbert van Alstyne and he also worked with other composers including Harry Warren, Isham Jones, George GERSHWIN, and Sigmund Romberg.
Kahn was lured to New York by Florenz Ziegfeld with promises of writing for Broadway productions. It was there that he met composer Donaldson. Kahn is best known for his collaborations with Walter Donaldson, whose glamorous, playboy lifestyle was the exact opposite of Kahn’s quiet, sober family background.
Ellen Donaldson, Walter Donaldson’s daughter, said in programme notes for Houston’s Theater Under the Stars 1997 production “Makin’ Whoopee,” that the collaboration was “a lifelong friendship,” which included as many golf games as songs. The lyric for “Makin’ Whoopee” was considered to be one of Kahn’s best.
It was Al JOLSON and Eddie CANTOR, vaudevillians turned film actors, who introduced Kahn’s music to audiences beyond Chicago and New York. Cantor, star of the Ziegfeld production “Whoopee,” made the transition to film with an adaptation of that musical, which was Cantor and Kahn’s first film collaboration.
Movie producer Sam Goldwyn insisted on a new song for the film. Kahn and Donaldson wrote “My Baby Just Cares for Me.” Legend has it that Goldwyn called the pair into his office and demanded to have a “danceable” song. Kahn is said to have simultaneously started humming the tune, grabbed Goldwyn and danced around the office. The tune was used.
It was 1933 when Kahn’s career in f i lm accelerated upon the wings of a Ginger Rogers-Fred Astaire musical, Flying Down to Rio. Kahn’s song “The Carioca” was nominated for an Academy Award. More than 50 films, primarily M G M productions, included Kahn lyrics over a span of eight years.
The 1940s “Spring Parade” featured a second Academy Award-nominated song: “Waltzing in the Clouds,” as sung by teen sensation Deanna Durbin.
Among the most enduring of his more than 800 songs are “It Had to Be You,” “Makin’ Whoopee,” “Pretty Baby,” “My Buddy,” “Carolina in the Morning,” “Love Me or Leave Me,” “Toot, Toot, Tootsie,” and “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.”
“Ziegfeld Girl” would feature the last work by Kahn. In 1951, a biographical film, I’ll See You in My Dreams, starred Danny Thomas as Kahn, and Doris DAY as his wife, Grace LeBoy. Gus Kahn died a decade earlier on October 8, 1941, in Beverley Hills, California, age 54.
Linda Dailey Paulson
SEE ALSO:
FILM MUSICALS; TIN PAN ALLEY.
FURTHER READING
Craig, Warren. Sweet and Lowdown: America’s Popular Song Writers (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1978).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
“All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm”; “Someone to Care for Me”; “Toot Toot Tootsie, Goodbye”; “Ukelele Lady”; “Waiting at the Gate for Katy.”