SOCIALLY the composer Harold Arlen was not a high flyer, but on one occasion in the mid 1950s he went dancing with Marilyn Monroe. "People are staring at us," he said, and Marilyn replied: "They must know who you arc." It is a nice story, but it has an ironic aftertaste. Irving Berlin summed it up when he said that Arlen "wasn't as well known as some of us, but he was a better songwriter than most of us".
His name certainly did not and does not evoke the same recognition as mention of Berlin himself, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter or Richard Rodgers, which is not to say that he was a lesser talent. A moment ago I picked up a CD of songs by Arlen. They include Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive, Stormy Weather, Blues in the Night, My Shining Hour, That Old Black Magic, Get Happy, One for My Baby and P's Only a Paper Moon. Oh, yes, and Over the Rainbow, which was one of the only two tunes my mad Aunt Mary ever learned. (The other, for the morbidly curious, was Daisy, Daisy.)
According to his present biographer, Edward Jablonski, the reason Arlen is not a star name is that he preferred Hollywood to New York. He liked sunshine, swimming pools, tennis and the cashdown contracts of Paramount, Warner Brothers or MGM. The alternative was Broadway musicals, compromise, star egos and greed. Also, he wrote the music for nearly 500 songs. Browsing through the list, one might reflect that at his seldom best he was unforgettable and at his frequent less than best he was worth forgetting.
His early life might have been a template for the story of The Jazz Singer. Born Hyman Arluck in Buffalo, New York, he was a cantor's son. When aged 20, he joined a band - called the Buffalodians as pianist, arranger and vocalist, and grieved his father by changing his first name to Harold. In time, he moved to New York and became the resident composer arranger for the Cotton Club at 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue.
From his photographs and depending on whether he was clean shaven, moustached or bearded, Harold Arlen resembled, and in the same order, a downmarket gigolo, an actor auditioning for The Godfather - Part IV and a semitic Abe Lincoln. In the flesh, he was less colourful. He kept his head down and got on with the job, which was sensible of him, given that the moving spirit behind the Cotton Club was Owen "Owney" Madden, a Liverpool born hoodlum who had chalked up five killings by the time he was 17.
Possibly, even the rather dull Mr Jablonski wishes that his subject had at one time or another got roaring drunk or slugged a policeman or been caught three in a bed. No such biographical luck either song writers as a breed are blameless fellows, or the strain of thinking of a melody to link "June" with "moon" causes the baser instincts to evaporate like hot air from a Branson balloon. The author is no slouch, however, at recreating bootleg New York.
At the Cotton Club in 1930, one could savour the talents of Adelaide Hall, Ethel Waters, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and the incredible Nicholas Brothers - still to be glimpsed in the 20th Century Fox musicals of the 1940s. The dancers featured in the twice nightly floors how - at midnight and 2 a.m. - were "sepia or "high yaller"; skin that was too dark or features that were too "Afro" were not wanted. There were guest bands: Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Paul Whiteman, and classical artists performed there; the roster included Heifetz and Ravel. Customers could bring a hip flask of their own bathtub Scotch or gin, but a small "split" of ginger ale or soda water cost a dollar.
With Ed Koehler, Arlen worked on five revues for the Cotton Club, and his first "standard" was Get Happy. It was said of Richard Rodgers that, after Oscar Hammerstein had laboured for weeks on a lyric, he would sit down and dash off the tune in a matter of minutes. With most songwriting teams, the music came first; even so, in Arlen's case the tunes came in tortuous half formed snatches. He was most at home with blues and torch songs; arguably Blues in the Night, written with Johnny Mercer for a very noir-ish 1941 Warner Brothers melodrama, was his masterwork.
Anya "Annie" Taranda was a very beautiful showgirl 10 years younger than Arlen. They fell in love and duly married, much to the dismay of Arlen's parents - Anya was not Jewish. They lived in Hollywood, where their friends included George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, and Arlen collaborated with Koehler, E.Y. "Yip" Harburg and Mercer, who, contrary to the tradition of impoverished Jewish songsmiths, was Gentile, "quality" and a Southerner.
Among the films on which Arlen worked was The Wizard of Oz. It was a troubled production. The witch's broomstick went on fire and it took the actress, Margaret Hamilton six weeks to recover from her burns. Judy Garland, who was earning $500 a week, caught a cold that cost MGM £150,000. Buddy Ebsen, who was to play the Tin Man, was allergic to the metallic make up and was replaced by Jack Haley. And the "Munchkins" of both sexes were drunken sex maniacs who, after a night's debauchery, had to be picked up by the police in butterfly nets.
Arlen's troubles centred on a song called Over the Rainbow. The top brass at MGM hated it - they complained that it was sung in a farmyard, it slowed down the action, it would not sell in sheet music, etc. It was thrice cut from previous showings and thrice restored, the last time when the (uncredited) producer, Arthur Freed, said "Rainbow stays or I go." It won an Oscar for Best Song.
Now and again Arlen went east to essay a Broadway musical, although his only two real hits are today all but forgotten. Bloomer Girl ran for 654 performances, and Jamaica, starring Lena Horne, was so mutilated by David Merrick that it turned into what was virtually a night club act for the star. A run of 557 performances hardly sweetened Arlen's anger at watching his work vanish around the U bend.
He worked on House of Flowers with its author, the young Truman Capote. It was not a success, but it yielded one lovely song, A Sleeping Bee, and one nice anecdote. At the time Marlene Diet rich, whom the author perceptively describes as a "professional angel of mercy", had struck up a friendship with Arlen. The reviews of the Philadelphia try out were good but hardly glowing, and a melancholy group held a wake in Arlen's hotel suite. Those present included Capote, the designer Oliver Messel and the visiting Noel Coward. Each one was attended by his (male) lover of the moment, which inspired Dietrich to say: "I'll tell you what's wrong with this show. I'm the only one here with balls."
ARLEN's wife Anya was not gregarious. The life of a Beverley Hills housewife stifled her, and her unhappiness exploded publicly in outbursts of rage. Arlen's family would have nothing to do with her, and she became reclusive. When her neuroses went out of control she was sent to an institution. A pattern developed; she would emerge, seemingly well, and the pair would be happy for a time; then the cycle began again. There was a period of normality, then she died of brain cancer in 1970.
Arlen lived in virtual retirement for another 16 years. He seems to have been a modest, rather self effacing man. The author's less than grammatical eulogy - "Like Mozart, like Schubert, Gershwin, like Kern, his gorgeous melodies are, timeless and will go on and on" - would probably have amazed him. Which makes two of us.
And, as if this were not enough, it recorded that on the day of his funeral he was buried next to Anya - there were spectacular rainbows in the sky. To which one can only say: "Oy vey, Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.