The lyricist Carl Sigman, who died on September 26th aged 91, would have deserved his place in music history for one song alone - Pennsylvania 6-5000. That first hit took its title from the telephone number of New York's Hotel Pennsylvania, and was recorded by Glenn Miller at the end of the 1930s. When it featured in the 1954 film, The Glenn Miller Story, it became a folk memory for a generation that loved seeing James Stewart on the phone to June Allyson.
Carl Sigman's All In The Game was a hit twice for Tommy Edwards, in 1951 and 1958; a success for Cliff Richard in the 1960s, and also for the Four Tops. In 1953, he provided lyrics for Robert Maxwell's Ebb Tide, and, soon afterwards, wrote the "riding through the glen" theme for the British television series Robin Hood. In 1970, he penned the theme song for the film, Love Story.
Carl Sigman was a man of many styles, who also managed to coin phrases that became part of everyday language. "Enjoy yourself," he said in the 1950 song, "it's later than you think." It served as the message on his own answering machine.
Carl Sigman was born into a Jewish-American family in Brooklyn and studied law at New York University. He practised for a year, but loathed the profession, possibly because court speeches were so formal. He was a spontaneous writer, always striving "to make conversational lyrics" from phrases people used on the phone, in the kitchen or across the dinner table.
While still a lawyer, he worked as a typist and a piano teacher, always trying to find time to go to the Brill Building, a popular haunt of songwriters. His successes included The All-American Soldier, which became the official, second World War song of the US 82nd Airborne Division. He earned a $25 war bond for his trouble - having already won a bronze star as a member of an army glider crew in Europe.
For the 1947 Broadway musical, Angel In The Wings, he produced Bongo, Bongo, Bongo, also known as Civilisation, a huge hit for Danny Kaye and the Andrews Sisters, as well as for Louis Prima. It was while listening to Prima cutting that disc that he met his future wife, Terry, then working for the singer and bandleader.
He occasionally wrote his own music, frequently adapting foreign songs. He did not, however, translate the lyrics, because he thought "the accents and metre are different". Among the adaptations was the French ballad Et Maintenant, which became the mid-1960s Frank Sinatra and Shirley Bassey hit What Now, My Love.
Several of his themes, not originally written for screen, surfaced frequently on film. It's All In The Game featured in the 1982 movie Diner, in Losin' It (1983) and in October Sky (1999).
Carl Sigman is survived by his wife and three sons.
Carl Sigman: born 1909; died, September 2000