Brooks Bowman

Brooks Bowman was an American composer, songwriter, and lyricist born on October 21, 1913, in Cleveland, Ohio. He is best known for composing "East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)," a song that became a jazz standard.

Bowman completed his early education at Asheville School in Asheville, North Carolina before finishing his preparatory schooling at University School in Cleveland. He spent one year at Stanford University before transferring to Princeton University as a sophomore in the fall of 1933. During his undergraduate years at Princeton, he served as president of the Tower Club and contributed significantly to the Princeton Triangle Club's musical productions. For the 1934 Triangle Club show Stags at Bay, he wrote several songs including "East of the Sun," "Love and a Dime," and "Will Love Find a Way?" — though "East of the Sun" nearly did not appear in the production due to a copyright dispute. For the Triangle Club's 1936 production, What a Relief!, he contributed "Give Me a Gibson Girl," "Love Will Live On," "A Newspaper Picture of You," and "Then I Shan't Love You Anymore."

Bowman graduated from Princeton with the class of 1936, the same year he appeared on Broadway in Spring Dance. He subsequently relocated to California, where in 1937 he worked briefly under contract as a songwriter for Selznick International Pictures. After his contract was terminated in September 1937, he returned to the East Coast and entered into a songwriting partnership with a former Princeton classmate, with Bowman set to serve as lyricist. A New York music publisher offered the pair a contract, but it was never signed.

Bowman died on October 17, 1937, four days before what would have been his 24th birthday, when the car in which he was riding struck a stone wall on Cat Rock Road near Garrison, New York. He is buried in the family mausoleum at Grandview Cemetery in Salem, Ohio.