Burton Lane

Burton Lane, born Burton Levy on February 2, 1912, in Manhattan, New York City, was an American composer, lyricist, and book writer whose work spanned Broadway and Hollywood over several decades. He died on January 5, 1997. The son of Lazarus and Frances Fink Levy, Lane lost his mother when he was two years old, though both parents shared a love of music. As a teenager, he adopted the surname Lane at the suggestion of someone with whom he was auditioning, a change his brother and cousins subsequently made as well.

Lane demonstrated musical aptitude from an early age, studying piano, viola, and cello as a child and composing two marches for his school band that were published. At fourteen, the Shubert theatrical producers commissioned him to write songs for a revue called The Greenwich Village Follies, which was ultimately canceled. A pivotal social connection came when his father brought him to play piano at a boarding house in Atlantic City during the winter holidays; there, George Gershwin's mother introduced herself to the family, leading Lane to meet George Gershwin, his lyricist brother Ira, and Ira's close friend Yip Harburg, who would later become one of Lane's most important collaborators. Lane's professional start came through lyricist Joe Young, who was working for the music publisher J.H. Remick. Young heard Lane compose a tune on the spot for one of his lyrics and recommended him to the publisher, prompting Lane to leave high school to write for Remick's.

Lane's Broadway career began at age eighteen when he contributed songs to the 1930 edition of Artists and Models, including "My Real Ideal" and "Two Perfect Lovers," and placed two songs — "Forget All Your Books" and "Out in the Open Air" — in the revue Three's a Crowd. Working with lyricist Harold Adamson, he contributed songs to The Earl Carroll Vanities of 1931 and placed additional material in several other productions. Among the individual songs he published during this period were "Look Who's Here" and "Tony's Wife," both with Adamson. His early Broadway and Tin Pan Alley work came to an end when his employer, Irving Berlin Inc., sent him and Adamson to Hollywood for what was intended to be a six-week engagement; Lane remained there for twenty-one years.

During his Hollywood years Lane wrote music for more than sixty films, working with Adamson and later with lyricist Ralph Freed at Paramount Pictures from 1936 to 1941. In 1933, his song "Everything I Have Is Yours," written with Adamson, was introduced in the film Dancing Lady and became a hit. At Paramount, Lane and Freed's song "How About You?," performed by Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in Babes on Broadway in 1941, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. Lane also introduced Frank Loesser to a Paramount producer, Lew Gensler, after being impressed by Loesser's lyrics; Lane and Loesser subsequently collaborated on standards including "The Lady's in Love with You" and "I Hear Music." Lane also recommended the then-unknown Mary Martin to Paramount after hearing her perform in a cabaret show. In 1935, Lane encountered the thirteen-year-old Judy Garland performing with her sisters at the Paramount theater in Los Angeles and immediately contacted the head of MGM's music department to arrange an audition; Louis B. Mayer was sufficiently impressed that the audition, which began at 9:30 in the morning, extended to 7:30 in the evening, and MGM signed Garland. Lane's most notable film of the 1940s and 1950s was Royal Wedding in 1951, for which Alan Jay Lerner wrote the lyrics; the song "Too Late Now" from that film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song.

Despite his extensive film output, Lane is most celebrated for two Broadway musicals. The first, Finian's Rainbow, opened in 1947 with Harburg writing the lyrics and co-writing the libretto. The show has been revived four times on Broadway and twice off-Broadway, and its songs — among them "Old Devil Moon," "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?," and "If This Isn't Love" — have been widely recorded. A film adaptation was released in 1968. Lane's second major Broadway work, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, opened in 1965 with Lerner writing both the libretto and lyrics. Although the show ran for 280 performances and Lerner's book drew criticism, it earned Lane a Tony Award nomination for Best Composer and Lyricist in 1966, and Lane and Lerner shared a Grammy Award for Best Score from an Original Cast Show Album for its cast recording. The title song and "Come Back to Me" have been recorded extensively. A film adaptation followed in 1970, incorporating new and revised songs by Lane and Lerner.

Lane's additional Broadway credits include Hold on to Your Hats in 1940, again with Harburg as lyricist, and Laffing Room Only in 1944, for which Lane himself wrote nearly all of the lyrics. His final Broadway musical, Carmelina in 1979, reunited him with Lerner and earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Original Score, though the production closed quickly after its libretto received negative notices. Lane's output became notably sparse after his film work declined in the 1950s, a situation he attributed to the difficulty of finding a libretto capable of inspiring a full score of varied songs. He turned down several projects on those grounds, including Arms and the Girl in 1950 and By the Beautiful Sea in 1954, both with books by Dorothy and Herbert Fields. He and Harburg also declined to work on Hello, Dolly! in 1964, as Harburg felt the material lacked sufficient social significance. Lane did eventually collaborate with Dorothy Fields on the television musical Junior Miss, which aired on CBS on December 20, 1957. His last major project was the animated film Heidi's Song in 1982, on which he worked for the first time with lyricist Sammy Cahn.

Lane married Marian Seaman in 1935; the marriage ended in divorce in 1961. He subsequently married Lynn Baroff Kaye, who had three daughters from a prior marriage. Born and raised in New York, New York, Lane left a body of work that earned him two Tony Award nominations — for Best Composer and Lyricist in 1966 and for Best Original Score in 1979 — along with his Grammy recognition for the On a Clear Day cast album.