E. Ray Goetz

Edward Ray Goetz was born on June 12, 1886, in Buffalo, New York, the son of a provision merchant. At sixteen he relocated to New York City to pursue songwriting, beginning his professional life writing for Ted Shapiro's Tin Pan Alley music publishing company. He studied music at Yale University and Columbia University, where he was a pupil of composer Edward MacDowell. Over the course of his career he published more than 500 songs, worked as a composer, lyricist, playwright, director, and theatrical producer, and became a charter member of ASCAP in 1914.

Goetz was active on Broadway from 1906 through 1930, contributing words and music to a wide range of productions. His early credits included The Orchid, The Gay White Way, and Two Islands, all in 1907, as well as The Follies of 1907, the first edition of the Ziegfeld Follies. Subsequent productions featuring his work included The Prince of Bohemia in 1910, A Matinee Idol in 1910, The Hen-Pecks and The Never Homes in 1911, Hanky Panky in 1912, All Aboard in 1913, and Hands Up in 1915, for which he served as lyricist to composer Sigmund Romberg while also contributing some music of his own. He and Buddy DeSylva collaborated on lyrics set to music by George Gershwin for the 1922 and 1923 editions of George White's Scandals, producing songs including "Across the Sea," "Let's Be Lonesome Together," "There Is Nothing Too Good for You," and "Throw 'Er in High."

Beginning with Hitchy-Koo of 1917, Goetz expanded his role to include producing. For that production he also wrote the musical book and served as lyricist, with Raymond Hubbell composing the music. He went on to produce several additional Broadway works in which he had creative involvement, among them As You Were in 1920, Little Miss Bluebeard in 1923, and Cole Porter's Paris in 1928, the latter of which also included musical material by Goetz. He authored and produced the 1928 play The Lady of the Orchids, and produced and served as production supervisor for the 1929 Herbert Fields and Porter musical Fifty Million Frenchmen, which Warner Brothers adapted into a film in 1930. His final Broadway production was Porter's The New Yorkers during the 1930–1931 season, for which he also created the story and served as director. A planned Broadway production of the Ballets Russes with choreography by Léonide Massine was abandoned after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 created serious financial difficulties for Goetz.

Among his most enduring songs was "For Me and My Gal," co-written in 1916 with lyricist Edgar Leslie and composer George W. Meyer, which later inspired the 1942 film of the same name in which Judy Garland and Gene Kelly performed it. That same year he co-authored "Yaaka Hula Hickey Dula" with Joe Young and Pete Wendling, which became a hit for Al Jolson in Robinson Crusoe, Jr. and a best-selling Columbia Records single. His 1911 song "Toddling The Todalo," written with composer Alfred Baldwin Sloane for The Hen-Pecks, became a hit for vaudeville performer Blossom Seeley. Additional songs from his catalog included "So This Is Love," "Don't Go In the Lion's Cage Tonight," "If You Could Care," "Meet Me in the Shadows," "The Land of Going to Be," "Boom," and "There's a Girl in Chateau Thierry," written in 1919.

In the final years of his life Goetz served as lyricist for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus from 1951 through 1954, collaborating with circus bandmaster Merle Evans and circus president John Ringling North, who composed many of the melodies to which Goetz set lyrics. Songs from that collaboration were featured in the 1952 film The Greatest Show on Earth. His work also appeared in the films For Me and My Gal in 1942 and Somebody Loves Me in 1952. Some of his songs were used posthumously in the 1975 Broadway musical Doctor Jazz.

Goetz was married three times. His first marriage, to Elizabeth Leyland, produced a daughter. His second marriage, to Ethel Johnson, ended in divorce in April 1918. On October 24, 1918, he married actress Irène Bordoni; that marriage ended in divorce on November 6, 1929. His younger sister Dorothy married Irving Berlin in 1912 and died from typhoid fever contracted during their honeymoon at the age of twenty. Goetz and Berlin remained friends, and the two collaborated on the 1912 song "Alexander's Bagpipe Band," a parody of Berlin's 1911 "Alexander's Ragtime Band." Goetz died on his sixty-eighth birthday, June 12, 1954, in Greenwich, Connecticut.