George Kleinsinger

George Kleinsinger (February 13, 1914 – July 28, 1982) was an American composer born in San Bernardino, California to a Polish-Jewish family. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1930 and subsequently earned a Bachelor of Arts in music from New York University before pursuing advanced composition studies at Juilliard. He launched his professional career performing in bands on the Borscht Belt circuit, where he played alongside trumpeter Frankie Newton.

Kleinsinger became widely recognized for his children's compositions, particularly through a series of orchestral and vocal works created in collaboration with lyricist Paul Tripp. The most prominent of these was Tubby the Tuba, released in 1945, which initiated a body of work for young audiences that also included Peewee the Piccolo, Jack and Homer the Horse, and The Story of Celeste. His 1937 Brooklyn Baseball Cantata, with words by Michael Stratton, was recorded by Robert Merrill for RCA Victor in 1948 and earned Kleinsinger an honorary membership in the Society for the Prevention of Disparaging Remarks About Brooklyn.

His connection to the animated holiday canon began in 1948 when he composed music for the original Max Fleischer and Jam Handy animated adaptation of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. That work led to a commission to set the song for the 1964 Rankin-Bass production; although the producers ultimately chose the Johnny Marks version, Kleinsinger retained partial songwriting credit. The royalties from that credit proved financially significant. His own version of the song was released by RCA in 1964, sung by Paul Wing with Russ Case's orchestra.

A sustained creative relationship with Joe Darion centered on the newspaper columns of Don Marquis featuring the characters archy and mehitabel. This collaboration produced a 1954 concept record album starring Carol Channing, a 1954 opera premiered by the Little Orchestra Society under Thomas Scherman, and the 1957 Broadway musical Shinbone Alley, for which Kleinsinger served as composer. The production ran for 49 performances and featured Eddie Bracken and Eartha Kitt. A film adaptation followed in 1970. Stephen Schwartz, who lived near Kleinsinger in Roslyn, New York, has cited the musical as an inspiration for his own career as a composer.

In the early 1950s, Kleinsinger co-founded the Roslyn Chamber Music Group alongside Robert Bernstein and Leonid Hambro, with the aim of bringing distinguished chamber musicians to perform on Long Island. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s he scored numerous television programs, films, and documentaries. Among the most notable were John Brown's Body for CBS, the labor documentary The Inheritance — whose title song featured performances by Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Carla Rotolo, and screenwriter Millard Lampell — and Greece: The Golden Age, which earned him an Emmy nomination.

Beyond his work for stage and screen, Kleinsinger composed in more traditional classical forms, including a cello concerto premiered by Paul Olefsky and a quintet for clarinet and strings premiered by the Kroll Quartet with Robert McGuiness. He also wrote the Brendan Behan Suite, which incorporates surreptitious tape recordings he made of his Chelsea Hotel neighbor Brendan Behan singing. Their friendship was later documented in Janet Behan's play Brendan at the Chelsea. He additionally composed film scores for another Chelsea neighbor, filmmaker Doris Totten Chase, including music for her works Squares and The Emperor's New Clothes.

For the final 25 years of his life, Kleinsinger resided at New York's Chelsea Hotel, where he became known for maintaining a tropical environment in his apartment that included iguanas, tarantulas, walking catfish, turtles, exotic birds, and a baby hippopotamus. In 1972, this living arrangement was the subject of a Harry Reasoner television documentary titled Who Do You Think You Are? – Man and Beast. Sculptures of Kleinsinger and other Chelsea residents by Eugenie Gershoy remain on display in the hotel lobby. Kleinsinger was married three times. He died of cancer in New York City on July 28, 1982. A memorial service was held the following week at Judson Memorial Church, and his ashes were spread on the Chelsea Hotel's rooftop garden.