Harold Orlob

Harold Fred Orlob (June 3, 1883 – June 25, 1982) was an American composer, lyricist, director, and film producer born in Logan, Utah, who became a prolific contributor to Broadway and Tin Pan Alley during the 1910s and 1920s. He is perhaps best remembered for composing the melody to "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now" (1909), a song for which he went uncredited for nearly four decades before winning co-authorship recognition through a lawsuit in 1947. His Broadway credits include A La Broadway, Ginger, An Aztec Romance, Listen Lester, and Hairpin Harmony, among other productions. He died in Salt Lake City at the age of 99.

Orlob moved with his family from Logan to Salt Lake City at the age of three, where his father worked for the ZCMI department store company. He studied piano in Salt Lake City with Frank W. Merrill and began composing while still a teenager, publishing his first composition, the cakewalk "White Trash," in 1899 through the Utah Lithographing Co. At the time of that publication he was in the eighth grade at Lowell School. By that same year he was directing his own youth orchestra in Salt Lake City, performing at community events. He also worked as a musician in the resident band of the Salt Lake Theatre and was a member of L. P. Christensen's orchestra, then the city's principal symphony ensemble.

In 1900 Orlob enrolled at the University of Utah, where he founded the university's orchestra and served as its first music director. Though he originally intended to pursue architecture, he took music lessons at the university with professor John J. McClellan and also performed at campus events as both a pianist and cornetist. He graduated in 1903 with a degree in engineering and was later named a distinguished alumnus in 1965. Following graduation, he pursued further music studies at the Michigan Conservatory of Music in Detroit, where he studied piano with Alberto Jonás and studied music theory, composition, and orchestration with Jean Van Der Velpen, earning a music degree from the institution.

His first musical, The Prince and the Peasant, for which he served as both composer and lyricist, was staged at the Salt Lake Theatre in 1902 when he was eighteen years old. He published several songs while still living in Utah, including "I'se Done Lost My Job" (1901) and "Mamie Kane of Maine" (1901), and during a 1901 trip to New York City attracted the interest of M. Witmark & Sons, who agreed to publish two of his songs. In 1904 his opera The Merry Grafters was staged at the Detroit Opera House as a benefit for Detroit's Woman's Hospital and Infant Home, using a libretto by Dr. E. L. Shurly. This was followed by work on Bonnie Annie Laurie (1904) and The Seminary Girl, staged at the Great Northern Theatre in Chicago in 1905, which Orlob conducted and which subsequently toured the Midwestern United States.

Orlob relocated to New York City in 1905, where he was employed by the Shubert Brothers as a composer and arranger. He contributed songs to their 1905 touring production of Babes in the Wood and authored music for James T. Powers's Ysaye that same year. In 1906 he married Margaret Neely of Chicago, an actress who performed under the stage name Lita Gilmore, at Britton Hall in New York City. That year his song "Don't You Care" was interpolated into the Shuberts' Broadway musical My Lady's Maid. Working simultaneously in Tin Pan Alley, he had songs published by houses such as Joseph W. Stern & Co., with works appearing in productions including The Maid and the Millionaire (1907) and Two Islands (1907). He was a founding member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 1914. With Irving Berlin, Louis A. Hirsch, and Earl Carroll, he collaborated on the music for The Passing Show of 1912.

The song "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now," with lyrics by Will M. Hough and Frank R. Adams, originated while Orlob was working as an arranger for composer Joseph E. Howard on the musical The Prince of Tonight (1909). Howard, who was known for claiming credit for others' work, published the song under his own name despite the melody having been crafted by Orlob. The misattribution stood until 1947, when Orlob successfully sued for co-authorship credit at the time 20th Century Fox released a biographical film about Howard bearing the song's title. Orlob did not seek royalties as part of the lawsuit. The song was later interpolated into the 1955 Broadway production Maurice Chevalier in an Evening of Songs and Impressions.

The most successful production of Orlob's Broadway career was Listen Lester, a hit of the 1918–1919 season that ran for 272 performances and included the song "Waiting," which was recorded by multiple artists of the era. His other Broadway scores include A La Broadway (1911, starring Mae West), An Aztec Romance (1912, based on the novel Corianton by B. H. Roberts and adapted by playwright Orestes U. Bean), The Red Canary (1914), Ned Wayburn's Town Topics (1915), Nothing But Love (1919), Just a Minute (1919), Ginger (1923), Talk About Girls (1927), and Hairpin Harmony. He also wrote scores for musicals produced in Chicago, among them The Flirting Princess (1909), Miss Nobody from Starland (1910), The Heartbreakers (1911), and A Trial Honeymoon (1924). In addition to his stage work, Orlob worked briefly in Hollywood as a producer for Paramount Pictures and operated a recording studio during his career.