Harry Tierney

Harry Austin Tierney (May 21, 1890 – March 22, 1965) was an American composer of musical theatre born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. His Broadway credits included Irene, Cross My Heart, The Broadway Whirl, Kid Boots, and Glory, among other productions. He was most active between approximately 1910 and 1930, and his work frequently brought him into collaboration with lyricist Joseph McCarthy.

Music ran in Tierney's family: his mother was a pianist and his father a trumpeter. In his early years he toured as a concert pianist, and he spent a period working in London for a music publisher before returning to the United States in 1916. During the following decades, many of his songs appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies, performed by singers including Eddie Cantor, Anna Held, and Edith Day. He also composed ragtime pieces, among them "The Bumble Bee" (1909), "The Fanatic Rag" (1911), and "Louisiana Rag" (1913).

The 1919 production of Irene represented Tierney's most celebrated Broadway achievement. The show ran for 620 performances, making it the longest-running Broadway production of its era. Its score included "Alice Blue Gown" and "Castle of Dreams," the latter an adaptation of Chopin's Minute Waltz. Irene was subsequently adapted as a film in 1926, remade in 1940 with Anna Neagle and Ray Milland, and brought back to the stage in 1973 with Debbie Reynolds.

Among Tierney's other notable productions were Kid Boots (1923) and Rio Rita (1927), the latter created in collaboration with Joseph McCarthy and among the first musicals converted into a talking picture by RKO. Additional shows including Dixiana (1929) and Half Shot at Sunrise (1930) were also adapted for film. His Broadway output further included Keep Smiling (1913), Up She Goes (1922), and Beau Brummell (1933). Tierney was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He died in New York in March 1965 at the age of 74 and is interred at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in New Rochelle, New York.