Herbert P. Stothart

Herbert Pope Stothart (September 11, 1885 – February 1, 1949) was an American composer, songwriter, arranger, and conductor whose career spanned Broadway and Hollywood. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he pursued musical training both in Europe and at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he subsequently taught.

Stothart's professional life began in the theater when producer Arthur Hammerstein hired him as a musical director for touring companies of Broadway productions. That association led him to collaborate with Hammerstein's nephew, Oscar Hammerstein II, and to compose for the stage more broadly. His Broadway credits as composer and book writer include Always You, Jimmie, Daffy Dill, the operetta Golden Dawn, and Good Boy, among other productions. He also contributed to Rose-Marie, the celebrated operetta with music by Rudolf Friml, and to Wildflower, on which he worked alongside Vincent Youmans and the team of Hammerstein and Otto Harbach. His collaborators over the course of his theater career included George Gershwin, Franz Lehár, and Emmerich Kálmán, the latter partnering with him on Golden Dawn.

Several songs from his Broadway years reached popular audiences as standards. Among them were "Bambalina," "The Mounties," "Totem Tom-Tom," "Wildflower," "Cute Little Two by Four," "Song of the Flame," "The Cossack Love Song," "Dawn," "Why Shouldn't We?," and "Fly Away." The song "I Wanna Be Loved by You," which Helen Kane first performed in 1928 with a "Boop-Boop-a-Doop" tag that inspired the cartoon character Betty Boop, was also among his credits, as were "Cuban Love Song," "The Rogue Song," and "The Donkey Serenade," the last adapted from a melody by Rudolf Friml with lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest and made well known through the 1937 film The Firefly.

Following the completion of Golden Dawn, Stothart accepted an invitation from Louis B. Mayer to relocate to Hollywood. In 1929 he signed a contract with MGM, where he would spend the next two decades as part of an elite circle of studio composers. His film work encompassed scores and conducting for a wide range of productions, including The Cuban Love Song, Queen Christina, Anna Karenina, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Mutiny on the Bounty, A Night at the Opera, Romeo and Juliet, The Good Earth, Mrs. Miniver, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Green Years, among more than one hundred film scores in total. The 1936 film version of Rose-Marie, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, was among his notable MGM contributions. He received ten Academy Award nominations over the course of his Hollywood career, with nominations including those for Mutiny on the Bounty and Maytime. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, which featured songs by E. Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen.

In 1947, while traveling in Scotland, Stothart suffered a heart attack. The experience prompted him to compose an orchestral work titled Heart Attack: A Symphonic Poem. He also completed a composition called Voices of Liberation, written on commission for the Roger Wagner Chorale. Stothart died of cancer in Los Angeles, California on February 1, 1949, at the age of 63, and is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.