Robert Emmett Dolan

Robert Emmett Dolan (August 3, 1908 – September 26, 1972) was a composer, conductor, arranger, and book writer whose career spanned Broadway, radio, film, and television across five decades. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, the eldest of twelve children, he studied piano under his mother's instruction and received his formal education in Montreal. He pursued advanced musical training at Loyola College, now known as Concordia University, and later studied with Mortimer Wilson, Joseph Schillinger, and Ernst Toch.

Dolan's professional life began in the 1920s when he played piano for honky-tonk and musical comedy bands before transitioning into work as a musician, composer, conductor, and musical director in the theater. His early Broadway contributions as musical director included May Wine (1935), Forbidden Melody (1936), Hooray for What! (1937), Leave It To Me (1938), Very Warm for May (1939), and Louisiana Purchase (1940), among others. He also contributed to productions of Of Thee I Sing and the Ziegfeld Follies during this period. In the 1930s he expanded into radio, working as a composer, conductor, and music director in that medium.

His Hollywood career began in 1941 when he became music director for MGM before moving to Paramount, where he served as music director on sixteen Bing Crosby pictures and worked as composer and arranger for Ginger Rogers and Betty Hutton. Over the course of his time in film, he scored approximately sixty movies. His work on Birth of the Blues (1941), Holiday Inn (1942), Star Spangled Rhythm (1943), Lady in the Dark (1944), The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), Incendiary Blonde (1945), Blue Skies (1946), and Road to Rio (1947) each earned him Academy Award nominations in the category of Scoring of a Musical Picture, for a total of eight nominations. Toward the end of his tenure at Paramount, he moved into producing, with credits including White Christmas (1954), The Girl Rush (1955), and Anything Goes (1956).

Dolan joined ASCAP in 1946 and frequently collaborated with Johnny Mercer and Walter O'Keefe on popular-song compositions. His published songs include "Your Heart Will Tell You So," "At Last I'm in Love," "Little by Little," "Big Movie Show in the Sky," and "A Month of Sundays," among others. He later worked in television, contributing to specials and documentaries, and became a prominent member of Columbia University's music faculty, where he taught orchestration, conducting, and a film score course based on his book Music in Modern Media.

Dolan returned to Broadway as a composer with Texas, Li'l Darlin' (1949), Not for Children (1951), and Foxy (1964). He also served as musical director for Juno (1959) and Coco (1969), and as musical editor for A Loss of Roses (1959).

In his personal life, Dolan married and divorced twice, each marriage producing one son. His first wife was dancer Vilma Ebsen, sister of actor Buddy Ebsen; they married on June 24, 1933, and divorced in January 1948. Their son, Robert Emmett Dolan II, also known as Bobby Dolan Jr., appeared in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945) as Joseph in a children's Christmas play sequence within the film. Dolan's second wife was actress Nan Martin; they married on March 17, 1948, and had a son named Casey Martin Dolan.

Dolan died in Los Angeles on September 26, 1972, of a heart attack in his sleep. Funeral services were held both in Los Angeles and at Columbia University in New York.