Sammy Cahn

Sammy Cahn, born Samuel Cohen on June 18, 1913, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, was an American lyricist, songwriter, and musician who worked across Broadway, film, and the recording industry until his death on January 15, 1993, in Los Angeles, California. He was the only son of Abraham and Elka Reiss Cohen, Jewish immigrants from Galicia, and grew up alongside four sisters — Sadye, Pearl, Florence, and Evelyn. Because his mother considered the piano a woman's instrument, Cahn took up the violin instead. After just three lessons, and following his bar mitzvah, he joined a small dixieland group called Pals of Harmony, which performed in the Catskill Mountains during summers and at private parties throughout the year.

Before establishing himself as a songwriter, Cahn held a variety of jobs, including playing violin in a theater-pit orchestra, working at a meat-packing plant, serving as a movie-house usher, operating a freight elevator, and working as a restaurant cashier and a porter at a bindery. His passion for vaudeville, which he had followed since age ten, proved formative. At sixteen, he watched Jack Osterman perform a self-written ballad and was moved to write his own first lyric that same evening, a piece he titled "Like Niagara Falls, I'm Falling for You — Baby."

Much of his early professional work was produced in collaboration with Saul Chaplin, whom Cahn first met when he invited Chaplin to audition at the Henry Street Settlement. Billed as "Cahn and Chaplin," the pair wrote special material for Warner Brothers' musical short subjects, filmed at the Vitaphone studio in Brooklyn. Through an office arrangement on West 46th Street with the booking firm Beckman and Pransky, they created material for emerging performers including Milton Berle, Danny Kaye, Phil Silvers, and Bob Hope. A childhood friendship with Lou Levy, who had become a music publisher, led to a songwriting partnership that produced "Rhythm is Our Business" for the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra — Cahn's first ASCAP copyright. The duo also wrote for Glen Gray's Casa Loma Orchestra and Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy, contributing "Until the Real Thing Comes Along."

Cahn's association with Frank Sinatra became one of the most significant of his career. Through Tommy Dorsey, Cahn was introduced to Sinatra, and the relationship that followed extended across decades. Working primarily with composer Jimmy Van Heusen, Cahn supplied Sinatra with a steady stream of songs during the singer's years at Capitol Records, and the two were regarded as something close to Sinatra's personal songwriters. Among the songs Cahn wrote with Van Heusen for Sinatra was "Love and Marriage," which originally debuted in a 1955 television production of Our Town and won an Emmy Award in 1956; the song later became the theme for the FOX television series Married... with Children. Cahn also collaborated with Jule Styne, producing the enduring holiday standard "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" in 1945. He contributed lyrics to two films set in the Land of Oz: Journey Back to Oz in 1971, with Van Heusen, and The Wizard of Oz in 1982, with Allen Byrns, Joe Hisaishi, and Yuichiro Oda.

On Broadway, Cahn worked as a performer, composer, and book writer across multiple productions. His credits include High Button Shoes, Skyscraper, Look to the Lilies, Walking Happy, and Eddie Fisher at the Winter Garden, the last of which marked his Broadway performing appearance in 1974. His work on Walking Happy earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Composer and Lyricist in 1967, and the production itself received a Tony nomination for Best Musical that same year. He received the Theatre World Award for Best Newcomer to Broadway, as well as the Outer Critics Circle Award and the Christopher Award.

Over the course of his career, Cahn received four Academy Awards for his song lyrics, accumulating thirty-one Oscar nominations in total — more than any other songwriter at the time. He also received five Golden Globe Award nominations and a Grammy Award nomination, with Van Heusen, for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Show for Robin and the 7 Hoods. Among his Oscar-winning songs was "Three Coins in the Fountain." In 1972, he became a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame and later assumed its presidency when his friend Johnny Mercer became ill. In 1988, the Sammy Film Music Awards were established in his honor, recognizing movie songs and scores annually.

Cahn played both piano and violin and, despite acknowledging that he did not possess a great singing voice, performed concerts of his own music with pianist and composer Harper MacKay serving as his musical director and accompanist. He changed his surname twice — first from Cohen to Kahn to avoid confusion with actor Sammy Cohen, then from Kahn to Cahn to distinguish himself from lyricist Gus Kahn.

He was married twice. His first marriage, in 1945, was to vocalist and former Goldwyn girl Gloria Delson, with whom he had two children, Laurie Cahn and guitarist Steve Khan. That marriage ended in divorce after eighteen years. In 1970, Cahn married Virginia Curtis, a former fashion coordinator for designer Donald Brooks. The couple divorced around 1982, remarried, and remained together until his death. Cahn died of heart failure at the age of seventy-nine and was interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Following his death, the Cahn estate established the High Hopes Fund at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston to support diabetes research and provide encouragement to children living with the disease.