Victor Arden

Victor Arden was the stage name of Lewis John Fuiks, an American pianist and orchestra leader born on March 8, 1893, in Wenona, Illinois. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Fuiks also studied at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago before embarking on a career that would span recording, radio, Broadway, and composition.

Arden began his recording career before 1920, cutting piano rolls for the American Piano Company and for QRS to be reproduced on player pianos. During this same period he was a member of the All-Star Trio, which recorded several successful sides for Victor Records between 1919 and 1921. He went on to form a celebrated piano duo and co-led an orchestra with Phil Ohman from 1922 to 1932, an association that brought him to Broadway. His stage appearances spanned from 1924 to 1939 and included the musical Lady, Be Good! and the revue George White's Scandals, which dated from 1922.

Beyond the stage, Arden maintained a prominent presence in radio. By 1935 he was described in the press as well known to both music lovers and radio listeners, with his orchestra featured on Musical Moments, a program broadcast on more than 300 stations each week. He and his orchestra later provided the music for Mr. Chameleon, a detective drama that ran on CBS Radio from the late 1940s into the early 1950s.

Arden was also a prolific composer whose output stretched from 1909 through 1941. His compositions included works created in collaboration with Frank Wheeler Wadsworth, George Hamilton Green, Walter Hirsch, and Joseph Russel Robinson, among others. Representative titles include Honeymoon Waltz from 1919, Dancing the Devil Away from 1930, and the 1941 pieces We'd Rather Die Upon Our Feet Than Live Upon Our Knees and Unity, both with words by Henry A. Murphy and melodies co-written with Robinson.

Arden married Ilse Alma Spindler, a 1916 University of Chicago graduate, in Chicago on May 2, 1917. The couple had two sons, Lewis John Fuiks Jr., born in 1919, and Robert Spindler Fuiks, born in 1921. Arden later remarried in the 1950s to Frances Newsom, a classical soprano. He died on July 31, 1962, in New York City.