Walter Kent

Walter Kent, born Walter Maurice Kaufman on November 29, 1911, in New York City, was an American composer, conductor, and Broadway songwriter. He died on March 2, 1994, in Los Angeles at the age of 82. Raised in a Jewish family, Kent attended Townsend Harris Hall High School and later enrolled at City College of New York, where he studied drafting with the intention of becoming an architect. He did not complete his university education and worked briefly as a draftsman before abandoning that path to pursue songwriting. During his early years in New York, he studied violin under Leopold Auer and Samuel Gardner and conducted his own orchestra, which performed in theaters and on the radio.

Kent's professional songwriting career began in 1932 when he co-wrote "Pu-Leeze, Mister Hemingway" with Milton Drake and Abner Silver. Through the 1930s and into the 1940s, he worked on both coasts, contributing songs to films in New York and Hollywood, including a number of westerns such as The Singing Cowgirl, Prairie Moon, and Water Rustlers. His collaborators over the course of his career included Kim Gannon, Al Hoffman, Mann Curtis, Jerome Jerome, Richard Byron, and Milton Drake.

As World War II spread across Europe, Kent composed the music for "(There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover" in 1941, a song expressing hope for England's eventual victory over Nazi Germany. Two years later, in 1943, he wrote "I'll Be Home for Christmas," which became one of his most enduring compositions and has since been featured in holiday-themed films. That same year he also wrote "I'm Gonna Live Till I Die," a song later recorded by Frank Sinatra and used in the trailer for the 2019 film Knives Out.

Kent received two Academy Award nominations for his film work: one in 1944 for "Too Much In Love," featured in Song of the Open Road, and another in 1945 for "Endlessly," from Earl Carroll Vanities. His film contributions spanned three decades, from I Loved You Wednesday in 1933 through Swingin' Along in 1962.

In 1951, Kent brought his work to Broadway, composing the score for Seventeen alongside Kim Gannon. The musical, based on Booth Tarkington's novel of the same name, ran for five months and included songs such as "I Could Get Married Today" and "After All It's Spring." Following Seventeen, Kent's output diminished considerably, and he seldom produced new music in the years that followed.

Before his death, Kent traveled to Kent, England — the county whose name he had adopted as his surname — to view the cliffs of Dover. During that visit he donated an original manuscript of "(There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover" and participated in early planning for a war commemoration tourist center.