Irving Caesar

Irving Caesar ( born July 4, 1895 in New York City; † 18 December 1996 in New York City ) was an American songwriter and composer, known for many contributions to the Great American Songbook.

Caesar is especially for the songs Tea for Two ( a jazz standard, written in 1925 for the Broadway show No, No, Nanette, Music Vincent Youmans ), Just a Gigolo (English text 1929 ), Swanee ( George Gershwin, a hit for Al Jolson ) Sometimes I'm Happy ( Sometimes I'm Blue ) (1927, music Youmans ), I Want to Be Happy ( Youmans with 1925 for No, No, Nanette ) and Animal Crackers in My Soup ( a Shirley Temple Curly Top hit in 1935 with Ray Henderson, Ted Koehler ) known. He wrote lyrics for over 700 songs and contributed to Broadway shows at 44.

He grew up with his older brother, the screenwriter Arthur Caesar, on the Lower East Side on, in the neighborhood of the Marx Brothers, which he knew as a child. Caesar visited the Chappaqua Mountain Institute ( a school of Quakers) and the Townsend Harris High School in New York. He then spent a year studying at the City College of New York before he worked for the Ford Motor Company from 1915. He traveled as a secretary with the Peace Ship of Henry Ford, which started in neutral countries during the First World War for Peace. In 1918 he had his first success as a songwriter and moved to New York as an author in the Tin Pan Alley, where he met George Gershwin, with whom he became friends. In 1919 she wrote Swanee on the way back from visiting a restaurant.

School children in the U.S., he was known in the 1930s for his Sing a Song of Safety Series (1938 with the composer Gerald Marks ). He also created the song series Sing a Song of Friendship originate (inspired by the UN and international understanding campaigning ) and a number of songs of Health. He wrote the official music for the U.S. Oath Pledge of Allegiance and transferred the rights to the U.S. government.

He was a founder of the Songwriters Guild of America and incorporated into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972. He was several times in the Council of the copyright organization ASCAP ( 1930-1946 and 1949-1966 ).