Harry Von Tilzer (July 8, 1872 - January 10, 1946) was a very popular United States songwriter.
Biography
Von Tilzer was born in Goshen, Indiana under the name Aaron Gumbinsky which he shortened to Harry Gumm. He ran away and joined a traveling circus at age 14, where he took his new name by adding 'Von' to his mother's maiden name 'Tilzer'. Harry soon proved successful playing piano and calliope and writing new tunes and incidental music for the shows. He continued doing this in Burlesque and Vaudeville shows for some years, writing many tunes which were not published or which he sold to entertainers for 1 or 2 dollars. In 1898 he sold his song "My Old New Hampshire Home" to a publisher for $15, and watched it become a national hit, selling over 2 million copies of the sheet music. This prompted him to become a professional songwriter.
He was made a partner of the Shapiro Bernstein Publishing Company. His 1900 number "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" became one of the biggest hits of the age. Von Tilzer became one of the best known Tin Pan Alley songwriters. In 1902 Von Tilzer formed his own publishing company, where he was soon joined by his younger brother Albert Von Tilzer.
Harry Von Tilzer's hits included "A Bird in a Gilded Cage", "Cubanola Glide", "Wait 'Til The Sun Shines Nellie", "Old King Tut", "All Alone", "Mariutch", "The Ragtime Goblin Man," "I Love My Wife, But Oh You Kid!", "They Always Pick On Me", "I Want A Girl (Just Like The Girl That Married Dear Old Dad)", "And The Green Grass Grew All Around", "On the Old Fall River Line", and many others.
He died in New York City on January 10, 1946.
Work on Broadway
von Tilzer was a prominent Jewish American popular song composer at the turn of the 20th Century. Wrote I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad, and Wait Till The Sun Shines, Nellie, among many others.
Brooks is a Jewish American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows. In middle age he became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films being among the top ten money makers of the year that they were released. His most well known films include The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, History of the World, Part I and Spaceballs.
Copland was born in Brooklyn of Lithuanian Jewish descent, the last of five children, on November 14, 1900. He was a 20th Century composer who brought American-based themes into his work (i.e. Appalachin Spring). The family name was Kaplan. It was changed, so far as Copland knew, by the Ellis Island agent.
19152003
