Jule Styne
| Jule Styne | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Julius Kerwin Stein |
| Born |
December 31, 1905 London, England, UK |
| Died | September 20, 1994 (aged 88) Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Songwriter |
| Years active | 1947–1994 |
Jule Styne (/ˈdʒuːli staɪn/; December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was a British-American songwriter known for a series of Broadway musicals, which include several famous and frequently revived shows.
Among his most enduring songs is "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", co-written with Sammy Cahn in 1945.
Styne was born in London as Julius Kerwin Stein to Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine, Russian Empire who ran a small grocery. At the age of eight he moved with his family to Chicago, where at an early age he began taking piano lessons. He proved to be a prodigy and performed with the Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit Symphonies before he was ten years old.
Styne attended Chicago Musical College, but before then he had already attracted attention of another teenager, Mike Todd, later a successful film producer, who commissioned him to write a song for a musical act that he was creating. It was the first of over 1,500 published songs Styne composed in his career. In 1929, Styne was playing with the Ben Pollack band, and wrote the song Sunday.
Styne was a vocal coach for 20th Century Fox, until Darryl F. Zanuck fired him because vocal coaching was "a luxury, and we're cutting out those luxuries" and told him he should write songs, because "that's forever". Styne established his own dance band, which brought him to the notice of Hollywood, where he was championed by Frank Sinatra and where he began a collaboration with lyricist Sammy Cahn, with whom he wrote many songs for the movies, including "It's Been a Long, Long Time" (#1 for 3 weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1945), "Five Minutes More," and the Oscar-winning title song of Three Coins in the Fountain. He collaborated on the score for the 1955 musical film My Sister Eileen with Leo Robin. Ten of his songs were nominated for the Oscar, many written with Cahn, including "I've Heard That Song Before" (#1 for 13 weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1943), "I'll Walk Alone", "It's Magic" (a #2 hit for Doris Day in 1948) and "I Fall in Love Too Easily".
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