Vivian Ellis

Vivian John Herman Ellis, CBE (29 October 1903 – 19 June 1996) was an English musical comedy composer best known for the song "Spread a Little Happiness" and the theme "Coronation Scot".

Ellis was born in Hampstead, London in 1903 and educated at Cheltenham College. He began a musical career as a concert pianist, but became a composer and lyricist. His grandmother, Julia Woolf, had also been a concert pianist as well as composing an opera, Carina. He had great success with "Over My Shoulder" song foxtrot in the early 20s. This led to further contributions of pieces for several revues in the 1920s. Another hit song was his "Yale Blues" which had a dance step called the "Yale" and became a craze in 1927 both in the UK, Europe and the US. He became well known in the London West End Theatres for providing the music and collaborating in the production of a large number of musical shows, spanning from 1925 to 1958 - in fact, Ellis was to dominate the musical theatre of the 1930s having one to three shows run most years of this decade. However, in spite of his music being both pleasant and catchy, few of his compositions were recorded (with the exception of "I'm On a See-Saw" by Fats Waller and "This is My Lovely Day" by Lizbeth Webb and Georges Guetary), so his name became less well known after his last London production. He wrote some songs used in British films of the 1930s.

By the 1950s, musical comedy had begun to fall out of fashion, and his last full-length musical, Half in Earnest, appeared in 1958. He contributed to revues for a few more years and then turned his hand to writing a series of amusing books such as How To Enjoy Your Operation. Ellis became the President of the Performing Right Society and in 1984 the society instituted an annual event - the Vivian Ellis Prize - to encourage young composers and lyricists to write for the musical stage. Ellis gave all the writers the same advice: "Try and put at least one hit song in every musical you write." Several of the promising writers featured in the competition went on to success, including Charles Hart who wrote lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical of The Phantom of the Opera, and Philip Glassborow whose comedy musical The Great Big Radio Show! was a personal favourite.

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