Vincent Youmans Biography
Vincent Miller (Millie) Youmans, 27 September 1898, New York, USA, d. 5 April 1946, Denver, Colorado, USA. An important composer and producer for the stage during the 20s and 30s, whose career was cut short by a long illness. He worked for a Wall Street finance company before enlisting in the US Navy during World War I, and co-producing musicals at Great Lakes Naval Training Station. On leaving the navy, he worked as a song-plugger for Harms Music, and as a rehearsal pianist for shows with music by the influential composer Victor Herbert. Youmans wrote his first Broadway score in 1921 for Two Little Girls In Blue, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin. One of the show’s songs, ‘Oh Me, Oh My, Oh You’, was a hit for novelty singer Frank Crumit. Youmans’ next show, Wildflower (1923), with book and lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II, ran for a creditable 477 performances, and included ‘April Blossoms’, and ‘Bambalina’, which was recorded by Paul Whiteman and Ray Miller. Mary Jane McKane (‘Toodle-oo’, ‘You’re Never Too Old To Learn’) and Lollipop (‘Take A Little One-Step’) both reached the Broadway stage in 1924, and in the following year, Youmans collaborated with lyricist Irving Caesar on the quintessential 20s score for No, No, Nanette, one of the decade’s most successful musicals. It contained several hits songs, including ‘Too Many Rings Around Rosie’, ‘You Can Dance With Any Girl At All’, and the much-recorded standards, ‘I Want To Be Happy’ and ‘Tea For Two’. It was filmed, with modifications to its score, in 1930, 1940, and in 1950 as Tea For Two, starring Doris Day and Gordon MacRae. In contrast, Youmans’ 1926 show, Oh, Please, with numbers such as ‘I Know That You Know’, and ‘Like He Loves Me’ (lyrics by Anne Caldwell), was a relative failure, despite the presence of Beatrice Lillie in the cast. A year later, Youmans composed the music for Hit The Deck, which ran for 352 performances, and featured ‘Sometimes I’m Happy’ (lyric by Clifford Grey and Caesar) and ‘Hallelujah!’ (lyric by Grey and Leo Robin). It was filmed in 1930, and again in 1955 with an all-star cast including Tony Martin, Vic Damone, Debbie Reynolds, Jane Powell, and Ann Miller. The latter release contained a new Youmans song, ‘Keepin’ Myself For You’, with a lyric by Sidney Clare. Despite containing some of his best songs, Youmans’ next few shows were flops. Rainbow ran for only 29 performances, Great Day, with the title song, ‘More Than You Know’ and ‘Without A Song’ (lyrics by Billy Rose and Edward Eliscu), lasted for 36 performances, Smiles, starring Marilyn Miller, Adele Astaire and Fred Astaire, and featuring ‘Time On My Hands’ (lyric by Mack Gordon and Harold Adamson), just 63 performances, and Through The Years, with the title song, ‘Kinda Like You’, and ‘Drums In My Heart’ (lyrics by Edward Heyman), a mere 20 performances. Youmans’ last Broadway show, Take A Chance, did much better. It starred Jack Haley and Ethel Merman, and ran for 243 performances. Youmans contributed three songs with lyrics by Buddy De Sylva: ‘Should I Be Sweet?’, ‘Oh, How I Long To Belong To You’, and Miss Merman’s show-stopper, ‘Rise ‘N’ Shine’, which was also a hit for Paul Whiteman. Apparently disenchanted with Broadway, Youmans moved to Hollywood and wrote his only major original film score for Flying Down To Rio (1933). Celebrated as the film that brought Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers together as a dance team, the musical numbers, with lyrics by Gus Kahn and Eliscu, comprised ‘The Carioca’, ‘Orchids In The Moonlight’, ‘Music Makes Me’, and the peppy title number. Youmans’ previous flirtations with the big screen, Song Of The West and What A Widow (both 1930), produced nothing particularly memorable, and the film adaptation of his stage show Take A Chance (with Lilian Roth replacing Merman), dispensed with most of the songs. However, the aforementioned Hit The Deck was a box-office favourite, and No, No, Nanette was filmed twice - as an early talkie with Bernice Claire in 1930, and 10 years later with Anna Neagle in the starring role. In the early 30s, Youmans contracted tuberculosis and spent much of the rest of his life in sanitaria. In 1934, his publishing firm collapsed, and a year later he was declared bankrupt for over half a million dollars. In 1943, he seemed well enough to return to New York to plan his most ambitious project, an extravaganza entitled The Vincent Youmans Ballet Revue. This was a combination of Latin-American and classical music, including Ravel’s ‘Daphnis And Chloe’, with choreography by Leonide Massine. It was a critical and commercial disaster, losing over four million dollars. Youmans retired to New York, and then to Denver, Colorado, where he died in 1946. Despite his relatively small catalogue of songs and his penchant for rarely using the same collaborator, Youmans is rated among the élite composers of his generation, and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1971, an acclaimed revival of No, No, Nanette starring Ruby Keeler, began its run of 861 performances on Broadway.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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