July 5 - Mack David

Image courtesy songhall.org

On this day, in 1912, Mack David was born in New York, New York. Growing up in a traditional Jewish family (his parents owned a delicatessen in Brooklyn), Mack had aspirations towards becoming a lawyer. He even spent several years at Cornell University and the law school at St. John’s University trying to make that dream come true. When his younger brother, Hal, was contemplating career paths, and considering going into song writing, Mack did everything he could to discourage him, telling him to choose something with more stability. Which really spreads a thick layer of irony over the outcome of Mack’s own life.

Maybe it was because Hal completely ignored his big brother’s advice, went into the music business and a spirit of competition kicked in or maybe Mack just wanted to see if he could be successful at it, but in the early Forties, Mack began writing songs. He was primarily a lyricist, but he would occasionally write the music as well. Some of his early hits were Just a Kid Named Joe for the Mills Brothers, The Singing Hills for Bing Crosby, Take Me for Jimmy Dorsey, Blue and Sentimental for Count Basie and Sunflower for Frank Sinatra. Not only were those songs originally written for big names but all of them have been covered by other artists over the years as well (Blue and Sentimental alone has appeared on over 100 different albums).

Image copyright Disney

These successful compositions gave Mack the courage to move out to Hollywood and begin writing music for the pictures. In 1950, he, along with writing partners Jerry Livingstone and Al Hoffman, became part of the Disney family in a big way, writing several songs for the studio’s twelfth animated feature, Cinderella. If you ever find yourself humming A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes, Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo or The Working Song, you’re familiar with the trio’s work. When the Oscar nominations were announced for that year, Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo made the list for Best Song, giving Mack his first award nomination (Mona Lisa from Captain Carey,USA edged him out for the win). As if those songs weren’t enough of a contribution to Disneyana, the boys returned for the next feature, Alice in Wonderland, with The Unbirthday Song.

Image copyright Disney

After his Oscar nominated work with Disney, Mack became a sought after, and highly prolific, songwriter for the next two decades. When the dust settled in the early Seventies, he had credits for lyrics or music (and sometimes both) on over 1,000 songs. He was nominated for an Academy Award seven more times after Cinderella, for his work in The Hanging Tree (1959), Bachelor in Paradise (1961), It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1961), Walk on the Wild Side (1962), Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964), Cat Ballou (1965) and Hawaii (1966). Unfortunately, he never did get one of the little golden men for his mantel, making him one of the most nominated but never won Oscar honorees. In 1975, Mack was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame

Image courtesy picclick,com

In addition to his film work, Mack also continued to write songs for pop artists (Baby It’s You for the Shirelles and It Must Be You for Gilbert Becaud), television (the theme to Casper the Friendly Ghost) and Broadway (the 1973 musical Molly and 1981’s Sophisticated Ladies). One of his biggest hits was his reimagining of the lyrics to the French song La Vie en Rose, which has been recorded by over 80 artists around the world and featured in dozens of films (I say reimagined because he didn’t write a strict translation of Edith Pilaf’s original lyrics but wrote new ones that honored their spirit).

So after several decades in the songwriting business, Mack had sufficiently put to rest his own fears that it wouldn’t be a very steady work to get into. His little brother, Hal, by the way, also had a long and prolific career doing the same thing (and Hal got into the Songwriters Hall of Fame three years earlier, probably just out of spite). On December 30, 1993, the New York lawyer turned song master passed away quietly in his home in Rancho Mirage, California. He was 81.