Mack Gordon emigrated to New York with his Polish parents when he was four. He began in vaudeville but turned to songwriting in the early ‘20s, becoming a prolific and successful lyricist. He collaborated with English pianist/composer Harry Revel on “You Made Me Love You” for Zeigfeld Follies of 1931. After two more stage shows they went to Hollywood in 1933 where they enjoyed success in 1934 with “Stay As Sweet as You Are” from College Rhythm and “Let’s K-nock K-neez,” which they contributed to The Gay Divorcee. In 1937 Alice Faye sang, “There’s a Lull in My Life” in Wake up and Live, and Teddy Wilson’s cover took it to the number two song.

Gordon established his second and highly successful collaboration with Harry Warren in 1940. Their title song for Down Argentine Way was nominated for an Oscar (1940). They scored two films for Glenn Miller’s Band, Sun Valley Serenade, which produced “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” (1941), and Orchestra Wives, which included “At Last,” “Serenade in Blue,” and “I Had a Gal in Kalamazoo” (1942). “You’ll Never Know” won the Oscar in 1943, the same year they wrote their most enduring standard, “There Will Never Be Another You.” They also wrote “I Had the Craziest Dream” (1942) and “The More I See You” (1945).

Gordon received a total of nine Academy nominations for Best Song, two of them with composer Josef Myrow for “You Do” (1947) and “Wilhelmina” (1950). The pair also wrote the highly popular “You Make Me Feel So Young” (1946), which became associated with Frank Sinatra.

Gordon had hits with other collaborators: “Time on My Hands” (1930) with Harold Adamson and Vincent Youmans, “I Can’t Begin to Tell You” (1945) with James V. Monaco, “Mam’selle,” written as the theme for The Razor's Edge (1944) with Edmund Goulding, and “Through a Long and Sleepless Night,” an Oscar nominee from Come to the Stable (1949) written with Alfred Newman.

-- Sandra Burlingame

Courtesy of JazzStandards.com