The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-07-15
10 Hollywood
ny PAUL HARRISON


 Hollywood, - Village sunesriiths: The youngest song writing team iil the major leagues of Hollywood and Broadway are Burton Lane and Ralph Freed, who are 24 and 20. They don't like being called Boy Wonders, but Lane, who's a veteran at the game now, once qualified as q prodigy,
 He was born In New York and was brought to BrOadway's attention when he was only IA by Harold Stern, the orchestra leader. At IS he was under contract to Remlck.
 The Shuberts hired him and he contributed tunes to three of their shows. Later, with Howard Dietz, he wrote for notable productions such as "Three's Q Crowd" ''The Third Little Show" and "The Vanities."
 Next Irving Berlin hired him, and Lane penned "Everything l Have Is Yours" for Dancing Lady," and numbers for Bot toms Up" and "Kid Millions"
 Ralph Freed, the lyricist of the team, had his first number pub- lished when he was i0. Been at 1t ever since. His "Little Dutch Mil" was the nations No. song for month. (Few ditties ever top the list for more than r1onth)
 He and Lane are working for Paramount now and turned out several of the numbers for dozen recent pictures. Sweet heart Waltz" in College Holiday" was theirs. Also "Smarty" in Bing Crosby's current Double or Nothing"
 Pleased With Criticism
 Ten years ago a blond young man named George Antheil wrote a musical oddment called Ballet Me- caniQue" for 12 pianos, four xylo- phones and lot of weird sound ef- fleets and percussion instruments. It actually caused riot in Paris and almost caused one in New York.
 Antheil was pleased because SO many people violently dis- liked his work; 1t was better than just leaving audiences cold and unresponsive.
 He believes that any young composer is crazy who doesn't try to write some radical stuff now and then to find out what he can do. Look at 24-year-old David Raksin, Q composer-arranger at Universal, who turned out suite of musical satire on Hollywood and had part of 1t played by Stokowski's erstwhile Philadel- phia orchestra.
 Antheil. also believes that literal movie scores-that is, chase mu- sic, romantic music and spook music to fit the action-are going out.
 The new idea Is to build and maintain the whole mood of a pie ture. subtly. He thinks young Werner Janssen's score for "The General Died at Dawn" is just about perfect: builds the mood and background of China.
 lntheil himself wrote the mu- sic for "The PlainSman," and parts of that score now are being played by orchestra. The only chance people have to appreciative movie scores is hearing them separately because audiences shouldn't be conscious of the music while watching Q picture.
  Prolific Composer
 The most prolific musical com- edy and operetta composer living today is Sismund Romberg. He's swaxtny, bald, has . heavy accent, and is 80 years old He has written about 50 shows, too: le of them big Winter Garden productions and most have been made into movies,
 "The Desert Song" "The student Prince" and 'Maytime" went biz in celluloid. "Rosalie" is another which Metro Is reading for extravagant production.
 In Vienna, Romberg was educated as a civil engineer. but privately he was unsteady inclined. So in this country, when he couldn't find e job as an engineer, he became first a musicians agent and then an or chestra leader.
 He was waving Q baton at Bus- tanoby's when @ composer named Harry Carroll dropped in with his newest number and asked Romberg to play 1t.
 The leader read 1t and said 1t was pretty bad; at least 1t wasn't so good but that he, Romberg, could write a better one.
 They made a bet of s25 on 1t. and a few days later, Romberg, who had never written anything before. brought in two tunes, Some Smoke" and leg O Mutton"
 As soon as Carroll heard the mus ic he paid the bet and hustled Romberg right over to see the Shu- berts.