Biography

Academy Award-winning songwriter ("The Continental", 1934), composer, pianist and publisher, educated at military academy, then a pianist in film theatres, and later a vaudeville entertainer in the USA and Europe. He wrote the Broadway stage scores for "Moonlight", "Mercenary Mary", "Kitty's Kisses", and "Americana". Then he became a music publisher, and went to Hollywood in 1929. Joining ASCAP in 1920, and his chief musical collaborators included Joe Young, Sidney Clare, Billy Rose, B. G. DeSylva, Benny Davis, Leo Robin, Herb Magidson, J. Russel Robinson, Vincent Rose, Archie Gottler, Sidney Mitchell, and William Friedlander. His popular-song compositions also include "Ma, He's Making Eyes at Me", "Margie", "Barney Google", "Prisoner of Love", "You've Got To See Mama Every Night", "Oh, Frenchy", "Palesteena", "Come On, Spark Plug", "Memory Lane", "Big City Blues", "Walking With Susie", "Lonesome and Sorry", "Sing a Little Love Song", "Mercenary Mary", "You Call It Madness But I Call It Love", Bend Down, Sister", "My Baby Said Yes Yes", "Looking for a Needle in a Haystack", "Midnight in Paris", "Here's to Romance", "Champagne Waltz", and "Singin' the Blues".
- IMDb mini biography by: Hup234!

Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

Father: Daniel Dober; Mother: Dorothea Heyman.

Down on his luck he was briefly employed by gambler-gangster Arnold Rothstein who he convinced, as Rothstein was a fan of Black entertainers, to bankroll the 1928 all-Black musical Keep Shufflin'.