Buddy G. DeSylva(1895-1950)

Prolific songwriter ("April Showers", "Button Up Your Overcoat", "Look for the Silver Lining", "California, Here I Come"), composer, producer, publisher and author, educated at USC. He wrote songs for the Broadway musicals "Sinbad", "Sally", "The Perfect Fool", "The French Doll", and the 1918 and 1921 editions of the Ziegfeld Follies. In 1925, he joined Lew Brown and Ray Henderson as a songwriting and music publishing team.

His Broadway stage scores include "La La Lucille", "Bombo", "Orange Blossoms", "The Yankee Princess", and "George White's Scandals" (1922 through 1926, and 1928), "Big Boy", "Sweet Little Devil", "Tell Me More", "Captain Jinks", and "Manhattan Mary". He also was co-librettist for "Good News", "Hold Everything", "Three Cheers", "Follow Through", "Flying High", and "Take A Chance" (the latter of which he also co-produced). He also was producer and co-librettist for the Broadway musicals "DuBarry Was a Lady" and "Panama Hattie", and produced "Louisiana Purchase".

In 1929, he sold the publishing firm and went to Hollywood under contract to Fox, eventually becoming a co-producer at Paramount (1941-1944). His film biography was given the title of his song "The Best Things in Life Are Free". Joining ASCAP in 1920 (he served as an ASCAP director between 1922 and 1930), he collaborated musically with Gus Kahn, Al Jolson, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Vincent Rose, Louis Silvers, Joseph Meyer, Victor Herbert, Emmerich Kálmán, Ira Gershwin, Ballard MacDonald, Lewis E. Gensler, James F. Hanley, Nacio Herb Brown, Richard A. Whiting, and Vincent Youmans.

His other popular-song compositions include:

• "'N' Everything",
• "I'll Say She Does",
• "You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet",
• "Yoo-Hoo",
• "Memory Lane",
• "Why Do I Love You?",
• "Whip-poor-will",
• "Avalon",
• "In Arcady",
• "A Kiss in the Dark",
• "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise",
• "Do It Again",
• "I Won't Say I Will but I Won't Say I Won't",
• "Somebody Loves Me",
• "Keep Smiling at Trouble",
• "Hello, 'Tucky",
• "If You Knew Susie",
• "Just a Cottage Small by a Waterfall",
• "Alabamy Bound",
• "Tell Me More",
• "Kickin' the Clouds Away",
• "My Fair Lady",
• "When Day is Done",
• "Lucky Day",
• "Birth of the Blues",
• "Black Bottom",
• "It All Depends on You",
• "The Best Things in Life Are Free",
• "Good News",
• "The Varsity Drag",
• "Just Imagine",
• "Lucky In Love",
• "Broken Hearted",
• "Just a Memory",
• "So Blue",
• "I'm on the Crest of a Wave",
• "You're the Cream in My Coffee",
• "You Wouldn't Fool Me, Would You?",
• "Sonny Boy",
• "Together",
• "My Sin",
• "I'm A Dreamer, Aren't We All?",
• "Sunny Side Up",
• "If I Had a Talking Picture of You",
• "Little Pal",
• "Without Love",
• "Thank Your Father",
• "Red Hot Chicago",
• "You Try Somebody Else",
• "Eadie Was a Lady",
• "My Lover",
• "I Want to Be With You",
• "Oh, How I Long to Belong to You",
• "Rise 'n Shine",
• "You're an Old Smoothie",
• "Should I Be Sweet?",
• "Gather Lip Rouge While You May",
• "Polly Wolly Doodle",
• "Wishing".