Get a closer look at some of Hollywood's perfect pairs.

Hollywood Power Couples

Get a closer look at some of Hollywood&#39;s perfect pairs.

"The Gentlemen" and "Slow Horses" return this fall, while the "Reacher" spin-off series "Neagley" makes its debut. See our guide of the biggest Fall TV and streaming releases.

2026 Fall TV and Streaming Watch Guide

&quot;The Gentlemen&quot; and &quot;Slow Horses&quot; return this fall, while the &quot;Reacher&quot; spin-off series &quot;Neagley&quot; makes its debut. See our guide of the biggest Fall TV and streaming releases.

Get a closer look at these actors from their many TV and streaming series roles.

Streaming Stars, Then and Now

One of the great lyricists of American song, Edgar Yipsel Harburg (born Isidore Hochberg) grew up in the working-class Jewish ghetto of Manhattan's Lower East Side. In high school, he befriended Ira Gershwin, later his collaborator on student literary ventures at City College of New York; both also contributed to F.P. Adams' column in the daily New York World, the city's leading outlet for light verse. After graduation in 1917, during the wartime manpower shortage, Harburg landed a lucrative job in Uruguay with the Swift & Co. meat-packing firm. In 1920, he returned to New York, where he became a partner in an appliance business that thrived for most of the 1920s but failed around the time of the 1929 stock market crash. Harburg determined to make a living at lyric writing; Gershwin provided a $500 loan and an introduction to the composer Jay Gorney. They collaborated on songs for Broadway revues and a number that Helen Morgan sang in two early film musicals; in 1932, they wrote Harburg's breakthrough, the unemployment anthem "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" In that year, for Broadway shows opening a few days apart, Harburg wrote "April in Paris" (with Vernon Duke) and, with Harold Arlen, "It's Only a Paper Moon." For the next 12 years, for theater and movies, Arlen was Harburg's most important collaborator; the partnership peaked with The Wizard of Oz (1939). Although he contributed to a number of films in the 1940s, Harburg's best work in those years was for Broadway's "Bloomer Girl" (with Arlen) and, with Burton Lane, "Finian's Rainbow." Both shows featured Harburg's lyrical dexterity ("When I'm not facing the face that I fancy, I fancy the face I face") and social commentary (both shows satirized racism and capitalism). His liberalism led to Harburg's blacklisting by Hollywood in the 1950s, helping to ensure that "Finian" would not be filmed for decades. Harburg continued to write, with Jule Styne, Earl Robinson and others, into his eighties.

It&#39;s easier to repent than to regret.

Our tribe of songsmiths always wrote for our peers. We were very much ashamed of ourselves if we wrote anything clichéd, if we took an idea from another person. By &#39;our tribe&#39; I&#39;m talking about Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, Hart, Dietz, all those people who got together every week, usually at George Gershwin&#39;s house. Something like Fleet Street in Samuel Johnson&#39;s time - an artistic community where people took fire from other people.

I doubt that I can ever say &#39;I love you&#39; head on. It&#39;s not the way I think. For me the task is never to say the thing directly, and yet to say it - to think in a curve, so to speak.

Ira [Gershwin] was the shyest, most diffident boy we had ever known. In a class of lower east side rapscallions, his soft-spoken gentleness and low-keyed personality made him a lovable incongruity. He spoke in murmurs, hiding behind a pair of steel-rimmed glasses..Ira had a kid brother who wore high stiff collars, shirts with cuffs and went out with girls.

[on &#39;The Wizard of Oz&#39;] I loved the idea of having the freedom to do lyrics that were not just songs but scenes.

Quotes

E.Y. Harburg

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