Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn

From Grokipedia

Jule Styne (December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was an English-born American songwriter and composer renowned for his prolific output in Broadway musicals and Hollywood films, shaping much of mid-20th-century popular music. Born Julius Stein in London's East End to Ukrainian Jewish immigrant parents, he moved to Chicago with his family in 1912 and quickly emerged as a child prodigy, studying at the Chicago College of Music by age 10 and developing a passion for theater from an early age. Over a career spanning nearly 75 years, Styne composed more than 2,000 songs—publishing about 1,500 of them—with roughly 200 becoming enduring hits or jazz standards, often through collaborations with lyricists such as Sammy Cahn, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Stephen Sondheim.

Styne's Broadway triumphs include the long-running High Button Shoes (1947, 727 performances), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949, featuring the iconic "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend"), Bells Are Ringing (1956, with hits like "Just in Time" and "The Party's Over"), Gypsy (1959), Peter Pan (1954), and Funny Girl (1964), many of which have been frequently revived and adapted into films. In Hollywood, he worked as a vocal coach and arranger for stars like Shirley Temple before composing scores for films including Anchors Aweigh (1945) and earning an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Three Coins in the Fountain" (1954 film, awarded 1955). His honors encompass multiple Tony Awards (including for Hallelujah, Baby! in 1968), an Emmy, two Grammy Awards, the Donaldson Award, the Drama Critics Circle Award, induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1972) and Theater Hall of Fame, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Johnny Mercer Award (1993), and the Songwriters Hall of Fame Board of Directors Award (1986). Styne died of heart failure in New York City at age 88, leaving a legacy of tuneful, character-driven songs that captured the spirit of American optimism and showmanship.

In brief

Julius Stein and Samuel Cohen were Jewish songwriters — one born in London, one in the Lower East Side — who became Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn, names on a thousand labels. They wrote Let It Snow! in a Hollywood heat wave, which is the correct origin story for an American winter song.

Cahn was a lyricist of conversational swing, a Sinatra collaborator who could make a rhyme feel spoken. Styne wrote Gypsy, Funny Girl, and a composer’s idea of brass and heartbreak. Together and apart they supplied mid-century popular music with its furniture: coins in fountains, three other coins, another chorus.

The work is professional in the highest sense. They showed up, wrote, and let singers finish the job. Awards followed because the songs stayed.

The accomplishment is a catalog you already know. Two Jewish craftsmen wrote the American weather — heat, snow, applause — into tunes that do not need a program note.