Non­fic­tion

They All Sang My Songs

Jack Lawrence
  • Review
By – August 20, 2012
We may not know the name Jack Lawrence, but we cer­tain­ly know his songs. The lyri­cist of Ten­der­ly” and Beyond the Sea” has spent most of his 93 years in the music busi­ness, and his engag­ing mem­oir invites us to share in the tri­umphs and the strug­gles of his long career. Lawrence has no doubt sur­vived into his tenth decade thanks to his upbeat atti­tude. Despite pro­fes­sion­al loss­es: Mae West pass­ing off his work as her own; get­ting robbed of the for­eign roy­al­ties to Beyond the Sea,” as well as per­son­al ones, like the death of his long-time com­pan­ion, Lawrence march­es on. He nar­rates his jour­ney from Brook­lyn to Hol­ly­wood to Broad­way with panache, and a judi­cious sprin­kling of celebri­ty gos­sip. We learn that Bud­dy Hack­ett ter­ror­ized his col­leagues and ad-libbed vul­gar­i­ties from the stage in the 1964 musi­cal I Had a Ball and that Frank Sina­tra always snubbed Lawrence after the lat­ter dared to crit­i­cize his singing. One quib­ble with They All Sang My Songs is the care­less edit­ing: Sen­a­tor Eugene McCarthy did not, to my knowl­edge, spear­head the Com­mu­nist witch hunts. All in all, though, Lawrence opens a delight­ful win­dow into show business.
Martha Sparks is a Ph.D. stu­dent in clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy. She lives and stud­ies in New Jersey.

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