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.