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Died: February 25, 1942 (age 53) Los Angeles, California
Primary songwriting role: lyricist; also composer
Co-writers: frequently with Con Conrad, Archie Gottler, Lew Pollack, and Sam Stept. For songs written with these co-writers and 17 others, view the DBOPM database.
Sidney Mitchell may be best remembered for his collaboration with Lew Pollack for song scores at 20th Century-Fox in the 1930s and 1940s. For a list of his songs used in movies, see ClassicMovieMusicals.com.
One of Pollack's and Mitchell's movies at Fox was Pigskin Parade (1936), a college football movie typical of the period. At the same time MGM was having a hard time figuring out what to do with "the little girl with the big voice" otherwise known as Judy Garland, so they loaned her out to Fox for the football picture. As Ken Bloom tells us, "Fox knew exactly what to with Garland: they gave her Mitchell and Pollack songs tailored to her voice. She made quite an impression in the film, but MGM held her contract and Fox had to let her go" (Bloom, p. 267). (A good move by MGM because three years later that studio made The Wizard of Oz.)
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Cafe Songbook
Master List of Great American Songbook Songwriters
Names of songwriters who have written at least one song included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook are listed below.
Names of songwriters with two or more song credits in the catalog (with rare exceptions) are linked to their own Cafe Songbook pages, e.g. Fields, Dorothy.
Names of songwriters with only one song credit in the catalog are linked to the Cafe Songbook page for that song, on which may be found information about the songwriter or a link to an information source for him or her.
Please note: Cafe Songbook pages for songwriters are currently in various stages of development.
, New York: American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (1966 edition, entry p. 515).