Born Today February 20: Mary Garden

1874-1967

Famed Scottish operatic soprano Mary Garden was born in Aberdeen on this day. Though born in Scotland, she spent her formative years in the United States, the family having moved to Chicopee, Massachusetts when she was nine.  They subsequently relocated twice, first to Connecticut and finally to Chicago, where she would eventually study music.  Gifted from an early age in music (singing, violin and piano), she was noticed by a wealthy couple who agreed to pay for her operatic singing studies.  In 1896, she was able to transfer her studies to Paris; and it was in Paris that she made her professional opera debut in the spring of 1900.  By the following year, she was one of the leading sopranos at the Opéra-Comique and after 1901, she was a frequent performer across the channel to London's Covent Garden. In 1907 she made a change and began performing at New York's Manhattan Opera House, staying only one year before returning to the Paris and the National Opera there.  Finally from 1910 through 1913, she sang in her second hometown for the Chicago Grand Opera Company. This made her a national star in the United States; known even in households that did not regularly pay any attention to opera. By 1915 she was with the Chicago Opera Association, often guesting in performances in New York. It was during this time that she was first filmed. Garden did eventually appear in two scripted films, but her first filmed visage came in the form of a newsreel.  In 1913 and 1914 she was featured in two Pathe news shorts. The first of these was Pathe's Weekly, No. 73 (4 December 1913) in which she is not singing/performing at all, but taking in a performance by a "band of Indians from Glacier Park" (editorializing a little here: it is rather disturbing to read the description of a famous opera singer taking in a native dance, placed in a newsreel that also includes reporting on a horrible anti-Semitic trumped murder trial in Keiv "Russia" at the instigation of Russian monarchical fascists!)  Secondly, in April of 1914 she appears in the Pathe's Weekly, No. 28 taking part in the departure of a troupe of opera singers in Boston about to sail back to Europe after a sojourn working Stateside. Garden was considered one of the best operatic actors of her time and that acting did, in fact, make it into two films. The first was a Goldwyn production of Thais co-directed by Frank Hall Crane and Hugo Ballin in 1917.   The following year she also starred in (top billing in fact) The Splendid Sinner, another Goldwyn production; it marks her only acting in a film not opera or music related.  This is the extent of her appearances in films; though her performance from Thais was featured (among a host of others) in the short 1939 documentary The Movies March On.  She did make two appearance on talk shows, one in 1949 and one in 1954 ("The Ed Sullivan Show" where she appeared along side the likes of Sophie Tucker and Eartha Kitt). At the height of her career in the early 1920's, she was the director of the newly formed Chicago Civic Opera, one of the first women to ever hold such a position.  She retired from opera stage performance in 1934 after giving one last performance fittingly in Paris, where her career had so successfully been launched.  She did become involved in films in one other way during her lifetime. After her retirement from opera performance, she devoted part of her time to serve as a talent scout for MGM, in addition to giving lectures and recitals.  She began a long decline into some form of dementia probably in the early 1950's; sometime along the way, she chose to return to Scotland to stay. She died in the Aberdeenshire town of Inverurie on the 3rd of January in 1967 at the age of 92. She is buried locally at Aberdeen's Saint Nicholas Church Graveyard.  

[Source: John T. Chiarella (Find a Grave)]

 

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Born Today August 2: Helen Morgan

 

1900-1941 

Like Eva Tanguay, Helen Morgan was more famous for her live singing performances, and like Tanguay, she had a biopic film--partially fictionalized--made about her life in the 1950's. That is where the similarities end. Morgan was a bluesy jazz singer and Broadway musical specialist with a very sad and tragic short life. Often called the fore-runner of both Billie Holiday and Judy Garland, Morgan was born Helen Riggin on this date to a poor family in Danville, Illinois--farming country--where her father was a dirt farmer and her mother worked in school administration.  Early in her life her mother divorced her birth father and remarried with the new surname "Morgan." It was not until after yet another divorce that young Helen relocated with her mother to Chicago.  She left school early, after just the eighth grade and took a series of menial jobs, but all along her passion was singing. There isn't a lot of information as to how or when she became interested in music, or perhaps she was simply born with it, but she had a determination as a teen to become successful in the field. Toward that end, she started work in local speakeasies at nights while working during the day. It was during this time that she became a very popular "torch singer" (a torch song can best be described as a kind of blues song, usually accompanied by piano and containing stories of lament--in the 1920's the performers would often where special long flowing clothes, her personal touch was a hand scarf).  She relocated to New York City and worked extremely hard.  She made it onto the Broadway stage via stage musicals and cabaret in a very short time--reportedly she made her debut in 1923, but it could have been earlier. She was able to spend her days studying instead of working; where she studied music and singing at Metropolitan Opera. She also came to the attention of  Florenz Ziegfeld  in the 1920's; she later became a member of his famous Ziegfeld Follies. Also a sign of the times, Morgan was introduced to her demon at speakeasies early in her performance career. She became an almost full time alcoholic--it could not have helped that the quality of the alcohol at these establishments was very questionable, often was just down right poisonous.  She did however succeed and by the late 1920's she was a very popular Broadway actress/singer. She landed the part of Julie LaVerne in the 1927 Broadway production of Show Boat  and that started her the path to the film appearances for which she is remembered today. Though she does appear in the non-silent portion of the 1929 film of the stage production of Show Boat -- it was not her film debut. She had two tiny "extra" credits from 1923; assuming that these are legitimate records of the films in question, and that the "Helen Morgan" listed as an extra are indeed to Torch Singer herself, she made her filmed debut in the romantic comedy The Heart Raider (1923).  She likewise is listed as an extra on Six Cylinder Love a  Elmer Clifton directed Fox comedy starring Ernest Truex, also released in 1923. After Show Boat, she appeared in two more films in 1929, one of which she was the star and both of which were early talkies. In Applause she plays Kitt Darling, a burlesque star with a secret past in a part that Mae West was given serious consideration for.  In Glorifying the American Girl  she appeared in the Revue scene with Eddie Cantor--Zeigfeld was the producer.  She next showed up in the female lead in the romantic comedy, heavy with music,  Roadhouse Nights, shot in 1929, the film was released in February of 1930. During this time, she also had roles in Broadway productions and made her radio debut (among her radio credits is a Show Boat production by Orson Welles).  Her battle with alcohol, however,  had gotten the best of her and her performances in every arena slowed; in film she showed up in shorts until 1934 when she was given a supporting role in You Belong To Me--a b-grade melodrama about vaudeville. In the mid 1930's she made her first attempt at sobering up and appeared in four more films before she was tapped by an enthusiastic James Whale  to appear in his version of Show Boat  in 1936. It is her most famous role to this day. It would also be her last film appearance. She lapsed back into drink and made one final attempt at sobering in 1940 after a stage revival of Show Boat; by this time she was well off enough in life to have a farm that she could rest at. Hoping this would be a decisive turning point for her, no one in her life knew that it was already too late. Her manager secured her ample stage work, but she collapsed on stage in 1941 and died of liver failure in her home town of Chicago on the 9th of October. She was just 41 years of age. She was buried at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois (which is located in Cook County). Two biopics of her life were produced in the 1950's; one on the small screen in the series Playhouse 90, and the other a major motion picture The Helen Morgan Story  in which she is played by Ann Blyth, and directed by Michael Curtiz.    

[Source: Scott Michaels (Find A Grave)]

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Born Today July 18: Gene Lockhart

 

1891-1957

  
Canadian born actor Gene Lockhart was born Edwin Eugene Lockhart in London, Ontario on this day. His father was an accomplished singer and thus encouraged his young son when the later showed an interest in performance.  He began acting as a child and made his professional stage debut at the age of just six; he also said that he made his professional dance debut a year later.  He was educated in both London, Canada and London, England and as a young adult became a professional football player in Toronto.  His very long association with the theater was the most pervasive portion of his career; movies came second--but when he appeared in films he always shone through--even in bit parts; this is especially true of the villains and "heavies" that he played so well (so much fun to watch!).  Early on, his career in theater took him to New York, while there he actually taught at Julliard. There, he made his Broadway debut in 1916 at the age of 25.  His film debut followed six years later in 1922.  It would be his only appearance in a silent film.  The film was a Norma Talmadge vehicle (made by her production company)--Smilin' Through --and directed by Sidney Franklin.  His part was rather small--that of "Village Rector"--he was credited as Eugene Lockhart.  Returning to the stage, Lockhart did not appear in film again until 1933 in a little known comedic short called The No Man  (an example of a "Broadway Brevity"--you  can read more about them here).  The first major production that he acted in was RKO's 1934 comedy By Your Leave; an accomplished singer and songwriter--Lockhart contributed to the soundtrack by singing a rendition of  "Far Above Cayuga's Waters." He was by this time transplanted to Hollywood and his film rolls increased exponentially. He made appearances in such well known films as: the 1938 Reginald Owen rendition of A Christmas Carol,  His Girl Friday (1940), Capra's Meet John Doe (1941), Curtiz's The Sea Wolf (1941), The Devil And Daniel Webster (1941), Northern Pursuit (1943) starring Errol Flynn, the film noir The House on 92nd Street (1945), and Miracle on 34th Street (1947).  He made his television debut in 1950 the series Lights Out -- a horror/mystery/science fiction affair that was a fore-runner of The Twilight Zone (episode:  Dr. Heidegger's Experiment). He also made an appearance on the similar series Tales of Tomorrow.  In the 1950's, he divided his time between television and the big screen, with the film Jeanne Eagels starring Kim Novak and based on the life of the silent film starlet of the same name as the film, being his last film. It was released several months after his death on the 31st of March in Santa Monica of a heart attack. He was 65 years of age. He was buried at Holy Cross in Culver City.  During his career, Lockhart became a naturalized U.S. citizen, wrote several plays and was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role in Algiers.  If Lockhart's last name rings a bell that you can't quite place, that is because he was the father, with his actress wife Kathleen Lockhart, of well known actress June Lockhart of "Lost In Space" fame (she strongly favors her father).  All three of them appeared in A Christmas Carol. 

[Source: Scott Michaels (Find A Grave)]

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Born Today July 2: Albert Szirmai

1880-1967

Hungarian born composer and Broadway music editor Albert Szirmai was born on this day in Budapest in the Austria-Hungary Empire. Sometimes credited as "Albert Sirmay," he was primarily a composer of operas/operettas and scored just as many musical plays. Though born in Budapest, he was completely devoted to early American musical stage composition and greatly admired 20th century songsters like George Gershwin and Cole Porter (in fact, Szirmai made headlines and history, when, in 1965, he discovered some 100 songs here-for-to-unknown written by Porter shortly after his death). He was also a big admirer of Gilbert and Sullivan; and took inspiration from German classical romantics composers and his native Hungarian folk songs. Szirmai arrived in the United States via the New York port in 1923; after working from the early part of the 20th century as a conductor in Hungary. When he arrived, he already had two film compositions to his name--strange I know for the silent era, but his work was used specifically to accompany two films in Hungary--the first of which was Kruppka Endre's Gazdag ember kabátja in 1912.   The same can be said for the 1916 Korda Sándor (Alexander Korda) film Mágnás Miska.  These are the only two films that he had anything to do with in the silent era. His work next turns up in the 1935 Vitaphone comedic short Vitaphone Casino starring Buster West.  Though his work in American cinema mostly dates from the 1930's (and confined to musical shorts), his work was rediscovered at various points in time in his home country of Hungary. In fact, the most recent use of one of his operatic pieces dates from the 1996 Hungarian comedy Szamba, which sports a soundtrack exclusively comprised of Hungarian composers.  In the 1940's, he also collaborated at least once with Kurt Weill.  Szimai died in his adopted home town of New York City on the 15th of January at the age of 86.  I can find no burial information on him under any name that he used in life.  Toward the end of his life, he made one final trip back to Hungary; while there he successfully premiered two new works.  

A still from Gazdag Ember Kabátja (1912)

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Born Today July 3: Alberto Lazzoli

1906-1987

Brazilian musician, composer and conductor Alberto Rossi Lazzoli was born on this day in São Paulo.  He is principally remembered for being an important Latin American conductor of and composer for radio orchestras in the mid 20th century; but he was also a composer of film scores as well--including direct film scoring--with the oboe being his instrument of choice.  To date, just four films have featured his music--all of them pre-1950 and all of them featuring scores that he wrote directly for each production.  The first of these was a late Brazilian silent film Human Clay (Barro Humano) from 1929, a melodrama directed by the then up and coming Brazilian director Adhemar Gonzaga.  Lazzoli was hired to write the score for the film directly (the film is now profoundly lost, with only a poster and a a few stills left for viewing). The other three films that he scored date from 1939, 1945 and 1947; the last of which was a romantic comedy entitled Querida Susana (1947).  In his lifetime he had also been a performer, a symphonic soloist, a pioneer of Brazilian radio and, most importantly, a teacher (professor) of music for others. Lazzoli died in Rio de Janeiro on the 4th of December; he was 81 years of age. 

Production still from Barro Humano

Born Today June 24: Phil Harris

1904-1995

Song and dance man, actor and American comedian Wonga Philip (Phil) Harris was born on this date in Linton, Indiana to circus performers.  He may have been born in Indiana, but he grew up in Nashville, Tennessee--a place that would have a profound affect on his life.  It is hardly surprising that his first performance job came with the very circus that his parents worked for, in the capacity of a boy drummer in the circus band of which his father was a bandleader.  This started him off squarely down the path of music.  By the 1920's, he was playing music professionally in San Francisco, where he formed his first band/orchestra.  The group secured a contractural engagement there at the St. Francis Hotel some time after 1925, that situation would last into the 1930's, quite impressive considering the coming of the depression. The contract ended when his orchestra disbanded in 1932, but he had an additional gig playing drums in yet another band at the time.  Harris made his first film appearance, yes, as a drummer, in 1929 in Why Be Good?--the film was released in two formats: one silent and one in mono with Vitaphone sound.  It was directed by William Seiter and starred Neil Hamilton and Colleen Moore. He wouldn't appear in another film until 1933, but it could be described as the most historically important film appearance of his career. He was the subject of the short So This Is Harris!, a comedic musical short directed and partially penned by Mark Sandrich, it would go to win the Oscar for Best Live Action Short.  His first full length full sound film appearance also came in 1933 with Melody Cruise.  What Harris is really known for his both his band-leading orchestral work and the proditious time his spent on the radio, which he started in 1936 on The Jell-O Show Starring Jack Benny when he became the show's band leader.  He and his orchestra, in the meantime, were also the subjects of numerous short films during this time as well.  Also, in 1942, he and his entire orchestra enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served until the end of World War II.  Harris made his television debut in the made-for-television musical Saturday Spectacular: Manhattan Tower; and, in 1958, he made he first appearance in an actual television series Shower of Stars in the episode Jack Benny Celebrated Celebrates his 40th Birthday, in an homage to his long time radio boss (by this time, Harris had moved on in radio, co-hosting a comedic family show with his wife Alice Faye).  He did eventually get into a few acting jobs on television as well, and later in life, he added voice work to his list of credits.  He is well remembered for his turn in the 1967 animated version of The Jungle Book as the voice for Baloo The Bear.  He continued to work in television, both in live parts and in voice-over, unitl 1981, when he retired.  He was persuaded to come out of retirement, however, in 1991--then in his late 80's--for one last voice role in the animated Rock-A-Doodle.  Harris died of a heart attack brought on by worsening heart failure at the age of 91 in Rancho Mirage, California on the 11th of August 1995.  He was cremated and his ashes were kept privately by his wife, until her death 3 years later, when both of their urns were interred on display at Forest Lawn Memorial Park's Palm Springs Mausoleum (now called the Cathedral City location).  

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Born Today June 20: Jacques Offenbach

1819-1880

German born composer Jacques Offenbach was born Jakob (or Jacob depending on the source) Offenbach on this day in Cologne.  His Jewish father was a well known cantor who earned a living by singing in synagogues and by playing violins in cafe's (his original surname was Eberst, but owing to his well known musical presence in the area, he adopted the surname Offenbach after his place of birth--he was known to town-folk basically as "the musician from Offenbach").  It stands to reason that young Jakob would be exposed to music from his earliest age. He took up the violin under his father's instruction at the age of six. By the time Jakob was old enough to attend lessons, his father--Isaac--had a permanent situation with a local synagogue, and therefore could afford to pay for music lesson for his young son (who was by this time growing more and more interested in composition). Jakob had lessons with the cellist Bernhard Breuer, this would eventually lead to Jakob's gaining a professional position playing the cello.  In the meantime, he was composing his own works for the instrument, and by the time he was in his teens had penned several works of immense complexity.  In addition, in a family of 10 children and musician father, it is to be expected that several of them are bound to wind up with talents for musical performance.  Jakob and at least two of his siblings, a brother and a sister, performed locally at the direction of their father. Eventually all of this would lead Offenbach to the very prestigious Paris Conservatory, the admissions standards being so strict for someone of Offenbach's background, it is a near miracle that not only did he gain acceptance, but so to did his brother Julius. This is when his first name was changed to it's French form. He quickly became known as a cello virtuous, and keep in mind that he was barely 16 years of age by this time (having gone to Paris at the very young age of 14).  Offenbach's life from this point is highly varied and quite interesting (follow links below). As his career moved along, he fell into a number of different modes of composition; one of the most popular was comic opera, the modern of which he is given credit for it's invention.  It is from these works, that early talkies of the late 1920's drew musical inspiration.  Offenbach's work however dates back much further in film history to 1908, to that most bizarre of movie "inventions"--the silent musical.  These are not merely silent films that have been reproduced for video tape or disc release that use works of famous composers in the public domain--these are works that specified works be played along with the film from the get-go. Many drew scenarios straight from operatic works as well. The short Brazilian film Barcarola is the first film to use any of Offenbach's works (drawn from The Tales of Hoffman)--it both draws inspiration from and stipulates music for a piece written into an opera by the composer. Something similar is apparently going on with the 1915 German film Ein Frauenherz. It was most certainly the case with Die Harmonie-Films dating from 1917, another German film produced exclusively for music showcase. As for those early talkies, the first of those was produced by Warner Brothers as an sound exhibition film by the studio; Bernado De Pace featured the vaudevillian musician of the same name playing tunes on the mandolin (his nickname was "The Wizard of the Mandolin")--the film features a number of the other composers, including Franz von Suppé). The same general concept was applied to Banjoland in 1928; another Warner's film.  In 1929, two films featured his work. One was the short Warner's production Little Miss Everybody, the other was the huge production that was MGM's The Hollywood Revue of 1929.  Rolling right along into a new decade and the dawning of the full adoption of the new technology of sound, his work was featured in three films in 1930 (the first of these was an Ub Iwerks animated short [I LOVE Iwerks' stuff!!] Fiddlesticks featuring Flip the Frog).  It took nearly twenty years for his music to make it to the small screen of television; in 1948 the BBC produced an 1 & 1/2 hour television feature length adaptation of his La vie parisienne. In 1954 his music first made it's way into a television series, when it was featured in a 4th season episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour.  It has since been featured almost countless films, some of which are quite famous and many episodes of well known television shows (Happy Days, Month Python's Flying Circus, The Ren & Stimpy Show  and The Simpsons just to name a few).  The most recent film to feature his work is 2018's Turner Risk.  Offenbach died at the age of 61 in Paris on the 5th of October. By this time he was a beloved French citizen and was given a state funeral. He was subsequently buried in Montmatre Cemetery in what became a family plot. 

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Born Today June 5: Richard J. Jose

1862-1941

Often listed as an "American countertenor," Richard J. Jose was in fact a British operatic singer born in Lanner, Cornwall (his name rhymes with "rose" and was originally "Joce"--which is a traditional Cornish name [reminder: Cornwall is a Celtic enclave of England--it is as Celtic as Wales]).  He apparently followed an uncle to the U.S., settling in Nevada and singing in saloons. He eventually joined minstrel shows which wound up taking him to California. By this time (the 1890's) he was becoming a well known operatic singer in the U.S. and made a number of recordings via the new technology of phonograph cylinders. By the turn of the century he was an early signee of the music company Victor.  His version of "Silver Threads Among the Gold" was a big hit for him and the company.  It was this song that led to his only appearance in a film, which came in 1915. The film was titled the same as the song and was a curiosity to say the least.  The poster boasted the gimmick of the film's promotion, "Richard J. Jose (Appears In Person)."  Jose actually toured with the film, singing the song in the appropriate places during the film's screening; Jose also starred as Martin in the film itself (IMDb link, and the film should not be confused with the 1911 film of the same name produced by the Edison Co & directed by their man Porter). The film was the brain child of the K & R Film Company--a one off sort of affair.  Unfortunately the film is lost; it's one of those great loses in the film world from the silent era--not because the film would likely be some long lost masterpiece, but because it was so oddly unique.  This is Jose's only film appearance; he soon retired completely from the entertainment industry and settled permanently in California.  There he embarked on a second career as California Deputy Real Estate Commissioner.  Jose died in San Francisco at the age of 79 on 20 October 1941.  He is buried in the Olivet Memorial Park (then Mount Olivet Cemetery) in Colma, Ca--just outside of CA. 

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Born Today May 27: Jacques Fromental Halévy (Not So Silent Edition)

1799-1862

French composer [Jacques] Fromental Halévy was born Jacques-Françoise-Fromental-Élie Halévy on this date in Paris.  His father was cantor, who served as secretary to the Jewish community Paris; his father was also a writer and teacher of Hebrew.  At the age 9 or 10, he entered Conservatoire de Paris; later he became a protege of Luigi Cherubini.  by 1819, he had won the Prix de Rome with an original cantata.  He was to travel to Rome after this, but his departure was delayed due to the untimely of his mother.  He did eventually accept his first commission there, and this brought him his first wide spread recognition.  Upon his return to France, he became the chorus master at the Theater Italien; in this capacity, he struggled to get an early opera of his performed.  After he was able to get the performance staged, the critics were quite harsh.  None the less, he was able to secure the job of chorus master at the Opera.  He also became a professor of harmony and accompaniment at the Convervatoire, where he was first schooled.  There, he had an impressive list of students (see link below).  The work that he is mostly remembered for today, La Juive, an opera that debuted in 1835.  It would become a favorite of both Mahler and Wagner, and was a favorite of Caruso to sing.  A year later he accepted a position at the Institut de France.  By two decades later, he was serving as a major promoter of the arts, rising to secretary of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.  It was noted that his health and mental capacity had begun to markedly decline by this time.  Whether he actually had some form of early on-set dementia cannot be known, but at least one acquaintance wrote a description of him in early 1855 that would point in that sad direction.  Halévy died in Nice on the 17th of March, 1862 at the age of 62.  His body was transported back to Paris for burial in the Montmartre Cemetery.  As far a films are concerned, two films in the late silent era featured his music.  Both of them were early Vitagraph sound shorts.  The first of these was Va prononcer la mort in 1927.  The next, also dating from 1927 has a doozy of a title:  Giovani Martinelli, Tenor, Assisted by Louis D'Angelo, Bass, of the Metropolitan Opera Company, in a Duet from Act IV of the Opera "La Juive".  The most recent use of his music came in 2005 in Nóe a made for television French film of his opera of the same name.  

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Born Today May 15: Michael William Balfe (Not So Silent Edition)

1808-1870

Irish composer Michael William Balfe was born on this day in Dublin.  He showed extreme musical talent at a very early age; in fact, by the time he was just 7, he had already composed a polish style dance.  Also by this time, he was playing violin for his father's dancing class business.  He made his public musical debut at the age of 9 on the violin and had also composed a ballad entitled "Young Fanny." His father died in 1823, so the teenager moved by himself to London, England.  He was then hired as a violinist by the orchestra of the Theater Royal in Drury Lane.  While continuing in that capacity, he also attempted to make a career for himself as an opera singer--a venture that failed.  In 1825, a member of the aristocracy arranged for him to travel to Italy for music and voice lessons.  While there, he was introduced to Italian composer Luigi Cherubini; through him, he wound up as an protege of Rossini.  It was at this time that he started to take up composing seriously.  By 1835, he was back in London--where his light opera's began to bring him success after several well thought of performances in Drury Lane.  In 1841, he founded the National Opera at the Lyceum Theater, but it was doomed to fail.  After this failure, he and his young family moved to Paris, France; and though several performances of his works were successfully staged there, by the end of the year the family was back in London.  Upon his return, he successfully staged a production of the work that he is most well known for today The Bohemian Girl.  It ran, to packed houses, for over 100 nights and inspired productions to be staged in a number of other countries as well.  In 1846, he was appointed musical director and conductor for the Italian Opera at Her Majesty's Theater.  He also composed special pieces for the 1851 Great International Exhibition that was set to take place in London.  He retired in 1864.  In all he had composed around 30 operas, several cantatas and one symphony.  The first time a film was made using his music came with the extremely early sound The Heart Bowed Down, dating from 1906; this little film used Chronophone system--the film was produced by the Gaumont British Picture Corp. and was named for one of Balfe's songs.  His material was next used in a Charlie Chaplin film dating from 1919 a film that Chaplin also penned: Sunnyside has both a full mono and a silent version--the 1974 mono reissue of the film featured Balfe's song "When Other Lips."  Finally, in 1929, his song "Excelsior" was featured in the short musical comedy Satires.  The first full length film to feature his music came in 1930 in Song o' My Heart.  The latest use of his music in a film came in the 2011 horror film The Shadows.  Balfe died in his home,  in Romney Abbey, Hampshire, England on 20 October 1870 at the age of 62.  He is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.  

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Born Today May 14: Alphons Czibulka (Not So Silent Edition)

1842-1894

Austro-Hungarian musician, bandleader and song writer Alphons Czibulka was born on this day in Kirchdrauf/Szepeváralja, Hungary (it is now a town in the Slovak Republic).  He got started in music early in his life and actually attained fame in his part of the world by the age of 15.  He had toured the Southern Russias giving piano performances and full on concerts; his name spread quickly as a real musical talent.  Eventually he was made the musical director of French Opera in Odessa, later the same at the National Theater in Innsbruck.  He then enlisted in the military and from 1866 to 1870 he served as a military bandleader in the Austro-Hungarian infantry.  He then began to compose his own songs in the salon style.  One of his songs became one of the most popular pieces for intimate recitals in the 19th century.  This is when his name became known in the west.  1880 to 1887 again found him a military bandmaster.  By 1889, he was again a private citizen and was appointed music director of the Concert House Flora in Hamburg.  By 1891 he was once again conducting in the military; he would continue in this capacity until his death on the 27th of October in Vienna.  He is buried there in the Central Cemetery there.  As far as his songs being put into film goes, the first film to feature his song "Hearts and Flowers" came in 1928 with the short comedy The Movie Man, a sound film featuring the Vitaphone apparatus.  In all, 5 films were made in the late 1920's that featured his music; all of them featured sound of some sort.  Show People (1928) was a partial silent King Vidor film, Synthetic Sin (1929) was another partial silent directed by William Seiter.  The Hollywood Revue Of 1929 was a well known MGM extravaganza presented in full sound.  Finally, there was Fire Proof (1929) another full sound comedic short that was a vehicle for Lupino Lane.  In the 1930's, his songs became popular in to use in animated shorts, or, in other words, cartoons.  The first full length film in the 1930's to use on of his compositions was Peach-O-Reno (1931), a romantic comedy.  The first time one of his songs was used for television was in the Mister Magoo series in the early 1960's.  The most recent use of his music also came in a television series; in 2012 the ultra popular crime vehicle Boardwalk Empire used his song "Stephanie Gavotte" in the episode "Resolution".  

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Born Today April 28: George Leyton

GEORGE LEYTON

1864-1948

Expat American songwriter and actor George Leyton was born today in New Orleans, LA.  Not a lot is known about his life, except that he left the U.S. for Great Britain when he was quite a young man.  He served for a time in the British army; and reportedly started a fund for veterans of the Crimea and the India Mutiny.  He financed this to the tune of £3,600 (quite a sum in the day!) with the sale of one of his songs.  He was a well known stage performer of various music halls in London, frequenting the vaudeville scene there.  Beginning in 1916, he appeared a small number of films, the first of which was Boys Of The Old Brigade.  In 1917 he appeared as "The Man" in The Man Who Made Good, for which he wrote the story that the film was based on.  Also in 1917, he appeared in It's Never Too Late To Mend.  Finally, in 1921 he produced and starred in Land Of My Fathers.  Leyton died in his adopted home town of London, England on 5 June at the age of 84.  There is no information on the disposal of his remains.

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Born Today April 25 (Not So Silent Edition): James Pierpont

1822-1893

American songwriter James Pierpont, born James Lord Pierpont, was born on this day in Boston, Mass (some sources wrongly list his birthplace to be in Maine).  His father was a well known pastor, poet and abolitionist.  He was also the nephew of the famous banker James Pierpont Morgan.  In 1832, young James was sent to boarding school in New Hampshire.  But in 1836, he ran away to sea on board a whaling ship.  Upon returning, he enlisted in the Navy, leaving at the age of 21.  Back in New England, he married and started a family, but later got caught up in the gold fever that was gripping San Francisco.  He left his young family to start a supply store there, but the business failed when he lost all of his inventory in a fire.  He also supplemented his income by becoming a photographer.  In 1856, his wife died, leaving him with 3 children.  James' father had taken a job in church located in Savannah, Georgia; so James followed him there.  He was then hired by the church as the organist and music director.  He also became an independent music teacher, teaching both the organ and voice.  (A point of trivia, the organ from that church is currently located at Florida State University in Tallahassee).  This is when he started composing his own songs.  Though he was a prolific song writer, there is just one song that he is known for (well known!) today.  In 1857 he composed Christmas song that he originally called "The One Horse Open Sleigh"--two years later, he added "Jingle Bells" to the title.  Today it is one of the most well known non-religious Christmas song in the world.  While in Savannah, he also remarried and had more children.  Then the civil war broke out and James and his father found themselves on opposite sides of the conflict, with his father serving as Army Chaplin in the the Union Army and James writing songs from the Confederacy.  After the war, he moved with his family to Valdosta, Georgia to teach music, then in 1869 he moved just down the road to Quitman, where he had accepted a job as church organist in a Presbyterian church there and to teach music at the Quitman Academy.  By the time he reached retirement age, he was the Music Director at the Academy.  After retirement, he moved to Winter Haven, Florida; where he died at the age of 71 on the 5th of August.  He is buried at Laurel Grove Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia.  In regards to films, the first time "Jingle Bells" was used in a movie came in an early sound short from 1927 also called Jingle Bells (the first hundreds to come!).  It was next featured in another early partial sound short The Toy Shop in 1928 (the film has a mono musical score, and is also an early color film showcasing the early 2-strip Technicolor process).  The first time the song was used in a full length film came in 1930 in The Unholy Three.  The first time in was used in a television series came in 1951 with a Christmas special for The Frank Sinatra Show.  It's most recent use came on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.  It's most recent use in a feature film dates from this year with the thriller Clinical.  Pierpont was inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 1970.

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Born Today April 24: Charles Nuitter

1828-1899

French librettist Charles Nuitter (birth name Charles-Louis-Étienne Nuitter) was born on this day in Paris.  Not only did he write lyrics for original operas, he also translated other non-French operas into French.  For example, he helped translate Wagner operas from the original German.  There are more than 500 original works by him.  Additionally, he also worked as an archivist/librarian in the field of music for the Paris Opera.  A handful of films have been made from his work, two of them in the silent era.  The first was The Toymaker's Secret a Vitagraph short, which was released in 1910.  The second was Una tazza di the, an Italian production, it was released in 1923.  The most recent film to use his work as source material was a filmed ballet made for television affair by the BBC: Coppélia: A ballet in three acts, it aired in 2000.  In 2015 the horror film Victor Frankenstein used one of his songs in it's soundtrack.  He died in Paris on the 23rd of February 1899 after suffering a stroke days before, he was 70 years old.  There is no information about any memorial for him in Paris.

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Born Today April 18: Franz von Suppé

1819-1895

Opera composer Franz von Suppé was born on this day in Spalato, Dalmatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now part of Croatia) as Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere di Suppé-Demelli; this is why outside the German and English speaking world he is often credited Francesco Suppé Demelli.  His actual ethnicity was Italian-Belgian on his father's side, and Austrian on his mother's side.  He grew up in the then Dalmatian town of Zara (Zadar, Croatia).  His music education started very early and he was already composing before the tender age of 10.  Though his actual father gave no support for his interest in music, he had a sort of surrogate father in a local choirmaster that filled that role.  He also gained the interest of popular local band master.  He studied both flute and harmony.  The debut of his work came in 1832 with  Missa dalmatica, a Roman Catholic Mass that was performed at a Franciscan church in Zara.  At the age of 16, he relocated to Padua to study law, probably at the insistence of his actual father, but refused to give up the further study of music in addition to his legal studies.  There, he also began to perform as an opera singer.  Eventually he was invited to Vienna by a theater manager there, where he continued his music studies.  He was also invited to conduct in the theater as well.  He began to compose light operettas, and it these works that he is remembered for today.  He also became a producer of operas, at one point staging a successful production featuring opera sensation Jenny Lind.  His music has been featured in a surprising number of films, including the likes of Beetlejuice.  But the first time his work was featured in a film came in a "silent musical" from 1908.  Trio de Boccaccio was a Brazilian short that featured lyrics from one of his operettas on the title cards.  The first film to actually feature his music in sound was a very early talking musical short dating from 1927 in Bernado De Pace, a Warner Brothers film featuring sound by Vitaphone.  The first full length film that featured his compositions came in 1933 with the Swedish film Kära släkten.  The latest production to feature his music came in the Austrian television series Neujahrskonzert der Wiener Philharmoniker that features performances by the Vienna Philharmonic; televised in 2015.  Franz von Suppé died in Vienna on the 21st of May 1895 at the age of 76.  He is buried there in the Vienna Central Cemetery.

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