Biographer Philip Furia

DATE December 3, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Philip Furia discusses his book "Skylark: The Life and
Times of Johnny Mercer"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics to many great songs. Here's a short list:
"Any Place I Hang My Hat is Home," "Blues in the Night," "Come Rain or Come
Shine," "Days of Wine and Roses," "Fools Rush In," "Hooray for Hollywood," "I
Remember You," "I Wanna Be Around," "Jeepers Creepers," "The Man That Got
Away," "Moon River," "One for My Baby," "Something's Gotta Give," "That Old
Black Magic" and "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby."

Mercer's period of greatest popularity was between the mid-1930s and mid-'50s.
There were 221 weeks within that period when Mercer had at least one song in
the top 10.

My guest Philip Furia has written a new biography of Mercer called "Skylark."
Furia is also the author of "The Poets of Tin Pan Alley" and books about
Irving Berlin and Ira Gershwin.

As part of his research for "Skylark," Furia interviewed many of Mercer's
surviving family, friends and colleagues. Many of them shared stories about
Mercer's appalling behavior when he was drunk. Yet, Furia says, the love
everyone had for him seemed to override their worst memories.

Mercer was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1909 and died in 1976. Let's start
with the Mercer lyric that the new biography is named after. The music was
written by Hoagy Carmichael, who sings on this 1956 recording.

(Soundbite of "Skylark")

Mr. HOAGY CARMICHAEL (Singer): (Singing) Skylark, have you anything to say to
me? Won't you tell me where my love can be? Is there a meadow in the mist
where someone's waiting to be kissed? Skylark, have you seen a valley green
with spring where my heart can go a-journeying over the shadows and the rain
to a blossom-covered lane? And in your lonely flight haven't you heard the
music of the night, wonderful music, faint as the will-o'-the-wisp, crazy as a
loon, sad as a Gypsy serenading the moon? Skylark, I don't know if you can
find these things, but my heart is riding on your wings. So if you see them
anywhere, won't you lead me there?

GROSS: Philip Furia, welcome back to FRESH AIR.

Mr. PHILIP FURIA (Author, "Skylark"): Oh, thank you so much.

GROSS: You say that Johnny Mercer is different from the other members of the
pantheon of American popular song who are his contemporaries, different
because of his background. How does his background compare to, you know, the
Gershwins and Harold Arlen and Cole Porter, Irving Berlin?

Mr. FURIA: Yeah, that's what interested me initially about him, because
Mercer was the only Southerner in that whole group of largely New York Jewish
immigrant or descended from immigrants songwriters. The Gershwins, Berlin,
even Cole Porter, who came from Indiana, can sound more New Yorkish, more
urbane than anyone else. And here's Johnny Mercer from Savannah, an
Episcopalian choirboy, mingling with all of these sophisticated, hard-nosed
New York Jewish songwriters. And I thought, what a world for him to move in.

There was a side of him that came out as I began to do research. He was very
patrician. And I think he was put off a little bit by kind of, you know, the
bluntness, the brusqueness of a lot of the other songwriters. He didn't have
that energy and drive.

GROSS: Let's get to Johnny Mercer's first lyric that actually had a life
outside of his house. And that lyric is "Out of Breath." And this is a song
that he actually got into the "Garrick Gaieties," which was a revue, a musical
revue. How did he write the song?

Mr. FURIA: Well, Johnny Mercer was a lyricist who, like most lyricists, wrote
lyrics after music was completed. And he had a collaborator who had given him
a melody. And he worked and worked and worked on it. And actually his
ambition was to be an actor. He really went to New York from Savannah wanting
to make it as an actor. And it was a bug that never let go of him. And he
went to the "Garrick Gaieties" and tried to get a role. And they said, `No,
we don't need any more actors, all we need are pretty girls and songs.'

So he went back to this melody that his collaborator had given him and worked
and worked and wrote many, many verses to it, and took it over to the show.
And they loved it. And it actually was featured very prominently in "Garrick
Gaieties."

GROSS: Had he not thought about writing lyrics before this?

Mr. FURIA: No, he had been doing that ever since he was about 15. He had
been writing lyrics. And his usual style--because he loved what were then
called race records, blues that were largely marketed to black audiences. And
he loved Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey and Louis Armstrong. And he wrote a lot
of very, very vernacular, bluesy kinds of lyrics. But "Out of Breath" was his
first song for a Broadway revue. And it has a kind of New York sophistication
to it. He could be that urbane New Yorker when he wanted to be.

GROSS: Well, let's hear Johnny Mercer singing "Out of Breath." And this was
recorded in 1971, when he appeared at the Lyrics and Lyricists series at the
92nd Street Y in New York. Here's Johnny Mercer.

(Soundbite of "Out of Breath")

Mr. JOHNNY MERCER (Lyricist): (Singing) Mine's a hopeless case, but there's
one saving grace. Anyone would feel as I do, out of breath and scared to
death of you. Love was first divined, then explored and defined. Still, the
old sensation is new. Out of breath and scared to death of you. It takes all
the strength that I can call to my command to hold your hand. I would speak
in length about the love that should be made, but I'm afraid. Hercules and
such never bothered me much. All you have to do is say boo. I'm out of
breath and scared to death of you.

(Soundbite of applause)

GROSS: That's Johnny Mercer singing the first song, the first lyric that he
wrote that actually got performed in a show. And that was recorded in 1971.
My guest is Philip Furia, who has written a new biography of Johnny Mercer.
It's called "Skylark."

Well, "Garrick Gaieties" not only gave a life to Mercer's song "Out of
Breath," Mercer met his wife Ginger at the "Garrick Gaieties," too. She was a
dancer in the show.

Mr. FURIA: Yeah, she was in the chorus line. And he courted her. She was
very, very different. She had grown up in Brooklyn. She was Jewish and very
much a city girl, but she was very taken with this odd Southern boy whose
language she could barely understand, who used to walk around in a Panama hat
and a white suit. But they married shortly thereafter--not a happy marriage,
as it turned out. But they were initially very much in love. And it came out
of that first show.

GROSS: Well, Johnny Mercer's song "Out of Breath" was performed in 1930 in
"Garrick Gaieties." What were the typical ways of breaking into music for a
young songwriter at that time?

Mr. FURIA: Well, for a young songwriter in New York, the way you broke in was
through Tin Pan Alley, which was where all the sheet music publishers had
their offices and where so many songs were kind of mass-produced, almost
assembly-line-produced. And Johnny Mercer walked the pavements. He want to
various music publishers, trying to get them to accept his songs. And, you
know, he would see the greats--Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein--walking around.
And, you know, he just envied the kind of success they had.

But it really took a long time before--even though he could place a song here
and there in a Broadway revue, it took him three or four years before he
really had a hit song. And it was a lot of frustration. He talked about--you
know, he and his wife lived in Brooklyn. And he had 25 cents a day to take
the subway in and buy himself two hog dogs and an orange soda for lunch, and
just kept knocking on those doors, trying to sell his songs.

GROSS: What was that first hit?

Mr. FURIA: The first hit was a song he wrote with Hoagy Carmichael in 1933
called "Lazy Bones." And they sold the song to a publisher and they got a
recording of it. And both of them at that time were so poor that the banks
wouldn't cash their first royalty checks for, like, $1,000, because these
guys looked so seedy. So one of the singers who had recorded the song took it
to her bank and got it cashed. But it was their first big break. Well, it
was Mercer's first break; Carmichael had had a couple of successful songs
before that.

GROSS: And after working with Hoagy Carmichael, Mercer went on to be the
songwriter for the Paul Whiteman Band. Hoagy Carmichael and Paul Whiteman had
already worked together. Was it typical for big bands then to have a
songwriter on staff?

Mr. FURIA: No, it was not typical. But Mercer was also a wonderful singer.
And he actually broke into Paul Whiteman's band by winning a national singing
contest. He was the New York champion. And then he won the national contest.
And Whiteman kept him on as a singer actually to replace Bing Crosby. Crosby
went to Hollywood, and Whiteman needed someone who could sing very rhythmical,
jazzy tunes. And that was Mercer's talent. He had grown up listening to the
black records and, you know, black church music as a kid. So he had a
wonderful sense of rhythm and jazz. And he sang with Whiteman for several
years.

GROSS: My guest is Philip Furia, the author of "Skylark: The Life and Times
of Johnny Mercer." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest, Philip Furia, is the author of a new biography of lyricist
Johnny Mercer. It's called "Skylark."

Johnny Mercer wrote for Hollywood in two different parts of his life. How
did he get started writing for Hollywood? And Hollywood was another great
way for a songwriter for become known and for his songs to become known.

GROSS: Hollywood got interested in him when they heard him on the radio
singing with Paul Whiteman. And Mercer's singing voice on the radio came
across as if he were black. In fact, Whiteman had teamed him with his
trombonist, a great jazz trombonist, Jack Teagarden. And they were a kind of
Amos-and-Andy act. And everyone who listened thought these were two blacks
who were, you know, talking dialogue back and forth and then breaking into
song. And RKO Studios had a producer who really loved that sound and invited
Mercer out to Hollywood to be an actor, a singer and a songwriter. It was
kind of like a triple threat. And Mercer still had that acting bug in him.
He wanted to make it, he wanted to be a movie star like Bing Crosby. He was
just astonished at the success Crosby had when he went out Hollywood. And
Mercer thought, `This is going to happen to me.'

And so he left a great job with Paul Whiteman's band, went out to Hollywood,
actually made two movies, and as an actor was a disaster; and wrote a few
songs while he was out there, wrote a song with Fred Astaire called "I'm
Building Up to an Awful Letdown." But basically his first venture into
Hollywood was a bust and they didn't renew his contract at RKO. And he was
left high and dry.

GROSS: And then a song that he wrote after leaving Hollywood ended up
becoming his ticket back into Hollywood. And that song was "I'm an Old
Cowhand." Tell the story of the song and how it changed his life.

Mr. FURIA: Well, after RKO canceled his contract, he realized how tough it
was to make it in Hollywood. And as he did so often in his life, he wanted to
get back home to Savannah, get back to his roots. And so he and his wife--and
this is in, you know, 1936, got in a car and drove from Hollywood to Savannah.
They'd never done that before and they never did it again.

It took them three days to drive across Texas. And as he was driving across
Texas, he was astounded at seeing these cowboys in big hats and with spurs on,
and they were driving cars and trucks. And I think, you know, after his bad
experience in Hollywood, he kind of saw how ridiculous the image Hollywood
portrayed of the Western cowboy was. And here was, in fact, in Texas, life
imitating art. So the song came to him as they were driving. `I'm an old
cowhand from the Rio Grande and I ride the range in my Ford V-8.' So it was a
kind of, you know, send-up of the Hollywood that he had come to really despise
and also, you know, just a very amusing look at the way these Texas cowboys
were trying to look like the ones in the movies.

GROSS: Mercer went to Hollywood hoping to have the kind of success he saw
Bing Crosby have, and Bing Crosby was the one who actually recorded "I'm an
Old Cowhand," turned it into...

Mr. FURIA: Right.

GROSS: ...a hit and a well-known song. How did Bing Crosby end up recording
it?

Mr. FURIA: Well, Crosby and Mercer were friends actually through their wives.
Johnny's wife, Ginger, had been a chorus girl and she had made friends with
another chorus girl, Dixie Lee, who went on to marry Bing Crosby; and also
Dolores Hope, who married Bob Hope. So the three women were lifelong friends.
And, as often happens, when the women are friends, the wives are friends, the
husbands become friends, too, so that Crosby kind of looked out for Johnny
Mercer and helped him along, particularly during those kind of bleak early
years in Hollywood in the 1930s. He recorded songs with him or he would sing
songs either on recordings or in movies that Johnny Mercer had written. So,
in some ways, he was kind of a mentor for Johnny Mercer.

GROSS: So Bing Crosby sang the song in the movie "Rhythm on the Range." And
here's Bing Crosby 1936 recording of "I'm an Old Cowhand" with a lyric by
Johnny Mercer.

(Soundbite of "I'm an Old Cowhand")

Mr. BING CROSBY (Singer/Actor): (Singing) I'm an old cowhand from the Rio
Grande. But my legs ain't bowed and my cheeks ain't tan. I'm a cowboy who
never saw a cow, never roped a steer 'cause I don't know how, sure ain't
a-fixin' to start it now. Oh, yippee-i-o-ki-ay, yippee-i-o-ki-ay. I'm an old
cowhand and I come down from the Rio Grande. And I learned to ride, ride,
ride before I learned to stand. I'm a riding fool who is up to date, I know
every trail in the Lone Star State 'cause I ride the range in a Ford V-8. Oh,
yippee-i-o-ki-ay. Yip, yip, yip. Dah-dah-dah-dah-dee-dah-dah-dah,
dee-dee-dee-dah.

GROSS: That's "I'm an Old Cowhand" recorded in 1936 by Bing Crosby. My
guest, Philip Furia, is the author of a biography of Johnny Mercer, who wrote
that song.

This is one of the few songs where Johnny Mercer wrote music and lyrics?

Mr. FURIA: Well, he wrote several where he actually did music, too, even
though he could not read music and couldn't play a musical instrument. But it
was very much like Irving Berlin. He would hear not only a melody but
harmonies in his head. And then he would go to a piano player and sing the
song. And then the piano player would pick it out. And then Mercer would
work with him, playing the chords. And it was really extraordinary. I
interviewed his former son-in-law, who was a pianist, who had written some
songs with him like that. And he said it took forever, but he knew exactly
the chords he wanted. He could hear them in his head.

GROSS: Now when he was in Hollywood, Johnny Mercer fell in love with Judy
Garland. They had an affair. How long did that affair last?

Mr. FURIA: It started in 1941, and it was an on-and-off-again affair that
lasted really until Judy Garland died. It was the most extraordinary thing I
learned about him in researching the book, that Judy Garland really was the
great, great love of his life. And although Garland biographers don't make a
lot of the affair, I think really it was a very important affair for her. She
was about to get married to her first husband. And she really wanted an older
man. And she was very interested in men with literary and artistic qualities
to them. And I think she fell deeply in love with Johnny Mercer. But he was
married and had just adopted a little girl, Amanda. And he wrote a song about
her called "Mandy Is Two." And he was just nuts about his daughter. And he
had this Southern genteel principle that he did not believe in divorce. And
Judy Garland had just finally gotten some success in "The Wizard of Oz" and
realized, I think, that if word had gotten out that she was an having an
affair with an older married man, that her career after waiting so long to
take off would have been in jeopardy.

And she actually broke it off. And Mercer never got over it. And they
renewed it several times until her death. And at another point in the 1960s,
he actually asked Ginger for a divorce so that he could finally marry Judy
Garland. And his kids were grown by then and he was ready to walk out of the
marriage. But, again, it didn't take off. His wife became deathly ill.
Doctors told him that she was going to die very soon. And he went into see
her in the hospital, and she said, `Please don't divorce me now.' And he
said, `I'll stay with you as long as you live.' And she recovered and lived
for another 30 years.

GROSS: Oh.

Mr. FURIA: And in the meantime, Garland kept going downhill and downhill and
downhill and, you know, finally died, I think, in 1969.

GROSS: Philip Furia's new biography of Johnny Mercer is called "Skylark."
We'll talk more about Mercer and hear more of his songs in the second half of
the show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR. Here's one of the great collaborations
between Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen, sung by Ella Fitzgerald.

(Soundbite of song)

Ms. ELLA FITZGERALD (Singer): My mama done told me when I was in pigtails, my
mama done told me, `Hon, a man's gonna sweet-talk and give you the big eye,
but when that sweet-talking's done, a man is a two-face, a worrisome thing
who'll leave you to sing the blues in the night.' Now the rains are falling,
hear the trains a calling hoo-hoo-oowee. My mama done told me, `Hear that
lonesome whistle blow across the trestle, hoo-hoo-oowee.' My mama done told
me, `Ah-hoo-we-ah-hoo-we, oh, clickety-clack sent echoing back the blues in
the night. The evening breeze will start the trees to crying and the moon
will hide its light.'

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, more about the life and work of Johnny Mercer. We continue
our conversation with biographer Philip Furia. In addition to writing some of
the most popular songs of the 20th century, Mercer was also a co-founder of
Capitol Records.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Philip Furia, the
author of a new biography of lyricist Johnny Mercer called "Skylark."
Mercer's songs include "Skylark," "Moon River," "The Days of Wine and Roses,"
"Come Rain or Come Shine," "Any Place I Hang My Hat is Home," "I Thought About
You," "The Man That Got Away," and "Hooray for Hollywood."

When we left off, Furia was talking about Johnny Mercer's secret affair with
Judy Garland. He told me that even many Hollywood insiders didn't know about
the affair.

Mr. FURIA: It was not well-known. In fact, in one Garland biography, there
was an interview with Mickey Rooney, who said, `In 1941, Judy Garland had
finally found the man she loved,' and Rooney didn't know who it was. So it
was kept pretty secret; it was just a few people in the family who knew about
it. But they said Johnny was just gaga over her. You couldn't even talk to
him. He'd just be staring straight forward and, you know, you'd kind of have
to snap your fingers in front of his face. But the fact that it happened in
1941 and was so heart-rending for him, it was one of those great lucky breaks
that he was, at that time, starting to collaborate with Harold Arlen. And
suddenly, in Mercer's lyrics--you know, before that, he had written "Jeepers
Creepers" and "I'm an Old Cowhand" and "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,"
but suddenly, there comes this wrenching, agonizing pain into his lyrics, and
he writes "Blues in the Night," "One for My Baby." You know, there's a whole
new depth of emotion, and I'm sure it comes out of the affair with Garland.
Also, a new kind of sensuality in things like "That Old Black Magic," which is
a song he wrote for her.

So, you know, in a way, Judy Garland, although the love affair didn't work
out, she kind of became his muse. And in a way, Judy Garland did that to
Johnny Mercer.

GROSS: Why don't we hear one of the songs that Mercer wrote with Arlen in
this period. Why don't we listen to "One For My Baby." And although this is
such a deeply felt song and such a kind of heart-breaking song, it was written
for the movie "The Sky's the Limit," and originally sung by Fred Astaire, who
gives it a much jauntier rendition...

Mr. FURIA: Yes.

GROSS: ...than what we're used to hearing from Sinatra.

Mr. FURIA: Yeah. Sinatra's rendition, I think, is the classic one, and he
captures all the pain. He once said, `A Johnny Mercer lyric is all the wit
you wish you had and all the love you ever lost.' And boy, he hit it with
"One For My Baby."

GROSS: Well, here's Frank Sinatra.

(Soundbite of "One For My Baby")

Mr. FRANK SINATRA: (Singing) It's quarter to 3. There's no one in the place
except you and me. So set 'em up, Joe. I got a little story you ought to
know. We're drinking, my friend, to the end of a brief episode. Make it one
for my baby, and one more for the road. I got the routine. Put another
nickel in the machine. Feelin' so bad. Can't you make the music easy and
sad? I could tell you a lot, but you've got to be true to your code. Make it
one for my baby, and one more for the road. You'd never know it, but, buddy,
I'm a kind of poet, and I got a lot of things I'd like to say. And when I'm
gloomy, won't you listen to me till it's tucked away? Well, that's how it
goes. And, Joe, I know you're gettin' anxious to close. And thanks for the
cheer. I hope you didn't mind my bending your ear. But this torch that I've
found gotta be drowned, or it soon might explode. So make it one for my baby,
and one more for the road, the long, that long--it's long.

GROSS: And that's Frank Sinatra singing "One For My Baby," music by Harold
Arlen, lyric by Johnny Mercer. And Johnny Mercer is the subject of a new
biography called "Skylark" written by my guest Philip Furia.

So you think that that song was inspired in part by Johnny Mercer's affair
with Judy Garland, which was broken off by the time this song was written.
Did they ever work together?

Mr. FURIA: Well, yeah. He wrote one of his biggest hits--he wrote for Judy
Garland in the movie "The Harvey Girls," "On the Atchison, Topeka & the
Santa Fe."

GROSS: Oh, of course. That's right.

Mr. FURIA: And he wrote a song for her when she had her television show. He
never appeared on it, but she once had her two children--oh, actually all
three children--Liza and Joey and Lorna Luft were on. They were just little
kids at the time. And for Liza Minnelli, she sang "Liza." For Joey, she sang
"Happiness is a Thing Called Joe." But then she said, `There's never been a
song written about Lorna.' But she said, `My friend, Johnny Mercer, wrote one
just for my daughter for me to do on this show,' so they were in touch in that
period. And Mercer just wrote a song for her daughter. It was a very
touching moment in the show when she brings Lorna up and then talks about
Johnny Mercer, and then sings this song.

GROSS: We'll talk more about Johnny Mercer with his biographer Philip Furia
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest, Philip Furia, is the author of a new biography of lyricist
Johnny Mercer. It's called "Skylark."

So Johnny Mercer finally did have his success in Hollywood, but then what he
really wanted was a hit Broadway show.

Mr. FURIA: Oh, it just killed him that other Hollywood songwriters that he
was senior to, like Frank Loesser and Alan J. Lerner, they went out to
Broadway, and they had these smash hits like "Guys and Dolls" and "My Fair
Lady." And Mercer could see that those shows would be immortal. They would
be revived over and over again. He always wanted that, and he never got it.
He had successful shows like "Lil' Abner," but no one's ever revived it. And
it was just--as one friend said, `one of the big holes in his heart was his
inability to write a great Broadway musical.'

GROSS: Now with Harold Arlen, he did write the songs for the show "St. Louis
Woman."

Mr. FURIA: Right.

GROSS: And that had a song that became a really big hit for him, "Come Rain
or Come Shine." That had "I Had Myself a True Love," which was another
well-known song. And "Riding on the Moon," a great song that isn't as
well-known, but some people still do it. How successful was the show?

Mr. FURIA: The show was a flop. It was supposed to have starred Lena Horne,
and that's why Mercer agreed to do it, because he had doubts about the book,
the script for the show. It was written by two black writers, Arna Bontemps
and Countee Cullen. And it's just a real clunker of a story. And Lena Horne
was approached by the NAACP, and they pressured her not to do it, because even
though the show was written by blacks, it had some pretty awful racial
stereotypes and a lot of--and a phony black dialect. And Lena Horne pulled
out of the show. And for Mercer, that was the end, even though they had a
wonderful new actress named Pearl Bailey who had the secondary role. But
without a big-name star like Lena Horne and with that clunker of a book, that
great, great score, that Arlen-Mercer score, was pretty much lost except for
the big hit, "Come Rain or Come Shine," which they recorded when the show
opened. I think Margaret Whiting did the recording of that. And that was the
only thing he could salvage.

GROSS: Well, why don't we play a version of "Come Rain or Come Shine?" Why
don't we hear the Ray Charles version of it?

Mr. FURIA: OK.

(Soundbite of "Come Rain or Come Shine")

Mr. RAY CHARLES: (Singing) I'm gonna love you like no one's loved you, come
rain or come shine. High as a mountain. Deep as a river. Come rain or come
shine. I guess when you met me, it was just one of those things. But don't
ever bet me, 'cause I'm gonna be true, well, if you let me. You're going to
love me like no one's loved me, come rain or come shine. Happy together,
unhappy together, and wouldn't it be fine? Days may be cloudy or sunny, yeah.
We're in or we're out of the money. Yeah, but I'm with you always. I'm with
you rain or shine.

GROSS: That's Ray Charles singing "Come Rain or Come Shine," which was
written by Harold Arlen and lyricist Johnny Mercer for the show "St. Louis
Woman." And my guest Philip Furia is the author of a biography of Johnny
Mercer.

How did Johnny Mercer react to the musical changes of the 1950s, when rock 'n'
roll was the music for young people, and it was crowding out American popular
song from the charts, it was competing with it?

Mr. FURIA: Well, Johnny Mercer, like so many of the other great, great
songwriters of his era, really resented the coming of rock 'n' roll, where,
you know, performers were writing their own songs and, you know, there was
just a complete fall-off in the quality of songs. Songs were being aimed at
the teen-age market. And you know, Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, those people
could complain about it, but they'd had their careers. The sad thing about
Mercer is that he was in his 40s, at the top of his form, and American popular
music was moving away from him. And it was agonizing for him. And Hollywood
musicals were starting to collapse because of the influx of television. They
were shutting down movie production, and musicals were the most expensive kind
of movies to make. There was less and less work for him writing scores for
movies. So it was really a bitter, bitter time for him, the 1950s.

GROSS: So here he was. Here was Mercer feeling very embattled because of the
growing popularity of rock 'n' roll, and movies, again, saved him.

Mr. FURIA: Yeah. They weren't making many original movie musicals anymore.
They were pretty much just doing movie versions of shows that had been hits on
Broadway, but they still had what were called theme songs. A dramatic movie,
not a musical, might have a song attached to it, and that's what finally saved
Mercer in the 1960s. He teamed with Henry Mancini. And there was a movie,
"Breakfast at Tiffany's," and Johnny Mercer had to go ask Mancini. I mean,
this was as far down as he was on his luck. He asked this young composer if
he could please, please work with him and try to write a song to Mancini's
melody for "Breakfast at Tiffany's." And Mancini was thrilled to collaborate
with Johnny Mercer. And Mercer, as often he did with collaborators, he would
get the music in his head, and then he wanted to be by himself. He didn't
like to be in the same room with a collaborator. And he would come back
sometimes with two or three different lyrics, and say to the composer, `Which
one do you like?' And the one he actually wrote for "Breakfast at
Tiffany's,"--the first one he wrote was called "I'm Holly."

(Singing) I'm Holly, like I wanna be, like holly on a tree back home.

And Mancini said, `Well, OK. That fits the main character of the movie, Holly
Golightly, but what else do you have?' And he said, `Well, I've got this one
that could either be called "Red River," "Blue River" or "Moon River."' And
Mancini listened to it and just heard those first three notes, (singing) Moon
River, and just knew at the time he was going to win the Academy Award, just
that wonderful opening.

And suddenly, Mercer was back. He won the Academy Award. Andy Williams made
a hit record of it. And then the next year, he and Mancini won it again with
"Days of Wine and Roses." And it was a thrill. I mean, it was just one song
a year, but he was on talk shows, and people knew his name again, so it was a
kind of wonderful comeback for him in the 1960s.

GROSS: Getting back to "Moon River" for a second, you know, one of the
phrases in that that always mystified me was `my huckleberry friend.' And you
say that Margaret Whiting, who was a good friend of his, suggested that he
take that phrase out 'cause it made no sense to her.

Mr. FURIA: It made no sense to her, and he really respected her opinion. She
was the daughter of one of his first great collaborators, Richard Whiting, so
he always felt like a father to her. And he thought about it for a day, and
he said, `No, I'm going to keep that in.' But you know, it's a song written
at one of the worst points in his life, but it took him back to that place
that I think he was always trying to get to, the place where he grew up, on
Moon River, outside of Savannah. And it's so filled with the images of the
river, you know, the marshland. And one of the things they did in the
summers, they would go huckleberrying. They would go out and get
huckleberries and then make ice cream out of it. And it's just a kind of
childhood memory that came to him, as I say, at this bleak point in his
career, that went into the lyric. But when you hear it, you realize it's a
huckleberry friend, but it conjures up Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer on the
Mississippi, that whole sense of boyhood ambition and, you know, the wonder of
childhood and yet going out to see the world. And it's become as Irving
Berlin predicted. It's become a kind of folk song.

GROSS: My guest is Philip Furia, the author of "Skylark: The Life and Times
of Johnny Mercer." Here's "Moon River" as sung by Audrey Hepburn in the film
"Breakfast at Tiffany's."

(Soundbite of "Moon River" from "Breakfast at Tiffany's")

Ms. AUDREY HEPBURN: (Singing) Moon River, wider than a mile, I'm crossing you
in style someday. Oh, dream maker, you heartbreaker, wherever you're goin',
I'm goin' your way. Two drifters off to see the world. There's such a lot of
world to see. We're after the same rainbow's end waitin' 'round the bend, my
huckleberry friend, Moon River and me.

GROSS: We'll talk more about lyricist Johnny Mercer after a break. This is
FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest, Philip Furia, is the author of a new biography of lyricist
Johnny Mercer. It's called "Skylark."

Now Johnny Mercer had a kind of business life as well in the sense that he was
one of the co-founders of Capitol Records. How did he end up co-founding
that?

Mr. FURIA: Well, he met a businessman who ran a record store in Los Angeles
named Glenn Wallichs. And they were just talking, and they realized that all
the big record companies at the time--this was in the 1940s--were all based in
New York: RCA Victor, Columbia and Decca. And they said, `You know, well,
Hollywood has brought so many talented singers to the West Coast; why
shouldn't there be a record company here on the West Coast?' And so they
agreed to start what Mercer just wanted to be a little company that put out a
few songs. And Wallichs was a great businessman, and he really turned the
business side of it into an enormous enterprise. And Mercer functioned--he
wasn't much of a businessman, but he was a great what they call an AR man,
artists and repertoire.

Mercer was the president of Capitol Records, and he was the one who decided
which performers would sing what songs, and he was just brilliant at that.
And he discovered all sorts of wonderful singers like Jo Stafford, Margaret
Whiting, Peggy Lee. And it was Johnny Mercer who went to Nat "King" Cole, who
at that time had a jazz trio, and persuaded Nat "King" Cole to sing as well as
play the piano. And Cole didn't want to do it, but Mercer kept pressuring and
pressuring, and finally got Nat "King" Cole to do some recordings for Capitol,
and Nat "King" Cole went on to become, really, the biggest singer in America
until Frank Sinatra's career reblossomed in the '50s. And this was all Johnny
Mercer's ear for talent, and his ear for really good songs that made Capitol
an artistic success as well as a business success.

GROSS: Boy, he did a lot of good on that end, didn't he?

Mr. FURIA: Oh, well, it paid off, too. He gradually, because he was such a
terrible businessman--he'd come in at 11:00 in the morning, look at a couple
of letters, and then he'd just want to go record songs with somebody and then
go out for a drink. And he kind of got shoved to the wings at Capitol Records
in the 1950s, when it really became an enormous business success. But it was
bought out in 1955 by a European company, EMI. And Mercer sold his interest
in it, and I think it came to almost $2 million. He became a millionaire by
selling Capitol Records.

GROSS: What was it like to research this book and to talk to people who were
alive now and knew or worked with Johnny Mercer?

Mr. FURIA: It was surprisingly difficult for me, because I had known a little
bit about how he behaved when he drank. But so many people--and these--people
who absolutely adored him told me these horrible, horrible stories about him,
that at cocktail parties, he would curse at his wife and, sometimes, would
take his drink and pour it over her head at a party, that he would make sexual
overtures to daughters of his collaborators, even to one of his own nieces,
who told me this. And she was just revolted. I mean, she thought, `I'd
always been like a daughter to him. I was the same age as his daughter, and
he got drunk and made a pass at me.' And I found that very difficult to write
about. And the sad thing is that he would attack everybody around him. And
then, unlike some drunks who forget the next morning, he would always
remember. And the Southern proper upbringing would come back, and he would
feel terrible remorse, and would inevitably send a dozen roses to whomever
he'd offended the next morning, with these abject note of apologies. So,
yeah, it was, in some ways, a horrible life, that he would be so abominable
when he drank and then feel so guilty the next morning. And it was just,
like, there was a while there I couldn't write about him. I found him so
repulsive a person when he drank.

So, you know, I'd written about Irving Berlin, who could be crusty, and Ira
Gershwin, who was just a sweetheart. But now Johnny Mercer, there was a
darkness to him and an ugliness to him that I didn't want to write about him.

GROSS: So you're in that position that we are with a lot of our artists,
unfortunately, which is learning how to keep loving the art while feeling
uncomfortable about the artist.

Mr. FURIA: Yeah, I'd never been in that position before. But finally, after
interviewing more people--and the interviews would get very, very emotional
sometimes as people talked about how much they loved him, but then would
recount these grisly stories about him. And finally, I began to see how
tormented he was. And it was a torment that went all the way back to his
childhood and the kinds of tremendous expectations that his family made on him
to make everything right, to always be the kindest, most generous person, to
fix everything that went wrong in the family. And I just felt that this
enormous pressure that when he drank, he could be bad. He could get out from
under that. And I began to feel a kind of sympathy for him that just built
and built, and then I could write.

GROSS: Well, Philip Furia, thank you so much for talking with us about Johnny
Mercer.

Mr. FURIA: It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Philip Furia's new biography of Johnny Mercer is called "Skylark."

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross. We'll close with Louis Armstrong singing a Johnny
Mercer lyric as recorded in 1938.
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