Biography
Born on 20 November 1906 in Vienna, Austria, as Fritz Spielman(n), the songwriter died in New York City on 21 March 1997. He specialized in popular material for Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley after completing composition studies under Joseph Marx at the Vienna Academy of Music. Following his Master’s degree in piano, he performed a handful of classical recitals before shifting to nightclub work and original songwriting as a means of support. One composition from that period, ‘Warum Spielt Bei Den Schinkenfleckerl Alleweil Das Fleisch Versteckerl?’, wryly captured the era’s economic hardship through its title, which roughly asks why the meat keeps hiding in the noodle-and-ham dish. After the March 1938 German annexation of Austria, he reached Paris and then secured passage on one of the final ships leaving for Cuba ahead of world war; there he married and relocated with his wife to New York in 1939. Adapting quickly to American life and English, he supplied music for numerous hits in the early 1940s, among them ‘Shepherd Serenade’ (Kermit Goell lyric), which Horace Heidt And His Musical Knights, Art Jarrett, and Bing Crosby all recorded successfully. Further Goell collaborations produced ‘You Better Give Me Lots Of Loving’ for the 1943 Andrews Sisters film Swingtime Johnny as well as ‘Every Time I Give My Heart’, ‘All You Gotta Do’, and ‘I Love It Out Here In The West’, all performed by Ann Dvorak’s warm-hearted saloon singer in the 1946 Randolph Scott western Abiline Town. Signed to MGM, he teamed with Janice Torre on occasional film songs including ‘I’m Gonna See A Lot Of You’ for Big City (1948), ‘Spring Came Back To Vienna’ sung by the twenty-year-old Jane Powell in Luxury Liner (1948), and the buoyant ‘Merry Christmas’ delivered by Judy Garland in In The Good Old Summertime (1949). Additional screen credits encompass ‘Time And Time Again’ (Earl Brent) for Nancy Goes To Rio (1950), several Goell-Torre numbers for Tom Thumb (1958) starring Russ Tamblyn, Peter Sellers, and Terry-Thomas, and ‘I Don’t Want To’ (Torre) for the 1962 Elvis Presley vehicle Girls! Girls! Girls!. In 1950 Goell and Al Hoffman reworked a melody Spielman had written as a teenager into the gentle ‘One Finger Melody’, whose Frank Sinatra recording remained on the US Hit Parade for sixteen weeks. Among his many other compositions were the 1950 novelty ‘Go To Sleep, Go To Sleep, Go To Sleep’ (Sammy Cahn), cut in the States by Mary Martin and Arthur Godfrey and in Britain by Lita Roza and Jack Parnell with the Ted Heath Orchestra; ‘It Only Hurts For A Little While’ (Mack David, 1956); Eddie Pola’s ‘The Longest Walk’, a 1955 US hit for Jaye P. Morgan; and the country-flavored ‘Paper Roses’, co-written with Torre in 1960 and revived profitably by Marie Osmond in 1973. He also joined Torre and Hoagy Carmichael on the humorous ‘Who Killed ’Er’, which Carmichael recorded in his distinctive style. With Arthur Gershwin he contributed songs to the short-lived 1945 Broadway musical A Lady Says Yes and supplied material for several off-Broadway ventures. In 1969 he and Torre wrote the score for the television musical The Stingiest Man In Town, drawn from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol; Walter Matthau supplied Scrooge’s singing voice, while Theodore Bikel, Robert Morse, and Dennis Day also appeared. Its later Chicago stage version received the Joseph Jefferson Award—an uncommon accolade for a composer whose catalog frequently went unrecognized. Wider notice arrived in 1990 when Shirley Horn recorded the Spielman-Goell ballad ‘You Won’t Forget Me’ after discovering it during a late-night broadcast of the 1953 Joan Crawford film The Torch Song; the same number had earlier appeared in the 1950 Esther Williams–Van Johnson picture The Duchess Of Idaho.