- Remember, when I'm working on songs, I'm still a book-writer. I'm not out to write popular song hits, though I've written songs that have become popular. I'm writing a song to fit a spot in the show. To fit a character, to express something about him or her - to move that story line forward. You can't fool that audience out there. They'll always tell you whether a song is right or not. And they're not polite about it either.
- [Jimmy]McHugh said, 'Would you like to do some songs for the Cotton Club in Harlem?'. And I said, 'I would write for the Westchester Kennel Club, I don't care what it is!' So we did a few shows there.
- [on Harry Warren] You know, Harry has carried on for years about how anonymous he is. With him, it's always some sort of a mass plot on the part of the world to keep his name hidden. Harry always says, 'If anybody gets the smallest billing , I get it'. I remember one day we were on our way to the studio to play our songs, and he said, 'Now remember, Dorothy, when we get to the Metro lot, you walk you walk three Oscars behind me - because I had only one'.
- Mills Music was the kind of firm that when Valentino died, the next day they had a song out: 'There's a New Star in Heaven Since Valentino Passed Away'. When Caruso died, the next day there was "A Songbird in Heaven named Caruso'. At this time a lady named Ruth Elder was going to fly the Atlantic. So Mills says, 'She's going to fly today and we have to have a song. I'll help you out. I'll give you fifty dollars to do this, if you can do it by tomorrow. I'll even give you a title. 'Our American Girl'. The two lines of verse you have to use are, 'You took a notion to fly across the ocean'. I said, 'Mr. Mills, you don't take a notion to fly across the ocean'. Well, anyhow, Ruth Elder never made it, so the song was never published.
- [on Jerome Kern] He didn't play the piano very well - not a great pianist like Arthur Schwartz, or Harold Arlen, or Cy Coleman, who play beautifully. He'd play something he'd written, and if there was an expression on your face that showed you didn't care for it - he'd react very quickly to what you thought - he'd turn this little statuette around, facing away, and say 'Wagner doesn't like it'.
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