Schwartz, Arthur

Schwartz, Arthur

(1900–84) composer; born in New York City. While practicing law in the mid-1920s, he began selling songs to vaudeville and Broadway revues. In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s he collaborated for Broadway, mainly with lyricist Howard Dietz, and worked as a Hollywood producer and composer with such lyricists as Dorothy Fields and Ira Gershwin on musicals, revues, films, and television. One of his best-known melodies is that for "You and the Night and the Music," and with Dietz he wrote the show-business standard, "That's Entertainment" (1953). From 1958 to 1983 he was director of ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers).