Jerome Kern Biography

Fast Facts

• One of America's preeminent songwriters, composed first Broadway score for The Red Petticoat (1912)
• Biggest hit on the Great White Way was Show Boat (1927), which was such a huge success that the 1929 film version omitted most of his songs on the theory that they were too familiar to audiences; subsequent Hollywood treatments, in 1931 and 1956, restored the full score
• Fred Astaire danced to Kern's music in several films, including 1936's Swing Time, in which he partnered with Ginger Rogers to Kern's Oscar-winning "The Way You Look Tonight," and 1942's You Were Never Lovelier
• Encouraged talented young composers such as George Gershwin
• Died while writing songs for Annie Get Your Gun; Irving Berlin inherited the project
• The 1946 musical Till the Clouds Roll By was an idealized account of his life