They may not have the same name recognition as Rodgers and Hammerstein or Lerner and Loewe, but the songwriting duo of Schwartz and Dietz nevertheless made significant contributions to the American Songbook. From the 1920s through the 1960s, composer Arthur Schwartz and lyricist Howard Dietz wrote Broadway musicals like The Band Wagon and Inside U.S.A., and their songs like “You and The Night and The Music” and “That’s Entertainment” were championed by singers like Fred Astaire, Tony Bennett, Mel Tormé and more. This week on the program, we’ll explore the standards written by this underrated songwriting pair.
"I Guess I’ll Have To Change My Plan"
For composer Arthur Schwartz—born in Brooklyn in the year 1900—songwriting was just a hobby. He received almost no formal training. Instead, he studied English and Law at both Columbia and New York University. In 1925, he opened a fairly successful law firm in New York City, but kept writing music only on the side.
Likewise for lyricist Howard Dietz, born in New York in 1896. He studied journalism at Columbia, and wrote lyrics merely as a side project for many years while working primarily as an advertising agent. Fun fact, Dietz was actually the ad agent who suggested to a young film producer named Samuel Goldwyn, then based in New Jersey, that his new motion picture company Goldwyn Pictures should use a lion for its logo. That lion, later named “Leo The Lion,” would go on to become the famous MGM lion when Goldwyn moved out to Hollywood. Howard Dietz actually held the position as the head of publicity for MGM until 1957, after he had already established himself as a songwriter.
The story of the Schwartz and Dietz partnership actually begins in 1924, when Schwartz, the composer, was working at a summer camp with the then-unknown lyricist Lorenz Hart. Schwartz and Hart formed a bond as fledgling songwriters, and even wrote a song together at the camp called “I Love To Lie Awake In Bed.” The song, however, went nowhere, but Schwartz held onto that melody.
Five years later, it was Larry Hart who suggested to his old friend Arthur Schwartz that he should forget about his law firm for a year and pursue songwriting in earnest. Schwartz agreed. He eventually connected with a Broadway producer, who put him in touch with a potential songwriting partner, an ad agent and lyricist by the name of Howard Dietz.
The first Schwartz and Dietz collaboration came in 1929 for the Broadway revue The Little Show. Their big breakout hit from the show was based on that old summer camp melody that Schwartz had written with Lorenz Hart. Dietz added new lyrics to the tune, turning it into the song “I Guess I’ll Have To Change My Plan.”
The Band Wagon
After contributing songs to a few musicals like The Little Show and Three's A Crowd, Schwartz and Dietz finally worked on a musical where they wrote the entire score. This one also became their most successful.
The Band Wagon from 1931 starred Fred Astaire with his Adele Astaire, and featured a story co-written by the later Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright George S. Kaufman. The story was about an aging Broadway star trying to revive his career, and was one of the first Broadway shows to have a revolving stage. It was later made into a successful MGM film starring Fred Astaire in 1953.
The show also included one of Schwartz and Dietz’s most memorable and celebrated songs, "Dancing In The Dark," which has gone on to become a standard performed by many artists, including Sarah Vaughan and Frank Sinatra. The film version of The Band Wagon in 1953 also included several Schwartz and Dietz songs that were not included in the original 1930 Broadway production, like "Louisiana Hayride" and "A Shine On Your Shoes" (both originally from the 1932 Broadway show Flying Colors) and the ever-popular "That's Entertainment" (written expressly for the 1953 film). "That's Entertainment," later performed by Judy Garland and Tony Bennett, basically became MGM’s theme song in the 1950s.
Waning Success In The 1930s
In the mid 1930s, Schwartz and Dietz expanded their musical output. Up until this point, they had been writing songs almost exclusively for musical revues, stage shows that were combinations of songs, dances, and sketches designed to show off their performers, but fairly light on any kind of plot.
In 1934, they turned their attention to book musicals, shows that centered around a single story, with the songs and dances contributing to that story in some way—similar to most musicals as we know them today. The first of these for Schwartz and Dietz was the show Revenge With Music, to which Dietz wrote the book, based on a steamy Spanish folk tale of seduction, political intrigue, and revenge. This show included two songs which Schwartz considered to be among his best melodies: “If There Is Someone Lovelier Than You” and “You And The Night And The Music.”
For much of 1936, Schwartz and Dietz wrote for a weekly musical comedy series on the radio called The Gibson Family, the first series of its kind. The duo wrote nearly 100 songs in total for the series in 1936, many of which were recycled for (or from) their stage musicals.
The next show for composer Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz was the 1937 musical Between The Devil, yet another book musical written by Dietz. This one revolves around the plot of a man who remarries because he mistakenly believes his wife has died. Like Revenge With Music, the show was a flop. But also like Revenge With Music, the show produced not one but TWO songs that have gone on to become standards: “I See Your Face Before Me” and “By Myself.”
Schwartz and Dietz On Their Own
After the two Broadway flops of Revenge With Music and Between The Devil, Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz parted ways for several years. Dietz kept busy by focusing on publicity work for the film studio MGM, and eventually working on publicity for the U.S. Treasury department, trying to raise money for war bonds. Schwartz, on the other hand, stayed committed to writing music full time.
Schwartz wrote songs for Broadway musicals, Hollywood films, and even the Hit Parade, working with a number of lyricists over the years besides Howard Dietz, including Frank Loesser (on the song "They're Either Too Young or Too Old"), Leo Robin (on the songs "A Gal In Calico" and "A Rainy Night In Rio"), Ira Gershwin (on the musical Park Avenue), and Yip Harburg (on the song "Then I'll Be Tired Of You").
Schwartz and lyricist Dorothy Fields had, perhaps, the most success together. They first worked together in 1939 on the musical Stars In Your Eyes, starring Ethel Merman and Jimmy Durante. They collaborated again in 1951 for the musical A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which produced the song "I'll Buy You A Star."
Dietz had also worked periodically with others over the years, including Ralph Rainger in 1928 (the song "Moanin' Low") and Vernon Duke in 1944 (songs like "The Love I Long For").
Together Again
After eleven years of working separately, composer Arthur Schwartz and lyricist Howard Dietz teamed up again in 1948 for their last great musical collaboration, the musical revue Inside U.S.A. Based loosely on the 1947 travel memoir by author John Gunther, this musical ended up being a success, running for over 300 performances and producing several memorable songs, both romantic and comical. This musical produced two great songs, the lovely "Haunted Heart" (later performed by Jo Stafford and others) and the comical "Rhode Island Is Famous For You" (later performed by Blossom Dearie and others).
In the years that followed, Schwartz and Dietz teamed up a few more times, including the musicals The Gay Life in 1961 and Jennie in 1963, neither of which had much success. Their biggest success came with the aforementioned 1953 film version of their earlier hit musical The Band Wagon, which revived many of their older tunes, and introduced the world to probably their last great song, the showstopper “That’s Entertainment.”
Howard Dietz had mostly retired by the 1960s, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Schwartz, on the other hand, remained a dedicated musical craftsman, writing for the stage, film, and television, and even serving as the director of the performers-rights organization ASCAP for several decades. His son Jonathan, became a noted advocate for the Great American Songbook as a DJ on New York radio for many years, as well.
Composer Alec Wilder once said of Arthur Schwartz that he wrote, “some of the finest American songs in existence.” Of course, no fine songwriter found success without fine words to sing, and about that specific art, Howard Dietz himself once said, “a good lyric writer can put words to music and have it come out as though he’d put music to words.”