Hal Borne
Hal Borne (December 26, 1911,
Tony Martin
("Tenement Symphony").
At the beginning of his career Hal Borne worked for
RKO Radio Pictures as the rehearsal pianist for Fred Astaire. He became a key musical contributor to the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals, arranging new Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin songs; Hal Borne came up with the familiar three-note obbligato to Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek" ("Heaven... [obbligato] I'm in heaven [obbligato]") in the 1935 film Top Hat.[1]
In 1941 he collaborated with
jukeboxes) for which his trio often provided backings.[2]
Borne joined
Bobby Van and Carl Reiner and the debut of Gwen Verdon. For many years Borne was associated with Tony Martin and became his regular music director for live and TV appearances throughout the 1950s and 60s. He scored the nudie film Not Tonight Henry in 1960, and in 1963 he composed most of the songs for the infamous first topless mainstream movie Promises! Promises!, starring Jayne Mansfield and Marie (the Body) McDonald—not to be confused with the subsequent Neil Simon-Burt Bacharach musical Promises, Promises. His other film work included the scores to The Explosive Generation (1961), Flight of the Lost Balloon (1961) and Hillbillys in a Haunted House
(1967).
He was celebrated for his piano improvisations and often jammed in duets with Ellington on the spinet.[3] Among his many albums, he supported Marie McDonald for her 1957 musical foray "The Body Sings".
References
- ISBN 0-88365-099-1
- ^ Billboard, February 28, 1942.
- ^ Lax, David, One Man Show, Washington Irving Gallery, 1976, p. 158
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