JOHNNY GREEN - INSCRIBED MAGAZINE PHOTO SIGNED - HFSID 19775

JOHNNY GREEN
The composer signs on this black and white magazine photograph
Magazine photograph inscribed and signed: "For/Harold Shell-/Best always/Johnny Green". B/w, 7x10¼. Johnny Green (1908-1989, born John Waldo Green in New York City) was an Academy Award-winning American composer, songwriter and conductor. Green wrote standards like Out of Nowhere, Rain Rain Go Away, I Cover the Waterfront and Body and Soul, as well as scores for movies, including his Academy-Award Winning scores for Easter Parade (1949), An American in Paris (1954), West Side Story (1962) and Oliver! (1969). Green was accepted into Harvard at age 15. Guy Lombardo heard his Gold Coast Orchestra between semesters and asked Green to create dance arrangements for his orchestra. He wrote his first hit, Coquette, in 1928 for Lombardo. After leaving college, he got a job as a stockbroker, but he didn't take to it and left to pursue a musical career. He started out arranging music for dance orchestras, but was commissioned to write works for larger orchestras in 1933 and, finally, was given his own orchestra, called Johnny Green, His Piano and Orchestra. He continued to play piano and to conduct, most notably at MGM, where he was responsible for changing the studio's overall musical sound with Conrad Salinger in the 1940s.Creased. Paper missing at lower right. Two tears at right margin. Lightly soiled. Mounting remnants on verso (no show through).