Gus Edwards(1878-1945)
- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Composer, songwriter ("School Days", "Tammany", "In My Merry
Oldsmobile") and producer, a charter member of ASCAP (1914) and brother
of Leo Edwards, and the uncle of Joan and Jack Edwards. He was a
vaudeville singer, and later had his own vaudeville company. He
discovered Walter Winchell, Elsie Janis, Eddie Cantor, Georgie Price,
Lila Lee, Eleanor Powell, Ray Bolger, the Duncan Sisters, Sally Rand,
Jack Pearl, the Lane Sisters, Paul Haakon, and Ina Ray Hutton. He wrote
the Broadway stage scores for "When We Were Forty-One", "Hip Hip
Hooray", "The Merry-Go-Round", "School Days", "Ziegfeld Follies of
1910", "Sunbonnet Sue", and "Show Window". He founded the Gus Edwards
Music Hall in New York, and also his own publishing company, then
produced special subjects for films, and returned to vaudeville between
1930 and 1937, finally retiring in 1939. His film biography was "The
Star Maker". His chief musical collaborators included Edward Madden,
Will Cobb, and Robert B. Smith. His other popular-song compositions
include "Meet Me Under the Wisteria", "By the Light of the Silvery
Moon", "I Can't Tell You Why I Love You but I Do", "Goodbye, Little
Girl, Goodbye", "I Just Can't Make My Eyes Behave", "I'll Be With You
When the Roses Bloom Again", "He's My Pal", "Way Down Yonder in the
Cornfield", "In Zanzibar", "If a Girl Like You Loved a Boy Like Me",
"Jimmy Valentine", "If I Were a Millionaire", and "Laddie Boy".
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