Alex North 1910-1991, composer · Hy Zaret 1907-2007, lyricist · both American
Alex North wrote the music as a film theme. He was one of Hollywood’s most inventive scorers — A Streetcar Named Desire, Spartacus, Cleopatra — and collected fifteen Academy Award nominations without ever winning a competitive one, receiving an Honorary Oscar in 1986 instead. Hy Zaret was a Tin Pan Alley lyricist whose other credits ran from “One Meatball” to a series of educational science songs for children. Their song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song and lost to “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” Zaret lived to 99, long enough to watch it become one of the most-recorded compositions of the twentieth century.