Allie Wrubel was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and songwriter

Songwriter

A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...

.

Biography

Born in Middletown

Middletown, Connecticut

Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, 16 miles south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated as a town under its original Indian name, Mattabeseck. It received its present name in 1653. In 1784, the central...

, Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

, Wrubel attended Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

 and Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 before working in dance bands. He began his musical career in Greenwich Village, New York where he roomed with his close friend James Cagney

James Cagney

James Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing "tough guys." In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth...

. He played saxophone and clarinet for a variety of famous swing bands. In 1934 he moved to Hollywood to work for Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 as a contract song writer. He contributed material to a large number of movies, including those of the famous Busby Berkeley

Busby Berkeley

Busby Berkeley was a highly influential Hollywood movie director and musical choreographer. Berkeley was famous for his elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns...

 before moving to Disney in 1947.

Wrubel collaborated with lyricist Ray Gilbert

Ray Gilbert

Ray Gilbert was a lyricist.Gilbert is best remembered for the lyrics to the Oscar winning song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from the film Song of the South, which he wrote with Allie Wrubel in 1947.He married, in 1962, actress Janis Paige.Daughter, actress and singer Joanne Gilbert, July...

 on the song "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

"Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" is a song from the Disney 1946 live action and animated movie Song of the South, sung by James Baskett. With music by Allie Wrubel and lyrics by Ray Gilbert, "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song...

" from the film Song of the South

Song of the South

Song of the South is a 1946 American musical film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is based on the Uncle Remus cycle of stories by Joel Chandler Harris. The live actors provide a sentimental frame story, in which Uncle Remus relates the folk tales of the...

which won the Oscar for Best Song in 1947.

Wrubel also contributed to the films Make Mine Music

Make Mine Music

Make Mine Music is an animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on August 15, 1946. It is the eighth animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series....

, Duel in the Sun, I Walk Alone

I Walk Alone

I Walk Alone is a 1948 film noir starring Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott, and Kirk Douglas. It was the directorial debut of Byron Haskin....

, Melody Time

Melody Time

Melody Time is a 1948 animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on May 27, 1948. Made up of several sequences set to popular music and folk music, the film is, like Make Mine Music before it, the popular music version of Fantasia Melody Time is a 1948...

, Tulsa

Tulsa (film)

Tulsa is a 1949 Technicolor film that was directed by Stuart Heisler and starred Susan Hayward, Robert Preston, Lloyd Gough, Chill Wills , and featured Ed Begley in one of his earliest film roles, billed as Edward Begley....

, Never Steal Anything Small and Midnight Lace

Midnight Lace

Midnight Lace is a 1960 American mystery-thriller film starring Doris Day and Rex Harrison, directed by David Miller. The screenplay by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts is based on the play Matilda Shouted Fire by Janet Green....

. The lyricists with whom he collaborated included Abner Silver

Abner Silver

Abner Silver was an American songwriter who worked primarily during the Tin Pan Alley era of the craft. He was born on December 28, 1899, in New York....

, Herb Magidson

Herb Magidson

Herbert A. "Herb" Magidson was an American popular lyricist. His work was used in over 23 films and four Broadway reviews. He won the first Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1934....

, Charles Newman, Mort Dixon

Mort Dixon

-Biography:Born in New York, Dixon began writing songs in the early 1920s, and was active into the 1930s. He achieved success with his first published effort, 1923's "That Old Gang of Mine". His chief composer collaborators were Ray Henderson, Harry Warren, Harry M...

 and Ned Washington

Ned Washington

Ned Washington was an American lyricist.-Biography:Washington was nominated for eleven Academy Awards from 1940 to 1962...

. When he died, at Twentynine Palms, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, he left a lengthy catalogue of songs.

Allie Wrubel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame

Songwriters Hall of Fame

The Songwriters Hall of Fame is an arm of the National Academy of Popular Music. It was founded in 1969 by songwriter Johnny Mercer and music publishers Abe Olman and Howie Richmond. The goal is to create a museum but as of April, 2008, the means do not yet exist and so instead it is an online...

 in 1970. His best-known songs include:

• The Lady from 29 Palms
• Gone with the Wind
  Gone with the Wind (song)
  "Gone with the Wind" is a popular song. The music was written by Allie Wrubel, the lyrics by Herb Magidson. The song was published in 1937. A version recorded by Horace Heidt was a #1 song in 1937.Diane E...
  
  
• I'll Buy that Dream
• Mine Alone
• Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah
  Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah
  "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" is a song from the Disney 1946 live action and animated movie Song of the South, sung by James Baskett. With music by Allie Wrubel and lyrics by Ray Gilbert, "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song...
  
  
• Anything that's part of you

External links