Nick Kenny (poet)
Encyclopedia
Astoria, Queens
Astoria is a neighborhood in the northwestern corner of the borough of Queens in New York City. Located in Community Board 1, Astoria is bounded by the East River and is adjacent to three other Queens neighborhoods: Long Island City, Sunnyside , and Woodside...
- December 1, 1975, Sarasota, Florida
Sarasota, Florida
Sarasota is a city located in Sarasota County on the southwestern coast of the U.S. state of Florida. It is south of the Tampa Bay Area and north of Fort Myers...
) was a syndicated newspaper columnist, a song lyricist and a poet who wrote light verse in the Edgar Guest
Edgar Guest
Edgar Albert Guest was a prolific English-born American poet who was popular in the first half of the 20th century and became known as the People's Poet.In 1891, Guest came with his family to the United States from England...
tradition.
Biography
Born in Queens, Kenny attended high school for only three months before joining the Navy (1911–18), serving on the USS ArizonaUSS Arizona (BB-39)
USS Arizona, a , was built for the United States Navy in the mid-1910s. Named in honor of the 48th state's recent admission into the union, the ship was the second and last of the Pennsylvania class of "super-dreadnought" battleships. Although commissioned in 1916, the ship remained stateside...
, followed by a tour of duty in the Merchant Marine (1918–20). He continued his education with extensive reading in ships' libraries. He began writing poetry but did not sign his poems until one was published in Arthur Brisbane
Arthur Brisbane
Arthur Brisbane was one of the best known American newspaper editors of the 20th century.-Biography:...
's column.
While a sportswriter and rewrite man at the Bayonne Times (1920–23), he wrote his first column, "Getting an Earful" (later collected in a 1932 book). After a brief period at the Boston American
Boston Herald
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...
(1923–24), Kenny moved on to the New York Journal (1924–27) and the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
(1927–30). He was the radio editor at the New York Daily Mirror
New York Daily Mirror
The New York Daily Mirror was an American morning tabloid newspaper first published on June 24, 1924, in New York City by the William Randolph Hearst organization as a contrast to their mainstream broadsheets, the Evening Journal and New York American, later consolidated into the New York Journal...
, and in 1930, he began writing "Nick Kenny Speaking," a column combining verse, jokes and observational humor with his commentary on current radio programs. The popularity of the column kept him at the New York Daily Mirror until that paper shut down in 1963. At that point, he moved to Sarasota, Florida
Sarasota, Florida
Sarasota is a city located in Sarasota County on the southwestern coast of the U.S. state of Florida. It is south of the Tampa Bay Area and north of Fort Myers...
where he wrote a column for the Sarasota Herald Tribune until his death.
When the USS Arizona went down at Pearl Harbor, one of Kenny's poems was on the ship's bulletin board. Kenny is mainly remembered today as the lyricist of the popular song standard, "Love Letters in the Sand," a 1957 gold record hit for Pat Boone
Pat Boone
Charles Eugene "Pat" Boone is an American singer, actor and writer who has been a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He covered black artists' songs and sold more copies than his black counterparts...
. Kenny's first big success, "Gold Mine in the Sky," inspired the Gene Autry
Gene Autry
Orvon Grover Autry , better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as The Singing Cowboy on the radio, in movies and on television for more than three decades beginning in the 1930s...
movie, Gold Mine in the Sky (1938) and enabled Kenny and his brother Charles to launch their own music firm, Gold Mine in the Sky Publishing Company. His songs included "Gone Fishin'
Gone Fishin' (song)
Gone Fishin' is a song written by Nick and Charles Kenny and recorded by Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong in 1951.The song was later recorded by Pat Boone, Gene Autrey, The Manhattan Transfer and Arthur Godfrey with the Cherry Sisters....
" and "Scattered Toys" recorded by the Three Suns, which has lyrics somewhat similar to one of his "Patty Poems".
During the mid-1930s he was the host of The Nick Kenny Radio Hour which sometimes featured the song-and-dance team of Jacqueline and William Daniels (who grew up to become the Screen Actors Guild President in 1999-2001). Delores Hawkins (1927–87) was the vocalist on Nick Kenny's Children's Follies.
Kenny was a guest on various radio programs between 1939 and 1952, including What's My Name?, Finders Keepers, Music for Millions and The Billion Dollar Show, a 1952 program celebrating the 30th anniversary of broadcasting. He also contributed scripts and poems to Mutual's Family Theatre.
On NBC television, Kenny had his own 15-minute music and talk show, The Nick Kenny Show (1951–52) with cast members Irene Walsh and Don Tippen.
Kenny published several collections of his poems between 1929 and 1959. In addition to poems, the collection Day Unto Day (1943) also featured quotations in "Uncle Nick's Scrap Book," plus tributes to Kenny by Major Edward Bowes
Edward Bowes
Edward Bowes was an American radio personality of the 1930s and 40s whose Major Bowes' Amateur Hour was the best-known amateur talent show in radio during its eighteen-year run on NBC Radio and CBS Radio.-Early life and radio career:Bowes made his first business success in real estate, until the...
, Uncle Don, Ted Malone
Ted Malone
Ted Malone , was an American radio broadcaster.-Childhood:Ted Malone became interested in oral performance when he attended high school in Missouri...
, Elsa Maxwell
Elsa Maxwell
Elsa Maxwell was an American gossip columnist and author, songwriter, and professional hostess renowned for her parties for royalty and high society figures of her day....
and Kate Smith
Kate Smith
Kathryn Elizabeth "Kate" Smith was an American Popular singer, best known for her rendition of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". Smith had a radio, television, and recording career spanning five decades, which reached its pinnacle in the 1940s.Smith was born in Greenville, Virginia...
. The poems in this book were grouped into sections, including Human Interest Poems, Personality Poems, Sailor Poems, Patty Poems and Joy Poems. The latter two were about his daughters, Patty and Joy, who were ages 15 and 11, respectively, at the time the book was published.
The illustrator Richard Bassford
Richard Bassford
Richard Bassford is an American illustrator who has worked in both advertising and comic books.- Biography :Raised in the New York City borough of Queens from age three, he lived successively in the neighborhoods of Maspeth, Corona and Whitestone until his marriage in 1961, when he moved to Flushing...
has long had an interest in Kenny's work and has illustrated Kenny poems in recent years.
See also
- Edgar GuestEdgar GuestEdgar Albert Guest was a prolific English-born American poet who was popular in the first half of the 20th century and became known as the People's Poet.In 1891, Guest came with his family to the United States from England...
- Eugene FieldEugene FieldEugene Field, Sr. was an American writer, best known for his children's poetry and humorous essays.-Biography:...
- Franklyn MacCormackFranklyn MacCormackFranklyn MacCormack was an American radio personality in Chicago, Illinois from the 1930s into the 1970s on his radio program, The All Night Showcase...
- Franklin Pierce AdamsFranklin Pierce AdamsFranklin Pierce Adams was an American columnist, well known by his initials F.P.A., and wit, best known for his newspaper column, "The Conning Tower", and his appearances as a regular panelist on radio's Information Please...
- List of caricatures at Sardi's restaurant
- O. O. McIntyreO. O. McIntyreOscar Odd McIntyre was a famed New York newspaper columnist of the 1920s and 1930s who cleverly combined a small town point of view with urban sophistication...