Early life Warren was born Salvatore Antonio Guaragna, one of eleven children of Italian immigrants Antonio (a bootmaker) and Rachel De Luca Guaragna, and grew up in
Brooklyn, New York. His father changed the family name to Warren when Harry was a child. Although his parents could not afford music lessons, Warren had an early interest in music and taught himself to play his father's
accordion. He also sang in the church choir and learned to play the drums. He began to play the drums professionally by age 14 and dropped out of high school at 16 to play with his godfather's band in a traveling carnival. Soon he taught himself to play the piano and by 1915, he was working at the
Vitagraph Motion Picture Studios, where he did a variety of administrative jobs, such as props man, and also played mood music on the piano for the actors, acted in bit parts and eventually was an assistant director. He also played the piano in cafés and silent-movie houses. In 1918 he joined the
U.S. Navy, where he began writing songs.
Career Warren wrote over 800 songs between 1918 and 1981, publishing over 500 of them. They were written mainly for 56 feature films or were used in other films that used Warren's newly written or existing songs. His song "
I Only Have Eyes for You" is listed in the list of the 25 most-performed songs of the 20th Century, as compiled by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (
ASCAP). Warren was the director of ASCAP from 1929 to 1932. Among his biggest hits were "
There Will Never Be Another You", "
I Only Have Eyes for You", "
Forty-Second Street", "
The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)", "
Lullaby of Broadway", "
Serenade In Blue", "
At Last", "
Jeepers Creepers", "
You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me", "
That's Amore", and "Young and Healthy". He wrote a succession of hit songs in the 1920s, including "I Love My Baby (My Baby Loves Me)" and "Seminola" in 1925, "Where Do You Work-a John?" and "In My Gondola" in 1926 and "Nagasaki" in 1928. In 1930, he composed the music for the song "Cheerful Little Earful" for the
Billy Rose Broadway revue,
Sweet and Low, and composed the music, with lyrics by Mort Dixon and Joe Young, for the
Ed Wynn Broadway revue
The Laugh Parade in 1931. He worked for
20th Century Fox starting in 1940, writing with Mack Gordon. He moved to
MGM starting in 1944, writing for
musical films such as
The Harvey Girls and
The Barkleys of Broadway, many starring
Fred Astaire. He later worked for
Paramount, starting in the early 1950s, writing for the
Bing Crosby and
Jane Wyman movie
Just for You and the
Martin and Lewis movie
The Caddy, the latter containing the hit song "
That's Amore". He continued to write songs for several more
Jerry Lewis comedies. Warren won the
Academy Award for Best Song three times, collaborating with three different lyricists: "
Lullaby of Broadway" with Al Dubin in 1935, "
You'll Never Know" with Mack Gordon in 1943, and "
On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" with Johnny Mercer in 1946. He was nominated for eleven Oscars. The last musical score that Warren composed specifically for Broadway was
Shangri-La, a disastrous 1956 adaptation of
James Hilton's
Lost Horizon, which ran for only 21 performances. In 1957, he received his last Academy Award nomination for the song "
An Affair to Remember". He continued to write songs for movies throughout the 1960s and 1970s but never again achieved the fame that he had enjoyed earlier. His last movie score was for
Manhattan Melody, in 1980, but the film was never produced. He also wrote nearly three dozen short piano vignettes. The sheet music was first published by Warren's Four Jays Music Co. A dozen of these were released on a 1975 album titled ''Harry Warren's Piano Vignettes'', played by Hugh Delain. Several pianists have recorded the vignettes, including Warren himself.
Personal life Warren married Josephine Wensler in 1917. They had a son, Harry Jr. (1919–1938), and a daughter, Joan (b. 1925). His wife died in 1993. Warren died on September 22, 1981, in
Los Angeles. He is interred in the
Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. The plaque bearing Warren's epitaph displays the first few notes of "You'll Never Know". ==Reputation and legacy==