William Powell, Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Cyd Charisse, Esther Williams, Keenan Wynn, Edward Arnold, Fanny Brice, Hume Cronyn, William Frawley, Lena Horne, Red Skelton, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Kathryn Grayson
Earl K. Brent will always be remembered primarily as the lyricist for the great torch song, “Angel Eyes,” written with Matt Dennis in 1946.
But Brent wrote for many films in the ‘40s, and several of his lyrics were set to classical music. For Three Daring Daughters (1948) he set words to the Strauss waltz aria from Der Rosenkavalier for Jeanette MacDonald and entitled it “Where There’s Love.” The film also featured Brent’s lyrics to “Springtide,” sung by MacDonald and Jane Powell to the music of Edward Grieg’s “An den Fruhling.” “Waltz Serenade,” sung in Anchors Aweigh (1945), was based on Peter Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz Serenade.” And in 1946 Brent wrote lyrics for Franz Schubert’s “Serenade.”
“That Good for Nothin’ Man of Mine,” written with Ralph Freed, was featured in Northwest Rangers (1942), and “Hail to Wainwright,” written with David Snell, appeared in Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1947). Brent contributed songs or to the scores of several other films: Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), They Were Expendable (1945), Zeigfeld Follies (1946), Call Me Mister (1951), and Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961). He also wrote the musical adaptation for the Marx Brothers’ The Big Store (1941).
His best known songs, outside of “Angel Eyes,” are “Let There Be Music,” written with Yip Harburg and introduced by Kathryn Grayson in Thousands Cheer (1943), and “Love Is Where You Find It,” written with Nacio Herb Brown and featured in two films in 1948: The Kissing Bandit, where it was sung by Grayson, and A Date with Judy, where it was sung by Jane Powell.
