Ralph Rainger

Ralph Rainger [Reichenthal]
(b New York, 7 Oct 1901; d nr Palm Springs, CA, 23 Oct 1942). American composer and pianist.

He studied music at the Damrosch Institute, where his teachers included Gallico and Clarence Adler, and law at Brown University. He began a career as a lawyer, but in 1926 became a pianist for Broadway musicals and also toured as a vaudeville accompanist and arranger. While playing in a piano duo with Adam Carroll in Arthur Schwartz’s The Little Show (1929), he composed ‘Moanin’ Low’, which was the most successful song of the production. He then went to Hollywood as a rehearsal pianist. From 1930 until his death in an aeroplane crash he composed songs for over 50 films for Paramount (1930–38) and 20th Century-Fox (1938–42), mostly with the lyricist Leo Robin. Many were for Bing Crosby, others for Betty Grable; ‘Thanks for the Memory’, introduced by Bob Hope in The Big Broadcast of 1938, won an Academy Award. Rainger’s songs are mostly in the contemporary light, romantic style, but have a particular elegance and sophistication in their integration of music and lyrics.