Composer; born in New York City. In the 1930s he contributed songs to Broadway revues and was a free-lance composer in Hollywood. He wrote his first complete score with E. Y. Harburg for the Broadway musical Hold On to Your Hats (1940) and in 1947 he and Harburg wrote the Broadway classic, Finian's Rainbow. From 1957 to 1967 he was president of the American Guild of Authors and Composers and he continued writing songs throughout the 1970s and 1980s.