Larry Morey
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Lawrence L. Morey (March 26, 1905 – May 8, 1971) was an American lyricist and
screenwriter A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...
. He co-wrote some of the most successful songs in
Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...
films of the 1930s and 1940s, including " Heigh-Ho", " Some Day My Prince Will Come", and " Whistle While You Work", and was also responsible for adapting Felix Salten's book '' Bambi, A Life in the Woods'' into the 1942 Disney film ''
Bambi ''Bambi'' is a 1942 American Animated film, animated Coming of age, coming-of-age drama film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Loosely based on Felix Salten's 1923 novel ''Bambi, a Life in the Woods'', the ...
''.


Career

He was born in
Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
,
California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
. Larry was born with a skeletal limb abnormality. His left arm was not fully formed and caused his mother to reject him at birth, saying "he would never amount to anything." She abandoned him to the care of his father, George T. Morey, a traveling musical ventriloquist. When he was only six years old, his father left him in a boarding house in Los Angeles and went on the road performing throughout California. Larry attended UCLA, then went to work for Warner Bros. and Paramount, for whom he wrote the lyrics to " The World Owes Me a Living", composed by Leigh Harline and sung by Shirley Temple in the film '' Now and Forever''. He joined Disney in 1933,Biographies of Disney songwriters (in French)
/ref> and wrote songs for several animated shorts, including '' The Wise Little Hen'' and '' The Grasshopper and the Ants''.Biography by Sandra Burlingame at JazzBiographies.com
/ref> Working with composer Frank Churchill, he then wrote some 25 songs for Disney's first full-length cartoon, '' Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'', in 1937. Eight of their songs were used in the film, including "Heigh-Ho", "Some Day My Prince Will Come", "Whistle While You Work", and "I'm Wishing", and the film was nominated for an
Academy Award The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...
for Best Original Score.William H. Young and Nancy K. Young, ''The Great Depression in America: a cultural encyclopedia, Volume 1'', Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, p.482
/ref> It is little known that Larry could only peck at the piano, due to his withered arm, but was very talented musically. Walt Disney used to say that a talented artist only had one great work in them, and would release them after he felt they had used that creativity. He said that Larry Morey was his one exception. Once Walt Disney was giving a tour of the studio to some guests, and they came upon Larry Morey leaning back in a chair with his eyes closed. Mr. Disney told the visitors to not disturb him because he was working. Larry had a great love for Japanese culture. He created a script about a cricket, set in the Japanese Edo period, that was never published. He named it ''Happy Mountain''. In 1938 Morey collaborated with composer Albert Hay Malotte on the title song for '' Ferdinand the Bull'', which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, and he worked with Frank Churchill on the score for '' The Reluctant Dragon'' in 1941. The following year he and Perce Pearce were responsible for adapting the book ''Bambi'' into the animated film of the same name. With Churchill, Morey was responsible for the film score, and both it and the song "Love Is a Song" were nominated for Oscars. In 1949, he received another Academy Award nomination, with composer Eliot Daniel, for the song " Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly)", sung by Burl Ives in the film '' So Dear to My Heart''. Morey died at the age of 66 in
Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara (, meaning ) is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States excepting A ...
.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Morey, Larry 1905 births 1971 deaths American male screenwriters American lyricists Walt Disney Animation Studios people Screenwriters from Los Angeles Songwriters from California 20th-century American male writers Hugo Award–winning writers Animation composers 20th-century American screenwriters