Larry Morey

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Larry Morey was an American lyricist and screenwriter, born in Los Angeles in 1905. He was born with an incompletely formed left arm, and grew up without a mother: his father, a travelling ventriloquist, left him in a boarding house when he was six. Morey studied at UCLA, worked for Warner Bros. and Paramount and wrote, among other things, The World Owes Me a Living, to music by Leigh Harline, sung by Shirley Temple. In 1933 he went to Disney.

Music and breakthrough

There he wrote for animated shorts and, with the composer Frank Churchill, for Disney's first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Of the roughly twenty-five songs they wrote, eight remained in the film, including Heigh-Ho, Some Day My Prince Will Come, Whistle While You Work and I'm Wishing. The film received an Oscar nomination for best score. Morey also wrote the title song of Ferdinand the Bull, which won an Oscar in 1938, and with Perce Pearce adapted the book Bambi into the film of 1942. For Love Is a Song he received an Oscar nomination. In 1949 came a nomination for Lavender Blue, sung by Burl Ives.

Influence

Morey himself could play the piano only with difficulty, but was very musical. His songs are simple, cheerful and easy to sing along to, and are among the best known in the history of animation. Walt Disney is said to have seen him as an exception: an artist who kept on producing new work.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1938Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (soundtrack)

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• The Dream Factory: Film Reel 7^NL Reader