Jean Schwartz

Jean Schwartz (November 4, 1878 – November 30, 1956) was a Hungarian-born Jewish American composer and pianist. He is best known for his work writing the scores for more than 30 Broadway musicals, and for his creation of more than 1,000 popular songs with the lyricist William Jerome. At the age of 13, he immigrated with his family to the United States and settled with them in New York City. and he studied the piano under his older sister, Rosa, who had trained as a pianist under Franz Liszt. After working for a time as an office boy at a cigar factory and as an attendant at a Turkish bath house, Schwartz obtained employment in the sheet music department of the Siegel-Cooper Company, where his job was to play songs on the piano for customers in order to sell the sheet music. Other music jobs he held in his early years included working as a pianist with an orchestra at Coney Island and as a song-plugger for the Shapiro-Bernstein Publishing House of Tin Pan Alley. In 1914, he was one of the twelve founding members of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. Work with William Jerome Schwartz remained at the Siegel-Cooper Company until 1901 when he took a job as the on