Mack Gordon turned out musical hits for Hollywood with almost machine-like regularity. In the 1930s, with composer Harry Revel, and in the 1940s, with composers Harry Warren and Josef Myrow, he wrote lyrics to nearly 120 hit songs, more than any other movie lyricist. Most of his best work was in the characteristic styles of the day--either generic romantic ballads or songs designed for the stars who introduced them. They were hummable and easily remembered but not complicated or especially sophisticated.

Born Morris Gittelson in Warsaw, Poland, on 21 June 1904, Gordon came to the United States with his family when he was three years old. His father, Benjamin, owned a grocery store in Brooklyn, where Mack attended elementary school. He went to high school in the Bronx and had odd jobs as a butcher boy, a runner for a Wall Street brokerage house, and an errand boy for a department...