Kalmar and Ruby - The Partnership

The Partnership

Kalmar hired Ruby as a "song plugger", and as a result of a knee injury that stopped him from dancing professionally, turned to writing songs full-time. Ruby, who had gotten a job at the firm of Waterson, Berlin and Snyder, got Kalmar a job at the same firm writing song lyrics. Before World War I he had begun to write lyrics for a number of different composers. One of them, Ruby, who had also had a number of collaborators, saw a strong compatibility between the two, and by 1920, Kalmar and Ruby recognized that they should form a permanent songwriting team. They also wrote comedy for stage and screen for Wheeler & Woolsey, Eddie Cantor and the Marx Brothers.

Together, Kalmar and Ruby formed a successful team until Kalmar's death in 1947. This partnership is portrayed in the 1950 MGM musical Three Little Words starring Fred Astaire and Red Skelton.

Read more about this topic:  Kalmar And Ruby

Famous quotes containing the word partnership:

    “Are we bereft of citizenship because we are mothers, wives and daughters of a mighty people? Have women no country—no interests staked in public weal—no liabilities in common peril—no partnership in a nation’s guilt and shame?”
    —Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)

    “Society is indeed a contract.... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
    —Edmund Burke (1729–1797)