Mack David - History

History

Mack David was born to a Jewish family in New York City, New York, on July 5, 1912. David originally planned to become an attorney and attended Cornell University and St. John's University Law School. Despite these original goals, in the mid-1940s, David began writing songs for New York's Tin Pan Alley. These initial successes prompted David to move to Hollywood, California, to work in the film and television industries. David enjoyed considerable success, including eight Academy Award nominations for "Bibbidy-Bobbidy-Boo", which he, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston wrote for Disney's Cinderella (1950), followed by the titlesongs from The Hanging Tree (1959), Bachelor in Paradise (1961), Walk on the Wild Side (1962), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), The Ballad of Cat Ballou (1965) and "My Wishing Doll" from Hawaii (1966). David was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1975. David's "most remunerative" song, "Sunflower", was published in 1948, and Frank Sinatra turned it into a hit. Jerry Herman's hit theme song for Hello, Dolly!, composed over a decade later, used the same melody line as David's "Sunflower." When David sued Herman for copyright infringement, Herman settled out of court with David (for a reputed $250,000), claiming he had never heard David's "Sunflower" prior to working on "Hello, Dolly!"