Biography

Composer, songwriter ("School Days", "Tammany", "In My Merry Oldsmobile") and producer, a charter member of ASCAP (1914) and brother of Leo Edwards, and the uncle of Joan and Jack Edwards. He was a vaudeville singer, and later had his own vaudeville company. He discovered Walter Winchell, Elsie Janis, Eddie Cantor, Georgie Price, Lila Lee, Eleanor Powell, Ray Bolger, the Duncan Sisters, Sally Rand, Jack Pearl, the Lane Sisters, Paul Haakon, and Ina Ray Hutton. He wrote the Broadway stage scores for "When We Were Forty-One", "Hip Hip Hooray", "The Merry-Go-Round", "School Days", "Ziegfeld Follies of 1910", "Sunbonnet Sue", and "Show Window". He founded the Gus Edwards Music Hall in New York, and also his own publishing company, then produced special subjects for films, and returned to vaudeville between 1930 and 1937, finally retiring in 1939. His film biography was "The Star Maker". His chief musical collaborators included Edward Madden, Will Cobb, and Robert B. Smith. His other popular-song compositions include "Meet Me Under the Wisteria", "By the Light of the Silvery Moon", "I Can't Tell You Why I Love You but I Do", "Goodbye, Little Girl, Goodbye", "I Just Can't Make My Eyes Behave", "I'll Be With You When the Roses Bloom Again", "He's My Pal", "Way Down Yonder in the Cornfield", "In Zanzibar", "If a Girl Like You Loved a Boy Like Me", "Jimmy Valentine", "If I Were a Millionaire", and "Laddie Boy".