Johnny Mercer - The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer

H e received an astonishing eighteen Academy Award nominations for best song and won four times. He has one of the largest catalogues of hits in ASCAP, for which he served as a board member. Largely a man who wrote lyrics, he also penned the music for some of his best songs, although Margaret Whiting claims that he could barely play the piano with one finger. He appeared as an actor in two movies and had bit roles in several Broadway productions. He co-founded Capitol Records and transformed the neophyte label into a competitor to RCA Victor, Columbia, and Decca. But it was as a familiar radio singer and recording star that Johnny Mercer became by far the best-loved songwriter in history.

John Herndon Mercer was born November 18, 1909, in Savannah, Georgia, to an old and distinguished southern family. His father, George, was an investment banker, who dabbled in real estate, a profession for which young John proved hopelessly inept during the rare occasions when he attempted to help out. His mother, Lillian, encouraged his interest in songwriting and in the activities of local, amateur theatre groups.

In 1922, John entered the prestigious Woodberry Forest School in Madison County, Virginia. When George Mercers banking business failed in 1927, John was graduated and decided to try his hand in show business in New York. He stowed away on a boat that was headed north but was soon discovered by the crew and forced to work for his passage.

At the time, The Theatre Guild was the finest producing organization on Broadway. Not only did it revive classics and import European plays, but it numbered among its playwrights the leading stage author of the day, Eugene ONeill. In addition to its stable of established contract actors, The Theatre Guild signed and trained young, aspiring thespians, who were often given walk-on roles.

Film director Vincent Sherman, who was born in Vienna, Georgia, on July 16, 1906, recalls that he and Mercer had bits in the celebrated ONeill satire Marco Millions, which opened at the Guild Theatre (today the Virginia) on January 9, 1928. For reasons that remain a mystery, Mercer used the stage name John Henry in his roles as A Dervish and An Indian Snake Charmer. Marco Millions was followed at the Guild on April 9 by a revival of Volpone, with John Henry as Slave to Volpone. Sherman recalls that as two Georgia boys in the big city, there was a bond between them, although they did not become close friends at that time.

Every Mercer biography incorrectly claims that he arrived in New York in 1927 with the Savannah Players to appear in an amateur play, The Hero, which won top prize, the Belasco Cup, in a little theatre contest. Unfortunately, except for the 1927 date, not one detail is correct.

During the 1920s, the little theatre movement was very popular. Every season, in one of the smaller Broadway houses, Walter Hartwig, in co-operation with the Manhattan Little Theatre Club, presented a week of competition among amateur groups for the David Belasco Trophy. Three or four short plays were presented each evening. On May 11, 1928, Mercer (this time using his real name) appeared in Hero Worship by Frances Hargis at the Frolic Theatre atop the New Amsterdam. The amateur work won a secondary prize (not the so-called Belasco Cup) for the Town Theatre of Savannah, the groups correct name.

On September 9, 1929, at the Knickerbocker, our hero returned to Broadway as one of a group of students in Houseparty. Although he used his real name in this collegiate melodrama, he reverted to John Henry for one-week revivals of Marco Millions (March 3, 1930) and Volpone (March 10) at the Liberty. An actor called John Henry also had bits in the short lived She Lived Next to the Firehouse (February 10, 1931) and The Sex Fable (October 20, 1931), but it has not yet been determined that this particular John Henry was our boy John Mercer.

Next, we hear the quaint but absurd fable that having just arrived in New York (which he had not), the young man, as a complete stranger in town, tried to get into the cast of The Theatre Guilds third and final edition of the Garrick Gaieties (October 16, 1930, Guild) but was informed that the revue was entirely cast; so instead he offered them a song. Far from a stranger, Mercer had been an employee of The Theatre Guild for more than two years and had worked with many of the people mounting the show. However, he did indeed provide them with a song, Out of Breath (And Scared to Death of You), his very first published opus and a modest hit at that. Far more significant, he was smitten by a pert, Brooklyn-born chorus girl, Elizabeth Meltzer, using the stage name Ginger Meehan. The couple married on June 8, 1931, and later had two children, daughter Georgia Amanda and son John Jefferson.