TV and film composer Ray Evans dead at 92

Posted:
Feb 17, 2007

Songwriter Ray Evans, whose many hit collaborations with Jay Livingston included the theme from The Porky Pig Show, died Thursday evening at 92.

Evans died of an apparent heart attack at UCLA Medical Center, Frederick Nicholas, Evans' lawyer and the trustee of his estate, told the Los Angeles Times on Friday.

"Ray Evans, along with his late partner Jay Livingston, gave us some of the most enduring songs in the great American songbook," lyricist Alan Bergman said. "We will miss him, but know that his songs will live on."

Evans began work with Livingston in the late 1930s. Their hits included the Oscar-winning "Buttons and Bows" (for 1948's The Paleface), "Mona Lisa" (1950's Captain Carey, U.S.A.) and "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)" (1956's The Man Who Knew Too Much).

In animation, Evans and Livingston provided the theme for Famous Studios/King Features' Beetle Bailey. Their theme for The Porky Pig Show, which ran on ABC from 1964 to 1967, was performed by The Warner Brothers Singers.

And though Evans was uncredited, he joined Livingston in writing the title theme, as well as "Ignatz Theme" and "Krazy Theme," for Rembrandt Films' 1960s syndicated series Krazy Kat, according to the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Several sources, including The Internet Movie Database, suggest that Evans joined with Livingston in writing the "This Is It" theme from The Bugs Bunny Show. However, screen credits identify the composers as Jerry (not Jay) Livingston and Mack David.

"Mona Lisa" was on the soundtrack of the 1981 Columbia Films feature American Pop. "Que Sera, Sera" was on the soundtrack of Studio Ghibli's 1999 animated movie Hohokekyo Tonari No Yamada-kun (My Neighbors the Yamadas), while Livingston and Evans' Christmas tune "Silver Bells" was heard in Warner Bros.' The Polar Express(2004). And their theme from Bonanza was in The Girl Who Slept Too Little, a 2005 episode of The Simpsons.

Livingston provided the melodies and Evans the lyrics for dozens of movies, mostly at Paramount, where they were under contract from 1945 to 1955. The team wrote 26 songs that are said to have sold over than a million copies each. Their songs reportedly have sold a total of almost 500 million copies.

Livingston and Evans received four Oscar nominations: for "The Cat and the Canary," from Why Girls Leave Home (1945); "Tammy," sung by Debbie Reynolds in Tammy and the Bachelor (1957); "Almost in Your Arms," from Houseboat (1958); and Dear Heart, from the movie of the same name (1964).

"Silver Bells," introduced in the 1951 Bob Hope-Marilyn Maxwell comedy The Lemon Drop Kid, is said to have been recorded by almost 150 artists and has sold over 160 million copies. Livingston and Evans also wrote the "A Horse is a Horse" theme for the TV sitcom Mr. Ed.

Born Raymond Bernard Evans in Salamanca, New York on February 4, 1915, the 5'10" songwriter was the son of a secondhand paper, string and burlap dealer.

Evans played clarinet in his high school band and served as class valedictorian. Following graduation, he earned a degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

It was at Wharton that Evans met Livingston, a journalism major from Pennsylvania who had studied piano in his childhood. Evans joined Livingston's band, which played college dances and parties. They played together on cruise ship bands during vacations. After their 1937 graduation, they kept working on cruise ships before moving to New York and working together as songwriters.

Their first success came when their song "G'Bye Now" was put into Olsen and Johnson's nutty 1941 Broadway revue Hellzapoppin'. The tune was heard on radio's Your Hit Parade.

The duo went to Hollywood in 1944, and had a hit with brassy singer Betty Hutton's recording of "Stuff Like That There."

While under contract to Paramount, they wrote one of 1946's biggest hits. The title tune for the Olivia de Havilland movie To Each His Own began with Evans' phrase "two lips must insist on two more to be kissed." For one week that year, five versions of the song were on Billboard's Top 10 list: recordings by Eddy Howard (which hit #1), Tony Martin, Freddy Martin, the Modernaires and the Ink Spots.

They also wrote the music and lyrics for Broadway musicals Oh Captain! (1958), and Let it Ride (1961).

"Dear Heart," with lyrics by Livingston and Evans and music by Henry Mancini, became a major hit for singer Andy Williams. It was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Song in a Motion Picture.

"I just loved the record I made of 'Dear Heart,'" Williams told the Los Angeles Times. "Livingston and Evans were really part of the generation of songwriters that I loved, and I sang a lot of their songs over the years. I wasn't as close to them like I was to Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini, but I certainly recognized their talent and how good they were at their craft of putting out great songs."

"Ray had a great ear for language, for the vernacular, which is something he had in common with many of the great lyricists," singer-pianist Michael Feinstein, who recorded an album of Evans and Livingston songs in 2002, told the L.A. Times several years ago.

"He was able to distill a mood or a feeling into a song without it sounding clichéd," Feinstein said. "He did not consider himself a sophisticated writer, but he knew how to express the thoughts, feelings and emotions of the common man in an eloquent way."

Livingston died in 2001 at 86 after he and Evans had partnered for 60 years. In an interview, discussing his collaboration, Evans said, "It works, that's all. I talked to my business manager once, years ago, and said I'd like to spread out and write with other people. He said, 'When something works, don't mess with it.'"

Ray Evans' wife died in 2003. He is survived by his sister, Doris Feinberg.