Sammy Timberg

• Born: May 21, 1903, New York, NY
• Died: August 26, 1992, Scranton, PA
• Active: '10s, '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s
• Genres: Soundtrack
• Instrument: Composer
• Representative Albums: "Boop-Oop-A-Doin': The Songs of Sammy Timberg From Betty Boop, Popeye, Super

Biography

Sammy Timberg was a New York-born contemporary of George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, and shared the same music teacher, Rubin Goldmark, with them -- and his music was nearly as ubiquitous in our popular culture, even if his name wasn't remotely as well known. The youngest child in a Jewish immigrant family from Austria, Timberg (who was sometimes credited as Sam Timberg or Samuel Timberg) was born in New York City in 1903, and from his early teens had entertained serious hopes of being a concert pianist. The death of his father in 1919, when he was 16, however, forced him to turn to vaudeville for a living -- his older brother Herman was already a successful comic and Sammy joined him as the straight man in the act. The two later turned to writing for other performers, including the Marx Brothers and Phil Silvers early in their respective careers. Sammy Timberg wrote songs for such Broadway musicals as The Duchess of Chicago and The Street Singer -- although he was versed in classical music (and had even written and conducted a critically acclaimed jazz rhapsody for 100 instruments), his preferred idioms were jazz and popular music.

He got to explore and mix both idioms in 1931, when he went to work for Fleischer Studios, founded and run by Max Fleischer and his brother Dave Fleischer. Over the next 14 years, sometimes working in tandem with Sammy Lerner, he scored as many as 200 cartoons built around the characters of Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor, and supporting players for each, such as Grampy, Wimpy, Poop-Deck Pappy, Bluto, and more. His output included a brace of songs that swept through the popular culture of the period, including "It's a Hap-Hap-Happy Day" and "Don't Take My Boop-Oop-a-Doop Away" -- the latter was one of the most sexually suggestive and humorous songs ever to grace a mainstream cartoon from a major producer. He also worked on a pair of Fleischer-produced full-length animated features, Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug Goes to Town, the latter in collaboration with Frank Loesser and Hoagy Carmichael. At his best, Timberg could freely mix pop and jazz into a memorable whole, either instrumentally or vocally -- his music was at the center of the appeal of the Fleischer cartoons, as much as the art or the direction, the jazz scoring and textures often driving the cartoon shorts' action. Max Fleischer knew it, keeping the composer on his payroll until the end of his tenure as head of the studio he'd founded. Timberg continued working with the studio even after it was taken over by Paramount Pictures as Famous Studios, and scored the renowned early/mid-'40s Superman cartoons. In the 1940s, he also provided the music for the Lionel Barrymore radio version of A Christmas Carol, which was a perennial favorite holiday event, and did music for Casper the Friendly Ghost and other postwar cartoon creations -- meanwhile, in popular recordings, he enjoyed his greatest success when, in collaboration with Buddy Kaye and Sammy Kahn, he co-wrote "Help Yourself to My Heart," which was recorded by Frank Sinatra during his period at Columbia Records.

After an unhappy period working for Columbia Pictures in the second half of the 1940s, he gave up movie work and returned to performing, preparing a revue of songs and comedy that he took on the road. He took up residence at a particularly inviting venue, in Scranton, PA, and lived there for the next 40 years, until his death in 1992. Timberg's name fell out of view across the decades, but his music continued to be heard -- in the early '60s, there was even a national theatrical re-release of the 24-year-old Gulliver's Travels, which had already become a fixture on television -- and was known by millions of baby boomers who had grown up watching Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons on television, and a few thousand theater mavens who remembered his songs for the stage. Timberg's daughter Pat later oversaw a CD release of modern re-recordings of Timberg's classic 1930s songs and music, in his own arrangements, entitled Boop-Oop-a-Doin' (2004). ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

• Born: May 21, 1903 in New York, New York
• Died: Aug 26, 1992 in Scranton, Pennsylvania
• Occupation: Director
• Active: '30s-'40s
• Major Genres: Comedy, Action
• Career Highlights: Gulliver's Travels, Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves, Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor
• First Major Screen Credit: Musical Doctor (1932)

Biography

Not a lot of filmgoers or music listeners know the name Sammy Timberg, but chances are they know his music if they ever saw the classic cartoons of Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer from the 1930s and '40s, including those starring Popeye, Betty Boop, Hunky & Spunky, Gabby, Grampy, and Superman. He scored at least 172 of them between 1931 and 1944, as well as writing music for the full-length features Gulliver's Travels (1939) and Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941) (the latter in conjunction with Frank Loesser and Hoagy Carmichael), and authoring the scripts to several musical shorts.

Sammy Timberg was born in 1903, the seventh and youngest child of Israel and Mary Timberg, both of whom were Austrian Jewish immigrants to the United States. He had a natural interest in music and hoped for a career as a pianist; at 16, he was studying with Rubin Goldmark, whose students included Timberg's contemporaries Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. The death of Timberg's father in 1919, however, forced him to seek out employment that would pay some kind of a living a lot sooner than further study on the piano offered. He was forced to go to work with his brother Herman Timberg, a comic, as his straight man in the act. The act eventually evolved from a stage duo into a creative partnership behind the scenes -- Herman became a comedy writer and often worked in conjunction with Sammy as a composer, the two creating scripts and songs for performers in need of material, including the Marx Brothers and Phil Silvers. Timberg was also successful in getting some of his songs onto Broadway, in such works as The Street Singer and The Duchess of Chicago. He also pursued more ambitious musical forms, including a jazz rhapsody for 100 instruments; by all accounts a superb piece, it was performed once in concert, in 1930.

Timberg's breakthrough in movies took place with the coming of sound. Although producers took a few years to understand that incidental music had a place in live-action features, music was considered an integral part of cartoons and shorts almost from the dawn of synchronized sound. In 1931, Timberg began working in movies, in collaboration with Sammy Lerner, with a novelty title called "Musical Justice," featuring Rudy Vallee, with Mae Questel playing a live-action version of Betty Boop. That film marked the start of a 13-year relationship between Timberg and Fleischer Studios, working on animated shorts starring Betty Boop and, later, Popeye the Sailor. Over the ensuing 12 years, he scored hundreds of cartoon shorts and was responsible for several highly memorable songs, among them "It's a Hap-Hap-Happy Day." Other songs of his familiar to longtime fans of Popeye and Betty Boop include "Be Human," "Don't Take My Boop-Oop-a-Doop Away," and "Sweet Betty." In the later '30s, Timberg scored Fleischer's feature-length animated movies and he continued working for the Fleischer organization and its successor, Famous Studios, on the Superman cartoons as well as the early '40s Popeye cartoons.

Much of Timberg's work -- which was often done in collaboration with Sammy Lerner -- involved a lot more than simply the soundtrack to the cartoons. Rather, it became the basis and center for the action in those cartoons, the building blocks upon which plot and action were constructed. Timberg's music, like that of LeRoy Shield at Hal Roach (for the Little Rascals/Our Gang and Laurel & Hardy films) and Carl Stalling at Warner Bros.' cartoon unit, became part of the soundtrack of life for several generations of young viewers. He later moved to Columbia Pictures, where he scored some of that studio's cartoons and headed the cartoon unit, but this proved to be very unhappy career phase, and he left at the end of his four-year contract. Timberg also dabbled in entertainment management, and one of his notable clients included a young, unknown Jackie Gleason, whom he dropped because of his personal volatility, as well as Eydie Gorme and Don Adams.

After leaving Hollywood at the end of the 1940s, Timberg tried writing and producing for the stage, and he also performed in his own revue of songs. Then, during the early '50s, he chanced to do what started out as a short job in Scranton, PA. He liked Scranton and the city felt it mutually; his short engagement kept getting extended, finally stretching out to more than a full year. Finally, he relocated to Scranton permanently, where he also married his second wife. Timberg passed away in 1992 at age 89. In the decades since, thanks to their periodic exposure on home video as well as rebroadcasts on cable television, the Popeye, Betty Boop, and Superman cartoons have helped keep Timberg's memory alive, and the Gulliver's Travels that he scored retains a popularity to rival Disney's 1930s work. In 2001, one of his Popeye-generated songs, "I'm Sinbad the Sailor," was used in the movie Baby Boy, and in 2004, there appeared a CD, Boop-Oop-a-Dooin', produced by his daughter Pat and featuring modern re-recordings (in the original arrangements) of some of his best 1930s songs and instrumentals associated with Popeye and Betty Boop. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Mr. Bug Goes to Town Buy this Movie

Mechanical Monsters Buy this Movie

Gulliver's Travels Buy this Movie

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