Skylark

The first biography of one of the twentieth century's most popular and influential lyricists, whose songs include "Moon River" and "That Old Black Magic."

Part of a golden guild whose members included Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer took Hollywood by storm in the midst of the Great Depression, writing one hit after another, from "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" to "Jeepers Creepers" and "Hooray for Hollywood." But it was also in Hollywood that Mercer's dark underside emerged. Sober, he was kind and generous, when he drank, Mercer tore into friends and strangers alike with vicious abuse. Mercer's wife Ginger, whom he'd bested Bing Crosby to win, suffered the cruelest attacks.

During World War II, Mercer served as America's troubadour, turning out such uplifting songs as "My Shining Hour" and "Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive." He also helped create Capitol Records, the first major West Coast recording company, where he discovered many talented singers, including Peggy Lee and Nat King Cole. During this period, he also began an intense affair with Judy Garland, which rekindled time and again for the rest of their lives. Although they never found happiness together, Garland became Mercer's muse and inspired some of his most sensuous and heartbreaking lyrics: "Blues in the Night," "One for My Baby," and "Come Rain or Come Shine." Amassing a catalog of over a thousand songs over the course of his career, Mercer was plagued by a sense of failure and bitterness over the big Broadway hit that seemed forever out of reach.

Based on scores of interviews with friends, family and colleagues, and drawing extensively on Mercer's letters, papers and his unpublished autobiography, Skylark is a long overdue portrait of an American original.