Walter Jurmann

Austrian-American Composer and Songwriter

Austrian Schlager and film music composer, born 12 October 1903 in Vienna, Austria and died 17 June 1971 in Budapest, Hungary. Composer Walter Jurmann was born October 12, 1903, in Vienna, Austria. He began his career as a piano player in Austria and in 1927 moved to Berlin, where he became a pianist at the Eden Hotel. During his time in Berlin, Jurmann collaborated with the lyricist Fritz Rotter (1900-1984) and the Polish composer Bronislaw Kaper (1902-1983), creating a number of hit songs. In the early 1930s, Jurmann and Kaper also wrote songs for German and French films, and Jurmann wrote revues during a stay in Paris in 1933. He sometimes issued music under pseudonyms while working in Europe (Pierre Candel, Fritz Candel, Caspar Paolo, Bob Handers and Erich Walter Schmidt. In 1934, Louis B. Mayer recruited Jurmann and Kaper for MGM's film productions, bringing them to Los Angeles. The pair wrote songs for The Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera" and "A Day at the Races", and the films "The Mutiny on the Bounty", "Escapade", and "San Francisco". Jurmann also composed music for several songs in the Judy Garland musical "Presenting Lily Mars". By the mid-1940s, Jurmann had left the film industry, becoming a freelance composer. He later wrote a number of love songs, as well as songs for the cities of San Antonio, Houston, and Los Angeles. Jurmann died on June 17, 1971, while traveling in Budapest, Hungary.