Harry Ruby

Harry Ruby, born Harry Rubinstein in New York’s Lower East Side, dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. He learned to play the piano in his adolescence and worked as a song plugger (demonstrator) for several New York music publishers in between stints as a pianist on the vaudeville circuit. Ruby, his Americanized stage name, collaborated with a number of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway songwriters, including Edgar Leslie, George Jessel, and Bert Kalmar, his longtime musical partner with whom wrote a number of popular scores, screenplays, and songs.