This article is from 75 years ago today, published in the Hartford Courant on November 29, 1934.
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"Allie" Wrubel is one of our city's most famous native sons, as a charter inductee into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 1970 (Phileas Fogg mentioned Elias Paul Wrubel among other
famous Middletown musicians). He was born in Middletown in 1905 and attended Wesleyan before heading to New York and Europe to pursue a musical career. He played saxophone in dance orchestras, including the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and toured Europe with his own band. In 1934, at the age of 29, he moved to Hollywood and wrote songs for film musicals. He had a slew of hits and won an Academy Award for the song, "Zip A Dee Doo Dah." From 1946 until his death in 1973, Wrubel lived on a 400 acre estate in Twentynine Palms, a town in the southern California desert.
Member of the Wrubel depart,emt store family??? Also Zip a de do dah from Song of the South, try and find a copy of that on video, next to impossibe.
ReplyDeleteYes, Allie Wrubel was part of the same family that had Wrubel's department store on Main Street.
ReplyDeleteAnd musical talent still runs in that family! Allie's nephew Richard Wrubel plays a sweet clarinet!
According to an article in the Western States Jewish History Journal, Volume 53 Issue#1, Disney called Allie for help in 1946 to write a sad song for a movie in production. Allie, knowing his literature, explained that this part of the story needed a happy song, not a sad one. Disney asked him to write it fast.
ReplyDeleteAllie wrote it on the way home - using words from his childhood in Middletown, CT. When his mother would call the 7 kids to supper, she would yell out "Zip-a-Dee-Doo!" They, in turn, would shout back, either, "Do Dah!" or "Danky Do."
In 1947, Allie Wrubel receive the Academy Award for this forever great American music.
I worked at Wrubel's Dept Store in the early 60's till I got drafted in 1964. Arthur Wrubel called himself my Dutch uncle (I immigrated from Holland in 1961)
ReplyDeleteFond memories of the store and it's people especially Diane Davis from Waterloo Iowa. We went to the carnival in Middletown the night before I left for the Army.
I rented a small apt on Main Street that the store owned.