Arthur Swanstrom

The son of politician J. Edward Swanstrom, he began his career as a ballroom dancer, primarily performing in that capacity in nightclubs and in vaudeville.

Ill health and financial problems plagued Swanstrom in the last years of his life, and he died of a stroke in 1940 at the age of 52.

[3] His grandparents on his father's side had immigrated to the United States from Sweden, and his grandfather, John P. Swanstrom, was a well known clergyman in New York.

[13] Swanstrom went on to write more lyrics for The Greenwich Village Follies, penning words for the 1920 and 1921 iterations of that revue.

[10] With composer Carey Morgan and songwriter Charles McCarron, Swanstrom co-wrote the hit song "Blues (My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me)",[14] a work which was first recorded in 1919 by Irving Kaufman[15] but didn't become a hit until 1920 when Ted Lewis's later recording popularized the work.

[3] Morgan and Swanstrom also collaborated on another successful 1920 song, "Broadway Blues", which had two hit recordings in 1920, one by Nora Bayes and the other by the duo of Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake.

[28][29] When Albert Szirmai's operetta Princess Charming was adapted for the Broadway stage, Swanstrom provided new lyrics for production which opened at the Imperial Theatre in October 1930.

[31] With Louis Alter he co-wrote the song "Come Up and See Me Sometime" for the 1933 Paramount Pictures movie musical Take a Chance in which singer and actress Lillian Roth introduced the tune.

It premiered in Boston on October 9, 1934, at the Shubert Theatre under the name America Sings, but a forthcoming Broadway run never materialized.

[33] He also wrote the lyrics to the 1934 Off-Broadway revue Casino Varieties which used music by John Frederick Coots and Louis Alter.

[37] Alone, Swanstrom wrote both the lyrics and book to the Broadway musical Sea Legs (1937, composer Michael H. Cleary) which was staged at the Mansfield Theatre.

[39] His 1940 obituary in Variety stated that Swanstrom had recently written a non-musical stage play which had been accepted by a producer for a forthcoming New York production at the time of his death.

[3] Due to his poor financial state at the time of his death, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers paid for both Swanstrom's funeral and his burial.