Herbert Reynolds (lyricist)

Michael Elder Rourke (14 July 1867 – 26 August 1933), who assumed the pen name Herbert Reynolds in 1913, was an Irish-American lyricist.

[1][2] Reynolds wrote the lyrics to Jerome Kern's first big hit, "They Didn't Believe Me", interpolated into the 1914 American version of The Girl from Utah, produced by Charles Frohman.

Frohman had hired the young Kern to write five new songs for the score together with Reynolds to strengthen what he felt was a weak first act.

He shared the lyric writing with P. G. Wodehouse in Miss Springtime (1916),[6] with additional music by Kern.

Reynolds went on to collaborate with Kern and several other lyricists on the Broadway musical Very Good Eddie with a book by Guy Bolton and Philip Bartholomae, and again in Rock-a-Bye Baby[7] (1918).

Sheet music cover of " They Didn't Believe Me " (1914)