Mischa Spoliansky

Mischa Spoliansky (28 December 1898 – 28 June 1985) was a Russian-born composer who made his name writing cabaret and revue songs in the Weimar Republic of the 1920s and early 1930s.

There Friedrich Hollaender and Werner Richard Heymann heard him and invited him to write and play for the literary cabaret Schall und Rauch [de] in the basement of the Großes Schauspielhaus, which Max Reinhardt had founded in 1919.

Spoliansky set the texts of Kurt Tucholsky, Klabund, Joachim Ringelnatz, and accompanied stars such as Gussy Holl, Paul O'Montis, Rosa Valetti and Trude Hesterberg.

In 1920 under the pseudonym "Arno Billing" he composed the melody for the first homosexual anthem called Das lila Lied, (The Lavender Song) which he dedicated to Magnus Hirschfeld, the sexologist who attracted the young Christopher Isherwood to Berlin a decade later.

One year later Dietrich would be "discovered" in Spoliansky's revue Zwei Krawatten (text by Georg Kaiser) by Josef von Sternberg, who was searching for the leading actress for The Blue Angel.

There followed in 1930 Wie werde ich reich und glücklich?, in 1931 Alles Schwindel, in 1932 Rufen Sie Herrn Plim and Das Haus dazwischen, and in 1933 100 Meter Glück.

Many years later, Korda was delighted to discover, in a remote river in the Congo, Spoliansky's theme song for the film being sung by Congolese fishermen as they paddled their boats upriver.

[9] In 1950, Hitchcock remembered Spoliansky, and hired him to write the song "Love Is Lyrical (Whisper Sweet Little Nothing to Me)", performed by Marlene Dietrich in the film Stage Fright.

In later years he composed scores for films such as Trouble in Store (1953), Saint Joan (1957), The Whole Truth (1958), North West Frontier (1959), The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965), The Best House in London (1969) and Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973), on which he clearly had a personal perspective.

[12] This work, along with his orchestral jazz piece Boogie (1958) and the overture to his last stage show My Husband and I (aka Wie lernt man Liebe) were recorded by the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paul Mann, in 2022.

For example, the 1932 cabaret opera Rufen Sie Herrn Plim (as Send for Mr Plin) had a successful production at the Battersea Arts Centre in 1999, transferring to Covent Garden the following year.