Alfred Bryan (lyricist)
Alfred Bryan was a Canadian lyricist.
Bryan was born in Brantford, Ontario. He worked as an arranger in New York and wrote lyrics for many Broadway shows in the late 1910s and early 1920s; often collaborating with composer Jean Schwartz. In the 1920s he moved to Hollywood to write lyrics for screen musicals.
Bryan worked with several composers during his career. Among his collaborators were Henriette Blanke-Belcher, Fred Fischer, Al Sherman, Larry Stock and Joe McCarthy. Perhaps his most successful song was "I Didn't Raise [My Boy to Be a Soldier]", with music by Al Piantadosi. The song sold 650,000 copies during the first three months and became one of 1915's top-selling songs in the United States. Although Bryan himself was not a committed pacifist, he described the American public's anti-war sentiments in his lyrics.
He died in Gladstone, New Jersey, aged 86.
Musicals
- Shubert Gaieties of 1919
- Hello, Alexander
- The Century Revue
- The Midnight Rounders of 1920
- The Midnight Rounders of 1921
- Make It Snappy
- ''A Night in Spain''
Songs
- 1904 We'll Be Together When the Clouds Roll By
- 1906 Everybody Gives Me Good Advice
- 1909 I'll Do Anything But
- 1910 Put Your Head Upon my Shoulder
- 1910 Come Josephine in My Flying Machine
- 1911 My Irish Girl
- 1913 Peg o' [My Heart |Peg o' My Heart]
- 1913 I'm On My Way to Mandalay
- 1914 Who Paid The Rent For Mrs. Rip Van Winkle?
- 1914 Down in Waterloo.
- 1914 When It's Night-Time Down in Burgundy.
- 1915 I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.
- 1915 When Our Mothers Rule the World.
- 1916 Don't Cry Dolly Grey.
- 1916 I Wouldn't Steal the Sweetheart of a Soldier Boy.
- 1917 Buy a Red Cross Rossie.
- 1917 Chimes of Normandy.
- 1917 Cleopatra.
- 1917 Don't Try to Steal the Sweetheart of a Soldier.
- 1917 For One Sweet Day.
- 1917 Get a Girl to Lead the Army.
- 1917 God Save Us all.
- 1917 I Want a Good Girl and I Want Her Bad.
- 1917 If You'll Be a Soldier I'll Be a Red Cross Nurse.
- 1917 I'm Crazy Over Every Girl in France.
- 1917 It's Time for Every Boy to Be a Soldier.
- 1917 Lorraine .
- 1917 My Yokohama Girl.
- 1917 Over the Top with Jack Wells and Pete Wendling
- 1917 Sweet Little Buttercup.
- 1917 There's a Vacant Chair in Every Home Tonight.
- 1917 Universal Peace Song God Save Us All.
- 1917 Vegetable Song.
- 1918 Big Chief Killahun with Edgar Leslie.
- 1918 Cheer Up Father, Cheer Up Mother.
- 1918 Come Across, Yankee Boy, Come Across.
- 1918 Comprenez-Vous Papa.
- 1918 Girls of France with Edgar Leslie & Harry Ruby
- 1918 Joan of Arc They Are Calling You with Willie Weston.
- 1918 Mister McAdoo with Joseph McCarthy.
- 1918 Oui, Oui, Marie with Joe McCarthy.
- 1918 Wee, Wee, Marie with Joe McCarrthy.
- 1918 When Alexander Takes His Ragtime Band to France with Cliff Hess & Edgar Leslie
- 1918 When the Boys from Dixie Eat the Melon on the Rhine.
- 1918 When They Do the Hula Hula on the Boulevard.
- 1918 White House Is the Light House of the World with Irving Caesar
- 1919 I'm Going to Break That Mason-Dixie Line Until I Get to That Gal of Mine.
- 1919 On the Road to Calais.
- 1920 Hiawatha's Melody of Love with Artie Mehlinger.
- 1930 Twenty Swedes Ran Through the Weeds with Billy Moll
- 1932 She Went to Old St. Mary's and He Went to Notre Dame.