Mitchell Parish, R I P - tribute to musical comedy lyricist - Editorial

National Review, April 26, 1993

Mitchell Parish is dead at 92, and with his passing we lose one of the last representatives of an era in American popular culture - the era of Irving Berlin, George M. Cohan, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein. These and other Broadway composers and lyricists - many of them Jewish, and many of them, like Parish himself, immigrants - wrote songs that caught the mood of an increasingly self-confident. American middle class.

Parish wrote the lyrics to Hoagy Carmichael's "Star Dust," and also to "Sweet Lorraine," "Sophisticated Lady," "Stairway to the Stars," "Deep Purple," "Moonlight Serenade," and many other popular classics. The American middle class heard its ideal emotions in these lyrics. Europe was liberated by GIs singing them. They catch at the heart still.