Burton Lane

The Broadway and Hollywood composer best-known for Finian's Rainbow, Burton Lane was born in New York in 1912. He began writing songs before his teens and after dropping out of high school, worked as a song plugger and staff composer. Influenced by Gershwin, Lane met his idol through a family friend and began composing for the theater while still a teenager. Teaming with lyricist Harold Adamson, he wrote songs for Earl Carroll's Vanities and Artists and Models in 1930. The pair wrote songs for several other shows, then traveled to Hollywood under the aegis of Irving Berlin's p...