A kid needs a break in New York. America’s most talented would just get lost in that metropolis if stardust didn’t fall, a muse didn’t smile or those serendipitous meetings never happened. Hugh Martin was a piano player, a singer and a kid when he left his home town of Birmingham, Alabama in the ’30s for the city of dreams. George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” so captivated him that it steeled his destiny. He arrived in the city of superlatives with not much more than a love for pop, blues, jazz, gospel—just about any kind of music—and wonder in his eyes. He was hoping for the magic that is Broadway to become a way of life.

In the early ’40s, before Van Johnson was THE Van Johnson, he ran into Ralph Blane—who was not yet THE Ralph Blane—in their New York apartment hallway. He told Blane that none other than THE George Abbott had a new script, a musical. Abbott wasn’t going with Rodgers and Hart this time, but Richard Rodgers would be as Martin put it, “the judge and jury” over the music. Johnson suggested Blane call his singing quartet buddy, Hugh Martin, and team up to write a few songs to audition for it. To which Blane replied, “I’ve never written a song in my life.”

Serendipity is a strong charm. Blane called Martin. They nervously, fearfully auditioned with “Shady Lady Bird” and “Ev’ry Time.” Rodgers encouragingly liked their songs. Abbott offered a contract. As casting for Best Foot Forward began, Martin and Blane were walking in a dream. The barely known June Allyson and Maureen Cannon would be cast along with the not yet celebrated comedienne Nancy Walker. When rehearsals at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre began, Martin and Blane could hardly believe they were getting paid to be there.

But there was a smudge on the fantasy. Something was not right with the choreography. Martin had been involved with enough shows to know every angle had to sparkle just so. He brashly brought it up with Mr. Abbott. Robert Alton was not available. Martin persisted. What about a new guy? He suggested a song and dance man who had never choreographed before, but wanted to. The smudge was wiped away when serendipity turned to the miraculous. Even though Gene Kelly was a couple blocks away at the Shubert becoming a star in Abbot’s other venture, Pal Joey, Abbot agreed to Kelly’s first choreography gig and Martin garnered a lifelong friend (and reputation for getting people jobs—he also landed Liza Minelli her first big role reprising Nancy Walker’s role in a Best Foot Forward revival).

Imagine that! Just to pull that off would be enough for a musical theater fan—especially of its golden age—to pack up and go back home happy, but Martin didn’t rush those laurels back to Birmingham. Much to our benefit, he kept writing. According to Mark Horowitz, a senior music specialist for the Library of Congress, Steven Sondheim listed 55 “Songs I wished I’d written (at least in part).” Only Harold Arlen and Cy Coleman had more songs on the list than Martin.

As great as Martin’s compositions are, it sells his genius and his contribution to Broadway short just to call him a songwriter. Broadway first winked at Martin when his not yet good friend Kay Thompson—now oddly more famous for writing the Eloise series of children’s books—introduced him to Ralph Blane. Then Broadway nodded when Martin had the audacity to write to THE Richard Rodgers and tell him what was wrong with his songs (this was pre-Best Foot Forward).

He didn’t equivocate in his letter. He praised Rodgers work but said, “I feel cheated when I hear nothing more imaginative than a verse and two choruses—or at best an Interlude or a Patter of some kind. . . .” That did it. A friend told him he’d better get down to the Alvin Theater, Rodgers wanted to see him. Broadway at the time was belting out songs Ethel Merman style. Not bad, but just straight out. Martin was an experienced vocal arranger, having done much for a trio he sang with in Alabama and with The Martins (a quartet of Martin, Blane and the Rogers sisters, Phyllis and Jo Jean—which did a lot of radio work, were featured on the The Fred Allen Show and probably would have found greater success if Van Johnson had kept his mouth shut).

When the timid and almost terrified Martin met his hero in person he said, “He greeted me warmly, thanked me for my letter and remarked that I had arrived at an opportune time.” Then he got down to business. He handed Martin a production copy of “Sing for Your Supper”, the song in “the eleven o’clock spot” of The Boys from Syracuse and told him to “fool around with it.” Rodgers said, “Larry (Lorenz Hart) and I want to make it a trio composed of our three leading ladies.” And with that, some have been daring enough to say Martin invented Broadway’s vocal arranging.

That Rodgers would immediately treat this nervy kid—Martin was 24—as a peer, as a professional, endeared him to Martin. And it is a quality Martin has in spades. He is not amazed with star power, but is electrified by star quality. “I have never been impressed with celebrities; I’m impressed with talent,” Martin said. Though Ralph Blane, Timothy Gray, Gene Kelly and Judy Garland were his intimates, it was their talent and character that won his love even before they were THE’s.

Musicians know who’s got it and it’s not always the headliners. And they love that magic moment. Sometimes that moment brings down a packed house. Sometimes that moment brings a cast to tears in rehearsal. The moment is live and raw and real. There is the writing, arranging, coaching, brainstorming, but then there is that moment when it all comes perfectly together. And those moments are what keep entertainers working for the next moment, no matter how small, no matter if the audience is just themselves. Martin described such a moment when he did a stint in the army during WWII. He was cleaning latrines with a solider whose name he can’t remember now, but he said, “He had a good singing voice and we harmonized on “Blues In the Night” while we scrubbed acres of urinals.”

Musicians also get the choir, the band aspect of a song. Unless it is an a cappella solo, every song is a team effort. And that’s what Martin loved about Broadway. Musical theater was a team effort. The songwriter could comment on the choreography, the orchestra leader could scratch his head over casting. Movies, according to Martin “are done piecemeal.” It’s the lonely writer in his garret and then thank you very much.

But Martin did do time in that other entertainment capitol of the world and he did it with typical Martin panache. His work on Best Foot Forward and his talents as a vocal arranger were his foot in the door to Metro Goldwyn Mayer. There is no business like show business and if Broadway accentuates the show, Hollywood accentuates the business. It took the Army and a war to free Martin from the notorious, albeit glamorous, MGM machine. But while Martin and Blane were part of “The Arthur Freed Unit,” they wrote themselves a merry little movie.

Meet Me in St. Louis, directed by Vincent Minelli and staring Judy Garland, produced three songs for which Martin is most famous—“The Boy Next Door,” “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry, Little Christmas”—the last, of course, now being a yuletide standard.

When you see Rodgers and Hammerstein or Lerner and Loewe, you rightly assume that one wrote the tunes and the other the lyrics. Not so with Martin and Blane. They are credited together, but they wrote songs by themselves, sometimes working “together” in separate rooms. In Best Foot Forward, “Buckle Down Winsocki” was all Blane. Once they were almost done with a song the other would critique it. It was Blane that suggested Martin use the address of “The Boy Next Door” in the song. And it was Blane who suggested the original words to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” were too depressing and why didn’t Martin bring it up to mere sentimental melancholy? The rest is all Martin.

Martin has been nominated for four Tony awards and two Oscars. He has written music for five Broadway plays and worked on the vocal arranging of nine and there were more movie and TV jobs. It is no small honor to be listed in the Great American Songbook. But Martin is also quick to point out that he was Judy Garland’s accompanist for her concerts during the ’50s including her celebrated turn at the Palace Theatre in New York. He had the best seat in the house for some venerable moments.

So how did Martin, a man whose “heart will always be in New York” become our boy next door? The short answer is being born-again, winter and Elaine Harrison. While in hospital for a malady, Martin’s roommate, a pastor, led him to Christ. Shortly thereafter, “I fled the bitter winter of the East to Encinitas.” His first Sabbath—this was around 1975—he went to church where Harrison said of the way he was dressed, “I felt it was my Christian duty to be kind to this old bum.” She and her husband Fred offered to be his ride to church; they were surprised to learn he was a songwriter of some note and soon they were fast friends. He soon moved in with the Harrisons and Martin credits Elaine with saving his life or at least saving him from an assisted-living facility.

“I love living in Encinitas,” Martin, now 94, said. “It boasts the friendliest residents I’ve ever encountered.” He’s traded Sardi’s for Firefly and Pino’s, but is happy with “dolphins, surfers and sailboats.” And one of the perks about being THE Hugh Martin is the folks who stop by. “When Michael Feinstein sits at our piano, we feel as if we are in the third row center at one of George and Ira’s [Gershwin] opening nights.”

Martin has written a fantastic memoir, Clang, Clang, Clang that hopefully will be published soon. It is not a nasty tell-all; he is too much of a gentleman. It is not a morose, hand-wringing of should haves and if onlys; he doesn’t take himself that seriously. It is a celebration of the great talent he’s known and the privilege to be “third row center” for Broadway’s golden age.

And if he had to put it in song he’d sing with that velvety voice of his:

Love was the thing I had the most of,
My life was a crazy quilt.
It wasn’t a life a guy could boast of,
But I lived it to the hilt . . .
. . . I dreamed a lot, yearned a lot.
I strayed a lot, but I learned a lot.
I always wore my heart on my sleeve.
I never met a soul I didn’t believe.
The same mistakes, I make them still,
And I guess I always will . . . •

(“The Story of My Life,” by Hugh Martin)