Sammy Cahn applied a ruthless yardstick when judging the success of a songwriter. "Sing me his medley," he would say, ticking off tunes according to their admissibility: "That's not a hit, you can't include that." Even under those rules, it would take a long time indeed to sing Cahn's medley. He was one of the most successful lyricists--both in artistic and financial terms--of his own or any other generation, winning four Oscars (out of twenty-six Academy Award nominations), two Emmys, and several gold records.

Sammy Cahn--born Samuel Cohen--was the son of Abraham and Elka Riss Cohen, who had immigrated to America from Galicia in Poland. Sammy was born in a drab Cannon Street tenement on New York's Lower East Side on 18 June 1913, the only boy of five children. For some reason his mother believed the piano was a woman's instrument; thus, while his four sisters--Sadye, Pearl, Florence, and...