With or Without a Song

Edward Eliscu has lived three celebrated lives for much of this century-on Broadway, in Hollywood, and in Connecticut. Known among his peers as the exemplary professional lyricist and to many others as a trenchant and witty playwright, screenwriter, performer, director, essayist, critic, poet, and political polemicist, Eliscu is best known to the general public as the writer of such memorable songs as Without a Song, More Than You Know, Great Day, Carioca, and Flying Down to Rio. As a screenwriter he wrote more than twenty films and adapted many prestigious dramatic plays for live television. This memoir is an exciting personal history of an artist with a conscience, his era, and the places he lived.