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.