Henry Vars (born Henryk Warszawski; December 29, 1902 September 1, 1977) was a Polish-American composer, arranger and conductor whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. He is regarded as the most important musical theatre, pop and film music composer of the interwar Poland.
Known in Poland as Henryk Wars, he is widely considered a pioneer of Polish jazz with his first composition "New York Times" (1927) being regarded as the very first jazz song in the history of Polish music. His other jazz and pop songs from the period include "Miłość ci wszystko wybaczy" (1933), "Umówiłem się z nią na dziewiątą", "Sex appeal" (both from 1937), "Ach, jak przyjemnie" and "Już nie zapomnisz mnie" (both from 1939).
In the United States, Henry Vars is best remembered for scoring westerns Seven Men From Now (1956) and Escort West (1959), with an adventure film Flipper (1963) being his most famous work. His other American works include a Margaret Whiting song "Over and Over and Over", Mel Tormé's "I Owe A Kiss To A Girl In Iowa" (both from 1950), Brenda Lee's "Speak to Me Pretty" (1961) and Doris Day's Walk With Him (1962). Wars also composed a symphony, now available on the Internet, as is his Piano Concerto of 1950.
Biography Henryk Wars was born on 29 December 1902 in Warsaw, in the Russian Partition of Poland, to Józef Izrael Warszawski, an engineer, and Sara Warszawska (née Lubelska), into an assimilated Polish-Jewish family. He was the second of four children, with three sisters: Józefina, Paulina, and Franciszka. Beginning in 1906, the family spent eight years in France due to his father's work. There, Wars learned French and received his first piano lessons from his mother before continuing his musical education with a private teacher. The family returned to Warsaw in 1914, settling at 14 Waliców Street. His older sister, Józefina, later became a mezzo-soprano at the Warsaw Opera and La Scala, while his younger sister Paulina pursued a career as a concert pianist and accompanist before being murdered at the Treblinka extermination camp during the Holocaust. His youngest sister, Franciszka, married an Italian diplomat and did not pursue a professional musical career.
Wars attended the newly opened Mazovian Voivodeship Gymnasium, at 16 Klonowa Street, where he quickly overcame the major educational gaps resulting from his years abroad and completed his secondary education, passing the matura examination in 1920. Described as a diligent student, he also displayed an exceptional aptitude for music and drawing, becoming known among his classmates for his ability to play pieces by ear and for sketching caricatures. He later recalled his seventh-grade history lessons as especially influential. During the Polish–Soviet War, inspired by radio posters and the mass mobilization of students to defend the newly independent Polish state, he volunteered for military service and fought in the Battle of Warsaw, for which he was awarded the Cross of Valour.
After the war, Wars initially pursued law at Warsaw University, while simultaneously studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. During his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, a youth concert was organized, which he conducted. Professor Emil łynarski, who had just arrived from Bolshevik Russia, came to the concert. He noticed Henryk, handed him his business card, and asked him to come to his hotel where he was staying the next morning. In shock, he waited until tomorrow. In the morning he ran to the professor, played some composition on the piano. The professor recognized that he had talent and gave him a scholarship to the conservatory.
However, not discounting the above scenario, According to records, On September 3, 1919, a request from Henryk Wars addressed to the Director of the Conservatory of Music in Warsaw was received, asking to have the honor of being admitted to the ranks of harmony class students, enclosing the documents: birth certificate, smallpox vaccination, and school certificates. A week later under this request, a note appeared: passed the task for a 4 (good).
Wars studied composition under Professor Roman Statkowski and Emil Młynarski, Under Emil Młynarski, Wars perfected his piano skills in his piano class. In 1922, Emil Młynarski resigned from pedagogical work and dedicated himself exclusively to the Warsaw Opera. He handed over his students and authority over the Conservatory to Henryk Melcer. He soon became famous for very modern pedagogical methods. He introduced experimental teaching programs, changed examination rules, and set incredibly high demands for teachers and students. Despite this, Henryk Wars recalled him very warmly later on, emphasizing how much immense knowledge he acquired from Melcer.
An account from his conservatory years on his discovery of jazz was this: "I had been recommended to the owner of Syrena Record, a gramophone company with a music shop on Marszałkowska Street, to design a poster for him. While working in the shop, I found myself completely captivated by the music playing in the background. They were American records featuring orchestra leaders like Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong—masters of a sound I had never encountered before. It was called jazz. Noticing my intense reaction to the music, the shop owner unexpectedly asked the cashier, Mrs. Lucia, to gift me ten records, though to this day I have no idea why. I took them home, and the very next day, I brought them along with a portable gramophone into Professor Statkowski’s class at the conservatory. I asked him to listen to this fresh, unfamiliar style of music. To my absolute horror, the professor kicked me out of the classroom, gramophone and all, and told me never to show my face there again."
After graduating in 1925, Wars returned to military service, and he served as a trainee in the first course at the Reserve Artillery Officer Cadet School in Włodzimierz Wołyński, Echoes of these experiences would soon resonate throughout his creative work in the form of marches, patriotic songs, and wartime ballads. However, the pieces that stuck with him most vividly were the short, popular songs known as żurawiejki, which were sung across nearly every military unit but were completely new to him at the time.
Having shed his uniform, he could finally dedicate himself fully to good music. His father had come to terms with the fact that Henryk would not be joining the ranks of Warsaw lawyers, assuming instead that he would see him at the conductor’s podium in a philharmonic or an opera house, but Henryk had fallen in love with syncopated music. It was at the Qui Pro Quo cabaret that he met Andrzej Włast, who was already a well-known lyricist, director, and impresario—a frequent guest of Parisian cabarets and a passionate lover of American jazz.
In 1927, he composed the song "New York Times" ("I do nothing all day but read the New York Times"), which was performed at the Karuzela (Merry-Go-Round) Theatre by Tadeusz Olsza and recorded by Henryk Gold's Orchestra for Syrena Rekord. He submitted the piano score to the Gebethner and Wolff publishing house, but had to cover the printing costs out of his own pocket. This was despite the fact that Włast—who wrote the lyrics for the song New York Times—had been publishing his own songs with them for many years. In the Warsaw Carousel revue titled Może tak (Perhaps So), the song was performed as a duet by Tadeusz Olsza and Eugeniusz Koszutski. To give fate a helpful nudge, the day after the premiere, the Warszawski family visited every sheet music and record shop across Warsaw. They explicitly asked for the recordings and sheet music of the song New York Times by the young, talented Henryk Wars. Whenever they received a negative reply, they expressed absolute outrage that such a hit wasn't available for purchase yet.
Although the song was a commercial and popular failure, it succeeded in bringing Wars's name to Andrzej Włast. Wars later recounted going all across Warsaw's musical stores with his entire family, to find records or sheet music (drawn by Wars), of the song. Later attempts to success included his "Polonia" waltz, an attempt by Andrzej Wlast to mimic the "can-can" of the Moulin Rouge in Paris for the Morskie Oko Theatre, but also failed.
Wars's first major success came in 1928 with "Zatańczmy tango" ("Let's Dance a Tango"), written for Stanisława Nowicka and Eugeniusz Bodo. The song quickly became an hit all across Poland, The recorded version by Taduesz Faliszewski proved so phenomenally popular that Syrena Record struggled to keep pace with producing the physical discs and covers, as well as major sheet music runs. Despite his sudden success with tango, Henryk Wars refused to give up on jazz. He stubbornly searched for the right venue, form, and method to popularize this style of music. Following the triumph of the revue To trzeba zobaczyć and his promotion to musical director of the stage, Wars faced no resistance when proposing several jazz numbers for each new production.
Around this time, he was hired as chief conductor and pianist at the Morskie Oko Theatre, after much thought by Wlast and also joined Henryk Gold's Orchestra.
From 1929, Henryk Wars played with Leon Boruński in revues as a regular duo called "Jazz for Two Pianos." During this time, he organized a reveller-style choir, the Jazz Singers, for the Morskie Oko Film Festival and recorded two albums with them on Syrena Record. This ensemble was the precursor to the later professional vocal group, the Wars Choir, which operated from 1930 until the end of 1933. Under Wars's direction and with his regular accompaniment, the Choir performed in revue theaters and recorded exclusive albums for Syrena Record. After the Choir ceased operations, Wars led a similar vocal ensemble called the Weseli Chłopcy z Columbii (Merry Boys from Columbia), which performed at venues such as the Hollywood Cinema in Warsaw and recorded albums for Columbia Records.
During the 1930s, Wars composed songs for a series of musical comedies in Poland, and his significance in the country is comparable to that of Irving Berlin in America. Between 1930 and 1939, he scored approximately 50–53 films, including Pieśniarz Warszawy, Manewry Miłosne, Romeo i Julcia, Antek Policmajster, and Włóczęgi. His melodies from this period, along with those of Jerzy Petersburski and Zygmunt Wiehler, remain extemely popular in Poland, with many songs closely associated with pre-war Lwów. Recent recordings include Ach, śpij kochanie (Ah, Sleep My Darling) by Grzegorz Turnau and others, as well as numerous performances of Tylko we Lwowie. The aforementioned songs are still sung widely and have becomes household names. In 1993, Wars's song "Milosc ci wszystko wybaczy" appeared in Schindler's List. In 2002, his song Umówiłem się z nią na dziewiątą (I Have a Date with Her at Nine) appeared in Roman Polański's film The Pianist.