In 1941 they were signed by Universal Pictures and worked on five films that year the most successful of which was Abbott and

In 1941 they were signed by Universal Pictures, and worked on five films that year, the most successful of which was Abbott and Costello’s first starring vehicle, Buck Privates. They wrote seven more films for the team, including Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), in which the two comics were pitted against the Frankenstein monster, Dracula and the wolf man. Here they wrote for the “Crime Does Not Pay” series, as well as Pete Smith specialties, historical featurettes and such classic Robert Benchley mock lectures as How to Train a Dog (1936), How to Start the Day (1937), and How to Sleep, which won the 1935 Academy Award for Best Short Subject.1n 1940 Lees and Rinaldo’s first feature-length screenplay, Street of Memories, was filmed by 20th Century-Fox. When the department was disbanded, Rinaldo and Lees joined MGM’s Short Subjects Department. Also in the unit was a young New Yorker named Fred Rinaldo, and he and Lees soon began collaborating. After playing a boatman in the Greta Garbo/Erich Von Stroheim film As You Desire Me and a bellboy in the all-star Grand Hotel (both 1932), he was given a screen test, for which he wrote his own material.More impressed with his script than with his acting, MGM asked him to join its new Junior Writers Department.

He cut short his studies at the University of California when his father, whose clothing business suffered during the Depression, asked him to work in his office. Thanks to a family connection with a film producer at MGM, Lees became an extra, graduating to bit parts. He remained modest about his achievements: “I don’t know anything about music I don’t know one note from the other I was completely self-taught.”Paul Wadey. “I guess I was a comedy writer from the word go,” said Robert Lees, looking back on a career that began in the 1930s, but ended abruptly in the 1950s when he fell victim to the notorious Hollywood blacklist. Before that, he wrote for such comedians as Abbott and Costello, contributing to eight of their funniest films. Robert Lees, screenwriter: born San Francisco 1912; married 1939 Jean Abel (died 1982; one son, one daughter); died Los Angeles 13 June 2004. Over the decades that followed he cut scores of sides for regional labels, many of them later resurfacing on a series of Arhoolie conjunto compilations.

In the 1990s he recorded a pair of acclaimed albums for Rounder: As?e Baila en Tejas (“This is the Way They Dance in Texas”, 1991) and Es Mi Derecho (“It’s My Right”, 1995), and in 2001 released a final disc, Mi Ultimo Beso (“My Last Kiss”).In 1982, De La Rosa was inducted into the Tejano Conjunto Hall of Fame and six years later received a prestigious National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Many of his most characteristic numbers date from this era, including “El Circo” (“The Circus”) – an adaptation of Red Foley’s classic country hit “Alabama Jubilee” – “El Sube y Baja” (“The Ups and Downs”), “La Periodista” (“The Journalist”), “Los Frijoles Bailan” (“The Dancing Beans”) and the classic “Atotonilco”.He often worked alongside other major names in the genre including Carmen and Laura Marroquin and the charismatic Isidro Lopez, and featured a string of lead singers including Joe Ramos, Cha Cha Jimenez and his own brother, Adan De La Rosa.Tony De La Rosa made his first recordings, the polkas “Sarita” and “Tres R?” (“Three Rivers”), in 1949. Although some purists were horrified, De La Rosa’s innovations enabled conjunto outfits to play in larger venues and rapidly caught on. He remembered: I would sit on the porch making everyone mad, learning to play “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” and “Old McDonald Had a Farm”.

I would play around the rancho for little gatherings, little birthday parties on patios, anywhere there was shade I made my d?t at a dance hall in Riviera. Then I played for dances and weddings around south Texas.Many of his earliest professional performances were as a member of a country band, but he turned increasingly to the music of the Hispanic community and, buoyed by his success, began to develop a unique sound that highlighted his staccato-like playing. He also introduced a new dance craze to conjunto music, the still popular tacuachito or “possum”, with its fluid gliding movements.In the mid-Fifties, De La Rosa added drums and the electric bajo sexto (12-string bass) to his band, later augmenting his line-up with a pair of saxophones. Inspired by the accordionist Narciso Martinez, at the age of nine he acquired his first accordion, a $9 one-row model purchased from a Sears catalogue. A dynamic accordionist known as “El Conde” (“The Count”), he revolutionised the music of the Texas-Mexico borderlands by introducing electric amplification to a previously acoustic dance form and, in doing so, ushered in a modern era for “Tex-Mex” that saw it gain international popularity.He was born, one of 12 children, in the small town of Sarita, Texas, and his earliest memories of music were of his mother playing the harmonica on the family’s front porch. Higher education colleges and new universities are part of that success story. They are raising the sights of their students and giving them the skills to improve their lot..