Broadway and Film Composer Ray Evans Dies at 92

Composer Ray Evans, who wrote two Broadway shows and three Oscar-winning songs with his longtime collaborator Jay Livingston, died in Los Angeles on February 15. He was 92 years old.

Evans was born in Salamanca, New York and eventually attended the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennysylvania, where he met Livingston, who was organizing a band. Not only did Evans make the band, but the pair became songwriting partners for 60 years, up until Livingston’s death in 2001.

The pair wrote two Broadway musicals: 1959’s Oh Captain!, which earned six Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical and a Best Actor nod for star Tony Randall, and 1961’s Let It Ride, which was adapted from the play Three Men on a Horse, and which lasted just 68 performances.

At the beginning of his career, Evans contributed music to the 1941 revue Sons o’ Fun, which ran nearly 750 performances, and he and Livingston contributed two songs, “The Sugar Baby Bounce” and “Warm and Willing,” to the long-running Broadway revue Sugar Babies.

However, Evans and Livingston found their greatest success in Hollywood. They penned three winners of the Academy Award for Best Song: 1948’s “Buttons and Bows” (from Paleface), 1950’s “Mona Lisa” (from Captain Carey, U.S.A.), and 1958’s “Que Sera, Sera” (from The Man Who Knew Too Much).

In addition, the pair wrote many other hits, including the holiday classic “Silver Bells” and the themes for the television series Mr. Ed and Bonanza.

Evans is survived by his sister, Doris Feinberg.