Lawrence L. "Larry" Morey, Jr. was an American composer, lyricist, and screenwriter, who co-wrote some of the most successful songs in Disney films of the 1930s and 1940s, including "Heigh-Ho", "Someday My Prince Will Come", and "Whistle While You Work"; and was also responsible for adapting Felix Salten's book Bambi, A Life in the Woods into the 1942 Disney animated feature film Bambi.
Morey was born in Los Angeles, California and worked for Warner Brothers and Paramount, for whom he wrote the lyrics to "The World Owes Me a Living", composed by Leigh Harline and sung by Shirley Temple in the film Now and Forever.
He joined Walt Disney in 1933, and wrote songs for several animated shorts, including The Wise Little Hen and The Grasshopper and the Ants. Working with composer Frank Churchill, he then wrote some 25 songs for Disney's first full-length cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1937. Eight of their songs were used in the film which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.
In 1938, Morey collaborated with composer Albert Hay Malotte on the title song for Ferdinand the Bull, which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, and he worked with Churchill on the score for The Reluctant Dragon in 1941. The following year he and Perce Pearce were responsible for adapting the book Bambi into the animated film of the same name. With Churchill, Morey was responsible for the film score, and both it and the song "Love is a Song" were nominated for Oscars. In 1949, he received another Academy Award nomination, with composer Eliot Daniel, for the song "Lavender Blue (Dilly, Dilly)", from the film So Dear to My Heart.
In 1950, he also contributed song ideas with Charles Wolcott in the early stages of Cinderella, where they wrote songs, like "Dancing on a Cloud", "The Face That I See in the Night", "The Dress That My Mother Wore", and "Sing a Little, Dream a Little". However, these songs were scrapped during production.
In addition, he produced and wrote music for Frank Tashlin in several stop-motion shorts.
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