American producer, lyricist, club owner, and entrepreneur.
Born September 16, 1893 · Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
Died June 17, 1948 · Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, USA .
Best known for the racy musical revues he put on in the 1920s, Earl Carroll started out as a staff lyricist for the Feist music publishing company in 1912. After serving as a pilot during World War I, Carroll returned to New York. In 1922, he opened his own Earl Carroll Theatre in Manhattan as a venue for popular shows. Particularly well known was a series of annual revues named "Earl Carroll's Vanities", nine of which he produced between 1923 and 1932, but the theater also hosted the premiere of playwright Eugene O’Neill's "Desire Under the Elms" in 1925. In 1930, he demolished the old building to construct an even bigger 3000-seat theater but it went into foreclosure six months after reopening in 1931.
Carroll then relocated to Hollywood where he reinvented himself as a movie and radio producer. Among his film credits are "Murder at the Vanities" (1933), "Stowaway" (1936), "Love is News" (1937), and "A Night at Earl Carroll's" (1940). In 1938, he also built a new Earl Carroll Theatre on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, with which he pioneered the theater supper club concept (later known as The Aquarius Theatre, Hollywood).
Carroll co-wrote, with the tenor Enrico Caruso, the song "Dreams of Long Ago." Caruso's recording of the song, one of the few English language songs he ever recorded, was a best-seller in 1912.
On June 17, 1948, Carroll and his long-time companion Beryl Wallace died in the crash of United Airlines Flight 624 at Mount Carmel in Pennsylvania.
