| Interment Location | Visited | |
|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles, CA | April 4, 2023 |
Within the small Westwood Village Memorial Park sits an even smaller cremation garden filled with nearly identical flat, square markers to commemorate the people whose ashes are buried beneath them. One belongs to Milton Ager, a composer whose music spanned Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood. He is buried beside his wife, Cecelia, a movie critic. The Agers’ daughter, Shana Alexander, was a journalist and television personality known for her work with Life magazine and 60 Minutes. Alexander is laid to rest a few strides away from her parents, who were wed for 57 years until Milton’s death in May 1979.
The Agers are interred eight rows down from the top of the cremation garden. In 1971, Milton Ager was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame as part of a class of 31 that included fellow Westwood occupant Sammy Cahn. Ager’s most popular compositions were 1927’s “Ain’t She Sweet” and 1929’s “Happy Days Are Here Again,” which he crafted with Jack Yellen. Ager also co-wrote the 1921 song “I’m Nobody’s Baby,” which was sung by actress Judy Garland in the 1940 film, Andy Hardy Meets Debutante.
The musical notes on Ager’s grave are an arrangement from “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Three years after its release, the piece regained popularity as the campaign song of New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was running for president of the United States. Per the New York Times, the connection between Ager and Yellen’s song and Roosevelt’s Democratic Party was partly by chance. “After Roosevelt’s nomination,” the paper reported in 1979, “the band at the convention wanted to play something nautical — “Anchors Aweigh,” for example, in acknowledgement of the nominee’s well-known interest in the sea and ships. But the orchestra did not have the music. A music plugger at the convention, who had the part’s to Mr. Ager’s song with him, assured the band leader that he had just the thing. The song, nautical or not, caught on as a trademark of Democratic conventions.”
Fast Facts
Born: October 6, 1893 in Chicago, Illinois
Spouse: Cecelia Rubenstein Ager (m. 1922-1979)
Died: May 6, 1979 in Inglewood, California
Age: 85
Interment: Westwood Village Memorial Park, Westwood Village, Los Angeles, California
"Mr. Ager was puritanical yet generous, Mrs. Ager withholding and free thinking. The marriage between artist and critic with entirely different temperaments put their daughters in a perplexing position. The marriage seemed one in which the partners were equal but living separate lives. Yet it lasted 57 years."
- The New York Times
November 12, 1995 in an article about Shana Alexander's book, Happy Days: My Mother, My Father, My Sister and Me
Sources Consulted and Further Reading
Alexander, Shana. Happy Days: My Mother, My Father, My Sister and Me. New York: Doubleday, 1995.
Hollywood Graveyard. “FAMOUS GRAVE TOUR – Westwood #4 (Hugh Hefner, Virginia Fox, etc.).” YouTube Video, 17:38. March 4, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkni9TygeQ8.
IMDb. “Milton Ager (1893-1979).” Accessed May 12, 2024. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0012971/.
Kellog, Mary Alice. “Shana Alexander Takes On the Toughest Subject, Her Family.” New York Times. November 12, 1995. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/12/nyregion/shana-alexander-takes-on-the-toughest-subject-her-family.html.
Lask, Thomas. “Milton Ager, 85, Composer, Dies; ‘Ain’t She Sweet’ Among His Hits.” New York Times. May 8, 1979. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1979/05/08/111021420.html?pageNumber=39.
