Carl Van Vechten · Public domain

Harold Arlen composed over 500 songs, but the one that lasts is "Over the Rainbow," written for The Wizard of Oz with lyricist Yip Harburg — it won him an Academy Award and was later voted the twentieth century's number one song by the RIAA and the National Endowment for the Arts. He earned eight further Oscar nominations for film scores and remains a mainstay of the Great American Songbook.