He won three Academy Awards, had more songs on the radio program Your Hit Parade than Irving Berlin, and from 1932 to 1957 wrote the scores for more musical films than almost any other composer, yet you may not know his name. With all the hoopla surrounding the resurgence of American popular song and its creators, little attention has been paid to one of its giants _ Harry Warren. He used to refer himself as "Harry Who?" after years of hearing that response when people were told Harry Warren wrote the music for standards like 42nd Street, Lullaby of Broadway, I Only Have Eyes for You, The More I See You, Chattanooga Choo Choo, Jeepers Creepers, An Affair to Remember, You'll Never Know, You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby, That's Amore, You're My Everything and scores of other perennials for four Broadway shows and an astounding 81 motion pictures. Ira Gershwin once told me he and his brother George were envious of Warren's mid-1930s stream of megahits and would have given anything to have written some of them. Warren died in 1981 at the age of 87. He would have been 100 years old this past Dec. 24, but there was no Carnegie Hall celebration like the ones for Irving Berlin or Cole Porter. That oversight should come as no surprise when you consider that, even after David Merrick's 1980 stage version of the 1932 landmark musical film 42nd Street opened on Broadway, most of those in the audience knew nothing about Harry Warren. They left humming his tunes but turned a deaf ear when it came to his identity. Shortly after the show began its eight-year run, I stood in the lobby at the end of a performance and randomly asked people if they knew who had written the music. No one did. What should have been the crowning achievement of a six-decade career turned out to be the final karmic joke on a man whose life's work never brought him proper credit. I was introduced to Warren in 1979 (through Ira and Lee Gershwin) and used to listen to him recount a multitude of stories about his lack of recognition: Early editions of his first published song omitted his name. The guards at the 1935 Academy Awards ceremony treated him like a gate crasher, even though he won that year for Lullaby of Broadway. The famous 1924 Aeolian Hall concert that introduced Rhapsody in Blue also featured an early Warren effort titled So This Is Venice _ but his name was left off the program. When his third Oscar winner, On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe, became a hit through lyricist Johnny Mercer's recording, Warren strolled down Broadway. He could hear the record blasting from every music store; the signs in the window referred to "Johnny Mercer's newest song success." Warren became philosophical about his obscurity. He figured it had to do with writing songs for movies as opposed to Broadway, where songwriters were respected, not treated like factory workers. Perhaps his versatility worked against him, depriving him of a single recognizable style. Shyness also played a part. He didn't attend Hollywood parties and kept a low profile. At the suggestion of friends, he once hired a publicist but fired him a few weeks later, embarrassed at seeing his name in the gossip columns. Among his songwriting cronies, he was known for his wit. During World War II, while he was in the middle of a friendly feud with a better-known songwriter, his reaction to an Allied air strike was: "They bombed the wrong Berlin." Warren never liked Hollywood. He was from Brooklyn and went there with lyricist Al Dubin, planning to write one film score and return. No one knew that 42nd Street would revolutionize the Hollywood musical and keep him there for the rest of his career. He was not well enough to attend the Broadway opening of 42nd Street in 1980 but was happy about its success. In his last years, he seemed to be content to reminisce about his childhood in Brooklyn Heights. As his infirmity increased, he became bedridden, and his mind reverted completely to his cherished childhood in Brooklyn. He was finally home. Michael Feinstein is a pianist and singer who specializes in American classic pop music.