Tommie Malie

American lyricist (Pittsburgh, PA 1897 - Chicago, IL, July 31, 1932)

Malie was orphaned at age two and lost both arms at the elbow in an accident as a child when he was playing on train tracks. Reared by a wealthy brewer, he started working at Hiller's Music Shop in Pittsburgh; in the early 1920s, he moved to New York's Tin Pan Alley, where he contributed the lyrics to a number of hits, such as "Jealous" (1924), "Looking At The World Through Rose-Colored Glasses" (1926), "Our Bungalow of Dreams" (1927), and "Highways Are Happy Ways" (1927). Suffering from alcoholism, he returned to Chicago where he died penniless of pneumonia and acute nephritis at age 35.