- Austrian composer and orchestrator. Left Vienna after the Nazis came to power and worked first in France and then in England. Many of the films he worked on during this time were operettas. He reached his creative peak in the early 1940's, scoring films for the Boulting Brothers and Rank/Gainsborough, notably prestige pictures like "The Wicked Lady" and "Brighton Rock".
- Despite the enormous success of "Ein Lied geht um die Welt" (33) the fate of his Jewish did not pass him by. Already in 1933 he went back to Austria where he continued his career, three years later he fled to England.
- He belonged to the co-founders of the cabaret "Die Gondel".
- By 1944, May was employed by The Rank Organisation, the largest film production company in England. He scored a string of prominent films, including the mystical romance Madonna of the Seven Moons (1944).
- Hans May managed what only few fugitives was granted in the emigration. He was able to continue his career in his professional environment and in the next years he composed many film compositions for British productions.
- May collaborated with Vera Caspary when he wrote the musical Wedding in Paris (1954), which enjoyed a one-year run in London with Anton Walbrook in the lead.
- He scored one German-made movie in the late '50s, but by then his music was considered outdated and his services were in decreasing demand.
- Had Hans May been born 40 years earlier, he likely would have been at the center of Viennese operetta's golden age. As it was, the Vienna-born May made his name with a string of successful songs in the 1920s in the shadow of older contemporaries such as Lehár and Kalman.
- In 1939, he successfully moved into more serious subject matter when he scored the drama The Stars Look Down. May's next major screen credit was for Thunder Rock (1942), a fantasy/drama about World War II that became a favorite of critics and enhanced the career of everyone associated with it.
- His past in operetta was also called upon for the 1945 production Waltz Time, a very thinly veiled variation on the plot of Die Fledermaus, co-starring Richard Tauber, in which May appeared onscreen as a gypsy troubadour.
- He already demonstrated his musical talent as a child and he played at first concerts at the age of 10. Later he studied music in Vienna and was able to start his professional life as a bandmaster. Later he realised operas and operettas as a director.
- Only in 1957 he returned to the European continent where he wrote the music for the Austrian movie "Der Kaiser und das Wäschermädel" (1957).
- He died in Beaulieu, France, in the early hours of January 1, 1959. His best-known songs include Break of Day, Il est un chant d'amour, and Ich liebe, du liebst, er liebt, and his work has been recorded by a string of legendary singers, beginning with Joseph Schmidt.
- He wrote numerous film compositons and also some of the most successful German language songs of the 30s like "Ein Lied geht um die Welt" (1933), "Es wird im Leben dir mehr genommen als gegeben" (1936) and "Heut' ist der schönste Tag in meinem Leben" (1936).
- Many of Hans May's song were interpreted by the exceptionally gifted singer Joseph Schmidt. As a Jew he shared the same fate like Hans May. Only Joseph Schmidt did not survive his escape and he died in a Swiss detention centre.
- Besides his activity as a musician and composer Hans May was also active as a performer during the 20s.
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