If you asked me to name composers of the time between World War I and World War II, I’d probably be able to come up with Irving Berlin and George Gershwin. Both wrote volumes of music and contributed richly to the culture of the time. But I’m willing to venture that not many people these days know the name of Yip Harburg.

Edgar Yipsel Harburg was the youngest of four surviving children out of ten born to Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish parents who had immigrated from Russia. His parents named him Isidore. He adopted the name Edgar Yipsel. One source said that he chose the name Yipsel because it meant “squirrel” in Yiddish. It would be a good story if Yipsel were actually a Yiddish word, but there is no such word in Yiddish. It is more likely that the name came from the Young People’s Socialist League, the youth group of the Socialist Party of America, whose members were called “yipsels.”

As a student in Townsend Harris High School, Harburg met Ira Gershwin, and the two became lifelong friends. After World War I, he graduated from City College in 1921. He was a co-owner of Consolidated Electrical Appliance Company, which went bankrupt following the 1929 crash. He insisted on paying back all of the more than $50,000 debt. He succeeded, but it took him more than 20 years. He wrote a few poems that were published in local newspapers. Ira Gershwin convinced him to start writing lyrics to music. In 1932, he had his first big hit with “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” The song became an anthem of the Great Depression. That song led him to write songs for Hollywood and Broadway. In Hollywood, he worked with composer Harold Arlen.

Harburg and Arlen collaborated on the musical The Wizard of Oz, released in 1939. Perhaps their most famous song, “Over the Rainbow,” was almost cut from the movie. MGM executives had it removed from the film for an advance screening, believing it slowed the film. Associate Producer Arthur Freed, however, argued that the movie needed a classic “I want” song to express the protagonist's desires. He cited the ballad, “Someday My Prince Will Come” from the 1937 Disney animated hit Snow White. He told studio head Louis B. Mayer, “The song stays - or I go.” Mayer replied, “Let the boys have the damn song. Put it back in the picture. It can’t hurt.”

The song went on to become a cultural icon. In 2001, “Over the Rainbow” was voted the greatest song of the 20th century in a joint survey by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America. Almost everyone knows the song. But nearly everyone has forgotten Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen. People my age can all name Judy Garland as the artist who sang the song in the film, but can’t say who wrote it. I had to look it up for this essay. The duo also wrote “Stormy Weather.”

One factor in the obscurity of the lyricist may be that Harburg was blacklisted and named in the pamphlet Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television. Harburg refused to identify reputed communists and was blocked from working in Hollywood films, television, and radio for twelve years from 1950 to 1962. During that time, he also had his passport revoked, so he could not travel abroad.

A lot of us know Harburg’s lyrics by heart.

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high
There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby
Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true

So many artists have recorded the song over the years. The version recorded by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole with ukulele accompaniment has been played at weddings, funerals, and other events.

I was thinking of the song yesterday as we saw an unusually bright double rainbow over Birch Bay on our daily walk. This particular rainbow was especially bright at the bottom of the arch, and the west side lit up a group of trees, making their leaves appear golden.

Of course, skies aren’t really blue over a rainbow. The brightest rainbows are seen against a dark cloud backdrop when the sunlight is behind the viewer. Yesterday’s rainbow appeared over the water only because the sun sets in the southwest this time of the year up here. Had it been the middle of the summer, we wouldn’t have seen a rainbow in the north.

I suppose that it makes sense for a little girl who is swept up in a tornado to sing about traveling over the rainbow. In the movie, Dorothy is carried high into the air in the house and travels to OZ, where she has fantastic adventures before waking up back at home in Kansas. “Over the Rainbow” seems to fit the movie. I don’t, however, know that I want to fly over the rainbow. Then again, I have flown over rainbows, which appear to be full circles when the angle between the sun and the clouds is just right, while flying in an airplane. I might be just as happy to travel through the arch of a rainbow or seek its end.

St. Patrick’s Day brings tales of leprechauns guarding pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. Lucky Charms cereal features a leprechaun juggling rainbow-colored marshmallows. Advertisements feature the cereal rather than a pot of gold.

Rainbows don’t really have an end. The arch shape is an illusion. The colors are the result of light reflected by raindrops. Since raindrops are suspended in the air, the bow appears to end at the horizon when viewed from the ground. Its location shifts as the viewer's perspective changes.

I don’t need to fly over the rainbow. And I’ll not go looking for a pot of gold, either. The trees along the bay with their autumn colors are worth more than gold to me. The trees grow because of the gift of rain. And I am one of the lucky ones who gets to see it all.