LOS ANGELES -- Four-time Oscar-winning songwriter Sammy Cahn, who penned such hits as 'Fly Me to the Moon' and 'Three Coins in the Fountain,' died Friday of heart failure. He was 79.
Ron Wise, spokesman for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said Cahn was admitted to the hospital Dec. 30, and died of congestive heart failure.
In recent years, Cahn had performed in London and around the United States in a review of his highly hummable songs.
Cahn rose from New York's lower East Side, where he led a small dance band, to writing some of Frank Sinatra's biggest hits. Teamed with composer Jimmy Van Heusen, he produced such Sinatra hits as 'All The Way,' 'High Hopes' and 'Call Me Irresponsible.'
He also collaborated with Jules Styne on such hits as 'Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!' 'Time After Time,' 'Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night in the Week' and the score for Broadway's 'High Button Shoes.'
He also was commissioned to write for such TV hits as 'Seasame Street' and 'Heidi's Song.'
Cahn won Academy Awards for 'Three Coins in the Fountain,' 'All the Way,' from 'The Joker is Wild' in 1957; 'High Hopes,' from 'Hole in the Head' in 1959; and 'Call Me Irresponsible' from 'Papa's Delicate Condition' in 1963.
Others in a seemingly endless string of hits included 'Love and Marriage,' 'Bei Mir Bist du Schoen,' 'Pocketful of Miracles,' 'Come Dance With Me,' 'Come Fly With Me' and 'My Kinda Town.'
He remarried his former wife, Tita, in 1987.
