Rose, Billy (1899–1966)

US entertainment entrepreneur and lyricist. He was known for producing such spectacles as the ‘aquacades’ for New York's World Fair 1939–40 and the San Francisco Golden Gate Exposition in 1940. He was associated with the production of Carmen Jones in 1943, and he commissioned Igor Stravinsky's Scènes de Ballet (1944).

He was born in New York City. He helped write popular songs in the 1920s but moved on to become a financer and producer of plays and musicals in the 1930s and 1940s. He owned nightclubs and theatre-restaurants. He wrote a syndicated newspaper column, appeared on radio in the 1940s and 1950s, and went through five highly publicized marriages.