- Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 275-277. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
- Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984.
- Brother of character actor David Hoffman.
- Though he continued playing the drums in night club bands and selling bagels door-to-door on Broadway, he began writing songs, collaborating with other songwriters such as Leon Carr, Leo Corday, Mann Curtis, Mack David, Milton Drake, Al Goodhart, Walter Kent, Sammy Lerner, Jerry Livingston, Al Sherman, Dick Manning, Bob Merrill, Ed Nelson, and Maurice Sigler.
- He was a hit songwriter active in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, usually co-writing with others and responsible for number-one hits through each decade, many of which are still sung and recorded today.
- In October, 2007, Hoffman's "I'm Gonna Live Til I Die" was the lead single from Queen Latifah's album, Trav'lin' Light.
- He has over 1,500 songs registered with A.S.C.A.P.
- In 1934, he moved to London to work on stage productions and movies, co-writing the hit songs "She Shall Have Music" and "Everything Stops for Tea".
- After graduating from high school in Seattle, he started his own band, playing the drums, and moved to New York City in 1928 to pursue a music career.
- Hoffman's songs were recorded by singers such as Frank Sinatra ("Close To You", "I'm Gonna Live Until I Die"), Billy Eckstine ("I Apologize") Perry Como ("Papa Loves Mambo", "Hot Diggity"), Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong ("Who Walks In When I Walk Out"), Nat "King" Cole, Tony Bennett, the Merry Macs, Sophie Tucker, Eartha Kitt, Patsy Cline, Patti Page ("Allegheny Moon") and Bette Midler.
- The popularity of Hoffman's song, "Mairzy Doats", co-written with Jerry Livingston and Milton Drake, was such that newspapers and magazines wrote about the craze. Time magazine titled one article "Our Mairzy Dotage". The New York Times simply wrote the headline, "That Song".
- Though Hoffman had apparently little connection to Chicago, he wrote the Chicago Bears fight song "Bear Down, Chicago Bears" in 1941 under the pseudonym Jerry Downs.
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