- Arlen was noted to have published around 65 works and had also worked as a music critic for the Los Angeles Times.
- He escaped to the US, settled in Chicago, founded a university music department and composed copiously, mostly for voice.
- He appeared in 2023 in the Netflix documentary "Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate".
- His parents ran a department store until it was expropriated by the Nazis after Kristallnacht in 1938.
- He was a Professor Emeritus of Music at Loyola Marymount University.
- Arlen, who escaped from Nazi persecution in Austria in 1939, has commented that his music has '(his) memories in it.'.
- Arlen showed musical talent from a young age and was sent for piano lessons with the Schubert scholar Otto Erich Deutsch.
- He has been described by musicologist Michael Haas as the 'quintessential exile composer,' because his music was written as a cathartic way of coming to terms with the sadness and loss that he experienced during his life.
- Composer and music critic Walter Arlen found fame later in life when his compositions were first performed in public in 2008.
- Arlen pursued his musical studies at UCLA, worked as a driver for Igor Stravinsky and, before long, and was hired as a classical critic for the Los Angeles Times.
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