Best known as a composer of popular music, Fain also recorded as a singer and pianist. He composed extensively for Broadway and films from the 1930s into the 1960s. Fain was nominated nine times for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, winning twice for "Secret Love" from "Calamity Jane" (1954) and for "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing" in 1955 from the film of the same name. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972.