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Remembering Betty Comden
May 3, 1917 - November 23, 2006
Adolph Green, the playwright, performer and lyricist and who,
in a six-decade collaboration with Betty Comden, co-authored such
Broadway hits as "On the Town," "Wonderful Town", and "On the 20th Century"
and screenplays for "Singin' in the Rain" and "The Band Wagon" died on
October 24, 2002 at the age of 87. Adolph was a dear friend of Leonard Bernstein's
and we will miss him and his irrepressible wit and humor.
New York Times Obituary
Betty Comden and Adolph Green News
June, 2003 --
Betty Comden receives the Kaufmann Center's Creative Arts Award at gala
ceremony in New York City.
December, 2002 --
Mayor Bloomberg proclaims Tuesday, December 3, 2002, Adolph Green Day in New York City.
Full text of mayor's proclamation..
Broadway Salutes Adolph Green at the Shubert Theatre
(Featured performers included Phyllis Newman, Betty Comden,
Lauren Bacall, and Bernadette Peters.) Read more about the event at
Playbill Online.
September, 2002 --
Singin' In The Rain 50th Anniversary. There are special Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Science and Telluride Festival screenings of the classic American movie musical
Singing In The Rain. Participants in the Los Angeles panel discussions (moderated by Michael
Feinstein) include screenwriters Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and co-stars Donald O'Connor, Cyd Charisse, Rita Moreno and
Debby Reynolds. The newly remastered DVD is scheduled for release on September 24 and will feature
Warner Bros' newly developed "Ultra-Resolution" process, digitally remastered from three-strip
Technicolor film elements.
buy online.
May, 2002 -- The Dramatists Guild presents Betty Comden and Adolph Green with a lifetime achievement award
in theatrical writing. They are the third recipient of the award -- the previous two are Arthur Miller and Edward
Albee.
January 1, 2002 -- Read the inside scoop on Wonderful Town in
an exclusive interview with Comden and Green.
February 22, 2001 -- Musical-Comedy Writing Team of Comden and Green Receive
Screen Laurel Award.
Comden and Green also recently received honorary Doctor of Music degrees from the Indiana University School of Music. See
their acceptance photo here.
Biography
The team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, 1991 recipients of the Kennedy Center
Honors, and the longest running creative partnership in theatre history, began
writing and performing their own satirical comic material in a group called The
Revuers, which included the late Judy Holliday. They went on to collaborate with Leonard Bernstein and Jerome
Robbins on what was the first show for all of them, On The Town. Also with Mr.
Bernstein they did the score for Wonderful
Town. With Jule Styne they wrote
the book and/or lyrics for Bells Are
Ringing, Do Re Mi, Subways Are For Sleeping, Peter Pan, and others, wrote the book
for Applause, with Cy Coleman the
book and lyrics for On The Twentieth
Century, lyrics for The Will Rogers
Follies, and book and lyrics for A
Doll’s Life, with Larry Grossman.
Five of these, Applause, Hallelujah Baby, Wonderful Town, On The
Twentieth Century, and The Will
Rogers Follies, won them six Tony Awards.
Their
many film musicals include Singin’ In The
Rain, The Band Wagon, On The Town, Bells Are Ringing, It’s
Always Fair Weather, Good News,
and The Barkleys Of Broadway. Their musicals: The Band Wagon and It’s
Always Fair Weather, received Academy Award Nominations, and those two plus
On The Town won the Screen Writers’
Guild Award.
Singin’
In The Rain was recently voted one of the ten best American films ever made
and, by a vote of international film critics conducted by the prestigious Sight and Sound, was chosen as Number
Three of the ten best films of all time.
As
performers, Comden and Green appeared in On
The Town, and later did an evening at the Golden Theatre, A Party With Betty Comden and Adolph Green,
comprised of material from their own shows and movies, and from their act, The Revuers. In 1977 they did a new A
Party to unanimous acclaim at the Morosco Theatre, and toured with it. A
Party received an Obie Award when it was first performed.
They
are both members of the Council of the Dramatists Guild, have been elected to
the Theatre Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and have received
the Mayor of New York’s Certificate of Excellence, as well as the 1994 NYU
Musical Theatre Hall of Fame Award and the 1994 Governor Cuomo Award.
Ms.
Comden received the Woman of the Year Award from the Alumni Association of New
York University. She appeared in the
films Garbo Talks and Slaves of New York, and on the stage in
the Playwrights’ Horizons production of Wendy Wasserstein’s Isn’t It Romantic? Mr. Green appeared in the films Simon, My Favorite Year, Garbo Talks,
Lily In Love, and I
Want To Go Home.
Some of their best-known songs include Just In
Time, The Party’s Over, Make Someone Happy, New York, New York, Neverland,
It’s Love, Lonely Town and Some Other
Time.
Stars they have written for in their musicals and films include Gene Kelly, Fred
Astaire, Lauren Bacall, Rosalind Russell, Judy Holliday, Mary Martin, Phil
Silvers, Carol Burnett and Nancy Walker. Ms.
Comden has written a memoir Off Stage
about her non-professional life. Adolph Green is married to the actress, Phyllis Newman.
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