Background

Ethnicity: Adolph Green's parents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants.

Adolph Green was born on December 2, 1914, in the Bronx, New York City. He was the son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants Daniel and Helen (Weiss) Green.

Education

Adolph Green attended New York public schools and graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1934. Green also attended New York University, where he studied drama but didn't graduate.

Career

Adolph Green graduated from high school and worked at assorted jobs including as a runner on Wall Street, hoping for a break as an actor. In 1937 he took a job as a counselor at a summer camp where he became good friends with the music counselor, Harvard student Leonard Bernstein. The next year he met Betty Comden, then a drama major at New York University and several other theatrically-inclined young people including Judy Tuvim later became the actress Judy Holliday, who decided to form a performing troupe called the Revuers. That meeting with Comden resulted in not only a number of stage and screen musicals but so close a working and performing relationship that they were often mistakenly thought of as a married couple. Although Comden and Green conferred every day of their lives, whether working on a project or not, they were never married, nor did they ever consider it. Their other collaborators were the best theatrical composers in the business: Jule Styne, Cy Coleman, André Previn, Morton Gould, Roger Edens, Garson Kanin.

The troupe performed in the legendary Greenwich Village nightclub, the Village Vanguard, and did sketch comedy (The Banshi Sisters, The Baroness Bazuka). To save money Comden and Green wrote their material. Leonard Bernstein sometimes joined them onstage at the piano. The Revuers' fame reached the Hollywood producers, and they were offered a spot in a Carmen Miranda and Don Ameche movie called Greenwich Village (1944), but in the end, their parts were so negligible that they all straggled back to New York. Meanwhile, Bernstein had had his first great stage success collaborating with Jerome Robbins on the ballet Fancy Free (1944) and planned to turn it into a Broadway musical. Bernstein asked Comden and Green to write the book and lyrics taking the opportunity to include substantial parts in it for themselves. The huge success of the result, On the Town (1944) encouraged them to follow with two more musicals, Billion Dollar Baby (music by Morton Gould, 1945) and Bonanza Bound (1947), but neither of these did well, and Comden and Green again headed for California. Their collaborators were the best theatrical composers in the business: Jule Styne, Cy Coleman, André Previn, Morton Gould, Roger Edens, Garson Kanin.

They found work with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), writing screenplays for Good News (1947) with June Allyson and Peter Lawford, for The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, for Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) with Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Esther Williams, and then filming On the Town (1949) with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly. The next project was screenplay and lyrics to Singin' in the Rain, one of the all-time greatest of film musicals, and then The Band Wagon with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, which ranks nearly as high. Although Singin' in the Rain never won an award, Comden and Green earned Screen Writers Guild Awards for On the Town, The Band Wagon, and their next musical feature, It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), as well as Oscar nominations for other screenplays.

In the 1950s Comden and Green commenced a return to Broadway, with the revue Two on the Aisle (1951) starring Bert Lahr and Dolores Gray, Wonderful Town (won Tony Award as Best Musical, 1953) with Rosalind Russell and Edie Adams, and Bells Are Ringing (Tony Award nominee as Best Musical, 1957) starring their old friend and colleague Judy Holliday. With tunes like Just in Time, Long Before I Knew You, and The Party's Over, this score proved to be among their finest and most popular. A play Say, Darling followed in 1958 and they also furnished the screenplay for the film version of Auntie Mame, and in the same year a revue called A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green brought them in person to the Broadway stage doing some of their early sketches. It was a critical and commercial success.

The next decades brought repeated triumphs on Broadway stages: Do Re Mi (Tony Award nominee, Best Musical, 1961), Subways Are For Sleeping (1961), Fade Out - Fade In (1964), Hallelujah, Baby! (Tony Awards winner, Best Composer and Lyricist, and Best Musical, 1968), Applause (Tony Award winner, Best Musical, 1970), Lorelei (1974), On the Twentieth Century (Tony Awards winner, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score, 1978), a staged version of Singin' in the Rain (Tony Award nominee, Best Book of a Musical, 1986), and The Will Rogers Follies (Tony Award winner, Best Original Score, 1991). Among other credits are six songs for Mary Martin's Peter Pan (1954), a modernized Die Fledermaus for the Metropolitan Opera, and stage vehicles for Carol Burnett, Leslie Uggams, and Lauren Bacall. Green's popular-song compositions also include I Get Carried Away; I Can Cook, Too; Some Other Time; Lonely Town; Lucky to Be Me; Bad Timing; Ohio; A Little Bit in Love; It's Love; A Quiet Girl; The French Lesson; If You Hadn't But You Did; Give a Little, Get a Little; There Never Was a Baby Like My Baby; Long Before I Knew You; Never-Never Land; Something's Always Happening on the River; Dance Only With Me; Adventure; Fireworks; Ride Through the Night; Comes Once in a Lifetime; I'm Just Taking My Time; Now; Fade Out - Fade In; and Get Acquainted.

The long career of Betty Comden and Adolph Green was celebrated in 1999 in a two-night series at Carnegie Hall, with performances from their repertoire by Elaine Stritch and Brian Stokes Mitchell. Adolph Green died on October 23, 2002, at age 87 in his home in Manhattan. His memorial in December 2002 was a sad but gala theatrical affair, with performances and tributes by two dozen Broadway stars and friends.

Achievements

• Adolph Green had a six-decade-long creative collaboration with Betty Comden. Together they wrote the scripts, books, and the lyrics for many Broadway shows and Hollywood film musicals. They were paired together longer than any other writing team in the history of Broadway. Green and Comden wrote the books and lyrics for such Broadway hits as On the Town (1944, filmed in 1949), Wonderful Town (1953), Peter Pan (1954), and Bells Are Ringing (1956, filmed in 1960). Their screenplays included those for Singin' in the Rain (1952), which were considered by many film historians as the best movie musical of all time and ranked #10 on the list of the 100 Best American Movies of the 20th Century, the Oscar Awards and Writers Guild Awards-nominated The Band Wagon (1953), and It's Always Fair Weather (1955), Auntie Mame (1958), and the Grammy Award-nominated Bells Are Ringing (1960). Their Broadway stages Do Re Mi (1960), A Doll's Life (1982), and a staged version of Singin' in the Rain (1985) won the Tony Award nominations. Adolph Green has been listed as a noteworthy Playwright, lyricist by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

More photos

• bok

  • Applause 1970

• book

  • On The Town 1944
  • Two on the Aisle 1951
  • Singin' in the Rain 1952
  • Wonderful Town 1953
  • The Band Wagon 1953
  • Bells Are Ringing 1956
  • Say, Darling 1958
  • Do Re Mi 1960
  • Subways Are for Sleeping 1961
  • Fade Out - Fade In 1964
  • Hallelujah Baby! 1967
  • On the Twentieth Century 1978
  • A Doll's Life 1982
  • The Will Rogers Follies 1991

• movie

  • Take Me Out to the Ball Game

    (Two turn-of-the-century baseball players, who work in vau...)

    1949
  • Peter Pan

    (In this magical tale about the boy who refuses to grow up...)

    1960
  • That's Entertainment III

    (The third installment in the That's Entertainment series,...)

    1994
  • The Barkleys of Broadway

    (A successful but constantly-feuding husband and wife musi...)

    1949
  • Wonderful Town

    (Ruth Sherwood and her sister, Eileen arrive in New York f...)

    1958
  • Bells Are Ringing

    (A Brooklyn answering service operator becomes involved in...)

    1960
  • What a Way to Go!

    (A four-time widow discusses her four marriages, in which ...)

    1964
  • Lily in Love

    (Broadway star Fitzroy Wynn (Christopher Plummer) is thril...)

    1984
  • Good News

    (At fictitious Tait University in the Roaring '20s, co-ed ...)

    1947
  • The Substance of Fire

    (Publishing magnate refuses to publish a book by his son's...)

    1996
  • On the Town

    (Three sailors on a day of shore leave in New York City lo...)

    1949
  • It's Always Fair Weather

    (Three soldiers meet ten years after their last meeting in...)

    1955
  • Designing Woman

    (A sportswriter and a fashion-designer marry after a whirl...)

    1957
  • That's Entertainment

    (Various MGM stars from yesterday present their favourite ...)

    1974
  • Simon

    (A group of scientists takes Simon, a psychology professor...)

    1980
  • Garbo Talks

    (The son of a woman dying of a brain tumor tries to fulfil...)

    1984
  • I Want to Go Home

    (A grumpy American is suffering during his visit to Europe.)

    1989
  • Auntie Mame

    (An orphan goes to live with his free-spirited aunt. Confl...)

    1958
  • Greenwich Village 1944
  • Singin' in the Rain 1952
  • The Band Wagon 1953
  • The Frank Sinatra Timex Show: To The Ladies 1960
  • That's Entertainment: Part 2 1976
  • My Favorite Year 1982
  • Candide 1991
  • The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story 1996

• music

  • On the Town 1944
  • Billion Dollar Baby 1945
  • Two On The Aisle 1951
  • Wonderful Town 1953
  • Bells Are Ringing 1956
  • Say, Darling 1958
  • A Party With Betty Comden And Adolph Green 1958
  • Do Re Mi 1960
  • Subways Are for Sleeping 1961
  • Fade Out - Fade In 1964
  • Hallelujah, Baby! 1967
  • Applause 1970
  • Lorelei 1974
  • On The Twentieth Century 1978
  • A Doll's Life 1982
  • The Will Rogers Follies 1991

• TV series

  • Make Room for Daddy

    (Danny Williams, a successful nightclub singer, encounters...)

    1955
  • Country Style U.S.A.

    (Public service program sponsored by the U.S. Army feature...)

    1958
  • Frasier

    (Dr. Frasier Crane moves back to his hometown of Seattle, ...)

    1994
  • The Dick Van Dyke Show 1963

Views

Quotations: "You sit down to do a job. By the time it's over if you're lucky, it's been much more than a job. Yes, you've poured a lot of yourself into it, much more than you knew."

Personality

While at school Adolph Green's grades were not outstanding, even though he was an avid reader, a writer of poetry, a music fan, and an enthusiastic thespian.

Connections

Adolph Green was married three times. He married Elizabeth Reitell on June 20, 1941 but divorced in 1942. Green's second wife was Allyn Ann McLerie, and they were married from 1945 till 1953. Then on January 31, 1960, Adolph married an actress Phyllis Newman and remained until Adolph Green died in 2002. They had two children: Adam and Amanda.

Father:

Daniel Green

Mother:

Helen (Weiss) Green

Son:

Adam Green

Daughter:

Amanda Green

Wife:

Phyllis Newman

ex-wife:

Elizabeth Reitell

ex-wife:

Allyn Ann McLerie

Friend:

Betty Comden

Friend:

Leonard Bernstein

colleague:

Judy Holliday

colleague:

Jule Styne

colleague:

Cy Coleman

colleague:

André Previn

colleague:

Garson Kanin