Adolph Green, Playwright and Lyricist Who Teamed With Comden, Dies at 87 (original) (raw)
Theater|Adolph Green, Playwright and Lyricist Who Teamed With Comden, Dies at 87
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- Oct. 25, 2002
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October 25, 2002
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Adolph Green, the playwright, performer and lyricist who in a six-decade collaboration with Betty Comden was co-author of such hit Broadway musicals as ''On the Town,'' ''Wonderful Town'' and ''Bells Are Ringing'' and screenplays for ''Singin' in the Rain'' and ''The Band Wagon,'' died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.
Ms. Comden and Mr. Green wrote the words for much of the Broadway show music written by Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne, Cy Coleman, André Previn, Morton Gould, Saul Chaplin and Roger Edens. Some of those songs were woven so tightly into the fabric of the musical that they were not readily selected by popular singers and so did not become well known.
Others, however, became standards. They included ''Make Someone Happy,'' ''Just in Time,'' ''The Party's Over'' and ''Never Never Land,'' with music by Styne; and ''New York, New York,'' ''Some Other Time,'' ''Ohio'' and ''Lucky to Be Me,'' with music by Bernstein.
In addition to their writing, they performed their own material in nightclubs, on concert stages and on television. They appeared on Broadway in ''A Party With Betty Comden and Adolph Green'' in 1958 and in the revival, in 1977.
The reviews were effusive, and Brendan Gill, writing in The New Yorker, said that they ''have never lost their freshness, and it is plainly their intention, growing older, never to grow old.''
In show business, where hyperbole can flow thick and fast to describe successful partnerships neither as enduring nor as productive as theirs, Comden and Green were beyond adjectives; they were in a category that only they occupied. No other team could match their quality and productivity over so many years. They were, as The Chicago Tribune noted in 1990, ''unchallenged as the longest-running act on Broadway.''
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