Photograph by Henri Dauman from Sony Music Entertainment courtesy of Sony Music Archives
August 31, 1918– Alan Jay Lerner:
”There even are places where English completely disappears. In America, they haven’t used it for years!”
Lerner had one of the legendary partnerships of the history of Musical Theater. He was one of the very best lyricists and he was a playwright, doing the books for most of his musicals. He enjoyed an amazing partnership with gay composer Frederick Loewe, but he collaborated with several talented composers before and after their eight shows together.
Lerner and Loewe inherited the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition of the integrated book musical, refining it in such acclaimed and popular shows as their masterpiece My Fair Lady (1956), Camelot (1960), Brigadoon (1947), and Gigi (1958).
The catalog of Lerner and Loewe bulges with songs that became popular standards: Almost Like Being In Love, On The Street Where You Live, If Ever I would Leave You, I Could Have Danced All Night.
Lerner was Harvard educated, Loewe was a composer from the Viennese opera tradition, and the two men applied their intellectual strengths toward creating worlds of rich fantasy: King Arthur’s Court, London’s Covent Garden, The American Wild West, and a disappearing village in the Scottish Highlands. Loewe’s music, and Lerner’s books and lyrics brought the Broadway stage beguiling and romantic worlds that somehow were in tune with the optimism of postwar USA.
Alluding to West Side Story (1957), the gritty and musically adventurous show with a score by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, and with a book by Arthur Laurents, Lerner wrote:
”Fritz and I don’t believe in musical plays with messages, particularly if the message deals with teen-age rumbles and switch-blade knives. To us, the best message a musical play can convey is: ‘Come back and see us again, and often’.”
It was not simply that their musicals brought a certain sense of refined style; it was also the way Lerner and Loewe lived. With the fortunes made from their hits, they typified the wealth and panache that was a part of Broadway’s Golden Age of Musicals.
Lerner and Loewe shows represent a highly idealized view of life, especially compared with the darker works of Sondheim. Yet, their musicals did make some daring leaps in adapting highbrow culture for popular consumption. My Fair Lady is, of course, based on a George Bernard Shaw play and Gigi on the story by the gay French writer Colette.
Not always old fashioned, Lerner wrote the lyrics for Kurt Weill’s score for Love Life (1948), an experimental musical with a cynical look at marriage. It is one of the first ”concept musicals”, shows built around themes instead of the narratives, musicals like A Chorus Line (1975) or Sondheim’s Follies (1971).
Lerner was never quite able to adapt to the changing American popular music, with the rise of Rock N’ Roll, and his career never really recovered when Loewe retired in 1960.
Lerner was born in NYC. His father was founder of Lerner Stores, a chain of inexpensive women’s apparel shops.
After Harvard, he attended The Juilliard School. At Harvard, Lerner began to write. He wrote for the Hasty Pudding Club shows. After college, he found work writing advertising copy and radio scripts. He wrote sketches for the annual revue produced by the Lamb’s Club, where he met Loewe.
Their first two musicals closed early, but for the next two decades they only had hits.
On March 16, 1956, My Fair Lady opened on Broadway. This musical brought Lerner and Loewe their greatest acclaim, their greatest fame, and a great deal of money. The production, directed by Moss Hart, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews ran for more than six years. By 1960, the Original Broadway Cast recording had sold more than 20 million albums. Harrison and Audrey Hepburn starred in the 1964 film adaptation, directed by George Cukor. It was an even bigger hit. A great deal of its success and stature is due, not just to the exquisite score, but especially to Lerner’s smart adaptation of Shaw’s comedy, Pygmalion (1912).
Camelot was the last and most lavish Lerner and Loewe show. It opened in 1960 with an advance sale of $3 million, adjusted for inflation, that would be like $60 million today. We are talking Hamilton huge. The evocation in Camelot of a handsome and charmed young King Arthur provided a metaphor for the Administration of John F. Kennedy. It was that President’s favorite show and he listened frequently to the cast album at The White House.
The months after Camelot were a turning point, mostly for the worse, in Lerner’s career. Moss Hart, the director of the Lerner and Loewe musicals, died and Loewe, in his late 50s, decided to retire.
Lerner had already done some excellent, celebrated work for Hollywood on his own. In 1951, he provided the screenplays for Royal Wedding and An American In Paris. His memoir, The Street Where I Live (1978) was a bestseller. It sits on a shelf with my collection of lyricists’ autobiographies, next to Ira Gershwin.
But, Lerner’s work of the theater work never reached the heights without Loewe. His later musicals were daring, flawed commercial flops.
I do really like On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (1965), a musical about ESP with a lovely score by Burton Lane. It had a respectable run of 275 performances on Broadway starring Barbara Harris, and was adapted into a film starring Barbra Streisand in 1970, but both lost money. The title song was a hit though, and Lerner said it was one of the most important songs of his career. It remains the most recorded of his songs.
I saw his musical about the presidency and race relations, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (1976), with a score by Bernstein. It was an enthralling mess and ran only seven performances on Broadway. The shows that followed also flopped.
The artistic difficulties of Lerner’s last years were reflected by his personal problems. In 1972, as one of the many celebrity patient of Dr. Max “Feel Good” Jacobson, he became addicted to amphetamine injections. That same year, Lerner was sued by the IRS for $1.4 million in back taxes.
That rare straight Broadway guy, Lerner was married eight times. In his memoir, he wrote:
”All I can say is that if I had no flair for marriage, I also had no flair for bachelorhood. Marriage, as someone said, is often like a besieged fortress. Everyone inside wants to get out and everyone outside wants to get in.”
Lerner and Loewe received Kennedy Center Honors in 1986, the first time the award was given to collaborators. Lerner won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among many other honors. Lerner took his final curtain call just a few months after the Kennedy Center Honors, gone from that damn cancer at 67-years-old.
This is my favorite Lerner lyric. It’s the greatest ”stalker” song of all time:
I have often walked down this street before
But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before
All at once am I several stories high
Knowing I’m on the street where you live
Are there lilac trees in the heart of town?
Can you hear a lark in any other part of town?
Does enchantment pour out of every door?
No it’s just on the street where you live
And oh, the towering feeling
Just to know somehow you are near
The overpowering feeling
That any second you may suddenly appear
People stop and stare, they don’t bother me
For there’s nowhere else on earth that I would rather be
Let the time go by, I won’t care
If I can be here on the street where you live
People stop and stare, they don’t bother me
For there’s nowhere else on earth that I would rather be
Let the time go by, I won’t care
If I can be here on the street where you live!
