Betty Comden

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Elizabeth "Betty" Comden (born May 3, 1917 in Brooklyn , New York City , New York , † November 23, 2006 in New York City, New York) was an American songwriter, screenwriter and actress. In her more than 60 years of ongoing collaboration with Adolph Green wrote lyrics for Broadway - musicals as On the Town , as well as scripts for musical films like Singin 'in the Rain .

Life

Betty Comden grew up in Brooklyn, New York, as the daughter of a lawyer and a teacher. 1938 graduated from New York State University. During her studies she decided to start a career as an actress and appeared in various New York theater groups. While looking for a theater agent, she first met Adolph Green. With him and Judith Tuvim, who later became a movie star as Judy Holliday , she formed the group The Revuers in the early 1940s , which performed successfully in New York nightclubs. Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote a number of sketches and songs for the Revuers. During this time they were often accompanied by the young conductor and pianist Leonard Bernstein .

After an unsuccessful attempt as an actor in Hollywood , Comden and Green returned to New York. There Bernstein offered them to work on a musical based on a ballet by Jerome Robbins . On the Town was created with Bernstein's music and the lyrics by Comden and Green . Comden and Green also played two of the leading roles in this musical, which depicts three sailors going ashore in New York. Although Betty Comden had been married to designer Steven Kyle since 1942, Comden and Green have been an inseparable couple since that time.

After On the Town , Comden and Green worked on various Broadway shows as songwriters and librettists, but without much success. Therefore, they went to Hollywood again, but this time as screenwriters. The Broadway Dancers , the film that reunited Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire after 10 years, was her first original screenplay in 1949. In the same year, On the Town by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen was filmed as Today we go shopping with Kelly and Frank Sinatra in the leading roles. With Kelly and Donen as directors, Comden and Green also worked on their most famous film, Singin 'in the Rain, in 1952 . With Moses Supposes , Comden and Green also wrote a song for Singin 'in the Rain (the other songs were all from the early years of the sound film). A year later, Comden and Green wrote the script for Curtain Up! (The Band Wagon), a musical with Fred Astaire that takes an ironic look behind the scenes of Broadway. Many see the characters Lester and Lily Marton portrayed by Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray as autobiographical traits of Betty Comden and Adolph Green. For the curtain up! they received their first of two Oscar nominations. 1955 was another Oscar nomination for the screenplay of predominantly cheerful (It's Always Fair Weather), originally as a continuation of On the Town was conceived.

In the mid-1950s, Betty Comden and Adolph Green began to focus more on Broadway again. The musical Wonderful Town was created with Leonard Bernstein in 1953 . A year later they contributed some songs to the successful production of Peter Pan with Mary Martin in the leading role. In 1956 they wrote the musical Bells are Ringing for their friend Judy Holliday , which was filmed in 1960 by Vincente Minnelli .

In 1958, Comden and Green returned to the stage themselves when they presented some of their old skits and songs in A Party with Betty Comden & Adolph Green . In the following years Comden and Green worked with composers like André Previn and Cy Coleman for stars like Yves Montand , Lauren Bacall and Carol Burnett . Her greatest successes in the 70s were musical versions of the classic films All About Eva and Twentieth Century . Betty Comden also starred in On The Twentieth Century for several weeks. Also, in 1977, their party with Betty Comden & Adolph Green resumed.

In the 1980s, Comden and Green experienced one of their few failures with A Doll's Life , but most of their old musicals were performed again. In 1984 Betty Comden made a guest appearance in Sidney Lumet's The Divine (Garbo Talks). In 1991, The Will Rogers Follies (music: Cy Coleman) was the last musical by Comden and Green premiered. In the same year they were awarded the prestigious Kennedy Prize . In 1995 Betty Comden published her memories Off Stage , in which she openly described the drug problems and the AIDS death of her son Alan Kyle in 1990.

In later years, Betty Comden and Adolph Green worked together almost every day until his death in October 2002. During their career as a team, they have won seven Tony Awards , including Wonderful Town , Hallelujah, Baby! , Applause and The Will Rogers Follies for Best Musicals. On November 23, 2006, Betty Comden died of heart failure in a New York clinic.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Other sources name 1915 and 1919 as the year of birth, cf. Internet Broadway Database and Internet Movie Database .
personal data
SURNAME Comden, Betty
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Comden, Elizabeth (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American screenwriter, librettist and actress
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York City, New York, United States
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 2006
Place of death New York City , New York, United States