Mary Rodgers

Mary Rodgers (* 11. January 1931 in New York City , † 26 June 2014 ibid) was an American musical - composer and writer .

Life

education

Mary Rodgers was the daughter of the eminent Broadway composer Richard Rodgers and his wife Dorothy Feiner Rodgers. She attended the private girls' school Brearley School in her native New York and Wellesley College , where she majored in music. However, she dropped out of her final year of college to marry Julian Beaty.

Musical career

She began her professional career as assistant to the producer of the “Young People's Concerts” with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Leonard Bernstein . Mary Rodgers wrote music and songs for a number of musicals and revues , starting with Once Upon a Mattress (1959), arguably her greatest success. The main role was played by Carol Burnett , who became a star. The musical, which is based on the fairy tale The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Andersen , received several awards and has remained consistently popular in the USA and Canada - it is still performed there in more than 400 performances annually. Once Upon a Mattress was also adapted for television in 1964, 1972 and 2005, with the latest version - again with Carol Burnett - being shown in the series The Wonderful World of Disney .

Other musical and revue productions in which Mary Rodgers played a leading role as a composer include Hot Spot (1963), The Mad Show (1966), Phyllis Newman's Show The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979) and The Griffin and the Minor Canon (1988). She also composed the background music for various productions with the Bil Baird Marionettes, including Davy Jones' Locker (1966) and Pinocchio (1973). A revue of their music, compiled and directed by Richard Maltby, Jr. , entitled Hey, Love, ran in June 1993 at Eighty-Eight's in New York. She was also involved in the successful record album Free to Be ... You and Me (1972). There are also numerous theater appearances. She was also a sought-after contemporary witness for documentaries on the history of the musical and her family.

Success as a writer

Mary Rodgers began writing books for children and young people in the late 1960s. She once justified her move to writing as follows:

“I had a decent talent, but not an extraordinary talent (…) I wasn't my father or my son. And you have to give up all kinds of things. - I had a pleasant talent but not an incredible talent. (...) I was not my father or my son. And you have to abandon all kinds of things. "

The best-known of her books is Freaky Friday (1972), which has won several literary prizes and was translated into German in the same year under the title Crazy Friday . The Walt Disney Studios bought the fabric and made of it so far (2010) three film versions, the original all Freaky Friday read: For Freaky Friday (1976) Mary Rodgers also wrote the screenplay and directed by Gary Nelson played Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris daughter and mother who miraculously slip into each other's skins. In 1995, Stu Krieger adapted Rodger's original script for the television film Annabelle's Biggest Wish starring Gaby Hoffmann and Shelley Long . Finally, Freaky Friday (2003) was a modernized theatrical version in which Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis played the leading roles of their daughter and mother. In addition, Mary Rodgers wrote the script for the other Disney fantasy comedy The Devil with Max ( The Devil and Max Devlin , 1981) based on an original story by her and Jimmy Sangster . However, this film turned out to be a far less successful project. According to her own admission, she hated writing screenplays because of the constraints and restrictions that film productions bring with them, and stopped after five films.

Other children's book titles by Mary Rodgers are The Rotten Book (1969), Summer Switch (1982) and A trillion for Boris (1974) serving as Trading Places of Manhattan ( Billions for Boris was also made into a film, 1984) and at the script Contributed author. Both A Billion for Boris and Summer Switch are sequels to Freaky Friday , with additional family experiences from the Andrews .

Together with her mother Dorothy Rodgers, she published the book A Word to the Wives (1970), which led to a national radio program. In addition, at the beginning of the 1970s, both had a monthly column entitled Of Two Minds in the women's magazine McCall’s , in which they alternately and often very differently answered reader questions.

Management functions in various committees

For many years, Mary Rodgers served on the board of directors of the Juilliard School and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (now both as Chairman Emeritus ). She also served on the governing bodies of the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival and the Dramatists Guild Council, as well as the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) . She also represented the Rodgers family in The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, which is run together with the Hammerstein family .

Private

After her first marriage to Julian Beaty, from whom she was divorced in 1957, Mary Rodgers was married to Henry Guettel for the second time since 1961. Both marriages have a total of five children. Her son Adam Guettel is also a composer, her daughter Constance P. Beaty a painter.

Awards

Mary Rodgers was nominated twice for the Tony Award : 1960 in the category "Best Musical" for her music for Once Upon a Mattress and 1978 in the category "Best Score" together with others for music and lyrics to Working .

For her book Freaky Friday (1972) she received first prize at the Book World Spring Book Festival in the year of publication and was mentioned as "Notable Children's Book" by the American Library Association (ALA) and in 1973 the Christopher Award . Other prizes included the Nene Award (Hawaii, 1977), the California Young Reader Medal (1977) and the Georgia Children's Book Award (1978). She also won the Christopher Award again in 1975 for A Billion for Boris , which also received a mention from the ALA.

Works

Musicals and revues

• Once Upon a Mattress , 1959 - music
• From A to Z , 1960 - Music for the song Hire a Guy
• Hot Spot , 1963 - Music
• The Mad Show , 1966 - Music
• Davy Jones' Locker , 1972 - Music and Songs
• Side by Side by Sondheim , 1977 - additional music
• Working , 1978 - Music for the song Nobody Tells Me How
• The Madwoman of Central Park West , 1979 - Music for Songs
• The Griffin and the Minor Canon , 1988 - Music

Books

• The Rotten Book. with pictures by Steven Kellogg, New York 1969.
• with Dorothy Rodgers: A Word to the Wives. New York 1970.
• Freaky Friday. New York 1972 (last New York 1999, ISBN 0-06-440046-8 . German: Crazy Friday. Translated by Sybil Gräfin Schönfeldt , Gütersloh 1972, ISBN 3-570-07594-X .)
• A Billion for Boris. New York 1974 (most recently also under the title ESP TV. New York 1999, ISBN 0-06-440838-8 .)
• Buzzer switch. New York 1982 ISBN 0-06-025058-5 .

Scripts

• 1976: Freaky Friday (Freaky Friday)
• 1981: To hell with Max (The Devil and Max Devlin)
• 1984: The Soldiers of Fortune of Manhattan (Billions for Boris) - script participation

Web links

• Literature by and about Mary Rodgers in the catalog of the German National Library
• Mary Rodgers in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Mary Rodgers in the Internet Broadway Database (English)
• Biography (with photo) at the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization (English)
• Bruce Weber: Mary Rodgers, Author and Composer in a Musical Family, Dies at 83. Obituary in The New York Times, June 27, 2014 (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Douglas Eby: Mary Rodgers Guettel , talentdevelop.com; Retrieved July 26, 2010
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} biography at the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization ; Retrieved July 26, 2010
3. ↑ Stephen Holden : "Mary Rodgers's Songs In a Patchwork on Romance" . In: The New York Times, June 11, 1993; Retrieved July 26, 2010
4. ↑ About Mary Rodgers ( Memento of the original from December 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , www.charlottezolotow.com; Retrieved July 26, 2010 
5. ↑ Jesse Green: A Complicated Gift . In: The New York Times, July 6, 2003; Retrieved July 26, 2010
6. ↑ ^{a b} Biographical information on Mary Rodgers at www.novelguide.com  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Retrieved July 28, 2010  
7. ↑ Information according to IMDb
8. ↑ cf. the information under www.novelguide.com  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Retrieved July 28, 2010