Richard Adler (composer)

Richard Adler (born August 3, 1921 in New York , † June 21, 2012 in Southampton , New York ) was an American composer and songwriter .

Life

Richard Adler's musicality was inherited from his father, who was a concert pianist. Originally, however, he did not seek a musical career; he wanted to be a writer. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , he worked as a copywriter.

The acquaintance and later friendship with the three years younger Jerry Ross and the composer and publisher Frank Loesser were groundbreaking for Richard Adler's career . The latter recognized the talents slumbering in the two young men and promoted them as best he could. From then on, Ross and Adler composed and wrote the lyrics together. In 1953 they landed their first big hit with the song Rags to Riches . The composer's and writer's duo achieved their big breakthrough in 1954 with their first musical, The Pajama Game , which had 1,063 performances in its first season on Broadway and won several Tony Awards . The play was still successful when Ross and Adler were able to repeat their sensational success just a year later with their second musical Damn Yankees , which reached 1,022 performances. Both collaboration ended with that, because Ross fell seriously ill and died on November 11, 1955 at the age of 29 of pneumonia.

After the death of his partner, Adler wrote many melodies and lyrics for musicals that could only be seen on American television. But in October 1961 he returned to Broadway with Kwamina . It was the first time in the history of the musical that a love story between a dark-skinned man and a white woman came on stage. The plant failed to achieve great success. It became clear that without Ross, Adler could not perform as expected.

In 1984 Richard Adler was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame . From 1958 to 1966 he was married to the British actress Sally Ann Howes .

literature

• Siegfried Schmidt-Joos : The Musical. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (dtv) Munich (1965)
• Charles B. Axton and Otto Zehnder: Reclam's musical guide . 10th edition 2009, ISBN 978-3-15-010697-6

Web links

• Richard Adler in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Richard Adler, 'Pajama Game' Collaborator, Dies at 90 , June 23, 2012, The New York Times
2. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from December 18, 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. Songwriters Hall of Fame (accessed January 4, 2011)