Betty Comden studied theatre at NYU in the 1930s. While making the rounds at “cattle call” auditions after graduation, she became friends with a fellow named Adolph Green who was doing the same thing. Green had heard about a gig at a night club on Sunday nights, and asked Comden if she wanted in. She did, and the two gathered a couple of other friends--including Judy Holiday--to perform a series of songs and scenes. When someone pointed out that royalties had to be paid for that kind of thing, the group began writing their own material—and thus “The Revuers” was born.

“The Revuers” attracted an elite crowd of urbanites and artists, and among them the newly famous Leonard Bernstein. When Bernstein got the opportunity to work on a Broadway show in 1944, he brought Comden and Green in to write the book and lyrics—and perform in the original cast. The resulting On the Town was a huge success, and the two never looked back. Their numerous shows and films include Singing in the Rain (recenty named among the best films of all time), Bells are Ringing (written for Judy Holiday), and the Tony-award-winning shows Wonderful Town (also with Bernstein, and currently being revived on Broadway); The Will Rogers Follies; and On the Twentieth Century (both with Cy Coleman).

On the Twentieth Century (which opened in 1978) won five Tony awards, including Best Score and Best Book, and was awarded a Drama Desk Award for Best Musical. Comden has said that although the play was set in the 1930s, she and Green felt that a more operatic feel would better express the larger-than-life characters featured in the story. They conferred with Coleman, who obliged them with some evocative music, and when the three met up again, they had put lyrics to every note Coleman had played them. Those lyrics are classic Comden and Green, nimble and ebullient, and Coleman’s score is—amazingly—both soaring and catchy.

Comden and Green make up musical theatre history’s longest-running partnership, writing together for some 60 years until Green’s death in 2002. The pair have received numerous Lifetime Achievement awards, have been elected into both the Songwriters’ and the Theatre Halls of Fame, and Comden was the NYU Alumni Association’s Woman of the Year. They don’t like to be called songwriters, though, declaring that they write what comes from characters and stories—and it happens to be in song. A grateful intern whom they rescued from the ill-treatment of a temperamental director in the 1970s recalls Comden’s charm and Green’s wicked sense of fun—qualities that shine through in all of their work.

Now at 86, Comden still entertains students in her pink-accented high-rise apartment in Manhattan. She tells them that the secret to all writing for the theatre is truth and passion rather than commercial viability, and she recalls her partnership with Green. The pair rarely worked separately, meeting from 1-5pm everyday for 60 years. She says they found the same things funny, the same things sad, and both maintained fulfilling lives outside their work. “Like Spencer and Hepburn without the romance,” says the intern!

For more information: Check out Betty Comden’s memoir, Off Stage.

[October 2005]

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