Word: lyricist
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Redhead, a musical now being tuned up in Philadelphia for high-kicking Dancer Gwen (Damn Yankees) Verdon, is described by Lyricist Dorothy Fields: "This is a happy show. It does absolutely nothing for the theater." Translation: a likely Broadway hit (opening Feb. 5), with advance sales already past $1,000,000. The story: something about a dreamy London chick (Verdon), working in a turn-of-the-century waxworks, who gets tied up with a U.S. vaudeville strong man. In Washington, the Daily News's Critic Tom Donnelly called Redhead "a mad blend of Agatha Christie and Mack Sennett...
Anyone buying a new Capitol 45-r.p.m. record titled Green Chri$tma$ can study these and other atrocities at yuletide leisure. Lyricist Stan Freberg is an adman himself, with an executive suite on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard and a reputation for the cute commercial (TIME, Aug. 4).) But Freberg also had a solid Baptist upbringing (his minister father still has a church in Pasadena), and for years he has felt Christmas commercialism gnawing away at his religious vitals. "The funny thing is," he says, "that businessmen would sell as much soap or soft drinks at Christmas if they never...
Died. Harry Revel, 52, bachelor composer of popular love songs (Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?), who also wrote scores for Broadway (Ziegfeld Follies of 1931) and Hollywood, often teamed with Lyricist Mack Gordon; of a cerebral hemorrhage; in Manhattan...
...Labor Day weekend, a pop lyricist named Charles Grean (The Thing, Sweet Violets) was placidly cruising Long Island Sound in his 26-ft. skiff when he was struck by an inspiration. "With this hoop craze," he thought, "there's bound to be a song. Somebody ought to move fast!" Grean raced ashore and started to move. Next day he took his already completed lyrics around to his pal, Composer Bob Davie, and within an hour the two of them had batted out "a simple little teenage song with a good rock 'n' roll melody," named it Hoopa...
...days later the completed records started coming into Atlantic's New York offices, were promptly funneled out to a list of 2,500 key disk jockeys about the country. Atlantic distributors started setting up deejay hoop contests through the Middle West. Scarcely more than a week after Lyricist Grean landed, his song was on the market ahead of the competition, and the painful fruits of his inspiration were assaulting ears across the land...