Word: stephen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...show's essential conception in Eliot Elisofon's picture of Gloria Swanson amid the ruins of Manhattan's Roxy Theater, a barococo movie palace that was demolished in 1960. "That sparked the whole notion of rubble?how it relates to the past and present." Prince set Composer-Lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who collaborated with him on Forum and Company, to work emulating typical mid-'20s and '30s show tunes for the "Loveland" sequence, and devised the flowing, cinematic style of the play. He also gave Costume Designer Florence Klotz one great illumination: Follies was to be a "Fellini musical...
With the kind of cast whose savvy spans a half-century of show business, Prince could do enough of what David Merrick calls "flimflam and legerdemain to cover an awful and gloomy book about nothing at all." Fortunately, the Prince and his Follies have that other talent: Stephen Sondheim. For the musical, he has written some of the glossiest, wittiest lyrics in Broadway history. His melodies gracefully genuflect to Kern and Gershwin, Berlin and Arlen. His words bow to no one. With Follies he has established himself, beyond doubt, as the theater's supreme lyricist...
...Sondheim is a spent youth. The son of a wealthy New York dress manufacturer, he literally learned his first lessons in the craft of songwriting at the feet of an old family friend, Oscar Hammerstein II. Stephen was then eleven; Oscar thought his first pubescent musical "terrible?although not without talent." Sondheim proved to be a good learner. He has written the lyrics (and often the music as well) for seven shows, five of which were hits. Only his 1966 musical, Anyone Can Whistle, a precious fable about a smalltown miracle, and 1965's Do I Hear a Waltz? (with...
After graduating magna cum laude from Williams (where he majored in music) and studying with Avant-Garde Composer Milton Babbitt, Stephen, at the age of 25, decided that Broadway was ready for him. Broadway decided otherwise. Through no fault of the author, his first effort (Saturday Night) expired along with its producer. For a time, Stephen knocked out scripts for the television sitcom Topper and honed his skills as an amateur gamesman. Sondheim is one of the world's fastest cutthroat anagram players, and the walls of his Manhattan town house are covered with antique game boards. (Between shows...
...GRANDEES by Stephen Birmingham. 368 pages. Harper...