Betty Comden

Songwriter

• Born: May 3, 1917
• Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
• Died: November 23, 2006
• Place of death: New York, New York

Comden and her partner, Adolph Green, created some of the most memorable musicals for the Broadway stage and for Hollywood film.

Early Life

Betty Comden (BET-tee COM-duhn) was the daughter of Leo Cohen, a lawyer, and Rebecca Sadvoransky, a schoolteacher. She married Steven Kyle, a designer and businessperson, on January 4, 1942; they had two children. Comden graduated from New York University in 1938, where she met Adolph Green. At the suggestion of their friend Judy Holliday, the pair formed a cabaret act in 1938 called the Revuers and performed at the Village Vanguard in New York’s Greenwich Village beginning in 1939. There, Comden and Green were often joined by Leonard Bernstein, who played piano for the musical act for free. The show’s success prompted Bernstein to approach the duo about writing the book and lyrics for an original musical comedy based on Fancy Free (1944), a ballet created by Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins.

Developing Robbins’s ballet theme of three sailors celebrating a twenty-four-hour leave in New York City, Comden and Green crafted a light comedy featuring the nautical trio in manic pursuit of an alluring “Miss Turnstiles” poster girl. Directed by George Abbott, On the Town (1944) became a smash hit on the Broadway stage and launched the successful theatrical careers of its four young creators. Green and Comden appeared in the original cast as the sailor Ozzie and his museum-anthropologist flame, Claire, and the duo later wrote the screenplay for the equally successful 1949 film version.

Life’s Work

After writing the lyrics for the 1949 film Take Me out to the Ballgame Comden and Green penned Singin’ in the Rain (1952), a spoof of the advent of “talking pictures,” that was directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. They won a Screen Writers Guild Award for their original screenplay, which they built around a catalog of 1920’s songs by Arthur Freed and composer Nacio Herb Brown.

Comden and Green had a long and fruitful association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as part of producer Arthur Freed’s unit, which began in 1947, when the team adapted the screenplay for the musical comedy Good News (1947), then scored a great success two years later with their first original screenplay, The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), also directed by Kelly and Donen, which reunited the dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

The writers also turned a satirical eye on show business in their next two hit film musicals, The Band Wagon (1953) and It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), winning Academy Award nominations for both. Comden and Green devised their original story for The Band Wagon around another catalog of songs, this one by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, who had earlier contributed to a hit Broadway stage revue of the same title starring Astaire and his sister, Adele. The writing couple, played by Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray in the film, were based on Comden and Green. In 1989, thirty-six years after The Band Wagon was released, Comden and Green began writing the book for a Broadway stage musical to be based on the film. In It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), three war buddies reunite after ten years and are featured on a ludicrous “human interest” television show, but the team also spoofed singing commercials, audience-participation shows, and other eccentricities of the medium. In 1958, Comden and Green wrote the screenplay for Auntie Mame (1958), based on the hit Broadway play.

The team’s stage successes were many, and they won seven Tony Awards and numerous Grammy Awards. An early show, Two on the Aisle (1951), with Bert Lahr and Dolores Gray, was a musical revue, and Wonderful Town, their 1953 comedy collaboration with Bernstein and Abbott, was primarily a vehicle for Rosalind Russell. It was filmed for television, again with Russell, and successfully revived in 2003. The writing partners followed this Tony Award-winning venture by contributing the songs “Never Never Land” and “Wendy” to the 1954 Broadway version of Peter Pan that starred Mary Martin; it was quickly filmed and it became an annual television event.

Comden and Green also wrote the book and lyrics to Jule Styne’s score for the musical comedy Bells Are Ringing (1960), with Holliday as a telephone-answering service operator who becomes romantically involved with one of her clients. Both the Broadway show and a 1960 film adaptation, with Holliday in her last film role, proved highly popular. In 1958, Comden and Green performed a compilation of their own material in the popular A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, which reprised the duo’s songs and sketches dating back to the beginning of their careers as “The Revuers.”

Do Re Mi (1960), with a book by Garson Kanin and music by Styne, had a largely forgotten score but two memorable stars: Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker. In 1961, Comden and Green wrote Subways Are for Sleeping and Fade Out-Fade In; both had scores by Styne. The duo won a second Tony Award in 1967 for the lyrics to Hallelujah, Baby!, a Broadway production starring Leslie Uggams as a black singer who faces racial discrimination while trying to break into show business. In 1970, Comden and Green enjoyed one of their biggest successes in years with Applause, their musical version of the 1950 film classic All About Eve; it garnered rave reviews and swept the Tony Awards.

The writing duo scored another hit in 1978 with On the Twentieth Century, based on the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play about a flamboyant producer and his leading lady traveling from Hollywood to New York on the Twentieth Century Limited train in the 1930’s. Green and Comden won Tony Awards for their book and lyrics.

In a joint writing career remarkable for its many successes and few failures, Comden and Green suffered a notable disappointment in 1982 with A Doll’s Life, a sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s classic tragedy Et dukkehjem (1879; A Doll’s House, 1880). Critics dismissed the production as ill-conceived, and the show closed in less than a week. The team’s last major Broadway show was The Will Rogers Follies (1991), a Ziegfeld-style extravaganza, with music by Cy Coleman and book by Peter Stone. It won six Tony Awards, including one for the music and lyrics, and it ran for more than two years. In 1999, performers such as Nathan Lane, Faith Prince, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Amanda Green performed in Carnegie Hall Celebrates Betty Comden and Adolph Green, to sing the duo’s famous show tunes. The show included selections from Bells Are Ringing, Peter Pan, and Wonderful Town. As a solo artist, Comden appeared in films such as Greenwich Village (1944), My Favorite Year (1982), Sidney Lumet’s Garbo Talks (1984), and Slaves of New York (1989).

Significance

Comden was part of one of the longest-lasting writing teams in show business, and she was known for her quick wit and facile ability to pen words and lyrics that captured the essence of a character and sharp, but always affectionate, slices of American life. While reflecting on the durability of his creative partnership with Comden, Green once suggested that their being married to different people helped. The collaborators were so in sync with each other that neither could say exactly who came up with any given phrase or idea in their finished writings.

Bibliography

Comden, Betty. Off Stage. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Describes Comden’s life apart from Green, including her youth in Brooklyn, her husband’s death, and her son’s losing battle with drug addiction.

Kresh, Paul. “Betty Comden and Adolph Green: A Profile.” Stereo Review 30 (April, 1973): 54-63. Essay focused on the recordings produced from Comden and Green shows. Rather dated, although the piece is especially good on the team’s early years.

Robinson, Alice M. Betty Comden and Adolph Green: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. This is a thorough compilation of the team’s work and the critical reception of each work, along with other material on them.

Roddick, Nick. “Betty Comden [and Adolph Green].” In American Screenwriters: Second Series, edited by Randall Clark. Vol. 44 in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, 1986. Comprehensive treatment of the Comden-Green team, with emphasis on the films they wrote for Hollywood, along with play productions and television presentations.