Cy Coleman

American musical-theater composer and pianist

• Born: June 14, 1929
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: November 18, 2004
• Place of death: New York, New York

Though he began as a classical pianist who turned to jazz, Coleman is noted for his work in musical theater and popular song.

The Life

Cy Coleman (si KOHL-muhn) was born Seymour Kaufman, the son of Russian immigrants Max and Ida Kaufman. Coleman began playing the piano when one was left in their building by a family who moved out without paying the rent. A child prodigy, he played a recital at Steinway Hall at the age of six and at Carnegie Hall at the age of seven. At New York City’s High School for the Performing Arts, Coleman focused on classical piano, composition, and conducting. However, his love for jazz would send him in a different musical direction. He changed his name to Cy Coleman at the age of sixteen when he began to write with lyricist Joseph A. McCarthy, Jr.; at the age of seventeen he was playing Manhattan clubs with the Cy Coleman Trio. Unusual for a Broadway composer, Coleman was an accomplished jazz pianist who loved to perform. He appeared occasionally in nightclubs for the rest of his life.

A longtime bachelor, Coleman married Shelby Brown in 1997, and they had a daughter, Lily Cye, in 2000. He died of heart failure at the age of seventy-five in 2004, leaving behind several unfinished projects, including Pamela’s First Musical, with a libretto by Wendy Wasserstein.

The Music

The year he graduated from high school, Coleman began writing music for television shows, and in 1952 he had his first hit single, with lyricist McCarthy, “Why Try to Change Me Now,” recorded by Frank Sinatra. Coleman and McCarthy’s music first appeared on Broadway in the musical revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac (“Tin Pan Alley,” 1953). When McCarthy’s drinking began to get in the way, Coleman looked for a new lyricist.

Collaborations with Leigh. Even though their disagreements were legendary, the partnership between Coleman and Carolyn Leigh created two Broadway musicals (Wildcat and Little Me) and a string of some of the biggest nonrock hits of the 1950’s and 1960’s: “A Moment of Madness” (recorded by Sammy Davis, Jr.), “My, How the Time Goes By,” “Witchcraft” (recorded by Sinatra), “Firefly,” “It Amazes Me,” “Rules of the Road,” and “The Best Is Yet to Come.” Their last successful pop songs were released in 1964: “When in Rome” (recorded by Barbra Streisand) and “Pass Me By” (recorded by Peggy Lee).

Lucille Ball’s only Broadway show, Wildcat, closed when its star became ill, leaving behind the wonderful “You’ve Come Home” and “Hey, Look Me Over!” Another star vehicle, Little Me, featured Sid Caesar in 1962 and Martin Short in 1998, and it contains “I’ve Got Your Number” and “Le Grand Boom-Boom.” For a 1982 revival, the Coleman-Leigh collaboration, which had ended twenty years before, was temporarily renewed when they contributed two new songs to the score.

Coleman’s five-year collaboration with Leigh was particularly productive: approximately twenty popular songs (many of them hits), scores for two Broadway shows, and several numbers for motion pictures. Their wry, sophisticated songs became favorites of discriminating cabaret singers, such as Mabel Mercer. Following the team’s acrimonious split after Little Me, Coleman wrote almost exclusively for musical theater.

Collaborations with Fields.Dorothy Fields thought her career was over by the late 1950’s. Musical styles had changed, and she was reeling from the deaths of her brother and husband. When Coleman approached her at a party with an invitation to write together, however, she leaped at the opportunity. Joining the team of Coleman, librettist Neil Simon, and director-choreographer Bob Fosse, Fields was twenty-five years older than her collaborators, but together they created the steamy, edgy, sassy Sweet Charity. Instant classics from the score include “Hey, Big Spender,” “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” and “There’s Gotta Be Something Better than This.” While they abandoned a project about Eleanor Roosevelt, Coleman and Fields did complete the romantic comedy Seesaw, working with director-choreographer Michael Bennett. “It’s Not Where You Start (It’s Where You Finish)” became a star turn for Tommy Tune. When Fields died in 1974, Coleman was once again without a lyricist.

Later Works. After writing four musicals with female lyricists, Coleman wrote his first Broadway musical with a male lyricist, Michael Stewart. Together they created I Love My Wife, undoubtedly the first musical about wife swapping in New Jersey. Coleman turned again to lyricist Stewart to pen the musical biography Barnum (1980), a lavish spectacle which ran for 854 performances.

The mock operetta On the Twentieth Century was the product of a new collaboration for Coleman, working with the lyric-writing team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Both I Love My Wife and On the Twentieth Century were financially successful, but Home Again, Home Again closed out-of-town in 1979. Working with his fourth female lyricist, Coleman teamed up with Barbara Fried on this epic story of a male protagonist’s fifty-year search for life’s meaning.

In 1989 Coleman opened two musicals on Broadway: Welcome to the Club and City of Angels. The former, with lyrics by Coleman and A. E. Hotchner, ran only twelve performances. City of Angels, on the other hand, won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Score, and it ran for 878 performances. With a book by Larry Gelbart and lyrics by David Zippel, City of Angels is set in 1940’s Hollywood. (Many consider this jazz-infused score to be Coleman’s best.) Two years later, Coleman was back on Broadway with The Will Rogers Follies, teaming again with Comden and Green. This show marked Coleman’s return to musicalizing the biography of a show business personality, and for it he won his third Tony Award for Best Musical.

Musical Legacy

In an age when composing for musical theater was almost completely a male reserve, Coleman worked with nearly all the female lyricists of his generation: Comden, Fields, Fried, and Leigh. These were fortunate choices, because so many of Coleman’s most memorable and heartfelt characters have been women, even when they are not the leads. Without a woman on his creative team, Coleman often found his shows taking on a decidedly misogynistic tone, especially Welcome to the Club with A. E. Hotchner (rewritten as Exactly Like You, 1999) and The Life, with lyrics by Ira Gasman.

Coleman won three Tony Awards for Best Score, three Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, an Academy Award nomination, and he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1981. Although he may not be as well known as some of his contemporary songwriters, he has contributed to the stage some popular showstoppers: “It’s Not Where You Start (It’s Where You Finish),” “Hey, Look Me Over!,” “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” “Nobody Does It Like Me,” and more.

Coleman’s music has always been influenced by the stylistic flair and the energy of his collaborators. With Leigh, his music tended to be feisty and brittle, like her lyrics. Fields’s verses were world-weary and wry, so Coleman gave her music for those colors in a way he did not for Hotchner (Welcome to the Club) or Ira Gasman (The Life), whose lyrics can be crass but funny. Comden and Green brought Coleman flamboyant, educated lyrics, and he responded with the zest of On the Twentieth Century and The Will Rogers Follies. Zippel (City of Angels) and Stewart (I Love My Wife) wrote lyrics that were quick and smart, reflected in Coleman’s music.

Principal Works

musical theater (music): John Murray Anderson’s Almanac, 1953 (music with Richard Adler and Jerry Ross; lyrics by Adler and Ross); Compulsion, 1957 (incidental music; lyrics by Carolyn Leigh); Wildcat, 1960 (lyrics by Leigh; libretto by Nathaniel Richard Nash); Little Me, 1962 (lyrics by Leigh; libretto by Neil Simon); Sweet Charity, 1966 (lyrics by Leigh; libretto by Simon); Seesaw, 1973 (lyrics by Dorothy Fields; libretto by Michael Bennett); Straws in the Wind, 1975 (lyrics and libretto by Betty Comden and Adolph Green); Hellzapoppin’!, 1976 (music by Coleman, Jule Styne, and Hank Beebe; lyrics by Leigh and Bill Heyer; libretto by Abe Burrows, Heyer, and Beebe); I Love My Wife, 1977 (lyrics by Michael Stewart; based on Luis Rego’s play); On the Twentieth Century, 1978 (lyrics and libretto by Comden and Green); Home Again, Home Again, 1979 (lyrics by Barbara Fried; libretto by Russell Baker); Barnum, 1980 (lyrics by Stewart; libretto by Mark Bramble); Thirteen Days to Broadway, 1983 (lyrics by Fried; libretto by Baker); Let ’Em Rot, 1988 (lyrics by Coleman and A. E. Hotchner; libretto by Hotchner); City of Angels, 1989 (lyrics by David Zippel; libretto by Larry Gelbart); Welcome to the Club, 1989 (lyrics by Coleman and Hotchner; libretto by Hotchner); The Will Rogers Follies, 1991 (lyrics by Comden and Green; libretto by Peter Stone); The Life, 1997 (lyrics by Ira Gasman; libretto by David Newman, Gasman, and Coleman); Exactly Like You, 1998 (lyrics by Hotchner and Coleman; libretto by Hotchner).

songs (music; lyrics by Carolyn Leigh): “A Moment of Madness,” 1957; “My, How the Times Goes By,” 1957; “Witchcraft,” 1957; “Firefly,” 1958; “It Amazes Me,” 1958; “Rules of the Road,” 1961; “The Best Is Yet to Come,” 1959; “Pass Me By,” 1964; “When in Rome,” 1964.

Bibliography

Sheed, Wilfrid. The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty. New York: Random House, 2007. One of the few book-length histories of musical theater that celebrates the work of Coleman.

Suskin, Steven. Show Tunes, 1905-1985: The Songs, Shows, and Careers of Broadway’s Major Composers. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986. Suskin does a brief analysis of Coleman’s work, suggesting that it peaked with Sweet Charity.

Vallance, Tom. “Obituary: Cy Coleman.” The London Independent (November 22, 2004). Overview of Coleman’s life, with references to his many musicals.

Viagas, Robert, ed. The Alchemy of Theatre: The Divine Science. New York: Playbill Books, 2006. Contains a brief interview with Coleman, who talks about his collaborators.