Cy Coleman
Born: Seymour Kaufman June 14, 1929, New York, NY
Cy Coleman did have smll impact on jazz scene, but his major importance
comes as composer and force in theater. He had a recital at Steinway Hall
at the age of six, and was playing Manhattan super clubs at 17. Coleman formed
a trio in 1948 while still a student at New York College of Music. He began
to attract attention with two hit singles he wrote done by Frank Sinatra in
the '50s; "Try to Change Me Now" and "Witchcraft." He also penned "Firefly"
for Tony Bennett in 1958. The musical "Wildcraft" which he did with lyricist
Carolyn Leigh starred Lucille Ball in 1960. Then came string of stage successes,
including "Little Me," "Sweet Charity" and "Seesaw." Since then, Coleman's
had other stage hits, notably "Barnum." He's also had songs featured in films,
covered by Barbra Streisand and many others. Coleman has also periodically
recorded albums. Mark Murphy did LP of Coleman material in 1977. ~ Ron Wynn,
All Music Guide
Another bio:
Coleman was a pianist, singer, producer and a composer of popular songs,
and scores for films and the Broadway stage. The youngest of the five sons
of emigrants from Russia, Coleman was born and brought up in the Bronx, where
his mother owned two tenement buildings. He began to pick out tunes on the
piano when he was four-years-old, irritating his father, a carpenter, to
such an extent that he nailed down the lid of the instrument. However, a
local teacher was so impressed by Coleman's piano playing that she provided
free lessons in classical music. Between the ages of six and nine, Coleman
performed in New York at the Town Hall, Steinway Hall, and Carnegie Hall.
While continuing his classical studies at the High School of Music and Art
and the New York College of Music, from which he graduated in 1948, Coleman
decided to change course and pursue a career in popular music. After a stint
at Billy Reed's Little Club, he spent two years as a cocktail-lounge pianist
at the plush Sherry Netherland Hotel in Manhattan, and played piano for several
television programmes, including THEKate Smith SHOW and A DATE IN MANHATTAN.
In 1950 he appeared with his trio, and singer Margaret Phelan, in the RKO
short, PACKAGE OF RHYTHM. During the early '50s, Coleman began to play in
jazz clubs in New York and elsewhere, developing what he called a ‘kind of
bepoppy style’. By then he had been composing songs for several years. One
of his earliest collaborators was Joseph Allen McCarthy, whose father, also
named Joseph, wrote the lyrics for shows such as IRENE, KID BOOTS and RIO
RITA. One of their first efforts, The Riviera, was included several years
later on Johnny Mathis's LIVE IT UP, while I'm Gonna Laugh You Right Out
Of My Life was recorded by singer-pianist Buddy Greco. Another, Why
Try To Change Me Now?, received a memorable reading from Frank Sinatra
in 1952. In the following year Coleman contributed Tin Pan Alley to the Broadway
show JOHN MURRAY ANDERSON'S ALMANAC and, around the same time, he wrote several
songs for a Tallulah Bankhead vehicle ZIEGFELD FOLLIES, which never made
it to Broadway.
From the late '50s until 1962, Coleman had a ‘stormy’ working relationship
with lyricist Carolyn Leigh. Together they wrote several popular numbers
such as Witchcraft (Frank Sinatra), The Best Is Yet To Come
( Mabel Mercer), A Moment Of Madness ( Sammy Davis Jr.), When In
Rome (I Do As The Romans Do) ( Vikki Carr/ Barbra Streisand), You
Fascinate Me So ( Mark Murphy), Playboy's Theme, The Rules
Of The Road, It Amazes Me, I Walk A Little Faster and Firefly.
The latter was written in 1958 for Coleman and Leigh's musical based on the
memoirs of stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee. The project was later abandoned, but
the song became a hit for Tony Bennett, who was instrumental in bringing
their work before the public, and included two of their songs in his famous
Carnegie Hall concert in 1962. Two years before that, the team wrote the
music and lyrics for the Broadway musical, WILDCAT. The score included the
show-stopper What Takes My Fancy, plus That's What I Want For Janie,
Give A Little Whistle, You've Come Home, El Sombrero,
and the march, Hey, Look Me Over. The latter became a hit for Peggy
Lee. Coleman and Lee later wrote Then Is Then And Now Is Now, together.
In 1962, Coleman and Leigh were back on Broadway with LITTLE ME. THE LIBRETTO,
by Neil Simon, was based on a successful novel by Patrick Dennis, and traced
the life of Belle Poitrine. Sid Caesar played all seven of her lovers, from
the 16-year-old Noble Eggleston to the geriatric skinflint Mr Pinchley. The
score included Love You, Deep Down Inside, The Other Side
Of The Tracks, Real Live Girl and the show-stopper I've Got
Your Number. Despite a favourable reception from the critics, LITTLE
ME did not fulfil its potential, and folded after only 257 performances.
In 1964, it was acclaimed in London, where comedian and song and dance man,
Bruce Forsyth, played the lead, and a revised version was presented in the
West End in 1984, starring the UK television comic, Russ Abbott. After LITTLE
ME, Coleman and Leigh went their separate ways, collaborating briefly again
in 1964 for Pass Me By, which was sung by the British writer-performer,
Digby Wolfe, over the opening titles of the Cary Grant movie, FATHER GOOSE.
In the same year, Coleman wrote the catchy ‘Take a Little Walk’ with
Buddy Greco, before teaming with the lyricist and librettist, Dorothy Fields.
Fields was 25 years older than Coleman, with an impressive track record of
standard songs for films and shows, written with composers such as Jimmy
McHugh, Jerome Kern and Arthur Schwartz, plus the book for Irving Berlin's
smash hit musical, Annie Get Your Gun.
In 1966 the new combination had their own Broadway hit with the score for
SWEET CHARITY, a musical version of Federico Fellini's film, NIGHTS OF CABIRIA.
The accent was very much on dancing in this ‘sentimental story of a New York
dancehall hostess, and her desperate search for love’. The Coleman-Fields
score included Baby, Dream Your Dream, Big Spender, If My
Friends Could See Me Now, There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This,
Where Am I Going? and I'm A Brass Band. The show ran for 608
performances on Broadway, and for 14 months in London, where it starred Juliet
Prowse. The lead in the 1969 movie version was taken by Shirley Maclaine,
and it also featured Sammy Davis Jr. as a hippie evangelist singing The
Rhythm Of Life, and Stubby Kaye leading the ensemble in I Love To
Cry At Weddings. Coleman was nominated for an Academy Award for his musical
score. After failing to get several other projects mounted, such as a biography
of Eleanor Roosevelt and a stage adaptation of the 1939 James Stewart movie,
MR. DEEDS GOES TO WASHINGTON, Coleman and Fields were back on Broadway in
1973 with SEESAW, based on William Gibson's '50s comedy, TWO FOR THE SEESAW.
The score included Welcome To Holiday Inn, Poor Everybody Else
and the blockbusters It's Not Where You Start (It's Where You Finish)
and Nobody Does It Like Me. The latter became successful outside the
show as a cabaret number for artists such as Shirley Bassey and comedienne,
Marti Caine. After Dorothy Fields’ death in 1974, it was another three years
before Coleman returned to Broadway with I LOVE MY WIFE, with book and lyrics
by Michael Stewart. Adapted from Luis Rego's farce ‘about two suburban couples
and their bumbling attempt to engage in wife swapping’, the production ran
for 857 performances. It featured a small on-stage orchestra whose members
sang, dressed in fancy clothes, and commented on the show's action. Coleman
received the Drama Desk Award for a score which included Hey There, Good
Times, Something Wonderful I Missed, Sexually Free, Lovers
On Christmas Eve, Everybody Today Is Turning On and the title
song. Less than a year after the opening of I LOVE MY WIFE, Coleman contributed
to ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, which was based on a '30s play by Ben Hecht
and Charles MacArthur, with lyrics and libretto by Betty Comden and Adolph
Green. The production included the songs I Rise Again, Together,
Never, She's A Nut and Our Private World. The show ran
for over a year, and earned six Tony Awards, including best score of a musical.
Coleman's next project, with lyricist Barbara Fried, was HOME AGAIN, which
‘followed an Illinois family from the Depression to the Watergate scandal’.
It closed in Toronto, during April 1979, two weeks before it was set to open
on Broadway.
In complete contrast, Barnum (1980), a musical treatment of the life
of showman P.T. Barnum, was a smash hit. Coleman's music and Michael Stewart's
lyrics were ‘catchy and clever, and occasionally very beautiful’. British
actor, Jim Dale, received rave notices for his endearing performance in the
title role, which called for him to sing and be a clown, ride a unicycle,
and walk a tightrope. The part of his wife was played by Glenn Close, on
the brink of her '80s movie stardom. The score included There's A Sucker
Born Ev'ry Minute, One Brick At A Time, The Colours Of My Life
and Come Follow The Band. BARNUM ran for 854 performances and captured
three Tonys and two Grammies for the Broadway Cast album. Its subsequent
run of almost two years at the London Palladium was a triumph for Michael
Crawford. During the early '80s Coleman mounted Broadway revivals of LITTLE
ME and SWEET CHARITY which gained four Tonys, including best revival of a
play or musical. In 1988, Coleman wrote the music and lyrics, in collaboration
with A.E. Hotchner, for LET ‘EM ROT. It failed to reach New York, and when
Coleman did return to Broadway in April 1989 with WELCOME TO THE CLUB, that
show was censured by the critics, and only ran for a few performances. It
proved to be a temporary setback, for in December of that year, Coleman had
one of the biggest hits of his career with THE CITY OF ANGELS utilizing David
Zippel's lyrics, and a book by Larry Gelbart which ‘both satirized and celebrated
the film noir genre and the hard boiled detective fiction of the 1940s’.
The ‘smart, swingy, sexy and funny play’, in which Coleman ‘uses a scat singing
quartet reminiscent of the Modernaires as a roving chorus’, is like ‘listening
to YOUR HIT PARADE of 1946, except that the composer's own Broadway personality
remakes the past in his own effervescent, melodic style’. The show garnered
six Tonys, three Outer Critics Circle Awards and eight Drama Desk Awards,
among them those for best musical, best music and lyrics. The production
included the songs With Every Breath I Take, The Tennis Song,
What You Don't Know About Women, You're Nothing Without Me
and Double Talk. CITY OF ANGELS was still running at the Virginia
Theatre two years later.
Meanwhile, Coleman had turned his attention to THE WILL ROGERS FOLLIES (A
LIFE IN REVUE), which related ‘the life story of America's favourite humorist
in the style of a ZIEGFELD FOLLIES’ (1991). With Keith Carradine in the title
role, Peter Stone's book called for ‘a mutt act, a world champion roper,
four kids, 12 sisters, a ranchful of cowboys, Gregory Peck (his voice only),
and girls wearing spangles, and, of course, girls wearing not much of anything
at all’, which was put together by director-choreographer Tommy Tune. For
the lyrics to his pastiche melodies, Coleman turned again to Comden and Green
for Never Met A Man I Didn't Like, Let's Go Flying, Willamania,
It's A Boy!, The Powder Puff Ballet, Give A Man Enough Rope
and Marry Me Now/I Got You. Despite initial notices citing ‘lapses
of taste’ and ‘a paltry case for a cultural icon’, the show was still running
eight months after its May opening, and gained Tony Awards for best musical
and original score.
In parallel with his Broadway career, Coleman wrote several film scores although
they generally failed to match the critical acclaim of his stage work. His
music for FAMILY BUSINESS was termed by one critic as ‘one of the most appalling
music scores in recent memory’. Coleman's other film work included FATHER
GOOSE (1964), THE TROUBLEMAKER (1964), THE ART OF LOVE (1965), THE HEARTBREAK
KID (1972), BLAME IT ON RIO (1984), GARBO TALKS (1984) and POWER (1986).
He also worked in television, where he conceived and co-produced Shirley
Maclaine's special IF THEY COULD SEE ME NOW (1974), and produced her GYPSY
IN MY SOUL (1976), both Emmy-winning presentations. Coleman also performed
with many symphony orchestras, including those of Milwaukee, Detroit, San
Antonio, Indianapolis, and Fort Worth. Coleman was a director of ASCAP, and
a governor of the Academy of Television Arts And Sciences, and the Dramatists
Guild. He was also a member of the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the New York State Advisory Committee
on Music. His honours included the La Guardia Award for Outstanding Achievement
in Music and the Irvin Feld Humanitarian award from the National Conference
of Christians and Jews.