• A Chorus Line
• Aaron Copland
• Adolph Green
• Ahmanson Theater
• Aida (musical)
• Alan Jay Lerner
• All in the Family
• Andrew Lloyd Webber
• Annie (musical)
• Annie Warbucks
• Applause (musical)
• Betty Comden
• Big River (musical)
• Bobby Darin
• Boston Pops
• Bring Back Birdie
• Broadway theatre
• Cats (musical)
• Charles Strouse
• Charlie and Algernon
• Christopher Hampton
• Composer
• Cy Coleman
• David Diamond
• David Shaber
• David Zippel
• Don Black (lyricist)
• Drama Desk Award
• Drood
• Edward Kleban
• Elton John
• Emmy Awards
• Evita (musical)
• Falsettos
• Frank Sinatra
• Fred Ebb
• Golden Boy (musical)
• Grammy Awards
• Henry Fonda
• Herbert Kretzmer
• I and Albert
• Into the Woods
• Ishtar (film)
• Jason Robert Brown
• Jay-Z
• Jerry Herman
• John C. Reilly
• John Kander
• Jonathan Larson
• Kirk Douglas
• Lauren Bacall
• Lee Adams
• Lortel Archives
• Lynn Ahrens
• Lyricist
• Martin Charnin
• Marty (film)
• Marvin Hamlisch
• Maury Yeston
• Mayor (musical)
• Mel Brooks
• Miami
• Minsky's
• Musical theatre
• Nadia Boulanger
• New York City
• Nick & Nora
• Nine (musical)
• Opera
• Paddy Chayevsky
• Parade (musical)
• Passion (musical)
• Pete Townshend
• Rags (musical)
• Ragtime (musical)
• Rent (musical)
• Revue
• Rock musical
• Roger Miller
• Rupert Holmes
• Sammy Davis, Jr.
• Sarah Brightman
• Six (musical)
• Stephen Flaherty
• Stephen Sondheim
• Susan Birkenhead
• T. S. Eliot
• The Who's Tommy
• Tim Rice
• Titanic (musical)
• Tony Bennett
• United States
• Wikipedia Persondata
• William Finn
• 
  

• 
  Broadway theatre
  Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City. Along with London's West End theatre, Broadway theatre is widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world.
  The Broadway theatre district is a popular tourist attraction in New York. According to The Broadway League, Broadway shows sold approximately $1.081 billion worth of tickets in calendar year 2011, compared with $1.037 billion for 2010. Attendance in 2011 was 12.13 million.
  New York did not have a significant theatre presence until about 1750, when actor-managers Walter Murray and Thomas Kean established a resident theatre company at the Theatre on Nassau Street, which held about 280 people. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggar's Opera. In 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice and The Anatomist. The company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the year the 2,000-seat Park Theatre was built on Chatham Street (now called Park Row). The Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, and especially so with the arrival of the Virginia Minstrels in the 1840s.
  
  wn.com/Broadway_theatre
• 
  Miami
  Miami ( /maɪˈæmi/ or /maɪˈæmə/) is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625. The 42nd largest city proper in the United States, with a population of 408,568, it is the principal, central, and most populous city of the South Florida metropolitan area, and the most populous metropolis in the Southeastern United States. According to the US Census Bureau, Miami's metro area is the seventh most populous and fifth-largest urban area in the United States, with a population of around 5.5 million.
  Miami is a major center and a leader in finance, commerce, culture, media, entertainment, the arts, and international trade. In 2010, Miami was classified as a Alpha- World City in the World Cities Study Group’s inventory. In 2010, Miami ranked seventh in the United States in terms of finance, commerce, culture, entertainment, fashion, education, and other sectors. It ranked thirty-third among global cities. In 2008, Forbes magazine ranked Miami "America's Cleanest City", for its year-round good air quality, vast green spaces, clean drinking water, clean streets and city-wide recycling programs. According to a 2009 UBS study of 73 world cities, Miami was ranked as the richest city in the United States, and the world's fifth-richest city in terms of purchasing power. Miami is nicknamed the "Capital of Latin America", is the 2nd largest U.S. city (after El Paso) with a Spanish-speaking majority, and the largest city with a Cuban-American plurality.
  
  wn.com/Miami
• 
  New York City
  New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. The city is referred to as New York City or The City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part. As a global power city, New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. The home of the United Nations Headquarters, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural capital of the world.
  Located on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which comprises a state county. The five boroughs—The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island—were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a Census-estimated 2011 population of 8,244,910 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km²), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. The New York City Metropolitan Area's population is the United States' largest, with 18.9 million people distributed over 6,720 square miles (17,400 km²), and is also part of the most populous combined statistical area in the United States, containing 22.1 million people as of the 2010 Census.
  
  wn.com/New_York_City
• 
  United States
  The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
  At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
  
  wn.com/United_States

• 
  Aaron Copland
  Aaron Copland ( /ˌærən ˈkoʊplənd/; November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers". He is best known to the public for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately more accessible style than his earlier pieces, including the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Rodeo and his Fanfare for the Common Man. The open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are archetypical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. However, he wrote music in different styles at different periods of his life: his early works incorporated jazz or avant-garde elements whereas his later music incorporated serial techniques. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores.
  
  wn.com/Aaron_Copland
• Adolph Green
  Adolph Green (December 2, 1914  – October 23, 2002) was an American lyricist and playwright who, with long-time collaborator Betty Comden, penned the screenplays and songs for some of the most beloved movie musicals, particularly as part of Arthur Freed's production unit at MGM, during the genre's heyday. Many people thought the pair were married; they were not, but they shared a unique comic genius and sophisticated wit that enabled them to forge a six-decade-long partnership that produced some of Hollywood and Broadway's greatest hits.
  Green was born in The Bronx to Hungarian-Jewish immigrants Daniel and Helen Weiss Green. After high school, he worked as a runner on Wall Street while he tried to make it as an actor. He met Comden through mutual friends in 1938 while she was studying drama at New York University. They formed a troupe called the Revuers, which performed at the Village Vanguard, a club in Greenwich Village. Among the members of the company was a young comedian named Judy Tuvim, who later changed her name to Judy Holliday, and Green's good friend, a young musician named Leonard Bernstein, frequently accompanied them on the piano. The act's success earned them a movie offer and the Revuers traveled west in hopes of finding fame in Greenwich Village, a 1944 movie starring Carmen Miranda and Don Ameche, but their roles were so small they barely were noticed, and they quickly returned to New York.
  
  wn.com/Adolph_Green
• Alan Jay Lerner
  Alan Jay Lerner (August 31, 1918 – June 14, 1986) was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre for both the stage and on film. He won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors.
  Born in New York City, he was the son of Edith Adelson Lerner and Joseph Jay Lerner, whose brother, Samuel Alexander Lerner, was founder and owner of the Lerner Stores, a chain of dress shops. One of Lerner's cousins was the radio comedian/television game show panelist Henry Morgan. Alan Jay Lerner was educated at Bedales School in England, The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, (where he wrote "The Choate Marching Song") and Harvard. He attended both Camp Androscoggin and Camp Greylock. At both Choate and Harvard, Lerner was a classmate of John F. Kennedy; at Choate they had worked together on the yearbook staff. Like Cole Porter at Yale and Richard Rodgers at Columbia, his career in musical theater began with his collegiate contributions, in Lerner's case to the annual Harvard Hasty Pudding musicals. During the summers of 1936 and 1937, Lerner studied at Juilliard. While attending Harvard, he lost his sight in his left eye due to an accident in the boxing ring. In 1957, Lerner and Leonard Bernstein, another of Lerner's college classmates, collaborated on "Lonely Men of Harvard," a tongue-in-cheek salute to their alma mater.
  
  wn.com/Alan_Jay_Lerner
• 
  Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber Kt. (born 22 March 1948) is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre.
  Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.
  Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats.
  
  wn.com/Andrew_Lloyd_Webber
• Betty Comden
  Betty Comden (May 3, 1917 – November 23, 2006) was one-half of the musical-comedy duo Comden and Green, who provided lyrics, libretti, and screenplays to some of the most beloved and successful Hollywood musicals and Broadway shows of the mid-20th century. Her writing partnership with Adolph Green lasted for six decades, during which time they collaborated with other leading entertainment figures such as the famed "Freed Unit" at MGM, Jule Styne and Leonard Bernstein.
  Betty Comden was born Basya Cohen in New York City, attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, and studied drama at New York University. In 1938, mutual friends introduced her to Adolph Green, an aspiring actor. Along with the young Judy Holliday and Leonard Bernstein, Comden and Green formed a troupe called the Revuers, which performed at the Village Vanguard, a club in Greenwich Village. Due to the act's success, the Revuers appeared in the 1944 film Greenwich Village, but their roles were so small they barely were noticed, and they quickly returned to New York.
  
  wn.com/Betty_Comden
• 
  Bobby Darin
  Bobby Darin (born Walden Robert Cassotto; May 14, 1936 – December 20, 1973) was an American singer who performed in a range of music genres, including pop, rock, jazz, folk, and country.
  He started as a songwriter for Connie Francis, and recorded his own first million-seller "Splish Splash" in 1958. This was followed by "Dream Lover", "Mack the Knife" and "Beyond the Sea", which brought him world fame. In 1962, he won a Golden Globe for his first film Come September, co-starring his wife Sandra Dee.
  Through the 1960s he became more political, and worked on Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign, being present on the night of his assassination. This affected him and sent him into a period of seclusion.
  Although he made a successful television comeback, his health was starting to fail, as he had always expected, following bouts of rheumatic fever in childhood. This knowledge had always spurred him on to exploit his musical talent while still young. He died at 37, following a heart operation in Los Angeles.
  
  wn.com/Bobby_Darin
• Charles Strouse
  Charles Strouse (born June 7, 1928) is an American composer and lyricist.
  Strouse was born and raised in New York City, the son of Ira and Ethel (Newman) Strouse. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Strouse studied under David Diamond, Aaron Copland and Nadia Boulanger.
  Strouse's first Broadway musical was the 1960 hit Bye Bye Birdie, with lyrics by Lee Adams, who would become his long time collaborator. Strouse won his first Tony Award for best score for this musical, which is considered the precursor of the rock musical. Strouse's next show, All American, with a book by Mel Brooks and lyrics by Adams, came in 1962 and produced the standard “Once Upon a Time” (recorded by Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Bobby Darin, among others). Following this was Golden Boy (1964, also with Adams), starring Sammy Davis, Jr. and It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman (1966, based on the popular comic strip) which introduced the song "You've Got Possibilities" sung by Linda Lavin.
  In 1970, Applause (starring Lauren Bacall, with book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and lyrics by Adams) won Strouse his second Tony Award. In 1977, Strouse adapted another comic strip for the stage, creating the hit Annie, which garnered him his third Tony Award and two Grammy Awards. Other Strouse musicals include Charlie and Algernon (1979), Dance a Little Closer (1983, with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner), Rags (1986), Nick & Nora (1993), and An American Tragedy (1995, with lyrics by David Shaber). Strouse also wrote a number of musical revues, many with Adams.
  
  wn.com/Charles_Strouse
• Christopher Hampton
  Christopher James Hampton, CBE, FRSL (born 26 January 1946) is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement.
  Hampton was born in Faial, Azores, to British parents Dorothy Patience (née Herrington) and Bernard Patrick Hampton, a marine telecommunications engineer for Cable & Wireless. His father's job led the family to subsequently settle in Aden and Alexandria in Egypt and later Hong Kong and Zanzibar. The Suez Crisis in 1956 necessitated that the family flee under cover of darkness, leaving their possessions behind.
  After a prep school at Reigate, Hampton went to the independent boarding school Lancing College at the age of 13, where he won house colours for boxing and distinguished himself as a sergeant in the CCF. Fellow dramatist David Hare was a school contemporary; poet Harry Guest was a teacher.
  
  wn.com/Christopher_Hampton
• 
  Cy Coleman
  Cy Coleman (June 14, 1929 - November 18, 2004) was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.
  He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida (née Prizent) was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason. He was a child prodigy who gave piano recitals at Steinway Hall, Town Hall, and Carnegie Hall between the ages of six and nine. Before beginning his fabled Broadway career, he led the Cy Coleman Trio, which made many recordings and was a much-in-demand club attraction.
  Despite the early classical and jazz success, he decided to build a career in popular music. His first collaborator was Joseph Allen McCarthy, but his most successful early partnership, albeit a turbulent one, was with Carolyn Leigh. The pair wrote many pop hits, including "Witchcraft" and "The Best Is Yet To Come." One of his instrumentals, "Playboy's Theme," became the signature music of the regular TV shows and specials presented by Playboy, and remains synonymous with the magazine and its creator, Hugh Hefner.
  
  wn.com/Cy_Coleman
• David Shaber
  David Shaber (1929 - November 4, 1999) was an American screenwriter and theatre producer, best known for writing The Warriors, Nighthawks, and Flight of the Intruder. He also wrote the final draft, though uncredited, for the John McTiernan film The Hunt for Red October.
  Shaber was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and abandoned a pre-med education for the Yale Drama School. He wrote and produced plays, and also wrote forty commissioned screenplays, eight of which were made into feature films, in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, he taught advanced screenwriting at Columbia University in New York City.
  Shaber has two daughters, Remy Shaber (dancer) and Sam Shaber (musician).
  He died on November 4, 1999 at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan of an aneurysm, at age 70.
  
  wn.com/David_Shaber
• David Zippel
  David Joel Zippel (born May 17, 1954) is an American musical theatre lyricist.
  Zippel was born in Easton, Pennsylvania. He is a 1976 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. While there, he wrote a "bizarre political musical" called Rotunda. He had intended on going to Harvard Law School to become a theatrical lawyer, but when he met Wally Harper (at the time Barbara Cook's accompanist and was in need of a lyricist, Zippel offered his services. Two of the songs they wrote together were used when Cook sang at Carnegie Hall. According to his official biography, "he is delighted not to practice law."^{[citation needed]}
  He also wrote the theme song to Veronica's Closet.
  His theatrical credits include:
  Zippel contributed lyrics to The Swan Princess (music by Lex de Azevedo, the song Far Longer than Forever was nominated for a Golden Globe Award), as well as provided the singing voice of Jean-Bob the Frog, and more notably wrote the lyrics for the Disney films Hercules, with music by Alan Menken (the song "Go the Distance" received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song) and Mulan, with music by Matthew Wilder. The music and lyrics received an Academy Award nomination for Best Musical or Comedy Score. A year later, Zippel collaborated with Phil Collins for Tarzan. He was in his agent Richard Kraft's film Finding Kraftland.
  
  wn.com/David_Zippel
• Edward Kleban
  Edward “Ed” Kleban (April 30, 1939 - December 28, 1987) was an American musical theatre composer and lyricist.
  Kleban was born in the Bronx, New York in 1939 and graduated from New York's High School of Music & Art and Columbia University, where he attended with future playwright Terrance McNally. Kleban is best known as lyricist of the Broadway hit A Chorus Line. He and composer Marvin Hamlisch won the 1976 Tony Award for Best Original Score, and he shared the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1976 with Hamlisch and three other contributors to the musical. The one-woman Phyllis Newman show, The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979), featured a few tunes with his lyrics. For several years he worked at Columbia Records, where he produced albums by performers as diverse as Igor Stravinsky and Percy Faith and the album for the Off-Broadway musical Now Is The Time For All Good Men.
  He was a teacher for many years at the BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated) Musical Theater Workshop.
  In his will, Kleban established the Kleban Foundation which grants annual awards, each in the amount of $100,000 over two years, to the most promising librettist and lyricist in American musical theatre. The awards are administered by BMI. His will also granted rights to his collection of unpublished songs to friends Avery Corman and Wendy Wasserstein with the request that they incorporate them into a new musical. Their attempts failed and the rights reverted to Kleban's longtime companion, librettist Linda Kline. Kline sought someone who did not know or work with Kleban, but who would learn about him through the material. She admired previous work of Lonny Price and sought him as a collaborator.
  
  wn.com/Edward_Kleban
• 
  Elton John
  Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947) is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor. He has worked with lyricist Bernie Taupin as his songwriter partner since 1967; they have collaborated on more than 30 albums to date.
  In his four-decade career John has sold more than 250 million records, making him one of the most successful artists of all time. His single "Candle in the Wind 1997" has sold over 33 million copies worldwide, and is the best selling single in Billboard history. He has more than 50 Top 40 hits, including seven consecutive No. 1 US albums, 56 Top 40 singles, 16 Top 10, four No. 2 hits, and nine No. 1 hits. He has won six Grammy Awards, four Brit Awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Tony Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him Number 49 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time.
  John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Having been named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1996, John received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for "services to music and charitable services" in 1998.
  
  wn.com/Elton_John
• 
  Frank Sinatra
  Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra,  /sɨˈnɑːtrə/, (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and film actor.
  Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the "bobby soxers", he released his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra in 1946. His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1953 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity.
  He signed with Capitol Records in 1953 and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records in 1961 (finding success with albums such as Ring-a-Ding-Ding!, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".
  
  wn.com/Frank_Sinatra
• Fred Ebb
  Fred Ebb (April 8, 1928 – September 11, 2004) was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.
  Ebb was born in Manhattan to a Jewish family, the son of Anna Evelyn (née Gritz) and Harry Ebb. He worked during the early 1950s bronzing baby shoes, as a trucker's assistant, and was also employed in a department store credit office and at a hosiery company. He graduated from New York University with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, and also earned his Master’s Degree in English from Columbia University.
  One of his early collaborators was Phil Springer, and a song they wrote together ("I Never Loved Him Anyhow") was recorded by Carmen McRae in 1956. Another song Ebb wrote with Springer was "Heartbroken" (1953), which was recorded by Judy Garland, the mother of his future protégée, Liza Minnelli. Other Springer-Ebb tunes include "Moonlight Gambler" and "Nevertheless I Never Lost the Blues". "Don't Forget", which he wrote with Norman Leyden, was recorded by singer Eddy Arnold in 1954.
  
  wn.com/Fred_Ebb
• 
  Henry Fonda
  Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American film and stage actor.
  Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins. He made his Hollywood debut in 1935, and his career gained momentum after his Academy Award-nominated performance as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, a 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl. Throughout six decades in Hollywood, Fonda cultivated a strong, appealing screen image in such classics as The Ox-Bow Incident, Mister Roberts and 12 Angry Men. Later, Fonda moved both toward darker epics as Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and lighter roles in family comedies like Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball.
  Fonda was the patriarch of a family of famous actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda, and grandson Troy Garity. His family and close friends called him "Hank". In 1999, he was named the sixth-Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.
  
  wn.com/Henry_Fonda
• Herbert Kretzmer
  Herbert Kretzmer OBE (born 5 October 1925) is a South African-born English journalist and lyric writer. He is perhaps best known as the lyricist for the English-language musical adaptation of Les Misérables.
  Kretzmer began his professional career writing documentary films and the commentary for a weekly cinema newsreel. However, he soon moved on to print journalism, initially as a reporter and feature writer for the Johannesburg Sunday Express. He relocated to London in the mid-1950s and pursued twin careers as journalist and lyric writer.
  After several years as a feature writer on the Daily Sketch, Kretzmer became a profile writer on the Sunday Dispatch and the Daily Express, interviewing John Steinbeck, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Sugar Ray Robinson, Louis Armstrong, Henry Miller, Cary Grant and Duke Ellington. In 1962, he became senior drama critic of the Daily Express: a post he held for 18 years, covering about 3,000 first nights.
  From 1979 to 1987, he wrote television criticism for the Daily Mail, winning in this capacity two national press awards, including TV Critic Of The Year.
  
  wn.com/Herbert_Kretzmer
• Jason Robert Brown
  Jason Robert Brown (born June 20, 1970 in Ossining, New York) is an American musical theater composer, lyricist, and playwright. Brown's music sensibility fuses pop-rock stylings with theatrical lyrics. An accomplished pianist, Brown has often served as music director, conductor, orchestrator, and pianist for his own productions.
  Brown grew up in the suburbs of New York City, and attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York for 2 years. During summer, he attended French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts in Hancock, New York. He said Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Sunday in the Park with George were two of his biggest influences, and had it not been for them, he would have joined a rock band and tried to be Billy Joel.
  When Brown was 23, he and a friend were invited to see Stephen Sondheim's show Passion by Sondheim himself. Brown's friend, whom he refers to only as "Franz Liszt", wrote to Sondheim, and that is how they both got the tickets. Sondheim also invited them to dinner afterward. At the show, they sat in front of the New York Times' Frank Rich. They went to dinner, and after twenty minutes, Sondheim asked them what they thought of the show: they both were silent. Brown described the dinner after that moment as "many extremely awkward silences punctuated by bursts of frantic, desperate conversation about anything other than the slaughtered elephant in the room." Brown called mutual friend Daisy Prince the next day, asking if there might be any way to repair the damage after the dinner. She and her family decided that Brown should call Sondheim. Brown paraphrased what Sondheim said:
  
  wn.com/Jason_Robert_Brown
• 
  Jerry Herman
  Jerry Herman (born July 10, 1931) is an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. He has been nominated for the Tony Award five times, and won twice, for Hello, Dolly! and La Cage aux Folles. In 2009, Herman received the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. He is a recipient of the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors.
  
  wn.com/Jerry_Herman
• John Kander
  John Harold Kander (born March 18, 1927) is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.
  Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice (née Aaron) and Harold S. Kander. Kander attended The Pembroke Country-Day School and Oberlin College before earning a Master's degree at Columbia University where he was a protégé of Douglas Moore and studied composition with Jack Beeson.
  Kander began his Broadway career as substitute rehearsal pianist for West Side Story. The stage manager for West Side Story then asked Kander to play the auditions for her next show, Gypsy. During the auditions, Kander met the choreographer, Jerome Robbins, who suggested that Kander compose the dance music for the show in 1959. After that experience, he wrote dance arrangements for Irma la Douce in 1960.
  His first produced musical was A Family Affair, written with James and William Goldman. He met lyricist Fred Ebb in 1962 and began a songwriting collaboration that would last for more than four decades. Later that year rising star Barbra Streisand recorded two of the duo's songs, "My Coloring Book" and "I Don't Care Much." In 1965, Kander and Ebb landed their first show on Broadway, Flora the Red Menace, produced by Hal Prince, directed by George Abbott, and with book by George Abbott and Robert Russell,^{[disambiguation needed ]} in which Liza Minnelli made her initial Broadway appearance. Kander and Ebb have since been associated with writing material for both Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera, and have produced special material for their appearances live and on television.
  
  wn.com/John_Kander
• Jonathan Larson
  Jonathan Larson (February 4, 1960 – January 25, 1996) was an American composer and playwright noted for the serious social issues of multiculturalism, addiction, and homophobia explored in his work. Typical examples of his use of these themes are found in his works, Rent and tick, tick... BOOM!. He received three posthumous Tony Awards and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the rock opera Rent.
  Larson was born to Jewish parents, Allan and Nanette Larson, in White Plains, New York. He was exposed to the performing arts, especially music and theatre from an early age, as he played the trumpet, tuba, was involved in his school's choir, and took formal piano lessons. His early musical influences were his favorite rock musicians such as Elton John, The Beatles, The Doors, The Who, and Billy Joel, as well as the classic composers of musical theatre, especially Stephen Sondheim. Larson was also involved in acting in high school, performing in lead roles in various productions at White Plains High School.
  
  wn.com/Jonathan_Larson
• 
  Kirk Douglas
  Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch, Russian: И́сер Даниело́вич; December 9, 1916) is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past (1947), Champion (1949), Ace in the Hole (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Lust for Life (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Spartacus (1960), and Lonely Are the Brave (1962).
  He is No.17 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time, making him the highest-ranked living person on the list. In 1996, he received the Academy Honorary Award "for 50 years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community."
  Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam, New York, the son of Bryna "Bertha" (née Sanglel) and Herschel "Harry" Danielovitch, a businessman. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Gomel, Belarus. His father's brother, who emigrated earlier, used the surname Demsky, which Douglas's family adopted in the United States. In addition to their surname, his parents also changed their given names to Harry and Bertha. Douglas grew up as Izzy Demsky and legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas before entering the Navy during World War II.
  
  wn.com/Kirk_Douglas
• 
  Lauren Bacall
  Lauren Bacall ( /ˌlɔrən bəˈkɔːl/; born Betty Joan Perske, September 16, 1924) is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.
  She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not (1944) and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in Bogart movies The Big Sleep (1946) and Dark Passage (1947), as well as a comedienne in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Marilyn Monroe and Designing Woman (1957) with Gregory Peck. Bacall has also worked on Broadway in musicals, gaining Tony Awards for Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981. Her performance in the movie The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination.
  In 1999, Bacall was ranked #20 of the 25 actresses on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars list by the American Film Institute. In 2009, she was selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Academy Honorary Award "in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures."
  
  wn.com/Lauren_Bacall
• Lee Adams
  Lee Richard Adams (born August 14, 1924) is an American lyricist best known for his musical theatre collaboration with Charles Strouse.
  Born in Mansfield, Ohio, Adams received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Ohio State University and a Master's from Columbia University.
  Adams won Tony Awards in 1961 for Bye Bye Birdie and in 1970 for Applause. In addition, he wrote the lyrics for All American, Golden Boy, It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman, Bring Back Birdie, and A Broadway Musical, and the book and lyrics for Ain't Broadway Grand. Additionally, Strouse and Adams co-wrote "Those Were the Days", the opening theme to the TV situation comedy All in the Family.
  Adams was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Lee_Adams
• Lynn Ahrens
  Lynn Ahrens (born October 1, 1948) is an American writer and lyricist for the musical theatre, television and film. She has collaborated with Stephen Flaherty for many years. She won the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for the Broadway musical Ragtime and was nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for the animated Twentieth Century Fox film "Anastasia." She is a mainstay writer for ABC-TV's "Schoolhouse Rock."
  Ahrens was born in New York City, graduated from Neptune High School on the Jersey shore, and graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Journalism and English. She is Jewish. She began a career in advertising as a copywriter but was invited to work on a children's television show, and began writing songs for "Schoolhouse Rock". She subsequently worked as a freelance composer and singer of commercial music, and wrote and produced shows for children's television. She began writing for the musical theater in 1982.
  Ahrens met Stephen Flaherty at the BMI Workshop in 1982 and they started working together the following year. Their first musical together was Lucky Stiff, which premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in April 1988. Their next musical was Once on This Island, which premiered on Broadway in 1990 and which was nominated for eight Tony Awards. My Favorite Year opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in Lincoln Center in October 1992 but ran for only 36 performances.
  
  wn.com/Lynn_Ahrens
• Martin Charnin
  Martin Charnin (born November 24, 1934) is an American lyricist, writer, and theatre director. Charnin's best-known work is as conceiver, director and lyricist of the hit musical Annie.
  Born in New York City, he graduated from The High School of Music & Art and then from The Cooper Union, where he got his BFA. Charnin began his theatrical career as a performer, appearing as "Big Deal", one of the Jets in the original production of West Side Story. He played the role for 1000 performances on Broadway and on the road. After completing his duties in West Side Story, he wrote music and lyrics for numerous off-Broadway and Cabaret revues, many of them for Julius Monk. He then went on to write, direct, and produce nightclub acts for Dionne Warwick, Nancy Wilson, Mary Travers, Larry Kert, Jose Ferrer, and Leslie Uggams. His first Broadway musical was in 1963, as the lyricist for Hot Spot starring Judy Holliday, with music by Mary Rodgers.
  
  wn.com/Martin_Charnin
• 
  Marvin Hamlisch
  Marvin Frederick Hamlisch (born June 2, 1944) is an American composer. He is one of only eleven people to have been awarded Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and a Tony. He is also one of only two people to have won those four prizes and also a Pulitzer Prize (the other is Richard Rodgers). Hamlisch has also won two Golden Globes.
  Hamlisch was born in New York City to Viennese Jewish parents: Lilly Schachter and Max Hamlisch. His father was an accordionist and bandleader. Hamlisch was a child prodigy, and by age five he began mimicking music he heard on the radio on the piano. A few months before he turned seven, in 1951, he was accepted into what is now the Juilliard School Pre-College Division. His first job was as a rehearsal pianist for Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand. Shortly after that, he was hired by producer Sam Spiegel to play piano at Spiegel's parties. This connection led to his first film score, The Swimmer. His favorite musicals growing up were My Fair Lady, Gypsy, West Side Story, and Bye Bye Birdie.
  
  wn.com/Marvin_Hamlisch
• Maury Yeston
  Maury Yeston (born October 23, 1945) is an American composer, lyricist, educator and musicologist.
  He is known for writing the music and lyrics to Broadway musicals, including Nine in 1982, and Titanic in 1997, both of which won Tony Awards for best musical and best score. He also won a Drama Desk Award for Nine. Yeston also wrote a significant amount of the music and most of the lyrics to the Tony-nominated musical Grand Hotel in 1989, which was nominated for best score. His musical version of the novel The Phantom of the Opera called Phantom (not to be confused with Andrew Lloyd Webber's version) has enjoyed numerous productions in the U.S. and around the world. He has also written a number of other Off-Broadway musicals, a song cycle, a Cello Concerto, and other pieces.
  Yeston serves on the Board of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is also President of the Kleban Foundation, serves on the editorial boards of Musical Quarterly and the Kurt Weill Foundation Publication Project and on the advisory board of the Yale University Press Broadway Series. He was the Director of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop in New York City for two decades beginning in 1982.
  
  wn.com/Maury_Yeston
• 
  Mel Brooks
  Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminsky; June 28, 1926) is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows. He became well known as part of the comedy duo with Carl Reiner, The 2000 Year Old Man. In middle age he became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films being among the top ten money makers of the year that they were released. His most well known films include The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, History of the World, Part I and Spaceballs. More recently he has had a smash hit on Broadway with the musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers. He was married to the actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005.
  Brooks is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award. Three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of all-time: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13.
  
  wn.com/Mel_Brooks
• 
  Nadia Boulanger
  (Juliette) Nadia Boulanger ([ʒy.ljɛt na.dja bu.lɑ̃.ʒe]; 16 September 1887 – 22 October 1979) was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century.
  From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger sister Lili, she gave up composing and became a teacher. In that capacity she influenced generations of young composers, including many from the U.S., beginning with Aaron Copland. Among her other students were those who became leading soloists and conductors, including John Eliot Gardiner, Dinu Lipatti, Igor Markevitch and Ástor Piazzolla.
  Boulanger taught in the U.S. and in England, working with music academies including the Juilliard School, the Yehudi Menuhin School, the Longy School, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, but her principal base for most of her life was her family's flat in Paris, where she taught for most of the seven decades from the start of her career until her death at the age of 92.
  
  wn.com/Nadia_Boulanger
• 
  Pete Townshend
  Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend (born 19 May 1945) is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, as well as for his own solo career. His career with The Who spans more than 40 years, during which time the band grew to be considered one of the most influential bands of the 1960s and 1970s, and, according to Eddie Vedder, "possibly the greatest live band ever."
  Townshend is the primary songwriter for The Who, having written well over 100 songs for the band's 11 studio albums, including concept albums and the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia, plus popular rock and roll radio staples like Who's Next, and dozens more that appeared as non-album singles, bonus tracks on reissues, and tracks on rarities compilations like Odds & Sods. He has also written over 100 songs that have appeared on his solo albums, as well as radio jingles and television theme songs. Although known primarily as a guitarist, he also plays other instruments such as keyboards, banjo, accordion, synthesiser, bass guitar and drums, on his own solo albums, several Who albums, and as a guest contributor to a wide array of other artists' recordings. Townshend has never had formal lessons in any of the instruments he plays.
  
  wn.com/Pete_Townshend
• Roger Miller
  Roger Dean Miller (January 2, 1936 – October 25, 1992) was an American singer, songwriter, musician and actor, best known for his honky tonk-influenced novelty songs. His most recognized tunes included the chart-topping country/pop hits "King of the Road", "Dang Me" and "England Swings", all from the mid-1960s Nashville sound era.
  After growing up in Oklahoma and serving in the United States Army, Miller began his musical career as a songwriter in the late 1950s, penning such hits as "Billy Bayou" and "Home" for Jim Reeves and "Invitation to the Blues" for Ray Price. He later started a recording career and reached the peak of his fame in the late-1960s, but continued to record and tour into the 1990s, charting his final top 20 country hit "Old Friends" with Willie Nelson in 1982. Later in his life, he wrote the music and lyrics for the 1985 Tony-award winning Broadway musical Big River, in which he also acted.
  Miller died from lung cancer in 1992, and was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame three years later. His songs continued to be recorded by younger artists, with covers of "Tall, Tall Trees" by Alan Jackson and "Husbands and Wives" by Brooks & Dunn, each reaching the number one spot on country charts in the 1990s. The Roger Miller Museum in his home town serves as a tribute to Miller.
  
  wn.com/Roger_Miller
• Rupert Holmes
  Rupert Holmes (born February 24, 1947) is an English-born American composer, singer-songwriter, musician and author of plays, novels and stories. He is best known for his number one pop hit "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" (1979/1980) and the song "Him", which reached the number 6 position on the Hot 100 U.S. pop chart in 1980. He is also known for his 1985 Tony Award-winning musical Drood (originally The Mystery of Edwin Drood) and his 2007 Drama Desk Award-winning book for the Broadway musical Curtains, and for his television series Remember WENN.
  Holmes was born David Goldstein in Northwich, Cheshire, England. His father, Leonard Goldstein, was a United States Army Warrant Officer and bandleader, his mother, Gwen, was English, and both were musical. Holmes has dual American and British citizenship. The family moved when Holmes was six years old to the northern New York City suburb of Nanuet, New York, where Holmes grew up and attended nearby Nyack High School and then the Manhattan School of Music (majoring in clarinet). Holmes' brother, Richard, is an opera singer based in New York City and is the principal lyric baritone of the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, sings roles with regional opera companies, such as Glimmerglass Opera, Lake George, and Virginia Opera, among others, and has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera.
  
  wn.com/Rupert_Holmes
• 
  Sarah Brightman
  Sarah Brightman (born 14 August 1960) is an English classical crossover soprano, actress, songwriter and dancer. She is famous for possessing a vocal range of over 3 octaves. She sings in many languages including English, Spanish, French, Latin, German, Italian, Russian, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.
  Brightman began her career as a member of the dance troupe Hot Gossip and released several disco singles as a solo performer. In 1981, she made her West End musical theatre debut in Cats and met composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, whom she married. She went on to star in several Broadway musicals, including The Phantom of the Opera, where she originated the role of Christine Daaé. The Original London Cast Album of the musical was released in CD format in 1987 and sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it the biggest-selling cast album of all time.
  After retiring from the stage and divorcing Lloyd Webber, Brightman resumed her music career with former Enigma producer Frank Peterson, this time as a classical crossover artist. She is often credited as the creator of this genre and remains among the most prominent performers, with worldwide sales of more than 30 million records and 2 million DVDs, establishing herself as the world's best-selling soprano of all time. Her duet with the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, "Time To Say Goodbye", topped charts all over Europe and became the highest and fastest selling single of all time in Germany, where it stayed at the top of the charts for fourteen consecutive weeks and sold over 3 million copies. It subsequently became an international success selling 12 million copies worldwide. She has now collected over 180 gold and platinum sales awards in 38 different countries. In 2010 she was named by Billboard the 5th most influential and top-selling classical artist of the 2000s decade in the US.
  
  wn.com/Sarah_Brightman
• Stephen Flaherty
  Stephen Flaherty (born September 18, 1960) is an American composer of musical theatre. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens. They are best known for writing the Broadway musicals Once on This Island, which was nominated for eight Tony Awards, Seussical , which was nominated for the Grammy Award and Ragtime, which was nominated for twelve Tony Awards and won Best Original Score. Flaherty was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards with Lynn Ahrens for his songs and song score for the animated film musical Anastasia.
  Flaherty was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began studying piano at the age of seven. When he was twelve he knew he wanted to write musicals and by age fourteen he had already composed his first musical score. He attended South Hills Catholic High School in Pittsburgh and later studied musical composition and piano at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, graduating in 1982. He did additional graduate studies in Musical Theater at New York University.
  
  wn.com/Stephen_Flaherty
• Stephen Sondheim
  Stephen Joshua Sondheim ( /ˈsɒnd.haɪm/) (born March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist known for his contributions to musical theatre. He is the winner of an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award. Described by Frank Rich of the New York Times as "the greatest, and perhaps best-known artist working in musical theatre", his most famous works include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy.
  Sondheim has also written material for movies, including the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds, contributing the song "Goodbye For Now". He also wrote five songs for the 1990 movie Dick Tracy, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", which won the Academy Award for Best Song.
  
  wn.com/Stephen_Sondheim
• Susan Birkenhead
  Susan Birkenhead is an American lyricist.
  Birkenhead made her Broadway debut as one of a team of songwriters contributing to Working (1978), for which she received her first Tony Award nomination. Her second was earned for Jelly's Last Jam (1992), which won her the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics and a Grammy Award nomination. Additional Broadway credits include Triumph of Love (Drama Desk nomination) and additional lyrics for the Cole Porter tunes in the 1998 revival of High Society.
  Birkenhead's off-Broadway and regional theatre credits include What About Luv?, a musical adaptation of the Murray Schisgal play Luv, for which she won the Outer Critics Circle Award; Pieces of Eight with Jule Styne and Michael Stewart; Fanny Hackabout Jones with Erica Jong and Lucy Simon; The Night They Raided Minsky's with Charles Strouse and Evan Hunter, the new musical Minsky's based on the same; and, in collaboration with Henry Krieger, two potentially Broadway-bound projects based on hit films, The Flamingo Kid and Moonstruck (with a book by screenwriter John Patrick Shanley).
  
  wn.com/Susan_Birkenhead
• Tim Rice
  Sir Timothy Miles Bindon "Tim" Rice (born 10 November 1944) is a British lyricist and author. An Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Tony Award and Grammy Award-winning lyricist, Rice is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, and additional songs for the 2011 West End revival of The Wizard of Oz, and for his work for Walt Disney Studios with Alan Menken (Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, King David), Elton John (The Lion King, Aida) and Ennio Morricone.
  Rice was born at Shardeloes, an historic English country house near Amersham, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom that was requisitioned as a maternity hospital during World War II. His father, Hugh Gordon Rice, served with the Eighth Army and reached the rank of major during World War II, whilst his mother, Joan Odette (née Bawden), served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) as a photographic interpreter. After the war, they worked for the de Havilland aircraft company.
  
  wn.com/Tim_Rice
• 
  Tony Bennett
  Anthony Dominick Benedetto, better known as Tony Bennett (born August 3, 1926), is an American singer of popular music, standards, show tunes, and jazz. Bennett is also a serious and accomplished painter, having created works — under the name Benedetto — that are on permanent public display in several institutions. He is the founder of Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in New York City.
  Raised in New York City, Bennett began singing at an early age. He fought in the final stages of World War II as an infantryman with the U.S. Army in the European Theatre. Afterwards, he developed his singing technique, signed with Columbia Records, and had his first number one popular song with "Because of You" in 1951. Several top hits such as "Rags to Riches" followed in the early 1950s. Bennett then further refined his approach to encompass jazz singing. He reached an artistic peak in the late 1950s with albums such as The Beat of My Heart and Basie Swings, Bennett Sings. In 1962, Bennett recorded his signature song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco". His career and his personal life then suffered an extended downturn during the height of the rock music era.
  
  wn.com/Tony_Bennett
• Wikipedia Persondata
  wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata
• William Finn
  William Alan Finn (b. February 28, 1952, Boston, Massachusetts) is an American composer and lyricist of musicals. His musical Falsettos received the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Music and Lyrics and for Best Book.
  Finn, who is Jewish, grew up in Natick, Massachusetts with his parents and siblings, Michael and Nancy. He majored in music at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. When he graduated, he received the Hutchinson Fellowship (a musical composition award). He is also Adjunct Faculty Composer/Lyricist at New York University.
  In 1992, Finn suffered deteriorating vision, dizziness and partial paralysis and was rushed to the hospital. He had arteriovenous malformation, or AVM, in his brain stem. In September, 1992, he had Gamma Knife surgery, which obliterated the AVM. After the surgery, Finn experienced a year of humbled serenity and constantly felt like he had a "new brain." Finn's 2002 musical A New Brain is based on his experience with AVM and his subsequent successful surgery. He lives with his life partner in New York City and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he is a composer and writer. Besides composing for the stage and screen, Finn is member of the NYU Tisch Graduate Program in Musical Theater Writing faculty and he has been the Artistic Head of the Musical Theater Lab at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts for the past four years.
  
  wn.com/William_Finn

• Obertura
• Tal vez
• Esto no es vivir
• Manana
• Vivimos en chabolas
• Huerfanas
• Me gustara vivir aqui
• Nueva york
• Crème de la crème
• No seras huerfana nunca jamas
• Entreacto
• No vestiras del todo bien sin sonreir
• Manana de la casa blanca
• Algo faltaba
• Te necesito solo a ti annie
• Feliz navidad
• Saludos
• Esto no es Vivir / Rap

• Overture
• Backstage Babble
• Think How It's Gonna Be
• But Alive
• The Best Night of My Life
• Who's That Girl?
• Applause
• Hurry Back
• Fasten Your Seat Belts
• Welcome to the Theatre
• Good Friends
• She's No Longer a Gypsy
• One of a King
• One Hallowe'en
• Something Greater
• Finale
• Applause
• The Loneliest Man in Town
• Smashing N.Y. Times
• God Bless

• Overture
• Maybe
• It's the Hard Knock Life
• Tomorrow
• Hooverville
• Little Girls
• I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here
• NYC
• Easy Street
• Fully Dressed (Children)
• Something Was Missing
• I Don't Need Anything but You
• Maybe 2
• It's the Hard Knock Life 2
• Tomorrow 2
• Hooverville 2
• Little Girls 2
• I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here 2
• NYC 2
• Easy Street 2
• Fully Dressed (Children) 2
• Something Was Missing 2
• I Don't Need Anything but You 2

• Overture
• Maybe
• The Hard-Knock Life
• The Hard-Knock Life (reprise)
• Tomorrow
• Little Girls
• I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here
• NYC
• NYC (reprise) / Lullaby
• Easy Street
• You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile (radio version)
• You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile (cast version)
• Something Was Missing
• I Don't Need Anything but You
• Maybe / Tomorrow (reprise)
• Little Girls (reprise)
• Finale / I Don't Need Anything but You

• Overture
• Maybe
• It's the Hard-Knock Life
• Tomorrow
• We'd Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover
• Little Girls
• I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here
• N.Y.C.
• Easy Street
• You Won't Be an Orphan for Long
• You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile
• Tomorrow (reprise)
• Something Was Missing
• I Don't Need Anything but You
• Annie
• A New Deal for Christmas
• Introductory Remarks
• Apples
• Lead-In and Song: We Got Annie
• Lead-In: Just Wait
• Just Wait
• Lead-In: That's the Way It Goes
• That's the Way It Goes
• Lead-In: Parents
• Parents
• Lead-In and Song: I've Never Been So Happy
• Tomorrow (First Public Performance)

• Overture
• Melt Us
• What a Country!
• Our Children
• We Speak the Same Language
• It's Fun to Think
• Once Upon a Time
• Nightlife
• I've Just Seen Her
• Physical Fitness / The Fight Song
• I Couldn't Have Done It Alone
• If I Were You
• Have a Dream!
• I'm Fascinating
• The Real Me
• Which Way?
• Finale

• Overture
• Greenhorns
• Brand New World
• Children of the Wind
• Penny a Tune
• Easy for You
• Hard to Be a Prince
• Blame It on the Summer Night
• For My Mary
• Rags
• What's Wrong With That?
• Nothing Will Hurt Us Again
• Entr'acte
• Cherry Street Cafe
• Yankee Boy
• Uptown
• Wanting
• Three Sunny Rooms
• The Sound of Love
• Kaddish
• Bread and Freedom / Dancing With the Fools
• Finale

• Overture
• Greenhorns
• Brand New World
• Children of the Wind
• Penny a Tune
• Easy for You
• Hard to Be a Prince
• Blame It on the Summer Night
• For My Mary
• Rags
• What's Wrong With That?
• Nothing Will Hurt Us Again
• Entr'acte
• Cherry Street Cafe
• Yankee Boy
• Uptown
• Wanting
• Three Sunny Rooms
• The Sound of Love
• Kaddish
• Bread and Freedom / Dancing With the Fools
• Finale

• [announcements]
• Overture
• [opening]
• We Need Him
• Doing Good
• [dialogue]
• Superman
• [dialogue]
• We Don't Matter At All
• [dialogue]
• Revenge
• [dialogue]
• Woman for the Man
• [dialogue]
• You've Got Possibilities
• [dialogue]
• What I've Always Wanted
• [dialogue]
• Newsreel
• [dialogue]
• Revenge (reprise)
• [dialogue]
• Thanks To You
• [act one finale]

• Deep Night
• Foggy Mountain Breakdown (instrumental)
• Sometimes I'm Happy
• Bouquet in Heaven
• Cora Is Gone
• I Ain't Much of a Lover Boy
• Doin' My Time
• The Gold Diggers Song (We're in the Money)
• I'll Be Going to Heaven Some Time
• Can't We Be Friends
• I Ain't No Rich Man
• Pike County Breakdown (instrumental)
• [unknown]
• Captain Hamer Spits at Bonnie
• Family Reunion
• Bonnie and Clyde
• Buck Falls
• Bonnies' Poem
• My Cabin in Caroline
• My Little Girl in Tennessee
• No Mother or Dad
• Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms
• Take Me in the Lifeboat
• Why Don't You Tell Me So
• Bonnie Wounded
• The Okies
• Finale
• The End Title
• The Story of Bonnie and Clyde
• The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde
• The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde

• Main Title (Bye Bye Birdie)
• An English Teacher
• The Telephone Hour
• How Lovely to Be a Woman
• Put On A Happy Face
• A Healthy, Normal, American Boy
• One Boy
• Let's Settle Down
• Honestly Sincere
• Hymn for a Sunday Evening (Ed Sullivan)
• One Last Kiss
• What Did I Ever See In Him?
• A Lot Of Livin' To Do
• Kids
• Spanish Rose
• Talk To Me
• A Mother Doesn't Matter Anymore
• A Giant Step
• Rosie
• End Credits

• Overture
• An English Teacher
• The Telephone Hour
• How Lovely to Be a Woman
• Put on a Happy Face
• A Healthy, Normal, American Boy
• One Boy
• Honestly Sincere
• Hymn for a Sunday Evening
• One Last Kiss
• What Did I Ever See in Him?
• A Lot of Livin' to Do
• Kids
• Baby, Talk to Me
• Kids (reprise)
• Spanish Rose
• Rosie
• Put on a Happy Face

• Workout
• Night Song
• Everything's Great
• Gimme Some
• Stick Around
• Don't Forget 127th Street
• Lorna's Here
• This Is the Life
• Golden Boy
• While the City Sleeps
• Colorful
• I Want to Be With You
• Can't You See It
• No More
• Finale (The Fight)

• His Name Is Charlie Gordon
• I Got a Friend
• Some Bright Morning
• Our Boy Charlie
• Hey Look at Me
• Reading
• No Surprises
• Midnight Riding
• Dream Safe With Me
• I Can't Tell You
• Now
• Charlie and Algernon
• The Maze
• Whatever Time
• Charlie
• I Really Loved You

• Overture
• Maybe
• It's a Hard Knock Life
• Tomorrow
• We'd Like to Thank You
• Little Girls
• I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here
• N.Y.C.
• Easy Street
• You Won't Be an Orphan for Long
• You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile
• Tomorrow (reprise)
• Something Was Missing
• Medley: I Don't Need Anything but You / Annie
• A New Deal for Christmas

• Overture
• It Never Would've Worked
• Happy, Happy New Year
• No Man Is Worth It
• What Are You Going to Do About It?
• A Woman Who Thinks I'm Wonderful
• Pas De Deux / There's Never Been Anything Like Us
• Another Life
• Why Can't the World Go and Leave Us Alone?
• He Always Comes Home to Me
• I Got a New Girl
• Dance a Little Closer
• There's Always One You Can't Forget
• Entr'acte / Homesick
• Mad
• I Don't Know / Anyone Who Loves
• Auf Wiederseh'n
• I Never Want to See You Again
• On Top of the World
• Dance a Little Closer (Finale)

• Bye Bye Birdie
• Opening Credits
• Telephone Hour
• How Lovely to Be a Woman
• We Love You Conrad
• Honestly Sincere
• Hymn for a Sunday Evening
• One Boy
• Put On a Happy Face
• Kids
• One Last Kiss [Gym Rehearsal Outtake]
• Lot of Livin' to Do
• Sultans' Ballet
• One Last Kiss
• Rosie
• Bye Bye Birdie (reprise)

• Overture
• An English Teacher
• The Telephone Hour
• How Lovely to Be a Woman
• Put on a Happy Face
• Normal American Boy
• One Boy
• Honestly Sincere
• Hymn for a Sunday Evening
• One Last Kiss
• What Did I Ever See in Him
• A Lot of Livin' to Do
• Kids
• Baby, Talk to Me
• Kids (reprise)
• Spanish Rose
• Rosie

• Tomorrow
• It's the Hard-Knock Life
• Maybe
• Dumb Dog
• Sandy
• I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here
• Little Girls
• We Got Annie
• Let's Go to the Movies
• Sign
• You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile
• Easy Street
• Tomorrow (White House Version)
• Maybe (Reprise)
• Finale: I Don't Need Anything but You / We Got Annie / Tomorrow