Adolph Green (1914 - 2002)
Adolph Green's Biography
Introduction
Born December 2, 1914
The Bronx, New York, U.S.
Died October 23, 2002 (aged 87)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation Playwright/Songwriter
Years active 1944–2002
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 Metro Goldwyn Mayer, during the genre's heyday. Many people thought the pair were married, but in fact they were not a romantic couple at all. Nevertheless, 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.
Biography
Green was born in the Bronx to Hungarian Jewish immigrants Helen (née Weiss) and Daniel Green. After high school, he worked as a runner on Wall Street while he tried to make it as an actor. He met Betty 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, who he had met in 1937 at a summer camp where Bernstein was the music counselor, 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.
Their first Broadway effort teamed them with Bernstein for On the Town, a musical romp about three sailors on leave in New York City that was an expansion of a ballet entitled Fancy Free on which Bernstein had been working with choreographer Jerome Robbins. Comden and Green wrote the lyrics and book, which included sizeable parts for themselves. Their next two musicals, Billion Dollar Baby (1945) and Bonanza Bound (1947) were not successful, and once again they headed to California, where they immediately found work at MGM.
They wrote the screenplay for Good News, starring June Allyson and Peter Lawford, The Barkleys of Broadway for Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, and then adapted On the Town for Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, scrapping much of Bernstein's music at the request of Arthur Freed, who did not care for the Bernstein score.
They reunited with Kelly for their most successful project, the classic Singin' in the Rain, about Hollywood in the final days of the silent film era. Considered by many film historians to be the best movie musical of all time, it ranked #10 on the list of the 100 Best American Movies of the 20th Century, compiled by the American Film Institute in 1998. They followed this with another hit, The Band Wagon, in which the characters of Lester and Lily, a husband-and-wife team that writes the play for the show-within-a-show, were patterned after themselves. They were Oscar-nominated twice, for their screenplays for The Band Wagon and It's Always Fair Weather, both of which earned them a Screen Writers Guild Award, as did On the Town.
Their stage work during the next few years included the revue Two on the Aisle, starring Bert Lahr and Dolores Gray, Wonderful Town, an adaptation of the comedy hit My Sister Eileen, with Rosalind Russell and Edie Adams as two sisters from Ohio trying to make it in the Big Apple, and Bells Are Ringing, which reunited them with Judy Holliday as an operator at a telephone answering service. The score, including the standards "Just in Time", "Long Before I Knew You," and "The Party’s Over" proved to be one of their richest.
In 1958, they appeared on Broadway in A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, a revue that included some of their early sketches. It was a critical and commercial success, and they brought an updated version back to Broadway in 1977.
Among their other credits are the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan for both Broadway and television, a streamlined Die Fledermaus for the Metropolitan Opera, and stage musicals for Carol Burnett, Leslie Uggams, and Lauren Bacall, among others. Their many collaborators included Garson Kanin, Cy Coleman, Jule Styne, and André Previn.
The team was not without its failures. In 1982, A Doll's Life, an exploration of what Nora did after she abandoned her husband in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, ran for only five performances, although they received Tony Award nominations for its book and score.
In 1980, Green was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.[1] And, in 1981, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.[2]
In 1989 he appeared as Dr. Pangloss in Bernstein's Candide.
Comden and Green received Kennedy Center Honors in 1991.
Green's third wife was actress Phyllis Newman, who had understudied Holliday in Bells Are Ringing. They had two children, Adam and Amanda, both of whom are songwriters.
His Broadway memorial, with such luminaries as Lauren Bacall, Kevin Kline, Joel Grey, Kristin Chenoweth, Arthur Laurents, Peter Stone, and, of course, Betty Comden in attendance was held at the Shubert Theater on December 4, 2002.
Broadway credits
These shows are collated from the biography above.
A Doll's Life (1982)
Die Fledermaus (1954)
Peter Pan (1954)
Broadway in A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green (1958)
Bells Are Ringing (1956)
Wonderful Town (1953)
Two on the Aisle (1951)
Bonanza Bound (1947)
Billion Dollar Baby (1945)
On the Town (1944)
Additional Broadway credits[edit]
The Will Rogers Follies (1991)
Singin' in the Rain (1985)
The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979)
On the Twentieth Century (1978)
Lorelei (1974)
Applause (1970)
Hallelujah, Baby! (1967)
Fade Out – Fade In (1964)
Subways Are For Sleeping (1961)
Do Re Mi (1960)
Say, Darling (1958)
Acting credits[edit]
Greenwich Village (1944) as Revuer (uncredited)
Simon (1980) as Commune Leader
My Favorite Year (1982) as Leo Silver
Lily in Love (1984) as Jerry Silber
I Want to Go Home (1989) as Joey Wellman
Candide (1991) (TV) as Dr. Pangloss / Martin
Frasier (1994) (TV) as Walter (episode: Burying a Grudge)
The Substance of Fire (1996) as Mr. Musselblatt
Awards and nominations[edit]
Year Award Category Work Result
1950 WGA Award Best Written American Musical The Barkleys of Broadway Nominated
On the Town Won
1953 Singin' in the Rain Won
New York Drama Critics' Circle Award Best Musical Wonderful Town Won
1954 Academy Awards Best Writing, Story and Screenplay The Band Wagon Nominated
WGA Award Best Written American Musical Nominated
1956 Academy Awards Best Writing, Story and Screenplay It's Always Fair Weather Nominated
WGA Award Best Written American Musical Nominated
1961 Bells Are Ringing Won
Grammy Award Best Soundtrack Album or Recording of Original Cast from a Motion Picture or TV Nominated
1968 Tony Award Best Composer and Lyricist Hallelujah, Baby! Won
1978 Best Book of a Musical On the Twentieth Century Won
Best Original Score Won
1983 Best Book of a Musical A Doll's House Nominated
Best Original Score Nominated
1986 Best Book of a Musical Singin' in the Rain Nominated
1991 Best Original Score The Will Rogers Follies Won
New York Drama Critics' Circle Award Best Musical Won
1995 National Board of Review Award Distinction in Screenwriting Won
2001 WGA Award Laurel Award for Screen Writing Achievement Won
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Published: August 8, 1991
WASHINGTON, Aug. 7— Gregory Peck is one of seven artists who will be honored by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Dec. 8 at the 14th annual Kennedy Center Honors.
Others to be honored for their contributions to the arts are Roy Acuff, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Fayard and Harold Nicholas and Robert Shaw.
The artists will be guests at a reception given by President and Mrs. Bush at the White House prior to the awards ceremony, which will be broadcast on network television.
Mr. Peck, one of Hollywood's foremost actors in a career that has spanned five decades, won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the 1962 film "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Mr. Acuff, who started his music career touring in the early 1930's, has been acclaimed as one of the greats of country music.
The musical comedy team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who began their careers as performers in Greenwich Village more than 50 years ago, have written for the screen ("Singin' in the Rain") and for the Broadway theater, most recently "The Will Rogers Follies."
Famed as tap and acrobatic dancers, Fayard and Harold Nicholas have worked on the stage, in films and on television.
Mr. Shaw, former director of the Atlanta Symphony, is regarded as one of the great choral music directors.
Family Tree & Friends
Adolph's Family Tree
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Partner
Child
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Relationships
Phyllis Newman
&Adolph Green

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Friends
Friends can be as close as family. Add Adolph's family friends, and his friends from childhood through adulthood.
1914 - 2002 World Events
Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Adolph's lifetime.
In 1914, in the year that Adolph Green was born, in August, the world's first red and green traffic lights were installed at the corner of East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland Ohio. The electric traffic light had been invented by a policeman in Salt Lake City Utah in 1912.
In 1924, when he was just 10 years old, in May, wealthy college students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb kidnapped and killed 14 year old Robert Franks "in the interest of science". Leopold and Loeb thought that they were intellectually superior and that they could commit the perfect crime and not be caught. They were brought in for questioning within 8 days and quickly confessed. Clarence Darrow was hired as their defense lawyer, getting them life imprisonment instead of a death sentence. Loeb was eventually killed in prison - Leopold was released after 33 years, dying of a heart attack at age 66.
In 1967, at the age of 53 years old, Adolph was alive when on November 7th, President Johnson signed legislation passed by Congress that created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which would later become PBS and NPR. The legislation required CPB to operate with a "strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature".
In 1973, when he was 59 years old, in October, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned - President Nixon nominated Gerald Ford for Vice President. Nixon's tax returns came under investigation. Nixon offered the recently discovered Oval Office tapes be heard by one person and summarized - his offer was rejected by the Special Prosecutor. Nixon ordered the Attorney General, then the assistant Attorney General, to fire the Special Prosecutor. Both refused and were fired. The Solicitor General became the acting Attorney General and fired the Special Prosecutor (the Saturday Night Massacre). Nixon releases some of the tapes, under extreme pressure because of the firings.
In 1984, he was 70 years old when on January 1, "Baby Bells" were created. AT&T had been the provider of telephone service (and equipment) in the United States. The company kept Western Electric, Bell Labs, and AT&T Long Distance. Seven new regional companies (the Baby Bells) covered local telephone service and were separately owned. AT&T lost 70% of its book value due to this move.
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