BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Description: Composer, Lyricist, USA
Known For: Known for the film – “My Fair Lady” – 1964
Music Styles: Popular
Location: United States of America
Date Born: 31st August 1918
Location Born: New York City, New York, United States of America
Date Died: 14th June 1986
Location Died: New York City, New York, United States of America
CONTACT DETAILS
Web Site: Alan Jay Lerner at the Songwriters Hall of Fame
Other Links: See below:
BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Alan Jay Lerner
An American Broadway lyricist and librettist. Together with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world’s most popular and enduring works of musical theatre.
Lerner wrote the lyrics for some of the theatre’s most famous songs. He won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors.
Following graduation, Lerner wrote scripts for radio, including Your Hit Parade, until he was introduced to a down-on-his-heels Austrian composer Frederick Loewe, who needed a lyricist, in 1942.
Their first hit was Brigadoon (1947), a romantic fantasy set in a mystical Scottish village, directed by Robert Lewis. It was followed in 1951 by the less successful Gold Rush story Paint Your Wagon.
Lerner poured his excess energy into collaborations with Kurt Weill on the stage musical Love Life (1948) and Burton Lane on the movie musical Royal Wedding (1951).
In that same year Lerner also wrote the Oscar-winning original screenplay for An American in Paris, produced by Arthur Freed and directed by Vincente Minnelli. This was the same team who would later join with Lerner and Loewe to create Gigi.
In 1956, Lerner and Loewe unveiled My Fair Lady.
Their adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion retained his social commentary and added unusually appropriate songs for the characters of Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins, played originally by Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison.
It was hugely popular and set box-office records in New York and London. When brought to the screen in 1964, the movie version would win eight Oscars.
The Lerner-Loewe partnership cracked under the stress of producing the Arthurian Camelot in 1960, with Loewe resisting Lerner’s desire to direct as well as write.
Loewe retired to Palm Springs, California while Lerner went through a series of unsuccessful musicals with such composers as André Previn (Coco), John Barry (Lolita, My Love), Leonard Bernstein, etc.
Lerner’s autobiography The Street Where I Live (1978), was an account of three of his and Loewe’s successful collaborations, My Fair Lady, Gigi, and Camelot along with personal information.
At the time of Lerner’s death, he had just begun to write lyrics for The Phantom of the Opera, and was replaced by Charles Hart.
Lerner died from lung cancer in Manhattan at the age of 67.
Films include as lyricist.
Brigadoon, 1947 (Broadway), 1954
Royal Wedding, 1951
Gigi, 1958
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1960
My Fair Lady, 1964
Camelot, 1967
Paint Your Wagon, 1969
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, 1970
The Little Prince, 1973
Tribute, 1980
Secret Places, 1984
Links: