Betty Comden

The team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green was the longest running creative partnership in theatre history. Betty Comden (May 3, 1917 November 23, 2006) was born Elizabeth Cohen in Brooklyn. In 1938, soon after graduation from NYU, where she studied drama, she started making the rounds of theatrical agents. While she didn't find an agent, she did get acquainted with Adolph Green, who was also searching for a theatrical agent. They began writing and performing their own satirical comic material in a group called "The Revuers," which included the late Judy Holliday. Comden and Green went onto collaborate with Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins on what was the first show for all of them, "On The Town." With Leonard Bernstein they also did the score for "Wonderful Town" and with Jule Styne they wrote the book and/or lyrics for "Bells Are Ringing," "Hallelujah Baby," "Do Re Mi," "Peter Pan," and wrote the book for "Applause," and book and lyrics for "On The Twentieth Century" and "A Doll's Life." "Applause," "Hallelujah, Baby," "Wonderful Town," and "On The Twentieth Century" won them five Tony Awards. Comden and Green's many film musicals include "Singin' In The Rain," "The Band Wagon," "On The Town," "Bells Are Ringing," "It's Always Fair Weather," and "Good News." "Singin' In The Rain" was voted as one of the ten best American films ever made. Comden and Green also created the classic songs "Just in Time," "The Party's Over," "Make Someone Happy," and "New York, New York." In 1991, Comden and Green reunited with Cy Coleman to write the lyrics for the Tony Award-winning Broadway hit, "The Will Rogers Follies." Two years later, Betty Comden spoke to the student delegates at the 1993 Achievement Summit in Glacier National Park in Montana about her legendary career as a lyricist and musical comedy author.