Mary Rodgers
Mary Rodgers ( born January 11, 1931 in New York and married Mary Rodgers Guettel ) is an American musical composer and writer.
- 3.1 musicals and revues
- 3.2 Books
- 3.3 screenplays
Life
Training
Mary Rodgers is the daughter of the famous Broadway composers Richard Rodgers and his wife Dorothy Feiner Rodgers. She attended the private girls' school Brearley School in her hometown of New York and the Wellesley College, where she studied music as a major subject. However, she broke her education in the last academic year in order to marry Julian Beaty.
Musical career
My professional career began including as assistant to the producers of the "Young People's Concerts " with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. Mary Rodgers wrote music and songs for a number of musicals and revues, starting with Once Upon a Mattress (1959 ), its probably the biggest success. The main role was played Carol Burnett, who became the star. The musical based on the fairy tale The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Andersen, has received several awards and has remained constant popular in the U.S. and Canada - today it is given there annually in more than 400 performances. Once Upon a Mattress was also in 1964, 1972 and 2005, adapted for television, with the most recent version - was seen in the series The Wonderful World of Disney - again with Carol Burnett.
More musical and revue productions in which Mary Rodgers was involved as a composer in charge, are Hot Spot (1963 ), The Mad Show ( 1966), Phyllis Newman's show The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979) and The Griffin and the Minor Canon ( 1988). They also composed the background music for various productions with the Bil Baird Marionettes, including Davy Jones ' Locker ( 1966) and Pinocchio (1973). A revue with their music, composed and directed by Richard Maltby, Jr. was entitled Hey, Love in June 1993, Eighty-Eight 's in New York. She was also involved in the successful record album Free to Be ... You and Me (1972). There are also numerous theater performances. Next she is also a sought-after contemporary witness for documentaries on the history of musicals and their family.
Success as a writer
Mary Rodgers went on in the late 1960s to write children 's books. Your change to writing they reasoned this way:
"I had a decent talent, but no extraordinary talent (...) I was not my father or my son. And you have to give up all sorts of things. - I had a pleasant talent but not an incredible talent. (...) I was not my father or my son. And you have to abandon all kinds of things. "
The most famous of her books is Freaky Friday (1972 ), which won several literary awards and was mad under the title Friday also translated into German in the same year. The Walt Disney Studios bought the fabric and made of it so far (2010) three film versions, which are called in the original all Freaky Friday: For a very Freaky Friday (1976 ) Mary Rodgers also wrote the screenplay, and played under the direction of Gary Nelson Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris, daughter and mother, who miraculously slip into the skin of each other. 1995 adapted Stu Krieger Rodgers original screenplay for the television film Annabelle's greatest desire with Gaby Hoffmann and Shelley Long. Freaky Friday - A full Freaky Friday (2003), finally, was a modernized film version, for which Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis took over the lead roles of daughter and mother. In addition, Mary Rodgers wrote for other Disney fantasy comedy To hell with Max ( The Devil and Max Devlin, 1981) the script on an original story by her and Jimmy Sangster. However, this film turned out to be far less successful project. By his own admission she hated it because of the constraints and limitations that bring movie productions to writing screenplays and heard after five movies again so on.
More children's book titles by Mary Rodgers are The Rotten Book ( 1969), Summer Switch ( 1982) and A Billion for Boris (1974 ), the (1984 Billions for Boris ) was also filmed as The fortune hunters of Manhattan and on the screenplay the author participated. Both A Billion for Boris and Summer Switch are with other experiences of the Andrews family continuations of Freaky Friday.
Together with her mother, Dorothy Rodgers, she released the book A Word to the Wives ( 1970), which led to a nationally syndicated radio program. In addition, both had at the beginning of the 1970s a monthly column entitled Of Two Minds in the women's magazine McCall's, in which they very different from each other alternately and often answered questions from readers.
Management positions in various committees
For many years belonged to Mary Rodgers the Executive Board of the Juilliard School and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts at (now respectively as Chairman Emeritus ). It is also involved in the governing bodies of the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival and the Dramatists Guild Council and for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers ( ASCAP ). It also represents the Rodgers family in the run together with the family Hammerstein The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization.
Private
After her first marriage to Julian Beaty, from whom she was divorced in 1957, Mary Rodgers is married since 1961 in second marriage with Henry Guettel. From two marriages she has five children. Her son Adam Guettel is also a composer, her daughter Constance P. Beaty painter.
Awards
Mary Rodgers was nominated twice for the Tony Award: in 1960 in the category " Best Musical " for their music to Once Upon a Mattress, and 1978 in the category " Best Score " along with other parties for music and lyrics to Working.
For her book Freaky Friday (1972 ) she was still in the Year of the first prize at Book World Spring Book Festival and a mention as a " Notable Children's Book " ( "Notable Children's Book ") of the American Library Association (ALA ) and the 1973 Christopher Award. Other prices were the Nene Award (Hawaii, 1977), the California Young Reader Medal ( 1977) and the Georgia Children's Book Award ( 1978). The Christopher Award, she won also in 1975 again for A Billion for Boris, which also in turn received a mention of the ALA.
Works
Musicals and revues
- Once Upon a Mattress, 1959 - Music
- From A to Z, 1960 - Music for the song Hire a Guy
- Hot Spot, 1963 - Music
- The Mad Show, 1966 - Music
- Davy Jones ' Locker, 1972 - Music and Songs
- Side by Side by Sondheim, 1977 - additional music
- Working, 1978 - Music for the song Nobody Tells Me How
- The Madwoman of Central Park West, 1979 - Music for songs
- The Griffin and the Minor Canon, 1988 - Music
- The Rotten Book. with pictures by Steven Kellogg, New York 1969.
- Together with Dorothy Rodgers: A Word to the Wives. New York 1970.
- Freaky Friday. New York 1972 ( most recently New York 1999, ISBN 0-06440046-8 dt: . Madman Friday translated by Sybil Gräfin Schönfeldt, Gütersloh 1972, ISBN 3-570-07594- X. . )
- A Billion for Boris. New York 1974 ( most recently under the title ESP TV. New York 1999, ISBN 0-06440838-8. )
- Summer switch. New York 1982 ISBN 0-06025058-5.