- unitid
-
{"value"=>"*T-Mss 2004-023", "type"=>"local_call"}
{"value"=>"21750", "type"=>"local_mss"}
- unitdate
-
{"value"=>"1944-2002", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1944/2002"}
- unittitle
-
{"value"=>"Adolph Green papers"}
- physdesc
-
{"format"=>"structured", "physdesc_components"=>[{"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"6 linear feet", "unit"=>"linear feet"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"14 boxes", "unit"=>"containers"}]}
- repository
-
{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">The New York Public Library. Billy Rose Theatre Division.</span><div class=\"address\"> <span class=\"addressline\">New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center</span> <span class=\"addressline\">40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498</span></div>"}
- abstract
-
{"value"=>"Adolph Green (1915-2002) was a lyricist and librettist of Broadway musicals, a Hollywood screenwriter and occasional performer. This collection contains his scripts and programs. The majority of the productions covered were written by Green and his constant collaborator, Betty Comden."}
- langmaterial
-
{"value"=>"English"}
- prefercite
-
{"value"=>"<p>Adolph Green Papers, *T-Mss 2004-023. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.</p>"}
- origination
-
{"value"=>"Green, Adolph", "type"=>"persname"}
- bioghist
-
{"value"=>"<p>Adolph Green was born in the Bronx, New York on December 2, 1915. After a brief stint as a runner on Wall Street, Green began his theatrical career as an actor and soon found himself writing and performing satirical sketches with the nightclub act, The Revuers. They played at the Village Vanguard and the Rainbow Room in the late 1930s and made a brief appearance in the Fox film, <span class=\"title\">Greenwich Village</span> (1944). Green’s fellow Revuers included Judy Holiday and Betty Comden, who became his lifelong writing partner. The team of Comden and Green scored a hit with their Broadway debut, <span class=\"title\">On The Town</span>(1944), for which they provided the book and lyrics to Leonard Bernstein’s score as well as appearing in the original Broadway cast.</p> <p>After their second show, <span class=\"title\">Billion Dollar Baby</span> (1945), written with composer Morton Gould, Comden and Green signed with Metro-Goldwin-Mayer and began working for the Arthur Freed Unit. Their first project was a screenplay and additional lyrics for <span class=\"title\">Good News</span> (1947). They went on to write original screenplays for several classic movie musicals, including <span class=\"title\">Singin’In The Rain</span> (1952), <span class=\"title\">The Bandwagon</span> (1953), <span class=\"title\">It’s Always Fair Weather</span> (1955) and the final film of the legendary partnership between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, <span class=\"title\">The Barkleys of Broadway</span> (1949). They also adapted the script and provided lyrics to new songs for their own <span class=\"title\">On The Town</span> (1949) for the screen.</p> <p> In the early 1950s Comden and Green resumed their Broadway career with the revue <span class=\"title\">Two On The Aisle</span> (1951), the first of many collaborations with their most frequent composer, Jule Styne. Their next project, <span class=\"title\">Wonderful Town</span> (1953), reunited them with Leonard Bernstein and won the Tony Award as Best Musical. Their next seven Broadway musicals were collaborations with Styne, including additional songs for <span class=\"title\">Peter Pan</span> (1954), <span class=\"title\">Say, Darling</span> (1958), <span class=\"title\">Do-Re-Mi</span> (1960), <span class=\"title\">Subways Are For Sleeping</span> (1961), <span class=\"title\">Fade Out-Fade In</span> (1964) and Best Musical Tony Award winner, <span class=\"title\">Hallelujah, Baby!</span> (1968). The most successful show from Comden and Green’s collaboration with Jule Styne was <span class=\"title\">Bells Are Ringing</span> (1956), which was written as a vehicle for Comden and Green’s old friend, Judy Holliday, now an Academy Award winning actress.</p> <p>During this period of high productivity on Broadway, Comden and Green also continued work on various film projects, adapting <span class=\"title\">Bells Are Ringing</span> for the screen in 1960. They also did the 1958 screen adaptation of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s play <span class=\"title\">Auntie Mame</span>, which starred <span class=\"title\">Wonderful Town</span>’s Rosalind Russell. Though their last produced film was the comedy with songs, <span class=\"title\">What A Way To Go!</span> (1964), they continued to work on screenplays for the rest of their careers. Comden and Green also continued their performing careers in 1959, with the first version of their successful revue, <span class=\"title\">A Party With Betty Comden and Adolph Green</span>, which they performed several times on Broadway and around the country over the following thirty years.</p> <p> In 1970 Comden and Green provided the book for Charles Strouse and Lee Adams’ score for <span class=\"title\">Applause</span>, a musical version of the classic film, <span class=\"title\">All About Eve</span>, (1950) which won the Tony Award for Best Musical. Another Comden and Green show won the Tony later in the decade: <span class=\"title\">On The Twentieth Century</span> in 1978, which also won them and their composer, Cy Coleman, the Tony for Best Score. Comden and Green’s next project was a departure from the witty, urbane style that had characterized their previous work when they tackled nineteenth century feminism in a collaboration with composer Larry Grossman and director Harold Prince. <span class=\"title\">A Doll’s Life</span> (1982) investigates what might have happened to Nora from Ibsen’s <span class=\"title\">A Doll’s House</span> after she slams the door and leaves her family. This ambitious project was unsuccessful, but demonstrated Comden and Green’s versatility. Their last original musical, however, was a triumph, both artistically and financially. <span class=\"title\">The Will Rogers Follies</span> (1991), another collaboration with Cy Coleman, ran 981 performances and brought Comden, Green and Coleman another Best Score Tony Award.</p> <p> Throughout his career as a writer, Green continued to work as a performer. Such films as <span class=\"title\">My Favorite Year</span> (1982) and <span class=\"title\">I Want to Go Home</span> (1989) showcased Green’s unique persona. He also appeared in countless tributes and concerts including the London Symphony Orchestra’s <span class=\"title\">Candide</span>, conducted by Leonard Bernstein in 1989, and <span class=\"title\">Follies in Concert</span>, performed at Avery Fisher Hall in 1985.</p> <p>Adolph Green was married to actress Allyn Ann McLerie from 1945-1953. In 1960 he married actress Phyllis Newman, with whom he had two children, Amanda Green and Adam Green and to whom he remained married until his death on October 23, 2002.</p>"}
- scopecontent
-
{"value"=>"<p>This collection consists of scripts and programs. The scripts are divided into Theatre and Film/TV scripts. Though this collection contains materials from as early as 1944 and as late as 2002, the bulk of these items are from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The projects that are most extensively represented here are <span class=\"title\">A Doll’s Life</span> (1982) and <span class=\"title\">On The Twentieth Century</span>(1978). The strengths of this collection are several scripts for unproduced or incomplete works by Comden and Green as well as other writers, as well as the multiple drafts of certain shows, reflecting the process of revising a script. Of special interest is an early draft of Cole Porter, Dwight Taylor and Robert Lawrence’s <span class=\"title\">Out of This World</span> (1950), which Comden and Green did uncredited work on, early drafts of an unrealized collaboration with Leonard Bernstein on a musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s <span class=\"title\">The Skin of Our Teeth</span>, a German translation of the film of <span class=\"title\">Bells Are Ringing</span> and early drafts of Comden and Green’s MGM film hits <span class=\"title\">Good News</span> (1947), <span class=\"title\">Singin’ In the Rain</span> (1952) and <span class=\"title\">The Bandwagon</span>(1953).</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p>Other types of materials on Adolph Green can also be found in the more extensive Comden and Green Papers (Collection ID *T-Mss 1986-004 in the Billy Rose Theatre Division). Included in the collection are photographs, business and personal correspondence, notebooks, notes, contracts, award plaques and sheet music as well as additional scripts and programs.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The Adolph Green papers are arranged in two series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/the/21750#c452033'>Series I: Scripts</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1944 - 1996</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>12 boxes</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series consists of scripts written for theatre and film or television, produced and unproduced. Adolph Green wrote the majority of these scripts. Some of these scripts are for projects written by various associates and friends of Green’s. The series also contains scripts for projects in which Green appeared as a performer.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/the/21750#c452178'>Series II: Programs</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1945 - 2002</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>2 boxes</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series contains playbills and souvenir programs for shows written by Green, as well as tributes to him, tributes and concerts in which he appeared as a performer, tributes to various collaborators, tributes which he contributed to and performances featuring Green’s wife, Phyllis Newman. There are programs for two films in which Green appeared, <span class=\"title\">Garbo Talks</span> (1984) and <span class=\"title\">I Want to Go Home</span> (1990) and miscellaneous other films. The series also contains programs for plays by various authors, with notes.</p></div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}
- arrangement
-
{"value"=>"<p>The collection is organized into 2 series and 2 sub-series. They are: <ul class=\"list\"> <li>Series I: Scripts, 1944-1996 <ul class=\"list\"> <li>Sub-series 1 -Theatre, 1944-1996</li> <li>Sub-series 2 -Film/Television, 1947-1988</li></ul></li> <li> Series II: Programs, 1945-2002</li></ul></p>", "supress_display"=>true}
- acqinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>The Adolph Green Papers were donated to the Billy Rose Theatre Division in 2004 by Phyllis Newman.</p>"}
- processinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Processed by Diana Bertolini; Machine-readable finding aid created by Diana Bertolini.</p>"}
- userestrict
-
{"value"=>"<p>For permission to publish, contact the Curator, Billy Rose Theatre Division.</p>"}
- relatedmaterial
-
{"value"=>"<p>Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts for other materials on Green including, photographs, business and personal correspondence, notebooks, notes, contracts, award plaques, and sheet music</p>"}
- date_start
-
1944
- keydate
-
1944
- date_end
-
2002
- date_inclusive_start
-
1944
- date_inclusive_end
-
2002