Showbiz duo Comden and Green: sharpest collaborators in ‘Town’

During their 60 years as writing partners — a longevity rare among show business collaborators — Betty Comden and Adolph Green worked every single day. There are long periods when nothing happens … but we have a theory that nothing’s wasted, even those long days of staring at one another. Based on Jerome Robbins’ ballet “Fancy Free,” “On the Town” opened in December 1944 and won raves for the gorgeous score by Leonard Bernstein and sprightly book and lyrics by Comden and Green — who also acted in that maiden production. Set in the last months of World War II, it follows three sailors on 24-hour shore leave as they cavort, chase women and sing New York, New York, it’s a helluva town! All three principal actors from the well-received 2014 Broadway production — Tony Yazbeck, Clyde Alves and Jay Armstrong Johnson — will star, along with Megan Fairchild, Alysha Umphress and Tony winner Shuler Hensley. “One of the big features of the evening was Adolph’s version of ‘Jingle Bells,’ which went on forever and ever, through every country and every ethnicity and every situation,” Thomas said. To make matters worse, she invariably appears at, say, producers’ conferences, with our latest work of dialogue or lyrics neatly typed and arranged in readable form. The collaborators met in 1938 and formed a cabaret act, the Revuers, with actress Judy Holliday. Bernstein, who knew Green from a Massachusetts summer camp where they worked as teenage counselors, played piano for the Revuers. In their group everybody knew every cue line from every show and every famous mistake that had happened in this scene or that scene. Showbiz stuff going back to the glory days of Broadway and even back to the Yiddish theater. “Bonanza Bound,” a 1947 musical set in Alaska in 1898, closed during out-of-town tryouts. A musical version of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” was scrapped in 1965, and “A Doll’s Life” (1982), a musical sequel to Ibsen’s “A Doll House,” closed after four bruising performances. Comden and Green were set to write the lyrics for “West Side Story,” but bowed out due to a movie commitment, paving the way for an up-and-comer named Stephen Sondheim to make his Broadway debut.