Jerry Herman, Revered Broadway Composer and Lyricist, Dies at 88
He was not on the list.
The four-time Tony Award recipient wrote what he called
"simple, hummable tunes" for 'Hello, Dolly!,' 'Mame' and 'La Cage Aux
Folles.'
Jerry Herman, the Tony-winning composer and lyricist whose
musical anthems for Hello, Dolly! and Mame created and shaped a new golden age
of Broadway, has died. He was 88.
Herman died Thursday in Miami of pulmonary complications,
his goddaughter Jane Dorian told The Hollywood Reporter. "He was an
extraordinary man and musical genius and will be missed dearly," she said.
Herman received Tonys in 1964 and 1984, respectively, for
his scores to Hello, Dolly! and La Cage Aux Folles, and he was the first composer-lyricist
to have had as many as three musicals (Dolly, La Cage and Mame) run for more
than 1,500 performances each on Broadway.
His songs, including "Hello, Dolly!" — a No. 1 hit
for Louis Armstrong that bumped The Beatles out of the top spot — "The Best
of Times Is Now," "Before the Parade Passes By" and "We
Need a Little Christmas," are American songbook standards.
"He cares tremendously about matters of the heart and
humanity and the warmth of relationships and people looking out for
people," Angela Lansbury told The Washington Post in 2010 on the occasion
of Herman being honored by the Kennedy Center. Lansbury originated the title
role in Mame in 1966, which helped launch her theatrical career.
"Jerry's [music] is immediate and has an emotional tug
and has a more universally acceptable and receivable message," she said.
Herman's work served as star-making vehicles for many
theatrical icons, including Bernadette Peters, who starred in Mack & Mabel
in 1974, and Carol Channing, who originated the title role in Hello, Dolly!
"The moment I met Jerry, I believed in him. I knew he
knew that character," Channing said. "He appreciated the person he's
working with. That gives you the power to do anything."
Born Gerald Herman on July 10, 1931, he grew up in Jersey
City, New Jersey, and spent his childhood coming into the city to see Broadway
shows with his parents. One of the first he saw was Annie Get Your Gun starring
Ethel Merman, and her show-stopping tune "There's No Business Like Show
Business" would inspire his own melodies for years to come. (Merman would
also go on to star as Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly!)
Herman learned how to play the piano at a young age. His
mother and father, both teachers, worked in New York's Dutchess County at
Stissing Lake Camp, where he spent his summers for more than a decade. It was
at camp that he first became involved in the theater, directing shows like
Oklahoma! and Finian's Rainbow.
He met Frank Loesser when he was 17 (his mother's friend
from bridge club knew the songwriter and helped set up the meeting), and
Loesser encouraged Herman to continue working toward a career in theater.
Loesser served as a valuable mentor.
"That wonderful man is responsible for my life in the
theater," Herman told the New York Post in 2010. "I met him at that
crucial point in your life when you don't know where you're going but you have
secret hopes about where it's going to be."
Herman started off his studies in architecture at New York's
Parsons School of Design, and he continued his love of design throughout his
life, renovating and decorating more than three dozen houses. But he dropped
out of Parsons after a year and continued his studies, now in theater, at the
University of Miami.
At Miami, he produced, wrote and directed a musical called
Sketchbook, which ran for 17 performances longer than scheduled thanks to
audience demand. (One of the school's theaters is named the Jerry Herman Ring
Theatre.)
Herman's work in college would go on to be the basis for his
early professional career in New York after graduation. He made his
off-Broadway debut with I Feel Wonderful, a revue of music he'd written at
Miami. He continued to write revues, including Nightcap, which ran at a
downtown jazz club for two years; Parade, which opened at the same jazz club
before moving to The Players Theatre in 1960; and From A to Z, which marked his
Broadway debut.
Parade put Herman on the map, and producer Gerard
Oestreicher saw the show and asked him to write his full Broadway musical, Milk
and Honey, in 1961. Three years later, he would join forces with producer David
Merrick, writer Michael Stewart and Channing to create Hello, Dolly!.
The original production ran for 2,844 performances, making
it the longest-running show at the time, and it reeled in 10 Tonys, including
the one for best musical, making it the most celebrated musical until The
Producers bettered its record with 12 wins. The show has been revived on
Broadway three times, most recently in 2016 with Bette Midler in the role.
Two years later, Herman wrote Mame with Jerome Lawrence and
Robert Edwin Lee. Starring Lansbury, the musical was based on the 1955 novel
and followed a woman whose life is upended during the Depression when her
brother's son comes to live with her. Lansbury won a Tony for her performance,
and the musical ran for four years.
His career and life were not without its flops and hard
times. The shows he wrote after Mame — Dear World, Mack & Mabel and The
Grand Tour — didn't receive anywhere near the success of Dolly or Mame, though
they have generated cult status among musical theater fans.
Herman was discouraged and didn't write another musical
until he watched the French film La Cage Aux Folles, based on the play of the
same name, and he knew he'd found his next project. He collaborated with the
young writer Harvey Fierstein, who penned the book, and the musical opened on
Broadway in 1983. Its story about love and acceptance proved an important
message during the AIDS epidemic, which took the lives of many of the musical's
castmembers, and the song "I Am What I Am" became a resounding anthem
for a generation.
Herman was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1985, but he lived
to see experimental treatments, even though his partner, Marty, died from the
disease. La Cage won the Tony for best musical and has been revived twice,
winning for best revival each time, making it the only musical to receive this
honor every time it's been staged.
''I never dreamed that kind of success would happen again,''
he told The New York Times in 1985. ''I'm certainly aware of how different
popular music is today from when I started in this business, and I realize that
my kind of songwriting is not generally in fashion. But La Cage has made me
feel secure about going on and just being what I am and writing simple,
hummable tunes.''
When asked about his creative process for the TAMS
newsletter Musical Show, Herman said that he wrote music and lyrics at the same
time, not one before the other. He also said he was never interested in writing
the book of a musical.
"I find the most successful way of working is to treat
the whole thing like a jigsaw puzzle, letting a lyric inspire a few bars of
music, and then letting those few bars of music lead me to a further lyric
development," he said.
Although he hadn't penned a musical since La Cage, he
witnessed several revivals of his work and put together revues including
Jerry's Girls and An Evening With Jerry Herman. He received an Emmy nomination
in 1997 for his work on the TV special Mrs. Santa Claus, starring Lansbury, who
presented him with a Tony for lifetime achievement in 2009.
"I write for a mass audience," Herman said in his
Post interview. "I write for people, for a smiling public. … I don't think
there's anything more gratifying in my business than to know the work will go
on after I'm not here anymore. Because I don't write for 1964, or for 1997. I
write songs that I hope will still be hummed years from now."
