The Songwriters Continued: Alan Jay Lerner

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Alan Jay Lerner Time

My husband and I continued to watch the very cool The Songwriters series on DVD: Last night it was performance shot in the very early 1980s with Alan Jay Lerner. He appeared with his EIGHTH wife, Liz Robertson, and he was talking about a new musical that he was writing that was going to star her. They had met in 1979 when he directed her, as Eliza, in a major London revival ofMy Fair Lady.


So, I was a little curious to see what had happened to Alan Jay Lerner, his wife Liz Robertson, and the musical that he was writing for her.

Well, it was destined to be his last musical, and it was called Dance A Little Closer (1983), and it closed after one performance. Ouch. It is so weird to see someone talking excitedly about a new project, and then being able to quickly Google forward and see the result of their labors. It's about as close to time travel as we'll ever get, I suppose, and it really changes the texture of TV viewing. I find myself watching a lot of stuff from the past, Googling forward to see the result of their predictions, and then snapping back and watching the characters proceed with their grim charade of living out a pre-determined future. It's a bit odd.

The good news is that Liz Robertson went on to have a great career:
Liz began her career as a singer-dancer in a dance group called The Go-Jos and she then became the lead singer and dancer of BBC2's The Young Generation. Her West End career began when she appeared in A Little Night Music (directed by Hal Prince at the Adelphi)and Side by Side by Sondheim (at The Mermaid and Wyndham's). She went on to star in the subsequent Toronto production with Georgia Brown at The Royal Alexandra Theatre. In 1977-8 she starred with Ben Cross in I Love My Wife directed by Gene Sack at the Prince of Wales, after which Cameron Mackintosh signed her to play Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady -- she earned rave reviews and The Variety Club's 'Most Promising Actress' award. A season at Chichester followed, as Jessica Mitford inThe Mitford Girls, and then she assembled a one-person show for the Duke of York's called Just Liz, which was later broadcast on television. Credits Include: Dance a Little Closer (Minskoff Theatre, Broadway); Song & Dance (Palace Theatre, Broadway),Kern Goes to Hollywood (Donmar & Broadway), Killing Jessica (Richmond & Savoy),Canaries Sometimes Sing (The Albery), A Touch of Danger (Nat'l), My Fair Lady(Birmingham & Manchester), Sherlock Holmes -- The Musical (Exeter & the Cambridge), The King and I (U.S. Nat'l -- Carbonell Best Actress Award, South Florida Enterainment Writers Association), The Sound of Music (Sadler's Wells & Tour). Mavis in Stepping Out (Thorndike Theatre, Leatherhead and the Theatre Royal, Plymouth), Let's Do It (Yvonne Arnaud Theatre & Nat'l), The King and I (Covent Garden Festival), The Music Man (Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park), Beethoven's Tenth (Chichester Festival Theatre), Love.co.uk (King's Head), Something Wonderful(Nat'l), and Peter Pan (Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford). TV: The Good Life, Song by Song (Cole Porter and Richard Rogers), Words of Alan Jay Lerner, and Give Us a Clue. In 1984 she recorded her first album, Somebody's Girl; she has appeared in four Royal Variety Performances and she also performed at The Kennedy Center Honors before President and Mrs Reagan.
Hey kewl: "She went on to star in the subsequent Toronto production with Georgia Brown at The Royal Alexandra Theatre."
By Suzy Conn on March 19, 2005 10:02 AM | | Comments (0)


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