Strouse, Charles (Louis)

(b New York, 7 June 1928). American composer. A classically trained pianist, he began to compose at the age of 12, then studied orchestration and composition at the Eastman School of Music, composition with Copland at Tanglewood for three years, and harmony and composition with Boulanger in Paris in his later teens and early 20s. In 1949, while supporting himself by playing the piano for ballet classes, summer stock choreographers and dance bands, he met lyricist Lee Adams. In the early 1950s Strouse and Adams, along with Michael Stewart, following the tradition of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, Fred Ebb and Herman Wouk, wrote weekly revues for the Green Mansions summer resort in the Adirondacks, and within a few years were inserting songs into small professional revues. After more than a year as a piano assistant to Frank Loesser during the composition and rehearsals of Greenwillow(1960), Strouse, with Adams and Stewart, was hired to write what is widely considered to be the first rock and roll musical. Bye Bye Birdie (1960), was a good-natured spoof about a popular singer, much like Elvis Presley, and the teenage girl in a small town chosen to kiss him good-bye on the eve of his induction into the army.

Strouse and Adams followed this Tony Award-winning hit with three less successful shows. All American (1962), the story of an immigrant professor who coaches a football team, is remembered primarily for the song ‘Once Upon a Time’. Golden Boy (1962), adapted from Clifford Odets's popular play and film, starred Sammy Davis jr as a poor black boxer seeking wealth and fame at any cost. Arguably Strouse's finest and most ambitious score, it began innovatively with a rhythmic counterpoint of boxer's grunts and groans during a workout and continued with an array of exceptionally lyrical songs (‘Night Song’, ‘Lorna's here’ and ‘I want to be with you’) and jazz-influenced songs (‘Don't forget 127th Street’ and ‘Can't you see it’). ‘It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman’, which emphasized the human side beneath the cartoon caricatures, was the first of several attempts over the next 30 years to bring a famous comic strip character to life on the stage. The last collaboration with Adams ended successfully with Applause (1970), an adaptation of the Academy Award-winning classic film All About Eve (1951). With a book by Betty Comden and Adoph Green and starring Lauren Bacall as Margo Channing, the famous actress betrayed by her sycophantic protégée Eve Harrington, Applause earned Strouse and Adams their second Tony Award and bequeathed a legacy of lasting songs about the theatre (‘Welcome to the theatre’, ‘But Alive’ and the title song). Seven years later Strouse, with Martin Charnin, turned another comic strip character, Little Orphan Annie, into his third Tony Award-winning musical, the spectacular hit Annie, and Broadway's eleventh-longest-running book musical of all time.

Future attempts at success on Broadway and in London proved elusive. Three Strouse shows received relatively successful off-Broadway runs, By Strouse (1978), a revue based on Strouse songs, Mayor (1985), a revue that revolved around colourful New York City Mayor Edward Koch, and Annie Warbucks (1993), the long-awaited sequel to Annie. Many of Strouse's failed shows contained well-received scores, especially Rags (1986), and an abundance of collaborative talent: Bye Bye Birdie librettist Stewart and lyricist Adams in the failed sequel Bring Back Birdie (1981); My Fair Lady librettist and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner in an updated version of Robert Sherwood's play Idiot's Delight as Dance a Little Closer (1983); Fiddler on the Roof librettist Joseph Stein's and Godspell lyricist Stephen Schwartz's original musical about the travails of Jewish immigration in New York City for Rags (1986); and West Side Story and Gypsy librettist Arthur Laurents's adaptation of Dashiel Hammett's novel and film, The Thin Man as Nick and Nora (1991). Nevertheless, the total of Broadway performances for these shows and two others (A Broadway Musical and Charlie and Algernon) was an astonishingly low 36. Even in less successful musicals Strouse has rarely failed to deliver a tuneful score. His stylistic malleability, however, may have contributed to his relative obscurity compared with composer-lyricists like Irving Berlin or teams like Rodgers and Hammerstein: for example, few of the millions of Americans familiar with ‘Those were the days’, the nostalgic theme song to the 1970s television series All in the Family, know that Strouse was its composer. On Broadway and film Strouse's ability to capture the stylistic essence of an era is especially evident in his musical depiction of New York City c1910, as in Rags, the 1930s for Annie and the films Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968), and other more contemporary popular styles. In fact, the flair for 1950s rock and roll parody he exhibited in Bye Bye Birdie (‘The Telephone Hour’, ‘One Boy’, ‘Honestly Sincere’ and ‘One Last Kiss’) led to a genuine rock and roll song Born Too Late that reached no.7 for the Ponytails on the American charts in 1962.

WORKS

(selective list)

stage

unless otherwise stated, all are musicals and dates are those of first New York performance; where different, writers shown as (lyricist; book author)

other works

lyricists in parentheses

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S. Green: The World of Musical Comedy (New York, 1960, rev. and enlarged 4/1980)

A. Kasha and J. Hirschhorn: Notes on Broadway: Conversations with the Great Songwriters (Chicago, 1985)

S. Suskin: Show Tunes …: the Songs, Shows, and Careers of Broadway's Major Composers (New York, 1986, enlarged 3/2000), 293–304

K. Mandelbaum: Not Since Carrie: 40 Years of Broadway Musical Flops (New York, 1991)

GEOFFREY BLOCK