Alan Jay Lerner

Alan Jay Lerner, (born Aug. 31, 1918, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died June 14, 1986, New York, N.Y.), American librettist and lyricist who collaborated with composer Frederick Loewe on the hit Broadway musicals Brigadoon (1947), Paint Your Wagon (1951), My Fair Lady (1956), and Camelot (1960) and the film Gigi (1958).

Lerner, whose parents were prosperous retailers (Lerner Stores, Inc.), was educated at Bedales School, Hampshire, Eng.; Choate School, Wallingford, Conn.; the Juilliard School of Music, New York City; and Harvard University (B.S., 1940), where he contributed lyrics to Hasty Pudding shows. He wrote more than 500 radio scripts between 1940 and 1942, the year he met Loewe (who had been composing theatrical songs with little success) at The Lambs theatrical club in New York City. One Lerner and Loewe Broadway production failed, and a second had a five-month run before the 1947 success of Brigadoon.

My Fair Lady, their fifth musical, based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, was an unprecedented triumph in American musical theatre. Produced by Columbia Broadcasting System, it set a record at the time for the longest original run of any musical production in London or New York City, was mounted in more than 20 countries, translated into 11 languages, toured the United States for several years, and was revived several times. The film version (1964) won seven Academy Awards. Brigadoon (1954), Paint Your Wagon (1969), and Camelot (1967) were also made into popular motion pictures. Gigi, Lerner and Loewe’s collaboration directly for film, received nine Academy Awards.

Without Loewe, Lerner wrote the book and lyrics for Kurt Weill’s Love Life (1948), and he produced scripts for several films, including An American in Paris (1951), for which he won an Academy Award. He attempted to collaborate with Richard Rodgers in the 1960s, but the partnership did not work out; and Lerner joined the composer Burton Lane for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, successfully produced on Broadway in 1965 and filmed in 1970. Lerner also collaborated with Lane on Carmelina (1979) and with the composers André Previn on Coco (1969), Leonard Bernstein on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (1976), and Charles Strouse on Dance a Little Closer (1983).

In 1978 Lerner published an autobiography, The Street Where I Live (the title being an echo of one of the famous songs in My Fair Lady).