Happy Birthday to EGOT nominee John Kander, born March 18, 1927, in Kansas City, Mo. After earning his bachelor’s from Oberlin (1951) and master’s from Columbia (1954), he began his career as a music director in summer stock, before making his Broadway debut as a rehearsal pianist for Gypsy (1959), during which Jerome Robbins asked him to write the dance arrangements. Kander also wrote dance arrangements for Irma la Douce (1960), before seeing his own first musical produced: A Family Affair (1962), written with James and William Goldman.
Later that year, Kander was introduced to lyricist Fred Ebb by Tommy Volando, their mutual publisher. The team’s first song was “My Coloring Book,” a Top 40 hit for Sandy Stewart that earned the new collaborators a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year. After Barbra Streisand recorded the song (and their second song, “I Don’t Care Much”), Kander and Ebb became a permanent team. Below is Streisand singing “My Coloring Book” on the Dec. 16, 1962, episode of The Ed Sullivan Show.
The duo’s first musical, Golden Gate, didn’t find a producer, but it did convince Harold Prince to hire them to write the score for Flora, The Red Menace (1965), in which Liza Minnelli made her Broadway debut. After the GE industrial Go Fly a Kite (1966), the team was back on Broadway with another Prince show: Cabaret (1966), which received eight Tony awards (including best musical and score), a Grammy Award, and an Oscar-winning film adaptation (1972) starring Minnelli. Below is Minnelli in the film’s title song.
Kander and Ebb returned to Broadway in 1968 with two new musicals, The Happy Time and Zorba, earning Tony and Grammy nominations for both. Their luck flagged with Wait for Me, World, which failed to find a producer, and the short-lived 70, Girls, 70 (1971), which incorporated one song from the abandoned show. They had better luck in TV and film, earning an Emmy for Liza with a “Z” (1972) and an Oscar nomination for Funny Lady (1975). Below is Streisand singing the nominated song “How Lucky Can You Get” in her 1975 TV special.
In 1975, Kander and Ebb wrote their most successful show, Chicago, starring Chita Rivera. It brought them Tony and Grammy nods but was largely overlooked until its 1996 revival, which earned the duo a Grammy and Olivier, as well as Oscar and Grammy nods for the 2002 Oscar-winning film adaptation. In 1977, they had another winner in the Minnelli-helmed film musical New York, New York, whose title tune received a Grammy nom for Song of the Year in 1981 for Frank Sinatra’s recording, which you can watch him perform below.
They worked with Minnelli again on The Act (1978), for which they received a Tony nomination and during which Kander met his future husband, Albert Stephenson. Four years later, they returned to Broadway with Woman of the Year (1981), winning a second Tony and earning a Grammy nod. The team’s 1984 musical The Rink brought together Minnelli and Rivera and earned Kander and Ebb yet another Tony nomination. The following year, Kander had his third Emmy nomination for the score to An Early Frost (1985). Below are Minnelli and Rivera singing “Wallflower” at the 1984 Tonys.
Kander and Ebb’s 1991 induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame coincided with the premiere of their Lortel-winning Off-Broadway revue And the World Goes ’Round. The following year, they won an Emmy for the TV special Liza Minnelli Live from Radio City Music Hall and, in 1993, both Tony and Drama Desk awards as well as a Grammy nod for Kiss of the Spider Woman, starring Rivera. They closed out the decade with Tony and Drama Desk nominations for Steel Pier (1997) and the Kennedy Center Honors (1998). Below is Brent Carver and Rivera in “Where You Are” at the 1993 Tonys.
In 2004, Fred Ebb died. Kander spent the next few years completing their unfinished projects with other writers, including the Tony-nominated Curtains (2006), The Scottsboro Boys (2010), and The Visit (2015). Kander also began writing new works with Greg Pierce, including The Landing (2013) and Kid Victory (2017), and David Thompson, including The Beast in the Jungle (2018). He’s even written the #Hamildrop song “Cheering for Me Now” (2018) with Lin-Manuel Miranda, which you can watch below.