Composer Stephen Sondheim, one of the pivotal figures in musical theater history, died November 26 at his home in Roxbury, Conn. Born March 22, 1930, in New York, Sondheim’s parents divorced when he was 10, and he moved to Bucks Co., Pa., with his mother. At George School, he wrote his first musical, By George (1945). He asked classmate Jimmy Hammerstein’s dad, Oscar, to evaluate the show. Sondheim recalled, “In that afternoon I learned more about songwriting and the musical theater than most people learn in a lifetime.”
Hammerstein designed a course for Sondheim: first, adapt an admired play; second, adapt a flawed play; third, adapt a novel or short story; and finally, write an original. At Williams College, Sondheim wrote the first, All That Glitters (based on Beggar on a Horseback), which had three performances. By 1952, he had finished the remaining three: High Tor, Bad Tuesday (based on Mary Poppins), and Climb High. Below is Sondheim singing “When I Get Famous” from his original musical Climb High.
After college, Sondheim studied with Milton Babbitt and struggled to land musical assignments. Then, after working on the TV series Topper (1953-54), he was hired to write the score for Saturday Night. It was scheduled for Broadway in fall 1955, but producer Lemuel Ayers died that summer and the production was scrapped. Sondheim’s Broadway debut would come in 1956, with incidental music for The Girls of Summer, but his lyrics for the sidelined musical convinced Leonard Bernstein to hire him for West Side Story (1957). Below is a medley from the 2000 Off-Broadway production of Saturday Night.
Sondheim’s West Side Story collaborators Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins next asked him to help adapt Gypsy Rose Lee’s memoir, but Ethel Merman refused to let a first-time composer write for her, so Jule Styne was hired to write music, with Sondheim again only writing lyrics. “Small World” from Gypsy (1959) earned Styne and Sondheim a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year. Below is Rosalind Russell singing the tune to Karl Malden in the 1962 film version.
Sondheim’s next Broadway musical, the first for which he wrote music, was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), which won the Tony for best musical. Then after three hits, his luck faltered with Anyone Can Whistle (1964) and Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965), the last show for which he didn’t write music. Next, Sondheim and James Goldman began work on The Girls Upstairs, inspired by a newspaper article about former Ziegfeld showgirls. When they hit a creative wall, they shifted to Evening Primrose (1966) for the anthology series ABC Stage 67. Below is Charmaine Carr singing “I Remember” to Anthony Perkins in the TV musical.
In 1970, he began a long collaboration with director Harold Prince on Company (book by George Furth), earning two Tonys and a Grammy, followed by Follies (James Goldman) in 1971, earning another Tony. A Little Night Music (Harold Wheeler) was next in 1973, bringing him a Tony and two Grammys, including one for “Send in the Clowns” as Song of the Year. In 1974, Sondheim flexed his acting muscles with a role in the PBS broadcast of June Moon, which you can watch below. His next shows with Prince were Pacific Overtures (John Weidman) in 1976 and Sweeney Todd (Harold Wheeler) in 1979, earning a Tony and a Grammy. Below is the cast of Sweeney at the 1979 Tonys.
After the disappointing reception of Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sondheim’s collaboration with Prince ended, and he even considered quitting the theater. He changed his mind after seeing writer-director James Lapine’s Off-Broadway play Twelve Dreams (1981). Their first collaboration was Sunday in the Park with George (1984), which won the Pulitzer and Grammy. Their next shows were Into the Woods (1987) and Passion (1994), which each brought him a Tony and a Grammy. Below are the cast of Sunday and Into the Woods at the Tonys in 1984 and 1987, respectively.
In the 1990s, Sondheim began collaborating with John Weidman, with whom he wrote Assassins (1990) and the Obie-winning Road Show (2008), whose previous incarnations included Wise Guys (1997) and Bounce (2003), which reunited him with Prince. Other highlights of the decade include his Oscar-winning song “Sooner or Later” for Dick Tracy (1990), which you can watch below, and his 1993 Kennedy Center Honors, which you can also watch below.
Sondheim’s recent honors include a Special Tony (2008), Special Olivier (2011), American Theatre Hall of Fame induction (2014), and Presidential Medal of Freedom (2015). He’s also seen Broadway’s Henry Miller’s Theatre and West End’s Queen’s Theatre renamed for him, in 2010 and 2019, respectively. After publication of his two-volume lyric collection, Finishing the Hat (2010) and Look, I Made a Hat (2011), composer Adam Guettel talked with Sondheim about “The Art of Songwriting,” which you can watch below.
Last year, to mark the occasion of Sondheim’s 90th birthday, Raúl Esparza hosted a virtual celebration featuring a galaxy of musical theater stars, which you can watch below. Sondheim’s upcoming projects include a new film version of West Side Story, directed by Steven Spielberg, and the first film adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Richard Linklater.