Ravinia 2019, Issue 3, Week 6

As one of the best-known screenwriters in Hollywood, Ernest Lehman (1915–2005) was regarded as the master of adaptation, writing or co-writing scripts for some of the most suc- cessful movie musicals of all time, including The King and I (1956), West Side Story (1961), and The Sound of Music (1965). Having worked with some of the most prominent movie directors of the postwar period, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder, he was highly sought after for his talents in writing stories which were intelli- gent, memorable, and funny in equal measure. Sabrina (1954), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), North by Northwest (1959), Who’s Afraid of Vir- ginia Woolf? (1966), and Black Sunday (1977) are among Lehman’s best-known scripts, respon- sible for turning him into one of the greatest talents the movie industry has ever seen. Apart from winning more Best Screenplay Awards from the Writer’s Guild than anyone in the guild’s history, in 2001 Lehman also received an honorary Oscar for his works, being the first screenwriter to receive this honor. Jerome Robbins (1918–98) is world-renowned for his work as a choreographer of ballets as well as his work as a director and choreographer in theater, movies, and television. His Broadway shows include On the Town , Billion Dollar Baby , High Button Shoes , West Side Story , The King and I , Gypsy , Peter Pan , Miss Liberty , Call Me Mad- am , and Fiddler on the Roof . His last Broadway production, 1989’s Jerome Robbins’s Broadway , won six Tony Awards, including for Best Musi- cal and Best Director. Among the more than 60 ballets he created are Fancy Free , Afternoon of a Faun , The Concert , Dances at a Gathering , In the Night , In G Ma- jor , Other Dances , Glass Pieces , and Ives, Songs , which are in the repertories of New York City Ballet and other major dance companies around the world. His last ballets include A Suite of Dances created for Mikhail Baryshnikov (1994), Two & Three Part Inventions (1994), West Side Story Suite (1995), and Brandenburg (1996). In addition to two Academy Awards for the film West Side Story , Robbins received four Tony Awards, five Donaldson Awards, an Emmy Award, the Screen Directors’ Guild Award, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Rob- bins was a 1981 Kennedy Center Honors recipi- ent and was awarded the French Chevalier dans l’Ordre National de la Legion d’Honneur. Rob- bins died in 1998. Stephen Sondheim (b. 1930) wrote the music and lyrics for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Anyone can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Lit- tle Night Music (1973), The Frogs (1974), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Into the Woods (1987), Assassins (1991), Passion (1994), and Bounce (2003), as well as lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965), plus ad- ditional lyrics for Candide (1973). Side by Side by Sondheim (1976), Marry Me a Little (1981), You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983), Putting It Together (1993/99), Moving On (2001) and Sond- heim on Sondheim (2010) are anthologies of his work as a composer and lyricist. For films, he composed the score of Stavisky (1974) and co-composed Reds (1981) as well as songs for Dick Tracy (1990). He also wrote the songs for the television production Evening Primrose (1966), co-authored the film The Last of Sheila (1973) and the play Getting Away with Murder (1996), and provided incidental music for the plays The Girls of Summer (1956), Invita- tion to a March (1961), Twigs (1971) and The En- clave (1973). Saturday Night (1954), his first pro- fessional musical, finally received its New York premiere in 1999. Sondheim is on the Council of the Dramatists Guild, the national associa- tion of playwrights, composers, and lyricists, having served as its president from 1973 to 1981, in which year he founded Young Playwrits Inc. to develop and promote the work of American playwrights ages 18 years and younger. Robert Wise (1914–2005) is one of the very few truly multifaceted film mavericks of the 20th century. At the age of 19, he kick-started his film career in the sound effects and editing departments at RKO, only to land a Best Film Editing Academy Award nomination six years later for his work on Orson Welles’s masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941). Throughout the following decades, he continued to harness critical and public acclaim as the director of some of the most innovative— The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)—and popular— The Sound of Music (1965)—movies of all time. Described by peers as approaching his sub- ject matters as an auteur working within the confines of major film studios, it was with West Side Story (1961) that Wise saw the crowning achievement in his career on more than 40 films. Winning a then record 10 Academy Awards for West Side Story (including ones for Best Direc- tor and Best Picture), Wise became ingrained in Hollywood memory for his versatility, fluently applying cross-genre cinematic styles to horror, noir, western, war, science fiction, musical, and drama. PRODUCTION CREDITS Producer: Paul H. Epstein for The Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc. Associate Producer: Eleonor M. Sandresky for The Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc. Production Supervisor: Steven A. Linder Technical Director: Chris Szuberla Sound Engineer: Martin Bierman Music Supervision: Garth Edwin Sunderland Original Orchestrations: Leonard Bernstein, Sid Ramin, Irwin Kostal Additional Orchestrations: Garth Edwin Sunderland and Peter West Music Preparation: Peter West Original Manuscript Reconstruction: Eleonor M. Sandresky Technical Consultant: Laura Gibson Soundtrack Adaptation – Chace Audio by Deluxe: Robert Heiber, Chris Reynolds, Andrew Starbin, Alice Taylor Sound Separation Technology provided by Audionamix Click Tracks and Streamers created by Kristopher Carter and Mako Sujishi With special thanks to: Arthur Laurents and his estate, Stephen Sondheim, the Robbins Rights Trust, the Johnny Green Collection at Harvard University, the Sid Ramin Collection at Columbia University, the Robert Wise Collection at the University of Southern California, Lawrence A. Mirisch, David Newman, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., MGM HD, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment LLC, Ken Hahn, and Sync Sound West Side Story is a registered trademark of The Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc., in the US and other countries. Jerome Robbins (photo: Jesse Gerstein) Stephen Sondheim JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 97