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This chapter examines the work of Cy Coleman. It gives an extended commentary of his career, and provides details on productions, giving data and song information. Coleman, a child prodigy at the keyboard, was giving piano recitals at the age of five. The budding concert pianist took a turn toward pop as a teenager, playing at servicemen’s clubs during World War II. He formed a jazz trio and was soon playing successfully in nightclubs. Coleman also started writing songs with lyricist Joseph McCarthy Jr., son of the lyricist of Irene (Notables: November 1, 1919).

Betty Comden and Adolph Green’s last outing on a new Broadway show came in 1991, when they provided lyrics for The Will Rogers Follies. With a book by Peter Stone, music by Cy Coleman, and direction and choreography by Tommy Tune, the show earned them yet another Tony Award, and the original cast recording garnered a Grammy for them as well. After this they settled into semi-retirement, enjoying additional accolades, such as a Kennedy Center Honor. They didn’t stop working entirely though. They revised older works, most notably A Doll’s Life, and maintained active lives as performers until their deaths in 2002 and 2006, respectively.

Betty Comden and Adolph Green found themselves in the early and mid-1970s returning to their earliest days artistically, when they formed the Revuers. They penned lyrics for a pair of songs heard in one revue, Straws in the Wind, and wrote the book for a second, By Bernstein. Their collaborator on the former was composer Cy Coleman, and with him they continued their 1930s-inspired artistry with their next show, On the Twentieth Century, which was a musical version of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s hit 1932 farce, Twentieth Century.

Chapter 9examines the socioeconomic health of New York City between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, as well as its impact on the city's Broadway and Off Broadway theaters. The theater industry's desire to clean up an increasingly seedy Times Square by offering wholesome family- and tourist-friendly musicalsclashed with its need to keep up with the country's rapidly changing social and sexual mores and to compete with newer, more explicit, mass-mediated forms of entertainment. The view of the sexual revolution in the 1977 musical I Love My Wife reflects the ultimate “mainstreaming” of the adult musical.

The Will Rogers Follies was Tune’s most opulent show, far different from the sleek, stylized minimalism of his recent musicals, with a score by Cy Coleman (music) and Betty Comden and Adolph Green (lyrics), and a book by Peter Stone, by this time a frequent Tune collaborator. The story of Will Rogers, the beloved, Oklahoma-born star of radio, vaudeville, and films, and one of the most popular headliners of the Ziegfeld Follies, was told as a series of routines played out on the stage of the Follies. This look back at a bygone theatrical era played to Tune’s strengths, and his staging recalled show business antecedents from the stage and screen updated with present-day flourishes. Tune’s staging feats were even more impressive because they were performed on a grand staircase that covered the entire expanse of the stage. The Will Rogers Follies opened during a moment of resurgent patriotism in the wake of the success of Operation Desert Storm. Following a decade in which British hits like Cats, Les Misérables, and The Phantom of the Opera dominated the Broadway musical, an air of jingoism and a determination to reclaim Broadway for American musicals hovered over the success of The Will Rogers Follies in 1991.

This chapter describes Bob Fosse’s film Sweet Charity, which opened at the top of 1966 and was a compendium of then-current styles and sexual attitudes. Fosse conceived this American adaptation of Federico Fellini’s film Nights of Cabiria (1957) as a vehicle for Gwen Verdon, changing the title character from Roman prostitute to New York City dance hall hostess. He wrote several drafts of the show’s book before relinquishing those duties to Neil Simon. Nonetheless, in Sweet Charity, Fosse’s authorial voice was much in evidence. His staging exhibited a new fluidity, as well as a dark, ambivalent view of sexuality. Sweet Charity was also the vehicle by which Fosse would return to movies, this time as a director. Although full of arresting moments, the film was deemed too busy and full of gimmicky, self-conscious camerawork. Sweet Charity was a commercial and critical failure, but it allowed Fosse to explore the camera’s potential in presenting dance on film.