Alan Jay Lerner

From the 1940s into the 1960s, American lyricist and librettist Alan Jay Lerner enjoyed repeated triumphs on both stage and screen alongside his principal collaborator, composer Frederick Loewe. Their partnership produced an initial Broadway hit with Brigadoon and reached its commercial peak with My Fair Lady. Born into affluence in New York City in 1918, Lerner was the son of the man who established the Lerner’s chain of women’s apparel stores. He pursued musical studies at Juilliard, continued them in England, and completed his education at Harvard, contributing material to campus shows during his time there. Following graduation he supplied scripts for radio between 1940 and 1942, yet his sights remained fixed on the Broadway stage when he first encountered Loewe. The resulting team of Lerner & Loewe placed its earliest songs in the 1943 production What’s Up?, then achieved its first major success four years afterward when Brigadoon opened to acclaim. Additional stage and film works followed, among them Paint Your Wagon in 1951, the Academy Award-winning score for Gigi in 1958, and Camelot in 1960; none, however, matched the unprecedented run of more than 2,500 performances recorded by My Fair Lady in 1956. After Loewe suffered a heart attack and withdrew from writing in 1961, Lerner formed a new alliance with Richard Rodgers. He had previously worked with another composer, Kurt Weill, on the 1948 production Love Life. Among the songs that remain most closely associated with Lerner are “Almost Like Being in Love” from 1947, “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live” from 1956, “If Ever I Would Leave You” from 1960, and “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.”