| Coleman, born Seymour Kaufman, was brought up in the Bronx. He was a child prodigy and had given piano recitals in Carnegie Hall and Steinway Hall by the ripe old age of 9 . Despite the early classical success, he decided to build a career in popular music. His first collaborator was Joseph Allen McCarthy but his most successful early partnership, albeit a turbulent one, was with Carolyn Leigh. The pair wrote many pop hits including Witchcraft and The Best Is Yet To Come, and also wrote two Broadway musicals : Wildcat, which starred Lucille Ball, and Little Me. In 1964, Coleman met Dorothy Fields at a party, and asked if she would like to collaborate with him. She is reported to have answered Thank God somebody asked. Fields was revitalised by working with the much younger Coleman, and by the contemporary nature of their first project, which was to become Sweet Charity. The show was a fabulous success and Coleman found working with Fields much easier than with Leigh. The partnership was to work on two more shows an aborted project about Eleanor Roosevelt, and Seesaw, which reached Broadway on 1973, after one of those troubled out-of-town tours. The partnership was cut short by Fields' death in 1974. Coleman has continued to write for the stage. In the last quarter of a century he has written the scores for the following shows: 1977 I Love My Wife (lyrics Michael Stewart) 1978 On The Twentieth Century (lyrics Betty Comden and Adolph Green) 1979 Home Again, Home Again (lyrics Barbara Fried) did not reach Broadway 1980 Barnum (lyrics Michael Stewart) 1988 Welcome to the Club ( lyrics Coleman, AE Hotchner) |