Mauro Nahoum (Mau Nah), José Sá Filho (Sazz), Arlindo Coutinho (Mestre Goltinho); David Benechis (Mestre Bené-X), José Domingos Raffaelli (Mestre Raf) *in memoriam*, Marcelo Carvalho (Marcelón), Marcelo Siqueira (Marcelink), Luciana Pegorer (PegLu), Mario Vieira (Manim), Luiz Carlos Antunes (Mestre Llulla) *in memoriam*, Ivan Monteiro (Mestre I-Vans), Mario Jorge Jacques (Mestre MaJor), Gustavo Cunha (Guzz), José Flavio Garcia (JoFla), Alberto Kessel (BKessel), Gilberto Brasil (BraGil), Reinaldo Figueiredo (Raynaldo), Claudia Fialho (LaClaudia), Pedro Wahmann (PWham), Nelson Reis (Nels), Pedro Cardoso (o Apóstolo), Carlos Augusto Tibau (Tibau), Flavio Raffaelli (Flavim), Luiz Fernando Senna (Senna) *in memoriam*, Cris Senna (Cris), Jorge Noronha (JN), Sérgio Tavares de Castro (Blue Serge) e Geraldo Guimarães (Gerry).

MORRE A GRANDE LETRISTA BETTY COMDEM

25 novembro 2006

Puxa, o que está havendo? Parece que todo o nosso patrimônio musical está se esvaindo.
Vc sabe quem é Betty Comdem? Reconheça no texto abaixo algumas das músicas que ela escreveu em parceria com Jule Styne e Adolph Green!
- 'Just in Time' ... I found you just in time, before you came my time e was running low ...
- 'New York! New York!' - it's a hell of a town ... - 'Isn't It Romantic' - 'The Party's Over' - ... the candle's flicker and dim ...

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Betty Comden, Lyricist for Musicals, Dies at 89 by Robert Berkvist - New York Times, November 23, 2006 - Betty Comden, who with her longtime collaborator Adolph Green wrote the lyrics and often the librettos for some of the most celebrated musicals of stage and screen, died today at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She was 89 and lived in Manhattan. The cause was heart failure, said Ronald Konecky, her lawyer and the executor of her estate.During a professional partnership that lasted for more than 60 years, and which finally ended with Mr. Green's death in 2002, the Comden-Green blend of sophisticated wit and musical know-how lit up stage shows like "On the Town," "Wonderful Town," "Peter Pan" and "Bells Are Ringing." Their Hollywood credits included the screenplays for two landmark film musicals, "Singin' in the Rain" and "The Band Wagon."Through the years, they worked with composers like Leonard Bernstein, Cy Coleman, Jule Styne and André Previn, creating songs like "New York, New York," "The Party's Over," "It's Love" and "Some Other Time." They were adept at making their lyrics fit the mood, whether it was rueful ("Lonely Town"), raucous ("100 Easy Ways to Lose a Man") or romantic ("Just in Time"). The title of one of their own songs, from "Bells Are Ringing," summed up their joint career: it was truly a "Perfect Relationship" in which they met daily, most often Ms. Comden's living room, either to work on a show, to trade ideas or even just talk about the weather."We stare at each other," Ms. Comden said in a 1977 interview with The New York Times. "We meet, whether or not we have a project, just to keep up a continuity of working. There are long periods when nothing happens, and it's just boring and disheartening. But we have a theory that nothing's wasted, even those long days of staring at one another. You sort of have to believe that, don't you? That you had to go through all that to get to the day when something did happen." Ms. Comden, slim, dark-haired and composed, was the ideal counterbalance to the often rumpled, wild-haired and restless Mr. Green. Sometimes, during discussions, Ms. Comden would finish one of his sentences, or vice versa. Songs and shows grew that way, too, although the story was always the starting point."The book comes first," Ms. Comden said in the 1977 interview, recalling how the song "Just in Time" took shape. "At some point when we were working on 'Bells Are Ringing,'" she said, "Jule Styne wrote that tune. Dee da dum, da dee da dee da dum. We all agreed it had to be in the show somewhere, but for months we couldn't find a place for it, or even a title, but Jule was playing it all over town at parties, calling it 'Dee Da Dum.' And that became the official title until the point where, rewriting part of the book one day, the situation was there, and we finally wrote the words to fit 'Dee Da Dum.'"The starting point for their partnership was Greenwich Village where, in the late 1930s, they joined up with another aspiring entertainer named Judy Holliday and two other friends to form a cabaret act. They called themselves the Revuers and persuaded Max Gordon, the owner of a club called the Village Vanguard, that their act would be good for business. It was. The Revuers opened at the Vanguard in 1939, performing material that included freewheeling sketches like "The Banshi Sisters" and "The Baroness Bazuka," a zany operetta, and frequently accompanied at the piano by one of Mr. Green's friends, a talented young musician named Leonard Bernstein, who dropped in often enough to be taken for part of their act.The act's success earned them a movie offer and the Revuers traveled west in hopes of finding instant fame in "Greenwich Village," a 1944 movie starring Carmen Miranda and Don Ameche in which the newcomers turned out to be virtually invisible. Ms. Comden and Mr. Green came back to New York, where they resumed working at the Vanguard and other clubs. It was not long before they heard from their erstwhile accompanist Leonard Bernstein, who said he had been working on a ballet with Jerome Robbins and that the two of them had decided that the ballet, called "Fancy Free," had the makings of a Broadway show. They were looking for someone to write the book and lyrics. Ms. Comden and Mr. Green jumped at the chance and jumped into the limelight with their work on the show. The result, "On the Town," the story of three sailors on shore leave in New York, opened late in 1944 and was a smash. Both Ms. Comden and Mr. Green appeared in the show, he as one of the sailors and she as Claire de Loone, an amorous anthropologist. New Yorkers inside and outside the theater were soon humming the town's geography à la Comden and Green:The Bronx is up and the Battery's down,The people ride in a hole in the ground,New York, New York,It's a helluva town.Ms. Comden and Mr. Green were definitely on their way up, not to the Bronx but to big-time success.Betty Comden was born Elizabeth Cohen on May 3, 1917 in Brooklyn. Her father, Leo, was a lawyer, her mother, Rebecca, a teacher. She attended Erasmus Hall High School and studied drama at New York University, graduating in 1938. By that time, she had changed her surname to Comden, had had nose surgery to make her look more stageworthy, had acted with the Washington Square Players and had met and become friends with Mr. Green, another aspiring actor. Their circle soon included three other would-be entertainers, Ms. Holliday, Alvin Hammer and John Frank. Then came their decision to form the Revuers, and all else followed.Ms. Comden married Steven Kyle, a designer and businessman, in 1942. He died in 1979 and she never remarried. They had two children, a daughter, Susanna, and a son, Alan. Their son, a drug addict, contracted AIDS and died of complications of his addiction in 1990. She is survived by her daughter, Susanna Kyle, of Manhattan.Ms. Comden reminisced about her Brooklyn childhood, her student years and her long marriage in a 1995 memoir, "Off Stage," in which she also told of the difficult circumstances of her son's struggle with drugs. The book included tributes to some of her friends and colleagues, among them Mr. Bernstein and Lauren Bacall, but hardly dealt at all with her professional life. After the success of "On the Town," Ms. Comden and Mr. Green tried their hand at writing the book for another Broadway musical. "Billion Dollar Baby," which opened in 1945, had a score by Morton Gould, choreography by Mr. Robbins and was directed by George Abbott, but it was not as well-received.Hollywood called again and this time, for the most part, they had better luck. "Good News" (1947), with June Allyson and Peter Lawford as singing, dancing campus sweethearts, was their first screenplay. They wrote "The Barkleys of Broadway" (1949), which marked the film reunion of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, and adapted "On the Town" (1949) for the screen, with Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin as the freewheeling sailors navigating the streets of New York. They contributed heavily to the success of "The Band Wagon" (1953), the Vincente Minnelli musical for which they wrote the witty screenplay. The film had a score by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz and starred Mr. Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray. The Comden-Green screenplay received an Academy Award nomination.They were still wedded to Broadway, however, and their stage work during the next few years included the Jule Styne musical "Two on the Aisle" (1951), a revue with Bert Lahr and Dolores Gray; "Wonderful Town" (1953), an adaptation of the 1939 comedy hit "My Sister Eileen," with music by Mr. Bernstein and starring Rosalind Russell and Edie Adams as two sisters from Ohio trying to make it in the Big Town; and, most notably, "Bells Are Ringing."That 1956 musical reunited them with Ms. Holliday, who headed the cast as an operator at an answering service who falls in love with one of the service's male clients (Sydney Chaplin), after listening to his voice over her telephone line. The score included the comic lament "I'm Going Back (To the Bonjour Tristesse Brassiere Company)" as well as some songs that became part of the standard pop repertory, like "Just in Time," "Long Before I Knew You" and "The Party's Over," which ended with the melancholy verse: Now you must wake upAll dreams must endTake off your make-upThe party's overIt's all over, my friend.Ms. Comden and Mr. Green also wrote the screenplay for the 1960 film version, which starred Ms. Holliday.Even their less successful shows yielded musical nuggets, one example being the 1960 "Do Re Mi," which had a book by Garson Kanin, music by Mr. Styne for which they wrote the lyrics, and which featured Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker. That largely unmemorable score included one gem, "Make Someone Happy."Ms. Comden and Mr. Green went on to write "Subways Are for Sleeping" (1961), with Carol Lawrence and Mr. Chaplin, and "Fade Out-Fade In" (1964), with Carol Burnett and Jack Cassidy, both shows with music by Mr. Styne; the lyrics for "Hallelujah, Baby" (1968), which had music by Mr. Styne, a book by Arthur Laurents and which starred Leslie Uggams and Robert Hooks, and then wrote the book for "Applause" (1970). Adapted from the film "All About Eve," with music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Lee Adams, the show starred Lauren Bacall as the take-no-prisoners movie queen Margo Channing played by Bette Davis in the film.In the years that followed they teamed up with the composer Cy Coleman for "On the Twentieth Century" (1978), based on the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play about a flamboyant movie producer (John Cullum) and his leading lady (Madeline Kahn), traveling from Hollywood to Broadway on the Twentieth-Century Limited in the 1930s. The show was a hit and brought them Tony Awards for their book and score. In 1982 they wrote the book and lyrics -- Larry Grossman wrote the music -- for what was meant to be a kind of musical sequel to Ibsen's "A Doll's House," but the result, "A Doll's Life" (1982), was a four-performance disaster.Their last major Broadway show was "The Will Rogers Follies," a 1991 Ziegfeld-style extravaganza with music by Mr. Coleman, book by Peter Stone and direction and choreography by Tommy Tune. Keith Carradine starred as the folksy humorist-philosopher. Despite mixed reviews the show won six Tony Awards, including one for the music and lyrics, and enjoyed a run of two and a half years. By the time "Will Rogers" came along, Ms. Comden and Mr. Green had worked together for more than a half-century. On Broadway, starting with "On the Town" in 1944, they had won a shelf full of Tony Awards. In 1991 they were among the recipients of that year's Kennedy Center honors for their contributions to American musical theater.Their early Hollywood credits included "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" (1949), with Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Esther Williams, and "It's Always Fair Weather" (1955), with Mr. Kelly, Dan Dailey, Michael Kidd and Ms. Charisse, for which their screenplay received an Academy Award nomination. A bittersweet sequel of sorts to "On the Town," the plot of "It's Always Fair Weather" revolved around the reunion a decade after World War II of three former G.I. companions who find that time has altered their friendship for the worse. "I don't think there's ever been a musical quite like it," Ms. Comden said in a 1999 interview with The Times. "The corrosive effect that time has on friendships -- that's a very unusual subject for a musical." She and Mr. Green said it was one of their favorites.After their stage debut in "On the Town," they didn't perform on Broadway again until 1958, when they appeared in "A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green," a revue that included some of their early favorites like "The Baroness Bazuka," which they described as a tribute to the Shubert brothers ("J. J., O. O., and Uh-Uh."). The revue was well received and they brought an updated version back to Broadway in 1977.Ms. Comden also performed in films from time to time. She acted in Sidney Lumet's "Garbo Talks" (1984), in which Mr. Green also made a fleeting appearance, and James Ivory's "Slaves of New York" (1984). She appeared on stage in 1983 in a rare dramatic role in Wendy Wasserstein's "Isn't It Romantic," playing the mother of a footloose girl waiting for Mr. Right to come along.In 1999 Ms. Comden and Mr. Green were saluted by their peers in a two-night program at Carnegie Hall. Elaine Stritch and Brian Stokes Mitchell were among the performers who sang numbers from the Comden-Green repertoire. Recent Broadway revivals of their work included a 2001 production of "Bells Are Ringing" starring Faith Prince, which closed after a brief run, and the 2003 revival of "Wonderful Town" with Donna Murphy, which settled in for a long stay at the Al Hirschfeld Theater.After Mr. Green's death in October 2002, Broadway turned out in force two months later for a memorial program at the Shubert Theater. Kevin Kline, Joel Grey, Ms. Bacall and others paid affectionate tribute to Mr. Green in song and story. At one point during her own reminiscence about Mr. Green, Ms. Comden paused and said to the audience, "It's lonely up here." After six decades, the perfect relationship was over.

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