Off Stage

The legendary lyricist, playwright, screenwriter and performer reveals her life offstage and behind the scenes, her difficulties with her daughter, the loss of her son to drugs, and people who changed her life forever

Betty Comden and Adolph Green together have written musicals for the theater and scripts for the movies over an astonishing seven decades, including titles from Bells Are Ringing and The Will Rogers Follies to Singin' in the Rain and Band Wagon. Now Comden has written a memoir of her private life. She barely mentions her successes as a writer for stage and screen; even her collaborator, Green, is passed over. Instead, she recalls her Brooklyn childhood and her successful marriage to Steven Kyle, an artist, who died of pancreatitis in 1979. They had two children. Son Alan's addiction to drugs led to his death from AIDS. Comden's sorrow and guilt permeate this memoir. It is ungracious to ask for what a writer is not offering us, but there is not enough in the domestic joys and tragedies of Comden's private life to justify this account. There are tidbits for her fans and information about famous friends, including Lauren Bacall, James Jones, Penelope Gilliat and Charles Chaplin, but little is added to our understanding of what combination of talents and chemistry fueled this brilliant and creative half of the legendary Comden-Green partnership. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Those hoping for an eyewitness account of the heyday of the musical will be disappointed by Comden's memoir. She admits in the opening pages to having no interest in discussing the working life of the team she and husband Adolf Green made up and that helped bring us such perennials as Singin' in the Rain, On the Town, and The Will Rogers Follies. She focuses instead on her early life, first in a lower-middle-class Brooklyn Jewish household during the 1920s and 1930s, and then as she failed to make it as an actress before settling on a writing career. She writes wittily and tightly, as you'd expect of one who cites Strunk's Elements of Style as a major influence. Still, her reminiscences wander and frustrate with the precious little space they devote to her friends Leonard Bernstein, Lauren Bacall, and Charlie Chaplin, not to mention Green, who's almost not in the book. But then, Comden concludes with an intelligent discussion of growing old and a heartbreaking account of her son's losing battle with drug addiction. Jack Helbig