Kailey Hewitt

Dr. Nathan Hurwitz

Styles and Genres II
September 25, 2012
John Kander and Fred Ebb
The team of John Kander and Fred Ebb had a career that spanned over forty years and is
the longest composer/lyricist partnership in the history of Broadway. Together they were
incredibly successful, but they came from very different backgrounds. John Kander was born on
March 18th, 1927 in Kansas City, Missouri to parents Harold and Bernice Kander. He grew up in
a Jewish home that was happy and loving. From the time he was young music was an integral
part of his life. Music was often played in his house and he attended concerts at the
Philharmonic in Kansas City and operas with the San Carlo Opera company (Lawrence, 9).
These experiences with the stage were very influential to sparking Kanders passion for
storytelling through music. When he was twelve he took his first trip to New York City,
inspiring him further in his ambitions towards a musical career. He began piano lessons at the
age of six, although he hated performing in front of others. His family was supportive of him as
he continued to develop his musical talents.
Kander got his undergraduate degree at Oberlin College where he studied composition.
His music shied away from the atonal style and he definitely found more success in vocal
writing. Kander called his few attempts at instrumental music the worst chamber music you
ever heard (Leve, 123). During his college years he primarily wrote art songs and opera pieces,
which he continued to do when he attended Columbia University for his masters. It was not until
after college that he began to delve into the musical theater repertoire. Some of his first

professional musical theater work was playing the piano for The Amazing Adele and An Evening
with Beatrice Lilly. He began writing some musicals with his close friends James and William
Goldman. A few of these musicals that never saw the light of day were Magic Circle, Jennifers
Travels, and The Enchanted. The only musical they wrote together that reached Broadway was
A Family Affair in 1962 but it was not a success and closed after sixty-five performances. To
make ends meet during this time Kander conducting summer stock theater, coaching singers and
playing auditions. Then in 1957 at the opening night party of West Side Story in Philadelphia he
met Joe Lewis who played in the pit for the show. Eventually he filled in for him in the
orchestra, which led him to play auditions with Jerome Robbins for Gypsy. Robbins was
impressed enough with Kander to ask him to do the dance arrangements for the show and
subsequently Irma la Douce. This was a great learning experience for Kander and educated him
in how to collaborate with others on Broadway.
In contrast to Kanders upbringing, Fred Ebb had a somewhat harsher home life. He was
born on April 8th, 1936 to Harry and Anna Ebb. He grew up in Manhattan and as a member of a
lower class Jewish family life did not contain much frivolous pleasure. His parents were
hardworking, not openly loving, and certainly had no inclination for music or theater. Ebb felt
enormous pressure from his family that he would have to support them in the future and to find
solace from his problems he turned to theater. He would listen to Broadway records and tried to
attend as much theater as could. The only way he could do so was to buy standing room or try
and help sell concessions. He did not see his first musical till he was fifteen and he loved it.
These experiences were preparing him for his future writing for the theater, as Ebb himself said,
I used to go to find out how they did itHow did all those elements come together? How do
you write a song that pays off later? (Lawrence, 11)

Ebb graduated as valedictorian early from high school and quickly earned a bachelors
degree from New York University. It was not until college that he began to look at writing as a
serious career. He had dabbled in limerick and short verse writing but after attending a short
story workshop at NYU he became very interested and eventually attended Columbia earning a
masters degree in English literature. While holding odd jobs in New York Ebb began to sell his
music to record companies and started collaborating on music with other composers. For a time
he worked with Phil Springer, whom he credits for much of his song writing training (Lawrence,
17). Springer was offered a job for a music publisher, however, so the collaboration ended
prematurely. Ebb wrote some songs with Norman Martin for the revue Put It in Writing and his
song What Kind of Life Is That? was a big hit with the audiences.
Ebb did have a promising partner in Paul Klein, whom he met in 1951. In the late fifties
they began writing together and they wrote three full-length musicals. It Gives Me Great
Pleasure and Simon Says were never produced but their musical Morning Sun had a short run
Off-Broadway. At first everything seemed to fall into place for Morning Sun. They got the
producer the wanted, the actors said yes, and Bob Fosse even agreed to direct. The producer and
Bob Fosse had a fallout, however, and left the project and ultimately the show failed. Ebb
blamed his libretto for the shows demise. Klein eventually left composing all together because
he could not handle the financial insecurity. This ended up being a blessing in disguise, because
it opened up the opportunity for Kander and Ebb to embark on their journey together.
It was Tommy Valando, who also brought Bock and Harrnick together, who encouraged
Kander and Ebb to meet in 1962 (Leve, 16). It was a casual meeting in Ebbs apartment and
both men felt that the partnership had possibilities. The first songs they wrote together, a mock
title song for Take Her, Shes Mine and Sara Lee, were comic, but their first real hit can with

the romantic ballad My Coloring Book. It was performed on Perry Comos television program
and became a sensation. Many artists, including Kitty Kallen and Barbara Streisand, recorded
the song. From the very start of their collaboration, Kander and Ebb worked in the same room
together on all of their music. It was not a situation where one would write the lyrics and then
send it to the other; they would bounce ideas off each other and experiment together. As Kander
said, We fell into a way of working that allowed us to enjoy what we were doingWe never
dont have a good time when were writing (Lawrence, 25). They also had a mutual to desire to
write musical theater. While Ebb was writing lyrics for pop songs on the side and Kander was a
rehearsal pianist, both of them knew what they truly wanted to be working on.
The first project they embarked on together was Golden Gate, a show that never actually
got produced. The shows book was written by Richard Morris and revolved around the
rebuilding of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. The musical was in a much more
traditional musical theater style than what Kander and Ebb would later write, with each song
fitting into a conventional song category like ballad or charm song (Leve, 243). The show could
not find a producer at the time of its composition, although the pair returned to try and rewrite
the show in 1970 and 1982. Some of the songs originally written for this show were pandered
off to other projects such as Dear Love and A Certain Girl. This project did lead Kander and
Ebb to their first produced musical, Flora, the Red Menace.
Kander and Ebb had played their Golden Gate score for George Abbott who liked their
stuff. Hal Prince, who knew Kander from A Family Affair, was strongly pushing for the pair to
work on a new show he was planning. It was to be based off of Lester Atwells 1963 novel Love
Is Just Around the Corner, which deals with Communism in New York during the depression.
The show they wrote from this, Flora, the Red Menace, became the first of Kander and Ebbs to

reach Broadway. The show follows Flora as she tries to hold a good job at a department store
and have a relationship with Harry, who is a communist. It opened at the Alvin Theater on May
11th, 1965, but unfortunately only ran for eighty-seven performances. With its dark subject
matter and the fact that Fiddler on the Roof and She Loves Me were also playing at the time, the
show could not survive. Although the show was not a public success, it did call attention to this
new promising composing team on Broadway. It also started a relationship with Hal Prince that
would be important throughout their careers. Above all, this show brought the team together
with Liza Minnelli. She was the staring roll of Flora and her performance earned her the Tony
Award for Best Actress. Liza would be the star of many a Kander and Ebb show to come. In
1987 the team did some revisions to the show and brought the show Off-Broadway to the
Vineyard Theater playing 46 performances. They collaborated with many up and coming talents
on this revival including Scott Ellis, David Tommy Thompson and Susan Stroman.
The teams first big success that catapulted them into the spotlight was Cabaret. The
show is derived from I Am a Camera, a 1951 play that is based off of Christopher Isherwoods
novellas The Berlin Stories. The plot deals with the Kit Kat Club, a nightclub in Berlin during
the rise of Nazism. It follows the relationship of Sally Bowles, a British singer at the nightclub,
and Clifford Bradshaw, an American writer who is visiting Berlin. The show deals with antiSemitism, overt sexuality and abortion, all difficult topics to tackle, especially for a writing team
that did not have a hit yet. Hal Prince, however, felt that Kander and Ebb were the right ones to
write the piece. Kander and Ebb said that working on Cabaret was one of the greatest
collaborative processes they ever had (Lawrence, 62). Part of what makes Cabaret so brilliant
was that it uses the setting of the nightclub to perform pieces that comment on what is going on
in the plot. The songs in the show as essentially split evenly between book songs that take place

in the action of the scene and cabaret numbers (Leve, 41). It is considered the first truly realized
concept musical and would influence Broadway for years to come.
Cabaret opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theater on November 20th, 1966. The
original cast included Joel Gray as the Emcee, Jill Haworth as Sally Bowles and Bert Convy as
Cliff the American writer. It was the hit that Kander, Ebb and Hal Prince needed, running for
1,165 performances, eventually moving to the Imperial and then Broadway theaters. The show
also won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Score. The show has had multiple
revivals over the years, including two on Broadway in 1987 and 1998. Both times these revivals
included many revisions, and while the critics panned the 1987 revival, the 1998 revival staring
Natasha Richardson and Alan Cumming was hailed as a success. The revisions to the show were
in large part due to the 1972 movie version of Cabaret, which was directed by Bob Fosse and
started Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles. Some of the songs many people find iconic to Cabaret,
Maybe This Time, Money, Money, and Mein Herr, were actually new additions to the
movie score. The movie, although it extremely different from the stage version, was incredibly
successful and won eight Oscars, including Best Director for Bob Fosse, Best Supporting Actor
for Joel Grey and Best Actress of Liza Minnelli.
Just before Cabaret came to Broadway and Kander and Ebb still did not have a
substantial hit they worked on some trade or industrial musicals, which were musicals
written for specific businesses. It was great training ground for young writers to test their stuff
and brought in needed cash. Kander and Ebb wrote Go Fly a Kite for General Electric in 1966
and Action 68 for Ford Motor Company in early 1967, although neither of the pair can
remember if that show was ever performed (Leve, 309).

After Cabaret, however, Kander and Ebb did not have to worry with small jobs like that
because they were now Broadway sensations. The pairs next show, The Happy Time, ended up
being the opposite of the title, unfortunately. The story follows Jacques Bonnard, a famous
photographer, who returns to his home village in France where becomes a big influence to his
nephew, Bibi. The show had a lot going for it; David Merrick produced it, the cast included
Robert Goulet and David Wayne, and was directed by Gower Champion. The concept of the
show, however, changed significantly in the out of town run in Los Angeles. Champion decided
to use a new projection system that was beautiful but really overshadowed the show, which
Kander and Ebb believed would have been better suited in a more intimate space (Lawrence, 77).
The show opened at the Broadway Theater on January 18, 1968 and only ran for 286
performances. It did win three Tony awards, Best Choreography and Direction for Champion
and Best Actor for Goulet, but the show also became one of the first million-dollar flop on
Broadway.
At the same period that The Happy Time was being worked on Hal Prince contacted
Kander and Ebb about doing a show based on the novel Zorba the Greek. Although the pair did
not like the novel, it was a chance they could not pass up. Ebb himself said, This is Hal
Princethis is the king of Broadway asking you to do itand how can you not do it. (Leve,
193). The show has a dark plot and centers on Nikos and Zorba, two friends who go to Crete to
resurrect an old mine. Each man falls in love with a woman on the island, but the show ends in
tragedy with one being murdered and the other dying of illness. Herschel Bernardi and Maria
Karnilova stared in the original show. Zorba premiered on November 17th, 1968 at the Imperial
Theater. It only performed for 305 performances. The very dark nature of the show did not
appeal to audiences. Its stars had also played opposite each other in Fiddler on the Roof, which

Hal Prince believed led people to see the show as a lesser, Greek Fiddler (Lawrence, 91). The
score, however, is beautiful and Kander and Ebb were able to make some revisions to the
bleakness of the piece in the 1970 tour, which ended up producing a reasonable profit. There
was also a revival in 1983 with Anthony Quinn, which was fairly successful.
The next musical Kander and Ebb worked on was 70, Girls, 70, which was the first time
the pair had initiated a project on their own. It is a much lighter tale than many of their other
works. The play deals with a group of elderly women who live in the Upper West Side who
decide to start a thieving ring at department stores in order to save the hotel they are living in.
Kander and Ebb decided to use a vaudeville premise, where a group of actors were getting
together to tell a story about these older women. This concept did not work extremely well with
this show and audiences got confused in the transitions from the book to vaudeville scenes.
Many of the songs also did not move the plot along. The show opened on April 15th, 1971 at the
Broadhurst Theater and closed after only thirty-five performances, making it the shortest running
Kander and Ebb show. Not only did the show have flaws, but it was also staged in a much larger
way than Kander and Ebb had intended. Kander himself thought that the piece probably would
have been better Off-Broadway in a smaller theater (Lawrence, 95). It also opened at the same
time as Sondheims Follies, which had the vaudeville performers coming back to the theater feel,
and 70, Girls, 70 was greatly overshadowed. As Kander put it, I mean, they were Tiffanys and
we were Woolworths (Lawrence, 104).
Kander and Ebb also began to dabble in the television and film world. In 1972 the pair
worked on a television special, Liza with a Z!, which had Liza Minnelli performing many Kander
and Ebb songs and featured Bob Fosse choreography. It was filmed at the Lyceum Theater on
May 31, 1972 and was broadcast in September of that same year. It won an Emmy for

Outstanding Single Program and the soundtrack road the top of charts for five months. On his
own Ebb wrote and produced a Frank Sinatra special, Ol Blue Eyes Is Back, which brought
Sinatra out of retirement and guest starred Gene Kelly. Together the team also wrote the music
for Funny Lady, a movie sequel to Funny Girl starring Barbara Streisand. It was a challenging
piece to write because they had try and make an extension, but not a direct copy, of Julie Styne
and Bob Merrills music and write correctly for the time period (Leve, 310). Six of their songs
made it into the movie and although their score did a decent job of blending in with the period
pieces also used in the movie, the project, which was released in May of 1975, was a tremendous
flop. Their song How Lucky Can You Get? did however receive an Oscar nomination. In
1977 they wrote music for the movie New York, New York starring Liza Minnelli and Robert De
Niro and directed by Martin Scorsese. Their song The Theme from New York, New York
became a major hit for Frank Sinatra in 1980 and is considered an anthem for New York City
(Lawrence, 105).
Kander and Ebbs next Broadway endeavor was Chicago. The show is based off of a
play of the same name and focuses on the murder trials of Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart and the
fame that came with it. It was Bob Fosse who first presented the idea to the team and he would
eventually go on to direct the show. They formatted the show in the vaudeville style and tried to
write each character like a famous star from that time frame. As Ebb explains, Every musical
moment in the show was loosely modeled on someone else: Roxie was Helen Morgan, Velma
was Texas Guinan, Billy Flynn was Ted Lewis, Mama Morton was Sophie Tucker (Lawrence,
127).
After the show was completed it went into tryouts in Philadelphia and that time was
extremely unpleasant for everyone involved. Bob Fosse was recovering from a recent heart

attack and his personality had turned very dark. He constantly picked on certain cast members,
would improvise new scenes without talking to Ebb first and was also going through difficulties
with his wife, Gwen Verdon, who was staring as Roxie Hart. This biting quality ended up
rubbing off on the show, which is probably one of the major reasons it was not large hit. The
show opened on June 1st, 1975 at the 46th Street Theater staring Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera and
Jerry Orbach. Many critics found the show too cynical and it ran for only 923 performances.
The run lasted that long in part to the fact that Liza Minnelli took over for Gwen Verdon for 8
weeks when she got injured. They never advertized the fact she was in the show, but it did create
some hype. Another obstacle for the show was that it came out in the same year as A Chorus
Line, which absolutely captured Broadways attention and swept the Tonys that year.
In May of 1996, the City Center Encores! series presented Chicago in a scaled down
staging, and the reception to the show was amazing. Kander and Ebb, who were at the premier
said, Ebb: I doubt the City Center ever had that kind of reaction to a musical before. I had
never seen anything like that. It was like hysteria. Kander: It was like a rock concert
(Lawrence, 138). This cast starred Ann Reinking, Bebe Neuwirth, James Naughton and Joel
Grey. Ann Reinking also choreographed the show in the style of Bob Fosse. With the success of
this production the show moved to the Richard Rodgers on November 14, 1996 and is currently
still running at the Ambassador Theater. This revival holds the record for longest-running revival
on Broadway and fourth longest-running show ever. Then, more than twenty-five years after the
original production started on Broadway, Chicago became a movie. Rob Marshall directed and
choreographed the film. It was also Marshall that came up with the idea that all of the musical
numbers were seen through the eyes of Roxie. Kander and Ebb were in complete support of
Marshalls vision, and Kander said, What was brilliant about what Rob did, I thought, was that

he came up with a very clear and simple solution which allowed him to do a stage piece, and yet
it was a movie, very much a movie movie (Lawrence, 212). The movie came out on December
27th, 2002 staring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah and John
C. Reilly. It was a hit and won six Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress and Best
Picture.
The next two shows that Kander and Ebb decided to write were used as vehicles to
showcase some of their favorite female stars. The musical The Act was initially the brainchild of
Marvin Hamlisch, who wanted to split writing the music with Kander, but the composing team
was not interested in that proposition. They did however like the project enough to write it
themselves and they wanted their much-loved Liza Minnelli to have the starring role (Leve, 233).
She in turn insisted that Martin Scorsese direct the show, but the famous movie director was out
of his element on Broadway. Gower Champion eventually replaced him, although this fact was
never publicized. The show is based loosely on the life of Shirley MacLaine. It revolves around
actress Michelle Craig who is a movie star on the decline who decides to go to Las Vegas and do
a nightclub act. The Act opened on October 29th, 1977 at the Majestic Theater and ran for 233
performances. The show received mixed reviews but was successful mostly due to the
electrifying Minnelli who won the Tony for Best Leading Actress. This was also the first show
to sell seats at the expensive price of $25, which was a record at the time. Although the show
was nominated for six Tonys, this is a show that neither Kander nor Ebb felt they did very good
job on, although it was during this show that Kander met Albert Stephenson, a dancer from the
show, and they have been partners ever since (Leve, 235).
Their next project was Woman of the Year, a musical based of the 1941 movie that starred
Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. This show was written primarily to star Lauren Bacall in

the leading roll. She played Tess Harding, a famous news personality who has to learn how to
balance her career and relationship with her husband. On March 29th, 1981 the show premiered
at the Palace Theater and ended up running for almost two years, totaling 770 performances.
Lauren Bacall was a huge success and won the Tony for Best Actress. All together the show won
four of the six Tonys it was nominated for, including Best Original Score for Kander and Ebb.
As with The Act, however, this is not a show that the pair felt they wrote very well. Kander
explains their conundrum, [Woman of the Year] was another show where I dont think our work
was so great. Its been a lesson to me that there are shows we have done which I think were
really good but received no attention at all I mean, major flops and then suddenly we get a
Tony Award for a show that is just professional (Lawrence, 155).
Unlike their previous two shows, The Rink was a show they absolutely loved. Kander
said it was, the most complete realization of our intentions on any production we have done
(Lawrence, 162). The plot revolves around the mother daughter relationship of Anna and Angel.
Anna owns a dilapidated roller rink and is going to sell it when her daughter Angel returns home
and they have to learn to reconcile their relationship. The roll of Anna was created with Chita
Rivera in mind, and although many actresses were considered for her daughter Kander and Ebb
could not say no to the pleas of Liza Minnelli. The show opened at the Martin Beck Theater on
February 9th, 1984. Even with the two star leads the show did not wow the critics and it closed
after 204 performances. Although Minnelli gave a wonderful performance, audiences could not
accept seeing her as a scruffy, hippie character (Leve, 222). Despite the failure of the show,
Chita Rivera did receiver her first Tony award for Best Actress for her performance in The Rink.
It was in the mid-1980s that Kander and Ebb began brainstorming their next piece. After
reading Manuel Puigs novel Kiss of the Spider Woman, Ebb knew he had to create a musical

version of the show. The show follows the story of two prison mates in Latin America; one is a
Marxist supporter and the other is a homosexual window dresser who uses fantasies to escape his
terrible situation. When Hal Prince heard about this idea he signed on right away. The team was
lucky enough to get in contact with Puig and met with him several times to discuss the shows
development. It was a slow process, however, because Puig lived in Brazil and Prince was busy
with other projects. Although Puig ended up not writing the libretto he was incredibly supportive
and helpful with the creative process right up to his untimely death in 1990. The show got its
first tryout that same year. It was performed at SUNY Purchase by the New Musicals
program. The show still had many kinks that needed to be worked out. To make matters worse
critics came to see it and published some unfavorable reviews in the New York Times, ignoring
the pleas from the producers not to. Thus the show closed at SUNY Purchase doused in ridicule.
For a few years Kander and Ebb went back to the drawing board, rewriting much of the
show. One of the big complaints about the Purchase production was that there was a large
imbalance between the imagined Hollywood sequences and the harsh prison scenes. They
decided to have the film sequences unrelated to the plot so there was no complicated secondary
story (Leve, 156, 158). Garth Drabinsky was also brought in as the new producer and he had a
large hand in saving the show (Lawrence, 184). The team took the revised version of the show
to Toronto in 1992 where Chita Rivera joined the cast and then to London. Kiss of the Spider
Woman finally opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theater on May 3rd, 1993. The critics
changed their tune this time, proclaiming the show a triumph. Hal Prince commented on this
experience saying, Never underestimate the incredible satisfaction of having a show so savagely
received two years earlier, and then taking it and coming back to the same New York arena and

having a triumphant reception (Lawrence, 184). The production ran for 906 performances and
received seven Tony awards including Best Original Score and Best Musical.
While Kiss of the Spider Woman was still being worked on Kander and Ebb had teamed
up with the same group who had done the Flora, The Red Menace revival, Scott Ellis, David
Thompson and Susan Stroman, on a Off-Broadway revue of their work. This show, entitled And
the World Goes Round was produced in association with the McCarter Theater in Princeton and
opened at the Westside Theater on March 18th, 1991. It ran for 408 performances and the team
decided to try their luck at creating a brand new Broadway show. Their idea was to write a
dance musical that could star Karen Ziemba. Kander and Ebb described the writing experience
as extremely enjoyable and they absolutely loved the cast. Along with Ziemba, the cast included
Daniel McDonald and Deborah Monk. The show is about a 1933 dance marathon and focuses on
Rita Racine who is trying to escape her abusive relationship with her husband and is encouraged
to do so by the mysterious pilot Bill Kelly. The show opened on April 24th, 1997 at the Richard
Rodgers Theatre, but closed after only 76 performances. This show is one of the least cynical of
all of Kander and Ebbs shows, which the critics were quick to pick at (Leve, 227). The show
also opened in a season of pop-operas and had trouble competing with that genre. Steel Pier was
also the last show that Ebb wrote that he would live to see produced on Broadway.
The next two shows Kander and Ebb worked on were produced regionally but never
moved to New York City. They first began working on a musical adaptation of Thornton
Wilders The Skin of Our Teeth. They collaborated with Joseph Stein on the libretto and the team
wrote an extremely varied score that included a spiritual, tango, lullaby and opera pieces (Leve,
273). The show is fanciful, following the First Family of Man through the Ice Age, a
Mammoth convention, and a world war. The show was initially titled Over and Over and after

briefly gaining the rights to the original title but then loosing it again, it ended up begin named
All About Us. The first production was produced at the Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia
in 1998 but was considered awkward by the critics (Leve, 276). A revised reading was workshopped in New York in 2004, at the McCarter Theater in 2005 and at the Westport Country
Playhouse in 2007.
Their next theatrical endeavor was The Visit, a dark show based off of Friedrich
Durrenmatts play of the same title. It is a piece that tells the story of Claire Zachanassian who is
one of the richest women on earth and returns home to seek revenge on a man who disgraced her.
Kander tried to evoke a European operetta style in the score while the team also included musical
comedy tropes (Leve, 279). The show was originally bound for Broadway with Angela
Lansbury starring but she had to withdraw from the project because of her husbands illness.
There was a production of the show at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in the fall of 2001
starring Chita Rivera that garnered favorable reviews, but after the events of September 11th,
2001, such a dark musical on Broadway seemed ill advised. There was another production at the
Signature Theater in Virginia in 2008 with Rivera reprising her role and a concert version in
2011, but so far the show has not found enough funding or interest to bring it to the Broadway
stage.
Since the middle of the 1980s, Kander and Ebb had worked with Peter Stone on a show
based around a backstage musical with a murder mystery spoof. It was to feature stereotypical
characters from Hollywood movie musicals. The show started out titled Who Killed David
Merrick? but after Stone had completed a script in 1986 he changed it to Curtains. The show
was set to go to Broadway in 1987 but the production never happened. There were rumors of a
production in 1991 and 1998 but it was not until 2002 when a serious attempt was made to take it

to Broadway. There was a reading in 2002, but then Stone died in 2003 as he was beginning to
make revisions. Rupert Holmes was brought on to be book writer. Then, on September 11th,
2004, Ebb died of a heart attack, stunning the theater community. Although Kander was deeply
saddened by his partners passing, he was determined to continue on with their work. With the
help of Holmes he completed the show and it premiered in 2006 in Los Angeles starring David
Hyde Pierce, Deborah Monk and Karen Ziemba. The Los Angeles run was completely sold out
and the whole cast moved to New York where it opened at the Al Hirschfeld Theater on March
22, 2007. The show received mixed reviews, but was relatively successful, running for 511
performances and earning Pierce the Tony for Best Actor.
Although Ebb had passed away, there was still one more show the pair had been working
on that he wanted to produce. In early 2000 Susan Stroman and David Thompson had gotten
together with Kander and Ebb to discuss writing a show based on the Scottsboro Boys trials in
the 1930s. These trials dealt with nine black boys who were wrongly accused of raping two
white women on a train and were forced to rot in jail for years while different trials took place.
The team decided to try and present the show in the minstrel show style as a way to deal with the
dark material while at the same time commenting on the cruelty of the actual show form. The
show incorporates classic minstrel show character such as Tambo, Bones and the Interlocutor.
Ebb was not able to complete the lyrics with Kander, but Kander has said, as far as the new
material is concerned, Ive sort of tried to channel Fred in my head and write the way I think he
writesEvery once in a while I look up or down or wherever the hell he is, and need him or
curse him for cutting our like this. But mostly hes around (Leve, 305). The final product, The
Scottsboro Boys, premiered off Broadway at the Vineyard Theater on March 10, 2010, to mostly
favorable reviews. The show moved to Broadway and opened at the Lyceum Theater on October

31st, 2010. The show was incredibly controversial, to the point of garnering protests outside the
theater. It closed after only 49 performances, but still received twelve Tony nominations. The
show is currently being produced in smaller regional theaters around the United States.
Kander and Ebb were a long lasting team that left a huge impact on Broadway. They
helped to mold the careers of some of Broadways brightest stars and influenced the way shows
were written and performed throughout their careers. Their shows continue to be performed in
New York and around the world to much success. Although Ebb is gone, he lives on through his
work and through the memory of his life long friend and partner, Kander. Their partnership,
through think and thin, helped to make musical theater what it is today.

Works Cited

Kander, John, and Frank Ebb. Color Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration,
and All That Jazz. Comp. Greg Lawrence. New York: Faber and Faber, 2003. Print.
Leve, James. Kander and Ebb. New Haven: Yale UP, 2009. Print.