Product Description

In the first full-scale life of the most
important composer-lyricist at work in musical theatre today, Meryle Secrest, the biographer of Frank Lloyd Wright and Leonard Bernstein, draws on her extended conversations with Stephen Sondheim as well as on her interviews with his friends, family, collaborators, and lovers to bring us not only the artist--as a master of
modernist compositional style--but also the private man.
Beginning with his early childhood on New York's prosperous Upper West Side, Secrest describes how Sondheim was taught to play the piano by his father, a successful dress manufacturer and amateur musician. She writes about Sondheim's early ambition to become a concert pianist, about the effect on him of his parents' divorce when he was ten, about his years in military and private schools. She writes about his feelings of loneliness and abandonment, about the refuge he found in the home of Oscar and Dorothy Hammerstein, and his determination to become just like Oscar.
Secrest describes the years when Sondheim was struggling to gain a foothold in the theatre, his attempts at scriptwriting (in his early twenties in Rome on the
set of Beat the Devil with Bogart and Huston, and later in Hollywood as a co-writer with George Oppenheimer for the TV series Topper), living the Hollywood life.
Here is Sondheim's ascent to the peaks of the Broadway musical, from his chance meeting with play-
wright Arthur Laurents, which led to his first success--
as co-lyricist with Leonard Bernstein on West Side Story--to his collaboration with Laurents on Gypsy, to his first full Broadway score, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. And Secrest writes about his first big success as composer, lyricist, writer in the 1960s with Company, an innovative and sophisticated musical that examined marriage à la mode. It was the start of an almost-twenty-year collaboration with producer and director Hal Prince that resulted in such shows as Follies, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, and
A Little Night Music.
We see Sondheim at work with composers, producers, directors, co-writers, actors, the greats of his time and ours, among them Leonard Bernstein, Ethel Merman, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Jerome Robbins, Zero Mostel, Bernadette Peters, and Lee Remick (with whom it was said he was in love, and she with him), as Secrest vividly re-creates the energy, the passion, the despair, the excitement, the genius, that went into the making of show after Sondheim show.
A biography that is sure to become the standard work on Sondheim's life and art.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38466 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-08
• Released on: 1999-06-08
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Amazon.com
America's foremost musical-theater composer also proves to be a fascinatingly complex and conflicted human being in this meticulous biography by the always-capable Meryle Secrest (Being Bernard Berenson, etc.). Stephen Sondheim himself was interviewed for the book, as were many of his closest friends, and the author makes perceptive use of this material. Born in 1930, Sondheim was a successful Broadway lyricist (West Side Story and Gypsy) before he was 30. But the scars from a miserable childhood remained: he was inclined to be distant, hypercritical of those less intelligent than he, and terrified of serious emotional commitment. Critics sometimes found those qualities in the series of groundbreaking musicals he created with director Hal Prince--Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, and Sweeney Todd, to name four--but they agreed that he brought new intellectual ambition and artistic adventurousness to the musical theater. Secrest does a fine job of delineating Sondheim's career in terms of what it tells us about the state of American theater, as when he shifted to a partnership with writer-director James Lapine and worked in the nonprofit sector for such musicals as Sunday in the Park with George and Assassins. She also does well in selecting revealing quotes to depict the composer's struggle to accept his homosexuality and a rage at his overbearing mother so deep that he didn't even attend her funeral. Sondheim the man and Sondheim the visionary artist get nearly equal time in an intriguing portrait.

From Publishers Weekly
Secrest interviewed composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim extensively for this full-scale biography, resulting in a portrait as subtle and sophisticated as its subject. Son of a wealthy New York City dress designer and manufacturer of German-Jewish extraction, Sondheim, an only child born in 1930, was emotionally neglected by his distant father, Herbert, and by his domineering mother, Janet (Foxy). Herbert left her when their son was 10 to live with his blonde, Catholic, Cuban lover, Alicia Bab?, whom he married after they had two sons. Oscar Hammerstein II became mentor and surrogate father to Sondheim, who grew up isolated, keeping people at a distance. Sondheim discusses with Secrest his 25 years of psychoanalysis, his homosexuality, his early stumbling career as actor and TV scriptwriter, and his working relationships with such pivotal figures in his life as producer Hal Prince and playwright-director Arthur Laurents. Biographer of Leonard Bernstein and Frank Lloyd Wright, Secrest has written a wonderful biography of an uncompromising musical dramatist who uses irony, wit and disillusion to probe painful emotions. Decked out with memorable photographs, her moving and perceptive portrait, full of Broadway lore, provides an incomparable peek into the genesis of such musicals as West Side Story, Gypsy, A Little Night Music and Passion.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Much has been written about Sondheim as the foremost theater composer of the latter 20th century, with works ranging from West Side Story to Sunday in the Park with George. Secrest (Leonard Bernstein, LJ 11/1/94) here tackles his personal life, revealing a private side rarely discussed or explored. She has exhaustively researched her subject with the cooperation of Sondheim himself as well as numerous colleagues, family, and friends. Though initially bogged down in detailing his dysfunctional childhood and alienated parents, her book improves when she begins describing Sondheim's inspirational friendship with Oscar Hammerstein and his burgeoning career as a musical composer. While she does not discuss the creative genesis of his shows with as much detail as other sources, Secrest chooses her anecdotes with care. Her strength is her straightforward style: not reverential but respectful and informative. Sondheim's homosexuality is revealed very matter-of-factly, yet the discussion of specific relationships is sporadic. Despite the examination, Sondheim emerges as an intensely private and enigmatic man. Secrest concludes that his musicals to date are not only a reflection of his psyche but also a personal inspiration to himself. Only time will tell whether Sondheim's music in fact brings us closer to the man.
-AKevin Henegan, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

He loved this book!
I bought this for my boyfriend, a huge Stephen Sondheim fan, who has already read planty about Sondheim's works and life. He could not put this book down. I have not read it myself, but when he can't put a book down, I know I picked out something good!

A mess, but for now it's the only mess we have
If you want to learn about Sondheim's life in detail, this is the most thorough account. Although there are books that are mostly about his work in which you can also find biographical information, this is the first and (thus far) only biography. That's the only reason why I'm giving three stars to this generally shoddy book.

What's wrong? First, there is an astounding number of factual errors.

In addition to the outright errors, Secrest also makes many misleading, imprecise, or incomplete statements. Loose ends and chronological confusions abound.

Some of the people Secrest quotes also make statements that are factually incorrect, and neither she nor her editors (who must take a good share of the blame) caught these mistakes. All of this suggests that she knows little about musical theatre in general or Sondheim's work in particular. She actually gets major plot details of Sondheim's shows wrong. Unbelievable.

There are also numerous places where she makes statements that contradict what she writes elsewhere.

All these problems seriously call into question how much of the material here that isn't public knowledge can be trusted. You end up wondering how someone who is so clearly unqualified persuaded the people at Knopf to give her this assignment, much less how she got Sondheim to cooperate. She must talk well, but she certainly doesn't write well.

Which brings us to the final problem: She isn't a very good writer.

Still, if you want a Sondheim bio, this is it. Since Secrest had access to Sondheim and to many of his friends and associates, I'm sure that some of what she writes is accurate. But if you read this, you should just realize that a good deal of what is here is unquestionably wrong.

Okay, but the definitive book on SS has yet to be written
Secrest has written a book on Sondheim that skims the surface and gives a broad overview. It rarely has insights, however, except a few "anaylses" of the musicals themselves that often border on the ludicrous (such as how many references to S&M there are in his works). There are misspellings of people's names, wrong dates, and some confused plot descriptions as well. But most of all, she seems too polite and distanced from her subject, offering facts but not insight or exploration. I'm not asking for National Enquirer-style dirt, but there is more on the inner-workings and intrigue of such works as "Merrily" in Craig Zadan's "Sondheim & Company," which unfortuantely is out of print, I believe. Furthermore, Secrest is often a confusing writer. She switches pronouns without always making it clear who is now doing the talking, or includes an out-of-context quote without explaining its meaning or context. She also repeats herself in several spots, making me think she revised one segment while forgetting what she had written just a page later or earlier. In short, this book needed an editor, as well as a more probing and insightful author. Most biographies suffer from excessive speculation. This one has just the opposite flaw.