Jerry Herman

Jerry Herman was one of the most successful songwriters for the musical theater in his generation, providing music and lyrics to three long-running Broadway shows -- Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles -- as well as four other Broadway productions between 1961 and 1983. Unlike such contemporaries as Stephen Sondheim and the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, Herman was not much interested in developing the art of the musical theater in new, more serious, or avant-garde directions. On the contrary, he was quoted as saying that he wished he had been born 30 years earlier,...