Robert Wright

Robert Wright (Daytona Beach, Florida, 1914) is known above all for his collaboration with George Forrest (Brooklyn, 1915), with whom he formed one of the longest-running teams in American musical theatre. The two began working together as teenagers and, in 1936, were signed by MGM in Hollywood, where they wrote lyrics, adapted music and occasionally composed new pieces for films based on stage musical comedies, mostly operettas. These assignments included works by Sigmund Romberg, Rudolf Friml, Victor Herbert, and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Three songs from their original musicals for the screen received Academy Award nominations.

In the early 1940s the duo opened a second phase, in which they took works by celebrated composers and turned them into stage musicals. Song of Norway (1944), based on the life of Edvard Grieg, and Kismet (1953), built on the music of Alexander Borodin, were their most skilful and popular adaptations, and both enjoyed international success on Broadway. Unlike many of their contemporaries, Wright and Forrest clearly credited the source of the music in programmes, published scores and recordings. In 1954 the Tony Award for Best Original Score went to Borodin rather than to them, a outcome considered consistent with that attitude.

Other adaptations, based on Herbert, Villa-Lobos, Rachmaninoff or Saint-Saëns, met with less fortune: they either never left the West Coast or closed after a few performances outside the city. Kean (1961) reached Broadway but failed quickly. The duo's career nevertheless had a notable coda. Kismet returned in 1978 as Timbuktu!, with new songs and an African setting, and was well received. And At the Grand, an original musical that had closed in Los Angeles in 1958, was revived in 1989 as Grand Hotel, in a heavily revised version directed by Tommy Tune, with a new book by Peter Stone and seven new songs by Maury Yeston.

The legacy of Wright and Forrest lies in having shown that classical and Romantic repertoire could be transferred to the musical effectively and with honesty about authorship. Their work connects Hollywood's musical cinema with Broadway theatre and offers a route distinct from that of the purely original composers of their time.