![]() ![]() By 1972, Meryle Secrest characterizes their relationship: “Foxy Sondheim continued to be in the background of life and made her periodic demands for attention, consideration, and love, using maladroit methods that had long ceased to prompt any reaction from her son except derisive laughter.” She was having dinner parties around New York. Sondheim’s mother attempted suicide in the summer of 1970. Sondheim’s works were almost never popular hits or commercial successes, the way that, say, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s megamusicals consistently were Sondheim’s first productions were oftentimes critically praised. From a production standpoint, his early productions followed the model of having out-of-town tryouts before heading to New York for a Broadway run his mid-career productions started with runs on Broadway, which were more cost-effective for avoiding the transport of scenic pieces and his later works often went through new work development Off-Broadway at non-profit theaters before being produced on Broadway, as the cost of mounting a production rose. Sondheim eventually established himself, not just as a lyricist, but as a composer. Over the course of his career as a writer for musical theatre, Sondheim evolved from working with figures such as Arthur Laurents (book-writer) and Jerome Robbins (director, choreographer), to working with Harold Prince (producer, director), and James Lapine (book-writer). At the start of his career, Sondheim wrote for hire for television. Sondheim met Harold Prince, by way of introduction by mutual friend Mary Rodgers, at the opening of South Pacific in 1949 both were optimistic about creating theatre in the future. The music department focused on performance, and he was a key figure in developing musical and theatre life at the college. He enrolled as an English major, soon switching to study music. Sondheim attended Williams College, leaving his mother to live with his father, when he was sixteen. In 1947, Sondheim became a “glorified office boy” on the set of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Allegro the musical would be a formative experience in his life, and many of his later works would be seen as responses to this story about a small-town doctor who becomes disillusioned by the big city. Sondheim first attempted writing songs there, working on a piece about life at the school, By George, in 1945. Sondheim attended the college preparatory school, the George School, in Bucks County, for four years. I won’t say they defended her, but they tried to make me understand, you know, that it was difficult and she was upset.” Oscar Hammerstein would be a surrogate father for Sondheim. Sondheim was said to be reduced to tears by Foxy, at which he would ride his bicycle over the Hammersteins who would comfort him Sondheim said: “They never, never, never undermined my mother to me. Their son, Jamie, was friends with Sondheim. Foxy Sondheim did introduce the Hammersteins into Sondheim’s life, becoming friends with Dorothy and her husband, musical theatre lyricist and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. She would lower her blouse and that sort of stuff.” The understanding was that Stephen would become the man of the house, in his father’s absence. ![]() ![]() Sondheim reports that she was apparently trying to seduce him as well, “Well, she would sit across from me with her legs spread. Post-divorce, Foxy “began to act very strangely”, holding Sondheim’s hand in the theatre and staring at him during a play. When Stephen Sondheim was a child, his father fell in love with another woman, Alicia Babé, and Herbert and Foxy divorced, on bad terms with each other Stephen was sent to military school. Herbert Sondheim played popular show tunes on the piano in their house, and Stephen Sondheim took up piano lessons at age seven. Herbert worked in the garment trade, founding his own dress house, and Foxy-described as “the most pretentious, self-centered, narcissistic woman ever known in life-was a designer. Herbert was the grandson of German-Jewish immigrants, and Foxy was the daughter of Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants. Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021) was born to Herbert and Janet “Foxy” Sondheim on March 22, 1930. ![]()
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