Leigh, Carolyn (originally, Rosenthal, Carolyn Paula)

Leigh, Carolyn (originally, Rosenthal, Carolyn Paula), exuberant American lyricist; b. Bronx, N.Y., Aug. 21, 1926; d. N.Y., Nov. 19, 1983. Leigh wrote confident, knowing lyrics to both popular songs such as “Young-at-Heart” and “Witchcraft,” recorded by Frank Sinatra, and to Broadway musicals such as Peter Pan (“I Gotta Crow”) and Wildcat (“Hey, Look Me Over!”). Her primary collaborator was composer Cy Coleman.

The daughter of Henry and Sylvia Rosenthal, Leigh began writing verse as a child. She attended Queens Coll. and N.Y.U., then worked as a writer in radio and in an advertising agency. In 1951 she was signed as a lyricist to a publishing company. Her first successful song was “I’m Waiting Just for You” (music and lyrics also by Henry Glover and Lucky Millinder), recorded by Lucky Millinder and His Orch. for a Top Ten R&B hit and also a pop chart entry for both Millinder and Rosemary Clooney in 1951; Pat Boone revived it in 1957 for a Top 40 hit.

Leigh’s biggest early success came when she set a lyric to Johnny Richards’s 1939 melody “Moonbeam” to create “Young-at-Heart.” Frank Sinatra’s recording peaked in the Top Ten in May 1954 and sold a million copies. It was heard by Mary Martin, who was looking for songwriters for a new theatrical production of Peter Pan, and Martin hired Leigh to work with composer Mark (Moose) Charlap on a few songs for what was then intended as a play with music. Their contributions included “I Gotta Crow,” “I’m Flying,” and ‘I Won’t Grow Up” the show was a success on the West Coast. For a transfer to Broadway it was expanded into a full musical, with new songs by Jule Styne and Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Opening in October 1954, the show ran 154 performances; it was broadcast on television, and the cast album became a Top Ten hit. The following year Leigh wrote the lyrics to music by Clay Warnick for a television musical version of Heidi.

Working with composer Philip Springer, Leigh continued to write songs for stage productions and recording stars in 1955-57. She and Springer had songs in The Shoestring Revue (N.Y., Feb. 28, 1955), Shoestring ’57 (N.Y., Nov. 5, 1956), and Ziegfeld Follies of 1957 (N.Y., March 1, 1957), and their biggest pop hit came in June 1956 when Frank Sinatra peaked in the Top 40 with “(How Little It Matters) How Little We Know.” In 1957 she switched partners and began working with Cy Coleman, writing songs for nightclub revues and for pop singers. In February 1958, Sinatra peaked in the Top Ten with their song “Witchcraft,” and Tony Bennett peaked in the Top 40 in October 1958 with “Firefly.” (Sinatra and Bennett recorded several other Coleman-Leigh compositions, notably “The Best Is Yet to Come” cut by Bennett in 1960 and Sinatra in 1964, which became a standard without ever being a hit.)

Leigh, whose first husband was Julius Levine, married David Wyn Cunningham Jr., an attorney, in 1959; they later divorced.

Leigh and Coleman were given their first opportunity to write songs for a book musical in 1960, when director and coproducer Michael Kidd and librettist and coproducer N. Richard Nash put together Wildcat, a star vehicle for Lucille Ball, famous for her long-running television series I Love Lucy. Their score, which featured “Hey, Look Me Over!” resulted in a Top Ten cast album, but the show ran only 171 performances, closing after Ball withdrew from it. Leigh and Coleman returned to Broadway in 1962 with Little Me, another vehicle for a TV star, in this case, Sid Caesar. This show ran 257 performances and produced a charting cast album.

Leigh and Coleman ended their exclusive partnership after Little Me. Leigh wrote the lyrics for “Stay with Me” to music by Jerome Moross for the October 1963 film The Cardinal; Frank Sinatra’s recording of the song was in the charts in January 1964. With Coleman she wrote “Pass Me By” for the November 1964 film Father Goose; Peggy Lee had a chart recording in February 1965.

Leigh returned to Broadway in December 1967 with the musical How Now, Dow Jones, on which she collaborated with Elmer Bernstein; the show ran 220 performances. This was her last work to run on Broadway. In subsequent years she sometimes appeared as a performer in nightclubs. On Labor Day, 1976, Something to Do—A Salute to the American Worker, a cantata by Morton Gould with her lyrics, was presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in commemoration of the American Bicentennial. Hellzapoppin, a musical revue to which she contributed lyrics for music by Cy Coleman and Jule Styne, had out-of-town tryouts starting in November 1976, but closed before reaching Broadway. In 1980 she was reported to be working on a show called Flyers. She and Coleman wrote two new songs for a Broadway revival of Little Me (N.Y., Jan. 21, 1982), and she was working on songs for a musical adaptation of the film Smile with Marvin Hamlisch when she died of a heart attack in 1983 at 57.

Works

stage (dates refer to Broadway openings): Peter Pan (Oct. 20, 1954); Wildcat (Dec. 16, 1960); Little Me (Nov. 17, 1962); How Now, Dow Jones (Dec. 7, 1967). television:Heidi (Oct. 1, 1955).

—William Ruhlmann