Stage, Film Composer Jule Styne Dies

NEW YORK - Composer Jule Styne, not only wrote for stars, he helped create a few, too.

Mr. Styne, who died yesterday at 88, was among the last of such legendary composers as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers - men who polished their craft on Broadway and in Hollywood when that was the pop music of the day.

The man who created the music for such brash Broadway classics as "Gypsy," "Funny Girl" and "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" was a master craftsman who tailored material to the strengths and weaknesses of the distinctive performers, for example, Carol Channing with "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" and Barbra Streisand with "People." And he gave Ethel Merman the greatest role of her long stage career in "Gypsy."

Mr. Styne wrote nearly 20 Broadway musicals, beginning in 1947 with "High Button Shoes," which starred Phil Silvers and Nanette Fabray. Among the other stage performers who sang his songs were Judy Holliday in "Bells Are Ringing," Silvers and Nancy Walker in "Do Re Mi," Bert Lahr and Dolores Gray in "Two on the Aisle," Carol Burnett in "Fade Out-Fade In" and Mary Martin, for whom he wrote several songs for "Peter Pan."

Before Broadway, Mr. Styne had carved a career in Hollywood, coaching stars like Alice Faye and Shirley Temple at 20th Century Fox. He once said that Darryl Zanuck, head of Fox, told him he had too much talent to coach and should write songs.

"I told him, `Well, give me a job.' "

"On this lot we only hire songwriters who get $5,000 a week," Zanuck replied. Mr. Styne ended up at Republic, a B picture studio, but was rescued when he teamed up with Frank Loesser (later to write "Guys and Dolls") at Paramount. They wrote "I Don't Want To Walk Without You, Baby," one of Mr. Styne's biggest hits.

Mr. Styne's masterpiece was the 1959 musical "Gypsy," written for Ethel Merman, who played the domineering mother of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. The 1959 musical, which has lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, includes the defiant "Everything's Coming Up Roses" and the lyrical "Small World."

The show has had a remarkable life since then, receiving successful Broadway revivals in 1974 with Angela Lansbury and again in 1989 with Tyne Daly. Bette Midler played Mama Rose in a well-received television version last year.

Mr. Styne also worked with lyricists Sammy Cahn, Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

Among the more than 1,500 songs he wrote were "Just In Time," "Make Someone Happy," "I'll Walk Alone," "It's Been a Long, Long Time," "It's Magic" and "The Party's Over."

He won an Academy Award for the song "Three Coins in the Fountain," from the 1954 film of the same name, and a Tony for "Hallelujah Baby," in 1968.

"The Red Shoes," based on the 1940s film, was Mr. Styne's last Broadway musical. The story of a dancer who sacrifices everything for art closed last December after two troubled months of previews and only five regular performances.

In a 1991 interview, Mr. Styne described its theme as "something that pertains to any profession or art - longevity, a very, very big subject because nothing really matters in the end.

"We all take ourselves seriously, but we can be replaced. Presidents are replaced. Kings are replaced. And the world goes on."

And so, assuredly, will the music of Jule Styne.