Adolf Green and Betty Comden

The team of Adolf Green and Betty Comden, 1991 recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, hold the record of the longest-running creative partnership in musical theater history, spanning six decades. They began writing and producing their own comic material in a group called The Revuers in 1938. The group enjoyed initial success at uptown theaters, nightclubs, and radio, but flopped in Hollywood. In 1944 in NYC they went on to collaborate with Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins on what was the first show for all of them, On The Town. In 1951, with Two on the Aisle, Comden and Green began a long partnership with Jule Styne who composed music for most of their shows, including Peter Pan (1954), Bells Are Ringing (1956), Say, Darling (1958), Do Re Mi (1960), Subways Are for Sleeping (1961), Fade Out--Fade In (1964), Hallelujah, Baby! (1967), and Lorelei (1974). Their 1953 musical Wonderful Town, yet another collaboration with Leonard Bernstein, won them their first Tony Award. The duo won three more Tony Awards, for Hallelujah, Baby!, Applause (1970), and On the 20th Century (1978).

In addition to writing for Broadway, Comden and Green also wrote musicals for film, including the ever popular hits "Singin' in the Rain," "The Bells Are Ringing," "It's Always Fair Weather," and "On the Town." They are both members of the Council of the Dramatists Guild, have been elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and have received the Mayor of New York's Certificate of Excellence, as well as the 1994 NYU Musical Theatre Hall of Fame Award and the 1994 Governor Cuomo Award. Adolf Green died on Oct. 24, 2002 at the age of 87.