New York-The three-time winner of the Tony Charles Strouse award, Broadway worker, a melodist teacher who composed music for music theater hits as classic as “Annie”, “Bye Bye Birdie” and “Applause”, died Thursday. He was 96 years old.
Strouse died at home in New York City, said his family.
In a race that covered more than 50 years, Strouse wrote more than a dozen Broadway musicals, as well as cinematographic scores and “Thats Were the Days”, the main song of the comedy “All in the family”.
Strouse was so popular, and catchy, melodies like “Tomorrow”, the optimistic anthem of “Annie” and the equally cheerful “put on a happy face” by “Bye Bye Birdie”, his first Broadway success.
“I work every day. Activity: it is a vital force,” said the composer born in New York to The Associated Press during an interview on the eve of his 80th birthday in 2008. “When you enjoy doing what you are doing, which I do a lot, I have something to get up.”
In his 90 years, he visited tours of his shows and the cast of Met. Jenn Thompson, who appeared in the first “Annie” as Pepper and directed a tourist version of “Annie” in 2024, recalls that Strouse reached auditions and spilled a tear when a girl sang “Tomorrow”. She said: “He is so magnificently generous and friendly. It has always been so.”
His Broadway career began in 1960 with “Bye Bye Birdie”, which Strouse wrote with the lyricist Lee Adams and the librettist Michael Stewart. “Birdie”, starring Dick Van Dyke and Chita Rivera, told the story of an Elvis Presley singer named Conrad Birdie being recruited in the army and its effect on a small city in Ohio.
Strouse not only wrote the music, but played the piano in the auditions, while Edward Padula, the neophyte producer of the program, tried to attract financial sponsors for a production that would eventually cost $ 185,000.
“We never stopped giving auditions, and people never gave money at all. The idea of using rock ‘n’ roll, everyone was so off,” said Stouse.
Finally, Padula found Texas Oilman L. Slade Brown. When he listened to the score, he said, in a Timbe in Texas, “I like those songs,” he pushed Strouse aside and chose the “put on a a Happy Face” melody on the piano.
Brown then said: “How much do the boys need?” and wrote a check for $ 75,000 to cover the start of the trials. “Suddenly, the world became technical,” Strouse recalled.
The popularity of “Birdie” generated a film (with Van Dyke, Janet Leigh and Ann-Margart) in 1963 and a television adaptation with Jason Alexander and Vanessa Williams in 1995.
Strouse and Adams gave several non -musical theater stars, including Sammy Davis Jr. and Lauren Bacall, hits on the “Golden Boy” stage and “All About Eve”, respectively.
But it was “Annie” (1977) that proved to be the most durable and long -lasting Broadway success (more than 2,300 performances). Noting the adventures of the era of depression of the famous character of the comic strip Little Orphan Annie, the musical presented lyrics of Martin Barnin and a book by Thomas Meehan.
He starred in Andrea Mcardle as the redhead Moppet and Dorothy Loudon, who won a Tony for her unbridled interpretation of the bad lady Hannigan, who directed the orphanage. The musical contained gems like “you are never completely dressed without a smile” and “is the hard life.”
The 1982 cinematographic version, which had Carol Burnett in the Loudon role, was not so popular or received. A stage sequel called “Annie Warbucks” went out of Broadway in 1993. The program was revived on Broadway in 2012 and became a film starring Qvenzhané Wallis in 2014. NBC put a network television version in 2021 called “Annie Live!”
Strouse and Barnin, who won the Grammy Awards for the “Annie” cast album, found fragments of their work included in the Grammy winning album of Jay-Z “Vol. 2 … Hard Knock Life”.
“Tomorrow” has been heard in the soundtracks of “Shrek 2” A “Dave” A “You have mail”. In 2016, Lukas Graham used parts of the “Annie” choir for his “Mama Said” blow.
Strouse also had its share of failures, including two shows: “A Broadway Musical” (1978) and “Dance to Little Closer”, a 1983 musical written with Alan Jay Lerner, which closed after a performance. Among his other musicals less than successful were “All-American” (1962), starring Ray Bolger, “It is a bird … it is a plane … is Superman” (1966), directed by Harold Prince and “Training Back Birdie” (1981), a sequel to “Bye Bye Birdie”.
Among Strouse’s cinematographic scores were the music for “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) and “The Night Thats Raided Minsky’s” (1968).
The theater signaled when he and Adams had the opportunity in the early 1950s to write songs for weekly magazines in a Summer Camp of Adirondacks called Green Mansions. Such camps were the training field for dozens of artists and writers.
“I would write a song and the orchestraine and copy the parts,” he said in the AP interview. “And the essay was the next day at nine, so at four in the morning, I am crossing the lake with the yet wet. I just loved it. I was never happier.”
His wife, Barbara, died in 2023. Four children, Ben, Nick, Victoria and William survived.
