Lionel Bart

Lionel Bart, born Lionel Begleiter on 1 August 1930 in Stepney, London, was the youngest of seven surviving children of Yetta and Morris Begleiter, Galician Jewish immigrants who had fled pogroms carried out by Ukrainian Cossacks. His father worked as a master tailor in a garden shed. A teacher identified Bart as a musical genius when he was six years old, and his parents provided him with a violin, though the lessons did not last. As a young man he was also an accomplished painter.

Bart began his songwriting career in amateur theatre, contributing to a revue at the International Youth Centre in 1952. The following year he started composing for Unity Theatre productions, including the title song for its 1953 revue Turn It Up and material for a 1953 pantomime production of Cinderella. It was at Unity Theatre that Joan Littlewood discovered him, leading to his involvement with Theatre Workshop at Theatre Royal, Stratford East. He also wrote comedy songs for the BBC radio programme The Billy Cotton Band Show.

His early professional reputation was built largely through pop songwriting for a roster of young male singers managed by Larry Parnes. Among the hits Bart wrote during this period were "Rock with the Caveman" and "A Handful of Songs," "Butterfingers," and "Little White Bull," all recorded by Tommy Steele, as well as "Living Doll" for Cliff Richard. He also wrote "Do You Mind," recorded by both Anthony Newley and Andy Williams, whose recording reached number one on the UK charts on 30 March 1960, becoming the 100th song to achieve that distinction. Additional credits from this era include "Easy Going Me" for Adam Faith, "Always You and Me" with Russ Conway, and "Big Time," a 1961 cover by Jack Jones of a show tune from Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be. Bart won three Ivor Novello Awards in 1957, four more in 1958, and two in 1960. He also played a role in the careers of Tommy Steele and Marty Wilde, having recommended both singers to Parnes. Twenty-seven years after "Living Doll" first reached number one, it was re-recorded by Cliff Richard and The Young Ones for Comic Relief and spent a further three weeks at the top of the charts.

Bart's first professional musical was Lock Up Your Daughters in 1959, based on Henry Fielding's eighteenth-century play Rape upon Rape. Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, produced by Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, followed and was noted for its use of authentic Cockney accents and its contribution to ending censorship in British theatre. His most celebrated work, Oliver!, opened in 1960 and was based on Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. Bart wrote the book, music, and lyrics, though because he could not read or write music, the melodies he hummed were transcribed by Eric Rogers, who also composed scores for twenty-one Carry On films. Oliver! established Bart as a central figure in the emergence of British musical theatre during a period when American productions had dominated the West End. Andrew Lloyd Webber described Bart as "the father of the modern British musical." In 1963, Oliver! earned Bart the Tony Award for Best Original Score, his Broadway credit as book writer also encompassing La Strada. The 1968 film adaptation of Oliver!, starring Ron Moody, Oliver Reed, and Shani Wallis, won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. At the height of the musical's success, Bart was estimated to be earning sixteen pounds a minute from the property.

Blitz! opened in 1962 and, at the time, was London's most expensive musical ever produced, running for 568 performances. It included "Far Away," which became a hit for Shirley Bassey. Maggie May followed in 1964 and also enjoyed a respectable West End run. Twang!!, a 1965 musical based on the Robin Hood legend, was a commercial failure. La Strada opened on Broadway in 1969 after most of Bart's songs had been removed from the production and closed after a single performance. Bart wrote the theme song for the 1963 James Bond film From Russia with Love and collaborated with composer John Barry again on the 1964 film Man in the Middle.

Financial difficulties followed the failures of his later productions. Bart used personal funds to attempt to salvage them, selling rights to his past and future work, including the rights to Oliver!, which he sold to entertainer Max Bygraves for £350. Bygraves later sold those rights for £250,000. Bart estimated that these transactions cost him more than £1 million. By 1972 he was bankrupt with debts of £73,000, and a prolonged period of depression and alcoholism followed. The years of substance abuse left him with diabetes and impaired liver function, though he eventually stopped drinking.

In 1975 and 1976 Bart wrote Next Year in Jerusalem, though it was not staged until 2021 in a virtual performance at the Jewish Music Institute featuring Maureen Lipman. In May 1977, an autobiographical musical titled Lionel! opened at the New London Theatre in the West End, loosely based on his early life. The cast included Clarke Peters, Marion Montgomery, and Adrienne Posta, with the title role shared by Todd Carty and Chris Nieto. Bart contributed new songs to the production, which closed after six weeks.

In later years Bart received a special Ivor Novello Award for life achievement in 1986. In 1987, encouraged by Barry Humphries, he traveled to Australia for the opening of a new production of Blitz!, which was subsequently revived in London's West End in 1990 by the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the London Blitz. Cameron Mackintosh, who held half the rights to Oliver!, revived the musical at the London Palladium in 1994 in a version that included rewrites by Bart, and gave Bart a share of the production royalties. Bart appeared on This Is Your Life in April 1991. His final notable commercial success was "Happy Endings," a song written for a 1989 Abbey National advertising campaign in which he appeared playing piano and singing to children. Lionel Bart died on 3 April 1999.