Rick Besoyan

Richard Besoyan was born on July 2, 1924, in Reedley, California, to Amos and Mabel Besoyan. The family relocated to Alameda, California, in 1928, where Besoyan attended Lincoln School and composed his first song at the age of twelve. He graduated from Alameda High School in 1942, having already co-written and produced a musical with classmates titled High and Dry. That same year he enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley, but departed during his first semester to enlist in the army, serving three years in Europe with the Special Services Division. During that overseas posting he studied piano at the London School of Music.

After returning to the United States, Besoyan joined the Bredon-Savoy Light Opera Company, where he took on the role of Ko-Ko in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. Following two years with the company he moved to New York, studying at the American Theater Wing and subsequently teaching musical comedy at Stella Adler's Theater School. In 1957 he directed a revival of Cole Porter's Out of this World at Actors Playhouse to mild success. He then wrote a revue called In Your Hat for Jim Paul Eilers's nightclub The Showplace; an Act II finale from that revue, titled Gems from Little Mary Sunshine, contained material that would later form part of his most celebrated work.

Little Mary Sunshine, a satirical takeoff on old-fashioned operetta for which Besoyan wrote the book, music, and lyrics, opened Off-Broadway in 1959 and became his signature achievement. The production earned him the 1959–1960 Vernon Rice Memorial Award for outstanding theatrical achievement.

Besoyan's Broadway career as a book writer centered on The Student Gypsy, or The Prince of Liederkranz, which opened in 1963 with a cast that included Eileen Brennan and Dom DeLuise. The production ran for only 22 performances, a result attributed in part to ongoing negotiations with the musicians' union and a concurrent newspaper strike. The following year he wrote book, music, and lyrics for the Off-Broadway production Babes in the Wood, starring Ruth Buzzi, which ran for 45 performances. Neither The Student Gypsy nor Babes in the Wood was commercially recorded.

In 1966, William S. Godfrey, then Mayor of Alameda, California, proclaimed September 16 Rick Besoyan Day in his honor. Besoyan was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1969. At the time of his death he had just finished directing the Sayville Musical Workshop's production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and was composing music and lyrics for a stage adaptation of Paul Gallico's Mrs. Arris Goes to Paris. Besoyan died of internal hemorrhages on March 13, 1970, in Sayville, Long Island, New York, at the age of 45.