Alan Jay Lerner: A Biography

by Edward Jablonski

One of the great lyricists and screenwriters of Broadway's and Hollywood's golden age, Alan Jay Lerner was one half of the successful collaboration (with Frederick Loewe) that created such memorable ventures as My Fair Lady and Camelot. Noted musical theater scholar Jablonski tells the story of Lerner's career and of his personal life--filling in the cracks purposefully left open in Lerner's own autobiography. Photos.

Genres: Nonfiction

345 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1996

About the author

Edward Jablonski was the author of several biographies on American cultural personalities, such as George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Alan Jay Lerner and Irving Berlin, as well as books on aviation history.

Jablonski was born in Bay City, Michigan to a family of Polish-American journalists and writers. His father had been a writer for Sztandar Polski and another relative, Paul F. Jablonski, wrote for the Bay City Times. Early on he fell in love with the music of George and Ira Gershwin. A fan letter he wrote to Ira while in school quickly turned into regular correspondence and eventually a lasting friendship with the lyricist.

While Jablonski was interested in music, his true fascination was with aviation. Supposedly, he spent much of his time watching the planes at the James Clements Airport near the South End of Bay City. He had grown up, he said later, listening to the music of the day as he ''hung around the airport watching the planes.'' As a schoolboy he also started a correspondence with Gershwin. Later on in his life, he became interested in aerial warfare. Telling an interviewer in 1986, "Aviation makes possible the most deadly form of warfare ever -- the perversion of one of man's greatest inventions."

He served in the United States Army Field Artillery in New Guinea during World War II. For his actions in New Guinea, he was awarded the Silver Star.

After leaving the army, he attended junior college in Bay City as a pre-journalism major. He continued his studies at the New School for Social Research, receiving his bachelor's in 1950. He also completed postgraduate work in anthropology at Columbia.

While working for the March of Dimes charity in New York, Jablonski wrote articles and music reviews for a number of small magazines as well as liner notes for albums; this was the beginning of a fifty-year freelance career.

At the time of his death, he was working on "Masters of American Song", which would have been a comprehensive history of American pop music.