Lionel Bart - Welcome to Cockney Pride Welcome to Cockney Pride Terms & Conditions lionel bart Lionel Bart (1 August 1930 – 3 April 1999) was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver Bart was born Lionel Begleiter the youngest of seven surviving children in East London to Galician Jews, and grew up in Stepney. His father worked as a tailor in a garden shed in London E1. The family had escaped the deadly pogroms against Jews by Ukrainian Cossacks in Galicia, which was then part of the Austrian Empire. The sole survivor of the seven children is Lionel's sister Renee Gold. Lionel changed his name to Bart, said to be derived from when he passed by St. Bart's hospital on the top deck of a bus after he had completed his National Service with the Royal Air Force. A more likely derivation of Bart is from the silk-screen company Lionel founded with John Gorman, G and B Arts. As a young man he was an accomplished painter. At the age of six a teacher told his parents that he was a musical genius.

His parents gave him an old violin, but he did not apply himself and the lessons stopped. At the age of 14 he obtained a Junior Art Scholarship to Saint Martin's School of Art. One Friday afternoon, he was suspended for "mischievousness" with another student, John Groom, for making a noise with the rest of the class, involving set squares and other paraphernalia. On the following Monday, he returned to School with a long explanation of his peripheral involvement in the disturbance and was re-instated. After St Martin's, he gave up his ambition to be a painter and took jobs in silk-screen printing works and commercial art studios. He never learned to read or write musical notation; this did not stop him from becoming a significant personality in the development of British rock and pop music. Songwriting He started his songwriting career in amateur theatre, first at The International Youth Centre in 1952 where he and a friend wrote a revue together calledIYC Revue 52. The following year the pair auditioned for a production of the Leonard Irwin play The Wages Of Eve at Unity Theatre, London.

Shortly after Bart began composing songs for Unity Theatre, contributing material (including the title song) to their 1953 revue Turn It Up, and songs for their 1953 pantomime, an agitprop version of Cinderella. While at Unity he was talent spotted by Joan Littlewood and so joined Theatre Workshop. He also wrote comedy songs for the Sunday lunchtime BBC radio programme The Billy Cotton Band Show. He first gained widespread recognition through his pop songwriting, penning numerous hits for the stable of young male singers promoted by artist manager and music publisher Larry Parnes. Bart's pop output in this period includes the hits "Living Doll" (written for Cliff Richard) and "Rock with the Cavemen","Handful of Songs", "Butterfingers" and "Little White Bull" (for Tommy Steele). During this period, Mike Pratt as well as Steele were his songwriting partners. In 1957, he won three Ivor Novello Awards, a further four in 1958, and two in 1960. He wrote the theme song for the 1963 James Bond film From Russia with Love.

His other hits include: "Do You Mind?" (recorded by both Anthony Newley and Andy Williams), "Big Time" (a 1961 cover by Jack Jones of his "Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be" show tune), "Easy Going Me" (Adam Faith) and "Always You And Me" (with Russ Conway). Bart was also responsible for the discovery of two of Parnes' biggest stars. It was on his recommendation that Parnes went to see singer Tommy Hicks, whom he signed and renamed Tommy Steele, and Bart also suggested that Parnes see singer Reg Smith, who was then performing at the Condor Club. Although Parnes missed his performance, he went round to Smith's house and signed him up on the basis of Bart's recommendation. Smith went on to score a number of UK hits under his new stage name Marty Wilde. Twenty-seven years after it became a number one hit for Cliff Richard, "Living Doll" was re-recorded by The Young Ones and Cliff Richard for Comic Relief and spent another three weeks at Number One.

Musical Theatre Bart's first professional musical was the 1959 Lock Up Your Daughters, based on the 18th-century play Rape Upon Rape, by Henry Fielding. Following that, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Beproduced by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, was notable for encouraging the use of authentic Cockney accents on the London stage. Oliver! (1960), based on Dickens's Oliver Twist was a huge hit from the beginning, becoming the first modern British musical to be transferred successfully to Broadway. It has sustained its popularity to the present day, and for many years was the standard musical performed by UK schools. The original stage production, which starred Ron Moody and Georgia Brown, contained such song hits as "As Long As He Needs Me" and "Consider Yourself" and is also notable for featuring Australian satirist Barry Humphries in his first major stage role as Mr Sowerberry and future rock stars Steve Marriott (later the lead singer of The Small Faces and Humble Pie) and Phil Collins (of Genesis fame) as The Artful Dodger. The music for Oliver! was transcribed by Eric Rogers who wrote and composed 21 scores for the Carry On films.

Bart hummed the melodies and Rogers wrote the notes on his behalf as Bart could not read or write music. In 1968 Oliver! was made into a film starring Ron Moody, Oliver Reed and Shani Wallis which won several Oscars, including best film. It is estimated that around this time Bart was earning 16pounds a minute from Oliver! Bart's next two musicals, Blitz! (1962) (the song Far Away produced another hit for Shirley Bassey) and Maggie May (1964), had respectable West End runs (Blitz!, at the time London's most expensive musical ever, had a run of 568 performances) but Twang! (1965), a musical based on the Robin Hood legend, was a flop and La Strada (1969), which opened on Broadway in New York City, closed after only one performance. By this time Bart was taking LSD and other drugs and was drinking heavily and this evidently affected both his work and his business judgement. He rashly used his personal finances to try to rescue his last two productions, selling his past and future rights to his work, including Oliver!

which he sold to the entertainer Max Bygraves for £350 (Bygraves later sold them on for £250,000) in order to realise capital to finance the shows; Bart himself later estimated that this action lost him over £1 million. By 1972, Bart was bankrupt with debts of £73,000. A twenty-year period of depression and alcoholism ensued. He eventually stopped drinking and attended Alcoholics Anonymous, although the years of substance abuse seriously damaged his health, leaving him with diabetes and impaired liver function. In May 1977, an autobiographical musical called Lionel! opened in the West End at the New London Theatre. It was loosely based on Bart's early life as a child prodigy. Bart added some new songs for the show and expectations were high. The cast included Clarke Peters, Marion Montgomery and Adrienne Posta. The role of Lionel was shared by a young Todd Carty and theatre unknown Chris Nieto. The show closed after six weeks losing £250,000.

He continued writing songs and themes for films, but his only real success in his later years was "Happy Endings", a 30-second jingle for a 1989 Abbey National advertising campaign which featured Bart playing the piano and singing to children. In 1986, Bart received a special Ivor Novello Award for his life's achievement. Cameron Mackintosh, who owned half the rights to Oliver!, revived the musical at the London Palladium in 1994 in a version rewritten by Lionel Bart. Mackintosh gave Bart a share of the production royalties. At the peak of his career Bart was romantically linked in the media with singers Judy Garland and Alma Cogan although he was gay. His sexuality was known to friends and colleagues but he did not "come out" until a few years before his death. Bart died in 1999 after a long struggle with cancer and his funeral took place at Golders Green Crematorium. A musical play based on Bart's life and using his songs, It's a Fine Life was staged at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch in 2006.

Top D-3 Where there is love D-3 Where there is love [h1]{PAGETITLE}[/h1] Genres: Music Theater Biography The composer/lyricist of one of the most popular of all English musicals, Oliver!, Lionel Bart enjoyed early promise, but suffered quick decline. He studied at St. Martin's School of Art, but was mainly self-taught as a musician; his early theater work was as a scene painter, and as a composer, he would later need assistants to transcribe his tunes and sort out his harmonic instructions. He began writing pop songs in the mid-'50s for the Cavemen, a group of which he was a member, as well as for Cliff Richard and Billy Fury. His work for Richard and Tommy Steele, lead singer of the Cavemen, helped Bart break into film when Richard and Steele started making movies; among his hits was "Living Doll." Around this time, he also started writing musicals for Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at Stratford East.

One of his earliest efforts, 1958's Wally Pone, King of the Underworld, established Bart's personal precedent for pillaging earlier and unlikely literary sources for his musicals -- in this case, Ben Jonson's Volpone. The following year, Fings Ain't Wot They Used t'Be was Bart's first West End success. Bart reached his peak in 1960, at age 30, with Oliver!, based on Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and the first of a string of Bart titles to end with at least one exclamation point. For this show, Bart produced some undeniably catchy songs -- even an homage to food -- and drew on his Jewish heritage in the modal songs for the character Fagin. Among Bart's later exclamatory efforts were 1962's Blitz!, set during the London blitzkrieg, and the notorious 1965 flop Twang!!, a Robin Hood spoof that missed its mark. His only notable musical after this was 1969's La Strada, based on the Fellini film; it closed after a single night on Broadway.

Bart continued writing songs and themes for films, but it's telling that his only real success later in life was "Happy Endings," a 1989 advertising jingle. This helped spur a few 1990s revivals of his earlier works, but nothing new found success remotely comparable to that of Oliver! or Bart's theme song for the 1963 James Bond movie From Russia With Love. ~ James Reel, Rovi Read more: #ixzz1Fmc0cJ37 Genres: Music Theater Biography The composer/lyricist of one of the most popular of all English musicals, Oliver!, Lionel Bart enjoyed early promise, but suffered quick decline. He studied at St. Martin's School of Art, but was mainly self-taught as a musician; his early theater work was as a scene painter, and as a composer, he would later need assistants to transcribe his tunes and sort out his harmonic instructions. He began writing pop songs in the mid-'50s for the Cavemen, a group of which he was a member, as well as for Cliff Richard and Billy Fury.

His work for Richard and Tommy Steele, lead singer of the Cavemen, helped Bart break into film when Richard and Steele started making movies; among his hits was "Living Doll." Around this time, he also started writing musicals for Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at Stratford East. One of his earliest efforts, 1958's Wally Pone, King of the Underworld, established Bart's personal precedent for pillaging earlier and unlikely literary sources for his musicals -- in this case, Ben Jonson's Volpone. The following year, Fings Ain't Wot They Used t'Be was Bart's first West End success. Bart reached his peak in 1960, at age 30, with Oliver!, based on Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and the first of a string of Bart titles to end with at least one exclamation point. For this show, Bart produced some undeniably catchy songs -- even an homage to food -- and drew on his Jewish heritage in the modal songs for the character Fagin.

Among Bart's later exclamatory efforts were 1962's Blitz!, set during the London blitzkrieg, and the notorious 1965 flop Twang!!, a Robin Hood spoof that missed its mark. His only notable musical after this was 1969's La Strada, based on the Fellini film; it closed after a single night on Broadway. Bart continued writing songs and themes for films, but it's telling that his only real success later in life was "Happy Endings," a 1989 advertising jingle. This helped spur a few 1990s revivals of his earlier works, but nothing new found success remotely comparable to that of Oliver! or Bart's theme song for the 1963 James Bond movie From Russia With Love. ~ James Reel, Rovi Read more: #ixzz1Fmc0cJ37 LIONEL BART Lionel Bart Lionel Bart Lionel Bart Lionel Bart (1 August 1930 – 3 April 1999) was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver! . The music for Oliver!

was transcribed by Eric Rogers who wrote and composed 21 scores for the Carry On films. Bart hummed the melodies and Rogers wrote the notes on his behalf as Bart could not read or write music.[7] Early life Bart was born Lionel Begleiter the youngest of seven surviving children in East London to Galician Jews, and grew up in Stepney. His father worked as a tailor in a garden shed in London E1. The family had escaped the deadly pogroms against Jews by Ukrainian cossacks in Galicia, which was then part of the Austrian Empire. The sole survivor of the seven children is Lionel’s sister Renee Gold. Lionel changed his name to Bart, said to be derived from when he passed by St. Bart’s hospital on the top deck of a bus after he had completed his National Service with the Royal Air Force. A more likely derivation of Bart is from the silk-screen company Lionel founded with John Gorman, G and B Arts. As a young man he was an accomplished painter. At the age of six a teacher told his parents that he was a musical genius. His parents gave him an old violin, but he did not apply himself and the lessons stopped.

At the age of 14 he obtained a Junior Art Scholarship to Saint Martin’s School of Art. One Friday afternoon, he was suspended for “mischievousness” with another student, John Groom, for making a noise with the rest of the class, involving set squares and other paraphernalia. On the following Monday, he returned to School with a long explanation of his peripheral involvement in the disturbance and was re-instated. After St Martin’s, he gave up his ambition to be a painter and took jobs in silk-screen printing works and commercial art studios. He never learned to read or write musical notation; this did not stop him from becoming a significant personality in the development of British rock and pop music. Song Writing He started his song writing career in amateur theatre, first at The International Youth Centre in 1952 where he and a friend wrote a revue together called IYC Revue 52. The following year the pair auditioned for a production of the Leonard Irwin play The Wages of Eve at Unity Theatre, London.

Shortly after Bart began composing songs for Unity Theatre, contributing material (including the title song) to their 1953 revue Turn It Up, and songs for their 1953 pantomime, an agitprop version of Cinderella. While at Unity he was talent spotted by Joan Littlewood and so joined Theatre Workshop.[2] He also wrote comedy songs for the Sunday lunchtime BBC radio programme The Billy Cotton Band Show.[3 He first gained widespread recognition through his pop songwriting, penning numerous hits for the stable of young male singers promoted by artist manager and music publisher Larry Parnes. Bart’s pop output in this period includes the hits “Living Doll” (written for Cliff Richard ) and “Rock with the Cavemen”,”Handful of Songs”, “Butterfingers” and “Little White Bull” (for Tommy Steele ). During this period, Mike Pratt as well as Steele were his songwriting partners. In 1957, he won three Ivor Novello Awards, a further four in 1958, and two in 1960. He wrote the theme song for the 1963 James Bond film From Russia with Love.

His other hits include: “Do You Mind?” (recorded by both Anthony Newley and Andy Williams), “Big Time” (a 1961 cover by Jack Jones of his “Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be” show tune), “Easy Going Me” (Adam Faith) and “Always You And Me” (with Russ Conway). Bart was also responsible for the discovery of two of Parnes’ biggest stars. It was on his recommendation that Parnes went to see singer Tommy Hicks, whom he signed and renamed Tommy Steele , and Bart also suggested that Parnes see singer Reg Smith, who was then performing at the Condor Club. Although Parnes missed his performance, he went round to Smith’s house and signed him up on the basis of Bart’s recommendation.

Smith went on to score a number of UK hits under his new stage name Marty Wilde.[4] Twenty-seven years after it became a number one hit for Cliff Richard , “Living Doll” was re-recorded by The Young Ones and Cliff Richard for Comic Relief and spent another three weeks at Number One.[5] Musical Theatre Bart’s first professional musical was the 1959 Lock Up Your Daughters, based on the 18th-century play Rape Upon Rape, by Henry Fielding. Following that, Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be produced by Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, was notable for encouraging the use of authentic Cockney accents on the London stage. Oliver! (1960), based on Dickens’s Oliver Twist was a huge hit from the beginning, becoming the first modern British musical to be transferred successfully to Broadway. It has sustained its popularity to the present day, and for many years was the standard musical performed by UK schools.

The original stage production, which starred Ron Moody and Georgia Brown, contained such song hits as “As Long As He Needs Me” and “Consider Yourself” and is also notable for featuring Australian satirist Barry Humphries in his first major stage role as Mr Sowerberry and future rock stars Steve Marriott[6] (later the lead singer of The Small Faces and Humble Pie), Davy Jones (pre-Monkees) and Phil Collins (of Genesis fame) as The Artful Dodger. The music for Oliver! was transcribed by Eric Rogers who wrote and composed 21 scores for the Carry On films. Bart hummed the melodies and Rogers wrote the notes on his behalf as Bart could not read or write music.[7] In 1968 Oliver! was made into a film starring Ron Moody, Oliver Reed and Shani Wallis which won several Oscars, including best film. It is estimated that around this time Bart was earning 16 pounds a minute from Oliver!.[8] Bart’s next two musicals, Blitz!

(1962) (the song Far Away produced another hit for Shirley Bassey) and Maggie May (1964), had respectable West End runs (Blitz!, at the time London’s most expensive musical ever, had a run of 568 performances),[9] but Twang! (1965), a musical based on the Robin Hood legend, was a flop and La Strada (1969), which opened on Broadway in New York City, closed after only one performance. By this time Bart was taking LSD and other drugs and was drinking heavily and this evidently affected both his work and his business judgement. He rashly used his personal finances to try to rescue his last two productions, selling his past and future rights to his work, including Oliver! which he sold to the entertainer Max Bygraves for £350 (Bygraves later sold them on for £250,000)[10] to realise capital to finance the shows; Bart himself later estimated that this action lost him over £1 million.[11] By 1972, Bart was bankrupt with debts of £73,000. A twenty-year period of depression and alcoholism ensued.

He eventually stopped drinking and attended Alcoholics Anonymous, although the years of substance abuse seriously damaged his health, leaving him with diabetes and impaired liver function.[11] In May 1977, an autobiographical musical called Lionel! opened in the West End at the New London Theatre. It was loosely based on Bart’s early life as a child prodigy. Bart added some new songs for the show and expectations were high. The cast included Clarke Peters, Marion Montgomery and Adrienne Posta. The role of Lionel was shared by a young Todd Carty and theatre unknown Chris Nieto. The show closed after six weeks losing £250,000. He continued writing songs and themes for films, but his only real success in his later years was “Happy Endings”, a 30-second jingle for a 1989 Abbey National advertising campaign which featured Bart playing the piano and singing to children. In 1986, Bart received a special Ivor Novello Award for his life’s achievement. Cameron Mackintosh , who owned half the rights to Oliver!, revived the musical at the London Palladium in 1994 in a version rewritten by Lionel Bart.

Mackintosh gave Bart a share of the production royalties. At the peak of his career Bart was romantically linked in the media with singers Judy Garland and Alma Cogan[3] although he was gay. His sexuality was known to friends and colleagues but he did not “come out” until a few years before his death.[11] Bart died in 1999 after a long struggle with cancer and his funeral took place at Golders Green Crematorium. A musical play based on Bart’s life and using his songs, It’s a Fine Life was staged at the Queen’s Theatre , Hornchurch in 2006.[12] Geoffrey Rush Considers Himself Lionel Bart | News | Movies - Empire Geoffrey Rush Considers Himself Lionel Bart Playing the composer in Vadim Jean's biopic The developing Oliver Twist film has nothing to do with the famous musical, but those with a love for its show tunes can take heart. Director Vadim Jean is preparing a musical biopic of Oliver!'s composer and lyricist Lionel Bart . Geoffrey Rush has just signed on to play Bart in Consider Yourself, and he'll be joined in the cast by Stephen Fry, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan, Matt Lucas and Michelle Dockery.

Al Weaver will play Bart / Rush as a younger man. Bart's is a rags-to-riches-to-rags story, more or less. From inauspicious beginnings in Stepney, he became one of the most successful songwriters in Britain, despite no formal musical training. Starting out writing pop hits (Cliff Richard's Living Doll was one of Bart's) he eventually moved on to musical theatre, and became the first person ever to have three West End productions running at the same time. Later productions like Twang! (based on the Robin Hood legend), La Strada (based on Fellini's film) and Lionel! (an autobiographical musical!) were flops however, and he lost fortunes pouring money into keeping them going. He died in 1999, a bit better off following an Oliver! revival and some work writing jingles for commercials, but far from the powerhouse name he had once been. Consider Yourself is not based on Lionel!, nor on It's A Fine Life, another stage musical biopic of Bart written in 2006 by Chris Bond. This one comes courtesy of Elliot Davis (Loserville: The Musical), with choreographer Peter Darling (Billy Elliott: The Musical) also involved.

The BBC have been part of Consider Yourself's development process, and the film's producers will be looking for further deals in at the European Film Market in Berlin next month. People Lionel Bart - Biography - IMDb Lionel Bart Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Trivia (6) | Personal Quotes (1) Overview (3) Lionel Begleiter Mini Bio (1) The son of a Jewish Tailor in London's working class East End young Lionel had no formal musical education and never learned musical notation but his music teacher at school declared him to be a genius. He gained a scholarship to St Martin's School of Art at age 16 and started work as a set painter in the theatre. When he saw a notice asking for song writers it was to change his life. His new name was inspired on a bus journey past St. Bartholomew's Hospital (affectionately known as Barts). He wrote his first musical in 1958, Wally Pone of Soho. It was not a success. However, the songs he wrote for the early British rock'n'rollers Tommy Steele (Rock With the Caveman and Little White Bull) and Cliff Richard (Living Doll - at No.

1 for 6 weeks in 1959) brought Lionel his first taste of success. His first musical success was with "Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be". By the end of 1959 both "Fings" and "Lock Up Your Daughters" were running successfully in London's West End. In June 1960 he opened "Oliver!" which had been turned down by a dozen promoters and had to be financed by Bart himself. An immediate hit it received 16 curtain calls on the opening night and had advanced sales of 30,000 in the first week. Oliver! was followed by other fairly successful shows such as Blitz and Maggie May. Bart was just 30 and earning £16 a minute! To finance his next musical "Twang!!" (based on the Robin Hood story) he signed away all rights to Oliver! The new show flopped badly and Bart estimated he lost about one million pounds in that and in the lost rights to Oliver! He filed for bankruptcy in 1972 with debts of £73,000. By the late 1970s his heavy drinking had brought on diabetes.

He stopped drinking but one third of his liver had been destroyed. Lionel Bart died aged 68 after suffering cancer for 6 months. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Steve Crook <steve@brainstorm.co.uk> Trivia (6) Won Broadway's 1963 Tony Award as Best Composer and Lyricist for "Oliver!," a show for which he also received two other Tony nominations: as Best Author (Musical) and as author of book, music and lyrics as part of a Best Musical nomination. Born the youngest of 11 children. His musical version, "Oliver!" was nominated for a 1973 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Play Production at the Candelight Dinner Playhouse in Chicago, Illinois. Friend of Alma Cogan . His musical, "Oliver!" at the Drury Lane Productions in Chicago, Illinois was nominated for a 2013 Equity Joseph Jefferson Award for Large Musical Production. His musical, "Oliver!," at the Marriott Theatre in Chicago, Illinois was nominated for a 2006 Joseph Jefferson Equity Award for Musical Production.

Personal Quotes (1) Ten most disastrous musical flops | The Times Welcome to your preview of The Times Subscribe now Ten most disastrous musical flops Broadway flop Carrie, based on Stephen King's novel about a telekinetic girl who murders her high-school bullies Peter Cunningham/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image Google+ 1 of 1 Broadway flop Carrie, based on Stephen King's novel about a telekinetic girl who murders her high-school bullies Peter Cunningham/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image Last updated at 12:01AM, March 30 2013 Around the World (1946) Orson Welles’s youthful hubris took a knock when his Broadway musical extravaganza, based on Phileas Fogg’s exploits, crashed and burnt – despite the presence of four mechanical elephants – leaving the Kane wunderkind in financial ruin. Twang!! (1965) Lionel Bart, writer of Oliver!, didn’t always get it right. His self-financed Robin Hood spoof Twang!! was then the most expensive flop in West End history, leaving Bart bankrupt. His earlier Second World War musial Blitz!

(1962), hadn’t fared much better - when Bart asked Noel Coward what he thought of it, the master had said: “I thought it was a Subscribe now Lionel Bart stages the comeback of Notre Dame | The Independent Home News Lionel Bart stages the comeback of Notre Dame With Oliver! playing to packed houses, his first 'new' musical for 25 years is waiting in the wings. Tim Minogue reports Sunday 12 November 1995 00:02 BST Click to follow The Independent Online LIONEL BART is in a hurry. Twenty tired young actors are grabbing a quick cup of tea and a fag in a cramped, windowless rehearsal room in Soho. Bart is itching for them to get back to work on a complicated fight scene from his new musical work in progress, Quasimodo. "New" is not quite right. Bart wrote the words and music for Quasimodo, based on Victor Hugo's 1831 novel Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) in 1963, or 1964 - he can't quite remember.

The poignant tale, set in 15th-century Paris, of the love between the deformed bellringer and the beautiful gypsy girl Esmerelda nearly made it to Broadway, where it would undoubtedly have joined the list of Bart's stage hits: Lock Up Your Daughters, Fings Ain't Wot They Used t'Be, Oliver!, Blitz! and Maggie May. But there was a complicated wrangle about who was to direct the show, and it was put on ice. Then there followed one of the gloomiest cliches in entertainment - 20 years of drink and drugs. But, now 65, Bart is back, booze banished, life straightened out, driving on a cast drawn from veterans of the hit musicals of the past decade: Starlight Express, Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Ain't Misbehavin'. A couple of minutes' walk from the London Palladium, where the revival of Oliver! is playing to full houses, he is hard at work getting Quasimodo ready for a private performance in front of anaudience of impresarios, producers and critics on 22 November, starring Ray Shelland Frances Ruffelle.

Bart says: "I've been fascinated by this story since I saw Charles Laughton as the hunchback in the 1939 film version. I was inspired by the story of this marvellous soul within a monstrous body. The simple premise of the piece, when I wrote it, was the question, 'What is ugly?' I hoped that you could realise, when you left the theatre, that the guy at the end of the row wasn't so ugly after all. "But things dragged on ... it never got made. Since then I've looked again at the original. In his story the hunchback was only 18 - not Charles Laughton at all. Esmerelda was only 16, a street kid. With the obsession of the priest, Frollo, who is the hunchback's mentor, it suddenly came together as an involved, modern, dark subject." Bart's decline began with Twang, a musical about the life of Robin Hood, in 1965. It seemed like a good idea at the time. He smiles at the memory of "my famous flop". The critics panned it, the public stayed away. That's showbiz. He was only 30.

But by the end of the 1960s, Bart, who had started his musical career in Soho with Tommy Steele in the mid- Fifties, had had a surfeit of showbiz. He had emerged for a time as one of the world's most successful composers and lyricists, the Andrew Lloyd Webber of his day. He partied with the Beatles and the Stones. He was romantically linked with the singers Judy Garland and Alma Cogan. As the Sixties died, so did his friends: Cogan, Garland, and Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, were all gone. There was another musical flop - La Strada, in 1969 - then next to nothing for 20 years as Bart grappled with the bottle and other related demons. But now, with Quasimodo, there is renewal, and hope. "Doing this is for me. It's to get my juices going again, which it has, I'm pleased to say. I've had a long break from new work. It has been so long that it's a bit like looking at someone else's work.

I have to look at that kid who was writing 30 years ago and say where is my head now in 1995? "Surprisingly, a lot of it still works. I remember when I'd written some of the music and lyrics I sent the script to Noel Coward. He said: 'Brilliant, dear boy, but were you on drugs when you wrote it? It seems a little bit abstract here and there.' I suppose it was. It's good to look back through that haze with a new clarity." London-based American actor Ray Shell was pleasantly surprised when he got the lead role in the workshop. "Les Mis doesn't have any black folks in it at all," he says. "I feared this would be the same. "I didn't want to do it at first. It's about being someone that other people find ugly and repulsive and what that does to your confidence and emotions. It's about how difficult it is to know someone else's soul. Despite his physical ugliness Quasimodo has a child's heart and mind.

We're all Quasimodos in a way - people judge us by the way we look, not how we are inside." Bart says: "It's a tragic story, but about being free to change, free to renew oneself. In a way I became the hunchback. It's a great release and a catharsis for me to put it all in this work." By now he is looking distracted. It's 4.30 on Friday afternoon, the cast want their weekend, but there is a scene to get right. There are 10 days to go before the money men come to cast their cold eyes on a show that has already been more than 30 years in the making. If they give it the OK, it may get on the West End stage in 1997. Maybe. Lionel Bart has the look of a man who is in a hurry to make up lost time. More about: Lionel Bart's greatest success Oliver! destroyed him: From cocaine to cheap vodka | Daily Mail Online Lionel Bart: His parties were legendary His parties were legendary. Princess Margaret, the Rolling Stones and Muhammad Ali were all regulars at his London home — or what was known as the ‘Fun Palace’.

So were Noel Coward, ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev and The Beatles. Footballer Bobby Moore and his wife were invited there hours after England’s 1966 World Cup win at Wembley. They arrived to find Joan Collins, Tom Jones, Jack Charlton and a group of hippies. Sometimes the host would join his guests, up to 600 of them, as they danced, drank and ingested other substances in the vast stateroom. At other times, he preferred to lie in his sound-proofed bedroom behind the minstrels’ gallery, watching the party below. His generosity knew no bounds, his extravagance no limits. Lionel Bart, the son of an East End tailor, had made millions from song-writing and he knew how to spend them. His Chelsea mansion had 27 opulently decorated rooms. Suits of armour lined the staircase, chandeliers shimmered above and an incongruous cast iron stork perched on the rooftop. Gadgets such as remote-controlled curtains, concealed TVs and sound systems littered the house.

There were mirrors everywhere — John Lennon liked getting stoned in one of the mirrored lavatories — and a secret passage through the back of a wardrobe to a sauna. I'd do anything... Lionel Bart in the sixties with John Lennon pictured at the Dorchester Hotel in London On a table by the front door was a glass bowl stuffed with cash, to which his guests could help themselves. A second bowl, it was said, contained cocaine, to which they were equally welcome. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share In the Sixties, the Fun Palace — like Lionel — was the epitome of cool. His songs, including Little White Bull and Big Time, topped the charts and he was the musical genius behind the hit musical Oliver! But his fall from grace was as dramatic as his ascent, and he ended up an impoverished alcoholic living in shabby obscurity — a cautionary tale relayed in a fascinating new biography. Lionel Bart was born Lionel Begleiter in 1930 to Jewish refugees in London’s East End, the youngest of seven siblings. The family were poor, but not destitute and music filled Lionel’s early life. His mother Yetta sang him lullabies.

He loved the Yiddish theatre, East End music halls, barrel organs and Salvation Army bands on the streets. Jewish folk songs, jazz, blues and Irish reels all served as musical inspiration. A physically unprepossessing child, short and skinny with sticking out ears and a beaky nose, Lionel compensated by entertaining his fellow urchins with his quick wit, making up rude lyrics to well-known songs. ‘Every audience for one of my shows represents, to me, an extension of that gang of kids in the East End,’ he once said. Mark Lester in the smash hit movie Oliver! When Lionel was six, his headmistress told his parents that their son was an ‘artistic genius’. He did not immediately fulfil her prediction: his screeching attempts to learn the violin were decidedly unsuccessful. Then, at 16, he won a scholarship to the prestigious St Martin’s School of Art in the West End of London and became part of the hip Soho crowd. In 1948, aged 18, he was called up for National Service with the RAF. On an outing from his airbase, he went to see David Lean’s film of Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist.

Turning to a friend, he said: ‘One day I’m going to write a musical based on that story and it will be better than any American musical.’ Back in London in 1950, he changed his surname to Bart — snappier, easier to spell on credits and less foreign-sounding — and found work at an East End theatre as a producer. He also began writing songs, earning 25 guineas for the first one published, Oh For A Cup Of Tea, which he blew on a celebratory party. For Lionel, success and excess went hand in hand. At a Soho party he met the then 20-year-old Tommy Steele, Britain’s first rock ’n’ roll star. He wrote Rock With The Cavemen for Steele in 1956. It spent five weeks in the charts. He followed this up by co-writing songs for a semi-documentary film starring the singer, The Tommy Steele Story, which won Bart three prestigious Ivor Novello song- writing awards. In 1958, Lionel discovered Harry Webb, a Bambi-faced teenager, who was renamed Cliff Richard, in the 2Is, a Soho club.

He recruited Cliff and his band, The Drifters (later The Shadows), to sing three of the songs he had written for a forthcoming film. One of them was Living Doll. Lionel wrote it in ten minutes and it became a No 1 hit in August 1959. He never learned to read or write music — he sang into a tape recorder for someone else to transcribe — and had no formal musical training. He believed in keeping tunes and lyrics simple. ‘I never spent more than an hour on a tune,’ he said. ‘Songs should be like sneezes — spontaneous.’ Despite his chart success, he yearned to have his songs performed in the theatre. His break came at the Stratford Theatre in East London, writing songs for a play called Fings Ain’t What They Used T’Be. It was a Cockney comedy. Please sir, can I have some more? Mark Lester, centre as Oliver, with Ron Moody as Fagan in the film Oliver! Lionel turned it into a musical. It opened in Stratford in February 1959 and was an immediate hit, transferring after a year to the West End.

Princess Margaret and the Queen both saw it, despite its risque scenes and dialogue. The Lord Chamberlain, who was in charge of censorship, wrote a letter demanding: ‘The builder’s labourer is not to carry the plank of wood in the erotic place and at the erotic angle that he does, and the Lord Chamberlain wishes to be informed of the manner in which the plank is in future to be carried.’ It was ignored. In 1959, Lionel began work on the songs and story for what would become his masterpiece, Oliver! But to his dismay, no theatre would touch it because, with its tale of orphans and poverty, it was considered too ‘downbeat’. Eventually, one producer agreed to stage it on a shoestring budget. Despite promising preview performances, on its first night in the West End Lionel sat rigid with fear in the audience. Petrified that it would be a flop, he bolted out of the theatre. After pacing the streets for more than an hour, he made his way back. As he approached the theatre, he heard a rumbling noise. Fearing that the audience was rioting in disgust, he turned to run. But the producer grabbed him and dragged him on to the stage.

The audience were on their feet, clapping deafeningly. There had been 23 curtain calls. The reviews were ecstatic. The show ran for six years, then a record for a British musical. Lionel Bart, left and John Lennon, right were hard party goers Overnight, Lionel became phenomenally wealthy. At one point, his song-writing earned him as much in a minute as most people earned in a week. He spent his new riches freely, drenching himself in his favourite Guerlain perfume, wearing sharply tailored suits and patent leather boots with Cuban heels. He had his beaky, broken nose fixed. He collected cars: a Mercedes-Benz convertible with a built-in telephone (this was in the Sixties!), Riley Pathfinder, Bentley Continental and, most exclusive of all, Facel Vega, the fastest, and coolest, four-seater sports coupe in the world. Lionel mixed with old showbiz: Judy Garland and Noel Coward became good friends. And new: The Beatles, the Stones, Michael Caine and Terence Stamp. Oliver! transferred to Broadway in 1963 to tremendous acclaim. He wrote the theme song for the second James Bond film, From Russia With Love.

But personal happiness eluded him. For years, he squired the singer Alma Cogan, but the relationship was never consummated — for the simple reason that Lionel was gay. He had a long-term boyfriend, then a series of casual lovers, but he did not publicly come out until 1971, four years after homosexuality was legalised. In 1962, he wrote another musical, Blitz!, based on his wartime childhood in the East End. It had an 18-month run, but neither Blitz! nor his next musical, Maggie May, came close to the success of Oliver! Undeterred, in 1965 he began writing another musical, Twang!! Based loosely on the story of Robin Hood, it lacked any coherent storyline or dialogue, possibly because — according to the director — Lionel was high on the hallucinogenic drug LSD. Actress Barbara Windsor with Lionel Bart preparing for a theatre production of the play Twang By the time the curtain went down on the first night of Twang!!, most of the audience had left. The critics savaged it. As the investors pulled out, Lionel wrote cheque after cheque from his personal account to keep it going. It was no good. Twang!!

closed within a few weeks of opening. It was an utter flop. Within six years, Lionel had gone from box office gold to poison. No producer would touch him. In 1967, however, Oliver! was turned into a film. Elizabeth Taylor was so desperate to play Nancy that she followed Lionel to the loo in his house and sang through the locked door. She didn’t get the part. The film, released in 1968, was a hit and won six Oscars — including Best Original Score for Lionel. He was invited to Hollywood to write movies, but in the sterile Los Angeles environment his inspiration deserted him. He resorted to making ridiculous demands, such as having a giant teddy bear travel in the front seat of his chauffeur-driven car. He returned home several months later, to find that a close friend and house guest, 21-year-old Anthony Haydon, had made off with a van-load of expensive possessions including clocks, paintings, antiques and film projectors. Lionel was devastated by the betrayal: he had trusted, even loved, Haydon. The goods were recovered, but the Fun Palace was tainted. Lionel sold it, moving to a small mews house in South Kensington.

Songwriter Lionel Bart sitting at his piano He wrote another musical, La Strada — based on the Italian film of the same name that was written and directed by Federico Fellini — which opened on Broadway in December 1969 and closed after one night. If the Sixties had been Lionel’s decade of success, the Seventies were one long downward spiral. In January 1970, he was arrested for drink-driving, but acquitted. That autumn brought the death of his mother, to whom he was devoted, and a heartbroken Lionel began drinking more heavily. His financial naivety and extravagance were catching up with him. He told a reporter he owed ‘half a million’. To clear his debts, Lionel made his worst financial decision ever. In April 1970, he sold the rights to his published music for the next six years, and the stage and film rights to Oliver! to a production company. He got just £300,000 for them. (A few years later they were worth £2 million.) Then he filed for bankruptcy to pay off his debts. Haunted by failure, Lionel was downing up to three bottles of vodka a day.

Together with Keith Moon, The Who’s notoriously self-destructive drummer, he ingested every illegal substance invented. Often at his side was a large black doctor’s bag marked ‘Bart’s hospital’ (a play on the name of the famous East London infirmary) filled with drugs. In February 1971, he was arrested for possessing cannabis, but the charges were dropped. Through it all, Lionel kept writing, but success continued to elude him. Then, in 1977, the producer Cameron Mackintosh put Oliver! back on the West End stage. It was, once more, a massive hit and was revived again in 1983. Though Mackintosh paid him as an adviser, it was not enough to save Lionel, financially or emotionally. Having sold most of his possessions, he moved to a modest flat in Acton, West London, descending further into alcoholism. Lionel Bart, song writer with singer Alma Cogan at the first night of musical Maggie May He developed diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver and his once skinny frame became spherical. ‘Do you know why I never committed suicide?’ he once asked.

‘Because I would simply hate to be found in any condition other than utter splendour.’ In 1994, Cameron Mackintosh produced another revival of Oliver!, directed by the young director Sam Mendes, which proved its enduring appeal. It made around £10 million in advance ticket sales — and Mackintosh generously gave Lionel a share of the royalties. In 1999, however, the years of abuse finally caught up with Lionel’s body. He died of liver cancer, leaving £1 million to his friends and charities, a fraction of the millions he had been worth at his peak. But with Lionel, it was never about the money — much as he loved spending it. ‘It’s the kicks that matter, nothing else. I just want to write musicals. I want to stand up and shout to the biggest audience I can get.’ Not bad for a skinny little boy from the East End who couldn’t even read music. n FINGS Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be: The Life Of Lionel Bart by David and Caroline Stafford (Omnibus Press, £19.95).

To order a copy at £16.99 (P&P free), call 0843 382 0000. Pub song that won a war... On August 18, 1914, the Daily Mail published a report by war correspondent George Curnock describing the march of the Irish Regiment through Boulogne in northern France. As they marched, he wrote, the soldiers sang It’s A Long Way To Tipperary. This month marks the centenary of World War I’s most popular song. But though it became a great battle song, it was composed on January 30, 1912, as part of a drunken bet in a Cheshire pub. Jack Judge, a music-hall entertainer, penned it in a break from rehearsals at the Grand Theatre in Stalybridge, after being bet five shilling (25p) that he couldn’t write a successful song on the spot. Inspired by his parents from Tipperary, he wrote the song, won the bet — and helped win a war.

Lionel Bart | ArkivMusic Lionel Bart Biography Born: August 1, 1930; London, England Died: April 3, 1999; Hammersmith, London, England The composer/lyricist of one of the most popular of all English musicals, Oliver!, Lionel Bart enjoyed early promise, but suffered quick decline. He studied at St. Martin's School of Art, but was mainly self-taught as a musician; his early theater work was as a scene painter, and as a composer, he would later need assistants to transcribe his tunes and sort out his harmonic instructions. He began writing pop songs in the mid-'50s for the Cavemen, Read more a group of which he was a member, as well as for Cliff Richard and Billy Fury. His work for Richard and Tommy Steele, lead singer of the Cavemen, helped Bart break into film when Richard and Steele started making movies; among his hits was "Living Doll." Around this time, he also started writing musicals for Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at Stratford East.

One of his earliest efforts, 1958's Wally Pone, King of the Underworld, established Bart's personal precedent for pillaging earlier and unlikely literary sources for his musicals -- in this case, Ben Jonson's Volpone. The following year, Fings Ain't Wot They Used t'Be was Bart's first West End success. Bart reached his peak in 1960, at age 30, with Oliver!, based on Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and the first of a string of Bart titles to end with at least one exclamation point. For this show, Bart produced some undeniably catchy songs -- even an homage to food -- and drew on his Jewish heritage in the modal songs for the character Fagin. Among Bart's later exclamatory efforts were 1962's Blitz!, set during the London blitzkrieg, and the notorious 1965 flop Twang!!, a Robin Hood spoof that missed its mark. His only notable musical after this was 1969's La Strada, based on the Fellini film; it closed after a single night on Broadway.

Bart continued writing songs and themes for films, but it's telling that his only real success later in life was "Happy Endings," a 1989 advertising jingle. This helped spur a few 1990s revivals of his earlier works, but nothing new found success remotely comparable to that of Oliver! or Bart's theme song for the 1963 James Bond movie From Russia With Love. Read less There are 18 Lionel Bart recordings available. Select a specific Work or Popular Work below or Lionel Bart | Biography & History | AllMusic google+ Artist Biography by Ed Hogan Lyricist and composer Lionel Bart created the delightful '60s hit musical Oliver! and wrote the theme song for the 1963 James Bond movie From Russia With Love. Bart is credited with helping to revive the English musical. Born Lionel Beglieter in 1932, the son of a Jewish tailor in London's East End, Bart had no formal musical education. Becoming a successful songwriter, he wrote hit songs for Tommy Steele and Anthony Newley .

Bart 's first musical, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, premiered in 1959 and ran for two years in London. Another musical, Lock up Your Daughters, opened the same year. In 1960 his signature work Oliver! opened. Based on Charles Dickens ' novel Oliver Twist, the musical was an immediate success. The long-running play had two successful revivals in 1967 and 1977. A New York version of the play opened on January 6, 1963, and was a Broadway hit, earning Bart a Tony Award. More Bart musicals followed: Blitz! in 1962, Maggie May in 1964, Twang! in 1965, and La Strada in 1969. In an ill-advised move, Bart sold his rights to Oliver! and other properties, in part to finance a musical about Robin Hood, Twang!, in 1965. In 1968, Columbia Pictures released the movie version of Oliver!.

Directed by Carol Reed, the film starred Ron Moody as Fagin, Jack Wild as the Artful Dodger, Oliver Reed as Bill Sykes, Shani Wallis as Nancy, and Mark Lester as Oliver. A huge hit, the film received 11 Academy Award nominations including Best Actor ( Ron Moody ), Best Supporting Actor ( Jack Wild ), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Vernon Gilbert Harris), and won for Best Picture, Art Direction (Terence Marsh, Ken Muggleston), Sound ( John Cox ), Musical Score (John Green), and Choreography (Onna White). The Oliver! soundtrack album includes some of the most enduring music from the Broadway stage: "Consider Yourself," "Food," the often-covered "Where Is Love?," and others. The movie soundtrack was issued on CD in 1988 by RCA/BMG. The movie was released on home video by Columbia/Tristar Home Video on both DVD (August 1998) and VHS. While visiting Los Angeles in 1968, Bart looked up his friend Sid Krofft.

Sid of Sid & Marty Krofft Television Productions was looking for a young actor to play the lead in a Saturday morning Wizard of Oz-like fantasy for kids, H.R. Pufnstuf for NBC-TV. Impressed by the performance of Jack Wild , Krofft tenaciously searched the actor/singer/dancer out and signed him to a deal. In 1973, Bart contributed to the movie score of the Paramount movie Scalawag, starring Kirk Douglas , Mark Lester , Lesley-Anne Down, and Danny DeVito . He composed the music for the play Lionel in 1977. Bouts with alcoholism and bankruptcy woes plagued Bart during the '70s. During the '80s, he became a prolific writer of commercial jingles. In 1994, producer Cameron Mackintosh staged a successful London revival of Oliver! starring Jonathan Pryce as Fagin. In an uncharacteristically gracious move in the entertainment field, Mackintosh restored some rights for Oliver! to Lionel Bart , allowing the writer to receive some residual income from the play.

Late in his life, Bart worked to revive an early '60s play of his, Quasimodo, based on The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Lionel Bart died of cancer on April 3, 1999, at the age of 68 in Hammersmith Hospital in London.

Question: Which Lionel Bart flop musical was based on Robin Hood?
Answer: TWANG