Original Creative Team

MUSIC: Mary Rodgers (1931-2014) – An accomplished author, screenwriter and composer, Mary Rodgers began her Broadway career as composer of Once Upon a Mattress starring Carol Burnett, later broadcast to great television success. Additional theatre composer credits include Hot Spot starring Judy Holliday, The Mad Show, Working and The Griffin and the Minor Canon. Television credits include Once Upon a Mattress, Three to Make Music, Feathertop and Marlo Thomas’ Free to Be...You and Me. Her musicals have been celebrated in the revue Hey, Love. Ms. Rodgers was also a popular author of fiction for young people; her best-selling first book, the Christopher Award-winning Freaky Friday, was adapted by Disney into a 1976 movie, for which she wrote the screenplay. Mary Rodgers served for many years as the Rodgers family representative to The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization and the chairman of the board of The Juilliard School.

LYRICS & BOOK: Marshall Barer (1923-1998) could have been labeled eclectic, mercurial, peripatetic, or simply promiscuous, but it mattered not to him, who over the years mated his lyrics to the melodies of Michele Brourman, Hoagy Carmichael, Gordon Connell, J. Fred Coots, Vernon Duke, Duke Ellington, Michael Feinstein, Dean Fuller, Ronny Graham, Fred Hellerman, Burton Lane, Michel Legrand, Michael Leonard, Hugh Martin, Anita Nye, Lance Ong, Norman Paris, Mary Rodgers, the Davids (Raksin, Ross, Shire), William Roy, Bruce Scott, Ralph Strain, Joseph Thalken, Kurt Weill and Alec Wilder—not to mention his own. While vouchsafing no “actual-all-time-number-one-favorite” he often confessed that, when asked, he found himself “leaning toward” Ms. Rodgers, with whom he wrote Once Upon A Mattress (1959) “several times.”

BOOK: Jay Thompson (1927-2014) co-wrote the book for Once Upon A Mattress and wrote the book, music and lyrics for the opera The Bible Salesman, as well as the one-act musical The Oldest Trick in the World. He also wrote Pocketful of Wry, a musical revue. In addition to composing words and music for the song "Jimmy," which was sung by Julie Andrews in the film Thoroughly Modern Millie, Thompson has created special material for Carol Channing, Dorothy Loudon, Imogene Coca and other funny ladies. As a director, he worked on Once Upon A Mattress, Born Yesterday, Pocketful Of Wry, Annie, Forum, Sweet Charity, Steel Magnolias, Laughing Matter and The Oldest Trick In The World.

BOOK: Dean Fuller (1922-2017) was a composer, playwright, conductor, sailor, pilot, novelist and teacher. B.A. music and drama, Yale University. Alumnus Tamiment Playhouse, last of the Borscht Belt boot camps for revue writers, lyricists and composers. He co-wrote the book for Once Upon A Mattress, contributed music (with lyrics by Marshall Barer) to the revues Once Over Lightly (Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, Sono Osato), New Faces of 1956 (Tiger Haynes, Inga Swenson, Maggie Smith) and Ziegfeld Follies (Beatrice Lillie). Musical director and arranger for Tallulah Bankhead's only nightclub appearances (Sands Hotel, Las Vegas). Composer, National Repertory Theatre (Eva LeGallienne, Denholm Elliott, Farley Granger, Sylvia Sydney). Co-author/composer of the Off-Broadway musical Smith. Author of three novels: Passage, A Death in Paris and Death of a Critic.