Adolph Green

American writer/composer/actor Adolph Green first attracted attention as a member of the Revuers, a satirical musicomedy troupe which performed at New York's Village Vanguard nightclub in the early '40s. The group couldn't afford the royalties on previously written material, so Green and fellow Revuer Betty Comden took to writing their own songs and routines. The Revuers were invited to Hollywood for the 1944 Betty Grable musical Greenwich Village, but the only member of the group that the movies were truly interested in was young Judy Holliday. Green and Comden remained in New York to write the libretto for and co-star in the Leonard Bernstein musical On the Town (which they later adapted for the screen). Green and Comden continued collaborating, spending less performance time as they became busier writers. The pair returned to Hollywood in 1947 as members of the Arthur Freed musical unit at MGM, where they worked on the scripts (and occasionally the songs) for such film hits as Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1948), The Barkeleys of Broadway (1949), The Band Wagon (1953) (which featured an ersatz Adolph Green-Betty Comden team in the form of Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray) and the immortal Singin' in the Rain (1956). For the Broadway stage, Green and Comden concocted a musical vehicle for their old Revuers cohort Judy Holliday, Bells are Ringing (1956), and also wrote the non-musical success Auntie Mame (1958). The white-maned Adolph Green has occasionally returned to movie acting with supporting roles in such films as My Favorite Year (1982); he also played the leading role of an elderly cartoonist in director Alain Resnais' I Want to Go Home (1989).

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide