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Cy Feuer

 
Actor: Cy Feuer
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Actors
  • Born: Jan 15, 1911 in New York, New York
  • Died: May 17, 2006 in Manhattan, New York
  • Active: '30s-'40s
  • Major Genres: Western, Drama
  • Career Highlights: Cabaret, A Chorus Line, Driftwood
  • First Major Screen Credit: The Devil Pays (1932)

Biography

New York-born Cy Feuer has enjoyed a multi-tiered career in music and movies, as a composer and department head at Republic Pictures during the 1930s and '40s and as a stage and screen producer from the '50s through the '70s. A student at the Juilliard School of Music, Feuer played trumpet in the Radio City Music Hall orchestra and the Roxy Theater orchestra (in the days when such theater orchestras were a major part of entertainment) during the '30s. He headed to California at the end of the decade and joined the music department at Republic Pictures in 1938. Starting with the serial Fighting Devil Dogs (one of the greatest chapterplays ever produced), Feuer was the music director for upwards of 125 movies over the next decade, with a three-year interruption (1942-1945) during which he served in the military in World War II. His work as a composer (usually uncredited) also turned up in some 90 feature films and serial releases during this period, including The Adventures of Captain Marvel and Drums of Fu Manchu; some of his music was also later tracked into The Lone Ranger television series. In 1947, Feuer left the studio and headed back to New York, where he became a producer on the Broadway stage. Apart from a short period working on the radio series Escape, his composing credits more or less disappeared in subsequent years, but Feuer was responsible for bringing such musical successes as Frank Loesser's Where's Charley (which he also later produced for the screen), Guys and Dolls, Cole Porter's Can-Can and Silk Stockings, and Loesser's How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying to the stage, all of which were later adapted into hit motion pictures. Feuer's crowning triumph, however, was the film of Cabaret (1972), which he produced; it became the biggest success of his career, earning tens of millions of dollars and eight Academy Awards. He was also later involved with bringing A Chorus Line to the screen. In 1996, Feuer's early career as a film composer was recalled in a series of CD releases by the CinemaSound Orchestra devoted to Republic's music, issued on the Varese Sarabande label. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
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Wikipedia: Cy Feuer
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Cy Feuer (January 15, 1911 – May 17, 2006) was a Tony Award-winning American theatre producer, director, composer, and musician.

Born Seymour Arnold Feuerman in Brooklyn, New York, he became a professional trumpeter at the age of fifteen, working at clubs on weekends to help support his family while attending New Utrecht High School. It was there he first met Abe Burrows, who in later years he would hire to write the book for Guys and Dolls. Having no interest in mathematics, science, or sports, he dropped out of school and found work as a trumpeter on a political campaign truck.[1] He later studied at the Juilliard School before joining the orchestras at the Roxy Theater and later Radio City Music Hall. In 1938, he toured the country with Leon Belasco and His Society Orchestra, eventually ending up in Burbank, California. Following a ten-week stint there, the orchestra departed for Minneapolis, but he opted to remain in California.

Feuer found employment at Republic Pictures, serving as musical director, arranger, and/or composer of more than 125 mostly B-movies, many of them Westerns, for the next decade, save for a three-year interruption to serve in the military during World War II. During his Hollywood sojourn, he enjoyed a tumultuous one-year affair with actress Susan Hayward,[2] worked with Jule Styne, Frank Loesser, and Victor Young, among others, received five Academy Award nominations for his film scores, and married divorcée Posy Greenberg, the mother of three-year-old Bobby. (The couple later had a son of their own named Jed.)

In 1947, having decided he had no real talent for film scoring,[3] Feuer returned to New York City, where he teamed up with Ernest H. Martin. After an aborted attempt to stage a production based on George Gershwin's An American in Paris,[4] they produced Where's Charley?, the 1949 Frank Loesser adaption of Charley's Aunt. Although it was panned by six of the seven major New York critics, positive word-of-mouth about the show, particularly Ray Bolger's star turn in it, kept it running for three years.[5] Over the next several decades, Feuer & Martin mounted some of the most notable titles in the Broadway musical canon, including Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, both of which won the Tony Award for Best Musical. As of 2007, How to Succeed... is one of only seven musicals to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Feuer was also a stage director. Among his Broadway directing credits were Little Me and the ill-fated I Remember Mama.

Feuer & Martin's greatest career success was the 1972 film version of Cabaret, which won eight Academy Awards and earned them a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy. They were also responsible for the 1985 screen adaptation of A Chorus Line, which proved to be one of their biggest flops.

Feuer's memoir, I Got The Show Right Here: The Amazing, True Story of How an Obscure Brooklyn Horn Player Became the Last Great Broadway Showman (ISBN 0743236114), written with Ken Gross, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2003.

Feuer served as president, and later chairman, of the League of American Theatres and Producers (now called The Broadway League) from 1989 to 2003. He died on May 17, 2006 of bladder cancer in New York City, aged 95.

Contents

Additional Broadway credits

Awards and nominations

  • 2003 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement
  • 1967 Tony Award for Best Musical (Walking Happy, nominee)
  • 1966 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical (Skyscraper, nominee)
  • 1966 Tony Award for Best Musical (Skyscraper, nominee)
  • 1963 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical (Little Me, nominee)
  • 1963 Tony Award for Best Musical (Little Me, nominee)
  • 1963 Tony Award for Best Producer of a Musical (Little Me, nominee)
  • 1962 Tony Award for Best Musical (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, (winner)
  • 1962 Tony Award for Best Producer of a Musical (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, winner)
  • 1951 Tony Award for Best Musical (Guys and Dolls, winner)

References

  1. ^ I Got the Show Right Here by Cy Feuer with Ken Gross, Simon & Schuster, 2003, pp. 9-11
  2. ^ Feuer (2003), pp. 38-42, 45, 49
  3. ^ Feuer (2003), pp. 47-49
  4. ^ Feuer (2003), pp. 78-79
  5. ^ Feuer (2003), pp. 105-107

External links


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 
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