The Golden Age of Broadway: Lyricists and Composers with Host Sonny Fox

Alan Jay Lerner, Kander and Ebb, Sheldon Harnick, Yip Harburg, Charles Strouse and Burton Lane will be featured during The Golden Age of Broadway: Lyricists and Composers with Sonny Fox. Sponsored by the Friends of the West Hollywood Library and the City of West Hollywood, the free event will be held on Saturday, November 8, 2014, from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. at the City of West Hollywood’s City Council Chambers/Public Meeting Room.

The former host of the hit children’s show Wonderama, television producer and past Chair of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Fox will tap into The Songwriter TV series he produced in the early 1980s. The clips provide an entertaining and unique opportunity to listen to and learn from these remarkable talents who share their experiences of creating the lasting legacy known as the “The Golden Age of Musicals.” Fox will add personal anecdotes and perceptions. A few highlights:

•Alan Jay Lerner talking about a performance of Camelot in Detroit when an entire audience wept the night of JFK’s assassination;

•Yip Harburg singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, allowing us to hear the lyric as the story he wrote;

•Burton Lane talking of his first meeting to collaborate with Ira Gershwin when they both confessed to taking pills to relax themselves;

•Fred Ebb singing one of the Kander and Ebb ‘party’ songs, written for their friends

Fox’s book, But You Made the Front Page: Wonderama, War, and a Whole Bunch of Life, will be available for purchase and signing, immediately following the program. Light refreshments will be served.

The address is 625 N San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood, CA. Validated parking will be available in the five-story Public/Park parking structure.

For more information call 323-929-2359 or email Westhollywood.Friendsofthelibrary@gmail.com

About the Friends of the West Hollywood Library

The Friends of the West Hollywood Library is a 501 (C) (3) nonprofit committed to the promotion and enhancement of the library’s collections, facilities and programs. For over 40 years, the Friends of the West Hollywood Library has been expanding library services through cultural programs and gifts, including supplemental funding for books, movies and music, services and programs, and new technology.

About Literary Arts in the City of West Hollywood

The City of West Hollywood has a strong commitment to fostering reading, literary arts, and books. In October 2011, the City celebrated the grand opening of the new West Hollywood Library, which showcases the City’s rich intellectual, literary, and cultural diversity and provides a landmark facility for the community’s passionate commitment to lifelong learning. The City’s One City One Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival is held each year in June and features a variety of literary events each year during Pride month. The City supports several community book clubs such as Women And Books and the Lambda Literary Book Club. In October 2014, the City inaugurated its first City Poet. For more information on arts and library programming in West Hollywood please visit www.weho.org/arts.