Broadway Lyricist and Librettist Tom Jones Has Passed Away

Tom Jones, best known for his work as the librettist and lyricist of The Fantasticks, which ran for 42 years off-Broadway, as well as other Broadway musicals including 110 in the Shade, and I Do, I Do!, has passed away. He was 95.

With Harvey Schmidt, Tom Jones wrote The Fantasticks for a summer theater at Barnard College. After its Off-Broadway opening in May 1960, it went on to become the longest-running production in the history of the American stage and one of the most frequently produced musicals in the world. Their first Broadway show, 110 in the Shade, was revived on Broadway in a new production starring Audra McDonald. I Do! I Do!, their two-character musical starring Mary Martin and Robert Preston, was a success on Broadway and is frequently produced around the country and the world. (One production, in Minneapolis, played for 22 continuous years with the same two actors in the leading roles.)

Watch Jones discuss The Fantasticks in the footage below:

For several years Jones and Schmidt worked privately at their theater workshop, concentrating on small-scale musicals in new and often untried forms. The most notable of these efforts were Celebration, which moved to Broadway, and Philemon, which won an Outer Critics Circle Award. They contributed incidental music and lyrics to the Off Broadway play Colette starring Zoe Caldwell, then later did a full-scale musical version under the title Colette Collage. The Show Goes On, a musical revue featuring their theater songs and starring Jones and Schmidt, was presented at the York Theater, and Mirette, their musical based on the award-winning children's book, was premiered at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut.

In addition to an Obie Award and the 1992 Special Tony Award for The Fantasticks, Jones and Schmidt were inducted into the Broadway Hall of Fame at the Gershwin Theatre, and on May 3, 1999 their stars were added to the Off-Broadway Walk of Fame outside the Lucille Lortel Theater.

On December 4, 2017 the York Theatre Company honored the musical theatre writing team of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt in a "Fantastick" gala concert and award ceremony directed by Richard Jay-Alexander with music direction by Andrew Gerle. The 2017 Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre was presented to the legendary team at the event held at the Asia Society, where they performed together for the last time before Schmidt's death in 2018.

Watch the performance below.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride

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