Who

Sondheim is the legendary composer and lyricist behind such Broadway staples as West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods.

Backstory

An only child whose father was a dress manufacturer, Sondheim grew up in Upper West Side affluence in the 1930s. When his parents divorced, he was raised by his overprotective mother Foxy, with whom he had an epically unpleasant relationship. (Before she entered the hospital for surgery in the late 1970s, she wrote him a letter with the last line, "The only regret I have in life is giving you birth.") Sondheim later became friends with the son of Oscar Hammerstein II, the composer responsible for golden-era musicals like The Sound of Music, The King And I, and Show Boat. Hammerstein became Sondheim's mentor, giving the young composer a personal education in musical theater. The mentoring clearly paid off: Sondheim hit it big with his first assignment, penning the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein's 1957 smash West Side Story. He followed up with the lyrics to 1959's Gypsy, and got his first "music and lyrics" credit for the 1962 musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Of note

Over the past four decades, Sondheim has cranked out a list of musical hits that even the most casual theater-goer would recognize. His highlights include A Little Night Music (1973)—the musical that gave the world "Send In The Clowns," Sondheim's most famous song, which has been covered by everyone from Sinatra to Streisand to Krusty the Clown—Sweeney Todd (1979), Sunday in the Park With George (1984), Into the Woods (1987), and Assassins (1990). In recent years, successful revivals of Sondheim's work have hit the stage—a London production of Sunday in the Park with George in 2005, Sweeney Todd also in 2005, and Company in 2006. Meanwhile, he's continued to produce new works, and to mentor a new generation of composers, including Jonathan Larson (Rent) and Adam Guettel (The Light in the Piazza).

On screen

Sondheim wrote several songs for the 1990 film Dick Tracy with Warren Beatty. He also made a cameo in Camp, the movie about a summer camp for musical theater geeks obsessed with show tunes and Sondheim.

Trophy case

Sondheim is one of the very few to have won a Tony (lots of them), an Oscar (for a song from Dick Tracy), a Grammy (for the recording of 1995's Passion) and a Pulitzer Prize (for 1984's Sunday in the Park with George). In 1992, the NEA awarded him the National Medal of Arts, but Sondheim refused it, calling it a "symbol of censorship."

Medical file

Sondheim suffered a heart attack in 1979.

Personal

The aloof Sondheim, who has described himself as "the boy in the bubble," didn't come out as gay until he was in his forties. He had a long-term relationship with composer Peter Jones, but the two eventually separated. Sondheim lives in a five-story townhouse in Turtle Bay that he purchased in 1960. For a time, Katherine Hepburn was his neighbor.

No joke

A noted crossword enthusiast, in the late '60s Sondheim published a series of famously inventive puzzles in New York magazine that have become legendary among aficionados.