- Fran Landesman
Fran Landesman (born 1927) is an American
lyricist and poet.Landesman was born Frances Deitsch on October 21, 1927 in
New York City . Her father was a dress manufacturer, her mother was a journalist; she has one brother, Sam.She was educated at private schools, then at
Temple University ,Philadelphia , and finally at theFashion Institute of Technology in New York. Her first career was in the fashion industry in New York, where she met writerJay Landesman , whom she married in July 15, 1950, and with whom she had two sons,Cosmo Landesman and Miles Davis Landesman. Producer,Rocco Landesman , is her nephew.They moved to her husband's home of
St Louis , where he and his brother started up the "Crystal Palace", acabaret . This was a successful venture, attracting big-name acts as well as producingavant-garde theatre. Fran Landesman's experiences sitting in the bar of the "Crystal Palace", listening to musicians and audiences, led her to begin writing song lyrics in 1952, including one of her best-known: "Spring Can Really Hang You up the Most ". The Palace's pianist,Tommy Wolf , set this to music, and it became a hit, leading to more Landesman–Wolf creations, including the songs for "The Nervous Set " (a Broadway musical by Landesman's husband) and "Molly Darling" (a musical by her husband andMartin Quigley ).In 1964 the Landesmans moved to
London , where Fran wrote lyrics for a number of well-known musicians (with an emphasis onjazz ), as well as for another of her husband's musicals, "Dearest Dracula". She also started writing poetry, for which she has become even better known than for her lyrics (though there is, of course, much overlap between the two). In 1996 theBBC received a number of complaints when Landesman appeared onDesert Island Discs , and requested a supply of marijuana as her luxury item. [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19980524/ai_n14158302]Bibliography
*"More Truth Than Poetry"
*"Invade My Privacy"
*"The Ballad of the Sad Young Men and Other Verses"
*"Rhymes at Midnight"
*"Is It Overcrowded In Heaven?"
*"The Thorny Side of Love"
*"Scars and Stripes"ources and external links
* [http://www.umsl.edu/~whmc/guides/whm0608.htm University of Missouri-St Louis] — biographical introduction
* [http://www.franlandesman.com Fran's Official Web Site]
* [http://www.womenofthebeat.org/FranLandesman/FranLandesman.htm Women of the Beat Biography for Fran Landesman]
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