Betty Comden

Betty Comden (May 3, 1917 – November 23, 2006) was an American lyricist, playwright, screenwriter, and occasional actress renowned for her six-decade creative partnership with Adolph Green, which produced some of Broadway's most enduring musicals and Hollywood's classic film musicals. Born Basya Cohen in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish parents Leo Cohen, a lawyer, and Rebecca Cohen, a teacher, she changed her first name to Betty to avoid being teased as "Bossie" and created the surname Comden by combining Cohen with her paternal grandmother's maiden name, Emden. After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School and earning a drama degree from New York University in 1938, Comden initially pursued acting but found greater success as a writer.

In the late 1930s, amid the Great Depression, Comden co-founded the satirical cabaret troupe The Revuers with Adolph Green, Judy Holliday, and others, performing sketches that honed their collaborative style. This led to their breakthrough Broadway musical On the Town (1944), for which Comden and Green wrote the book and lyrics in collaboration with composer Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins, capturing the energy of wartime New York City. Their partnership, the longest-running in theater history, extended to acclaimed works like Wonderful Town (1953, with music by Leonard Bernstein), Bells Are Ringing (1956, with music by Jule Styne), Applause (1970, with music by Charles Strouse), and On the Twentieth Century (1978, with music by Cy Coleman). In Hollywood, they penned screenplays for iconic MGM musicals including Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), and It's Always Fair Weather (1955), blending witty dialogue with memorable songs such as "New York, New York," "Just in Time," and "The Party's Over."

Betty Comden was born Basya Cohen on May 3, 1917, in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish immigrant parents from Russia. Her father, Leo Cohen (originally Sadvoransky), was a lawyer who had arrived in the United States as a young man, while her mother, Rebecca Cohen (née Sadvoransky), worked as an English teacher. The family lived in a comfortable middle-class household in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, maintaining an observant Jewish home where they kept kosher and lit Sabbath candles.