Great Performances mourns the passing of Mary Rodgers Guettel (1931 – 2014), composer and daughter of legendary Broadway composer Richard Rodgers. She died at her home June 26, 2014, in New York City. She was 83 years old.
Ms. Rodgers was an accomplished composer in her own right. After majoring in music at Wellesley College, she went into the “family business” and wrote the hit musical Once Upon a Mattress (1959), starring Carol Burnett and based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea.” Many say Mattress effectively launched Carol Burnett’s career. Rodgers also wrote the music for the following musicals and revues: From A to Z (1960), Hot Spot (1963), The Mad Show (1966), Working (1978), and Phyllis Newman’s one-woman show The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979).
In addition to her composing, Ms. Rodgers also wrote children’s novels and scored a big hit with Freaky Friday, a book about a mother and daughter trading bodies, which Disney made into the hit film of the same name starring Jodie Foster in 1976. Wanting to expose Freaky Friday to a brand new generation of mothers and daughters, Disney remade the film in 2003 with Lindsey Lohan as its star.
A longtime patron of THIRTEEN/WNET New York Public Media, we were fortunate to work with Ms. Rodgers as she was featured on the Emmy award-winning PBS mini-series Broadway: The American Musical and the Peabody award-winning Great Performances program Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy, which you can watch online.