Life of Once Upon a Mattress Composer Mary Rodgers Will Be Celebrated at Town Hall | Playbill

News Life of Once Upon a Mattress Composer Mary Rodgers Will Be Celebrated at Town Hall A memorial celebration for late Once Upon a Mattress composer Mary Rodgers Guettel, who died June 26 at age 83, will be held Nov. 3 at Town Hall.

Members of Mrs. Rodgers Guettel's family and close, lifelong friends will speak during the 5:30 PM memorial, which is free and open to the public. Ms. Rodgers grew up in a household steeped in music and theatre culture. She was born Jan. 11, 1931, to Richard Rodgers and his wife Dorothy Bell Feiner Rodgers. When still in her 20s, she wrote, with lyricist Marshall Barer and bookwriters Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller, Once Upon a Mattress, a musical adaptation of the Hans Christian Anderson fable "The Princess and the Pea." The musical later arrived on Broadway in 1959 and made a star out of its lead actress, Carol Burnett, who made comic hay out of the awkward Princess Winnifred. Burnett and the musical received Tony nominations.

The scion of a musical giant, Mary Rodgers became the mother of a notable composer when her son with Henry Guettel, Adam, began producing work in the 1990s.

Read Playbill.com's obituary for Mary Rodgers here.

 
Today’s Most Popular News:
 X

Blocking belongs
on the stage,
not on websites.

Our website is made possible by
displaying online advertisements to our visitors.

Please consider supporting us by
whitelisting playbill.com with your ad blocker.
Thank you!