Michael Bennett (April 8, 1943 - July 2, 1987) was an American musical theater director, writer, choreographer, and dancer.

Biography

Early life

Born Michael Bennett DiFiglia to a Roman Catholic father and a Jewish mother in Buffalo, New York, he studied dance and choreography in his teens and staged a number of shows in his local high school before dropping out to accept the role of Baby John in the US and European tours of West Side Story.

Early career

Bennett's career as a Broadway dancer began in the 1961 Betty Comden-Adolph Green-Jule Styne musical Subways Are For Sleeping, after which he appeared in Meredith Willson's Here's Love and the short-lived Bajour. In the mid-1960s he was a featured dancer on the NBC pop music series Hullabaloo, where he met fellow dancer Donna McKechnie.

Bennett made his choreographic debut with A Joyful Noise (1966), which lasted only twelve performances, and in 1967 followed it with another failure, Henry, Sweet Henry (based on the Peter Sellers film The World of Henry Orient). Success finally arrived in 1968 in the form of Promises, Promises, an adaptation of the film The Apartment, with a hip contemporary score by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. For the next few years, he earned kudos for his work on Twigs with Sada Thompson, Coco with Katharine Hepburn, two Stephen Sondheim productions - Company and Follies (which he co-directed with Hal Prince) - and the Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields' hit Seesaw, for which he was also the director and librettist.

A Chorus Line and Broadway

Bennett's next project was A Chorus Line. The musical was formed out of thousands of hours of taped sessions with real Broadway dancers. Bennet was invited to the sessions originally as an observer but soon became a leader. He co-choreographed and directed the play. The musical debuted in July 1975 off-Broadway. It won nine Tony Awards and the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Bennett would later become a creative consultant for the 1985 film version of the musical but left due to creative differences.

Bennett's next musical was the unsuccessful Ballroom starring Dorothy Loudon. He later found more success in 1981 with Dreamgirls, with a book and lyrics by Tom Eyen and music by Henry Krieger.

Personal life

In the early 1980s, Bennett worked on various projects, but none of them reached the stage. His addictions to alcohol and drugs, notably cocaine and quaaludes, severely affected his ability to work and impacted on many of his professional and personal relationships. In 1985, he abandoned the nearly-completed musical Scandal, which he had been developing for nearly five years through a series of workshop productions, and signed to direct the West End production of Chess, but he had to withdraw in January 1986 due to his increasingly failing health, leaving Trevor Nunn to complete the production using Bennett's already commissioned sets. He moved to Tucson, Arizona, where he remained until his death from AIDS-related lymphoma at the age of forty-four. He left a sizable portion of his estate to fund research to fight the epidemic.

Awards and nominations

Awards

• 1971 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography - Follies
• 1971 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director - Follies
• 1972 Tony Award for Best Choreography - Follies
• 1972 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical - Follies
• 1974 Tony Award for Best Choreography - Seesaw
• 1976 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography - A Chorus Line
• 1976 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical - A Chorus Line
• 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama - A Chorus Line
• 1976 Tony Award for Best Choreography - A Chorus Line
• 1976 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical - A Chorus Line
• 1979 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography - Ballroom
• 1979 Tony Award for Best Choreography - Ballroom
• 1982 Tony Award for Best Choreography - Dreamgirls
• 1984 Drama Desk Award Special Award - A Chorus Line 3,389th performance

Nominations

• 1967 Tony Award for Best Choreography - A Joyful Noise
• 1968 Tony Award for Best Choreography - Henry, Sweet Henry
• 1969 Tony Award for Best Choreography - Promises, Promises
• 1970 Tony Award for Best Choreography - Coco
• 1971 Tony Award for Best Choreography - Company
• 1974 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical - Seesaw
• 1974 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical - Seesaw
• 1979 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical - Ballroom
• 1979 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical - Ballroom
• 1979 Tony Award for Best Musical - Ballroom
• 1982 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical - Dreamgirls
• 1982 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical - Dreamgirls
• 1982 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical - Dreamgirls
• 1982 Tony Award for Best Musical - Dreamgirls
• 1983 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play - Third Street

References

• Kelly, Kevin (1990). One Singular Sensation: The Michael Bennett Story. New York: Doubleday.
• Michael Kantor Choreographer, Directors & Producers: Michael Bennett. Broadway: The American Musical. Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved on 2008-05-21..

External links