Lionel Bart

LIONEL BART

Born in London in 1930, Lionel Bart was educated in his native East End before gaining a scholarship to St. Martin’s School of Art. In 1956, he joined some friends in a skiffle group called the Cavemen, featuring Tommy Steele. With the Bart song ‘Rock With the Caveman’, Steele launched his career with a UK top 20 hit that year. Tommy Steele’s early screen career featured many of Lionel’s songs specially written for him, including The Tommy Steele Story (1957), The Duke Wore Jeans (1958), Light Up the Sky (1959), and Tommy the Toreador (1960), which featured the top 10 single “Little White Bull”. Lionel became a “disciple” of Joan Littlewood at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, and fell in love with musical theatre. This led to two early successful stage shows, Lock Up Your Daughters and Fings Ain’t Wot They Used t’Be, both in 1959, the same year as his classic “Living Doll” for Cliff Richard was a no. 1 single. 1960 opened with “Do You Mind” – another chart topping single – this time for Anthony Newley, but the best was yet to come. Packed with wonderful songs, Oliver! opened at the New Theatre in 1960 and ran for over 2,500 performances. An instant success, it opened in New York in 1962 to great acclaim, winning the coveted Tony Award for its creator. The classic ballad “As Long As He Needs Me” provided a huge hit for Shirley Bassey. With Oliver! still running, Bart launched three further shows: Blitz! (1962), Maggie May (1964), and Twang!! (1965). He continued to write for the cinema, notably “From Russia With Love” from the second Bond movie and a chart success for Matt Monro. In 1968, Oliver! was transformed into a lavish feature film. Perhaps the last of the classic screen musicals, the film received universal acclaim, collecting six Oscars with the soundtrack album going gold. For some years, Lionel remained relatively inactive, his music kept alive by a steady flow of stage revivals, the enduring power of Oliver! and an unexpected hit single in the form of Cliff Richard with the Young Ones’ 1986 rendition of “Living Doll”. His real renaissance started in 1989 when he wrote and starred in the Abbey National building society TV advert with the accompanying single – “Happy Endings”. In 1992, the National Youth Theatre brought Blitz! Back to the West End and, the following year, Maggie May. In 1994, Big Audio Dynamite revived “Rock With the Caveman”, featured in The Flintstones movie soundtrack. In 1994, Oliver!, his masterwork, was given a new, acclaimed revival at the London Palladium, produced by Cameron Mackintosh and directed by Sam Mendes. Lionel Bart’s international reputation as a composer, lyricist and playwright spanned more than four decades and included nine Ivor Novello Songwriting Awards and the many Oscars for Oliver!. He was the first British composer to receive a Broadway Tony Award. In 1997, Lionel was honoured with a Variety Club Silver Heart for contribution to the world’s musical theatre.