Lionel Bart 1930-1999
Play and songwright most famous for the musical Oliver!
Lionel Bart was the son of a
Jewish tailor in the East End of
London. He had no formal musical education, but his music teacher at school declared him to be a genius. He obtained a scholarship to St. Martin's School of Art at 16, and began to work as a set painter.
Bart's new name was inspited on a bus journey past St. Bartholemew's Hospital in
London. He wrote his first musical - Wally Pone of Soho - in 1958, but it was a failure. However, the songs he wrote for the early British rock'n'rollers
Tommy Steele (
Rock With the Caveman and
Little White Bull) and
Cliff Richard (
Living Doll - at No. 1 for 6 weeks in 1959) brought him success.
Bart's first musical success was with "Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be". By the end of 1959 both "Fings" and "Lock Up Your Daughters" were running successfully in London's West End. In June 1960 he opened "
Oliver!" which had been turned down by a dozen promoters and had to be financed by Bart himself. It was an immediate hit with 16 curtain calls on the first night and had advanced sales of £30,000 in the first week.
Oliver! was followed by other fairly successful shows such as Blitz and Maggie May. At this time, Bart was 30 and earning about £16 a minute! In between this, he also wrote the title song to the
James Bond film From Russia With Love.
To finance his next musical "Twang!!" (based on the
Robin Hood story) he signed away all rights to Oliver! The new show flopped badly and Bart estimated he lost about £100m in that and in the lost rights to Oliver! He filed for bankruptcy in 1972 with debts of £73,000. By the late 1970's his heavy drinking had brought on diabetes. He stopped drinking but one third of his liver had been destroyed. Lionel Bart died on the third of April 1999 aged 68 after suffering cancer for 6 months.