Leslie Bricusse

Double Oscar and Grammy winner Leslie Bricusse is a writer-composer-lyricist who has contributed to many musical films andplays during his career. He was born in London, and educated at University College School and Gonville and Caius College,Cambridge. At Cambridge, he was President of the Footlights Revue Club and founded the Musical Comedy Club. There, he co-authored, directed and performed in his first two musical shows, Out of the Blue and Lady at the Wheel, both of which made their way to...See more

Double Oscar and Grammy winner Leslie Bricusse is a writer-composer-lyricist who has contributed to many musical films andplays during his career. He was born in London, and educated at University College School and Gonville and Caius College,Cambridge. At Cambridge, he was President of the Footlights Revue Club and founded the Musical Comedy Club. There, he co-authored, directed and performed in his first two musical shows, Out of the Blue and Lady at the Wheel, both of which made their way to London's West End. He also found time in the gaps to acquire a Master of Arts degree.The late, great Beatrice Lillie plucked him out of the Footlights Revue at the Phoenix Theatre, and made him her leading man in An Evening with Beatrice Lillie at the Globe Theatre, where he spent the first year of his professional life writing another musical, The Boy on the Corner, and the screenplay and score of his first motion picture, Charley Moon, which won him his first Ivor Novello Award. That year he decided to drop the possibilities of directing and performing, and concentrate his career on becoming a full-time writer-composer- lyricist.His subsequent stage musicals include Stop the World - I Want To Get Off, The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd, Pickwick, Harvey, The Good Old Bad Old Days, Goodbye, Mr Chips, Henry's Wives, Scrooge, Sherlock Holmes, Jekyll & Hyde, Noah's Ark, Sammy, Cyrano de Bergerac, Kennedy, Sunday Dallas, Victor/Victoria and It's a Dog's Life! He has written songs and/or screenplays for such films as Doctor Dolittle, Scrooge, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Fac- tory,Goodbye, Mr Chips, Superman, fi Hats for Lisa, Victor/Victoria, Santa Claus - The Movie, Home Alone I and II, Hook, Tom and Jerry - The Movie, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, The Last Emperor, various Pink Panthers, The Great Music Chase, Two for the Road, The Sand Pebbles, Sunday Lovers, Babes in Toyland, The Land Before Time, Bachelor of Hearts and The Pied Piper of Hamelin.Bricusse has written more than forty musical shows and films,and over the years has had the good fortune to enjoy fruitfulcollaborations with a wonderful array of musical talents,including Anthony Newley, Henry Mancini, John Williams, JohnBarry, Jerry Goldsmith, Jule Styne, Quincy Jones, Andre Previn, FrankWildhorn and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (whose Nutcracker Suite he adapted into a song score).Bricusse is one of very few people in the world of stage and screen musicals who contribute all three creative elements - book, music and lyrics - to a show or film, a feat he has achieved some twenty- five times. He has also written words and music (but not the book) or book and lyrics (but not the music) to a further dozen projects in his various collaborations.His better-known songs include 'What Kind of Fool Am I?', 'Once in a Lifetime', 'Gonna Build a Mountain', 'Who Can I Turn To?', 'The Joker', 'If I Ruled the World', 'My Kind of Girl', 'Talk to the Animals', 'You and I', 'Feeling Good', 'My Old Man's a Dustman', 'When I Look in Your Eyes', 'Goldfinger', 'Can You Read My Mind?' (the love theme from Superman), 'You Only Live Twice', 'Le Jazz Hot', 'On a Wonderful Day Like Today', 'Two for the Road', 'The Candy Man', 'This Is the Moment', 'Thank YouVery Much', 'Crazy World', 'Pure Imagination' and 'Oompa-Loompa- Doompa-Dee-Doo'.He has been nominated for ten Oscars, nine Grammys and four Tonys, and has won two Oscars, a Grammy and eight Ivor Novello Awards, the premier British Music Award. Hundreds of Bricusse's songs have been recorded by major artists, including Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Sammy Davis Jr (who recorded sixty Bricusse songs), Tony Bennett, Shirley Bassey, Tom... See less