Why-o-why-o-why-o?

According to this article in Playbill:

Betty Comden, the award-winning lyricist and librettist who -- with writing partner Adolph Green -- created such musicals as Bells Are Ringing, Wonderful Town and On the Town -- died Nov. 23 at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She was 89.

The New York Times reports that the cause of Ms. Comden's death was heart failure.

Born Elizabeth Cohen on May 3, 1919, in Brooklyn, NY, Comden -- with the late Green -- would go on to write several musicals that were love letters to her native city. She and Green first hit the town in a sketch-comedy group called The Revuers, which also featured the late Judy Holliday. It was for Holliday that the duo created the 1956 musical Bells Are Ringing; Holliday won a Tony Award for her performance and later repeated her role as Ella Peterson in the screen version of the classic musical.

Comden and Green also worked closely with their friend Leonard Bernstein. With Bernstein they created two of their best-known works, On the Town -- a tale of three sailors on leave in Manhattan that boasted such tunes as "New York, New York," "Lucky to Be Me" and "Lonely Town" -- and Wonderful Town -- the story of two sisters from Ohio who find themselves over their heads in Greenwich Village. That musical gave the world such songs as "Ohio," "A Little Bit in Love," "A Quiet Girl" and "It's Love."

The other musicals for which the writing team -- who also performed an acclaimed specialty act throughout the years entitled A Party With Betty Comden and Adolph Green -- penned book and/or lyrics include Bells Are Ringing; On the Twentieth Century; Hallelujah, Baby!; Applause; Peter Pan; A Doll's Life; Do Re Mi and The Will Rogers Follies.

Comden and Green also enjoyed success as screenwriters. Although they only wrote ten films, their scripts include "Singin' in the Rain" as well as the Oscar-nominated "The Band Wagon" and "It's Always Fair Weather." Other titles: "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," "Auntie Mame," "Good News," "What a Way to Go!" and "The Barkleys of Broadway."

In 1991 Comden and Green were both awarded the Kennedy Center Honors. The duo also racked up numerous Tony Awards: 1953 (Wonderful Town wins Best Musical Tony), 1968 (Hallelujah, Baby! wins Tonys for Best Musical and Best Composer and Lyricist), 1970 (Applause wins Tony for Best Musical), 1978 (On the Twentieth Century wins Tonys for Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical) and 1991 (The Will Rogers Follies wins Tony for Best Original Score).

Among the plethora of songs that came from the pens of Comden and Green are "Make Someone Happy," "Just in Time," "The Party's Over," "Long Before I Knew You," "Never Never Land," "Comes Once in a Lifetime," "I'm Just Taking My Time," "My Own Morning," "Never Met a Man I Didn't Like" and "Look Around."

Another Tony Award-winning librettist, the late Peter Stone, once spoke about how Comden and Green worked together. Stone told Playbill writer Harry Haun, "Adolph Green might have been the only writer in all of history who never wrote. Betty's the one who jotted everything down, Adolph jotted absolutely nothing down. I never saw him use a pen or pencil, let alone a typewriter. It would have been useless for him to even try to type because he was not on direct speaking terms with any sort of mechanical object.

The form and structure came from Betty, so did style and sensibility. Then what, you might ask, did Adolph do? The answer is: the madness. The sheer, outlandish, surreal, weird, goofy, uniquely Adolphian madness."

Haun also interviewed both Comden and Green in 1998, as the revival of On the Town was set to hit the New York stage. Both were overjoyed by the show's reemergence. Said Ms. Comden, "Just say that we're thrilled to see it again and that we're working on a new show. We go on, that's all. That's the best thing to say."

Ms. Comden married designer Steven Kyle in 1942. After his death in 1979, she never remarried. The couple had two children: a son Alan, who died in 1990, and a daughter Susanna Kyle, who survives her.

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