Herbert Kretzmer, lyricist of stage phenomenon ‘Les Misérables,’ dies at 95
Herbert Kretzmer, a London newspaperman who moonlighted as a lyricist and produced the libretto for the English version of “Les Misérables,” the epic musical that remains an international sensation 35 years after its barricades first rose up from a London stage, died Oct. 14 at his home in that city. He was 95.
His agent, Marc Berlin, confirmed his death and said he did not know the cause.
Millions of theatergoers around the world have seen “Les Misérables,” the musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel about crime and redemption, liberty and struggle, and gone home with the words of such numbers as “Master of the House” and “Do You Hear the People Sing?” still ringing in their ears.
If fans could not stop hearing the people sing - a “Seinfeld” episode memorably poked fun at the earworm nature of “Master of the House” - they owed the experience in part to Kretzmer’s facility with words, a talent he said he honed as an inkstained theater and television critic for two middlebrow London newspapers, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail.
“In rhyming and journalism, you work under constant stricture,” he once told the London Daily Telegraph. “You are held loosely behind bars. There is something about being constrained that appeals to me: the freedom inside the cage.”
A South African- born son of Lithuanian Jews, Kretzmer first sailed to London shortly after the end of World War II. He had grown up going to the movies and idolizing such composers as George Gershwin and Cole Porter, he recalled in an essay for the Daily Mail published in 2013, and aspired to become a songwriter. But he found London “positively awash with composers far more talented than I.”
He decided to try his hand at penning lyrics and, while making a living as a journalist, “wrote songs for anyone who would buy my wares.”
He shared a credit for “Goodness GraciousMe!,” recorded by Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren in 1960, andwrote a number of songs for the BBC TV satirical show “ThatWas the Week That Was.”