RIP Charles Strouse

 

Charles Strouse, Annie and Bye Bye Birdie Composer, Dead at 96

The prolific writer's work included musical standards like "Tomorrow," "Put On a Happy Face" and the theme song from the CBS sitcom 'All in the Family'

People

By Victoria Edel, Dave Quinm

May 15, 2025

 

Charles Strouse — the Broadway composer and lyricist behind some of the most beloved Broadway musicals including Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, and Applause — died peacefully at his home in New York on Thursday, May 15. He was 96.

News of his passing was announced by his four children, Benjamin, Nicholas, Victoria, and William Strouse. He was predeceased by his wife, choreographer Barbara Siman, to whom he was married from 1962 until her death in 2023.

A private ceremony will be held at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in New York City.

Strouse was born in New York City in 1928 to Ira and Ethel Strouse, and he began taking piano lessons at age 10. "My first connection with music was through my mother," he told Playbill in 2009. "She was a pianist. She played a kind of ragtime piano. That was the first thing I heard. She was a very sad woman. I started tinkering at the piano to amuse her, to make her happy."

He graduated from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, in 1947, and afterwards studied under greats like Aaron Copland and Nadia Boulanger. To earn money, he did orchestrations for the music department at 20th Century Fox, was a pianist at the Actors Studio and played for auditions, among other things.

His remarkable career spanned over seven decades, during which time he created some of Broadway’s most beloved and enduring works.

He won his first Tony Award for his very first Broadway musical — 1960’s Bye Bye Birdie, which featured the future standard "Put On a Happy Face." Stouse created Bye Bye Birdie with lyricist Lee Adams, whom he'd met in 1949 and who would go on to be a lifelong collaborator. The musical was adapted into a successful movie starring Dick Van Dyke in 1963, and again in a 1995 TV film starring Jason Alexander and Vanessa Williams (which won Strouse an Emmy).

“I'm a very lucky man," Strouse told NPR about the musical’s success in 2008. "It was the most performed show in America, at one point."

His next musicals were 1962’s All American, 1964’s Golden Boy and the 1966 musical It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman. In 1970, his musical Applause  — based on the 1950 film All About Eve and starring Lauren Bacall — won him his second Tony.

Seven years later, he enjoyed his biggest success with Annie, which he wrote with lyricist Martin Charnin. The musical — based on the beloved comic strip about the titular red-haired orphan — won him his third Tony Award. Many of the show’s songs — "It's a Hard Knock Life," "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile," "Maybe" — are now considered classics.

Most famous of all is the ballad “Tomorrow," which has been sung by every Broadway star under the sun. It's considered one of the best show tunes ever written.

“Writing a song for a character that an audience is beginning to know and like — but perhaps not yet love — is probably the songwriter’s greatest luxury and opportunity,” he wrote in his 2008 autobiography Put on a Happy Face: A Broadway Memoir. In Annie, he continued, that chance happened “when a little orphan girl needed time to move from one scene to another, so we gave her a dog and song called ‘Tomorrow.’ "

Annie was adapted for film and television numerous times. The first film, released in 1982, starred Albert Finney, Carol Burnett, Ann Reinking, Tim Curry, Bernadette Peters and Aileen Quinn. A made-for-TV film version came in 1999, with Victor Garber, Kathy Bates, Audra McDonald, Alan Cumming, Kristin Chenoweth and Alicia Morton. A new updated big-screen version, set in the present day, was released in 2014 with Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz and Quvenzhané Wallis, and the story made its way to TV again in 2021 with NBC’s Annie Live!, starring Harry Connick Jr. and Taraji P. Henson. Scores of actresses have played the title role, including Sarah Jessica Parker. 

Over the course of his long career, Strouse scored more 30 stage musicals, 13 of which made it to Broadway. Those included the Tony-nominated Charlie & Algernon, Rags, and Nick & Nora.

He tried not to let the ones that didn’t work affect him, telling NPR, “Everybody has flops. When I teach, the students say, 'How can you work three or four years on a show... and it flops? How do you recover from that?' The only answer is, you've done your best, it didn't work, what's next?"

In addition to his work for theater, he composed the music for "Those Were the Days," the beloved theme song for Norman Lear’s CBS sitcom All in the Family (Lee Adams was the lyricist) and wrote musical revues, popular songs, orchestral works, piano concertos, chamber music and even operas. He was nominated for six Grammys, winning twice.

Strouse’s film scores include Bonnie and Clyde (1967) starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), There Was a Crooked Man (1970), with Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas, Sidney Lumet’s Just Tell Me What You Want, and the animated feature All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989).

In 1985, Strouse was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He's also a member of the Theater Hall of Fame and was the recipient of several honorary doctorates.

Strouse is survived by his previously mentioned children, as well as his eight grandchildren: Sam and Arthur Strouse, Navah Strouse, Vivian, Weston and Ever Brush, and Owen and Theodore Strouse.

STROUSE, Charles (Charles Louis Strouse)

Born: 6/9/1928, New York City, New York, U.S.A.

Died: 5/15/2025, New York City, New York, U.S.A.

 

Charles Strouse’s western – composer:

There was a Crooked Man – 1970