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- Mary Rodgers was a songwriter, children's book author, philanthropist and — perhaps most famously — the daughter of theatrical legend Richard Rodgers. Though she died in 2014, her memoirs were published on Tuesday. Titled Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers, they're co-authored by New York Times theater critic Jesse Green.
Aug 11, 2022 · Titled Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers, they're co-authored by New York Times theater critic Jesse Green.
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- Eyes on The Surprise
- Careering from Career to Career
- A Sense of One's Self
- Arthur on The Rocks
- Old Friends
- Footnotes to History
- Getting to Know Her
When asked what if anything Rodgers said surprised him, Green told Newsweek, "She deployed her surprises even to me. It was brilliant timing. For me, the major surprises in the book include that she converted to Catholicism for a man whom she then did not proceed to marry, getting the archbishop involved. It's a whole story that involves Walter Win...
Over the years, Rodgers had several very different careers. To a younger generation, she is the primarily, if not exclusively, author of the Freaky Friday books, which are still hugely popular, smart middle-grade novels that are closer in spirit to the books of Daniel Pinkwater and Leonard Wibberley than Judy Blume, who wrote books that were, Rodge...
When asked if it was true that Rodgers considered Once Upon a Mattress her story, even though she only wrote the music. Green told Newsweek, "She did. Look back at how it's worded: She feels she says that is the way things happen. You work with what comes before you to write, and if it has something to do with your life, it's kind of unconscious. H...
Early on, Page 30 as I recall, Rodgers expresses her disdain for Arthur Laurents, with whom she had been friends. When asked why they became estranged, Green told Newsweek, "Mary had complex feelings about him, largely because she feels that for many years, she was complicit in his awfulness, because she stood by and watched for fear of becoming th...
Sondheim is an interesting character in Rodgers' life too, in that their friendship begins at age 13. And it seems like even early on before he's even writing music, certainly anything for musical theater. She sees something special about him. Green said, "He was just so intensely brilliant, so intensely himself that even before he had a specific a...
The footnotes in Shy are special: informative, funny. Green told Newsweek, that "they were informed by things Mary told me, but obviously I checked. The idea for the notes was that they would start on the kind of a neutral note and then gradually become apparent that they were me. And at some point, I actually break out the neutral voice and clearl...
The key to Rodgers here, kind of a Rosebud scene, according to Green, comes early on in Shy. Green told Newsweek, "She was salty and believed strongly in giving people a good time if she was going to bend their ear. There is a scene in the book early on when she considered herself—and was told repeatedly by her parents—to be an ugly fat girl. But s...
- Joe Westerfield
Aug 5, 2022 · Written in collaboration with the New York Times theater critic Jesse Green, who completed it after Rodgers’s death at 83 in 2014, “Shy” relates the life story of a successful...
- Daniel Okrent
Aug 7, 2022 · Mary Rodgers' memoir, Shy, written with Jesse Green, is a brutally honest and extremely entertaining story of the daughter of Richard Rodgers.
- Joe Westerfield
Aug 9, 2022 · Jesse Green is the chief theater critic for The Times. His latest book is “Shy,” with and about the composer Mary Rodgers.
Aug 9, 2022 · This is the best theater memoir I’ve ever found, filled with fascinating, often funny anecdotes but mostly imbued with heart—namely the big hearts of Rodgers, an artist ahead of her time, and Green who helped Rodgers narrate her unique contributions to musical theater and YA lit.
Aug 9, 2022 · New York Times theater critic Jesse Green acts as a ventriloquist, allowing Mary’s voice—witty, acerbic and outspoken—to shine through, and his extensive footnotes fill in the blanks about the people Mary references without detracting from her conversational approach.
