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Steve Lawrence, the smooth baritone star of nightclubs, television and recordings who, along with his wife and partner, soprano Eydie Gorme, kept pop standards in vogue long after his prime and took America on musical tours through down memory lane for half a century, died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 88 years old.
The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, said Susan DuBow, a family spokeswoman. She had been diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s in 2019.
Billed as “Steve and Eydie” at Carnegie Hall concerts, on television, and in swanky Las Vegas hotels, the remarkably enduring couple stuck to their pop style as rock ‘n’ roll swept America in the 1970s. 1950s and 1960s. Long after the millennium, they were still performing songs like “Our Love Is Here to Stay,” “Just in Time,” and “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” to an audience that seemed to be aging rapidly. they.
Lawrence, the son of a Brooklyn cantor, and Gorme, the Bronx-born daughter of Sephardic Jewish immigrants, met professionally in 1953 as regular singers on “The Steve Allen Show,” a late-night program on New York’s NBC station that it would go national the next year as “Tonight.” Their romance could have been the plot of a 1940s MGM musical, with fights, breakups, reconciliations and lots of songs.
When they finally decided to marry, Lawrence and Gorme faced an obstacle, as they recalled in a backstage interview with The New York Times at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas in 1992.
“The biggest problem was his mother,” Gorme explained. “She said she would stick her head in the oven if Steve married me.”
He rolled his eyes and tried to get a word out, but she continued, “Until the day her mother died, she said I wasn’t Jewish but Spanish.”
Later, the topic turned to the age of its audiences.
Her: “Can I say something?”
Him: “Could I ever stop you?”
Her: “All or most of the people there tonight are our age. We are playing for people like us. The reality is that we are who we are. “We can’t be anyone but Steve and Eydie.”
It was the kind of married people’s replica that went well with ballads and show tunes, and they used it on and off stage, clearly enjoying each other’s company. She played the role of the emotional, talkative and sincere one; he was the quiet singer who made gentle jokes about her sex life. Many of her friends were comedians, including Johnny Carson, Bob Newhart, Don Rickles and Carol Burnett.
In addition to giving concerts and tours with his wife, Lawrence starred in Broadway musicals, acted on television and in the occasional film (including “The Blues Brothers”), produced TV specials and dozens of recorded albums, with and without Doña Gorme, and more than 60 singles. Her “Portrait of My Love” was a Top 10 hit in 1960. Her version of “Go Away Little Girl,” written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, reached number one on the charts in 1963 and sold more than a million. of copies.
Record sales put him among the top ranks of American pop singers in the early 1960s, and despite competition from rock groups, his clubs and concerts with Ms. Gorme remained enormously popular.
In 1964, Lawrence was also a hit on Broadway with the musical What Makes Sammy Run?, based on Budd Schulberg’s novel about a ruthless 1930s Hollywood mogul who triumphs through deceit and betrayal, with music and lyrics by Ervin. Duck. It had 540 performances; Lawrence won a New York Film Critics Circle Award and was nominated for a Tony for his portrayal of Sammy Glick.
He and Gorme co-starred in “Golden Rainbow,” a Broadway musical that ran for nearly a year in 1968 and 1969. Its music included a reprise of Lawrence’s 1967 single, “I’ve Gotta Be Me” (which was later a hit for Sammy Davis Jr.).
In the 1970s, as their recording magic faded, Steve and Eydie continued to headline at the Copacabana in New York, the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, the Eden Roc in Miami Beach, and the Sands and Sahara hotels in Las Vegas. . His 1975 television tribute to the Gershwins, “Steve and Eydie: Our Love Is Here to Stay,” was nominated for an Emmy, and he won an Emmy as producer of “Steve and Eydie Celebrate Irving Berlin” (1978).
The pair celebrated their 25th anniversary as singing partners with a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1983. “Of all the pop baritones who emerged in the shadow of Frank Sinatra, Mr. Lawrence is the one who has kept his voice in the best shape,” said Stephen Holden in a review for The Times. “His renditions of Saturday ballads featured the same velvety smoothness that characterized his singing in the mid-1950s.”
They joined Sinatra on his Diamond Jubilee world tour in 1991, traveling through Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States. When Sinatra retired, he gave Mr. Lawrence the book of his arrangements, which were used on the 2003 album “Steve Lawrence Sings Sinatra.”
Steve Lawrence was born Sidney Liebowitz on July 8, 1935 in Brooklyn, one of three children of Max and Anna (Gelb) Liebowitz. His father was a rabbi and house painter.
The Liebowitz boys all had musical talents. At age 8, Sidney was singing in a synagogue choir and at age 12 he was already composing songs. He dropped out of Thomas Jefferson High School before graduating to sing in bars and nightclubs.
He began calling himself Steve Lawrence, the given names of two nephews. He won Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts award at age 15 and sang for a week on Godfrey’s morning radio show.
In 1952, he signed with King Records and released a single, “Poinciana”, which sold 100,000 copies. (Both he and Gorme would have some of his biggest hits with Columbia.) A year later, he was chosen from 50 applicants to be a regular on Steve Allen’s show in New York; He gained greater attention when the show began airing nationally in 1954. He sang with the United States Army Band after being drafted in 1958.
Mr. Lawrence and Mrs. Gorme were married in 1957. They had two sons, Michael and David. Michael died in 1986 from undiagnosed heart disease. Ms Gorme retired in 2009 and died in 2013. Mr Lawrence is survived by his son David, a granddaughter and his brother Bernie. He had lived in Los Angeles for many years.
In their later years, the couple scaled back the touring that had dominated their schedules. But they continued to perform at the Stardust in Las Vegas, Foxwoods in Connecticut and smaller venues.
In 2004, at the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island, where they had played many times, they performed in a theater in the round, dressed to the nines, he in a tuxedo and she in a white sequined caftan. Family photos were projected on giant screens – Eydie as a baby, Steve in his military uniform, photos from his wedding – and the crowd oohed and aahed like proud grandparents.
“We’ve been traveling around the world for forty years, only to end up working on a carousel in Westbury,” Lawrence joked to a Times reporter that year. “If we were good, who knows? Maybe they’d let us play at Fortunoff’s.
They then sang familiar old favorites, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “Mam’selle,” and “Where or When,” while the rapt, aging audience sang and hummed.
Alex Traub contributed with reports.