Dory Previn (born
Dorothy Veronica Langan;
[1] was an American
lyricist,
singer-songwriter and
poet died she was 86.
During the late 1950s and 1960s she was a lyricist on songs intended for motion pictures and, with her then husband,
André Previn, received several
Academy Award nominations. In the 1970s, after their divorce, she released six
albums
of original songs and an acclaimed live album. Previn's lyrics from
this period are characterized by their originality, irony and honesty in
dealing with her troubled personal life as well as more generally about
relationships, sexuality, religion and psychology. Until her death, she
continued to work as a writer of song lyrics and prose.
(October 22, 1925
– February 14, 2012)
Biography
Early years
Previn was born in
Rahway, New Jersey,
[4]
the eldest daughter in a strict Catholic family of Irish origin. She
had a troubled relationship with her father, especially during
childhood. He had served in the
First World War and been
gassed, and experienced periods of depression and violent mood swings.
[4]
He tended to alternately embrace and reject her, but supported her when
she began to show talents for singing and dancing. However, his mental
health deteriorated after the birth of a second daughter, culminating in
a paranoid episode in which he boarded the family up in their home and
held them at gunpoint for several months. Previn's childhood
experiences, described in her autobiography
Midnight Baby, had a profound effect on her later life and work.
[citation needed]
After high school, she attended the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts for a year before having to leave due to financial difficulties.
[5] She toured as a chorus line dancer and singer, and started to write songs. She later wrote,
[6]
"I have been an actress, model, and chorus girl. I've worked at odd
jobs – secretary, salesgirl, accounting in a filling station, waitress –
anything to keep me going while I pursued my writing." At this time,
she entered a brief first marriage which ended in divorce soon after.
[7]
Lyricist and marriage: 1958–1969
Through a chance contact with film producer
Arthur Freed, she gained a job as a lyricist at
MGM. There she met, and began collaborating with, composer André Previn. In 1958, as
Dory Langdon, she recorded an album of her songs,
The Leprechauns Are Upon Me, with André Previn and jazz guitarist
Kenny Burrell accompanying her, for
Verve Records.
She married André Previn in 1959. The couple collaborated on a number
of songs used in motion pictures, including "The Faraway Part Of Town"
sung in the film
Pepe by
Judy Garland, which was nominated for an
Oscar for Best Song in 1960. In 1961 they wrote "One, Two, Three Waltz" for the movie
One, Two, Three, and, in 1962, wrote "A Second Chance" for the movie
Two for the Seesaw, which won them a second Oscar nomination. They also wrote songs recorded by
Rosemary Clooney,
Chris Connor,
Vic Damone,
Bobby Darin,
Sammy Davis Jr.,
Doris Day,
Eileen Farrell,
Jack Jones,
Marilyn Maye,
Carmen McRae,
Matt Monro,
Leontyne Price,
Nancy Wilson,
Monica Zetterlund and others. In 1964, she and André Previn collaborated with
Harold Arlen on "So Long, Big Time!", which was recorded by
Tony Bennett.
[5] Later in 1966, the song was covered by
Carola, accompanied by the
Heikki Sarmanto Trio.
[8]
By the mid-1960s Previn's husband had become a classical music
conductor, touring worldwide. She had a morbid fear of air travel and
did not join him. In 1965 Previn's mental health deteriorated, she
suffered a nervous breakdown and was briefly institutionalized in a
psychiatric hospital. However, she continued to write with her husband,
on songs including "
You're Gonna Hear from Me", recorded by
Frank Sinatra, and began to use the name Dory Previn professionally. In 1967, they wrote five songs for the movie
Valley of the Dolls. The soundtrack album spent six months in the charts, and
Dionne Warwick had a pop hit with her version of the theme song.
[5] In 1968, she wrote a new English language
libretto for
Mozart's
The Impresario.
[9] The following year she won a third Oscar nomination for "
Come Saturday Morning," with music by
Fred Karlin, from the movie
The Sterile Cuckoo. A hit version was recorded by
The Sandpipers.
[10]
In 1968 André Previn had fully moved from composing film scores to conducting symphony orchestras, most notably the
London Symphony Orchestra. While in London he began an affair with the then 23-year-old actress
Mia Farrow, who was working on the film
A Dandy in Aspic.
[11]
In 1969 Previn discovered that Farrow had become pregnant, compelling
Previn to separate from her husband. Their divorce became final in July
1970. André Previn subsequently married Farrow.
[5] This betrayal led to Previn being institutionalized again, where she was treated with
electroconvulsive therapy.
[12]
This seemed to change her outlook as a songwriter, making her more
introspective. She subsequently expressed her feelings regarding Farrow
and the end of her marriage in the song "Beware of Young Girls" on her
1970 album
On My Way to Where.
[citation needed]
Singer-songwriter: 1970–1980
In 1970 she signed as a solo artist with the
Mediarts company founded by
Alan Livingston and
Nik Venet, and recorded her first album for 12 years,
On My Way To Where.
[5]
Much of the album, which like several subsequent albums was produced by
Venet, deals with her experiences in the late 1960s. "Mister Whisper"
examines episodes of
psychosis from within the confines of a psychiatric hospital, while "Beware of Young Girls" is a scathing attack on
Mia Farrow and her motives for befriending the Previns (Farrow belatedly apologized to Dory in her memoir
What Falls Away). The track "With My Daddy in the Attic" is a chilling piece dealing with
Stockholm Syndrome and fantasies of
incest. The album's lyrics were published in book form in 1971.
Her second album of this period,
Mythical Kings and Iguanas, released in 1971, was even more successful.
United Artists Records then took over Mediarts and released her third album,
Reflections in a Mud Puddle. The album was voted one of the best albums of 1972 by
Newsweek magazine, and was included in
The New York Times
critics' choice as one of the outstanding singer-songwriter albums of
the 1970s. "Taps, Tremors and Time-Steps: One Last Dance for my Father,"
the second side of
Reflections In a Mud Puddle, is a personal
account of the deterioration of their relationship and her anguish at
their differences remaining unresolved at the time of her father's
death.
[citation needed]
In 1972 she released
Mary C. Brown and the Hollywood Sign,
a thematic album about Hollywood misfits and Mary C. Brown, an actress
who kills herself jumping from Hollywood's letter "H", apparently based
upon real-life
Peg Entwistle.
The songs were intended for a musical revue that ran briefly in Los
Angeles. Previn teamed up with producer Zev Bufman to stage it on
Broadway, but the previews were poor and the show was cancelled before it opened.
[13]
Her albums maintained a balance of intensely personal lyrics and
wider commentary – "A Stone for Bessie Smith" is about the premature
death of singer
Janis Joplin,
while "Doppelgänger" examines the latent savagery of humanity.
Self-conscious spirituality at the expense of the tangible is criticised
in "Mythical Kings and Iguanas," while songs dealing with emotionally
frail characters appear as "Lady With the Braid", "Lemon-Haired Ladies",
and "The Altruist and the Needy Case". Feminist issues and dilemmas are
explored in "Brando" and "The Owl and the Pussycat", while the male ego
is attacked with wit and irony in "Michael, Michael", "Don't Put Him
Down", and "The Perfect Man".
[citation needed]
In 1973, her screenplay
Third Girl From The Left was filmed and broadcast as a TV movie.
[5]
She also undertook some public performances that year, including a
concert in New York on April 18, 1973. This was recorded and released
later as a double LP,
Live At Carnegie Hall,
which featured in a book of the two hundred best rock albums. She also
continued to collaborate on music for film and TV. Her last film credit
was the title song for
Last Tango in Paris (1973), with music by
Gato Barbieri.
She then switched to
Warner Bros. Records, and released the album
Dory Previn in 1974, followed by
We're Children of Coincidence and Harpo Marx
in 1976. Overcoming her fear of flying, she toured in Europe in the
late 1970s, and in 1980 performed in a musical revue of her songs,
Children Of Coincidence, in Dublin.
[5] She withdrew from music for a period, and wrote two autobiographies,
Midnight Baby: an Autobiography (1976,
ISBN 0-02-299000-4) and
Bogtrotter: An Autobiography with Lyrics (1980;
ISBN 0-385-14708-2). The latter title refers to her Irish heritage: "bogtrotter" is a derogatory term for an Irish person. She wrote
Schizo-phren, a one-woman play with songs.
[citation needed]
Later life
From the 1980s, she often used the name
Dory Previn Shannon, Shannon being her mother's maiden name.
[14] In 1983 she wrote and appeared in a musical statement on nuclear war,
August 6, 1945, in Los Angeles. Working for television, she won an
Emmy Award in 1984 for "We'll Win this World" (from
Two of a Kind) with Jim Pasquale, and an Emmy nomination in 1985 for "Home Here" (from
Two Marriages) with Bruce Broughton.
[15]
In 1984 she married actor and artist
Joby Baker. She performed in London in 1986, and wrote a stage work,
The Flight Of The Gooney Bird. She last appeared in concert in 1988, in Dublin and at the
Donmar Warehouse in London. As a writer, her short stories have appeared in several publications, and she has also worked on a novel,
Word-Play with an Invisible Relative. She lectured on lyric writing, recording, and writing autobiographies at various American universities.
[15] Baker provided illustrations for
The Dory Previn Songbook (1995), which contains songs from her period with United Artists.
In 1997 she collaborated with André Previn again, to produce a piece for soprano and ensemble entitled
The Magic Number.
[16] This was first performed by the
New York Philharmonic, with Previn as conductor and
Sylvia McNair performing the soprano part. A piano reduction was published by G. Schirmer, Inc (
ISBN 0-7935-8803-0). In 2002 she released a royalty-free recording available via the internet entitled
Planet Blue.
[17]
This contains a mixture of recent and previously unreleased material
dealing with environmental degradation and the threat of nuclear
disaster. She continued to work, in spite of having suffered several
strokes, which affected her eyesight. A new compilation of her early 1970s work, entitled
The Art of Dory Previn, was released by
EMI on January 21, 2008.
[citation needed]
Death
Previn died, aged 86, on February 14, 2012, at her farm in
Southfield, Massachusetts, where she lived with her husband,
Joby Baker.
[18][19]
Discography
Original albums
Compilation albums
- One A.M. Phonecalls (1977) United Artists
- In Search of Mythical Kings: The U.A. Years (1993) EMI
- The Art of Dory Previn (2008) EMI
Previn's material from her period with
United Artists has been re-issued on CD under the Beat Goes On label.
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