While his grandfather was from the Ukraine, Alan Jay was born in New York, one of the sons of Edith Adelson Lerner and Joseph Jay Lerner. His father had once practiced painless dentistry on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. In 1909 Joseph's brother Samuel Lerner had founded of the Lerner Stores* which sold popularly priced women's wear and, with a growing family, Joseph was persuaded to join his brother. Soon he was living in a large apartment on Park Avenue furnished with antiques, a chauffeur, two maids and a nanny. Edith and Joseph attended all the Broadway shows, traveled frequently to Europe and also quarreled frequently. But Alan was born on August 31, 1918. As a child, he studied classical piano wanted to be a composer. A loner at the time, he did not get along with his brothers or his schoolmates. Since his father was not a believer, Alan did not have a Bar Mitzvah.

In the summer of 1932 the Lerner boys were sent to Bedales, a "public" (i.e. private) school in England to learn proper English. They hated it and promised to study English at home if they were not sent back the next summer. At fourteen Alan was sent to Choate, the prestigious Connecticut school. John F. Kennedy was also a student. They both worked on the school paper. His piano playing in the recreation room made him popular and, to fit in better, he claimed his mother was Catholic. While he was at Choate, his father left home, and his parents divorced.

Alan had his heart set on Broadway, but his father was determined he should go into politics and possibly become an ambassador. He was sent to Harvard where he majored in sociology and served "four years of hard labor". However, he took only a few og the sociology courses, spending his study time on French, Italian and off-campus activities. Summers he studied music at Julliard and took flying lessons so he could join the Air Corps when he graduated. Then, while boxing, disaster struck. A serious head injury caused him to go blind in one eye and to spend eight months in the hospital. His dreams of flying dead, he was more determined than ever on a Broadway career. After Harvard, he moved for a short time to the Lambs Club, a private club for theatrical professionals. He soon before married long time friend Ruth Boyd, the first of his eight wives. Both had money, and they moved to a hotel near the famous Algonquin. He worked as a radio writer for various shows including Victor Borge, and he learned to write the good dialogue which is a prominent feature of his later musicals.

In 1942 he met Frederick (Fritz) Lowe who was seventeen years his senior, and one of the greatest of Broadway teams was born. This was eight months before the opening of Oklahoma by Rodgers and Hammerstein changed Broadway musicals for ever. There early works met with limited success before they finally had the smash hit Brigadoon in 1947. This led to Alan having projects with composers such as Kurt Weill (Love Life 1948) and George Gershwin (the film An American in Paris 1951). The latter introduced a seventeen year old Leslie Caron, the future Gigi. An American In Paris, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture (the first musical to do this in fifteen years) also introduced Lerner to Hollywood and to Arthur Freed and Vincente Minnelli with whom he would collaborate on Gigi. Then Lerner reunited with Fritz Loewe for My Fair Lady 1956, the film Gigi 1957 and Camelot 1960.

On the personal side, Marian Bell became Lerner's second wife and, in Hollywood he met his third wife, Nancy Olson, the mother of two of his children. While filming the Gigi in Paris, he had met Micheline Muselli Pozzo, a lawyer called the "French Portia", and she was to become his fourth wife. He married his fifth wife, Karen Gunderson a writer for Newsweek in 1966. He became dependent on amphetamines and other prescribed drugs to be able to work, and he became addicted. He and Karen divorced, and he married his sixth wife, British actress Sandra Payne, thirty years his junior. 1977 saw him married a seventh time to Nina Bushkin, less than half his age, and they spent most of their time apart. In his autobiography he said: "All I can say is that if I had no flair for marriage, I also had no flair for Bachelorhood". Finally, in 1981, Lerner married a young British actress, Elizabeth Robertson and they were happy together until his death in 1986.

After Camelot, Lerner and Loewe split, and Lerner went on to other things: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever with Burton Lane 1965, Coco with Andre Previn 1969, and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with Leonard Bernstein 1976. The last was written for the United States Bicentennial and was the story of several former presidential couples. Bernstein was six days older than Lerner and both went to Harvard but Bernstein was a year ahead. Lerner had said "I don't approve of musicals with a message" (such as West Side Story) so they had had no experience working with each other. "The resulting production was overblown ... with no continuity from couple to couple, essentially a long pageant rather than a musical." Attempts were made to cancel it, but it went ahead. By this time Lerner was heavily into drugs, had difficulty concentrating on work, and seemed to be intimidated by Bernstein. The opening was a disaster; the audience started to leave after the first act. It went on to New York but lasted only seven performances.

Things went down hill from there for Lerner, except for his 8th marriage in which he was very happy. He died of lung cancer June 14, 1986 a few days after his daughter Susan who also had cancer, leaving three other children. At the time, he had just started writing lyrics for The Phantom of the Opera but only completed one song. In spite of his wealthy roots and his earnings in the theatre, his divorces cost him much of his fortune and, when he died he is said to have owed over one million dollars in back taxes.

The lights of Broadway were lowered the night of his death. He had often struggled with his lyrics, usually spending months on one song and constantly rewriting it. It was worth it; he is remembered because his lyrics always fit the character who sings them.

*At one time there of 450 of these stores throughout the country and Alan grew up in prosperous surroundings. (In the 90s these stores were taken over by New York and Company which has five stores in San Diego County.) He could have joined the firm and lived in luxury, but he preferred try to make his way in the precarious world of the Broadway theatre.

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Revised August 2010
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