ENTERTAINMENT
Looking To The Rainbow
Composer
Burton Lane
refuses to rest
on his accom-
plishments.
SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to The Jewish News
B
roadway and Holly-
wood composer Bur-
ton Lane detests dis-
crimination, the sub-
ject of his classic
musical Finian's Rainbow. In
recognition of his artistic and
personal stance against bias,
he received the Human Rela-
tions Award for Lifetime
Achievement from the Anti-
Defamation League.
The award was presented
last month during a dinner
program at the Westin Hotel,
where Michigan Opera
Theatre members performed
many of his well-known
songs. Honored along with
Mr. Lane was entrepreneur
and philanthropist Frank
Stella, who received the
Distinguished Community
Service Award.
While on this second trip to
Detroit — the first occurring
in 1939 when he opened the
show Hold On To Your Hats
with Al Jolson — Mr. Lane
talked freely about the values
that remain important to him
as he continues to work at age
80.
"How monotonous the
world would be if everything
was the same color," observed
Mr. Lane. His social commen-
tary/fantasy musical Finian's
Rainbow, written with E.Y.
(Yip) Harburg and Fred
Saidy, explores the ex-
periences of a bigoted
southern senator who is turn-
ed black and becomes a vic-
tim of the discriminatory laws
he advocated.
"When I look at the grass,
there are all shades of green;
I look at the trees, and the
trees have different colors.
There are blossoms of dif-
ferent colors and flowers of
different colors. And I wonder
where racial prejudice came
from.
"The God that put us here
gave us all the variations of
nature that are so beautiful
and then put people on this
planet who are white, who are
tan, who are yellow and who
are black," he said.
"We never complain about
the variety in nature; why
can't there be more apprecia-
tion for the variety of people
who are here?"
As Finian's Rainbow was
being written in the '40s,
friends from the entertain-
ment industry were invited to
express their opinions after
informal performances of the
dialogue as well as the songs,
which included "Look to the
Rainbow," "How Are Things
in Glocca Morra?" and
"When I'm Not Near the Girl
I Love."
Although the show's
creators were repeatedly cau-
tioned that the serious subject
matter might never be com-
mercial, the three-man team
persevered.
"They didn't stop us from
going on with it because we
loved it and believed in it, and
we turned out to be right,"
said the composer. He insisted
he has been rewarded by hav-
ing written songs that made
a lot of friends for him and in
having a career that provides
him with so much pleasure.
The seeds of his career were
planted at age 10, when he
started taking piano lessons
and going to New York pro-
ductions once a week with his
father, a great enthusiast for
popular songs and the
musical theater.
"When I was just learning
to play the piano and read
music, my father came home
one day with a copy of sheet
music of the current hit, and
in trying to play it, I struck
a chord or two not on the
paper, which led me into
something that was not there
at all," he said.
"I can't say that this led to
composing, but it certainly
led to something that was not
there before. It was kind of a
musical adventure for me and
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