Jerry Bock

Jerry Bock wrote Big as Life as a student at the University of Wisconsin, and served an apprenticeship in popular songwriting and television before meeting the lyricist Sheldon Harnick. The partnership that followed produced The Body Beautiful, then Fiorello!, a portrait of a New York mayor that took both the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Their later musicals included She Loves Me and Fiddler on the Roof. Tenderloin, The Apple Tree and The Rothschilds were also part of their collaboration. Born in New Haven and raised in Queens, he was elected to both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Theater Hall of Fame, and died in 2010. Before Harnick there was Larry Holofcener, with whom he wrote for television, for revue and for Mr. Wonderful. The Pulitzer for Fiorello! came in 1960, the Songwriters Hall of Fame took him in 1972, and in 1990 it gave him and Harnick its Johnny Mercer Award. His first musical, My Dream, was written while he was still at high school.