Background
The Jerome Robbins ballet "Fancy Free" (1944), with music by Leonard Bernstein, was a hit for the American Ballet Theatre, and Oliver Smith (the set designer) and his business partner, Paul Feigay, thought that the ballet could be turned into a Broadway musical. They convinced Robbins and Bernstein, who in turn wanted their friends Comden and Green to write the book and lyrics. When the director George Abbott was added to the project funding was secured, including funding from the movie studio MGM in return for the film rights.
Read more about this topic: On The Town (musical)
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