Lee Goldsmith

Lyricist | Librettist

SEXTET opened on Broadway March 3, 1974

Lee Goldsmith, a native New Yorker, fell in love with musical theatre since seeing Ethel Merman in Anything Goes when he was a schoolboy. In the 1950s, Lee began writing revue material, collaborating with Fred Ebb and Paul Klein. With composer Lawrence Hurwit, he later wrote book and lyrics for two musicals: Sextet, a groundbreaking Broadway musical that served as Dixie Carter’s Broadway debut, and Gold Diggers of 1633, a musical adaptation of Moliere’s “School for Wives” as perhaps envisioned by Busby Berkeley. His musical adaptation of William Inge’s “Come Back, Little Sheba” with songwriter Clint Ballard was given two productions: the first starring Kaye Ballard and another with Donna McKechnie in the lead. With composer Roger Anderson, Goldsmith wrote the lyrics for Chaplin, which won South Florida’s Carbonell Award for Best New Work. In 2012 Chaplin was given its London Premiere at The Barbican Centre by the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Their musical Shine! The Horatio Alger Musical premiered in 1983 but finally made it to New York by way of the 2010 New York Music Theatre Festival, winning the Award for Excellence. Shine! is now published by Samuel French. Quality Street, for which Goldsmith wrote both book and lyrics, is based on the play by J. M. Barrie and has received successful staged readings in New York and Connecticut. Their final collaboration, Abe, premiered at the Muddy River Opera Company in Quincy, Illinois as part of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial. Abe was immediately published by Samuel French.

Comic Book Writer

Goldsmith was also a writer for DC Comics. He authored and collaborated on stories of fictional characters such as Green Lantern, The Flash and Wonder Woman. He was also one of the journalists behind Girls’ Love Stories, a line of comics that was very popular with teenagers and young women until the 1970s. Goldsmith also helped write War Stories and The Westerns comics. [comics.org list of credited issues]

Lee Goldsmith
Lee Goldsmith circa 1980s

“I might have won Tony Awards and a Pulitzer, but that wouldn’t mean as much to people as the fact that I wrote issues of The Flash, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern. And imagine—every day after work we were required to take armfuls of unsold comics and put them down the incinerator. Who could have imagined anyone would have regarded them as valuable?”