Lionel Bart was a British writer and composer of pop music and musicals.
19 Facts About Lionel Bart
2.
Lionel Bart was born Lionel Begleiter, the youngest of seven surviving children of Galician Jews, Yetta and Morris Begleiter, a master tailor.
3.
Lionel Bart grew up in Stepney; his father worked in the area as a tailor in a garden shed.
4.
When Lionel Bart was aged six, a teacher told his parents that he was a musical genius.
5.
Lionel Bart's parents gave him an old violin, but he did not apply himself and the lessons stopped.
6.
Lionel Bart started his songwriting career in amateur theatre, first at The International Youth Centre in 1952 where he and a friend wrote a revue together called IYC Revue 52.
7.
Shortly afterward Lionel Bart began composing songs for Unity Theatre productions, contributing material to its 1953 revue Turn It Up, and songs for its 1953 pantomime, an agitprop version of Cinderella.
8.
Lionel Bart wrote comedy songs for the Sunday lunchtime BBC radio programme The Billy Cotton Band Show.
9.
Lionel Bart first gained widespread recognition through his pop songwriting, penning numerous hits for the stable of young male singers promoted by artist manager and music publisher Larry Parnes.
10.
Lionel Bart won three Ivor Novello Awards in 1957, a further four in 1958, and two in 1960.
11.
Lionel Bart wrote the theme song for the 1963 James Bond film From Russia with Love, and worked with John Barry again on the score to the 1964 film Man in the Middle.
12.
Lionel Bart was responsible for the discovery of two of Parnes' biggest stars.
13.
Lionel Bart hummed the melodies and Rogers wrote the notes on his behalf as Lionel Bart could not read or write music.
14.
Lionel Bart eventually stopped drinking, although the years of substance abuse seriously damaged his health, leaving him with diabetes and impaired liver function.
15.
The role of Lionel Bart was shared by a young Todd Carty and Chris Nieto.
16.
Lionel Bart continued writing songs and themes for films, but his only real success in his later years was "Happy Endings", a song he wrote for a 1989 Abbey National advertising campaign, which featured Lionel Bart playing the piano and singing to children.
17.
Lionel Bart received a special Ivor Novello Award for life achievement in 1986.
18.
At the peak of his career, Lionel Bart was romantically linked in the media with singers Judy Garland and Alma Cogan, though he was homosexual.
19.
Lionel Bart died at the Hammersmith Hospital in West London on 3 April 1999, of liver cancer.