Mary Rodgers was an American composer, screenwriter, and author.
12 Facts About Mary Rodgers
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Mary Rodgers wrote the novel Freaky Friday, which served as the basis of a 1976 film starring Jodie Foster, for which she wrote the screenplay, as well as three other versions.
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Mary Rodgers was a daughter of composer Richard Rodgers and his wife, Dorothy Belle.
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Mary Rodgers attended the Brearley School in Manhattan, and majored in music at Wellesley College.
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Mary Rodgers began writing music at the age of 16 and her professional career began with writing songs for Little Golden Records, which were albums for children with three-minute songs.
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One of these recordings, "Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves", which was released in 1957, featured performances by Bing Crosby of songs Mary Rodgers wrote with lyricist Sammy Cahn.
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Mary Rodgers composed music for television, including the jingle for the Prince Spaghetti commercial.
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Mary Rodgers later wrote children's books, most notably the popular Freaky Friday, which was made into a feature film, for which she wrote the screenplay, and was remade for television in 1995, and again for cinemas in 2003, screenplay by Heather Hach and Leslie Dixon "based on the book by Mary Rodgers".
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In 2022,8 years after she died, Rodgers' memoirs were published in Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers, Co-Authored by Jesse Green.
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Mary Rodgers was a director of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization and a board member of ASCAP.
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Mary Rodgers served for several years as chairman of the Juilliard School.
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Mary Rodgers died from heart failure at her home in Manhattan on June 26,2014.