Remembering Steve Lawrence, Nightclub, TV, Recording Star and Actor for More Than 50 Years

Steve Lawrence, who was born Sidney Liebowitz on July 8, 1935 and enjoyed a 50 year performing career, died on March 7 in Los Angeles of complications of Alzheimer's disease.

The son of a cantor at the Brooklyn synagogue Beth Sholom Tomchei Harav, he was best known as a member of the pop vocal duo "Steve and Eydie" with his wife Eydie Gormé, and for his performance as Maury Sline, the manager and friend of the main characters in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. Steve and Eydie first appeared together as regulars on Tonight Starring Steve Allen in 1954 and continued performing as a duo until Gormé's retirement in 2009.

As Robert D. McFadden wrote in The New York Times,

The Liebowitz boys were all musically gifted. By 8, Sidney was singing in a synagogue choir, and by 12 he was composing songs. He dropped out of Thomas Jefferson High School before graduation to sing in bars and nightclubs.

He began calling himself Steve Lawrence, the given names of two nephews. He won “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” at 15 and sang for a week on Godfrey’s morning radio show.

Billed as “Steve and Eydie” in Carnegie Hall concerts, on television and at glitzy hotels in Las Vegas, the remarkably durable couple remained steadfast to their pop style as rock ’n’ roll took America by storm in the 1950s and ’60s.

Long after the millennium, they were still rendering songs like “Our Love Is Here to Stay,” “Just in Time” and “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” for audiences that seemed to grow old with them.Record sales put him in the top ranks of America’s pop singers in the early 1960s, and despite competition from rock groups, his club and concert dates with Ms. Gorme remained enormously popular.

As a tribute to the class act of Steve and Eydie, we're sharing a long medley of music by Richard Rodgers with lyrics by Lorenz Hart or Oscar Hammerstein. Songs: The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, Falling In Love With Love, A Wonderful Guy, I Married An Angel, Where Or When, My Heart Stood Still, Blue Moon, Manhattan, Isn't It Romantic, Glad To Be Unhappy, It Might As Well Be Spring, Spring Is Here, It Never Entered My Mind, Bewitched Bothered And Bewildered, My Romance, My Funny Valentine, With A Song In My Heart.

With special thanks to Buzz Stephens for posting this video on YouTube.

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.