When Sondheim was about ten years old (around the time of his parents' divorce), he formed a close friendship with James Hammerstein, son of lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II. He had already been estranged from her for nearly 20 years. When she died in the spring of 1992, Sondheim did not attend her funeral. What she did for five years was treat me like dirt, but come on to me at the same time." She once wrote him a letter saying that the only regret she ever had was giving birth to him. And she used me the way she used him, to come on to and to berate, beat up on, you see. Sondheim detested his mother, who was said to be psychologically abusive and to have projected her anger from her failed marriage onto her son: "When my father left her, she substituted me for him. "A butler took a duster and brushed it up, tinkling the keys. "The curtain went up and revealed a piano", Sondheim recalled. Sondheim traced his interest in theater to Very Warm for May, a Broadway musical he saw when he was nine. He graduated magna cum laude and received the Hubbard Hutchinson Prize, a two-year fellowship to study music. From 1946 to 1950, Sondheim attended Williams College. From 1942 to 1947, he attended George School, a private Quaker preparatory school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he wrote his first musical, By George in 1946. His mother sent him to New York Military Academy in 1940. He spent several summers at Camp Androscoggin. When he lived in New York City, Sondheim attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. As the only child of affluent parents living in the San Remo at 145 Central Park West, he was described in Meryle Secrest's biography ( Stephen Sondheim: A Life) as an isolated, emotionally neglected child. The composer grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and, after his parents divorced, on a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. His father manufactured dresses designed by his mother.
His paternal grandparents, Isaac and Rosa, were German Jews and his maternal grandparents, Joseph and Bessie, were Lithuanian Jews from Vilnius. Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930, into a Jewish family in New York City, the son of Etta Janet ("Foxy" née Fox 1897–1992) and Herbert Sondheim (1895–1966). 3.1 Conversations with Frank Rich and others.2.4 1984–1994: Collaborations with James Lapine.2.3 1970–1981: Collaborations with Hal Prince.Film adaptations of Sondheim's work include West Side Story (1961), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Into the Woods (2014), and West Side Story (2021). He has a theater named for him both on Broadway and in the West End of London. Sondheim's numerous accolades include eight Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Tony in 2008), an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, a Pulitzer Prize, a Kennedy Center Honor, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. His best-known works include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Into the Woods (1987). Sondheim began his career by writing the lyrics for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959), before eventually devoting himself solely to writing both music and lyrics. His shows addressed "darker, more harrowing elements of the human experience", with songs often tinged with "ambivalence" about various aspects of life. One of the most important figures in twentieth-century musical theater, Sondheim was credited for having "reinvented the American musical" with shows that tackled "unexpected themes that range far beyond the traditional subjects" with "music and lyrics of unprecedented complexity and sophistication". Stephen Joshua Sondheim ( / ˈ s ɒ n d h aɪ m/ SOND-hyme March 22, 1930 – November 26, 2021) was an American composer, songwriter and lyricist.