The Stage

Julian More

Published Monday 25 January 2010 at 16:15 by Jackie More

Librettist, lyricist, screenwriter, novelist and travel writer, my cousin Julian More has died, aged 81.

His career began at Trinity College, Cambridge, when he wrote and performed in revues for the Footlights, and his first professional show, Puss in Red Riding Breeches, a pantomime for adults, was performed in 1954 at the Watergate Theatre.

Grab Me a Gondola (1956) was his first West End musical, running for 18 months at the Lyric Theatre, followed by productions in Norway, South Africa and Australia. With lyrics also by composer James Gilbert, it starred Joan Heal, Denis Quilley and Jane Wenham.

Julian’s next musical, Expresso Bongo (Saville, 1958) starred Paul Scofield and Millicent Martin. He collaborated on the book with Wolf Mankowitz and the lyrics with composers Monty Norman and David Heneker - as a result, he, Norman and Heneker were chosen by Peter Brook to adapt Alexandre Breffort’s musical, Irma La Douce. This long-running show, starring Elizabeth Seal, Keith Michell and Clive Revill, played at the Lyric in London and the Plymouth in New York, with worldwide productions, and was also made into the Shirley MacLaine/Jack Lemmon film directed by Billy Wilder.

Julian wrote the book, lyrics or both for 15 shows, including The Art of Living, a revue based on the writings of American humourist Art Buchwald (Criterion, 1960), and the lyrics of an operetta R Loves J, with book by Peter Ustinov, premiered in Munich before the 1973 Chichester Festival, and starring Topol.

In 1979 he collaborated with Norman again to write Songbook (Globe, 1979), which won the Evening Standard, SWET and BASCA best musical awards, and a Tony nomination for its Broadway production in 1981. And, in 1987, Roza, with music by Gilbert Becaud, directed by Harold Prince and starring Georgia Brown, broke box office records in Los Angeles, but did not run on Broadway.

In 1976, Julian and his wife Sheila moved to France, where they lived in an old farmhouse at Visan in the Vaucluse, and in 1985 he began writing travel books, with photographs by his daughter Carey. A Taste of Provence (in its French translation) won the Alexandre Dumaine Award for best book of the year in France on gastronomy in 1988.

Since 2005, he and Sheila had lived in Marseille, where he completed the manuscript of his last book. He died peacefully at home amongst his family on January 15 and is survived by Sheila, his twin daughters Camilla and Carey, and grandchildren Sasha, Cameron and Manon.