I wrote when I could but with big gaps when I couldn't. By that point, I had become the theater critic for New York magazine, and my schedule went insane. So, we had just two years of solid work together before she died in 2014. Then she waffled a few times we didn't actually start until 2012. Green, chief theater critic for The New York Times, told Newsweek, "Mary and I met in 2004, but she didn't ask me to work with her until 2010 or so. The idea of writing of Shy had its beginnings in 2010, but the book took a long, roundabout route to publication. It took the better part of 10 years, mostly alone, for co-author Jesse Green to compile, edit fact check and shape the manuscript. Putting the book together, however, did not come easy. It is a great story filled with great stories. Like a meal in a five-star restaurant, I wanted to savor every moment. I read the first 30 to 40 pages very quickly, then I slowed down. They make themselves.Shy, the memoir of Mary Rodgers, is one of the best pieces of nonfiction, not just autobiography or theater writing, in years.
Both an eyewitness report from the golden age of American musical theater and a tale of a woman striving for a meaningful life, Shy is, above all, a chance to sit at the feet of the kind of woman they don't make anymore-and never did. Whether writing for Judy Holliday or Rin Tin Tin, dating Hal Prince or falling for Stephen Sondheim over a game of chess at thirteen, Rodgers grabbed every chance possible-and then some. But in telling these stories-with copious annotations, contradictions, and interruptions from Jesse Green, the chief theater critic of The New York Times- Shy also tells another, about a woman liberating herself from disapproving parents and pervasive sexism to find art and romance on her own terms. Shy is the story of how it all happened: how Mary grew from an angry child, constrained by privilege and a parent's overwhelming gift, to become not just a theater figure in her own right but also a renowned author of books for young readers (including the classic Freaky Friday) and, in a final grand turn, a doyenne of philanthropy and the chairman of the Juilliard School. What that leaves out is Mary herself, also a composer, whose musical Once Upon a Mattress remains one of the rare revivable Broadway hits written by a woman. Her father was Richard Rodgers, perhaps the greatest American melodist her son, Adam Guettel, a worthy successor. She was referring to being stuck in the middle of a talent sandwich: the daughter of one composer and the mother of another. The memoirs of Mary Rodgers-writer, composer, Broadway royalty, and "a woman who tried everything." "What am I, bologna?" Mary Rodgers (1931-2014) often said.
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