Tom Lehrer Net Worth
Tom Lehrer Net Worth is
$10 Million
Tom Lehrer Bio/Wiki, Net Worth, Married 2018
Thomas Andrew Lehrer (known professionally as Tom Lehrer) (/?l?r.?r/; born April 9, 1928) is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater. He is best known for the pithy, humorous songs he recorded in the 1950s and 1960s.His work often parodies popular song forms, though he usually creates original melodies when doing so. A notable exception is "The Elements", where he sets the names of the chemical elements to the tune of the "Major-General's Song" from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. Lehrer's early work typically dealt with non-topical subject matter and was noted for its black humor in songs such as "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". In the 1960s, he produced a number of songs dealing with social and political issues of the day, particularly when he wrote for the U.S. version of the television show That Was the Week That Was. Despite their of-the-moment subject matter and references, the popularity of these songs has endured; Lehrer quoted a friend's explanation: "Always predict the worst and you'll be hailed as a prophet."In the early 1970s, he retired from public performances to devote his time to teaching mathematics and music theatre at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He did two additional performances in 1998 at a London gala show celebrating the career of impresario Cameron Mackintosh. | Full Name | Tom Lehrer |
| Date Of Birth | April 9, 1928 |
| Place Of Birth | New York City, New York, USA |
| Profession | Soundtrack, Music Department, Composer |
| Education | Harvard University, Horace Mann School, Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, The Masochism Tango, Lobachevsky |
| Nationality | American |
| Awards | Raven Award |
| Nominations | Mastercard Best New Musical |
| TV Shows | The Frost Report |
| Star Sign | Aries |
| # | Quote |
|---|---|
| 1 | The whole idea that freedom of speech means you can say 'fuck' on television is an anathema to me. That's not what freedom of speech is about. It's about saying stuff. Now that you can say anything, why don't you? But they don't. |
| 2 | [on performing for royalty] There was a line for the Queen to come round and shake everyone's hand. She wore gloves, of course - you never know where these actors have been. She came around, 'Nice to see you, thank you for coming'. And Prince Philip also shakes your hand, at a discreet distance of course from the Queen. And he said 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park' gave us a lot of pleasure. We used to play that'. I asked Princess Margaret, 'What does Her Majesty think of the record?' And she said, 'Oh, she thinks it's horrid. She leaves the room when we put it on'. |
| 3 | In the fifties, everybody agreed. Adlai Stevenson was good, lynching was bad. Life was much easier. Now [2000] you can make certain obvious jokes, but I can't think how you do a song. Monica Lewinsky is easy. I don't know how you make jokes about Sierra Leone, or Rwanda, or Ireland, or stuff that's really going on in the world. |
| 4 | [on lyrics] I think the construction part, how to say it, the logical mind, the precision, is the same that's involved in math, and I guess in music too. It's gotta come out right. It's like a puzzle to write a song. The idea of fitting all the pieces so it exactly comes right, the right word at the end of the sentence, and the rhyme goes there and not there. The outrageousness gets you hooked, but then the perfected songcraft, the wedding of lyric to tune, and the fact that every line has some nice wordplay in it - never wastes a line. That keeps you coming back. |
| 5 | The first thing is to get the idea for the song, then to get the title, or the ending or something. To begin a song is not hard, it's where you're going to end. You gotta have the joke at the end. So it was mainly getting the idea and deciding what form it would be in, a waltz or a tango, or whatever, and then plugging away at it. |
| 6 | Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. |
| 7 | Plagiarise / Plagiarise / Let no-one else's work / Evade your eyes |
| 8 | I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity. |
| 9 | Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize. |
| 10 | Well, what I like to do on formal occasions like this is to take some of the various types of songs that we all know and presumably love and, as it were, to kick them when they're down. I find that if you take the various popular song forms to their logical extremes, you can arrive at almost anything from the ridiculous to the obscene or, as they say in New York, sophisticated. |
| 11 | I know some people feel that marriage as an institution is dying out, but I disagree and the point was driven home to me rather forcefully not long ago by a letter I received which said: "Darling, I love you and I cannot live without you. Marry me, or I will kill myself". Well, I was a little disturbed at that until I took another look at the envelope and saw that it was addressed to 'occupant'. |
| 12 | [on why he never married]: I have a notoriously short attention span. I can barely concentrate on (the 8-hour stage production) 'Nicholas Nickleby', let alone sustain a relationship. |
| 13 | I did rather well myself this past Christmas. The nicest present I received was a gift certificate good in any hospital for a lobotomy. How thoughtful. |
| 14 | If a person feels he can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up. |
| 15 | [From interview with Barry Hansen, aka Dr. Demento, c. 1990s]: I never had the temperament of a performer. For example, I do not require anonymous affection, such as that manifested by the applause of large groups of strangers. (I love it when they buy the records, however.) Moreover, I always considered myself a writer rather than a performer. I didn't relish the prospect of doing pretty much the same show night after night, any more than a novelist would enjoy reading his book aloud every night. I wanted to do the songs only until I was satisfied with the performance and then record them. I wanted the audience to leave thinking "Weren't those songs funny?", whereas most, if not all, comedians want them to leave thinking "Wasn't he (or she) funny?" As for stopping writing, it used to be that if an idea came to me, I'd write, and if it didn't, I wouldn't -- and, gradually, the second condition prevailed over the first. I didn't regard it as a problem. Occasionally people ask, "If you enjoyed it" (and I did) "why don't you do it again?" I reply, "I enjoyed high school, but I certainly wouldn't want to do that again". |
| 16 | The nature of forbidden words has certainly changed. For example, when I was in college, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl. Now you can say them, but you can't say "girl". |
| 17 | I've occasionally heard that I was kicked out [of Harvard] for being a Communist, for dealing drugs, for corrupting minors, or for diverse other infractions of local decorum. Unfortunately, none of these rumours are true. The one I've heard more often is that I am dead. That one I encouraged, hoping it would cut down on the junk mail. It didn't. |
| 18 | Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit. |
| 19 | I have always found it interesting... that there are people who regard copyright infringement as a form of flattery. |
| 20 | It is a sobering thought that when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years. |
| # | Fact |
|---|---|
| 1 | Lecturer, University of Californa Santa Cruz [January 2004] |
| 2 | Lehrer is a big fan of Stephen Sondheim, who he considers the greatest lyricist in the English language. They actually knew each other when they were children when they attended the same summer camp in 1937 through 1939, but did not meet again until 59 years later. |
| 3 | Wrote ten songs for The Electric Company (1971) after a call from producer Naomi Foner because he was a Harvard classmate and good friend of the late Joe Raposo, the show's musical director for most of the time it was in production and its primary songwriter. |
| 4 | Has been been erroneously reported as being dead so many times that he keeps a scrapbook of articles mentioning him as "the late Tom Lehrer". |
| 5 | Three songs he wrote for the educational television show The Electric Company (1971) were made into animated shorts: "Silent E" "S-N (Snore, Sniff, and Sneeze)," and "L-Y," with orchestrations by Joe Raposo. |
| 6 | Wrote and recorded several anti-war songs, including "Send the Marines", "So Long, Mom, I'm off to Drop the Bomb" and "We'll All Go Together When We Go." |
| 7 | His songs served as the basis for the hit off-Broadway review "Tomfoolery" in 1981. |
| 8 | Contributed songs to the now classic TV show That Was the Week That Was (1964) (NBC: 1963 - 1965), where he also served as an occasional performer. These songs made up the contents of his album "That Was the Year That Was" (Reprise: 1965). He also wrote ten songs and served as an occasional performer for the PBS children's show The Electric Company (1971) in the early 1970s. |
| 9 | His three albums for Reprise/Warner Bros. records, "Songs by Tom Lehrer" (repackaged in 1990 as "Revisited"), "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer", and "That Was the Year That Was" have remained in print continually and have continued to sell since they were released in the late 1950s and mid-1960s. It is Lehrer's quiet boast that these albums have actually sold better over the years since, than they did at the time of release. |
| 10 | Hits include "The Masochism Tango" and "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". |
| 11 | He entered Harvard at age 15, having skipped several grades. Everyone applying for admission to Harvard was required to include an example of their written work. Lehrer submitted a long verse, in the style of W.S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan, which concluded: "I will leave movie thrillers/And watch caterpillars/Get born and pupated and larva'd/And I'll work like a slave/And always behave/And maybe I'll get into Harva'd." The poem in its entirety appeared in "Scholastic Magazine" in 1943. It was Lehrer's first published work. |
| 12 | Parents divorced when he was 14. |
| 13 | Was influenced as a boy by the witty, rapid-fire singing style of Danny Kaye. This influence is most noticeable in Lehrer's songs "The Elements" and "Lobachevsky". |
| 14 | His first public performance was in 1952 at a Boston nightclub called Alpini's Rendezvous in Kenmore Square, near Boston University. |
Soundtrack
| Title | Year | Status | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD: The Story of the National Lampoon | 2015 | Documentary performer: "Fight Fiercely, Harvard" / writer: "Fight Fiercely, Harvard" | |
| The Big Bang Theory | 2010 | TV Series writer - 1 episode | |
| Timeshift | TV Series documentary performer - 1 episode, 2008 writer - 1 episode, 2008 | ||
| Flitter, Flutter-Thud | 2007 | Short performer: "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" / writer: "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" | |
| NCIS | TV Series lyrics - 1 episode, 2007 performer - 1 episode, 2007 | ||
| Gilmore Girls | 2006 | TV Series lyrics - 1 episode | |
| A Gathering of Eagles | 1963 | lyrics: "The Sac Song" / music: "The Sac Song" |
Music Department
| Title | Year | Status | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nova ScienceNow | 2006 | TV Series documentary music theme - 1 episode | |
| Marty Back Together Again | 1974 | TV Series composer - 3 episodes |
Composer
| Title | Year | Status | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Electric Company | 1971 | TV Series | |
| That Was the Week That Was | 1964 | TV Series |
Self
| Title | Year | Status | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Electric Company's Greatest Hits & Bits | 2006 | TV Movie documentary | Himself (voice) |
| Hey, Mr. Producer! The Musical World of Cameron Mackintosh | 1998 | TV Special documentary | Himself |
| How to Prevent a Nuclear War | 1987 | Documentary short | Himself |
| Parkinson | 1980 | TV Series | Himself |
| The Frost Report | 1966 | TV Series | Himself |
| Today | 1966 | TV Series | Himself |
| The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson | 1965 | TV Series | Himself - Guest |
Archive Footage
| Title | Year | Status | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America | 2009 | TV Series documentary | Himself |
| Comedy Songs: The Pop Years | 2008 | TV Movie documentary | Himself |
| Heroes of Comedy | 2000 | TV Series documentary |
Known for movies
DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD: The Story of the National Lampoon (2015)
as Soundtrack
A Gathering of Eagles (1963)
as Soundtrack
The Frost Report (1966)
as Himself
Hey, Mr. Producer! The Musical World of Cameron Mackintosh (1998)
as Himself