Holmes, Rupert 1947-

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HOLMES, Rupert 1947-

PERSONAL: Born February 24, 1947, in Northwich, Cheshire, England; immigrated to United States, 1948; son of Leonard Eliot (a high school music teacher) and Gwendolen Mary (Pynn) Goldstein; married Elizabeth Wood Dreifuss (an attorney), April 17, 1969; children: Wendy Isobel (deceased), and two sons. Education: Attended Manhattan School of Music.

ADDRESSES: Office—The Holmes Line, 717 White Plains Rd., Ste. 114, Scarsdale, NY 10583. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Musician, singer, composer, playwright, and novelist. Arranger, conductor, and performer on Showbizz, 1979; performer on Rupert Holmes, 1980; vocalist on Full Circle, 1981. Also played in rock band the Buoys. Stage composer for Twelfth Night, 1986–87; television composer and song performer in Hi, Honey, I'm Home, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (ABC), 1991. Film music composer for The Animals, 1971; Forbidden under the Censorship of the King and A.W.O.L., 1972; Memories within Miss Aggie, 1973; Five Savage Men; and Death Play, New Line Cinema, 1976. Judge for Miss America Pageant, 1987; appeared as band leader in film No Small Affair, 1984.

AWARDS, HONORS: Antoinette Perry ("Tony") Awards for best book, best music, and best lyrics, all 1986, all for The Mystery of Edwin Drood; two Edgar Allan Poe awards, Mystery Writers of America, including for Accomplice; Tony Award nomination, 2003, and National Broadway Theatre Award, 2004, both for Say Goodnight, Gracie; Drama Desk Award for Best Orchestration, for Swing.

WRITINGS:

(And composer and author of lyrics) The Mystery of Edwin Drood (based on the novel by Charles Dickens; play; produced in New York, NY, 1985), libretto published as The Mystery of Edwin Drood: The Solve-It-Yourself Broadway Musical, Holmes Line of Records (Secaucus, NJ), 1986, published as The Mystery of Edwin Drood: A New Musical, Nelson Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1986.

(And composer of incidental music) Accomplice: A Comedy Thriller (play), Samuel French (London, England), 1991.

Solitary Confinement (play), produced in New York, NY, 1992.

Remember WENN American Movie Classics, 1996.

(And director) Goosebumps—Live on Stage (two-act play), produced in Wallingford, CT, 1999.

Say Goodnight, Gracie (one-act play), produced in Fort Lauderdale, FL, 2000, produced on Broadway, 2002.

Thumbs (two-act play), produced in Nyack, NJ, 2002.

(With Charles Stouse and Lee Adams) Marty (play; based on the screenplay by Paddy Chayevsky), produced in Boston, MA, 2002.

Where the Truth Lies (novel), Random House (New York, NY), 2003.

Swing (novel), Random House (New York, NY), 2005.

Mystery stories and song lyrics have appeared in Ellery Queen magazine.

AUTHOR OF LYRICS; SOUND RECORDINGS

(And composer and performer) Widescreen, Epic (New York, NY), 1973.

(Composer and performer) Rupert Holmes, Epic (New York, NY), 1975.

(And composer) Singles, Epic (New York, NY), 1976.

(And composer) Pursuit of Happiness, Private Stock Records (New York, NY), 1978.

(And arranger) Partners in Crime, Infinity Records (New York, NY), 1979.

(And Composer) Adventure, MCA Records (Universal City, CA), 1980.

Lyricists of "Queen Bee" and "Everything," for A Star Is Born, Warner Bros., 1976; "No Small Affair," "Hot Headed," "Double Barrels," "Itchin' for a Fight," "Otherwise Fine," for No Small Affair, Columbia, 1984; "You Got It All," for Jaws: The Revenge, Universal, 1987; and "Escape" (also known as "The Pina Colada Song"), 1980, "Answering Machine," and "Him." Also wrote songs for Barbara Cook: A Concert for the Theatre, 1987.

ADAPTATIONS: Film rights to Where the Truth Lies have been purchased; and the book was adapted as an audio recording, Random House Audio, 2003.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A musical based on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and a musical based on the author's television series Remember WENN. The Mystery of Edwin Drood was recorded by Polydor, 1986.

SIDELIGHTS: Rupert Holmes began his career in a rock band and went on to become an accomplished composer and pop songwriter who gained further recognition in the 1980s with his successful, Tony Award-winning Broadway play The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which was based on an uncompleted novel by Charles Dickens. In the play, Holmes recreates a British music hall, circa 1870, in which an acting group performs an over-the-top version of the mystery story. The play features audience interaction as the actors leave their characters behind at different stages of the play to tell jokes. At the end of the musical, the audience is given the chance to vote on whom they think committed murder. If a certain actor or character is chosen, Holmes wrote special lines for them to perform. "I broke a lot of rules, but it worked," Holmes told Michael Small in an article in People. In a review of the play for Time, William A. Henry III commented that, "taken on its own terms … Drood is vivacious, funny and richly tuneful."

In his play Accomplice: A Comedy Thriller, Holmes presents a parody of the British "whodunit" capers. The play takes place in a cottage in the English moorland and opens with a couple who the audience thinks are married but who turn out to be lovers plotting the murder of the woman's real husband. Referring to Holmes as a "clever wordsmith," Hollywood Reporter contributor Ed Kaufman called the play "onehalf a delightful parody of the British whodunit mystery thriller and one-half broad comic farce and even a bit of slapstick." As for the initial play-within-a-play, Rob Kendt noted in Back Stage that the author "offers us this innovation as a relentlessly winking parodic commentary on the vagaries of pounding the boards in cheap, titillating trash."

Solitary Confinement is a mystery-thriller play about a black security guard and an accountant who hire an assassin to murder their boss. When the boss learns of the plot, the assassin is already in the building, meaning that the boss must survive on his own wits. Some of the play's featured characters never appear on stage in person but rather are portrayed through a disembodied voice and on television screens. Stefan Kanfer, writing in the New Leader, noted that the author has provided an "ingenious yet undernourished plot."

Holmes based his play Goosebumps—Live on Stage on the popular children's book series by R.L. Stine. The author turned to the life and comedy of the late comedian George Burns for Say Goodnight, Gracie, a one-man, one-act play in which comedian Frank Gorshin originally played Burns. Writing in Variety, Jack Zink commented that the play "offers a rare symbiosis of box office and artistic ingredients that break through the litany of concerns (and complaints) regarding the solo show formula." As Zink added, "another is the deft manner in which playwright Holmes incarnates the presence of the equally lovable Gracie Allen without putting her onstage. She's represented in recreations of old radio broadcasts … and clips from the Burns & Allen TV show of the '50s."

In his play Thumbs Holmes tells the story of a bitchy television actress who has murdered her ex-husband because he was going to tell all about her in a book he was writing. The play takes place in a cabin in rural Vermont, where a serial killer who cuts off his victims' thumbs is also on the loose. Robert L. Daniels, writing in Variety, noted that "the setup is reasonably fast, and second-guessers may have a difficult time—should they be inclined—with the plot's whirling twists and turns."

Holmes turns his talents to novel writing with his first mystery Where the Truth Lies. The novel's narrator is K. O'Connor, a showbiz reporter circa 1970s. It seems that O'Connor may have the inside scoop unsolved on an 1959 murder of a beautiful redhead, whose body—missing some of her toes—was found by a famous comedy team in their bathtub. O'Connor has become involved because she is ghostwriting the memoir of one of the comedians, whose trademark was the pratfall. Although the comedy team had alibis at the time, they broke up their act shortly afterward. As O'Connor writes the memoir, she soon suspects that the breakup may have something to do with the murder.

Many reviewers of Where the Truth Lies noted that the comedy team is likely based on the famous '50s comedy duo, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Marc Kloszewski, writing in Library Journal, commented that Holmes's first novel is "notable for its wit, snappy dialog, and uncanny sense of Hollywood glitz, backstage politics, and dirty deeds."In a review in Booklist, Connie Fletcher commented that "the plotline will command reader's interest" and also noted the "dead-on way Holmes captures the comedy team's speech cadences and sybaritic habits." Newsweek contributor Kate Stroup called Where the Truth Lies a "wonderfully witty first novel" and later noted that it "has all the gloss and glamour you'd expect from a Hollywood whodunit."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Theatre, Film, and Television, Volume 13, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1995.

Harrison, Nigel, Songwriters, McFarland & Company (Jefferson, NC), 1998.

Larkin, Colin, editor, The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 3rd edition, MUZE (London, England), 1998.

Legends in Their Own Time, Prentice Hall General Reference (New York, NY), 1994.

PERIODICALS

Back Stage, April 27, 1990, Ellis Nassour, "Rupert Holmes Attempts to Talk about 'Accomplice' …, p. A1; May 4, 1990, Michael Sommers, review of Accomplice: A Comedy Thriller, p. 31A; November 20, 1992, David Sheward, review of Solitary Confinement, p. 40; November 12, 1993, Rob Kendt, review of Accomplice, p. W12; April 12, 2002, E. Kyle Minor, review of Thumbs, p. 15.

Back Stage West, June 14, 2001, Les Spindle, review of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, p. 12.

Book, July-August, 2003, review of Where the Truth Lies, p. 22.

Booklist, June 1, 2003, Connie Fletcher, review of Where the Truth Lies, p. 1749; February 15, 2005, Bill Ott, review of Swing, p. 1064.

Christian Science Monitor, April 5, 2005, Roderick Nordell, review of Swing.

Daily Variety, October 9, 2002, Michael Fleming, "'Drood' Dude's 'Truth,'" p. 1.

Entertainment Weekly, July 11, 2003, Melissa Rose Bernardo, review of Where the Truth Lies, p. 85.

Esquire, August, 2003, review of Where the Truth Lies, p. 24.

Hollywood Reporter, February 24, 2005, Ed Kaufman, review of Accomplice, p. 31.

Houston Chronicle, August 15, 2003, Michael J. Bandler, review of Where the Truth Lies.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2003, review of Where the Truth Lies, p. 702; January 15, 2005, review of Swing, p. 73.

Library Journal, June 15, 2003, Marc Kloszewski, review of Where the Truth Lies, p. 101; March 15, 2005, David Keymer, review of Swing, p. 78.

MBR Bookwatch, April, 2005, review of Swing.

Media Week, December 2, 1996, Betsy Sharkey, review of Remember WENN, p. 16.

Nation, June 11, 1990, Thomas M. Disch, review of Accomplice, p. 834.

New Leader, November 4, 1985, Leo Savage, review of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, p. 18; November 2, 1992, Stefan Kanfer, review of Solitary Confinement, p. 23.

Newsweek, July 21, 2003, Kate Stroup, review of Where the Truth Lies, p. 58.

New York Times, March 27, 2005, Marilyn Stasio, review of Swing.

People, June 2, 1986, Michael Small, "Musical Cutup Rupert Holmes Made the Best Stab at the Tonys with The Mystery of Edwin Drood," p. 55; July 28, 2003, Edward Karam, review of Where the Truth Lies, p. 37.

Publishers Weekly, June 2, 2003, review of Where the Truth Lies, p. 34; June 2, 2003, Bridget Kinsella, "Murder, with Music: Talks with Rupert Holmes," p. 33; January 31, 2005, review of Swing, p. 49.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 27, 2005, Harry Levins, review of Swing; December 29, 2004, Judith Newmark, "Mystery of Rupert Holmes Is How He Does It All—and on Little Sleep."

St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, FL), May 8, 2005, Jim Haskings, review of Swing.

Time, December 16, 1985, William A. Henry III, review of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, p. 83; November 23, 1992, review of Solitary Confinement, p. 81.

Variety, January 4, 1999, Markland Taylor, review of Goosebumps—Live on Stage, p. 112; September 4, 2000, Jack Zink, review of Say Goodnight, Gracie, p. 34; April 1, 2002, Robert L. Daniels, review of Thumbs, p. 42.