The memoirs of Mary Rodgers - writer, composer, Broadway royalty, and "a woman who tried everything."
"What am I, bologna?" Mary Rodgers Guettel (1931-2014) often said. She was referring to being stuck in the middle: the daughter of one composer and the mother of another. And not just any composers. Her father was Richard Rodgers, perhaps the greatest American melodist; her son Adam Guettel, a worthy successor. 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.