Tributes have been paid to triple Tony Award-winning writer Thomas Meehan who has passed away at the age of 88.
Widely seen as one of Broadway’s leading librettists, Meehan won his first Tony Award for his work with lyricist/director Martin Charmin and composer Charles Strouse in turning the comic strip Little Orphan Annie into the 1970s smash hit Annie.
It was long-time friend and collaborator Charmin who would first spot Meehan’s talent as a wordsmith after reading comic pieces he had written for the prestigious New Yorker magazine.
Charmin brought him in to write for a 1970 TV special he was producing centred on Anne Bancroft. Meehan’s work on the show, Annie – The Women in the Life of a Man, won him an Emmy Award and launched a glittering career that would take him from screen to stage.
Meehan won another Tony Award for his work on The Producers with Mel Brooks and a third for Hairspray (co-written with Mark O’Donnell).
His many credits include the book for major musicals including I Remember Mama (1979), Bombay Dreams (2004), Elf (2010) and Rocky (2014).
Brooks, who also worked with Meehan on the screenplays for movies including Spaceballs and the stage version of his Young Frankenstein, was among the stars paying tribute to Meehan on Twitter this week.
The writer and director wrote: “Stunned by the news that my friend/co-writer Tom Meehan has died. I’ll miss his sweetness and talent. We have all lost a giant of the theatre.”
A tribute from the organisers of the Tony Awards read: “Master librettist Thomas Meehan won Tonys for writing Hairspray, The Producers and Annie. He will be missed. Rest in peace.”
In an interview about his glittering career with The New York Observer in 1999, Meehan was quoted as saying: “I wrote stories that were serious, very sombre, trying to be in the style of William Faulkner. My career has always been that every time I try something really serious, it’s no good, but if I try to be funny, then it works.”
Angela Thomas
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