Jerry Ross

In 1954 and 1955, Jerry Ross and his writing partner Richard Adler did something no songwriting team had done before — they wrote two consecutive Broadway musicals that both won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The Pajama Game. Then Damn Yankees. Both ran over a thousand performances. Songs from the shows — “Hey There,” “Hernando’s Hideaway,” “Whatever Lola Wants,” “(You Gotta Have) Heart” — dominated the radio and the charts.

Jerry Ross was 29 years old. He had a wife he adored, a baby daughter, and the two biggest shows on Broadway. He was, by every account, a man of extraordinary range — a former child performer with a philosopher’s mind, as likely to stay up for hours dissecting an idea as to walk into a room and change its energy. He brought that intensity to everything — his music, his marriage, his too-short life.

He died on November 11, 1955. Both shows were still running.

Seventy-one years later, they still are.