Richard Eldridge Maltby, Jr.[1] (born October 6, 1937) is an American theatre director and producer, lyricist, and screenwriter. He is also well known as a constructor of cryptic crossword puzzles. He has done this for Harper's Magazine, sometimes in collaboration with E. R. Galli (prior to 1995), since the January 1976 issue.
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Maltby was born in Ripon, Wisconsin, the son of Virginia (née Hosegood) and Richard Maltby, Sr., a well-known orchestra leader.[1] He has conceived and directed the only two musical revues to ever win the Tony Award for Best Musical: Ain't Misbehavin' (1978: Tony, N.Y. Drama Critics, Outer Critics, Drama Desk Awards, also Tony Award for Best Director) and Fosse (1999: Tony, Outer Critics, Drama Desk Awards).
He was director/co-lyricist for the American version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Song and Dance, (1986) starring Bernadette Peters. He was co-lyricist for Miss Saigon (Evening Standard Award 1990; Tony nomination: Best Score, 1991).
Maltby and David Shire started working together as students at Yale University; their first Broadway credit was in 1968, when their song "The Girl of the Minute" was used in the revue New Faces of 1968. In 1977 the Manhattan Theatre Club produced a review of their earlier songs, written for other works, finally titled Starting Here, Starting Now.[2] With composer Shire, Maltby was the director and lyricist for Baby, (1983, book by Sybille Pearson) and the lyricist for Big, (1996, book by John Weidman). Also with Shire, he conceived and wrote the lyrics for Take Flight (book by John Weidman), which had its world premiere in July 2007 at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London.[3]
He also conceived and directed Ring Of Fire, The Johnny Cash Musical Show, (2006). He is co-bookwriter/lyricist for The Pirate Queen (2007).[4] He was most recently represented on Broadway as the director of the new, original musical The Story of My Life by composer/lyricist Neil Bartram and book writer Brian Hill. That musical had a brief run at the Booth Theatre in February 2009.[5] and received a 2009 Drama Desk Award nomination for outstanding production of a musical.
Maltby married twice: first to Barbara Black Sudler on June 5, 1965 (they had two children, Nicholas and David), and second, in 1987, to Janet Brenner (they had three children, Jordan Maltby, Emily and Charlotte).
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