John La Touche (lyricist)

John La Touche (lyricist)

John Treville Latouche (La Touche) (November 13, 1914, Baltimore, Maryland – August 7, 1956, Calais, Vermont) was a musician and writer.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Latouche's family moved to Richmond, Virginia when he was four months old. Much of his work included Rabelaisian humor and was therefore often censored or protested against. He attended Columbia University but never graduated.

In 1937 he had two songs in the revue Pins and Needles. In 1939 for the show Sing For Your Supper he wrote the lyrics for "Ballad for Uncle Sam", later retitled "Ballad for Americans", with music by Earl Robinson. It was featured at both the 1939 Republican Convention and the convention of the American Communist Party, and was extremely popular in 1940s America. This 13-minute cantata to American democracy was written for a soloist and as well a full orchestra. When performed on the CBS Radio network by singer Paul Robeson, it became a national success. Subsequently, both Robeson and Bing Crosby regularly performed it. Actor and singer Brock Peters also made a notable recording of the cantata.

He provided the lyrics for Vernon Duke's songs (including, with Ted Fetter, "Taking A Chance On Love") for the musical Cabin in the Sky (1940) and also for Duke's musical Banjo Eyes which starred Eddie Cantor (1941). He appeared as The Gangster in the experimental film Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947), and wrote the lyrics for the song "The Girl With the Pre-Fabricated Heart" (music by Louis Applebaum) which accompanies the sequence conceived by Ferdinand Leger.

He wrote the book and lyrics for The Golden Apple in 1954 with music by Jerome Moross, which won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical. In 1955 he provided additional lyrics for Leonard Bernstein's Candide. He also wrote the libretto to Douglas Moore's opera The Ballad of Baby Doe, one of the few American operas to join the standard repertoire. In 1955, he collaborated with co-writer Sam Locke and composer James Mundy on the Carol Channing vehicle The Vamp, which closed after a run of only 60 performances. He had been working with David Merrick on musicalizing the Eugene O'Neill play Ah, Wilderness but died during the writing of it (It would later become Take Me Along).

He was a protégé of James Branch Cabell and friends with writers Gore Vidal and Jack Woodford. Latouche dated Louella Woodford when they were both teenagers. He also was friends of the architect William Alexander Levy, who designed and built Hangover House for travel writer Richard Halliburton, and writer Paul Mooney, who assisted Halliburton in several of his classic travel works. See Gerry Max, Horizon Chasers - The Lives and Adventures of Richard Halliburton and Paul Mooney (McFarland, 2007) for references.

Latouche died of a sudden heart attack at his Calais, Vermont home at the age of 41.

The New York Theatre Company produced Taking a Chance on Love - The Lyrics and Life of John LaTouche, A New Musical Revue ("The Bad Boy of Broadway Is Back") in 2000, with notes by Ned Rorem (OC-4444: Original Cast Records, Box 496, Georgetown, CT 06827). The John LaTouche Archive, containing journals, family letters, scrapbooks of photographs and newspaper articles, is housed at Columbia University. Out in the World - Selected Letters of Jane Bowles 1935-1970, edited by Millicent Dillon (Black Sparrow Press, Santa Barbara, 1985), contains a number of references to LaTouche, and his circle of friends and acquaintances. Also read Virginia Spencer Carr, Paul Bowles - A Life (Scribner: New York London Toronto and Sydney, c2004) for frequent snapshot references to LaTouche.