After the success of the ballet Fancy Free, the set designer Oliver Smith persuaded Bernstein and Jerry Robbins
to expand it into a musical. Lenny insisted that his friends from the Revuers, Betty Comden and Adolph
Green be brought in to write the book and lyrics. From June to December 1944 On the Town was written with
great seriousness despite the light-hearted tone of the final piece. The competitiveness of the sailors in Fancy
Free was reversed and the women were given more substantial characters. More than twenty musical numbers
were written for the show (three were dropped before the New York premiere) and it made a number of 'firsts'.
It was the first American musical to be composed by a classically trained 'symphonist', broke interracial new
ground by having black and white dancers side by side and was the first show to be bought unseen by a
Hollywood film company.

Betty Comden interviewed in 1995 :

"It happened in such a complicated way, as everything does. First of all, Jerome Robbins and Leonard
Bernstein had done the ballet 'Fancy Free' and they both became quite famous...Adolph and I were just
working in the nightclub called 'The Blue Angel.' We were old friends of Leonard's...we knew him
personally for five or six years before that, when we were performing as The Revuers, and he knew
all of our material backwards. Anyway, the idea came of doing a full-length version of the show that
Jerry and Lenny did together. He suggested us to write the book and lyrics, as he was crazy about our
material, and we were all so close. So that's how the four of us got together to do the show...we had to
audition and try to raise money, but when George Abbott came into the picture and said he would direct
it, then it became a reality, and it took six months between the time we started to work, and the time it
opened (laughs), which is a very short time!...It was (our) first show and we wrote ourselves parts in it.
It was just tremendously exciting - one year we were trying to make a living, working with this partnership
as a nightclub act, and the next year we have this big hit on Broadway, that we did the book and the lyrics
for, and that we're appearing in. It was a great moment, and Mr. Abbott was terrific, and of course,
working with our old friend Leonard was a great thrill."
 

    Bernstein, Robbins, Comden and Green in 1944
 

On the Town premiered in New York at the Adelphi Theater on December 28th 1944 and received rave reviews.
It ran for a total of 436 performances and grossed over $2 million. Lenny's star was further on the rise. One of the
outcomes from On the Town was the reaction of Serge Koussevitzky. Lenny virtually bowed to Koussevitzky's
at-length lecture that a potentially great conductor should not dissipate his talents thus. Throughout the remainder
of the forties Bernstein concentrated on conducting, with composing and concert piano performances relegated
to the occasional.

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