History: Music / LeslieBricusse

Leslie Bricusse (1931-) is a noted musical playwright with a much spottier track record in film.

His stage career includes at least one classic, ''Stop The World I Want To Get Off'', starring his regular partner, Anthony Newley.

In film, Bricusse's career includes two classic Film/JamesBond theme songs: "Film/{{Goldfinger}} and ''Film/YouOnlyLiveTwice''.

As for getting into film as a screenwriter, he got his big break replacing Alan Jay Lerner (who stalled for over a year) in 1966 to write the film version of ''Film/DoctorDolittle'' and quickly impressed producer Arthur Jacobs with a wealth of story ideas from their first meeting and followed up with a full treatment with song suggestions in two months later. However, the realities writing for such a TroubledProduction proved a nightmare, especially working with Rex Harrison who was being a Prima Donna {{Jerkass}} who demanded endless contradictory rewrites while continually insulting Newley. Furthermore, Bricusse himself blundered when he accidentally took an original plot point from a competing would-be producer's script and put it in his own story and got the studio into a $4.5 million plaigerism lawsuit. In the end, Bricusse would get an Oscar for the song "Talk to the Animals".

Bricusse later followed with musical film versions of ''{{Film/Scrooge 1970}}'' and ''Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory'' which both performed poorly but create classic songs "Thank You Very Much" for the former and "The Candyman" and "Pure Imagination" for the latter.
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