In a career spanning more than 60 years, Steve Lawrence, who has died aged 88 from complications due to Alzheimer’s disease, enjoyed enduring success as a recording artist and star of television, film and the Broadway stage. He was famous both as a solo artist and as half of the singing duo Steve and Eydie, where he was joined by Eydie Gormé, to whom he was married from 1957 until her death in 2013.
His light, easy-listening vocal style helped him to make 33 appearances on the US Billboard chart between 1952 and 1966, five of them reaching the Top 10. He topped the chart once, with his million-selling version of the Carole King/Jerry Goffin song Go Away Little Girl from 1962. He earned a 1961 Grammy nomination for his Top 10 hit Portrait of My Love.
With Gormé, Lawrence became a regular on disc, in TV entertainment and game shows, and on theatre and nightclub stages across the US. The title track of their first album as a duo, We Got Us, took the 1960 Grammy award for best performance by a vocal group. They were a regular attraction in Las Vegas, headlining at top venues including the Sands, the Sahara and Caesars Palace. They won the Musical Variety Act of the Year four times at the Las Vegas Entertainment Awards.
In 1968 the duo starred in the Broadway musical Golden Rainbow, best remembered for Lawrence’s performance of I’ve Gotta Be Me. The song later became a hit for Sammy Davis Jr. In 1981, they gave a sold-out series of concerts at Carnegie Hall, New York.
The duo struck a popular nerve with their trio of TV specials dedicated to the songwriters Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and George and Ira Gershwin. The Gershwin show (1975) was Emmy-nominated, and they won an Emmy for Steve & Eydie Celebrate Irving Berlin (1978). In 1995, the duo were awarded the Sammy Cahn lifetime achievement award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Lawrence was born Sidney Liebowitz, in the Brownsville district of Brooklyn, New York. His father, Max, was a house painter as well as a cantor at the Beth Sholom Tomchei Harav synagogue. His mother, Anna (nee Gelb), was a housewife. Sidney had two brothers, and all three of them showed musical talent.
By the time he was eight Sidney was singing in the synagogue, and later began learning the piano and the saxophone. He was already composing songs at the age of 12, and while attending Thomas Jefferson high school in Brooklyn he would sneak off to the music publishing companies in Manhattan’s Brill Building, hoping to be employed as a singer. He renamed himself Steve Lawrence, borrowing the names from a couple of his nephews.
He was inspired by Frank Sinatra. “I must have been 15 years old when I heard him,” he said. “His influence – not only on me, but everyone who came after him – was so indelible, so powerful.”
Like Sinatra, Lawrence was never persuaded to move into rock’n’roll, much preferring the great American songwriters such as Porter and the Gershwins. “I related to what they were writing because it was much more melodic,” he explained. “By and large these people were bright, educated or extremely gifted.”
In April 1952, the 16-year-old Lawrence signed a contract with King Records after winning a talent contest on Arthur Godfrey’s CBS TV show, which called for him to record eight singles over the next two years. He reached the Top 30 with Poinciana, which sold 100,000 copies. His debut album, called merely Steve Lawrence, was released the following year. He was recruited to perform regularly on Steve Allen’s late-night television show. This was originally a local New York programme, but in 1954 it went national (renamed The Tonight Show), affording Lawrence much greater exposure. Gormé was another regular on the show, and they felt both a musical and personal chemistry.
“I think Steve Allen was the biggest thing that happened to me,” Lawrence commented. “Every night I was called upon to do something different. In its own way, it was better than vaudeville.” He and Gormé teamed up, and married in Las Vegas in December 1957, despite the reservations of Lawrence’s mother. Gormé explained to the New York Times: “To the day his mother died, she said I wasn’t Jewish but Spanish.”
Meanwhile Lawrence signed a recording deal with Coral Records, and scored sizeable hits with The Banana Boat Song and Party Doll. In the summer of 1958, Lawrence and Gormé stood in for Allen and co-hosted a variety show on NBC.
In 1958 Lawrence was drafted into the US army, and during his two-year military stint he sang with the US army band. Back in civilian life, he picked up where he had left off. In 1964 he garnered critical plaudits for his performance in the Broadway show What Makes Sammy Run?, a musical adaptation of Budd Schulberg’s novel about power struggles in Hollywood.
Lawrence’s portrayal of the ruthlessly ambitious Sammy Glick brought him a New York Drama Critics’ Circle award and a Tony award nomination. He told the New York Post: “In me, there’s a drive that wants to be successful, but I’m not going to step on anybody – at least not consciously.”
He subsequently made a number of memorable screen appearances, not least as the manager Maury Sline in The Blues Brothers (1980), alongside John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. He returned to the role for the 1998 sequel, Blues Brothers 2000. He also featured in the Steve Martin vehicle The Lonely Guy (1984), and appeared in numerous TV shows including Night Gallery, Murder, She Wrote and Frasier.
Lawrence and Gormé had become good friends with Sinatra, frequently staying at his Palm Springs residence, and they were his opening act on his Diamond Jubilee Tour of 1990-91. Lawrence was angered by a Saturday Night Live TV sketch that depicted them as sycophants to Sinatra, and secured a guarantee that the item would not be syndicated.
He is survived by his son David, a composer. A younger son, Michael, died of a heart condition in 1986.
• Steve Lawrence (Sidney Liebowitz), singer and actor, 8 July 1935; died 7 March 2024
