Hank Beebe, prolific songwriter, award-winning composer, and longtime show producer, has died at 96
His big hit was 1963's 'The Cowboy and the Tiger,' and he composed thousands of songs, scores, and musical shows over 70 years.
Hank Beebe, 96, formerly of Philadelphia, a prolific songwriter, award-winning composer, longtime show producer, and veteran, died Sunday, Feb. 5, of complications from pneumonia at his home in Portland, Maine.
Versatile in how and where he presented his vast body of work, and eclectic in his ideas, Mr. Beebe wrote countless songs, scores, and musical productions, many of which are still performed by choirs, singers, actors, and orchestras in theaters, churches, and schools around the world. He wrote so many off-Broadway and community-theater musicals, choral songs, and industrial-show ditties over his 70-year career that even he had to stop counting years ago.
Some of his shows and songs are recorded on film and video, and his big hit, The Cowboy and the Tiger, starred Jack Gilford and was shown twice on network TV in 1963 after a two-year run off-Broadway. In 1976, he and collaborating lyricist Bill Heyer won an Outer Critics Award for Tuscaloosa’s Calling Me But I’m Not Going as best off-Broadway musical.
He worked with Jerry Lewis and Lynn Redgrave on the 1977 theatrical revival of Hellzapoppin, and wrote thousands of choral songs about religion, humor, and everyday life that have been performed at venues around the country and in Hungary, Germany, Russia, and elsewhere.
“Hank was so wonderful and flexible in terms of how he worked with us,” Sonny Fox, producer of The Cowboy and the Tiger, said in a recent video interview. “It was one of my proudest achievements.”
The hour-long TV show featured a little boy cowboy and a singing tiger. “It is about a basic human need, the need to be needed,” Mr. Beebe said in a video interview. “It’s universal.”
Mr. Beebe also composed industrial musicals when General Electric, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, American Standard, and other corporations began using live and recorded song-and-dance routines to energize national sales meetings and motivate staff. Beginning in the 1960s, he and Heyer came up with snappy songs such as “Diesel Dazzle” for a Detroit Diesel Corp. show and ”Got to Investigate Silicones” for a General Electric promotion.
That work became better-known after coauthors Steve Young and Sport Murphy wrote Everything’s Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals in 2013, and Young called Heyer and Mr. Beebe the John Lennon and Paul McCartney of industrial music.
“Seeing the new products revealed to them with singing and dancing and fireworks made [the salespeople] more enthusiastic, and enthusiasm is what you need to sell,” Mr. Beebe told the Portland Press Herald in 2015.
Mr. Beebe’s music was also featured in Dava Whisenant’s Bathtubs Over Broadway, a 2018 documentary about industrial musicals. Since 1980, when he moved from New York to Maine, Mr. Beebe, wife Nancy, daughter Selby Beebe-Lawson, and other family members have revitalized several local theaters and founded the Schoolhouse Arts Center and Embassy Players.
He published his memoir, I Chose to Compose — Against the Advice of Just About Everyone, in 2017 and shared 140 personal emails of music and musings he called “Comfort in Hard Times” with family and friends during the pandemic.
Mr. Beebe and his wife lived at Westtown School while he served as the school’s music director in the early 1950s. They moved to Philadelphia in the late ‘50s, and he studied with composer Vincent Persichetti at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music before moving to New York in 1965.
“He loved his audience and his actors,” his wife said. “He cared about people.”
Harold H. Beebe Jr. was born July 16, 1926, in Pitman. He played piano as a boy, learned music by ear, and liked to attend shows at the old Steel Pier in Atlantic City.
He attended Pitman High School for a while but moved to Florida with his family and graduated there. He served a few years in the Navy and afterward earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in musical composition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He met Nancy Alt at a birthday party, and they married in 1952 and had daughters Selby and Jane. He welcomed longtime friend Linda Ford into their family as another daughter, and the household was often abuzz with four generations.
He and his wife played summer stock in Somer’s Point for a few years when they lived in Philadelphia, and he enjoyed the Philadelphia Orchestra. Later, they hosted weekly concerts and neighborhood sing-alongs in their living room and elsewhere in Maine.
He never really retired, and more than two dozen accolades are posted to his online tribute.
“He was a friend, a mentor, a colleague, and an inspiration to many in the world of musical theater and far beyond,” his family said in a tribute. “Hank represented the best of humanity in so many ways.”
In addition to his wife, daughters, and Ford, Mr. Beebe is survived by five grandchildren, four great-granddaughters, and other relatives. A sister and brother died earlier.
A musical celebration of his life was held Feb. 18.
Donations in his name may be made to St. Elizabeth’s Jubliee Center, P.O. Box 4036, Portland, Maine 04101.