They first worked together in 1962, on Flora the Red Menace, which was produced by Hal Prince, directed by George Abbott, and with book by George Abbott and Robert Russell. It was the musical in which Liza Minnelli made her Broadway debut. Kander and Ebb wrote material for Minnelli and Chita Rivera for their appearances live and on television.
Their greatest acclaim came from the musical and filmCabaret. The musical was a major success, with a Broadway run of over 1100 performances. It won a Tony Award as the season's best musical, and its original cast recording won a Grammy. The film won eight Academy Awards. The 2002 film Chicago, based on their initially poorly-received musical of the same name, was also a great success, including an Oscar nomination for the two of them.
Kander and Ebb's songs make a powerful cumulative statement regarding the importance of alternative values, and are the more remarkable for making that statement in a theatrical form more easily given to escapism than to social comment.
Kander and Ebb write music for characters who, like Flora, have learned, or are in the process of learning, to resist any pressure to conform, particularly when the social system exerting that pressure is itself corrupt ("You Are You").
Kander and Ebb's interest in persons who are barely on the margins of respectability, or who have been left behind entirely by the American Dream, drives them repeatedly to skewer the hypocrisy of social orthodoxy.
Fred Ebb (born 1932) is the lyricist half of the award-winning songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.
Kander and Ebb next collaborated with Richard Morris on Golden Gate, a play that did not open in San Francisco as planned but did so impress influential director-producer Harold Prince that he asked the pair to write the songs for the Broadwaymusical, Flora the Red Menace.
Kander and Ebb's 70 Girls 70 was a 1999 revival at the York.
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