Leigh worked as a copy writer for radio stations and advertising agencies.[3] Always writing stories and poems, in 1951, when urged to write songs by a musical publisher who gave her a contract, she wrote "I'm Waiting Just for You" with Henry Glover, and two years later, "Young at Heart."[4]
Leigh's lyrics for Broadway shows include Peter Pan, Wildcat, Little Me, and How Now, Dow Jones.[1] The last was an original idea of Leigh's, though Max Shulman wrote the script. She provided lyrics for the scores to the films The Cardinal in 1963 and Father Goose in 1964. In 1969 she wrote the lyrics for the musical Gatsby, with the score by Lee Pockriss and book by Hugh Wheeler.[5]
She wrote the lyrics for two other unproduced musicals,Caesar's Wife, again with music by Pockriss, about Julius Caesar's third wife, Calpurnia, and Juliet, based on the Fellini movie Juliet of the Spirits, with music by Morton Gould.[6]
Leigh was working with Marvin Hamlisch on the musical Smile when she died on November 19, 1983, of a heart attack.[4][1] She was divorced from David Cunningham Jr.[when?] Leigh was inducted posthumously into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985.[4]
^The New York Times. A Musical Version of ‘Gatsby,' Four Decades Late by Rachel Lee Harris, September 29, 2011.
^The New York Times, Unearthing Lost Gems in Career of Lyricist ‘Unsung Carolyn Leigh' Reveals Charm of a Gatsby Musical by Stephen Holden, April 8, 2014.
