- Born
- Died
- Composer, author and recording executive Goddard Lieberson was educated at the University of Washington where he studied with George Frederick McKay, and with Bernard Rogers at the Eastman School of Music. He earned honorary degrees from Temple University and the Cleveland School of Music. Joining the Masterworks Department of Columbia Records in 1939, he was named department director, then vice-president of Masterworks Artists-and-Repertoire, executive vice-president in 1949, and from 1956 to 1966, president. Lieberson also became a vice-president of the CBS board of directors, the chairman of the CBS Foundation, a Yale University Library committee member, honorable curator of the Yale Coll. Literature American Musical Theatre, chairman of Music Advisory Comm. at Hopkins Center, Dartmouth, and in 1966, president of the CBS Columbia Group.
- IMDb mini biography by: Lou Rugani
- SpouseVera Zorina(April 2, 1946 - May 29, 1977) (his death, 2 children)
- Two sons: Peter Lieberson is a composer; Jonathan has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University.
- On his Broadway show albums, Lieberson insisted that no dialogue from the shows be included unless absolutely necessary, and even then, as little as possible. (He assumed listeners would grow impatient with repeated hearings of dialogue.) He solved the problem of "My Fair Lady" ending with spoken dialogue by having the record album finish off with an orchestral version of the entire chorus of "I Could Have Danced All Night", a device that was repeated on the London cast album in 1959, but not on the 1964 film soundtrack album.
- Lieberson also solved the problem of "South Pacific" ending with no singing by having Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza sing the Act I reprise of "Some Enchanted Evening" at the end of the album, rather than just before Mary Martin's "(I'm In Love With) A Wonderful Guy". This idea proved so popular that RCA Victor Records imitated it when they released the 1958 film soundtrack album.
- It was while Liberson was an executive at Columbia Records that five historic albums of complete non-musical Broadway plays were made - the Paul Robeson "Othello" (the first Broadway Shakespearean production ever recorded), the 1950 production of George Bernard Shaw's "Don Juan in Hell", the 1953 staged reading of Stephen Vincent Benet's "John Brown's Body", the original Broadway cast recording of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and the 1964 Richard Burton "Hamlet". Those productions of "Othello" and "Hamlet" still hold the record as the two longest-running Shakespeare stage productions ever presented in the United States.
- Highly respected Columbia (a.k.a. Sony) Records recording executive who was responsible for the introduction of the 33 1/3 RPM LP; after many highly influential years there, he finally became president of the company in 1956, served until 1971, then again from 1973 to 1975.
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