About Carol Hall
Carol Hall was an American composer and songwriter best known for her contributions to the American songbook and musical theater. She earned national acclaim for her witty lyrics and catchy score to the award-winning Broadway show, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which premiered in the late 1970s and is now being developed for a revival on Broadway. Her work often blends humor with heartfelt moments, creating memorable songs that continue to delight and touch audiences. Most composers and lyricists who write for the theater are dedicated to just that, but Carol also wrote for recording artists, children’s television and cabaret, carving out a unique niche with her tender ballads and playful, yet sophisticated style. Carol Hall remains a distinctive voice in American popular song and musical theater, celebrated for her succinct and insightful lyrics, sharp wit and engaging melodies.
The first Carol Hall song that achieved high visibility was “Jenny Rebecca.” She originally wrote it as a gift for the first friend of hers to have a baby. The song was soon performed by cabaret legend Mabel Mercer and later recorded by a young Barbra Streisand, and numerous others.
Over the years, Carol’s songs have also been performed by Tony Bennett, Harry Belafonte, Barbara Cook, Helen Reddy, Lena Horne, Chita Rivera, Michael Feinstein, Mark Murphy, Mabel Mercer, LeAnn Rimes, Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, Olivia Newton-John, Maureen McGovern, Miriam Makeba, RuPaul, Frederica von Stade, KT Sullivan, Kermit the Frog, and Big Bird, among others.
Her musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas won two Drama Desk Awards for lyrics and music, received a Grammy nomination for its cast album, and ran on Broadway for almost five years. In 1982, it was adapted into a film starring Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton. Dolly’s recording of Carol’s song “Hard Candy Christmas” won an ASCAP Most Performed Country Song Award. The film also earned Charles Durning an Oscar nomination for his performance of “The Sidestep” as the Governor of Texas. A national tour of the musical, starring the legendary Ann-Margret, ran for more than a year and a half.
In 2015, Cyndi Lauper recorded “Hard Candy Christmas” as a duet with Alison Krauss on her album Detour. In 2016, Reba McEntire included the song on her album My Kind of Christmas, released through Cracker Barrel. The song has been listed among The Best Christmas Songs Ever by Hal Leonard Corporation.
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas continues to be one of the most frequently performed stock and amateur musicals around the world and has just been optioned for a Broadway revival.
Carol also had a long career writing for children. For more than ten years she contributed songs to such shows as Sesame Street, Big Blue Marble, The Muppet Show and The Electric Company. She was one of the principal contributors to Marlo Thomas’s Free to Be… You and Me, which won an Emmy Award and went gold as an album. She later contributed to Free to Be… a Family and Thanks & Giving: All Year Long. She also wrote the music and lyrics for Max & Ruby (TheatreWorks, NYC), a musical which toured nationally for four years.
She usually wrote both music and lyrics but occasionally collaborated with other writers such as Lesley Gore, Steven Lutvak, Robert Burke, Alex Rybeck, Bill Evans, Sam Pottle, Larry Grossman and Bobby Gosh. Late in her career she was the lyricist for A Christmas Memory, based on Truman Capote’s short story, with a libretto by Duane Poole and music by Larry Grossman. The show premiered in 2010 at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, California, where it received rave reviews and broke attendance records. It was later staged at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in 2011 and premiered in New York at the Irish Repertory Theatre in December 2014.
Her other stage work included Good Sports (Goodspeed Theatre), Paper Moon (Paper Mill Playhouse), Are We There Yet? (Williamstown Theatre Festival), To Whom It May Concern (Off-Broadway), and songs for A… My Name Is Alice and A… My Name Is Still Alice. Her collection of non-musical one-act plays, The Days Are As Grass, was performed at the Woodstock Fringe Festival, Bay Street Theater, the Actors Studio Playwrights Unit in New York City, and Theatre of the Spirit in Newcastle, Maine. It, and To Whom It May Concern and Whorehouse, are available for production through Concord Theatricals.
Carol was a Lifetime Member of the Dramatists Guild Council, a TONY Nominator and TONY Voter, and Vice-President of the Dramatists Guild Foundation. She conducted Master Classes at the International Cabaret Conference at Yale University and served as a moderator in the Playwrights/Directors Workshop of the Actors Studio in New York City. In 2015, the DGF decided to allocate a large work-space in the offices of the DGF, specifically for writers’ use and, without hesitation, Carol gifted the seed money to start what is now “The Music Hall.”
Carol Hall died on October 11, 2018, at the age of 82, from the impact of logopenic primary progressive aphasia, a rare form of dementia. She was married to media producer Leonard Majzlin and was the mother of Susannah Blinkoff, a songwriter, recording artist, screenwriter and actor, and Daniel Blinkoff, an actor. Daniel, along with his wife and actor, Tamlyn Tomita, recently founded The Outside In Theater, a new, non-profit theater in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.
In 2023, Leonard, and Carol’s children, along with their respective spouses, Tamlyn Tomita and Jordan Corngold, provided a generous endowment gift to the Dramatists Guild Foundation that fully underwrites “The Music Hall” for writers’ use, free of charge, in perpetuity.
