Stephen Sondheim suggested evening the percentage at two percent each, but Sondheim refused because he wanted the credit. Sondheim later said he wished "someone stuffed a handkerchief in my mouth because it would have been nice to get that extra percentage". After "West Side Story" opened, Shevelove lamented the lack of "low-brow comedy" on Broadway and mentioned a possible musical based on Plautus' Roman comedies. When Sondheim was interested in the idea he called a friend, Larry Gelbart, to co-write the script. The show went through a number of drafts, and was interrupted briefly by Sondheim's next project. In 1959, Sondheim was
Stephen Sondheim parents divorced, on a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. As the only child of well-to-do parents living in the San Remo on Central Park West, he was described in Meryle Secrest's biography ("Stephen Sondheim: A Life") as an isolated, emotionally-neglected child. When he lived in New York, Sondheim attended ECFS, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School known simply as "Fieldston". He later attended the New York Military Academy and George School, a private Quaker preparatory school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where he wrote his first musical, "By George," and from which he graduated in 1946. Sondheim spent several summers at Camp Androscoggin.