Tonight (1956 song) Tonight (1956 song) "Tonight" is a popular song with music written by Leonard Bernstein and the lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and was published in 1956. It was introduced in the Broadway musical "West Side Story." The movie version, featuring vocals by Marni Nixon (dubbing Natalie Wood) and Jimmy Bryant (dubbing Richard Beymer), finished at #59 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. The song was revived in 1961 on single records in versions by Ferrante & Teicher (#8 pop, #2 easy listening) and Eddie Fisher, whose version narrowly missed the Top 40. Shirley Bassey recorded
Stephen Sondheim a musical adaption of "Beggar on Horseback" (a 1924 play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, with permission from Kaufman) which had three performances. A member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, he graduated "magna cum laude" in 1950. "A few painful years of struggle" followed, when Sondheim auditioned songs, lived in his father's dining room to save money and spent time in Hollywood writing for the television series "Topper". He devoured 1940s and 1950s films, and has called cinema his "basic language"; his film knowledge got him through "The $64,000 Question" contestant tryouts. Sondheim dislikes movie musicals, favoring