Mary Rodgers, 'Freaky Friday' Author And Broadway Composer, Dies At 83

 By MARK KENNEDY - HuffPost Books                                   

NEW YORK (AP) — Mary Rodgers, the daughter of Broadway icon Richard Rodgers who found her own fame as composer of the 1959 musical "Once Upon a Mattress" and as the author of the body-shifting book "Freaky Friday," has died. She was 83.

Rodgers died Thursday at her home in Manhattan after a long illness, her son Alec Guettel said.
Rodgers' hit "Once Upon a Mattress," a musical adaptation of the Hans Christian Anderson fable "The Princess and the Pea," made a star of Carol Burnett. A Broadway revival in 1996 starred Sarah Jessica Parker. Her other shows include "From A to Z," a revue featuring her songs, and two other short-lived shows: "Hot Spot" and "The Madwoman of Central Park West," a one-person musical starring Phyllis Newman.

She was also a children's book author who scored big with "Freaky Friday," in which a mother and daughter trade bodies. The book was twice adapted into a Disney movie, most recently in 2003 starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan. Her other books include "A Billion for Boris," ''Summer Switch" and "The Rotten Book."

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