‘Sweeney’s’ Noteworthy Wordsmith

There was a sighting of a rare bird in American musical theater at the Ahmanson on Friday evening--Stephen Sondheim, composer-lyricist extraordinaire.

Sondheim is known for shunning the spotlight, and it took more than the usual bait to get him to the theater. Yes, there were stars of TV and stage Kelsey Grammer and Christine Baranski resurrecting Sondheim’s ghoulish musical “Sweeney Todd” as part of the “Reprise! Broadway’s Best in Concert” series.

There was even a dandy award, which is usually enough to get your typical Angeleno into a tux. Oscar-winning songwriter and American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers President Marilyn Bergman presented Sondheim with the group’s highest honor, its Founders Award, for being “the foremost composer-lyricist of the American theater of our time.”

But even that wasn’t enough to draw Sondheim to the opening night of the latest “Sweeney.” Bergman said he accepted only “on condition that the evening benefit a cause close to his heart--the growth of the American musical theater.” And so it did. The gala will support the nonprofit organization Reprise and the ASCAP Foundation, which helps young writers.

At the opening-night bash, Sondheim was, not surprisingly, press-shy. But his praises were sung by the two Mrs. Lovetts--Angela Lansbury, who originated the role of London’s most macabre meat-pie maker, and her worthy successor, Baranski.

“I shall forever be grateful to Stephen for bringing me to an audience that I would never have reached otherwise,” Lansbury said of her debut in “Sweeney” 20 years ago. “All the musical students and young singers flocked to see the show because this was a totally breakthrough innovative piece of musicology which they’d never seen the likes of.”

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Producer Rachel Pfeffer didn’t get an award at USC Saturday evening, and she couldn’t have been happier. The honors went to a couple of writers she’d fixed up, professionally speaking. The university’s Scripter Award for the best film adaptation of a book went to the scribes behind “A Civil Action”--bestselling author Jonathan Harr and screenwriter Steven Zaillian, who added this year’s Scripter to his two others for “Schindler’s List”(1994) and “Awakenings” (1991).

So pooh on the Oscars.

“This is a very special award,” said Pfeffer, “and part of it is I’ve been seen around town ranting and raving that there’s been a terrible misunderstanding that Steve Zaillian has not gotten an Oscar nomination. I cried at the Writers Guild Awards when he didn’t win. It’s been four years of my life, and it’s the only thing I’ve done in these four years.”

Zaillian told the black-tie crowd supporting the USC libraries that Pfeffer had steered the “Civil Action” project along a difficult course from Robert Redford’s Wildwood Enterprises to Disney, which made the bleak courtroom drama with Paramount Pictures.

“During that time, she lost her job defending it--the casting and me--and there aren’t many people who will do that, no matter how much they like you or the project,” Zaillian said.

Pfeffer later declined to comment.

Here’s something else unusual about “A Civil Action”: The author and the screenwriter still like each other. Harr said they knew they were literary soul mates when they met in L.A. four years ago.

“We had immediate rapport,” Harr said. “ I was still smoking then, and when I came down to the hotel lobby, he was smoking a cigarette. I thought that was great. He was wearing cowboy boots, and so was I. He was wearing jeans, and I was wearing jeans. We just hit it off. So I knew my book was in very good hands.”

USC also presented its first Literati Commendation to Los Angeles Times Publisher Mark Willes in honor of the paper’s “Reading by 9” initiative.

Irene Lacher’s Out & About column runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on Page 2.