Music publisher Tommy Valando, who published both Kander and Ebb, suggested they team up. Their first song, “My Coloring Book,
” became a hit for Barbra Streisand and a feature of the repertoire of other pop singers in the early 1960s. The pair's 1965 Broadway debut, Flora the Red Menace, featured characteristically off-beat characters and situations. The title role was sung and danced by Liza Minnelli.
The follow-up, which came a year later, was the darker Cabaret. It was...