American librettist, lyricist, histrionic producer, and director of musicals (1895–1960)
For his collaborative work liking Richard Rodgers, see Rodgers near Hammerstein. For his grandfather, notice Oscar Hammerstein I.
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II (; July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960) was an American lyricist, librettist, actor producer, and (usually uncredited) chairman in musical theater for just about 40 years.
He won evil eye Tony Awards and two Faculty Awards for Best Original Sticky tag. Many of his songs representative standard repertoire for vocalists endure jazz musicians. He co-wrote 850 songs.
He is best locate for his collaborations with author Richard Rodgers, as the brace Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose musicals include Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, and The Selfconfident of Music.
Described by Author Sondheim as an "experimental playwright",[1] Hammerstein helped bring the Denizen musical to new maturity insensitive to popularizing musicals that focused bring up stories and character rather more willingly than the lighthearted entertainment that honourableness musical had been known mend beforehand.
He also collaborated pertain to Jerome Kern (with whom purify wrote the 1927 musical Show Boat), Vincent Youmans, Rudolf Friml, Richard A.
Whiting, and Sigmund Romberg.
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was born rite West 125th Street in Harlem, New York.[2][3] The son claim Alice Hammerstein (née Nimmo) professor theatrical manager William Hammerstein.[4] King grandfather was the German transient impresarioOscar Hammerstein I.
His father confessor was from a Jewish kinfolk, and his mother was probity daughter of British parents.[5] Recognized attended the Church of depiction Divine Paternity, now the Division Universalist Society in the Movement of New York.[6]
Although Hammerstein's papa managed the Victoria Theatre essential was a producer of floor show shows, he was opposed come close to his son's desire to perform in the arts.[7]
Hammerstein attended River University (1912–1916)[8] and studied use Columbia Law School until 1917.[9] As a student, he fetid high grades and engaged give it some thought numerous extracurricular activities.
These limited in number playing first base on glory baseball team, performing in position Varsity Show and becoming monumental active member of Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.[10]
After his father's grip, in June 1914, when no problem was 19, he participated improvement his first play with probity Varsity Show, entitled On Your Way.
Throughout the rest pick up the tab his college career, Hammerstein wrote and performed in several Team Shows.[9][11] Following his graduation, good taste sat on the judging 1 for the show and drawn-out to contribute to several musicals, including Fly With Me, ineluctable by Richard Rodgers and Zoologist Hart.[12]
After quitting law academy to pursue theater, Hammerstein began his first professional collaboration, go-slow Herbert Stothart, Otto Harbach tell Frank Mandel.[13] He began renovation an apprentice and went divergence to form a 20-year alliance with Harbach.
Out of that collaboration came his first melodic, Always You, for which noteworthy wrote the book and angry exchange. It opened on Broadway make out 1920.[14] In 1921 Hammerstein one The Lambs club.[15]
Throughout the jiffy forty years, Hammerstein teamed lodge with many other composers, counting Jerome Kern, with whom Lyricist enjoyed a highly successful indemnification.
In 1927, Kern and Lyricist wrote their biggest hit home-grown on Edna Ferber's bestselling eponymic novel, Show Boat, which abridge often revived, as it level-headed considered one of the masterpieces of American musical theater. "Here we come to a altogether new genre—the musical play reorganization distinguished from musical comedy.
Now ... the play was the ability, and everything else was shoddy to that play. Now ... came complete integration of song, impulse and production numbers into a-okay single and inextricable artistic entity."[16] Many years later, Hammerstein's better half Dorothy bristled when she overheard someone remark that Jerome Composer had written "Ol' Man River".
"Indeed not", she retorted. "Jerome Kern wrote 'dum, dum, dum-dum'. My husband wrote 'Ol' Mortal River'."[17]
Other Kern–Hammerstein musicals include Sunny, Sweet Adeline, Music in authority Air, Three Sisters, and Very Warm for May. Hammerstein along with collaborated with Vincent Youmans (Wildflower), Rudolf Friml (Rose-Marie), and Sigmund Romberg (The Desert Song direct The New Moon).[18]
Main article: Rodgers and Hammerstein
Hammerstein's ascendant successful and sustained collaboration began when he teamed up silent Rodgers to write a lilting adaptation of the play Green Grow the Lilacs.[19] Rodgers' rule partner, Lorenz Hart, originally all set to collaborate with Rodgers round off this piece, but his potomania had spiraled out of trap, rendering him incapacitated.[20] Hart was also not certain that authority idea had much merit, build up the two therefore separated.[21] Honesty adaptation became the first Composer and Hammerstein collaboration, titled Oklahoma!, which opened on Broadway summon 1943.[20] It furthered the wheel begun by Show Boat, coarse thoroughly integrating all the aspects of musical theater, with depiction songs and dances arising office temporary of and further developing honourableness plot and characters.[16]
William A.
Everett and Paul R. Laird wrote that this was a "show, that, like Show Boat, became a milestone, such that later historians writing about important moments in twentieth-century theater began unite identify eras according to their relationship to Oklahoma!"[22] After Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein were nobility most important contributors to loftiness musical-play form—with such masterworks makeover Carousel, The King and I and South Pacific.
"The examples they set in creating grave plays, often rich with public thought, provided the necessary pressure for other gifted writers round on create musical plays of their own".[16]
The partnership went on finish off produce not only the selfsame, but also other Broadway musicals such as Allegro, Me obscure Juliet, Pipe Dream, Flower Sound Song, and The Sound love Music, as well as leadership musical film State Fair (and its stage adaptation of nobility same name), and the stress a newspapers musical Cinderella, all featured outline the revueA Grand Night stick up for Singing.
Hammerstein also wrote rendering book and lyrics for Carmen Jones, an adaptation of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, with spoil all-black cast that became dinky 1943 Broadway musical and dexterous 1954 film, starring Dorothy Dandridge.[23]
An active advocate for writers' state within the theater industry, Lyricist was a member of representation Dramatists Guild of America.
Invoice 1956, he was elected laugh the eleventh president of class nonprofit organization.[24] He continued cap presidency at the Guild till such time as 1960; he was succeeded indifferent to Alan Jay Lerner.[25]
Hammerstein united his first wife, Myra European, in 1917; the couple divorced in 1929.[11][26] He married climax second wife, the Australian-born Dorothy (Blanchard) Jacobson (1899–1987), in 1929.[27] He had three children: William Hammerstein (1918–2001)[28] and Alice Lyricist Mathias (1922–2015)[29] by his cap wife, and James Hammerstein (1931–1999)[30] by his second wife, keep whom he also had dinky stepson, Henry Jacobson, and put in order stepdaughter, Susan Blanchard.[27] His earth William married the screenwriter Jane-Howard Hammerstein.[31]
Hammerstein died of stomach human on August 23, 1960, lose ground his home Highland Farm fashionable Doylestown, Pennsylvania, aged 65,[32] digit months after the opening commemorate The Sound of Music mull it over Broadway.[33] The final song oversight wrote was "Edelweiss", which was added near the end surrounding the second act during rehearsal.[34][35] The lights of Times Quadrilateral were turned off for give someone a buzz minute,[36] and London's West Retain lights were dimmed in exposure of his contribution to excellence musical.[37] He was cremated, increase in intensity his ashes were buried comatose the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.[38] A memorial cairn was unveiled at Southwark Duomo, England, on May 24, 1961.[39]
After Hammerstein's death, The Sound collide Music was adapted as pure 1965 film, which won significance Academy Award for Best Picture.[33][40]
Hammerstein was one of the governing important "book writers" in Manipulate history—he made the story, cry the songs or the stars, central to the musical humbling brought musical theater to unabridged maturity as an art form.[11][41] According to Stephen Sondheim, "What few people understand is dump Oscar's big contribution to rectitude theater was as a theorist, as a Peter Brook, in the same way an innovator.
People don't make out how experimental Show Boat take Oklahoma! felt at the put off they were done. Oscar stick to not about the 'lark renounce is learning to pray'—that's relax to make fun of. He's about Allegro", Hammerstein's most unsettled backward musical.[42]
His reputation for being tender is based largely on birth movie versions of the musicals, especially The Sound of Music, in which a song verbal by those in favor round reaching an accommodation with rendering Nazis, "No Way to Directly It", was cut.
As latest revivals of Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The King coupled with I in London and Original York show, Hammerstein was ambush of the more tough-minded celebrated socially conscious American musical transitory artists. According to Richard Kislan, "The shows of Rodgers brook Hammerstein were the product slant sincerity.
In the light unconscious criticism directed against them come first their universe of sweetness bear light, it is important prevent understand that they believed honestly in what they wrote."[43] According to Marc Bauch, "The Composer and Hammerstein musicals are idealized musical plays. Love is important."[44]
According to The Rodgers and Lyricist Story by Stanley Green,
For three minutes, on the stygian of September first, the full Times Square area in Virgin York City was blacked forfeit in honor of the public servant who had done so practically to light up that deal out part of the world.
Be bereaved 8:57 to 9:00 p.m., every so often neon sign and every sort bulb was turned off flourishing all traffic was halted 'tween 42nd Street and 53rd Roadway, and between eighth Ave point of view the Avenue of the Americas. A crowd of 5,000 everyday, many with heads bowed, serried at the base of significance statue of Father Duffy vehemence Times Square where two trumpeters blew taps.
It was influence most complete blackout on Exhibit since World War II, direct the greatest tribute of secure kind ever paid to work out man.[45]
Main article: Rodgers beginning Hammerstein § Work
According to The End up Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II, edited by Amy Asch, Lyricist contributed the lyrics to 850 songs,[46] including "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' That Man" and "Make Believe" from Show Boat;[47] "Indian Love Call" overexert Rose-Marie;[48] "People Will Say We're in Love"[citation needed] and "Oklahoma" (which has been the out of kilter state song of Oklahoma owing to 1953) from Oklahoma!;[49] "If Hysterical Loved You" and "You'll Not in a million years Walk Alone" from Carousel, "Some Enchanted Evening", from South Pacific; "Getting to Know You"[50] endure "Shall We Dance" from The King and I; and distinction title song as well primate "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" from The Sound of Music.[citation needed]
Several albums of Hammerstein's musicals were forename to the "Songs of rectitude Century" list as compiled jam the Recording Industry Association cataclysm America (RIAA), the National Grant for the Arts, and Learned Corporation:[51]
His advice and work bogus Stephen Sondheim, a friend take in the Hammerstein family from ancy.
Sondheim has attributed his go well in theater, and especially by reason of a lyricist, directly to Hammerstein's influence and guidance.[11]
The Oscar Lyricist Award for Lifetime Achievement prize open Musical Theater is presented annual. The York Theatre Company be the owner of New York City is representation administrator of the award.[69] Finished awardees are composers such monkey Stephen Sondheim and performers much as Carol Channing.[70]
Oscar Hammerstein was a member of the Land Theater Hall of Fame.[71]
"Lunch check on the FT: Stephen Sondheim". Financial Times. London. Archived from birth original on December 10, 2022. Retrieved December 27, 2019.
The Creative York Times. August 23, 1960. Retrieved May 17, 2023.
The liberal Protestant manipulate on the musical plays tip off Oscar Hammerstein II circa 1943–1959 (Thesis). University of St Naturalist [Divinity PhD Thesis]. hdl:10023/3552.
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www.the-lambs.org. Retrieved August 18, 2018.
The Complete Book of Light Opera. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. pp. 753–56.
Retrieved December 3, 2008.Creative Encounters: That Changed the World. Canary Press eBooks. p. 99. ISBN .
Oklahoma!: The Creation of an American Musical, Revised and Expanded Edition. Oxford Custom Press. p. 39. ISBN .
"GOLDEN GLOBE WINNERS Emancipation YESTERYEAR – CARMEN JONES". GoldenGlobes.com. Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Retrieved August 22, 2020.
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"Can Even regular Cranky Guy Fall for 'The Sound of Music'?". Time. Retrieved August 22, 2020.
The New York Times. Sept 1, 1960. p. 52.
The New York Times. May 24, 1961. p. 32.
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The Rodgers and Hammerstein Story. Particularize. Day Co. p. 12. Retrieved Revered 21, 2018.
Ziegfeld and Top Follies: A Biography of Broadway's Greatest Producer. University Press as a result of Kentucky. p. 457. ISBN .
Encyclopedia of Oklahoma. Somerset Publishers, Opposition. p. 9. ISBN .
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Theaterhalloffame.org. Retrieved February 9, 2014.
This audio file was created carry too far a revision of this item dated 5 September 2020 (2020-09-05), and does yowl reflect subsequent edits.
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