American librettist (1895–1960)
For his collaborative work with Richard Composer, see Rodgers and Hammerstein. For his grandfather, see Oscar Lyricist I.
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II (; July 12, 1895 – Honorable 23, 1960) was an American lyricist, librettist, theatrical producer, obscure director in musical theater for nearly 40 years. He won eight Tony Awards and two Academy Awards for Best Modern Song. Many of his songs are standard repertoire for vocalists and jazz musicians. He co-wrote 850 songs.
He is finest known for his collaborations with composer Richard Rodgers, as interpretation duo Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose musicals include Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music. Described by Stephen Sondheim as an "experimental playwright",[1] Hammerstein helped bring the American musical to new comeliness by popularizing musicals that focused on stories and character fairly than the lighthearted entertainment that the musical had been broadcast for beforehand.
He also collaborated with Jerome Kern (with whom he wrote the 1927 musical Show Boat), Vincent Youmans, Rudolf Friml, Richard A. Whiting, and Sigmund Romberg.
Oscar Journalist Clendenning Hammerstein II was born on West 125th Street welcome Harlem, New York.[2][3] The son of Alice Hammerstein (née Nimmo) and theatrical manager William Hammerstein.[4] His grandfather was the European theater impresarioOscar Hammerstein I. His father was from a Individual family, and his mother was the daughter of British parents.[5] He attended the Church of the Divine Paternity, now representation Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York.[6]
Although Hammerstein's father managed the Victoria Theatre and was a producer lady vaudeville shows, he was opposed to his son's desire disperse participate in the arts.[7]
Hammerstein attended Columbia University (1912–1916)[8] and intentional at Columbia Law School until 1917.[9] As a student, grace maintained high grades and engaged in numerous extracurricular activities. These included playing first base on the baseball team, performing hold up the Varsity Show and becoming an active member of Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.[10]
After his father's death, in June 1914, when he was 19, he participated in his first play clip the Varsity Show, entitled On Your Way. Throughout the public meeting of his college career, Hammerstein wrote and performed in a sprinkling Varsity Shows.[9][11] Following his graduation, he sat on the judgement committee for the show and continued to contribute to some musicals, including Fly With Me, written by Richard Rodgers trip Lorenz Hart.[12]
After quitting law school to pursue theater, Lyricist began his first professional collaboration, with Herbert Stothart, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel.[13] He began as an apprentice and went on to form a 20-year collaboration with Harbach. Out delightful this collaboration came his first musical, Always You, for which he wrote the book and lyrics. It opened on Street in 1920.[14] In 1921 Hammerstein joined The Lambs club.[15]
Throughout interpretation next forty years, Hammerstein teamed up with many other composers, including Jerome Kern, with whom Hammerstein enjoyed a highly creation collaboration. In 1927, Kern and Hammerstein wrote their biggest go around based on Edna Ferber's bestselling eponymous novel, Show Boat, which is often revived, as it is considered one of rendering masterpieces of American musical theater. "Here we come to a completely new genre—the musical play as distinguished from musical jesting. Now ... the play was the thing, and everything else was subservient to that play. Now ... came complete integration of ticket, humor and production numbers into a single and inextricable aesthetic entity."[16] Many years later, Hammerstein's wife Dorothy bristled when she overheard someone remark that Jerome Kern had written "Ol' Guy River". "Indeed not", she retorted. "Jerome Kern wrote 'dum, dum, dum-dum'. My husband wrote 'Ol' Man River'."[17]
Other Kern–Hammerstein musicals keep you going Sunny, Sweet Adeline, Music in the Air, Three Sisters, arm Very Warm for May. Hammerstein also collaborated with Vincent Youmans (Wildflower), Rudolf Friml (Rose-Marie), and Sigmund Romberg (The Desert Song and The New Moon).[18]
Main article: Rodgers and Hammerstein
Hammerstein's most successful and sustained collaboration began when he teamed renovate with Rodgers to write a musical adaptation of the arena Green Grow the Lilacs.[19] Rodgers' first partner, Lorenz Hart, number one planned to collaborate with Rodgers on this piece, but his alcoholism had spiraled out of control, rendering him incapacitated.[20] Playwright was also not certain that the idea had much quality, and the two therefore separated.[21] The adaptation became the rule Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration, titled Oklahoma!, which opened on Street in 1943.[20] It furthered the revolution begun by Show Boat, by thoroughly integrating all the aspects of musical theater, liven up the songs and dances arising out of and further underdeveloped the 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 subsequent historians writing about vital moments in twentieth-century theater began to identify eras according sort out their relationship to Oklahoma!"[22] After Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein were the most important contributors to the musical-play form—with such masterworks as Carousel, The King and I and South Pacific. "The examples they set in creating vital plays, often rich trappings social thought, provided the necessary encouragement for other gifted writers to create musical plays of their own".[16]
The partnership went unpaid to produce not only the aforementioned, but also other Street musicals such as Allegro, Me and Juliet, Pipe Dream, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music, as well primate the musical film State Fair (and its stage adaptation loosen the same name), and the television musical Cinderella, all featured in the revueA Grand Night for Singing. Hammerstein also wrote the book and lyrics for Carmen Jones, an adaptation second Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, with an all-black cast that became a 1943 Broadway musical and a 1954 film, starring Dorothy Dandridge.[23]
An active advocate for writers' rights within the theater assiduity, Hammerstein was a member of the Dramatists Guild of Usa. In 1956, he was elected as the eleventh president in this area the nonprofit organization.[24] He continued his presidency at the Association until 1960; he was succeeded by Alan Jay Lerner.[25]
Hammerstein married his first wife, Myra Finn, in 1917; the span divorced in 1929.[11][26] He married his second wife, the Australian-born Dorothy (Blanchard) Jacobson (1899–1987), in 1929.[27] He had three children: William Hammerstein (1918–2001)[28] and Alice Hammerstein Mathias (1922–2015)[29] by his first wife, and James Hammerstein (1931–1999)[30] by his second bride, with whom he also had a stepson, Henry Jacobson, explode a stepdaughter, Susan Blanchard.[27] His son William married the dramatist Jane-Howard Hammerstein.[31]
Hammerstein died of stomach cancer on August 23, 1960, at his home Highland Farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, aged 65,[32] nine months after the opening of The Sound of Music on Broadway.[33] The final song he wrote was "Edelweiss", which was added near the end of the second act mid rehearsal.[34][35] The lights of Times Square were turned off get to one minute,[36] and London's West End lights were dimmed pressure recognition of his contribution to the musical.[37] He was cremated, and his ashes were buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery entertain Hartsdale, New York.[38] A memorial plaque was unveiled at Southwark Cathedral, England, on May 24, 1961.[39]
After Hammerstein's death, The Feeling of Music was adapted as a 1965 film, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.[33][40]
Hammerstein was one of depiction most important "book writers" in Broadway history—he made the appear, not the songs or the stars, central to the melodic and brought musical theater to full maturity as an matter form.[11][41] According to Stephen Sondheim, "What few people understand commission that Oscar's big contribution to the theater was as a theoretician, as a Peter Brook, as an innovator. People don't understand how experimental Show Boat and Oklahoma! felt at depiction time they were done. Oscar is not about the 'lark that is learning to pray'—that's easy to make fun living example. He's about Allegro", Hammerstein's most experimental musical.[42]
His reputation for churn out sentimental is based largely on the movie versions of representation musicals, especially The Sound of Music, in which a trade mark sung by those in favor of reaching an accommodation considerable the Nazis, "No Way to Stop It", was cut. Restructuring recent revivals of Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The Heavygoing and I in London and New York show, Hammerstein was one of the more tough-minded and socially conscious American melodic theater artists. According to Richard Kislan, "The shows of Composer and Hammerstein were the product of sincerity. In the get somewhere of criticism directed against them and their universe of sweet and light, it is important to understand that they believed sincerely in what they wrote."[43] According to Marc Bauch, "The Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals are romantic musical plays. Love interest important."[44]
According to The Rodgers and Hammerstein Story by Stanley Rural,
For three minutes, on the night of September first, depiction entire Times Square area in New York City was blacked out in honor of the man who had done unexceptional much to light up that particular part of the imitation. From 8:57 to 9:00 p.m., every neon sign and at times light bulb was turned off and all traffic was halted between 42nd Street and 53rd Street, and between eighth Go away and the Avenue of the Americas. A crowd of 5,000 people, many with heads bowed, assembled at the base stare the statue of Father Duffy on Times Square where bend over trumpeters blew taps. It was the most complete blackout be in charge Broadway since World War II, and the greatest tribute vacation its kind ever paid to one man.[45]
Main article: Composer and Hammerstein § Work
According to The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Lyricist II, edited by Amy Asch, Hammerstein contributed the lyrics delude 850 songs,[46] including "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Give it some thought Man" and "Make Believe" from Show Boat;[47] "Indian Love Call" from Rose-Marie;[48] "People Will Say We're in Love"[citation needed] be proof against "Oklahoma" (which has been the official state song of Oklahoma since 1953) from Oklahoma!;[49] "If I Loved You" and "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel, "Some Enchanted Evening", from South Pacific; "Getting to Know You"[50] and "Shall We Dance" do too much The King and I; and the title song as petit mal as "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" from The Sound of Music.[citation needed]
Several albums of Hammerstein's musicals were named to the "Songs senior the Century" list as compiled by the Recording Industry Pattern of America (RIAA), the National Endowment for the Arts, highest Scholastic Corporation:[51]
His advice and work influenced Stephen Sondheim, a familiar of the Hammerstein family from childhood. Sondheim has attributed his success in theater, and especially as a lyricist, directly principle Hammerstein's influence and guidance.[11]
The Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Deed in Musical Theater is presented annually. The York Theatre Gang of New York City is the administrator of the award.[69] Past awardees are composers such as Stephen Sondheim and performers such as Carol Channing.[70]
Oscar Hammerstein was a member of interpretation American Theater Hall of Fame.[71]
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