HAMMERSTEIN II, OSCAR  BIOGRAPHY

Librettist, Lyricist
(1895-1960)

Oscar Hammerstein II , whose family included a theater owner, a producer, and an opera impresario, attended Columbia law school before embarking on a career as librettist/lyricist. He is second only to Irving Berlin in the number of lyrics he created. Hammerstein had his first Broadway success with the operetta, Rose Marie (1924) with co-lyricist Otto Harbach and composers Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart. Two more operettas followed, both with Harbach and composer Sigmund Romberg: The Desert Song (1926) and The New Moon (1928).

He adapted the Edna Ferber novel, Showboat (1927), for the stage and wrote lyrics for Jerome Kern’s music. The show’s racially mixed cast, its theme of miscegenation, and its songs, which define each character, were anything but traditional Broadway fare. Despite production problems the show produced a host of hit songs.

Even a failed film in 1937 produced the lovely “I’ll Take Romance” written by Ben Oakland. The 1939 Broadway show Very Warm for May, with music by Kern, featured the perennial favorite, “All the Things You Are.” In 1940 Hammerstein wrote the lyrics for “The Last Time I Saw Paris” as the Nazis occupied Paris. Kern supplied the music.

In 1943 Hammerstein teamed with Richard Rodgers on Oklahoma! for which they won a Pulitzer Prize. The musical paved the way for serious subject matters to become part of musical theater, and the show’s ballet, choreographed by Agnes De Mille, ushered in a new era of dance. The film State Fair (1945) won an Oscar for “It Might as Well Be Spring.” As the most successful team on Broadway, they won a second Pulitzer for South Pacific in 1949 and saw many of their shows translated to film—The King and I (1951), Carousel (1945), Flower Drum Song (1958), and The Sound of Music (1959).

-- Sandra Burlingame

Courtesy of JazzStandards.com