Hammerstein, Oscar, II, 1895-1960

Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II (/ˈhæmərstaɪn/; July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960) was an American lyricist, librettist, theatrical producer, and (usually uncredited) director in the musical theater for almost 40 years. He won eight Tony Awards and two Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Many of his songs are standard repertoire for vocalists and jazz musicians. He co-wrote 850 songs.

He is best known for his collaborations with composer Richard Rodgers, as the duo Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose musicals include Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. Described by Stephen Sondheim as an "experimental playwright",[1] Hammerstein helped bring the American musical to new maturity by popularizing musicals that focused on stories and character rather than the lighthearted entertainment that the musical had been known for beforehand.

He also collaborated with Jerome Kern (with whom he wrote Show Boat), Vincent Youmans, Rudolf Friml, Richard A. Whiting, and Sigmund Romberg.

Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was born in New York City, the son of Alice Hammerstein (née Nimmo) and theatrical manager William Hammerstein.[2] His grandfather was the German theater impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. His father was from a Jewish family, and his mother was the daughter of British parents.[3] He attended the Church of the Divine Paternity, now the Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York.[4]

Although Hammerstein's father managed the Victoria Theatre and was a producer of vaudeville shows, he was opposed to his son's desire to participate in the arts.[5]

Hammerstein attended Columbia University (1912–1916) and studied at Columbia Law School until 1917.[6] As a student, he maintained high grades and engaged in numerous extracurricular activities. These included playing first base on the baseball team, performing in the Varsity Show and becoming an active member of Pi Lambda Phi, a mostly Jewish fraternity.[7]

After his father's death, in June 1914, when he was 19, he participated in his first play with the Varsity Show, entitled On Your Way. Throughout the rest of his college career, Hammerstein wrote and performed in several Varsity Shows.[8][9]

After quitting law school to pursue theater, Hammerstein began his first professional collaboration, with Herbert Stothart, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel.[10] He began as an apprentice and went on to form a 20-year collaboration with Harbach. Out of this collaboration came his first musical, Always You, for which he wrote the book and lyrics. It opened on Broadway in 1920.[11] In 1921 Hammerstein joined The Lambs club.[12]

Throughout the next forty years, Hammerstein teamed up with many other composers, including Jerome Kern, with whom Hammerstein enjoyed a highly successful collaboration. In 1927, Kern and Hammerstein wrote their biggest hit based on Edna Ferber's bestselling eponymous novel, Show Boat, which is often revived, as it is considered one of the masterpieces of American musical theater. "Here we come to a completely new genre—the musical play as distinguished from musical comedy. Now ... the play was the thing, and everything else was subservient to that play. Now ... came complete integration of song, humor and production numbers into a single and inextricable artistic entity."[citation needed] Many years later, Hammerstein's wife Dorothy bristled when she overheard someone remark that Jerome Kern had written "Ol' Man River". "Indeed not", she retorted. "Jerome Kern wrote 'dum, dum, dum-dum'. My husband wrote 'Ol' Man River'."[13]

Other Kern–Hammerstein musicals include Sweet Adeline, Music in the Air, Three Sisters, and 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).[14]

Hammerstein's most successful and sustained collaboration began when he teamed up with Richard Rodgers to write a musical adaptation of the play Green Grow the Lilacs.[15] Rodgers' first partner, Lorenz Hart, originally planned to collaborate with Rodgers on this piece, but his alcoholism had spiraled out of control, rendering him incapacitated.[16] Hart was also not certain that the idea had much merit, and the two therefore separated.[17] The adaptation became the first Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration, entitled Oklahoma!, which opened on Broadway in 1943.[16] It furthered the revolution begun by Show Boat, by thoroughly integrating all the aspects of musical theater, with the songs and dances arising out of and further developing the plot and characters.[18]

William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird wrote that this was a "show, that, like Show Boat, became a milestone, such that that subsequent historians writing about important moments in twentieth-century theater began to identify eras according to their relationship to Oklahoma!"[19] 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 with social thought, provided the necessary encouragement for other gifted writers to create musical plays of their own".[18]

The partnership went on to produce not only the aforementioned, but also other Broadway musicals such as Allegro, Me and Juliet, Pipe Dream, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music, as well as the musical film State Fair (and its stage adaptation of the same name), and the television musical Cinderella, all featured in the revue A Grand Night for Singing. Hammerstein also wrote the book and lyrics for Carmen Jones, an adaptation of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, with an all-black cast that became a 1943 Broadway musical and a 1954 film, starring Dorothy Dandridge.[20]

Hammerstein died of stomach cancer on August 23, 1960, at his home Highland Farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, aged 65,[23] nine months after the opening of The Sound of Music on Broadway.[24] The final song he wrote was "Edelweiss", which was added near the end of the second act during rehearsal.[25][26] After Hammerstein's death, The Sound of Music was adapted as a 1965 film, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.[24][27]

The lights of Times Square were turned off for one minute,[28] and London's West End[29] lights were dimmed in recognition of his contribution to the musical. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.[30] A memorial plaque was unveiled at Southwark Cathedral, England, on May 24, 1961.[31]

Hammerstein married his first wife, Myra Finn, in 1917; the couple divorced in 1929.[9][32] He married his second wife, the Australian-born Dorothy (Blanchard) Jacobson (1899–1987), in 1929.[33] He had three children: William Hammerstein (1918–2001)[34] and Alice Hammerstein Mathias (1922–2015)[35] by his first wife, and James Hammerstein (1931–1999)[36] by his second wife, with whom he also had a stepson, Henry Jacobson, and a stepdaughter, Susan Blanchard.[33]