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.[7]
Hammerstein attended Columbia University (1912–1916)[8] and studied at Columbia Law School until 1917.[9] 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 fraternity.[10]
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.[9][11] Following his graduation, he sat on the judging committee for the show and continued to contribute to several musicals, including Fly With Me, written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.[12]
Early career
After quitting law school to pursue theater, Hammerstein 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 of this collaboration came his first musical, Always You, for which he wrote the book and lyrics. It opened on Broadway in 1920.[14] In 1921 Hammerstein joined The Lambs club.[15]
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."[16] 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'."[17]
Hammerstein's most successful and sustained collaboration began when he teamed up with Rodgers to write a musical adaptation of the play Green Grow the Lilacs.[19] 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.[20] Hart was also not certain that the idea had much merit, and the two therefore separated.[21] The adaptation became the first Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration, titled Oklahoma!, which opened on Broadway in 1943.[20] 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.[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 important moments in twentieth-century theater began to identify eras according to 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 with social thought, provided the necessary encouragement for other gifted writers to create musical plays of their own".[16]
Hammerstein with his first wife, Myra Finn, photographed aboard a ship
Hammerstein married his first wife, Myra Finn, in 1917; the couple 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 wife, with whom he also had a stepson, Henry Jacobson, and a stepdaughter, Susan Blanchard.[27] His son William married the screenwriter Jane-Howard Hammerstein.[31]
Hammerstein was one of the most important "book writers" in Broadway history—he made the story, not the songs or the stars, central to the musical and brought musical theater to full maturity as an art form.[11][41] According to Stephen Sondheim, "What few people understand is 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 the time they were done. Oscar is not about the 'lark that is learning to pray'—that's easy to make fun of. He's about Allegro", Hammerstein's most experimental musical.[42]
His reputation for being sentimental is based largely on the movie versions of the musicals, especially The Sound of Music, in which a song sung by those in favor of reaching an accommodation with the Nazis, "No Way to Stop It", was cut. As recent revivals of Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The King and I in London and New York show, Hammerstein was one of the more tough-minded and socially conscious American musical theater artists. According to Richard Kislan, "The shows of Rodgers and Hammerstein were the product of sincerity. In the light of criticism directed against them and their universe of sweetness 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 is important."[44]
According to The Rodgers and Hammerstein Story by Stanley Green,
For three minutes, on the night of September first, the entire Times Square area in New York City was blacked out in honor of the man who had done so much to light up that particular part of the world. From 8:57 to 9:00 p.m., every neon sign and every light bulb was turned off and all traffic was halted between 42nd Street and 53rd Street, and between eighth Ave and the Avenue of the Americas. A crowd of 5,000 people, many with heads bowed, assembled at the base of the statue of Father Duffy on Times Square where two trumpeters blew taps. It was the most complete blackout on Broadway since World War II, and the greatest tribute of its kind ever paid to one man.[45]
Oscar Hammerstein is the only person in history named Oscar to have won an Oscar.
In 1950, the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York."[67]
In 1981, The Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theater Studies at Columbia University was established with a $1 million gift from his family.[68]
Legacy
His advice and work influenced Stephen Sondheim, a friend of the Hammerstein family from childhood. Sondheim has attributed his success in theater, and especially as a lyricist, directly to Hammerstein's influence and guidance.[11]
The Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theater is presented annually. The York Theatre Company 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]
^Hunter-Tilney, Ludovic (October 15, 2010). "Lunch with the FT: Stephen Sondheim". Financial Times. London. Archived from the original on December 10, 2022. Retrieved December 27, 2019.
^Bradley, Kathryn A. (June 25, 2013). The liberal Protestant influence on the musical plays of Oscar Hammerstein II circa 1943–1959 (Thesis). University of St Andrews [Divinity PhD Thesis]. hdl:10023/3552.
^ abcd"The Stars : COMPOSERS, LYRICISTS & WRITERS : Oscar Hammerstein II". Broadway: The American Musical. PBS. Retrieved August 22, 2020. Oscar went to Columbia University in preparation for a career in law. It was at Columbia, however, that Oscar's career in theater actually began when, at age 19, he joined the Columbia University Players as a performer in the 1915 Varsity review "On Your Way". He participated heavily in the Varsity shows for several years, first as a performer and later as a writer. .... In 1929 Oscar divorced his wife of 12 years, Myra Finn, and married Dorothy Blanchard Jacobson.
^Everett, William A. and Laird, Paul R. (2002), The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, Cambridge University Press, p. 124, ISBN0-521-79639-3
^Camara, Jorge (April 20, 2011). "GOLDEN GLOBE WINNERS OF YESTERYEAR – CARMEN JONES". GoldenGlobes.com. Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Retrieved August 22, 2020. The winner of the Golden Globe for the Best Comedy/Musical Picture of 1954 was Carmen Jones. The film, an adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was an adaptation of Georges Bizet's famous opera "Carmen," respected the music, but used a script and new English lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein of Rodgers and Hammerstein musical fame.
^Hillshafer, Linda (June 1, 2020). "Stories of Standards—All the Things You Are". KUVO. Retrieved August 22, 2020. Hammerstein was a member of the Dramatists' Guild of America and was elected its eleventh president in 1956. He died of stomach cancer in 1960.
^McHugh, Dominic (2014). Alan Jay Lerner: A Lyricist's Letters. Oxford University Press. p. 124. ISBN978-0-19-994928-1. Retrieved August 22, 2020. ... Lerner was elected president of the Dramatists Guild on February 18, replacing Oscar Hammerstein. .... The reason for Hammerstein's need to stand down as president, however, was sad: he was suffering from cancer....
^Hamersly, Lewis Randolph; Leonard, John William; Mohr, William Frederick; Knox, Herman Warren; Holmes, Frank R. (1947). Who's who in New York City and State. L.R. Hamersly Company. p. 444. Retrieved August 22, 2020. ... m. Myra Finn, Aug. 22. 1917, N. Y. C. (div. May 13, 1929); (2) May 14, 1929, Dorothy Blanchard in Baltimore: ch.: William, Alice, James. ...
^"Oscar Hammerstein II Is Dead", The New York Times, p. 1, August 23, 1960
^ abCorliss, Richard (March 2, 2015). "Can Even a Cranky Guy Fall for 'The Sound of Music'?". Time. Retrieved August 22, 2020. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences loved the movie big time, festooning it with 10 nominations and five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, at the 1966 ceremony. ..... Though Hammerstein died at 65 in 1960, nine months into The Sound of Music's Broadway run, the movie has proved how lasting that heritage would be. .....
^Maslon, Lawrence. The Sound of Music Companion (2007), p. 177, Simon and Schuster, ISBN1-4165-4954-4
^"Hammerstein Honored". The New York Times. May 24, 1961. p. 32. Mrs. Oscar Hammerstein 2nd, widow of the lyricist, unveiled a plaque today to his memory in Southwark Cathedral .... Mr. Hammerstein's will provided £2000 to support two choir-boys at Southwark Cathedral.
^"The 38th Academy Awards (1966)". Oscars.org. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. October 4, 2014. Retrieved August 22, 2020.
^"Interview: Stephen Sondheim". Academy of Achievement. Archived from the original on December 12, 2010. Retrieved May 8, 2010. People underestimate what [Hammerstein] did in the way of musical theater. He was primarily an experimental writer, and what he was doing was marrying the traditions of opera and American musical comedy, using songs to tell a story that was worth telling. The first real instance of that is Show Boat, which is a watershed show in the history of musical theater, and Oklahoma!, which is innovative in different ways ... Now, because of the success of Oklahoma!, and subsequent shows, most musical theater now tells stories through songs. But that was not true prior to 1943, the year of Oklahoma!
