Oscar Hammerstein II

Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American lyricist, librettist, theatrical producer, and director whose work helped define musical theater for nearly 40 years. Born on July 12, 1895, on West 125th Street in Harlem, New York, he came from a family already tied to the stage. His father, William Hammerstein, managed the Victoria Theatre and produced vaudeville shows, and his grandfather was the German theater impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. Yet his father opposed his wish to take part in the arts, a tension that made Hammerstein’s early pull toward theater all the more striking.

Hammerstein attended Columbia University from 1912 to 1916 and studied at Columbia Law School until 1917. At Columbia he kept high grades, played first base on the baseball team, performed in the Varsity Show, and joined Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. After his father’s death in June 1914, when Hammerstein was 19, he took part in his first play with the Varsity Show, On Your Way. He continued writing and performing in Varsity Shows, then quit law school to pursue theater. His first professional work came with Herbert Stothart, Otto Harbach, and Frank Mandel, and his long collaboration with Harbach produced his first musical, Always You, which opened on Broadway in 1920.

By the late 1920s, Hammerstein had become a major writer for the American musical stage. With Jerome Kern he wrote Show Boat, the 1927 musical based on Edna Ferber’s bestselling novel. The work was later seen as a new kind of musical play, one in which song, humor, production numbers, and story worked together rather than standing apart. His collaborations in this period also included Kern musicals such as Sunny, Sweet Adeline, Music in the Air, Three Sisters, and Very Warm for May, as well as work with Vincent Youmans, Rudolf Friml, Sigmund Romberg, Richard A. Whiting, and others.

Hammerstein is best known for his partnership with composer Richard Rodgers. Their first collaboration, Oklahoma!, opened on Broadway in 1943 as an adaptation of Green Grow the Lilacs. It carried forward the change begun by Show Boat, with songs and dances growing from the plot and characters. Rodgers and Hammerstein went on to create Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music, along with Allegro, Me and Juliet, Pipe Dream, the musical film State Fair, and the television musical Cinderella. Hammerstein also wrote the book and lyrics for Carmen Jones, an adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen with an all-Black cast, which became a 1943 Broadway musical and a 1954 film starring Dorothy Dandridge.

Across his career, Hammerstein co-wrote 850 songs, won eight Tony Awards, and received two Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Many of his songs became standard repertoire for vocalists and jazz musicians. He was also active in writers’ rights through the Dramatists Guild of America, serving as its eleventh president from 1956 until 1960. A lifelong Unitarian Universalist, he lived a life shaped by theater, collaboration, discipline, and a belief that musicals could carry character and story with seriousness and grace. He died on August 23, 1960, but his words remain in circulation because they were built for voices, for feeling, and for the stage.