Rainbow sheet music
Show Boat star Helen Morgan’s recollection of her early days singing in beer gardens provided the germ of the idea to Oscar and Jerry for Sweet Adeline. Oscar and Jerry always worked as one to establish an atmosphere, an overarching visual world that their plot and characters inhabited. Jerry woke up Oscar one night and described his vision of the setting: “I see bicycles with Chinese lanterns going through the night. I hear their bells—a merry symphony of bells.”
The bicycles eventually proved too difficult to incorporate into the production, but Oscar and Jerry would thenceforth always refer to that all-important “look” of the play as “the bicycle.”
Sweet Adeline is a story about the sacrifice of one sister for another. The show fit Morgan’s melancholy, torch singer persona all too perfectly, for she lived the forlorn life that she acted. Oscar wrote her a lyric that she herself might have asked about her own tragic life:
Why was I born?
Why am I living?
What do I get?
What am I giving?
Why do I want a thing
I daren’t hope for?
What can I hope for
I wish I knew
Why do I try
To draw you near me?
Why do I cry
You never hear me?
I’m a poor fool
But what can I do?
Why was I born
To love you?
“Why Was I Born?” sheet music from Sweet Adeline, 1929
Much like Show Boat, Sweet Adeline depicted realistic characters with frailties and flaws operating within a well-crafted plot. The girl loses the boy; she wins, then loses the second boy; and the third boy confesses his love and wins the girl. This storm-tossed search for true love veered significantly away from form and dealt less with romantic love than with poor choices made by a lonely, needy heroine. Sadly, Helen Morgan’s real life did not mirror the show’s happy ending. Plagued by tragedy, legal mishap, and alcoholism, she died at the age of forty-one.
The critics praised Sweet Adeline to the skies, from Kern’s delightful score to Oscar’s mesh of song with story and comedy with tragedy. But unlike Show Boat, Sweet Adeline ran an only respectable 234 performances. This stung Jerry and Oscar. Were book musicals but a passing fad? They both thought they were on the right track, yet they somehow had derailed. (Never mind that the stock market crashed a month into the run.) It disheartened the duo.
Despite the anguish that it spread, the stock market crash did speed up a trend. Movies had steadily drained theatre audiences—especially the cheap seats—for years and now that the country was broke, that trend only accelerated. By 1930, films became the primary means of musical storytelling. Broadway fed Hollywood’s insatiable demand for more product, and most of the talent—composers, writers, directors, and designers—found themselves called westward to adapt their stage material for the screen. This was especially true for Oscar. His hit shows had recently been made into movies and more were in production—even Golden Dawn. But the migration didn’t go entirely one way. Broadway talent bounced from coast to coast, chasing the next paycheck. Broadway paid less, but the talent had more control and profited from their efforts. Hollywood paid more, but controlled everything. In the early days, the situation held some creative promise and much financial security for the East Coast theatre talent community.
Arthur, with his raft of 1920s musicals raring to be adapted, was one of the first stage producers to go to Hollywood. He publicly declared that Broadway was dead and that Hollywood was the future and quantity was to be his business model. He trumpeted so many upcoming movies’ productions—many of which never came to fruition—that the Times was prompted to chide: “He went to the Coast to make a talking picture … and strangely enough, he is making it.”
Director Alan Crosland (with bullhorn), Sigmund Romberg (with horn), Oscar Hammerstein II, and the cast in a publicity shot from the 1930 film Viennese Nights
In early 1929 Oscar Hammerstein and Sigmund Romberg received a two-year, four-picture deal from Warner Bros. and were each paid $100,000 per movie, as advance against 25 percent of the net profits. Their first effort was Viennese Nights. In this film, Romberg cannibalized hit themes from his earlier shows, like Maytime, and mixed them with a generous amount of plot lifted from Noël Coward’s Bitter Sweet. He tossed in a show-within-a-show for good measure. Viennese Nights was shot in two-color Technicolor and featured, in a small role, a prefanged Bela Lugosi. (Beside him, in a supernumerary role, sat a regally beautiful Dorothy Hammerstein.) The film received glowing reviews and remains a fine example of the movie-musical genre.
“No Wonder I’m Blue” sheet music from Ballyhoo, 1930
Arthur briefly came back east to produce Ballyhoo of 1930. Billed as a musical comedy, it was really a grab-bag revue starring W. C. Fields, with a grab bag of contributors. Fields had worked the Victoria for Willy in his comedy-juggler salad days, had always held the Hammersteins in high regard, and was quite fond of Willy’s “sonny boy.” But this changed as the deteriorating economy, Arthur’s characteristically hands-off approach to producing, and brother Reggie’s AWOL approach to directing put Fields in the position of de facto captain of a sinking theatrical ship. Fields wrote impassioned letters imploring Arthur to become more involved, and even waived his salary contract in order to pool and reallocate the meager box office profits with the rest of the cast. Oscar came in to ghost-direct and even penned lyrics for the show’s only hit song, “I’m One of God’s Children.” But despite a wide array of contributing talent that included Louis Alter, Leighton Brill, Harry Ruskin, Otto Harbach, and even Rudolf Friml, and despite the selfless efforts of its highly popular star, the show lasted only two miserable weeks.
It is therefore no wonder that Oscar may have genuinely believed, or, more aptly, hoped, that the movies would be his future. In 1930 alone, Oscar saw four of his efforts fill the movie screens—Song of the West (the adaptation of Rainbow, which worked swaggeringly better as a movie), Golden Dawn, Sunny, and The New Moon—in addition to the release of his Warner Bros. commissions, Viennese Nights, followed in 1931 by Children of Dreams.
Children of Dreams was a story about a poor, young apple-picking woman whose beautiful singing voice led her to fame and fortune on the opera stage, but away from her poor, apple-picking boyfriend back home. Love triumphs before the credits roll. Here again, Oscar inserted a theme that popped up in dozens of his efforts—that the big-city life is a temptation of which honest folk would do well to steer clear. The public just dozed.
The movie studios had wagered that light, escapist musical fare was what the Depression-fatigued public wanted and had dutifully delivered with a heavy hand. The public, however, was in no mood to watch dashing heroes and dishy heroines “singing down each other’s throats,” as Dorothy called it, and stayed away in droves. It got to the point where movie houses had to put signs up in front promising no singing in order to draw an audience. The changed mood was sudden enough that Jack Warner, of Warner Bros., bought Oscar and Romberg out of their last two films at half price. Oscar remarked that the $100,000 buyout was “the most money [he] ever got for not making a movie.”
W. C. Fields
In January 1931, Oscar returned east to direct a show called The Gang’s All Here. After one-week tryouts in Philadelphia and Newark, The Gang’s All Here opened February 18, to a critical thrashing. One reviewer advised that it would require “a carload of blue pencils” to edit it into shape—and he was being kind. The show mercifully closed after a three-week run, but is notable for two contributors: Morrie Ryskind and Russel Crouse. Ryskind would soon go on to co-pen most of the Marx Brothers movies before receiving a Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to the Gershwin brothers’ Of Thee I Sing. Crouse made Anything Goes shipshape in 1934 and, a quarter century later, would collaborate with Howard Lindsay to write the only Rodgers and Hammerstein hit the pair didn’t write the book for: The Sound of Music
. However, glory would have to wait—The Gang’s All Here was a stinker!
Oscar Hammerstein II in Hollywood
In the meantime, Arthur had once again hitched his star to composer Friml, but both Luana on the stage and The Lottery Bride on the screen had failed dismally with press and public. United Artists had torn up his contract, too. Arthur did an about-face and confidently ballyhooed his glorious return to a forgiving Broadway but, like most producers in his position, was very much on the financial ropes. He’d been forced to sell his Hammerstein Theatre to Schwab and Mandel. By 1931, both the Hammersteins had migrated back to a Depression-fatigued Broadway. Oscar’s many friendships and loyalties, to collaborators and to Arthur, now took their toll. Perhaps, the added agita of the poor economy prompted him to spread himself as thin as ever—he became the writer who couldn’t say no.
For the Schwab-Mandel combo, at the now renamed Manhattan Theatre, Oscar wrote Free For All, a story about a young man whose father sends him west to oversee the family copper mine and to get him away from his interest in radical politics. Politics and romance follow him down into the mine. But the paying public had no interest. While this theme might have found resonance with some Americans, it no doubt unnerved those who could still pay for their Broadway tickets in 1931. Some booed loudly, many walked out in the middle. Not even Benny Goodman’s orchestra pizzazz could save it, and Free For All closed after fifteen righteous performances.
“To-night” sheet music from Free For All, 1931
A mere six weeks later, Oscar’s next effort for Schwab and Mandel, East Wind, told the story of a young woman who meets two brothers, falls in love with the wrong one, then catches her mistake and falls in love with the right one by the act-two curtain. Critics praised the scenery, but nothing else. East Wind—a twenty-three-performance flop—bankrupted Schwab and Mandel, who were also compelled to sell the theatre they’d just bought from Arthur.
“It’s a Wonderful World” sheet music from East Wind, 1931
Oscar now returned to the Kern partnership and the slow, sustained effort that had yielded Show Boat and Sweet Adeline to score his first and only hit of the decade—1932’s Music in the Air. The plot revolved around a young German composer (in alt-universe Germany) who travels to the big city with his girlfriend to sell his little hit song. She gets the eye from an older composer. He gets the same from the composer’s wife. The city proves too slick and they return to their country home wiser, if not older.
“I’ve Told Ev’ry Little Star” sheet music from Music in the Air, 1932
Looking for opportunity, Oscar observed that the Depression had not socked London’s West End quite as hard as it had Broadway and, with Dorothy more than willing to enjoy a change of scenery, moved the family to London. This sojourn yielded two flops in two years for the venerable Drury Lane theatre, Ball at the Savoy and Three Sisters. To Oscar’s surprise, England showed as much hospitality for his efforts as they had for his grandfather’s—that is to say, not much.
Ball at the Savoy, written with old-school newcomer, composer Paul Abraham, was nothing less than a streamlined plot lift of Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow. So creaky and witless was the result that London Sunday Times critic James Agate warned: “The plot bored to death even our grandmothers.” Ball managed to roll along for 148 performances. This was far more than could be said of Oscar’s second effort, written with Kern, of all people. Three Sisters, a story about one father, three sisters, and their efforts to find true, married love, managed only forty-five performances. Critics implored Oscar to go home. And he did.
While Oscar had been in London, times had changed. Hollywood no longer needed operetta royalty. Now it was Oscar who needed Hollywood. The theatre critics’ steady drumbeat of disapproval over Oscar’s arcane skill set and naive mind-set had become deafening. In Hollywood, Oscar would have to sell his soul—but at least Hollywood was buying.
Over the remainder of the decade, Oscar worked for hire on a wide range of movies, with an even wider range of talents. But The Night Is Young; Give Us This Night; Swing High, Swing Low; High, Wide, and Handsome; The Lady Objects; The Great Waltz; and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle all came and went, making little if any lasting impression on the press and public. Oscar’s soul was no longer his own, but, in his defense, he never, ever stopped working.
During this time, Oscar came back to New York to work on only five musicals, two of which were not even for Broadway. By this point, Romberg had passed his creative high point, and even Kern was considered quaint.
In 1935 Oscar collaborated with Romberg on May Wine, the story of a jealous man who finally realizes he needn’t be so and lives happily ever after with a faithful wife. The sentimental tale ran a respectable 213 performances on the strength of mildly positive reviews. The critics had begun to show their appreciation of Oscar’s skill at integrating the song material with the story—sentimental though it was.
“Just Once Around the Clock” sheet music from May Wine, 1935
In 1938 Oscar once again teamed with Kern for the Civil War–themed Gentlemen Unafraid, which explored the conflict between love for a woman and duty to country, with the character of President Lincoln making a cameo appearance. Even Kern got the rare pan. The show died after ten performances in St. Louis.
“All the Things You Are” sheet music from Very Warm for May, 1939
By the time Very Warm for May opened in November 1939, Oscar was running on fumes. In this show, young May wants to act, sing, and dance, against her show folk parent’s wishes and puts on a show. Very warm high jinks ensue. Critics began performing autopsies on Oscar’s lyrics and warned that his book writing had begun to obscure even Kern’s mellifluous scores. They were right. This stillborn formula ran fifty-nine embarrassing performances. But the critics were wrong about one song. From the wreckage was salvaged one immortal musical gem, a circle of fifths tour de force titled “All the Things You Are,” the chorus of which remains to this day a staple of father-daughter wedding dances and a quiet favorite of jazz musicians:
You are the promised kiss of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long.
You are the breathless hush of evening
That trembles on the brink of a lovely song.
You are the angel glow that lights a star,
The dearest things I know are what you are.
Someday my happy arms will hold you,
And someday I’ll know that moment divine,
When all the things you are, are mine!
This dated mix of operatic song and frivolous story did not resonate with the audience of 1939. (People didn’t say “moment divine” anymore—if they ever did.) The drums of war could be heard across the Atlantic. America’s grim duty was becoming clearer by the day.
While out in Hollywood, Oscar had founded the Anti-Nazi League in an attempt to put pressure on governments to form a proto–United Nations, antifascist alliance. He had long recognized Hitler’s menace. But these efforts were all for naught, and now his heart was filled with sorrow, frustration, and perhaps, fear. Paris had fallen to the Nazis in the late spring of 1940.
Jerome Kern
Oscar had first visited Paris in 1906. His father had brought the family while scouting vaudeville acts for the Victoria. Oscar had loved the place and had returned often—sometimes for business, always for pleasure. Now he wondered, Is all this no longer? Are memories all that remain?
Oscar began to jot down his memories and, finding rhyme, crafted them into a simple, unaffected poem:
The last time I saw Paris,
Her heart was warm and gay.
I heard the laughter of her heart
in ev’ry street cafe.
The last time I saw Paris,
Her trees were dressed for spring
And lovers walked beneath those trees
And birds found songs to sing.
I dodged the same old taxicabs
that I had dodged for years.
> The chorus of their squeaky horns
was music to my ears.
The last time I saw Paris,
Her heart was warm and gay
No matter how they change her,
I’ll remember her that way.
Oscar Hammerstein II
This verse was Oscar in a nutshell: the sentimental optimist, eschewing the darkest of clouds for the thinnest of silver linings, willfully, unapologetically naive. But Oscar had not written a song; just a poem. There was no show, no character to develop, no plot to push forward. This may have been the first time he didn’t struggle to empathize with some character in the first person. This was simply him, unadorned. Oscar read Jerry his poem over the phone. A few days later, to his surprise, Jerry sent the poem back with a tune attached.
Opening in May 1940, American Jubilee was a forty-cent world’s fair show, with a huge cast and budget, a tiny rehearsal window, and a fixed, five-month run. Though it received positive reviews, the way-off-Broadway context was far less critical. Oscar and composer Arthur Schwartz—who had far more success before and after this effort with his usual collaborator, Howard Dietz—were playing in the theatrical minor leagues here. American Jubilee played the fixed duration of the fair, and then sank without a trace.
American Jubilee souvenir program
“The Last Time I Saw Paris,” Oscar’s poem turned musical number, had far better luck. Inserted into Lady Be Good, it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1941.
But Oscar, now forty-six, was blue. In spite of winning an Oscar, he feared the possibility that his greatest successes as a writer of musicals were behind him. “Paris” had been a lucky, and truly inadvertent, bit of good that stood in marked contrast to a decade of bad luck, bad timing, and some plain bad writing.
The Hammersteins Page 10