Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II
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Oscar Hammerstein II wrote the lyrics and libretto for Oklahoma! 1943, the revolutionary musical that changed Broadway by integrating song and story. He collaborated with composer Richard Rodgers on classics like The Sound of Music 1959 and South Pacific 1949, winning eight Tony Awards. His earlier work with Jerome Kern on Show Boat 1927 tackled serious themes like racism. Hammerstein died of stomach cancer in 1960 at age 65.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Oscar Hammerstein II — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Oscar Hammerstein II by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Oscar Hammerstein II — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
From childhood, Oscar Hammerstein II was surrounded by theatre. His father Willie Hammerstein managed the Victoria Theatre in Times Square, and his grandfather Oscar Hammerstein I was a pioneering opera impresario. After his father’s death in 1914, Hammerstein enrolled at Columbia University, where he wrote and performed in the Varsity Show. He left law school in 1917 to pursue theater, mentored by lyricist Otto Harbach.
In 1927, Hammerstein found his first major success with Show Boat, written with composer Jerome Kern. The musical introduced Ol Man River’ and broke from light operetta by addressing racism. In the early 1940s, Richard Rodgers sought Hammerstein after his partnership with Lorenz Hart faltered. Their collaboration produced Oklahoma! in 1943, which ran for 2,212 performances and pioneered the integrated musical. Between 1945 and 1959, Rodgers and Hammerstein created Carousel 1945, South Pacific 1949, Pulitzer Prize, The King and I 1951, and The Sound of Music 1959. Hammerstein also wrote the all-black adaptation Carmen Jones in 1943. He won Academy Awards for The Last Time I Saw Paris 1940 and It Might as Well Be Spring 1945.
Hammerstein married Myra Finn in 1917; they divorced in 1929. That same year he married Dorothy Blanchard, an interior designer, who remained his wife until his death. He had three children: James, William, and Alice. His son James became a theatre director and producer. Stepdaughter Susan Blanchard worked as a lyricist. Hammerstein’s home, Highland Farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was a 19th-century farmhouse where he lived from 1940 until his death.
Hammerstein, alongside Rodgers and Kern, developed the integrated musical, where songs advance plot and character. This approach influenced Stephen Sondheim, whom Hammerstein mentored. His works like Oklahoma! and Show Boat are regularly revived. In 1996, he was posthumously nominated for a Tony for State Fair. The lights of Times Square were dimmed for one minute upon his death in 1960. He is remembered for his lyricism and his role in elevating musical theatre to a serious art form.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by Oscar Hammerstein II — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
Oscar Hammerstein II's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
A wall of memorable lines from Oscar Hammerstein II — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
The Definition of a Producer: an Idealist, a Realist, a Practical Dreamer, a Sophisticated Gambler and a Stage Struck Child.
Everyone Speaks and Writes Words. Few Can Write Music. It’s Creation Is a Mystery. There Are Mathematical Principles to Guide the Construction, but No Mere Knowledge of These Can Produce the Emotional Eloquence Some Music Attains. We Are Made Sad or Happy, Romantic, Thoughtful, Disturbed or Peaceful by Someone Else’s Singing Heart. to Me This Is a Most Exciting and Inexplicable Phenomenon. I Should Hate to Me a Music Critic with Telling People What Is Good or Bad in a Musical Composition or What Are Its Component Elements. One Might as Well Try to Explain to a Group of Children at the Seaside the Chemistry of Salt Water and Sand, and the Source of the Sunlight or the Breeze That Romps with Them Along the Shore.
I Am Not a Trained Musician. as a Librettist, I Use Music as a Tool That a Kind Composer Has Given Me, but I Have No Idea Where He Got It. I Do Have Some Idea of How Music Can Affect an Audience in a Theatre, and Only Within This Limited Area, Do I Consider Qualified to Discuss the Work of Richard Rodgers. He Is Essentially a Composer for Plays. He Writes Music to Depict Story and Character and Is, Therefore, Himself a Dramatist. He Is Not an Abstractionist in Any Sense And, as Far as I Can See, He Has No Interest in the Mere Creation of Sound, However Unusual or Ingenious. He Composes in Order to Make Words Fly Higher or Cut Deeper Than They Would Without the Aid of His Music. His Melodies Are Clean and Well Defined. His Scores Are Carefully Built, Logically Allied to the Stories and Characters They Describe. No Overgrown Forests or Weed Clogged Meadows of Music Here, but Neat Rows of Tenderly Grown Flowers on Well Kept Lawns.
Any Professional Author Will Scoff at the Implication That He Spends His Time Hoping and Waiting for a Magic Spark to Start Him Off. There Are Few Accidents of This Kind in Writing. a Sudden Beam of Moonlight, or a Thrush You Have Just Heard, or a Girl You Have Just Kissed, or a Beautiful View Through Your Study Window Is Seldom the Source of an Urge to Put Words on Paper. Such Pleasant Experiences Are Likely to Obstruct and Delay a Writer’s Work. Nobody Waits to Be Inspired.
Aside from My Shortcomings as a Wit and Rhymester or Perhaps, Because of Them My Inclinations Lead Me to a More Primitive Type of Lyric.
Little-known facts about Oscar Hammerstein II — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Hammerstein is the only man named Oscar ever to win an Academy Award.
Edelweiss from The Sound of Music was the last song Hammerstein wrote. He composed it at the last minute to give actor Theodore Bikel a solo number. Bikel always notes that the final word Hammerstein wrote as a lyric was forever.
Stephen Sondheim said of him, His work tended to make people think of him as an unsophisticated, platitudinous hick, when in fact he was a highly intelligent, strongly principled, and philosophical man.
Hammerstein mentored composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. His Pennsylvania estate, Highland Farms, is now a bed and breakfast featuring family memorabilia.
He, along with Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers, developed the integrated musical, where songs furthered the plot and revealed character. With Kern he wrote Show Boat, and with Rodgers he wrote Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, the TV musical Cinderella, and The Sound of Music.
Hammerstein was generous in giving credit. The song Bill used in Show Boat was originally from an older musical with lyrics by P.G. Wodehouse. Hammerstein rewrote half the lyrics but let the public think it was entirely Wodehouse’s work. In the 1951 film credits read Lyrics for Bill by P.G. Wodehouse.
Often wrote standing up at a high antique bookkeeper’s desk, a gift from old friend and collaborator Jerome Kern. He claimed it helped his creative process.
Richard Rodgers and his musical The King and I at the Marriott Theatre in Chicago, Illinois was awarded the 2001 Equity Joseph Jefferson Award for Musical Production.
Born at 4:30am EST.
Unlike his most frequent partners Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers, Hammerstein came from a distinguished theatrical family. His paternal grandfather, Oscar Hammerstein I, was a successful theater and opera impresario. His father, William Hammerstein, was a successful vaudeville producer. His uncle, Arthur Hammerstein, produced Broadway musicals.
He and Richard Rodgers established their own publishing firm, Williamson Music, as an inside joke because both their fathers were named William.
He and Richard Rodgers also produced shows by other writers, including Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun and John Van Druten’s I Remember Mama.
The King and I was performed at the London Palladium in 2000 and nominated for Outstanding Musical Production at the Laurence Olivier Theatre Awards.
His musical Oklahoma! won the London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Musical.
Won five Tony Awards: three in 1950 for South Pacific lyrics, book, co-producer; one in 1952 for The King and I book and lyrics; and one in 1960 for The Sound of Music lyrics. He was also Tony-nominated three other times: in 1956 for Pipe Dream, in 1959 for Flower Drum Song, and in 1996 posthumously for State Fair.
The Theatre Guild produced his and Richard Rodgers’ first three stage shows Oklahoma!, Carousel, Allegro. The Guild suggested turning Ferenc Molnar’s play Liliom into what became Carousel.
His son William Hammerstein was named after Hammerstein’s father.
Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Member of Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.
He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for South Pacific, collaborating with Richard Rodgers and Joshua Logan.
Cousin of actress Elaine Hammerstein.
Richard Rodgers and his musical The King and I at the Porchlight Music Theatre in Chicago was nominated for the 2011 Equity Joseph Jefferson Award for Musical Production.
Richard Rodgers and his musical The Sound of Music at the Drury Lane Oakbrook Theatre in Illinois was nominated for a 2012 Equity Joseph Jefferson Award.
Richard Rodgers and his musical South Pacific at the Marriott Theatre was nominated for a 2013 Equity Joseph Jefferson Award.
Richard Rodgers and his musical The King and I at the Marriott Theatre was nominated for a 1987 Equity Joseph Jefferson Award.
The 1956 West German film The Trapp Family and its sequel became the most successful in post-war West Germany. The success of these films led to the stage musical The Sound of Music, developed with Mary Martin and the Rodgers and Hammerstein team. The show opened on Broadway in 1959 and ran for 1,433 performances.
The last song Hammerstein ever wrote was Edelweiss 1959, a song where an Austrian character bids farewell to his homeland. It used the edelweiss flower as a symbol of Austria. The song later became a tourist attraction for Austria.
He and Richard Rodgers shared a special Pulitzer citation for Oklahoma!, an Oscar for the song It Might as Well Be Spring from State Fair, and were recipients of several Donaldson and Antoinette Perry Awards.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Oscar Hammerstein II.
Celebrities similar to Oscar Hammerstein II — same craft, ranked by reach.
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