Word: hammersteins
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Before his father, William Hammerstein, died, he left instructions: "Watch over Oscar. He has a great name, but never let him get near the stage." At Columbia, Oscar got good grades in his law courses, played first base (he was too light for football) and then-fatefully-wrote some varsity shows. His favorite contained a fat part for himself: a comic French waiter called Dubonnet (acting is still one of Hammerstein's secret ambitions). Slowly, he began to dream of the theater. But he had the promise of a law job at $15 a week. Says he: "If they...
...Hammerstein wrote the words one after noon sitting on his bed ; he needed a number to pull the somewhat rambling plot together. And as long as Americans sing, they are likely to remember those simple lyrics...
...Inner Conceit. In 1929, Hammerstein was divorced from his first wife and married mahogany-haired Dorothy Blanchard, daughter of an Australian sea captain. With her he answered a syncopated summons from Hollywood. He arrived on the Coast amidst expectant huzzahs. But soon he was weighed in Hollywood's inexplicable scales, and found wanting. One M-G-Mogul passed the verdict around commissaries and conference rooms: "Oscar is a very dear friend of mine, but he can't write...
Hollywood marked the beginning of a long, curious period of Hammerstein failure. He worked on a dozen musicals between 1930 and 1942, but few were hits. He suffered the lean years stoically. In 1940 he bought, as a sort of refuge, a farm near Doylestown, Pa. People said that Oscar Hammerstein was through; he claims that he was kept going by a "certain inner conceit...
...Theatre Guild told him that they were redoing Lynn Riggs's Green Grow the Lilacs with a score by Dick Rodgers. Would he do the lyrics? He certainly would. After ten years of uncertainty, Hammerstein found in Oklahoma! the modern touch that "they" wanted. It consisted chiefly of a captivating simplicity that revolutionized musicomedy...