Hammerstein Revisited

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Budowitz Website: http://www.budowitz.com

I don't know if this is still relevant, but Oscar Hammerstein appears in the
Encyclpedia Judaice with the following entry:

HAMMERSTEIN, U.S. family closely associated with the development of opera
and the popular musical theater in U.S. Its two most famous members were
Oscar Hammerstein I (1847-1919) and his grandson, Oscar II (1895-1960). Born
in Berlin, OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN I ran away from home, reached New York in 1863,
and worked in a cigar factory. He soon became an important and wealthy
figure in the industry. His passion, however, was for building opera houses.
The Harlem Opera House, built in the 1880s, was his first. The Victoria
(1899) was a successful vaudeville theater managed by his son WILLIAM.
Altogether he built ten opera houses and theaters in New York, in addition
to an opera house in Philadelphia (1908) and one in London (1911). His
Manhattan Opera House (1906), a venture in which his son ARTHUR (1873-1955)
was closely involved, competed with the dominant Metropolitan Opera House
until 1910, when the Metropolitan bought it out for $1,200,000. In its time
the Manhattan helped to make grand opera exciting by bringing new talent and
works to American audiences. His later ventures were less successful. OSCAR
HAMMERSTEIN II, librettist, was born in New York, the son of William
Hammerstein. He played an important role in developing the "musical play"
into an integrated dramatic form. He worked for his uncle Arthur as a stage
manager. By 1920 he had produced the books for three musicals. Wildflower
(1923) was his first real success. Subsequently he collaborated on such
Broadway musicals as Rose Marie (1924), Desert Song (1926), and Show Boat
(1927). After some years in Hollywood, he formed his partnership with the
composer Richard Rodgers in 1943. Together they produced a series of
successful musicals with a style and form of their own. These included
Oklahoma (1943), Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), which won a Pulitzer
Prize, The King and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959). The Rodgers and
Hammerstein Foundation, New York, established a fund for cancer research in
1963, at the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem.
[Harvey A. Cooper]

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