The librettist for The King and I was born with theatre in his blood. As the grandson of Oscar Hammerstein I, the immigrant from what is now Poland, whose first job in the United States was sweeping the floors of a cigar factory. (He invented a machine for making the cigars more uniform.) As a boy, Oscar I's father beat him for skating instead of practicing his violin, so he sold the violin and left home. With a life-long passion for opera he became an opera impresario and started building theatres including the Manhattan Opera House and the one in Harlem which later became the famous Apollo. For more on him see:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/hammersein.html.

His son, William, was also a successful theatrical manager, most famously of the Victoria vaudeville house in New York. His son, Oscar Hammerstein II, born July 12, 1895, saw his first show at the Victoria when he was about eight and was hooked. However, his family made him promise not to go into the theatre. Tall and gangly, at thirteen he stood over six feet. He enrolled in Columbia University, starting to study law, but the pull of the stage was too strong, and he became involved in college dramatics. There he first met the fourteen year old Richard Rodgers whose brother was also among the players.

Oscar did eventually obtain a law degree but spent his life in the theatre. He tried to enlist in World War I but was too thin. Instead he went to work for his uncle as an assistant stage manager, soon becoming production stage manager. He learned on the job by seeing every play on Broadway. Eventually he made his mark as a lyricist. His first big hit was Rose Marie (1924) with Rudolph Friml, best known for the Indian Love Song. Other early works were The Desert Song (1926) with Sigmund Romberg, and Show Boat (1927) with Jerome Kern.

Another hit was Carmen Jones (1943), with its all black cast. It used the music of Bizet but Hammerstein rewrote the text in modern southern English and set it in a parachute factory during World War II. The toreador became a boxer. Hammerstein's most famous collaboration was with Richard Rodgers with whom he wrote, among other things, Oklahoma (1943), Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1945), The King and I (1951) and The Sound of Music (1959).

On the Board of Directors of many organizations, including the Screen Actors Guild, he won two Pulitzer prizes, two Academy Awards, and five Tony Awards. He was a mentor to many young artists including Alan Jay Lerner and Stephen Sondheim. For the latter he became a sort of surrogate father. His farm in Pennsylvania was home to a large extended family of children from broken homes.

Hammerstein was a liberal whose musicals had socially daring themes. When his passport expired in 1953, he was asked to sign an affidavit that he was not, and never had been, a communist. He did so and was given a provisional passport. He then wrote a paper documenting his loyalties although he did say he was against blacklisting and he did hire accused actors.

Just before the rehearsals for The Sound of Music began, Hammerstein felt the first pains of the stomach cancer which was to kill him. The last song he wrote was Edelweiss. A week after his death all the area around Times Square was blacked out for three minutes in his honor; it was the most complete blackout since World War II.

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Revised May 2009
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