Lyricist Sheldon Harnick, who teamed up with composer Jerry Bock to write some of Broadway’s most memorable musicals, including Tony Award-winning Fiddler on the Roof and Fiorello! died at his Manhattan home. he was 99 years old.
His death was announced by publicist Sean Katz.
Mr. Harnick’s lyrics can be broadly funny, subtly satirical, richly romantic, or poignantly moving. He makes a wide variety of appearances, including bright-eyed young lovers, corrupt politicians, quarreling Adam and Eve, and, in Fiddler on the Roof, an anguished Jew in early 20th-century Russia. I was in charge of the characters’ voices.
When three unmarried sisters confront a village matchmaker in The Fiddler, two of them hopeful and the third cynical, they all have second thoughts.
Matchmaker, matchmaker, no plans
I’m in no hurry, maybe I’ve learned
Girls can get burned when playing with matches.
So don’t bring the ring, don’t groom the groom,
If you find it, you won’t find it, and if you catch it, you won’t be caught.
Must be Musou!
The man in “She Loves Me” sings himself while nearly having a mental breakdown as he tries to meet the woman he’s exchanged love letters with for months.
i haven’t slept, i just think
About the approaching Tete a Tete,
8 o’clock tonight.
I feel a mix of melancholy and elation.
What a state!
to wait
Until eight o’clock.
Mr. Harnick met Mr. Bock in the late 1950s and quickly realized that the two could work together despite their different temperaments. “I tend to be skeptical and pessimistic,” Harnick told The New York Times in 1990. “Jerry Bock is a lively, lively personality.”
The team disbanded after more than a decade due to controversy over the musical The Rothschilds. But this combination worked quite well while it lasted.
The late 1950s were a difficult time for those new to the musical stage. His musical hits on Broadway during this decade included “Guys and Dolls,” “The King and I,” “Wonderful Town,” “My Fair Lady,” and “Candide.” “At the time,” Harnick recalled in a 2004 interview. Now we’re following in the footsteps of Andrew Lloyd Webber and trying to reach a wider audience. ”
Harnick and Bock got off to a sluggish start in 1958 with The Body Beautiful, set in the world of bounty hunters. After a short run it closed. But the following year he made a definitive recovery with “Fiorello!,” a refreshing portrayal of one of New York City’s most flamboyant politicians.
Fiorello!, written by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman and directed by Mr. Abbott, stars Tom Bosley as reformer Fiorello H. LaGuardia, mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1945 bottom. A time when political corruption was rampant.
For example, the song “Little Tin Box” is how a twisted party boss (Howard Da Silva) reacted when a judge asked how he could buy a yacht on such a low salary. It suggests. The boss replies:
I’m sure your Excellency must be joking.
Anybody who works can do what I did.
For a month or two I just quit smoking
And I put in the extra pennies one by one
into a small tin box
small tin box
That little tin key unlocks it.
nothing out of the ordinary
About the size of a small tin box.
After nearly 800 performances, “Fiorello!” won three Tony Awards, including Best Musical, alongside “The Sound of Music.” It was also one of the few musicals to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
But one of the Bockharnik team’s biggest successes, and one of Broadway’s greatest successes, was yet to come. Fiddler on the Roof, which opened in 1964 and has been performed more than 3,200 times. The production became the longest-running musical in Broadway history, a record that stood for ten years.
Directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins and based on Joseph Stein’s book based on the story of Shorem Aleichem, The Fiddler on the Roof is about a Jew facing expulsion from his village in Tsarist Russia. I drew the story of the human community, focusing on Tevye. (Zero Mostel), a village milkman and his family.
In addition to “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” the score includes “Tradition,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” and Tevye’s humorous and wistful lament “If I Was Rich” (“There,” one long staircase Up / and one down even longer / and another leading to nowhere, just a sham”).
“Fiddler on the Roof” wasn’t just a hit show. It was a phenomenon. It won nine Tony Awards, including one for music. This production was his 1971 hit film adaptation, which has been staged worldwide, most recently his fifth revival on Broadway in 2015 (the Yiddish production was his Off-Broadway production in 2019). and was rerun at the end of the year) in 2022. )
Other notable works by the Bock Harnick team include the films ‘The Shop Around the Corner’, ‘In the Good Old Summertime’ and ‘You got my mail’. A story about employees (Barbara Cook and Daniel Massey) who finally realize they’ve been exchanging romantic letters and they’re meant for each other. “She Loves Me” had no standout songs and was an initial success, closing after 301 performances. However, its 1993 and 2016 Broadway productions were similarly short-lived, but gained popularity after a series of revivals.
Their other shows include The Apple Tree (1966), three musical playlets directed by Mike Nichols (including one about Adam and Eve), and Frederick Morton’s biography of a Jewish family. There was “The Rothschilds” (1970) based on. The ghetto becomes a financial powerhouse.
It was the dispute over who would run the “Rothschilds” that ended the Bock-Harnick partnership. The show’s original director, Derek Goldby, was replaced by Michael Kidd at the recommendation of Mr. Harnick and others who wanted someone with more musical theater experience. Mr. Bock was furious.
“Jerry felt that Derek had been badly dealt with,” Harnick recalled in 1990. “For a while the feeling between us was very bad.” He added that “things changed for the better” when “Fiorello!” The piece was revived in his 1985 at his Opera House in Goodspeed, Connecticut, where he and Mr. Bock met to work on the piece. (It was revived Off-Broadway in 2016.)
Sheldon Mayer Harnick was born on April 30, 1924 in Chicago to Harry Harnick and Esther Harnick. His father was a dentist and his mother a housewife. He took violin lessons as a child, attended music school during his teenage years, and earned money playing in amateur theater. After he served in the Army, he enrolled in the Northwestern University School of Music. He graduated in his 1949.
He began writing songs while attending Carl Schultz High School in Chicago, and after hearing a recording of Barton Lane and EY Harburgh’s 1947 hit musical Finnian’s Rainbow, he became seriously interested in songwriting as a career. now have He moved to New York in 1950 on the recommendation of Northwestern student and actress Charlotte Rae.
Mr Harnick’s first song in a Broadway show was “Boston Begin”, for which he wrote the music and lyrics for the revue “Leonard Silman’s 1952 New Face”. He wrote several other review numbers, including “Two’s Company” (1952), before teaming with Mr. Bock. (One of his works at the time, the darkly satirical and deceptively hilarious “Merry Minuet”, was made popular by his trio of folk music his group Kingston.)
Mr Harnick’s first marriage to Mary Bortner was annulled. Her second partner, comedian, screenwriter and director Elaine May, ended in divorce. In 1965, he married actress Margery Gray, whom he met while auditioning for the show The Tenderloin. (She later became a photographer and artist.) She survived him, as did his daughter Beth Dorn. son Matthew Harnick. and four grandchildren.
After parting ways with Mr. Bock, Mr. Harnick continued collaborating with other composers. He worked on the 1973 version of “Pinocchio” by Mary Rogers and Bill Baird’s marionettes, and with her father Richard Rodgers, a short Broadway musical about Henry VIII in 1976. Cooperated with Rex. Nicole Williamson stars in the title role. He also appeared in two of his shows, the English stage version of the 1979 Broadway production of the film musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and the new adaptation of A Christmas Carol in Stamford, Connecticut.・Cooperated with Legrand. and has collaborated with Joe Raposo on ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, based on the film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and has been produced in many regions since 1986.
Mr. Harnick is also an accomplished opera translator, providing English librettos for such classics as Lehár’s The Merry Widow, Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale and Bizet’s Carmen.
He wrote original opera librettos, including Captain Jinx of the Horse Marines (1975), with music by Jack Beeson, and Phantom Tollbooth (1995), co-written with children’s author Norton Juster. I have also written some Based on it and composer Arnold Black. The opera “Lady Bird: First Lady of the Nation,” about Lady Bird Johnson, with the libretto by Johnson and the music by Henry Morricone, premiered in Texas in 2016 and has been performed in New York and elsewhere. there is
In late 2015, just before the latest Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof opened, Mr. Harnick was in the studio playing a demonstration record of the song “Dragons,” an adaptation of the Russian play he wrote the book for. was creating. Music and lyrics and what he’s been working on for years. In an interview with The Times, he said he had no thoughts of retiring and continued to attend all Broadway shows as he had for many years. He added that he is working on his own new show.
“I wish I could live long enough to finish it,” he said. “I won’t tell you what ideas I have because you will steal them.”
Former New York Times arts editor Robert Burkvist died in January. Peter Keepnews contributed to the report.
