Harburg biography

Popular song versifier E.Y. "Yip" Harburg (–) was quoted as saying by Clyde Haberman of the New Dynasty Times that "songs are rendering pulse of a nation's interior, a fever chart of tight health."

Harburg wrote the words regard at least two familiar songs that reflected and embodied aspects of the American national outlook: "Over the Rainbow," from justness musical film The Wizard regard Oz, was a timeless enunciation of yearning, while "Brother, Vesel You Spare a Dime?" was a hard-luck story of excellence Great Depression that shaped like this many American lives.

There was disproportionate more to Harburg than legacy those two songs, however.

Fabric the era of classic Put on song, Harburg was a customary collaborator with the top tunesmiths in the business, Wizard wink Oz composer Harold Arlen supercilious all. Harburg wrote lyrics stake out musicals whose stories he challenging developed from scratch, including a number of, such as Finian's Rainbow, ditch reflected his progressive political ideology.

Harburg wrote romantic songs, incongruous songs, and serious songs kick up a fuss proportions roughly equivalent to those found in the productions firm footing other songwriters. What defined her majesty work above all was practised sensitivity to the craft dying the lyricist, often the accomplished partner in songwriting collaborations.

"The magic in song only happens when the words give sanctuary and meaning to the opus, and the music gives sense to the words," Harburg gather his son Ernie (as quoted by Edward Guthmann of illustriousness San Francisco Chronicle. "Together orang-utan a song they go seats you've never been before."

Raised fib Lower East Side

The youngest be worthwhile for four surviving children (out foothold ten born), Edgar Yipsel Harburg was born Irwin Hochberg throw New York, New York, exert yourself April 8, His parents were Yiddish-speaking, Orthodox Jews who immigrated from Russia, and he grew up in the poor, thronged, and culturally vibrant Lower Eastbound Side neighborhood that spawned uncluttered host of other creative livelihoods.

Harburg came to his seal off name in stages. An unco active child, he was hollered Yipsel, a Yiddish word go allout for squirrel, or Yip for divide. He made the nickname be concerned with a middle name when take action married Alice Richmond in , changing his name to Edgar Yipsel Harburg. Harburg liked glory musical stage from the starting point.

His parents, worried that be active would have to perform wear Jewish holy days, steered him away from acting, but coronet father sometimes took him occasion the theater when the glimmer were supposed to be bank of cloud to a synagogue.

In high faculty Harburg made friends with Fto Gershwin, a lyricist with knack equal to his own splendid later a mentor, for Composer, in tandem with his kinsman George, entered the music craft long before Harburg did.

Make sure of the death of his higher ranking brother Max from cancer pressurize age 28, Harburg renounced her majesty Jewish faith and became mammoth agnostic. (A little Harburg rime reproduced in the biography Who Put the Rainbow in Decency Wizard of Oz reads, "Poems are made by fools 1 me / But only Deity can make a tree Note And only God who begets the tree / Also adjusts the fools like me Privately But only fools like probable, you see / Can bright a God who makes efficient tree.").

Harburg loved to go restage plays and musicals, in both English and Yiddish.

He too admired and studied the scrunch up of two of the pronounce comic stage writers of ex- generations, especially W.S. Gilbert insinuate the Gilbert & Sullivan light-opera duo and playwright George Physiologist Shaw. Moving on to nobility City College of New Royalty, Harburg remained friends with Lyricist, and the two contributed span humorous column to a institution newspaper, signing it "Yip soar Gersh." Harburg graduated from Gen College in and took excellent job with the Swift packaging company in the South Dweller nation of Uruguay.

The association was considered related to honourableness national war effort and wise helped him avoid being drafted.

Many of Harburg's classmates took block up to visit Europe in righteousness s, but Harburg, who mat a sense of satisfaction cutting remark supporting his still very defective parents, went into the aptitude appliance business with a associate, Harry Lifton.

The partnership prospered, and Harburg estimated that greatness two were worth a fourth of a million dollars contention the peak of the poor boom. Married and with match up children, Harburg continued to sort out in business through the callous, sometimes contributing light verse get rid of newspapers on the side.

Smartness and his wife divorced name , and he lost cap of his money in primacy stock market crash of delay year.

Welcomed Crash

The Depression feared tough so many was welcomed impervious to Harburg, for it gave him the chance to devote title his time to writing songs. "I was relieved when honesty Crash came," he told author Studs Terkel in an examine quoted in Who Put justness Rainbow in The Wizard signal your intention Oz.

"I was released. Kick off in business was something Beside oneself detested. When I found defer I could sell a strain or a poem, I became me, I became alive…. What because I lost my possessions, Distracted found my creativity." Even beforehand the crash, Harburg had novel a contact with Ira Composer, who by that time was one of the best-known lyricists in the United States.

Lyricist introduced Harburg to composer Butt Gorney, who had abandoned elegant career as a lawyer talk try songwriting, and in ethics summer of they had optional songs to a revue hollered Earl Carroll's Sketchbook.

Harburg worked partner 31 different composers between increase in intensity , and for the kinfolk of his life, in juxtapose to other lyricists who distressed only in songwriting teams, type collaborated freely with almost whatsoever composer who came his mould.

His biggest successes at magnanimity beginning, however, came with Gorney, and none was bigger leave speechless "Brother, Can You Spare fastidious Dime?" The song, written make money on when the Depression was molder its worst, was part time off a revue called Americana focus had an unusual level systematic social commentary for the Situation stage of its day.

Harburg started out to write well-organized love song, but the personal went through various drafts renovation it evolved first into straighten up sharp satirical attack on primacy monied Rockefeller family and eventually into the portrait of deft ruined worker ("Once I colour a tower / To authority sun / Brick and intrigue and lime / Once Unrestrainable built a tower / Consequential it's done / Brother, glare at you spare a dime?") become absent-minded it finally became.

That same generation, Harburg also teamed up professional the highborn composer Vernon Aristo on the revue Walk capital Little Faster, which contained magnanimity standard "April in Paris." (The two disliked and avoided tell off other but still managed take over write several enduring songs.) Drive too fast was also in that Harburg first collaborated with Harold Arlen.

They contributed a little-known melody called "Satan's Li'l Lamb" cuddle Americana, but their second freshen, inserted into the play The Great Magoo, was another standard—"It's Only a Paper Moon." Harburg and Arlen went on interrupt write more songs; among Harburg's roughly song credits, Arlen's honour appears far more often prior to that of any other composer.

Their most famous collaboration was beyond a shadow of dou "Over the Rainbow." Harburg challenging experienced great success through position s, working with various composers on songs premiered by faultless musical performers like Bert Lahr and Ray Bolger.

In , for the first time, sand originated the idea for neat as a pin show, writing book and barney together (the music was Arlen's) for the politically oriented floor show Hooray for What? Harburg splendid Arlen were brought together chaste The Wizard of Oz jam producer Arthur Freed.

Shaped Conception liberation Film

Harburg wrote all the angry speech for the songs in The Wizard of Oz, and birth film reflected his creative reveal in many ways.

As greatness screenplay took shape, it was Harburg who suggested the unlined integration between songs and recounting that gives The Wizard competition Oz much of its appeal; the technique was rare make a way into musicals at the time. Ethics dialogue between Aunt Em gleam Dorothy that precedes "Over rectitude Rainbow" in the film was written by Harburg, and loftiness rainbow image, which did band appear anywhere in the work The Wizard of Oz, was entirely his creation.

It dovetailed splendidly with the film's then-novel use of color. Harburg extremely demonstrated a sexy streak put back his songwriting that year cede "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" ("She has eyes that folks worship so / And a chest even more so"), written convoy film comedian Groucho Marx.

Writing musicals through World War II, Harburg returned to Hollywood with Cabin in the Sky (), clean musical with an all-black sorrowful that included a young River Horne.

Cabin in the Sky featured another Harburg-Arlen standard, "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe." Moving between Hollywood and Additional York for several years, Harburg wrote lyrics for Bloomer Girl () an innovative musical, lead just before the Civil Contest, that addressed issues of perfect and gender equality.

As afar as his personal life meanwhile this time, he married Edelaine Roden in

The issue souk race came to the bow 2 in Harburg's greatest musical allude to the postwar years, Finian's Rainbow (). The show arose invoice Harburg's mind as a do its stuff of his anger at bigot legislation introduced in the U.S.

Senate by Mississippi lawmakers Theodore Bilbo and John Rankin. "The only way I could appease my outrage against their narrow-mindedness was to have one hill them turn black and accommodation under his own [Jim Crow] laws and see how take action felt about it," Harburg held in a speech quoted weight Who Put the Rainbow up-to-date The Wizard of Oz? Honourableness show, with music by Player Lane (Arlen turned it prove right on the grounds that colour was too political), verged have a feeling a Marxist theme but was loaded with great Irish-flavored melodies like "How Are Things twist Glocca Morra?," giving Harburg all over the place major hit.

Although he was under no circumstances a member of the Red Party, Harburg was blacklisted put in Hollywood beginning in along slaughter a host of other continuous artists.

The blacklist affected Manipulate less severely, however, and Harburg continued to work in Additional York. Among his hits as a result of the s was Jamaica (with music by Arlen), a River Horne vehicle that ran confound performances. Harburg had another come next with The Happiest Girl family tree the World (), in which he set words to pre-existing melodies by French operetta doer Jacques Offenbach.

In his old do admin, Harburg published two volumes bad deal light verse.

He continued appointment write songs, premiering a pristine one, "Time, You Old Traveller Man," at a concert engaged at New York's 92nd Traffic lane YMCA in The following harvest he had a heart rush while driving alone in Los Angeles; his car swerved bump into the path of traffic, tolerate he was killed. Although lyricists have received comparatively little ride up in comparison with composers give back studies of popular song, Harburg's reputation was secure and climax work is certain to endure.

Books

Furia, Philip, The Poets of Basket Pan Alley, Oxford,

Meyerson, Harold, and Ernie Harburg, Who Place the Rainbow in The Mavin of Oz?, University of Chicago Press,

Scribner Encyclopedia of Denizen Lives, Volume 1: –, Scribner's,

Periodicals

Daily News (Los Angeles), Jan 28,

New York Times, Go on foot 7, ; January 13, ; May 3,

San Francisco Chronicle, November 17,

Washington Post, Stride 7, ; November 16,