Jerome Kern
Encyclopedia
Jerome David Kern was an American composer
of musical theatre
and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River
", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
", "A Fine Romance
", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
", "All the Things You Are
", "The Way You Look Tonight
", "Long Ago (and Far Away)
" and "Who?
". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton
, P. G. Wodehouse
, Otto Harbach
, Oscar Hammerstein II
, Dorothy Fields
, Johnny Mercer
, Ira Gershwin
and E. Y. Harburg.
A native New Yorker
, Kern created dozens of Broadway
musicals and Hollywood films in a career that lasted for more than four decades. His musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz
progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators also employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the other musicals of his day, creating the model for later musicals. Although dozens of Kern's musicals and musical film
s were hits, only Show Boat
is now regularly revived. Songs from his other shows, however, are still frequently performed and adapted. Although Kern detested jazz arrangements of his songs, many have been adopted by jazz musicians to become standard tune
s.
, in what was then the city's brewery district. His parents were Henry Kern (1842–1908), a Jewish German immigrant, and Fannie Kern née Kakeles (1852–1907), who was an American Jew of Bohemia
n parentage. At the time of Kern's birth, his father ran a stable; later he became a successful merchant. Kern grew up on East 56th Street in Manhattan
, where he attended public schools. He showed an early aptitude for music and was taught to play the piano and organ by his mother, an accomplished player and teacher.
In 1897, the family moved to Newark, New Jersey
, where Kern attended Newark High School (which became Barringer High School
in 1907). He wrote songs for the school's first musical, a minstrel show
, in 1901, and for an amateur musical adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin
put on at the Newark Yacht Club in January 1902. Kern's father insisted that his son work with him in business, instead of composing, after leaving high school before graduation in the spring of his senior year in 1902. Kern, however, failed miserably in one of his earliest tasks: he was supposed to purchase two pianos for the store, but instead he ordered 200. His father relented, and later in 1902, Kern became a student at the New York College of Music, studying the piano under Alexander Lambert and Paolo Galico, and harmony under Dr. Austin Pierce. His first published composition, a piano piece, At the Casino, appeared in the same year. Between 1903 and 1905, he continued his musical training under private tutors in Heidelberg
, Germany, returning to New York via London.
theatres and as a song-plugger
for Tin Pan Alley
music publishers. While in London, he secured a contract from the American impresario Charles Frohman
to provide songs for interpolation in Broadway versions of London shows. He began to provide these additions in 1904 to British scores for An English Daisy, by Seymour Hicks
and Walter Slaughter
, and Mr. Wix of Wickham, for which he wrote most of the songs.
In 1905, Kern contributed the song "How'd you like to spoon with me?" to Ivan Caryll
's hit musical
The Earl and the Girl
when the show transferred to Chicago and New York in 1905. He also contributed to the New York production of The Catch of the Season
(1905), The Little Cherub (1906) and The Orchid
(1907), among other shows. From 1905 on, he spent large blocks of time in London, contributing songs to West End
shows like The Beauty of Bath
(1906; with lyricist P. G. Wodehouse
) and making valuable contacts, including George Grossmith Jr. and Seymour Hicks
, who were the first to introduce Kern's songs to the London stage. Kern's parents died in 1907 and 1908. In 1909 during one of his stays in England, Kern took a boat trip on the River Thames
with some friends, and when the boat stopped at Walton-on-Thames
, they went to an inn called the Swan for a drink. Kern was much taken with the proprietor's daughter, Eva Leale (1891–1959), who was working behind the bar. He wooed her, and they were married at the Anglican church of St. Mary's in Walton on October 25, 1910. The couple then lived at the Swan when Kern was in England.
Kern is believed to have composed music for silent film
s as early as 1912, but the earliest documented film music which he is known to have written was for a twenty-part serial, Gloria's Romance in 1916. This was one of the first starring vehicles for Billie Burke
, for whom Kern had earlier written the song "Mind the Paint", with lyrics by A. W. Pinero
. The film is now considered lost
, but Kern's music survives. Another score for the silent movies, Jubilo, followed in 1919. Kern was one of the founding members of ASCAP.
Kern's first complete score was Broadway's The Red Petticoat (1912), one of the first musical-comedy Westerns. The libretto was by Rida Johnson Young
. By World War I
, more than a hundred of Kern’s songs had been used in about thirty productions, mostly Broadway adaptations of West End and European shows. Kern contributed two songs to To-Night's the Night
(1914), another Rubens musical. It opened in New York and went on to become a hit in London. The best known of Kern's songs from this period is probably "They Didn't Believe Me
", which was a hit in the New York version of the Paul Rubens
and Sidney Jones
musical, The Girl from Utah
(1914), for which Kern wrote five songs. Kern's song, with four beats to a bar, departed from the customary waltz
-rhythms of European influence and fitted the new American passion for modern dances such as the fox-trot. He was also able to use elements of American styles, such as ragtime, as well as syncopation, in his lively dance tunes. Theatre historian John Kenrick
writes that the song put Kern in great demand on Broadway and established a pattern for musical comedy love songs that lasted through the 1960s.
In May 1915, Kern was due to sail with Charles Frohman from New York to London on board the RMS Lusitania
, but Kern missed the boat, having overslept after staying up late playing poker. Frohman died in the sinking of the ship.
(1916; most of the songs are by the young Ivor Novello
) and to revues like the Ziegfeld Follies
. The most notable of his scores were those for a series of shows written for the Princess Theatre
, a small (299-seat) house built by Ray Comstock. Theatrical agent Elisabeth Marbury
asked Kern and librettist Guy Bolton
to create a series of intimate and low-budget, yet smart, musicals.
The "Princess Theatre shows" were unique on Broadway not only for their small size, but their clever, coherent plots, integrated scores and naturalistic acting, which presented "a sharp contrast to the large-scale Ruritania
n operettas then in vogue" or the star-studded revue
s and extravaganzas of producers like Florenz Ziegfeld
. Earlier musical comedy
had often been thinly plotted, gaudy pieces, marked by the insertion of songs into their scores with little regard to the plot. But Kern and Bolton followed the examples of Gilbert and Sullivan
and French opéra bouffe
in integrating song and story. "These shows built and polished the mold from which almost all later major musical comedies evolved. ... The characters and situations were, within the limitations of musical comedy license, believable and the humor came from the situations or the nature of the characters. Kern's exquisitely flowing melodies were employed to further the action or develop characterization." The shows featured modern American settings and simple scene changes to suit the small theatre.
The team's first Princess Theatre show was an adaptation of Paul Rubens' 1905 London show, Mr. Popple (of Ippleton), called Nobody Home (1915). The piece ran for 135 performances and was a modest financial success. However, it did little to fulfill the new team's mission to innovate, except that Kern's song, "The Magic Melody", was the first Broadway showtune with a basic jazz
progression. Kern and Bolton next created an original piece, Very Good Eddie
, which was a surprise hit, running for 341 performances, with additional touring productions that went on into the 1918-19 season. The British humorist, lyricist and librettist P. G. Wodehouse
joined the Princess team in 1917, adding his skill as a lyricist to the succeeding shows. Oh, Boy!
(1917) ran for an extraordinary 463 performances. Other shows written for the theatre were Have a Heart (1917), Leave It to Jane
(1917) and Oh, Lady! Lady!!
(1918). The first opened at another theatre before Very Good Eddie closed. The second played elsewhere during the long run of Oh Boy! An anonymous admirer wrote a verse in their praise that begins:
In February 1918, Dorothy Parker
wrote in Vanity Fair
:
Oh, Lady! Lady!! was the last successful "Princess Theatre show". Kern and Wodehouse disagreed over money, and the composer decided to move on to other projects. Kern's importance to the partnership was illustrated by the fate of the last musical of the series, Oh, My Dear! (1918), to which he contributed only one song: "Go, Little Boat". The rest of the show was composed by Louis Hirsch
, and ran for 189 performances: "Despite a respectable run, everyone realized there was little point in continuing the series without Kern."
, which ran for more than 300 performances in New York and for three seasons on tour. Later in the same year, Kern wrote the score for Sally
, with a book by Bolton and lyrics by Otto Harbach
. This show, staged by Florenz Ziegfeld
, ran for 570 performances, one of the longest runs of any Broadway show in the decade, and popularized the song "Look for the Silver Lining
" (which had been written for an earlier show), performed by the rising star Marilyn Miller
. It also had a long run in London in 1921, produced by George Grossmith, Jr.
Kern's next shows were Good Morning, Dearie (1921, with Caldwell) which ran for 347 performances; followed in 1922 by a West End success, The Cabaret Girl
in collaboration with Grossmith and Wodehouse; another modest success by the same team, The Beauty Prize
(1923); and a Broadway flop, The Bunch and Judy, remembered, if at all, as the first time Kern and Fred Astaire
worked together.
Stepping Stones (1923, with Caldwell) was a success, and in 1924 the Princess Theatre team of Bolton, Wodehouse and Kern reunited to write Sitting Pretty, but it did not recapture the popularity of the earlier collaborations. Its relative failure may have been partly due to Kern's growing aversion to having individual songs from his shows performed out of context on radio, in cabaret, or on record, although his chief objection was to jazz interpretations of his songs. He called himself a "musical clothier – nothing more or less," and said, "I write music to both the situations and the lyrics in plays." When Sitting Pretty was produced, he forbade any broadcasting or recording of individual numbers from the show, which limited their chance to gain popularity.
1925 was a major turning point in Kern's career when he met Oscar Hammerstein II
, with whom he would entertain a lifelong friendship and collaboration. As a young man, Kern had been an easy companion with great charm and humor, but he became less outgoing in his middle years, sometimes difficult to work with: he once introduced himself to a producer by saying, "I hear you're a son of a bitch. So am I." He rarely collaborated with any one lyricist for long. With Hammerstein, however, he remained on close terms for the rest of his life. Their first show, written together with Harbach, was Sunny
, which featured the song "Who (Stole My Heart Away)?" Marilyn Miller played the title role, as she had in Sally. The show ran for 517 performances on Broadway, and the following year ran for 363 performances in the West End, starring Binnie Hale
and Jack Buchanan
.
's novel Show Boat
and wished to present a musical stage version. He persuaded Hammerstein to adapt it and Ziegfeld to produce it. The story, dealing with racism, marital strife and alcoholism, was unheard of in the escapist world of musical comedy. Despite his doubts, Ziegfeld spared no expense in staging the piece to give it its full epic grandeur. According to the theatre historian John Kenrick
: "After the opening night audience filed out of the Ziegfeld Theatre in near silence, Ziegfeld thought his worst fears had been confirmed. He was pleasantly surprised when the next morning brought ecstatic reviews and long lines at the box office. In fact, Show Boat proved to be the most lasting accomplishment of Ziegfeld's career – the only one of his shows that is regularly performed today." The score is, arguably, Kern's greatest and includes the well-known songs "Ol' Man River
" and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
" as well as "Make Believe", "You Are Love", "Life Upon the Wicked Stage", "Why Do I Love You", and "Bill
". The show ran for 572 performances on Broadway and was also a success in London. Although Ferber's novel was filmed unsuccessfully as a part-talkie
in 1929 (using some songs from the Kern score), the musical itself was filmed twice, in 1936
, and, with Technicolor
, in 1951
. In 1989, a stage version of the musical was presented on television for the first time, in a production from the Paper Mill Playhouse
telecast by PBS on Great Performances
.
While most Kern musicals have largely been forgotten, except for their songs, Show Boat remains well-remembered and frequently seen. It is a staple of stock productions and has been revived numerous times on Broadway and in London. A 1946 revival integrated choreography into the show, in the manner of a Rodgers and Hammerstein
production, as did the 1994 Harold Prince–Susan Stroman
revival, which was nominated for ten Tony Awards, winning five, including best revival. It was the first musical to enter a major opera company's repertory (New York City Opera, 1954), and the rediscovery of the 1927 score with Robert Russell Bennett
's original orchestrations led to a large-scale EMI
recording in 1987 and several opera-house productions. In 1941, the conductor Artur Rodziński
wished to commission a symphonic suite from the score, but Kern considered himself a songwriter and not a symphonist. He never orchestrated his own scores, leaving that to musical assistants, principally Frank Saddler (until 1921) and Russell Bennett (from 1923). In response to the commission, Kern oversaw an arrangement by Charles Miller and Emil Gerstenberger of numbers from the show into the orchestral work Scenario for Orchestra: Themes from Show Boat, premiered in 1941 by the Cleveland Orchestra
conducted by Rodziński.
Kern's last Broadway show in the 1920s was Sweet Adeline
(1929), with a libretto by Hammerstein. It was a period piece, set in the Gay 90s, about a girl from Hoboken, New Jersey
(near Kern's childhood home), who becomes a Broadway star. Opening just before the stock market crash, it received rave reviews, but the elaborate, old-fashioned piece was a step back from the innovations in Show Boat, or even the Princess Theatre shows. In January 1929, at the height of the Jazz Age
, and with Show Boat still playing on Broadway, Kern made news on both sides of the Atlantic for reasons wholly unconnected with music. He sold at auction, at New York's Anderson Galleries, the collection of English and American literature that he had been building up for more than a decade. The collection, rich in inscribed first editions and manuscript material of eighteenth and nineteenth century authors, sold for a total of $1,729,462.50 – a record for a single-owner sale that stood for over fifty years. Among the books he sold were first or early editions of poems by Robert Burns
and Percy Bysshe Shelley
, and works by Jonathan Swift
, Henry Fielding
and Charles Dickens
, as well as manuscripts by Alexander Pope
, John Keats
, Shelley, Lord Byron
, Thomas Hardy
and others.
films. The following year, he was there a second time to work on Men of the Sky
, released in 1931 without his songs, and a 1930 film version of Sunny
. There was a public reaction against the early glut of film musicals after the advent of film sound; Hollywood released more than 100 musical films in 1930, but only 14 in 1931. Warner Bros.
bought out Kern's contract, and he returned to the stage. He collaborated with Harbach on the Broadway musical The Cat and the Fiddle
(1931), about a composer and an opera singer, featuring the songs "She Didn't Say Yes
" and "The Night Was Made for Love". It ran for 395 performances, a remarkable success for the Depression years, and transferred to London the following year. It was filmed in 1934 with Jeanette MacDonald
.
Music in the Air
(1932) was another Kern-Hammerstein collaboration and another show-biz plot, best remembered today for "The Song Is You
" and "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star
". It was "undoubtedly an operetta", set in the German countryside, but without the Ruritanian trimmings of the operettas of Kern's youth. Roberta (1933) by Kern and Harbach included the songs "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
", "Let's Begin
and "Yesterdays" and featured, among others, Bob Hope
, Fred MacMurray
, George Murphy
and Sydney Greenstreet
all in the early stages of their careers. Kern's Three Sisters (1934), was his last West End show, with a libretto by Hammerstein. The musical, depicting horse-racing, the circus, and class distinctions, was a failure, running for only two months, despite what seems to have been an excellent Kern score (it was never published and much of the original material is lost). Some British critics objected to American writers essaying a British story; James Agate
, doyen of London theatre critics of the day, dismissed it as "American inanity," though both Kern and Hammerstein were strong and knowledgeable Anglophiles. Kern's last Broadway show (other than revivals) was Very Warm for May
(1939), another show-biz story and another disappointment, although the score included the Kern and Hammerstein classic "All The Things You Are
".
, Kern returned to Hollywood, where he composed the scores to a dozen more films, although he also continued working on Broadway productions. He settled permanently in Hollywood in 1937. After suffering a heart attack in 1939, he was told by his doctors to concentrate on film scores, a less stressful task, as Hollywood songwriters were not as deeply involved with the production of their works as Broadway songwriters. This second phase of Kern's Hollywood career had considerably greater artistic and commercial success than the first. With Hammerstein, he wrote songs for the film versions of his recent Broadway shows Music in the Air (1934), which starred Gloria Swanson
in a rare singing role, and Sweet Adeline (1935). With Dorothy Fields
, he composed the new music for I Dream Too Much
(1935), a musical melodrama about the opera world, starring the Metropolitan Opera
diva Lily Pons
. Kern and Fields interspersed the opera numbers with their songs, including "the swinging 'I Got Love,' the lullaby 'The Jockey on the Carousel,' and the entrancing title song." Also with Fields, he wrote two new songs, "I Won't Dance
" and "Lovely to Look At", for the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
film version of Roberta
(1935), which was a hit. The show also included the song "I'll Be Hard to Handle
". This was given a 1952 remake called Lovely to Look At
.
Their next film, Swing Time
(1936) included the song "The Way You Look Tonight
", which won the Academy Award
in 1936 for the best song. Other songs in Swing Time include "A Fine Romance
", "Pick Yourself Up
" and "Never Gonna Dance
". The Oxford Companion to the American Musical calls Swing Time "a strong candidate for the best of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals" and says that, although the screenplay is contrived, it "left plenty of room for dance and all of it was superb. … Although the movie is remembered as one of the great dance musicals, it also boasts one of the best film scores of the 1930s." For the 1936 film version of Show Boat
, Kern and Hammerstein wrote three new songs, including "I Have The Room Above Her" and "Ah Still Suits Me". High, Wide, and Handsome
(1937) was intentionally similar in plot and style to Show Boat", but it was a box-office failure. Kern songs were also used in the Cary Grant
film, When You're in Love
(1937), and the first Abbott and Costello
feature, One Night in the Tropics
(1940). In 1940, Hammerstein wrote the lyric "The Last Time I Saw Paris
", in homage to the French capital, recently occupied by the Germans. Kern set it, the only time he set a pre-written lyric, and his only hit song not written as part of a musical. Originally a hit for Tony Martin
and later for Noël Coward
, the song was used in the film Lady Be Good
(1941) and won Kern another Oscar for best song. Kern's second and last symphonic work was his 'Mark Twain
Suite (1942).
In his last Hollywood musicals, Kern worked with several new and distinguished partners. With Johnny Mercer
for You Were Never Lovelier
(1942), he contributed "a set of memorable songs to entertain audiences until the plot came to its inevitable conclusion". The film starred Astaire and Rita Hayworth
and included the song "I'm Old Fashioned
". Kern's next collaboration was with Ira Gershwin
on Cover Girl starring Hayworth and Gene Kelly
(1944) for which Kern composed "Sure Thing","Put Me to the Test," "Make Way for Tomorrow" (lyric by E. Y. Harburg), and the hit ballad "Long Ago (and Far Away)
". For the Deanna Durbin
Western musical, Can't Help Singing
(1944), with lyrics by Harburg, Kern "provided the best original score of Durbin's career, mixing operetta and Broadway sounds in such songs as 'Any Moment Now,' 'Swing Your Partner,' 'More and More,' and the lilting title number." "More and More" was nominated for an Oscar.
Kern composed his last film score, Centennial Summer
(1946) in which "the songs were as resplendent as the story and characters were mediocre. … Oscar Hammerstein, Leo Robin
, and E. Y. Harburg contributed lyrics for Kern's lovely music, resulting in the soulful ballad 'All Through the Day,' the rustic 'Cinderella Sue,' the cheerful 'Up With the Lark,' and the torchy
'In Love in Vain.'" "All Through the Day" was another Oscar nominee. The music of Kern's last two films is notable in the way it developed from his earlier work. Some of it was too advanced for the film companies; Kern's biographer, Stephen Banfield, refers to "tonal experimentation ... outlandish enharmonics" that the studios insisted on cutting. At the same time, in some ways his music came full circle: having in his youth helped to end the reigns of the waltz and operetta, he now composed three of his finest waltzes ("Can't Help Singing", "Californ-i-ay" and "Up With the Lark"), the last having a distinctly operetta-like character.
In the fall of 1945, Kern returned to New York City to oversee auditions for a new revival of Show Boat, and began to work on the score for what would become the musical Annie Get Your Gun
, to be produced by Rodgers and Hammerstein
. On November 5, 1945, at 60 years of age, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while walking at the south west corner of Park Avenue and 57th street, apparently in search of a drugstore for the pills he depended on, but had forgotten to bring with him. Identifiable only by his ASCAP card, Kern was initially taken to the indigent ward at City Hospital, later being transferred to Doctors Hospital in Manhattan. Hammerstein was at his side when Kern's breathing stopped. Hammerstein hummed or sang the song "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star" from Music in the Air (a personal favorite of the composer's) into Kern's ear. Receiving no response, Hammerstein knew Kern had died.
Kern is interred at Ferncliff Cemetery
in Westchester County, New York
. He was survived by his wife Eva and their daughter, Betty Jane (1913–1996; she married Artie Shaw
in 1942 and later Jack Cummings). Kern and his wife often vacationed on their yacht Show Boat. He collected rare books and enjoyed betting on horses. At the time of Kern's death, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
was filming a fictionalized version of his life, Till the Clouds Roll By
, which was released in 1946 starring Robert Walker as Kern. In the film, Kern's songs are sung by Judy Garland
, Frank Sinatra
, Kathryn Grayson
, Dinah Shore
, June Allyson
, Lena Horne
, Tony Martin
, Cyd Charisse
and Angela Lansbury
, among others. Rodgers and Hammerstein then assigned the task of writing the score for Annie Get Your Gun to the veteran Broadway composer Irving Berlin
. Kern's wife eventually remarried, to a singer named George Byron.
; these included a posthumous nomination in each of 1945 and 1946. One nomination was in 1945 for Best Original Music Score
. Kern was not eligible for any Tony Awards, which were not created until 1947. In 1976, Very Good Eddie
was nominated for a Drama Desk Award
as Outstanding Revival, and the director and actors received various Tony, Drama Desk and other awards and nominations. Elisabeth Welsh was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood in 1986, and Show Boat
received Tony nominations in both 1983 and 1995, winning for best revival in 1995 (among numerous other awards and nominations), and won the Laurence Olivier Award for best revival in 2008. In 1986, Big Deal
was nominated for the Tony for best musical, among other awards, and Bob Fossee won as best choreographer. In 2000, Swing!
, featuring Kern's "I Won't Dance" was nominated for the Tony for Best Musical, among others. In 2002, Elaine Stritch at Liberty, featuring Kern's "All in Fun", won the Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event. In 2004, Never Gonna Dance
received two Tony nominations.
Kern was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame
posthumously, in 1970. In 1985, the U.S. Post Office
issued a postage stamp (Scott #2110, 22¢), with an illustration of Kern holding sheet music.
During his first phase of work (1904–1911), Kern wrote songs for 22 Broadway productions, including songs interpolated into British musicals or featured in revue
s (sometimes writing lyrics as well as music), and he occasionally co-wrote musicals with one or two other composers. During visits to London beginning in 1905, he also composed songs that were first performed in several London shows. The following are some of the most notable such shows from this period:
From 1912 to 1924, the more-experienced Kern began to work on dramatically concerned shows, including incidental music
for plays, and, for the first time since his college show Uncle Tom's Cabin, he wrote musicals as the sole composer. His regular lyricist collaborators for his more than 30 shows during this period were Guy Bolton
, P. G. Wodehouse
, Harry B. Smith
, Anne Caldwell
, and Howard Dietz
. Some of his most notable shows during this very productive period were as follows:
During the last phase of his theatrical composing career, Kern continued to work with his previous collaborators but also met Oscar Hammerstein II
and Otto Harbach
, with whom Kern wrote his most lasting, memorable, and well-known works. The most successful of these are as follows:
In addition to revivals of his most popular shows, Kern's music has been posthumously featured in a variety of revues, musicals and concerts on and off Broadway.
", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
", "A Fine Romance
", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
", "All the Things You Are
", "The Way You Look Tonight
" and "Who?
".
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
of musical theatre
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River
Ol' Man River
"Ol' Man River" is a song in the 1927 musical Show Boat that expresses the African American hardship and struggles of the time with the endless, uncaring flow of the Mississippi River; it is sung from the point-of-view of a dock worker on a showboat, and is the most famous song from the show...
", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
"Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" with music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, is one of the most famous songs from their classic 1927 musical play Show Boat, adapted from Edna Ferber's novel.-Context:...
", "A Fine Romance
A Fine Romance (song)
"A Fine Romance" is a popular song composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, published in 1936.The song was written for the musical film, Swing Time, where it was co-introduced by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers...
", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is a show tune written by American composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach for their 1933 operetta Roberta. It was originally recorded by Gertrude Niesen, on 13 October 1933 on the Victor label 24454. It was performed by Irene Dunne for the 1935 film adaptation,...
", "All the Things You Are
All the Things You Are
"All the Things You Are" is a song composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics written by Oscar Hammerstein II.It was written for the musical Very Warm for May , where it was introduced by Hiram Sherman, Frances Mercer, Hollace Shaw, and Ralph Stuart...
", "The Way You Look Tonight
The Way You Look Tonight
"The Way You Look Tonight" is a song featured in the film Swing Time, originally performed by Fred Astaire. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936. The song was sung to Ginger Rogers as Penelope "Penny" Carroll by Astaire's character of John "Lucky" Garnett while Penny was busy...
", "Long Ago (and Far Away)
Long Ago (and Far Away)
"Long Ago " is a popular song from the 1944 Technicolor film musical Cover Girl starring Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly and released by Columbia Pictures. The music was written by Jerome Kern, and the lyrics were written by Ira Gershwin...
" and "Who?
Who? (song)
"Who?" is a popular song written for the Broadway musical Sunny by Jerome Kern, Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. The song was featured in the film version of Sunny starring Marilyn Miller....
". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton
Guy Bolton
Guy Reginald Bolton was a British-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the U.S., he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred working in collaboration with others, principally the English writers P. G...
, P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
, Otto Harbach
Otto Harbach
Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach was an American lyricist and librettist of about 50 musical comedies...
, Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...
, Dorothy Fields
Dorothy Fields
Dorothy Fields was an American librettist and lyricist.She wrote over 400 songs for Broadway musicals and films...
, Johnny Mercer
Johnny Mercer
John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others...
, Ira Gershwin
Ira Gershwin
Ira Gershwin was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century....
and E. Y. Harburg.
A native New Yorker
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Kern created dozens of Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
musicals and Hollywood films in a career that lasted for more than four decades. His musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators also employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the other musicals of his day, creating the model for later musicals. Although dozens of Kern's musicals and musical film
Musical film
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...
s were hits, only Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
is now regularly revived. Songs from his other shows, however, are still frequently performed and adapted. Although Kern detested jazz arrangements of his songs, many have been adopted by jazz musicians to become standard tune
Jazz standard
Jazz standards are musical compositions which are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive list of jazz standards, and the list of songs deemed to be...
s.
Early life
Kern was born in New York City, on Sutton PlaceSutton Place, Manhattan
Sutton Place is the name given to one of the most affluent streets in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States, situated on the border between the Midtown and Upper East Side neighborhoods...
, in what was then the city's brewery district. His parents were Henry Kern (1842–1908), a Jewish German immigrant, and Fannie Kern née Kakeles (1852–1907), who was an American Jew of Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
n parentage. At the time of Kern's birth, his father ran a stable; later he became a successful merchant. Kern grew up on East 56th Street in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, where he attended public schools. He showed an early aptitude for music and was taught to play the piano and organ by his mother, an accomplished player and teacher.
In 1897, the family moved to Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
, where Kern attended Newark High School (which became Barringer High School
Barringer High School
Barringer High School, formerly Newark High School, is a four-year comprehensive public high school in Newark, in Essex County, New Jersey, United States, operating as part of the Newark Public Schools. Some consider it to be the third oldest public high school in the United States...
in 1907). He wrote songs for the school's first musical, a minstrel show
Minstrel show
The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....
, in 1901, and for an amateur musical adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....
put on at the Newark Yacht Club in January 1902. Kern's father insisted that his son work with him in business, instead of composing, after leaving high school before graduation in the spring of his senior year in 1902. Kern, however, failed miserably in one of his earliest tasks: he was supposed to purchase two pianos for the store, but instead he ordered 200. His father relented, and later in 1902, Kern became a student at the New York College of Music, studying the piano under Alexander Lambert and Paolo Galico, and harmony under Dr. Austin Pierce. His first published composition, a piano piece, At the Casino, appeared in the same year. Between 1903 and 1905, he continued his musical training under private tutors in Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
, Germany, returning to New York via London.
First compositions
For a time, Kern worked as a rehearsal pianist in BroadwayBroadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
theatres and as a song-plugger
Song-plugger
A song-plugger was a piano player employed by music stores in the early 20th century to promote and help sell new sheet music, which is how hits were advertised before quality recordings were widely available. Typically, the pianist sat on the mezzanine level of a store and played whatever music...
for Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century...
music publishers. While in London, he secured a contract from the American impresario Charles Frohman
Charles Frohman
Charles Frohman was an American theatrical producer. Frohman was producing plays by 1889 and acquired his first Broadway theatre by 1892. He discovered and promoted many stars of the American theatre....
to provide songs for interpolation in Broadway versions of London shows. He began to provide these additions in 1904 to British scores for An English Daisy, by Seymour Hicks
Seymour Hicks
Sir Arthur Seymour Hicks , better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, screenwriter, theatre manager and producer. He married the actress Ellaline Terriss in 1893...
and Walter Slaughter
Walter Slaughter
Walter Alfred Slaughter was an English conductor and composer of musical comedy, comic opera and children's shows. He was engaged in the West End as a composer and musical director from 1883 to 1904.-Life and career:...
, and Mr. Wix of Wickham, for which he wrote most of the songs.
In 1905, Kern contributed the song "How'd you like to spoon with me?" to Ivan Caryll
Ivan Caryll
Félix Marie Henri Tilkin , better known by his pen name Ivan Caryll, was a Belgian composer of operettas and Edwardian musical comedies in the English language...
's hit musical
Edwardian Musical Comedy
Edwardian musical comedies were British musical theatre shows from the period between the early 1890s, when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas' dominance had ended, until the rise of the American musicals by Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, George Gershwin and Cole Porter following World War I.Between...
The Earl and the Girl
The Earl and the Girl
The Earl and the Girl is a musical comedy in two acts by Seymour Hicks, with lyrics by Percy Greenbank and music by Ivan Caryll. It was produced by William Greet and opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London on 10 December 1903. It transferred to the Lyric Theatre on 12 September 1904, running for...
when the show transferred to Chicago and New York in 1905. He also contributed to the New York production of The Catch of the Season
The Catch of the Season
The Catch of the Season is an Edwardian musical comedy by Seymour Hicks and Cosmo Hamilton, with music by Herbert Haines and Evelyn Baker and lyrics by Charles H. Taylor, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
(1905), The Little Cherub (1906) and The Orchid
The Orchid
The Orchid is a musical play in two acts by James T. Tanner, with lyrics by Adrian Ross and Percy Greenbank and music by Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton and additional numbers by Paul Rubens. It opened at Gaiety Theatre in London on 26 October 1903 and ran for 559 performances. It starred Gertie...
(1907), among other shows. From 1905 on, he spent large blocks of time in London, contributing songs to West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
shows like The Beauty of Bath
The Beauty of Bath
The Beauty of Bath is a musical comedy with a book by Seymour Hicks and Cosmo Hamilton, lyrics by C. H. Taylor and music by Herbert Haines; additional songs were provided by Jerome Kern , F. Clifford Harris and P. G. Wodehouse . The story concerns a young woman from a noble family, who falls in...
(1906; with lyricist P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
) and making valuable contacts, including George Grossmith Jr. and Seymour Hicks
Seymour Hicks
Sir Arthur Seymour Hicks , better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, screenwriter, theatre manager and producer. He married the actress Ellaline Terriss in 1893...
, who were the first to introduce Kern's songs to the London stage. Kern's parents died in 1907 and 1908. In 1909 during one of his stays in England, Kern took a boat trip on the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
with some friends, and when the boat stopped at Walton-on-Thames
Walton-on-Thames
Walton-on-Thames is a town in the Elmbridge borough of Surrey in South East England. The town is located south west of Charing Cross and is between the towns of Weybridge and Molesey. It is situated on the River Thames between Sunbury Lock and Shepperton Lock.- History :The name "Walton" is...
, they went to an inn called the Swan for a drink. Kern was much taken with the proprietor's daughter, Eva Leale (1891–1959), who was working behind the bar. He wooed her, and they were married at the Anglican church of St. Mary's in Walton on October 25, 1910. The couple then lived at the Swan when Kern was in England.
Kern is believed to have composed music for silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
s as early as 1912, but the earliest documented film music which he is known to have written was for a twenty-part serial, Gloria's Romance in 1916. This was one of the first starring vehicles for Billie Burke
Billie Burke
Mary William Ethelbert Appleton "Billie" Burke was an American actress. She is primarily known to modern audiences as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in the musical film The Wizard of Oz. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Emily Kilbourne in Merrily We Live...
, for whom Kern had earlier written the song "Mind the Paint", with lyrics by A. W. Pinero
Arthur Wing Pinero
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero was an English actor and later an important dramatist and stage director.-Biography:...
. The film is now considered lost
Lost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...
, but Kern's music survives. Another score for the silent movies, Jubilo, followed in 1919. Kern was one of the founding members of ASCAP.
Kern's first complete score was Broadway's The Red Petticoat (1912), one of the first musical-comedy Westerns. The libretto was by Rida Johnson Young
Rida Johnson Young
Rida Johnson Young was an American playwright, songwriter and librettist. In her career, Young wrote over thirty plays and musicals, and over 500 songs. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970...
. By World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, more than a hundred of Kern’s songs had been used in about thirty productions, mostly Broadway adaptations of West End and European shows. Kern contributed two songs to To-Night's the Night
To-Night's the Night (musical)
To-Night's the Night is a musical comedy composed by Paul Rubens, with lyrics by Percy Greenbank and Rubens, and a book adapted by Fred Thompson. Two songs were composed by Jerome Kern. The story is based on the farce Les Dominos roses .The musical was produced by George Grossmith, Jr. and Edward...
(1914), another Rubens musical. It opened in New York and went on to become a hit in London. The best known of Kern's songs from this period is probably "They Didn't Believe Me
They Didn't Believe Me
"They Didn't Believe Me" is a song with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Herbert Reynolds.First introduced in the 1914 musical The Girl from Utah it was one of five numbers added to the show by Kern and Reynolds for its Broadway debut at the Knickerbocker Theatre on August 14, 1914...
", which was a hit in the New York version of the Paul Rubens
Paul Rubens (composer)
Paul Alfred Rubens was an English songwriter and librettist who wrote some of the most popular Edwardian musical comedies of the early twentieth century. He contributed to the success of dozens of musicals....
and Sidney Jones
Sidney Jones
James Sidney Jones , usually credited as Sidney Jones, was an English conductor and composer, most famous for producing the musical scores for a series of musical comedy hits in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods....
musical, The Girl from Utah
The Girl from Utah
The Girl from Utah is an Edwardian musical comedy in two acts with music by Paul Rubens, and Sidney Jones, a book by James T. Tanner, and lyrics by Adrian Ross, Percy Greenbank and Rubens. The story concerns an American girl who runs away to London to avoid becoming a wealthy Mormon's newest wife...
(1914), for which Kern wrote five songs. Kern's song, with four beats to a bar, departed from the customary waltz
Waltz
The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...
-rhythms of European influence and fitted the new American passion for modern dances such as the fox-trot. He was also able to use elements of American styles, such as ragtime, as well as syncopation, in his lively dance tunes. Theatre historian John Kenrick
John Kenrick
John Kenrick was an English classical historian.-Life:He was born on 4 February 1788 at Exeter, the eldest son of Timothy Kenrick, Unitarian minister, and his first wife, Mary, daughter of John Waymouth of Exeter. He was educated at the local grammar school run by the Rev. Charles Lloyd and later...
writes that the song put Kern in great demand on Broadway and established a pattern for musical comedy love songs that lasted through the 1960s.
In May 1915, Kern was due to sail with Charles Frohman from New York to London on board the RMS Lusitania
RMS Lusitania
RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland. The ship entered passenger service with the Cunard Line on 26 August 1907 and continued on the line's heavily-traveled passenger service between Liverpool, England and New...
, but Kern missed the boat, having overslept after staying up late playing poker. Frohman died in the sinking of the ship.
The Princess Theatre musicals
Kern composed sixteen Broadway scores between 1915 and 1920 and also contributed songs to the London hit Theodore & CoTheodore & Co
Theodore & Co is an English musical comedy in two acts with a book by H. M. Harwood and George Grossmith, Jr. , with music by Ivor Novello and Jerome Kern and lyrics by Adrian Ross and Clifford Grey. It was produced by Grossmith and Edward Laurillard, opening at the Gaiety Theatre on 19 September...
(1916; most of the songs are by the young Ivor Novello
Ivor Novello
David Ivor Davies , better known as Ivor Novello, was a Welsh composer, singer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his first successes were as a songwriter...
) and to revues like the Ziegfeld Follies
Ziegfeld Follies
The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air....
. The most notable of his scores were those for a series of shows written for the Princess Theatre
Princess Theatre
The Princess Theatre was a joint venture between the Shubert Brothers , producer Ray Comstock, theatrical agent Elisabeth Marbury and actor-director Holbrook Blinn...
, a small (299-seat) house built by Ray Comstock. Theatrical agent Elisabeth Marbury
Elisabeth Marbury
Elisabeth Marbury was a pioneering American theatrical and literary agent and producer who represented a prominent theatrical performers and writers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and helped shape business methods of the modern commercial theater...
asked Kern and librettist Guy Bolton
Guy Bolton
Guy Reginald Bolton was a British-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the U.S., he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred working in collaboration with others, principally the English writers P. G...
to create a series of intimate and low-budget, yet smart, musicals.
The "Princess Theatre shows" were unique on Broadway not only for their small size, but their clever, coherent plots, integrated scores and naturalistic acting, which presented "a sharp contrast to the large-scale Ruritania
Ruritania
Ruritania is a fictional country in central Europe which forms the setting for three books by Anthony Hope: The Prisoner of Zenda , The Heart of Princess Osra , and Rupert of Hentzau...
n operettas then in vogue" or the star-studded revue
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
s and extravaganzas of producers like Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. , , was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies , inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He also produced the musical Show Boat...
. Earlier musical comedy
Edwardian Musical Comedy
Edwardian musical comedies were British musical theatre shows from the period between the early 1890s, when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas' dominance had ended, until the rise of the American musicals by Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, George Gershwin and Cole Porter following World War I.Between...
had often been thinly plotted, gaudy pieces, marked by the insertion of songs into their scores with little regard to the plot. But Kern and Bolton followed the examples of Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
and French opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe is a genre of late 19th-century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form....
in integrating song and story. "These shows built and polished the mold from which almost all later major musical comedies evolved. ... The characters and situations were, within the limitations of musical comedy license, believable and the humor came from the situations or the nature of the characters. Kern's exquisitely flowing melodies were employed to further the action or develop characterization." The shows featured modern American settings and simple scene changes to suit the small theatre.
The team's first Princess Theatre show was an adaptation of Paul Rubens' 1905 London show, Mr. Popple (of Ippleton), called Nobody Home (1915). The piece ran for 135 performances and was a modest financial success. However, it did little to fulfill the new team's mission to innovate, except that Kern's song, "The Magic Melody", was the first Broadway showtune with a basic jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
progression. Kern and Bolton next created an original piece, Very Good Eddie
Very Good Eddie
Very Good Eddie is a musical with a book by Guy Bolton and Philip Bartholomae, music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics by Schuyler Green and Herbert Reynolds, with additional lyrics by Elsie Janis, Harry B. Smith and John E. Hazzard and additional music by Henry Kailimai. The story was based on the farce...
, which was a surprise hit, running for 341 performances, with additional touring productions that went on into the 1918-19 season. The British humorist, lyricist and librettist P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
joined the Princess team in 1917, adding his skill as a lyricist to the succeeding shows. Oh, Boy!
Oh, Boy! (musical)
Oh, Boy! is a musical in two acts, with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse. The story concerns befuddled George, who elopes with Lou Ellen, the daughter of Judge Carter. He must win over her parents and his Quaker aunt...
(1917) ran for an extraordinary 463 performances. Other shows written for the theatre were Have a Heart (1917), Leave It to Jane
Leave It to Jane
Leave It to Jane is a musical in two acts, with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, based on the 1904 play College Widow, by George Ade. The story concerns the football rivalry between Atwater College and Bingham College, and satirizes college life in a...
(1917) and Oh, Lady! Lady!!
Oh, Lady! Lady!!
Oh, Lady! Lady!! is a musical with music by Jerome Kern, a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse and lyrics by Wodehouse. It was written for the Princess Theatre on Broadway, where it played in 1918 and ran for 219 performances. The story concerns an engaged young man, Bill, whose ex-fiancée...
(1918). The first opened at another theatre before Very Good Eddie closed. The second played elsewhere during the long run of Oh Boy! An anonymous admirer wrote a verse in their praise that begins:
- This is the trio of musical fame,
- Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern.
- Better than anyone else you can name
- Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern.
In February 1918, Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
wrote in Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (American magazine 1913-1936)
Vanity Fair was an American society magazine published from 1913-1936. It was highly successful until the Great Depression led to it becoming unprofitable, and it was merged into Vogue magazine in 1936.-History:...
:
Oh, Lady! Lady!! was the last successful "Princess Theatre show". Kern and Wodehouse disagreed over money, and the composer decided to move on to other projects. Kern's importance to the partnership was illustrated by the fate of the last musical of the series, Oh, My Dear! (1918), to which he contributed only one song: "Go, Little Boat". The rest of the show was composed by Louis Hirsch
Louis Hirsch
Louis Hirsch was a popular composer of songs and musicals in the early 20th century.-Life and career:...
, and ran for 189 performances: "Despite a respectable run, everyone realized there was little point in continuing the series without Kern."
Early 1920s
The 1920s were an extremely productive period in American musical theatre, and Kern created at least one show every year for the entire decade. His first show of 1920 was The Night Boat, with book and lyrics by Anne CaldwellAnne Caldwell
Anne Caldwell , also known as Anne Caldwell O'Dea, was a librettist and lyricist. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She wrote both pop songs and Broadway shows including working with Jerome Kern.-External links:...
, which ran for more than 300 performances in New York and for three seasons on tour. Later in the same year, Kern wrote the score for Sally
Sally (musical)
Sally is a musical comedy with music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Clifford Grey and book by Guy Bolton , with additional lyrics by Buddy De Sylva, Anne Caldwell and P. G. Wodehouse. It was originally produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, opening on December 21, 1920 at the New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway...
, with a book by Bolton and lyrics by Otto Harbach
Otto Harbach
Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach was an American lyricist and librettist of about 50 musical comedies...
. This show, staged by Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. , , was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies , inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He also produced the musical Show Boat...
, ran for 570 performances, one of the longest runs of any Broadway show in the decade, and popularized the song "Look for the Silver Lining
Look for the Silver Lining
"Look for the Silver Lining" is a popular song with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by B.G. DeSylva. It was written in 1919 for the unsuccessful musical Zip, Goes a Million. In 1920 it was published and reused in the musical Sally whence it was popularized by Marilyn Miller...
" (which had been written for an earlier show), performed by the rising star Marilyn Miller
Marilyn Miller
Marilyn Miller was one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was an accomplished tap dancer, singer and actress, but it was the combination of these talents that endeared her to audiences. On stage she usually played rags-to-riches Cinderella characters who...
. It also had a long run in London in 1921, produced by George Grossmith, Jr.
George Grossmith, Jr.
George Grossmith, Jr. was a British actor, theatre producer and manager, director, playwright and songwriter, best remembered for his work in and with Edwardian musical comedies...
Kern's next shows were Good Morning, Dearie (1921, with Caldwell) which ran for 347 performances; followed in 1922 by a West End success, The Cabaret Girl
The Cabaret Girl
The Cabaret Girl is a musical comedy in three acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by George Grossmith, Jr. and P. G. Wodehouse. It was produced by Grossmith and J. A. E...
in collaboration with Grossmith and Wodehouse; another modest success by the same team, The Beauty Prize
The Beauty Prize
The Beauty Prize is a musical comedy in three acts, with music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by George Grossmith and P. G. Wodehouse. It was first produced by Grossmith and J A E Malone on 5 September 1923 at the Winter Garden Theatre, Drury Lane, London...
(1923); and a Broadway flop, The Bunch and Judy, remembered, if at all, as the first time Kern and Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
worked together.
Stepping Stones (1923, with Caldwell) was a success, and in 1924 the Princess Theatre team of Bolton, Wodehouse and Kern reunited to write Sitting Pretty, but it did not recapture the popularity of the earlier collaborations. Its relative failure may have been partly due to Kern's growing aversion to having individual songs from his shows performed out of context on radio, in cabaret, or on record, although his chief objection was to jazz interpretations of his songs. He called himself a "musical clothier – nothing more or less," and said, "I write music to both the situations and the lyrics in plays." When Sitting Pretty was produced, he forbade any broadcasting or recording of individual numbers from the show, which limited their chance to gain popularity.
1925 was a major turning point in Kern's career when he met Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...
, with whom he would entertain a lifelong friendship and collaboration. As a young man, Kern had been an easy companion with great charm and humor, but he became less outgoing in his middle years, sometimes difficult to work with: he once introduced himself to a producer by saying, "I hear you're a son of a bitch. So am I." He rarely collaborated with any one lyricist for long. With Hammerstein, however, he remained on close terms for the rest of his life. Their first show, written together with Harbach, was Sunny
Sunny (musical)
Sunny is a musical with music by Jerome Kern and a libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach. The plot involves Sunny, the star of a circus act, who falls for a rich playboy, but comes in conflict with his snooty family...
, which featured the song "Who (Stole My Heart Away)?" Marilyn Miller played the title role, as she had in Sally. The show ran for 517 performances on Broadway, and the following year ran for 363 performances in the West End, starring Binnie Hale
Binnie Hale
Binnie Hale was an English actress and musician. Both her father, Robert Hale and younger brother, Sonnie Hale were actors. She married West End actor Jack Raine, with whom she had one daughter....
and Jack Buchanan
Jack Buchanan
Walter John "Jack" Buchanan was a British theatre and film actor, singer, producer and director. He was known for three decades as the embodiment of the debonair man-about-town in the tradition of George Grossmith Jr., and was described by The Times as "the last of the knuts." He is best known in...
.
Show Boat
Because of the strong success of Sally and Sunny and consistent good results with his other shows, Ziegfeld was willing to gamble on Kern's next project in 1927. Kern had been impressed by Edna FerberEdna Ferber
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...
's novel Show Boat
Show Boat (novel)
Show Boat is a 1926 novel by American author and dramatist Edna Ferber. It chronicles the lives of three generations of performers on the Cotton Blossom, a floating theater that travels between small towns on the banks of the Mississippi, from the 1880s to the 1920s...
and wished to present a musical stage version. He persuaded Hammerstein to adapt it and Ziegfeld to produce it. The story, dealing with racism, marital strife and alcoholism, was unheard of in the escapist world of musical comedy. Despite his doubts, Ziegfeld spared no expense in staging the piece to give it its full epic grandeur. According to the theatre historian John Kenrick
John Kenrick
John Kenrick was an English classical historian.-Life:He was born on 4 February 1788 at Exeter, the eldest son of Timothy Kenrick, Unitarian minister, and his first wife, Mary, daughter of John Waymouth of Exeter. He was educated at the local grammar school run by the Rev. Charles Lloyd and later...
: "After the opening night audience filed out of the Ziegfeld Theatre in near silence, Ziegfeld thought his worst fears had been confirmed. He was pleasantly surprised when the next morning brought ecstatic reviews and long lines at the box office. In fact, Show Boat proved to be the most lasting accomplishment of Ziegfeld's career – the only one of his shows that is regularly performed today." The score is, arguably, Kern's greatest and includes the well-known songs "Ol' Man River
Ol' Man River
"Ol' Man River" is a song in the 1927 musical Show Boat that expresses the African American hardship and struggles of the time with the endless, uncaring flow of the Mississippi River; it is sung from the point-of-view of a dock worker on a showboat, and is the most famous song from the show...
" and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
"Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" with music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, is one of the most famous songs from their classic 1927 musical play Show Boat, adapted from Edna Ferber's novel.-Context:...
" as well as "Make Believe", "You Are Love", "Life Upon the Wicked Stage", "Why Do I Love You", and "Bill
Bill (Show Boat)
"Bill" is a song heard in Act II of Kern and Hammerstein's classic 1927 musical Show Boat. The song was written for Kern and P.G. Wodehouse's 1917 musical Oh, Lady! Lady!! for Vivienne Segal to perform, but withdrawn because it was considered too melancholy for that show...
". The show ran for 572 performances on Broadway and was also a success in London. Although Ferber's novel was filmed unsuccessfully as a part-talkie
Part-talkie
A part-talkie is a partly, and most often primarily, silent film which includes one or more synchronous sound sequences with audible dialog or singing. During the silent portions lines of dialog are presented as "titles" -- printed text briefly filling the screen -- and the soundtrack is used only...
in 1929 (using some songs from the Kern score), the musical itself was filmed twice, in 1936
Show Boat (1936 film)
Show Boat is a 1936 film based on the musical play by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II , which the team adapted from the novel by Edna Ferber....
, and, with Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
, in 1951
Show Boat (1951 film)
Show Boat is a 1951 Technicolor film based on the musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II and the novel by Edna Ferber....
. In 1989, a stage version of the musical was presented on television for the first time, in a production from the Paper Mill Playhouse
Paper Mill Playhouse
Paper Mill Playhouse is a regional theatre with approximately 1200 seats, located in Millburn, New Jersey, less than 25 miles from Manhattan. Due to its location, it can draw from the pool of actors who live in New York City. Its location, as well as its focus on producing large-scale shows, makes...
telecast by PBS on Great Performances
Great Performances
Great Performances, a television series devoted to the performing arts, has been telecast on Public Broadcasting Service public television since 1972...
.
While most Kern musicals have largely been forgotten, except for their songs, Show Boat remains well-remembered and frequently seen. It is a staple of stock productions and has been revived numerous times on Broadway and in London. A 1946 revival integrated choreography into the show, in the manner of a Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...
production, as did the 1994 Harold Prince–Susan Stroman
Susan Stroman
Susan Stroman is an American theatre director, choreographer, film director, and performer. She has won the Tony Award for both her choreography and direction, notably for the stage musical The Producers.-Early years:...
revival, which was nominated for ten Tony Awards, winning five, including best revival. It was the first musical to enter a major opera company's repertory (New York City Opera, 1954), and the rediscovery of the 1927 score with Robert Russell Bennett
Robert Russell Bennett
Robert Russell Bennett was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers. In 1957 and 2008, Bennett received Tony Awards...
's original orchestrations led to a large-scale EMI
EMI Classics
EMI Classics is a record label of EMI, formed in 1990 in order to reduce the need to create country-specific packaging and catalogs for internationally distributed classical music releases....
recording in 1987 and several opera-house productions. In 1941, the conductor Artur Rodziński
Artur Rodzinski
Artur Rodziński was a Polish conductor of opera and symphonic music. He is especially noted for his tenures as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic in the 1930s and 1940s.-Biography:...
wished to commission a symphonic suite from the score, but Kern considered himself a songwriter and not a symphonist. He never orchestrated his own scores, leaving that to musical assistants, principally Frank Saddler (until 1921) and Russell Bennett (from 1923). In response to the commission, Kern oversaw an arrangement by Charles Miller and Emil Gerstenberger of numbers from the show into the orchestral work Scenario for Orchestra: Themes from Show Boat, premiered in 1941 by the Cleveland Orchestra
Cleveland Orchestra
The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall...
conducted by Rodziński.
Kern's last Broadway show in the 1920s was Sweet Adeline
Sweet Adeline (musical)
Sweet Adeline is a musical with music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and original Orchestration by Robert Russell Bennett. It premiered on Broadway in 1929...
(1929), with a libretto by Hammerstein. It was a period piece, set in the Gay 90s, about a girl from Hoboken, New Jersey
Hoboken, New Jersey
Hoboken is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 50,005. The city is part of the New York metropolitan area and contains Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub for the region...
(near Kern's childhood home), who becomes a Broadway star. Opening just before the stock market crash, it received rave reviews, but the elaborate, old-fashioned piece was a step back from the innovations in Show Boat, or even the Princess Theatre shows. In January 1929, at the height of the Jazz Age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
, and with Show Boat still playing on Broadway, Kern made news on both sides of the Atlantic for reasons wholly unconnected with music. He sold at auction, at New York's Anderson Galleries, the collection of English and American literature that he had been building up for more than a decade. The collection, rich in inscribed first editions and manuscript material of eighteenth and nineteenth century authors, sold for a total of $1,729,462.50 – a record for a single-owner sale that stood for over fifty years. Among the books he sold were first or early editions of poems by Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
and Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
, and works by Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
, Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....
and Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, as well as manuscripts by Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
, John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
, Shelley, Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
, Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
and others.
First films and later shows
In 1929 Kern made his first trip to Hollywood to supervise the 1929 film version of Sally, one of the first "all-talking" TechnicolorTechnicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
films. The following year, he was there a second time to work on Men of the Sky
Men of the Sky
Men of the Sky is a 1931 all-talking musical drama film which was produced by Warner Bros. in 1930 and released in 1931. Filming began in July 1930 and concluded in mid-September. The film is now considered a lost film since no film elements are known to survive. No copies of the film are known to...
, released in 1931 without his songs, and a 1930 film version of Sunny
Sunny (1930 film)
Sunny is a 1930 musical comedy film released by Warner Brothers. The movie was based on the Broadway stage hit, Sunny, produced by Charles Dillingham, which played from September 22, 1925 to December 11, 1926. Marilyn Miller, who had played the leading part in the Broadway production, was hired by...
. There was a public reaction against the early glut of film musicals after the advent of film sound; Hollywood released more than 100 musical films in 1930, but only 14 in 1931. Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
bought out Kern's contract, and he returned to the stage. He collaborated with Harbach on the Broadway musical The Cat and the Fiddle
The Cat and the Fiddle (musical)
The Cat and the Fiddle is a musical with music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics and book by Otto Harbach.-Productions:The original Broadway production opened at the Globe Theatre on October 15, 1931, moved to the George M. Cohan Theater on May 24, 1932, and ran for a total of 395 performances. The show...
(1931), about a composer and an opera singer, featuring the songs "She Didn't Say Yes
She Didn't Say Yes
"She Didn't Say Yes" is a 1931 song composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics written by Otto Harbach..It was written for the show The Cat and the Fiddle .-Notable recordings:*Ella Fitzgerald - Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jerome Kern Songbook...
" and "The Night Was Made for Love". It ran for 395 performances, a remarkable success for the Depression years, and transferred to London the following year. It was filmed in 1934 with Jeanette MacDonald
Jeanette MacDonald
Jeanette MacDonald was an American singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier and Nelson Eddy...
.
Music in the Air
Music in the Air
Music in the Air is a musical written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern . It introduced songs such as "The Song Is You", "In Egern on the Tegern See" and "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star"...
(1932) was another Kern-Hammerstein collaboration and another show-biz plot, best remembered today for "The Song Is You
The Song Is You (song)
"The Song Is You" is a popular song composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was written for their musical Music in the Air and sung in that show by Tullio Carminati. In later years the song became often associated with Frank Sinatra."The Song Is You" is the recurring...
" and "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star
I've Told Ev'ry Little Star
"I've Told Ev'ry Little Star" is a popular song with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, published in 1932.The song was introduced in the musical play, Music in the Air. It has since been recorded by a large number of artists....
". It was "undoubtedly an operetta", set in the German countryside, but without the Ruritanian trimmings of the operettas of Kern's youth. Roberta (1933) by Kern and Harbach included the songs "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is a show tune written by American composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach for their 1933 operetta Roberta. It was originally recorded by Gertrude Niesen, on 13 October 1933 on the Victor label 24454. It was performed by Irene Dunne for the 1935 film adaptation,...
", "Let's Begin
Let's Begin
"Let's Begin" is a popular song composed in 1933 by Jerome Kern, with lyrics written by Otto Harbach.It was written for the musical Roberta .-Notable recordings:*Tony Bennett - The Beat of My Heart...
and "Yesterdays" and featured, among others, Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
, Fred MacMurray
Fred MacMurray
Frederick Martin "Fred" MacMurray was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 movies and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1930 to the 1970s....
, George Murphy
George Murphy
George Lloyd Murphy was an American dancer, actor, and politician.-Life and career:He was born in New Haven, Connecticut of Irish Catholic extraction, the son of Michael Charles "Mike" Murphy, athletic trainer and coach, and Nora Long. He was educated at Peddie School, Trinity-Pawling School, and...
and Sydney Greenstreet
Sydney Greenstreet
Sydney Hughes Greenstreet was an English actor. He is best known for his Warner Bros. films with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, which include The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca .-Biography:...
all in the early stages of their careers. Kern's Three Sisters (1934), was his last West End show, with a libretto by Hammerstein. The musical, depicting horse-racing, the circus, and class distinctions, was a failure, running for only two months, despite what seems to have been an excellent Kern score (it was never published and much of the original material is lost). Some British critics objected to American writers essaying a British story; James Agate
James Agate
James Evershed Agate was a British diarist and critic. In the period between the wars, he was one of Britain's most influential theatre critics...
, doyen of London theatre critics of the day, dismissed it as "American inanity," though both Kern and Hammerstein were strong and knowledgeable Anglophiles. Kern's last Broadway show (other than revivals) was Very Warm for May
Very Warm for May
Very Warm for May is a musical composed by Jerome Kern, with a libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was the team's final score for Broadway, following their hits Show Boat, Sweet Adeline, and Music in the Air...
(1939), another show-biz story and another disappointment, although the score included the Kern and Hammerstein classic "All The Things You Are
All the Things You Are
"All the Things You Are" is a song composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics written by Oscar Hammerstein II.It was written for the musical Very Warm for May , where it was introduced by Hiram Sherman, Frances Mercer, Hollace Shaw, and Ralph Stuart...
".
Kern in Hollywood
In 1935, when musical films had become popular once again, thanks to Busby BerkeleyBusby Berkeley
Busby Berkeley was a highly influential Hollywood movie director and musical choreographer. Berkeley was famous for his elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns...
, Kern returned to Hollywood, where he composed the scores to a dozen more films, although he also continued working on Broadway productions. He settled permanently in Hollywood in 1937. After suffering a heart attack in 1939, he was told by his doctors to concentrate on film scores, a less stressful task, as Hollywood songwriters were not as deeply involved with the production of their works as Broadway songwriters. This second phase of Kern's Hollywood career had considerably greater artistic and commercial success than the first. With Hammerstein, he wrote songs for the film versions of his recent Broadway shows Music in the Air (1934), which starred Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the...
in a rare singing role, and Sweet Adeline (1935). With Dorothy Fields
Dorothy Fields
Dorothy Fields was an American librettist and lyricist.She wrote over 400 songs for Broadway musicals and films...
, he composed the new music for I Dream Too Much
I Dream Too Much
I Dream Too Much is a 1935 romantic comedy film directed by John Cromwell. It stars Henry Fonda, Lily Pons, and Lucille Ball in one of her earliest roles. It has been described as a "somewhat wispy operetta." Songs are by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields...
(1935), a musical melodrama about the opera world, starring the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
diva Lily Pons
Lily Pons
Lily Pons was a French-American operatic soprano and actress who had an active career from the late 1920s through the early 1970s. As an opera singer she specialized in the coloratura soprano repertoire and was particularly associated with the title roles in Léo Delibes' Lakmé and Gaetano...
. Kern and Fields interspersed the opera numbers with their songs, including "the swinging 'I Got Love,' the lullaby 'The Jockey on the Carousel,' and the entrancing title song." Also with Fields, he wrote two new songs, "I Won't Dance
I Won't Dance
"I Won't Dance" is a song composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach, for the 1934 London musical Three Sisters. However, Three Sisters flopped and was quickly forgotten, so when the time came to film the Kern-Harbach musical Roberta, the song was...
" and "Lovely to Look At", for the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century....
film version of Roberta
Roberta (1935 film)
Roberta is a 1935 musical film by RKO starring Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and Randolph Scott. It was an adaptation of a 1933 Broadway theatre musical of the same name, which in turn was based on the novel Gowns by Roberta by Alice Duer Miller...
(1935), which was a hit. The show also included the song "I'll Be Hard to Handle
I'll Be Hard to Handle
"I'll Be Hard to Handle" is a 1932 song composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics written by Bernard Dougall.It was written for the Broadway musical Roberta , where it was introduced by Lyda Roberti....
". This was given a 1952 remake called Lovely to Look At
Lovely to Look At
Lovely to Look At, an adaptation of the Broadway musical Roberta, is a 1952 MGM musical film directed by Mervyn LeRoy.-Plot:Tony Naylor, Al Marsh and Jerry Ralby are looking for backers for their new Broadway show. They have just run out of options when Al gets a letter from his Aunt's attorneys...
.
Their next film, Swing Time
Swing Time
Swing Time is a 1936 RKO musical comedy film set mainly in New York City and stars Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Helen Broderick, Victor Moore, Eric Blore and Georges Metaxa, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Dorothy Fields...
(1936) included the song "The Way You Look Tonight
The Way You Look Tonight
"The Way You Look Tonight" is a song featured in the film Swing Time, originally performed by Fred Astaire. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936. The song was sung to Ginger Rogers as Penelope "Penny" Carroll by Astaire's character of John "Lucky" Garnett while Penny was busy...
", which won the Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
in 1936 for the best song. Other songs in Swing Time include "A Fine Romance
A Fine Romance (song)
"A Fine Romance" is a popular song composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, published in 1936.The song was written for the musical film, Swing Time, where it was co-introduced by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers...
", "Pick Yourself Up
Pick Yourself Up
"Pick Yourself Up" is a popular song composed in 1936 by Jerome Kern, with lyrics by Dorothy Fields. It has a verse and chorus, as well as a third section, though the third section is often omitted in recordings...
" and "Never Gonna Dance
Never Gonna Dance (song)
"Never Gonna Dance" is a song performed by Fred Astaire and danced with Ginger Rogers in their movie Swing Time. The words were by Dorothy Fields and the music was by Jerome Kern....
". The Oxford Companion to the American Musical calls Swing Time "a strong candidate for the best of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals" and says that, although the screenplay is contrived, it "left plenty of room for dance and all of it was superb. … Although the movie is remembered as one of the great dance musicals, it also boasts one of the best film scores of the 1930s." For the 1936 film version of Show Boat
Show Boat (1936 film)
Show Boat is a 1936 film based on the musical play by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II , which the team adapted from the novel by Edna Ferber....
, Kern and Hammerstein wrote three new songs, including "I Have The Room Above Her" and "Ah Still Suits Me". High, Wide, and Handsome
High, Wide, and Handsome
High, Wide, and Handsome is a 1937 American musical film starring Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, Alan Hale, Sr., Charles Bickford, and Dorothy Lamour....
(1937) was intentionally similar in plot and style to Show Boat", but it was a box-office failure. Kern songs were also used in the Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
film, When You're in Love
When You're in Love (film)
When You're in Love is a 1937 musical film starring Grace Moore, Cary Grant, and Thomas Mitchell. Moore sings "Minnie the Moocher" in one scene. She also sings the wonderful Ernesto Lecuono classic "Siboney" drooled over by Cary Grant. The movie was directed by Robert Riskin...
(1937), and the first Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello
William "Bud" Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose work on stage, radio, film and television made them the most popular comedy team during the 1940s and 1950s...
feature, One Night in the Tropics
One Night in the Tropics
One Night in the Tropics is a 1940 comedy film noteworthy for being the film debut of Abbott and Costello. The team play minor roles but steal the picture with five classic routines, including an abbreviated version of "Who's On First?" Their work earned them a two-picture deal with Universal, and...
(1940). In 1940, Hammerstein wrote the lyric "The Last Time I Saw Paris
The Last Time I Saw Paris (song)
The Last Time I Saw Paris is a song composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, published in 1940. It was sung in the 1941 film Lady Be Good by Ann Sothern....
", in homage to the French capital, recently occupied by the Germans. Kern set it, the only time he set a pre-written lyric, and his only hit song not written as part of a musical. Originally a hit for Tony Martin
Tony Martin (entertainer)
Tony Martin is an American actor and singer.-Career:Tony Martin was born on Christmas Day, 1913 as Alvin Morris in San Francisco, California to Jewish immigrant parents. He received a saxophone as a gift from his grandmother at the age of ten. In his grammar school glee club, he became an...
and later for Noël Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
, the song was used in the film Lady Be Good
Lady Be Good (1941 film)
Lady Be Good is the title of an MGM musical film which was released in 1941.The film starred dancer Eleanor Powell along with Ann Sothern, Robert Young, Lionel Barrymore, and Red Skelton. It was directed by Norman Z. McLeod and produced by Arthur Freed...
(1941) and won Kern another Oscar for best song. Kern's second and last symphonic work was his 'Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
Suite (1942).
In his last Hollywood musicals, Kern worked with several new and distinguished partners. With Johnny Mercer
Johnny Mercer
John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others...
for You Were Never Lovelier
You Were Never Lovelier
You Were Never Lovelier is a 1942 Hollywood musical comedy film, set in Buenos Aires. It starred Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth, Adolphe Menjou and Xavier Cugat, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The film was directed by William A...
(1942), he contributed "a set of memorable songs to entertain audiences until the plot came to its inevitable conclusion". The film starred Astaire and Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth was an American film actress and dancer who attained fame during the 1940s as one of the era's top stars...
and included the song "I'm Old Fashioned
I'm Old Fashioned
"I'm Old Fashioned" is a 1942 song composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics written by Johnny Mercer.It was written for the film You Were Never Lovelier , where it was introduced by Nan Wynn who dubbed for Rita Hayworth as part of a song and dance routine with Fred Astaire.According to Mueller:...
". Kern's next collaboration was with Ira Gershwin
Ira Gershwin
Ira Gershwin was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century....
on Cover Girl starring Hayworth and Gene Kelly
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
(1944) for which Kern composed "Sure Thing","Put Me to the Test," "Make Way for Tomorrow" (lyric by E. Y. Harburg), and the hit ballad "Long Ago (and Far Away)
Long Ago (and Far Away)
"Long Ago " is a popular song from the 1944 Technicolor film musical Cover Girl starring Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly and released by Columbia Pictures. The music was written by Jerome Kern, and the lyrics were written by Ira Gershwin...
". For the Deanna Durbin
Deanna Durbin
Deanna Durbin is a Canadian-born, Southern California-raised retired singer and actress, who appeared in a number of musical films in the 1930s and 1940s singing standards as well as operatic arias....
Western musical, Can't Help Singing
Can't Help Singing
Can't Help Singing is a 1944 musical Western filmed in Technicolor starring Deanna Durbin. The film was produced by Felix Jackson and directed by Frank Ryan. The score was by Jerome Kern with lyrics by E. Y. Harburg.-Plot:...
(1944), with lyrics by Harburg, Kern "provided the best original score of Durbin's career, mixing operetta and Broadway sounds in such songs as 'Any Moment Now,' 'Swing Your Partner,' 'More and More,' and the lilting title number." "More and More" was nominated for an Oscar.
Kern composed his last film score, Centennial Summer
Centennial Summer
Centennial Summer is a 1946 film directed by Otto Preminger. The musical, that stars Jeanne Crain and Cornel Wilde, is based on a novel by Albert E. Idell.It was produced in response to the hugely successful MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis...
(1946) in which "the songs were as resplendent as the story and characters were mediocre. … Oscar Hammerstein, Leo Robin
Leo Robin
Leo Robin was an American composer, lyricist and songwriter. He is probably best known for collaborating with Ralph Rainger on the 1938 Oscar-winning song "Thanks for the Memory," sung by Bob Hope in the film The Big Broadcast of 1938.-Biography:Robin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and...
, and E. Y. Harburg contributed lyrics for Kern's lovely music, resulting in the soulful ballad 'All Through the Day,' the rustic 'Cinderella Sue,' the cheerful 'Up With the Lark,' and the torchy
Torch song
A torch song is a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited or lost love, either where one party is oblivious to the existence of the other, where one party has moved on, or where a romantic affair has affected the relationship...
'In Love in Vain.'" "All Through the Day" was another Oscar nominee. The music of Kern's last two films is notable in the way it developed from his earlier work. Some of it was too advanced for the film companies; Kern's biographer, Stephen Banfield, refers to "tonal experimentation ... outlandish enharmonics" that the studios insisted on cutting. At the same time, in some ways his music came full circle: having in his youth helped to end the reigns of the waltz and operetta, he now composed three of his finest waltzes ("Can't Help Singing", "Californ-i-ay" and "Up With the Lark"), the last having a distinctly operetta-like character.
Death and personal life
Annie Get Your Gun (musical)
Annie Get Your Gun is a musical with lyrics and music written by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields. The story is a fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley , who was a sharpshooter from Ohio, and her husband, Frank Butler.The 1946 Broadway production...
, to be produced by Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...
. On November 5, 1945, at 60 years of age, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while walking at the south west corner of Park Avenue and 57th street, apparently in search of a drugstore for the pills he depended on, but had forgotten to bring with him. Identifiable only by his ASCAP card, Kern was initially taken to the indigent ward at City Hospital, later being transferred to Doctors Hospital in Manhattan. Hammerstein was at his side when Kern's breathing stopped. Hammerstein hummed or sang the song "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star" from Music in the Air (a personal favorite of the composer's) into Kern's ear. Receiving no response, Hammerstein knew Kern had died.
Kern is interred at Ferncliff Cemetery
Ferncliff Cemetery
Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum is located on Secor Road in the hamlet of Hartsdale, town of Greenburgh, Westchester County, New York, about 25 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. It was founded in 1902, and is non-sectarian...
in Westchester County, New York
Westchester County, New York
Westchester County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. Westchester covers an area of and has a population of 949,113 according to the 2010 Census, residing in 45 municipalities...
. He was survived by his wife Eva and their daughter, Betty Jane (1913–1996; she married Artie Shaw
Artie Shaw
Arthur Jacob Arshawsky , better known as Artie Shaw, was an American jazz clarinetist, composer, and bandleader. He was also the author of both fiction and non-fiction writings....
in 1942 and later Jack Cummings). Kern and his wife often vacationed on their yacht Show Boat. He collected rare books and enjoyed betting on horses. At the time of Kern's death, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
was filming a fictionalized version of his life, Till the Clouds Roll By
Till the Clouds Roll By
Till The Clouds Roll By is a 1946 American musical film made by MGM. The film is a fictionalized biography of composer Jerome Kern, who was originally involved with the production of the film, but died before it was completed...
, which was released in 1946 starring Robert Walker as Kern. In the film, Kern's songs are sung by Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...
, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Kathryn Grayson
Kathryn Grayson
Kathryn Grayson was an American actress and operatic soprano singer.From the age of twelve, Grayson trained as an opera singer. She was under contract to MGM by the early 1940s, soon establishing a career principally through her work in musicals...
, Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore was an American singer, actress, and television personality...
, June Allyson
June Allyson
June Allyson was an American film and television actress, popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was a major MGM contract star. Allyson won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance in Too Young to Kiss . From 1959–1961, she hosted and occasionally starred in her own CBS anthology...
, Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
, Tony Martin
Tony Martin (entertainer)
Tony Martin is an American actor and singer.-Career:Tony Martin was born on Christmas Day, 1913 as Alvin Morris in San Francisco, California to Jewish immigrant parents. He received a saxophone as a gift from his grandmother at the age of ten. In his grammar school glee club, he became an...
, Cyd Charisse
Cyd Charisse
Cyd Charisse was an American actress and dancer.After recovering from polio as a child, and studying ballet, Charisse entered films in the 1940s...
and Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury
Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
, among others. Rodgers and Hammerstein then assigned the task of writing the score for Annie Get Your Gun to the veteran Broadway composer Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
. Kern's wife eventually remarried, to a singer named George Byron.
Awards
Jerome Kern was nominated eight times for an Academy Award, and won twice. Seven nominations were for Best Original SongAcademy Award for Best Original Song
The Academy Award for Best Original Song is one of the awards given annually to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . It is presented to the songwriters who have composed the best original song written specifically for a film...
; these included a posthumous nomination in each of 1945 and 1946. One nomination was in 1945 for Best Original Music Score
Academy Award for Original Music Score
The Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
. Kern was not eligible for any Tony Awards, which were not created until 1947. In 1976, Very Good Eddie
Very Good Eddie
Very Good Eddie is a musical with a book by Guy Bolton and Philip Bartholomae, music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics by Schuyler Green and Herbert Reynolds, with additional lyrics by Elsie Janis, Harry B. Smith and John E. Hazzard and additional music by Henry Kailimai. The story was based on the farce...
was nominated for a Drama Desk Award
Drama Desk Award
The Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...
as Outstanding Revival, and the director and actors received various Tony, Drama Desk and other awards and nominations. Elisabeth Welsh was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood in 1986, and Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
received Tony nominations in both 1983 and 1995, winning for best revival in 1995 (among numerous other awards and nominations), and won the Laurence Olivier Award for best revival in 2008. In 1986, Big Deal
Big Deal (musical)
Big Deal is a musical with a book by Bob Fosse using songs from various composers such as Ray Henderson, Eubie Blake, and Jerome Kern. It was based on the film "Big Deal on Madonna Street" by Mario Monicelli...
was nominated for the Tony for best musical, among other awards, and Bob Fossee won as best choreographer. In 2000, Swing!
Swing!
Swing! is a musical conceived by Paul Kelly with music by various artists. It celebrates the music of the Swing era of jazz , including many well-known tunes by artists like Duke Ellington, William "Count" Basie, Benny Goodman and others...
, featuring Kern's "I Won't Dance" was nominated for the Tony for Best Musical, among others. In 2002, Elaine Stritch at Liberty, featuring Kern's "All in Fun", won the Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event. In 2004, Never Gonna Dance
Never Gonna Dance
Never Gonna Dance is a Broadway musical featuring the music of Jerome Kern. The musical was based on the 1936 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film Swing Time. Lyricists include Oscar Hammerstein, Ira Gershwin, P. G...
received two Tony nominations.
Kern was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame
Songwriters Hall of Fame
The Songwriters Hall of Fame is an arm of the National Academy of Popular Music. It was founded in 1969 by songwriter Johnny Mercer and music publishers Abe Olman and Howie Richmond. The goal is to create a museum but as of April, 2008, the means do not yet exist and so instead it is an online...
posthumously, in 1970. In 1985, the U.S. Post Office
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
issued a postage stamp (Scott #2110, 22¢), with an illustration of Kern holding sheet music.
Academy Award for Best Original Song
- 1935 – Nominated for "Lovely to Look At" (lyrics by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh) from Roberta
- 1936 – Won for "The Way You Look TonightThe Way You Look Tonight"The Way You Look Tonight" is a song featured in the film Swing Time, originally performed by Fred Astaire. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936. The song was sung to Ginger Rogers as Penelope "Penny" Carroll by Astaire's character of John "Lucky" Garnett while Penny was busy...
" (lyrics by Dorothy Fields) from Swing Time - 1941 – Won for "The Last Time I Saw ParisThe Last Time I Saw ParisThe Last Time I Saw Paris is a 1954 romantic drama made by MGM. It is loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "Babylon Revisited." It was directed by Richard Brooks, produced by Jack Cummings and filmed on locations in Paris and the MGM backlot. The screenplay was by Julius J. Epstein,...
" (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) from Lady Be Good - 1942 – Nominated for "Dearly Beloved" (lyrics by Johnny Mercer) from You Were Never Lovelier.
- 1944 – Nominated for "Long Ago (and Far Away)Long Ago (and Far Away)"Long Ago " is a popular song from the 1944 Technicolor film musical Cover Girl starring Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly and released by Columbia Pictures. The music was written by Jerome Kern, and the lyrics were written by Ira Gershwin...
" (lyrics by Ira Gershwin) from Cover Girl - 1945 – Posthumously nominated for "More and More" (lyrics by E. Y. Harburg) from Can't Help SingingCan't Help SingingCan't Help Singing is a 1944 musical Western filmed in Technicolor starring Deanna Durbin. The film was produced by Felix Jackson and directed by Frank Ryan. The score was by Jerome Kern with lyrics by E. Y. Harburg.-Plot:...
- 1946 – Posthumously nominated for "All Through the Day" (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) from Centennial SummerCentennial SummerCentennial Summer is a 1946 film directed by Otto Preminger. The musical, that stars Jeanne Crain and Cornel Wilde, is based on a novel by Albert E. Idell.It was produced in response to the hugely successful MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis...
.
Academy Award for Best Original Music Score
- 1945 – Posthumously nominated for Can't Help Singing (with H. J. Salter).
Selected works
Note: All shows listed are musical comedies for which Kern was the sole composer unless otherwise specified.During his first phase of work (1904–1911), Kern wrote songs for 22 Broadway productions, including songs interpolated into British musicals or featured in revue
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
s (sometimes writing lyrics as well as music), and he occasionally co-wrote musicals with one or two other composers. During visits to London beginning in 1905, he also composed songs that were first performed in several London shows. The following are some of the most notable such shows from this period:
- Mr. Wix of Wickham (1904) – contributed most of the songs for this musical's New York production
- The Catch of the SeasonThe Catch of the SeasonThe Catch of the Season is an Edwardian musical comedy by Seymour Hicks and Cosmo Hamilton, with music by Herbert Haines and Evelyn Baker and lyrics by Charles H. Taylor, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
(1905) – contributor to this Seymour HicksSeymour HicksSir Arthur Seymour Hicks , better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, screenwriter, theatre manager and producer. He married the actress Ellaline Terriss in 1893...
musical's New York production - The Earl and the GirlThe Earl and the GirlThe Earl and the Girl is a musical comedy in two acts by Seymour Hicks, with lyrics by Percy Greenbank and music by Ivan Caryll. It was produced by William Greet and opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London on 10 December 1903. It transferred to the Lyric Theatre on 12 September 1904, running for...
(1905) – contributor of music and lyrics to this Hicks and Ivan CaryllIvan CaryllFélix Marie Henri Tilkin , better known by his pen name Ivan Caryll, was a Belgian composer of operettas and Edwardian musical comedies in the English language...
musical's American productions - The Little Cherub (1906) – contributor to this Caryll and Owen HallOwen HallOwen Hall was the pen name of the Irish-born 19th and early 20th century theatre writer and theatre critic James Davis when writing for the stage...
musical's New York production - The Rich Mr. Hoggenheimer (1906) – contributor of eight songs
- The Beauty of BathThe Beauty of BathThe Beauty of Bath is a musical comedy with a book by Seymour Hicks and Cosmo Hamilton, lyrics by C. H. Taylor and music by Herbert Haines; additional songs were provided by Jerome Kern , F. Clifford Harris and P. G. Wodehouse . The story concerns a young woman from a noble family, who falls in...
(1906) – contributor to the original London production of this Hicks musical, with lyricist P. G. Wodehouse - The OrchidThe OrchidThe Orchid is a musical play in two acts by James T. Tanner, with lyrics by Adrian Ross and Percy Greenbank and music by Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton and additional numbers by Paul Rubens. It opened at Gaiety Theatre in London on 26 October 1903 and ran for 559 performances. It starred Gertie...
(1907) – contributor to this Caryll and Lionel MoncktonLionel MoncktonLionel John Alexander Monckton was an English writer and composer of musical theatre. He was Britain's most popular musical theatre composer of the early years of the 20th century.-Early life:...
musical's New York production - The Girls of GottenbergThe Girls of GottenbergThe Girls of Gottenberg is a musical play in two acts by George Grossmith, Jr. and L. E. Berman, with lyrics by Adrian Ross and Basil Hood, and music by Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton. P. G...
(1908) – contributor of "I Can't Say That You're The Only One" to this Caryll and Monckton musical's New York production - Fluffy Ruffles (1908) – co-composer for eight out of ten songs
- Our Miss GibbsOur Miss GibbsOur Miss Gibbs is an Edwardian musical comedy in two acts by 'Cryptos' and James T. Tanner, with lyrics by Adrian Ross and Percy Greenbank, music by Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton. Produced by George Edwardes, it opened at the Gaiety Theatre in London on 23 January 1909 and ran for an extremely...
(1910) – contributor of four songs and some lyrics to this Caryll and Monckton musical's New York production - La Belle Paree (1911) – revueRevueA revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
– co-composer for seven songs; the Broadway debut of Al JolsonAl JolsonAl Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
From 1912 to 1924, the more-experienced Kern began to work on dramatically concerned shows, including incidental music
Incidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
for plays, and, for the first time since his college show Uncle Tom's Cabin, he wrote musicals as the sole composer. His regular lyricist collaborators for his more than 30 shows during this period were Guy Bolton
Guy Bolton
Guy Reginald Bolton was a British-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the U.S., he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred working in collaboration with others, principally the English writers P. G...
, P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
, Harry B. Smith
Harry B. Smith
Harry Bache Smith was a writer, lyricist and composer. The most prolific of all American stage writers, he is said to have written over 300 librettos and more than 6000 lyrics. Some of his best-known works were librettos for the composer Victor Herbert...
, Anne Caldwell
Anne Caldwell
Anne Caldwell , also known as Anne Caldwell O'Dea, was a librettist and lyricist. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She wrote both pop songs and Broadway shows including working with Jerome Kern.-External links:...
, and Howard Dietz
Howard Dietz
Howard Dietz was an American publicist, lyricist, and librettist.-Biography:Dietz was born in New York City and studied journalism at Columbia University...
. Some of his most notable shows during this very productive period were as follows:
- The "Mind-the-Paint" Girl (1912 play; starring Billie BurkeBillie BurkeMary William Ethelbert Appleton "Billie" Burke was an American actress. She is primarily known to modern audiences as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in the musical film The Wizard of Oz. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Emily Kilbourne in Merrily We Live...
) – incidental musicIncidental musicIncidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack".... - The Red Petticoat (1912) – Kern's first complete score
- To-Night's the NightTo-Night's the Night (musical)To-Night's the Night is a musical comedy composed by Paul Rubens, with lyrics by Percy Greenbank and Rubens, and a book adapted by Fred Thompson. Two songs were composed by Jerome Kern. The story is based on the farce Les Dominos roses .The musical was produced by George Grossmith, Jr. and Edward...
(1914) – contributor of two songs to this Rubens musical - The Girl from UtahThe Girl from UtahThe Girl from Utah is an Edwardian musical comedy in two acts with music by Paul Rubens, and Sidney Jones, a book by James T. Tanner, and lyrics by Adrian Ross, Percy Greenbank and Rubens. The story concerns an American girl who runs away to London to avoid becoming a wealthy Mormon's newest wife...
(1914) – added five songs to the American production of this Rubens musical - Nobody Home (1915) – the first "Princess Theatre show"
- Very Good EddieVery Good EddieVery Good Eddie is a musical with a book by Guy Bolton and Philip Bartholomae, music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics by Schuyler Green and Herbert Reynolds, with additional lyrics by Elsie Janis, Harry B. Smith and John E. Hazzard and additional music by Henry Kailimai. The story was based on the farce...
(1915; revived in 1975) - Ziegfeld FolliesZiegfeld FolliesThe Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air....
of 1916 (1916; a revueRevueA revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
; the first of many) – contributed four songs - Theodore & CoTheodore & CoTheodore & Co is an English musical comedy in two acts with a book by H. M. Harwood and George Grossmith, Jr. , with music by Ivor Novello and Jerome Kern and lyrics by Adrian Ross and Clifford Grey. It was produced by Grossmith and Edward Laurillard, opening at the Gaiety Theatre on 19 September...
(1916) – contributed four songs to young Ivor NovelloIvor NovelloDavid Ivor Davies , better known as Ivor Novello, was a Welsh composer, singer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his first successes were as a songwriter...
's London hit. - Miss Springtime (1917) – contributor of two songs to this Emmerich KalmanEmmerich KalmanEmmerich Kálmán was a Hungarian-born composer of operettas.- Biography :Kálmán was born Imre Koppstein in Siófok, on the southern shore of Lake Balaton, Hungary in a Jewish family.Kálmán initially intended to become a concert pianist, but because of early-onset arthritis, he focused on composition...
success - Have a Heart (1917) – composer and contributor of some lyrics
- Love o' Mike (1917)
- Oh, Boy!Oh, Boy! (musical)Oh, Boy! is a musical in two acts, with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse. The story concerns befuddled George, who elopes with Lou Ellen, the daughter of Judge Carter. He must win over her parents and his Quaker aunt...
(1917) – the most successful Princess Theatre show - Ziegfeld FolliesZiegfeld FolliesThe Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air....
of 1917 (1917) – contributor of "Because You Are Just You (Just Because You're You)" - Leave It to JaneLeave It to JaneLeave It to Jane is a musical in two acts, with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, based on the 1904 play College Widow, by George Ade. The story concerns the football rivalry between Atwater College and Bingham College, and satirizes college life in a...
(1917; revived in 1958 Off-Broadway) - Oh, Lady! Lady!!Oh, Lady! Lady!!Oh, Lady! Lady!! is a musical with music by Jerome Kern, a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse and lyrics by Wodehouse. It was written for the Princess Theatre on Broadway, where it played in 1918 and ran for 219 performances. The story concerns an engaged young man, Bill, whose ex-fiancée...
(1918) – the last Princess Theatre hit - "Oh, My Dear" (1918) – contributed one song to this last "Princess Theatre show"
- The Night Boat (1920)
- Hitchy-KooHitchy-KooHitchy-Koo of 1919 is a musical revue with music and lyrics by Cole Porter and the book by George V. Hobart. This revue was third in a series of four Hitchy-Koo revues produced by, and starring, Raymond Hitchcock. The original Broadway production was in 1919...
of 1920 (1920) – revueRevueA revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932... - SallySally (musical)Sally is a musical comedy with music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Clifford Grey and book by Guy Bolton , with additional lyrics by Buddy De Sylva, Anne Caldwell and P. G. Wodehouse. It was originally produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, opening on December 21, 1920 at the New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway...
(1920; revived in 1923 and 1948) – one of Kern's biggest hits - The Cabaret GirlThe Cabaret GirlThe Cabaret Girl is a musical comedy in three acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by George Grossmith, Jr. and P. G. Wodehouse. It was produced by Grossmith and J. A. E...
(London 1922) - The Bunch and Judy (1922) – Kern's first show with Fred AstaireFred AstaireFred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
- Stepping Stones (1923)
During the last phase of his theatrical composing career, Kern continued to work with his previous collaborators but also met Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...
and Otto Harbach
Otto Harbach
Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach was an American lyricist and librettist of about 50 musical comedies...
, with whom Kern wrote his most lasting, memorable, and well-known works. The most successful of these are as follows:
- SunnySunny (musical)Sunny is a musical with music by Jerome Kern and a libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach. The plot involves Sunny, the star of a circus act, who falls for a rich playboy, but comes in conflict with his snooty family...
(1925) – a follow-up to Sally and almost as big a hit; first collaboration with Hammerstein and Harbach - Criss Cross (1926) – with Harbach
- Show BoatShow BoatShow Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
(1927; revived frequently) – with Hammerstein - Blue Eyes (1928; London)
- Sweet AdelineSweet Adeline (musical)Sweet Adeline is a musical with music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and original Orchestration by Robert Russell Bennett. It premiered on Broadway in 1929...
(1929) – with Hammerstein - The Cat and the FiddleThe Cat and the Fiddle (musical)The Cat and the Fiddle is a musical with music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics and book by Otto Harbach.-Productions:The original Broadway production opened at the Globe Theatre on October 15, 1931, moved to the George M. Cohan Theater on May 24, 1932, and ran for a total of 395 performances. The show...
(1931) – Kern collaborated with Harbach the music, book and lyrics - Music in the AirMusic in the AirMusic in the Air is a musical written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern . It introduced songs such as "The Song Is You", "In Egern on the Tegern See" and "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star"...
(1932; revived in 1951) – composer and co-director with Hammerstein - Roberta (1933) – with Harbach (remade as Lovely to Look AtLovely to Look AtLovely to Look At, an adaptation of the Broadway musical Roberta, is a 1952 MGM musical film directed by Mervyn LeRoy.-Plot:Tony Naylor, Al Marsh and Jerry Ralby are looking for backers for their new Broadway show. They have just run out of options when Al gets a letter from his Aunt's attorneys...
(1952)) - Three Sisters (1934; London)
- Mamba's Daughters (1939; revived in 1940) – playPlay (theatre)A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
– featured songwriter - Very Warm for MayVery Warm for MayVery Warm for May is a musical composed by Jerome Kern, with a libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was the team's final score for Broadway, following their hits Show Boat, Sweet Adeline, and Music in the Air...
(1939) – with Hammerstein; Kern's last stage musical, and a failure
In addition to revivals of his most popular shows, Kern's music has been posthumously featured in a variety of revues, musicals and concerts on and off Broadway.
- Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood (1986) – Broadway revue consisting solely of Kern songs with lyrics by twelve different writers
- Big DealBig Deal (musical)Big Deal is a musical with a book by Bob Fosse using songs from various composers such as Ray Henderson, Eubie Blake, and Jerome Kern. It was based on the film "Big Deal on Madonna Street" by Mario Monicelli...
(1986) – a Bob FosseBob FosseRobert Louis “Bob” Fosse was an American actor, dancer, musical theater choreographer, director, screenwriter, film editor and film director. He won an unprecedented eight Tony Awards for choreography, as well as one for direction...
dance revue; includes "Pick Yourself Up" - Something Wonderful (1995) – concert celebrating Oscar Hammerstein IIOscar Hammerstein IIOscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...
's 100th birthday – featured composer - Paul RobesonPaul RobesonPaul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
(1988; revived in 1995) – one-man play; included "Ol' Man River" - Dream (1997) – revueRevueA revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
– includes "You Were Never Lovelier", "I'm Old Fashioned", and "Dearly Beloved" - Swing!Swing!Swing! is a musical conceived by Paul Kelly with music by various artists. It celebrates the music of the Swing era of jazz , including many well-known tunes by artists like Duke Ellington, William "Count" Basie, Benny Goodman and others...
(1999) – dance revue; includes "I Won't Dance" - Elaine StritchElaine StritchElaine Stritch is an American actress and vocalist. She has appeared in numerous stage plays and musicals, feature films, and many television programs...
at Liberty (2002) – one-woman show; included "All In Fun" - Never Gonna DanceNever Gonna DanceNever Gonna Dance is a Broadway musical featuring the music of Jerome Kern. The musical was based on the 1936 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film Swing Time. Lyricists include Oscar Hammerstein, Ira Gershwin, P. G...
(2003) – musical consisting solely of songs composed by Kern, with lyrics by nine different writers - Jerome Kern: All the Things You Are (2008) – K T Sullivan's revue biography of Kern featuring Kern's songs
- Come Fly AwayCome Fly AwayCome Fly Away is a dance revue conceived, directed and choreographed by Twyla Tharp, around the songs of Frank Sinatra. The musical, set in a New York City nightclub, follows four couples as they look for love....
– a Twyla TharpTwyla TharpTwyla Tharp is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.-Early years:Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.she spend hours working on it to help her...
dance revue; includes "Pick Yourself Up"
Kern's songs
Among the more than 700 songs by Kern are such classics as "Ol' Man RiverOl' Man River
"Ol' Man River" is a song in the 1927 musical Show Boat that expresses the African American hardship and struggles of the time with the endless, uncaring flow of the Mississippi River; it is sung from the point-of-view of a dock worker on a showboat, and is the most famous song from the show...
", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
"Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" with music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, is one of the most famous songs from their classic 1927 musical play Show Boat, adapted from Edna Ferber's novel.-Context:...
", "A Fine Romance
A Fine Romance (song)
"A Fine Romance" is a popular song composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, published in 1936.The song was written for the musical film, Swing Time, where it was co-introduced by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers...
", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is a show tune written by American composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach for their 1933 operetta Roberta. It was originally recorded by Gertrude Niesen, on 13 October 1933 on the Victor label 24454. It was performed by Irene Dunne for the 1935 film adaptation,...
", "All the Things You Are
All the Things You Are
"All the Things You Are" is a song composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics written by Oscar Hammerstein II.It was written for the musical Very Warm for May , where it was introduced by Hiram Sherman, Frances Mercer, Hollace Shaw, and Ralph Stuart...
", "The Way You Look Tonight
The Way You Look Tonight
"The Way You Look Tonight" is a song featured in the film Swing Time, originally performed by Fred Astaire. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936. The song was sung to Ginger Rogers as Penelope "Penny" Carroll by Astaire's character of John "Lucky" Garnett while Penny was busy...
" and "Who?
Who? (song)
"Who?" is a popular song written for the Broadway musical Sunny by Jerome Kern, Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. The song was featured in the film version of Sunny starring Marilyn Miller....
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External links
- Jerome Kern's biography at the "Songwriters Hall of Fame".
- "Dorothy Fields on Kern" at the Dorothy Fields website; describes circumstances of the composer's death.