On this date in 1895, Oscar Hammerstein was born in New York City. Although his grandfather, a Jewish German immigrant, had been instrumental in reviving grand opera in this country, the boy's father had other plans. Oscar's father, who himself managed vaudeville shows, wanted his son to become a lawyer.
The young man tried to be dutiful. After graduating from Columbia, where he played first for the school baseball team, he enrolled in Columbia Law School. But his dad died while he was still a student and the lure of the arts was too strong. Oscar Hammerstein II quit law school and pursued his passion as a song lyricist.
And before his death in 1960, all he did was help create the modern American musical while writing songs that millions of people all over the world know by heart.
Oscar Hammerstein didn't write tunes; he wrote the words to songs. More than that, however, in a career spanning four decades with several famous collaborators, he shaped what theater and movie audiences expected from a musical. In his productions, stars and songs were still vital, but the driving force was the story itself.
"Show Boat," which Hammerstein created with Jerome Kern, is remembered today because of the classic number "Ol' Man River," but the reason audiences were so captivated was that it was a tragic love story and a morality tale about racism.
Overcoming prejudice was also the heart of "South Pacific," which Hammerstein wrote along with Richard Rodgers. The pair would also write the songs for "Oklahoma!" as well as "The King and I," "Carousel," and "The Sound of Music."
The memorable words to one of the pair's most enduring songs (it's from "South Pacific") didn't take much imagination: The simple narrative of sudden, unexplained love in "Some Enchanted Evening" was borrowed from Hammerstein's own life.
"In March 1927, as he sailed for England on the R.M.S. Olympic, Hammerstein went to the captain's cocktail party the first night out," wrote New York Times correspondent John Steele Gordon. "And there, across a crowded room, was a stranger named Dorothy Blanchard, to be his second wife and the love of his life."
The song, which you can listen to here (at about the 4-minute and 30-second mark), begins this way:
Some enchanted evening, you may see a strangerYou may see a stranger across a crowded roomAnd somehow you know, you'll know even thenThat somewhere you'll see her again and again
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.