Tony- and Grammy Award-winning lyricist Sheldon Harnick, who with composer Jerry Bock made up one of many premier musical-theater songwriting duos of the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties with reveals comparable to Fiddler on the Roof, Fiorello! and The Apple Tree, has died. He was 99.
Recognized for his wry, refined humor and deft wordplay, Harnick died in his sleep Friday (June 23) in New York Metropolis of pure causes, stated Sean Katz, Harnick’s publicist.
Broadway artists paid their respects on social media, with Schmigadoon! author Cinco Paul calling him “one of many all-time nice musical theater lyricists” and actor Jackie Hoffman lovingly writing: “Like all good persnickety lyricists he was a ache within the tuchus.”
Bock and Harnick first hit success for the music and lyrics to Fiorello!, which earned them every Tonys and a uncommon Pulitzer Prize in 1960. As well as, Harnick was nominated for Tonys in 1967 for The Apple Tree, in 1971 for The Rothschilds and in 1994 for Cyrano — The Musical. However their masterpiece was Fiddler on the Roof.
Bock and Harnick had been first launched at a restaurant by actor Jack Cassidy after the opening-night efficiency of Shangri-La, a musical during which Harnick had helped with the lyrics. The primary Harnick-Bock musical was The Physique Stunning in 1958.
“I feel in the entire years that we labored collectively, I solely keep in mind one or two arguments — and people had been firstly of the collaboration after we had been nonetheless feeling one another out,” Harnick, who collaborated with Bock for 13 years, recalled in an interview with The Related Press in 2010. “As soon as we bought previous that, he was fantastic to work with.”
They’d type one of the crucial influential partnerships in Broadway historical past. Producers Robert E. Griffith and Hal Prince had preferred the songs from The Physique Stunning, they usually contracted Bock and Harnick to write down the rating for his or her subsequent manufacturing, Fiorello!, a musical in regards to the reformist mayor of New York Metropolis.
Bock and Harnick then collaborated on Tenderloin in 1960 and She Loves Me three years later. Neither was successful — though She Loves Me received a Grammy for finest rating from a forged album — however their subsequent one was a monster that continues to be carried out worldwide: Fiddler on the Roof. It earned two Tony Awards in 1965.
Primarily based on tales by Sholom Aleichem that had been tailored right into a libretto by Stein, Fiddler handled the expertise of Japanese European Orthodox Jews within the Russian village of Anatevka within the 12 months 1905. It starred Zero Mostel as Teyve, had an nearly eight 12 months run and provided the world such gorgeous songs as “Dawn, Sundown,” “If I Had been a Wealthy Man” and “Matchmaker, Matchmaker.” The latest Broadway revival starred Danny Burstein as Tevye and earned a finest revival Tony nomination.
In a masterpiece of laughter and tenderness, Harnick’s lyrics had been poignant and trustworthy, as when the hero Tevye sings, “Lord who made the lion and the lamb/ You decreed I ought to be what I’m/ Wouldn’t it spoil some huge everlasting plan/If I had been a rich man?”
Harvey Fierstein, who performed Tevye in a Broadway revival beginning in 2004 stated in a press release that Harnick’s “lyrics had been clear and purposeful and by no means lapsed into cliche. You’d by no means catch him counting on simple rhymes or ‘lists’ to fill a musical phrase. He all the time sought and informed the reality for the character and so made performing his songs a pleasure.”
Bock and Harnick subsequent wrote the e book in addition to the rating for The Apple Tree, in 1966, and the rating for The Rothschilds, with a e book by Sherman Yellen, in 1970. It was the final collaboration between the 2: Bock determined that the time had come for him to be his personal lyricist and he put out two experimental albums within the early Seventies.
Harnick went on to collaborate with Michel Legrand on The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in 1979 and a musical of A Christmas Carol in 1981; Mary Rodgers on a model of Pinocchio in 1973; Arnold Black on a musical of The Phantom Tollbooth; and Richard Rodgers on the rating to Rex in 1976, a Broadway musical about Henry VIII.
He additionally wrote lyrics for the tune “William Desires a Doll” for Marlo Thomas’ TV particular Free to Be… You and Me and a number of other authentic opera librettos, together with Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines and Love in Two Nations. He received a Grammy for writing the libretto for The Merry Widow that includes Beverly Sills.
His work for tv and movie ranged from songs for the HBO animated movie The Story of Peter Rabbit in 1991 with music by Stephen Lawrence, to lyrics for the opening variety of the 1988 Academy Awards telecast. He wrote the theme songs for 2 movies, each with music by Cy Coleman: The Heartbreak Child in 1972 and Blame it On Rio in 1984.
In 2014, off-Broadway’s The York Theatre Firm revived a few of Harnick’s early works, together with Malpractice Makes Excellent, Dragons and Tenderloin. She Loves Me was final revived on Broadway in 2016 in a Tony-nominated present starring Zachary Levi.
Harnick received a Grammy and 4 Tony Awards, together with a 2016 award for lifetime achievement within the theatre. Harnick and Bock had been inducted into the Songwriters Corridor of Fame in 1972 and obtained that group’s highest honor, the Johnny Mercer Award, in 1990.
Harnick was born and raised in Chicago and earned a bachelor’s diploma in music from the Northwestern College College of Music after serving within the military throughout World Warfare II. Skilled within the violin, he determined to attempt his luck as a songwriter in New York.
His early songs included “The Ballad of the Form of Issues,” later recorded by the Kingston Trio, and the Cole Porter spoof, “Boston Beguine,” from the revue New Faces of 1952.
He and his spouse, artist Margery Grey Harnick, had two kids, Beth and Matthew, and 4 grandchildren. Harnick had an earlier marriage to actress Elaine Could. He was a longtime member of the Dramatists Guild and Songwriters Guild.
Kristin Chenoweth, who starred in a 2006 revival of The Apple Tree, on Twitter known as it “one in all my favourite skilled experiences of my profession,” including about Harnick: “I liked his musings. His writings. His soul.”
