If you like American musical theater, you must know the name Oscar Hammerstein, who, as part of the duo Rodgers and Hammerstein, contributed many of the classic musicals to the genre. What you might not know is that Hammerstein was Oscar Hammerstein II. His grandfather was Oscar Hammerstein I, who founded the multigenerational Hammerstein musical theater dynasty. Oscar Hammerstein I was born May 8, 1846, in the Kingdom of Prussia.
Hammerstein showed musical talent early, and could play the flute, the piano, and the violin while just a boy. His father didn’t think music was a very good choice, and wanted Hammerstein to specialize in math, and when Hammerstein was about 15 they actually came to blows over it. Hammerstein had had enough, sold his violin, and used the money to travel to Liverpool, England, and then the US. Besides suggesting that he had a pretty valuable violin for a kid, this turned out to be a pretty good move on his part. But once in the US, he didn’t embark on his theatrical career.
Instead, Hammerstein went into the cigar business. As a young immigrant in New York City, a job in a cigar factory may have been one of a limited number of opportunities open to him. He was pretty good at it, and he not only worked his way up in the cigar business, he started inventing machines and devices for making cigars. He ended up with 80 patents, his own factories, and a boatload of money. And it was at that point that he returned to his first love, music.
But he didn’t return to performing music. Instead, he used his fortune to build opera houses in New York. His first was built in 1889, and he followed that up with seven more over the next few years. In fact, the Times Square area of New York is still known as the “theater district,” and it’s because that’s where Hammerstein built most of his theaters and opera houses.
In 1903 he wrote his own musical, Punch, Judy, & Co., and expanded his theater-building operations to Philadelphia, in the US, as well as London, England. His son Arthur followed in his footsteps and built Hammerstein’s Theater in 1927, in honor of Oscar Hammerstein. That theater is still there, now called the Ed Sullivan Theater. Arthur also wrote, directed, and produced musicals (and appeared in at least one movie), and his brother Willie managed the family theaters. Oscar Hammerstein II is Willie Hammerstein’s son. And if that’s not enough of a theater dynasty for you, Oscar I’s daughter Stella was an actress, as was Arthur’s daughter Elaine and Arthur’s wife Dorothy Dalton. And Oscar II’s son James was a director and producer, and his stepdaughter Susan Blanchard was a lyricist, director, and was married to two Hollywood stars, Henry Fonda and Richard Widmark. Break a leg!
