Composer Jerome Kern is considered by many to be the father of the modern musical theatre. He was instrumental in linking the European operetta tradition with the modern American musical theatre. With the monumental musical Show Boat—considered the first truly American musical—he virtually invented the genre, making it a vehicle for the presentation of ideas and imagination. And with songs such as ” All the Things You Are,” “Yesterdays,” and “The Folks Who Live on the Hill , ” Kern created some of the most memorable and haunting melodies in popular music. As his Show Boat collaborator Oscar HAMMERSTEIN II wrote, ” … he devoted his lifetime to giving the world something it needs and knows it needs—beauty.”
Born in Manhattan on January 27, 1885, Jerome David Kern was the youngest of seven children (one of only three sons who survived) of well-to-do German-Jewish parents. His doting mother gave Jerry his first piano lessons at age five and cultivated in him an early love of the musical stage. When his father insisted he join the family furniture business, Kern ordered 200 new pianos and nearly bankrupted the company. With that, his father gave in and agreed to support his budding musical career. Kern soon dropped out of the New York College of Music to study composition and musical comedy in London and Germany. Returning to New York, Kern worked as a Tin Pan Alley song plugger and rehearsal pianist, and moonlighted as a contributor to Broadway productions.
Starting in 1907 and continuing until the mid-1920s, Kern’s music was featured in up to eight shows a season (often in collaboration with librettist Guy Bolton and lyricist P. G . Wodehouse) producing early hits such as “They Didn’t Believe Me,” “Till the Clouds Roll By,” and “Look for the Silver Lining.” He teamed with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II on the 1925 hit musical Sunny, but their greatest triumph came two years later. Show Boat (1927), based on Edna Ferber’s novel, was the most important musical ever to open on Broadway, both in its social relevance and dramatic impact. Instead of the curtain rising on a chorus line of scantily-clad showgirls, the two-and-a-half hour “musical play” opened with African-Americans hauling cotton bales and chanting a work song. It crumbled stereotypes by creating believable characters in a powerful story that exposed the racism of the time, and had a fully-integrated musical score with standards such as “Ol’ Man River,” “Make Believe,” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” (“Bill,” one of its most famous songs, had been cut from a 1917 Kern show, with lyrics by Wodehouse.)
As musical theatre archivist Miles Kreuger wrote, “The history of the American Musical theatre, quite simply, is divided into two eras: everything before Show Boat and everything after Show Boat.”
In 1934, Kern moved to Hollywood and wrote scores for several musicals, including Roberta and Swing Time, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. He was awarded an Academy Award in 1936 for “The Way You Look Tonight,” from Swing Time, and again in 1941 for “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” from Lady Be Good. Kern was about to begin work on a new musical based on the life of Annie Oakley (which became Annie Get Your Gun) when he collapsed o n a New York City street. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage on November 11, 1945. Till the Clouds Roll By, a lavish movie musical set around Kern’s life and works, was produced by MGM in 1946.
Michael R. Ross
SEE ALSO:
FILM MUSICALS; MUSICALS; OPERETTA; TIN PAN ALLEY.
FURTHER READING
Bordman, Gerald. Jerome Kern: His Life and Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990);
Freedland, Michael. Jerome Kern (New York: Stein and Day, 1981);
Kreuger, Miles. Show Boat: The Story of a Classic American Musical (New York: Applause, 1995).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Erroll Garner Plays Gershwin and Kern; Kern Goes to Hollywood; Marni Nixon Sings Classic Kern; Peggy King Sings Jerome Kern; Show Boat.