Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II (; July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960 ) was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and ( usually uncredited ) theatre director of musicals for almost forty years.

Hammerstein was the lyricist and playwright in his partnerships ; his collaborators wrote the music.

Hammerstein collaborated with composers Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, Rudolf Friml and Sigmund Romberg ; but his most famous collaboration, by far, was with Richard Rodgers.

His grandfather was German-born Jewish theater impresario Oscar Hammerstein I, and his mother was the daughter of Scottish and English parents.

Hammerstein was raised an Episcopalian.

He was survived by his second wife Dorothy ( Blanchard ) Jacobson ( m. May 13, 1929 ) and his three children, William Hammerstein and Alice Hammerstein Mathias by first wife Myra Finn, and James Hammerstein by Blanchard.

Hammerstein was probably the best " book writer " in Broadway history – he made the story, not the songs or the stars, central to the musical and brought musical theater to full maturity as an art form.

As recent revivals of Show Boat, Oklahoma !, Carousel, and The King and I in London and New York show, Hammerstein was one of the more tough-minded and socially conscious American musical theater artists.

According to The Rodgers and Hammerstein Story by Stanley Green, " For three minutes, on the night of September first, the entire Times Square area in New York City was blacked out in honor of the man who had done so much to light up that particular part of the world.

The Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theater Studies at Columbia University was established in 1981 with a $ 1-million gift from his family.

It was at the opening of South Pacific, the musical Hammerstein wrote with Richard Rodgers, that Sondheim met Harold Prince, who would later direct many of Sondheim's shows.

It was a major success among his peers, and it considerably buoyed the young songwriter's ego ; he took it to Hammerstein, and asked him to evaluate it as though he had no knowledge of its author.

Hammerstein said it was the worst thing he had ever seen.

Initially he resisted, because he was determined to write the full score for his next project ( Saturday Night had been aborted ), but Oscar Hammerstein convinced him that he would benefit from the experience, and he accepted.

With the help of Oscar Hammerstein, Laurents convinced Bernstein and Sondheim to move " One Hand, One Heart ", which he considered too pristine for the balcony scene, to the scene set in the bridal shop, and as a result " Tonight " was written to replace it.

It was not until Kern explained that he and Oscar Hammerstein II wanted to create a different type of musical that Ferber granted him the rights.

It was Oscar Hammerstein II ( pp. 58 – 59 ).

She was twenty-one years old and the stepdaughter of Oscar Hammerstein II.

Much of Rodgers's work with both Hart and Hammerstein was orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett.

* August 1 – Oscar Hammerstein I, Polish-born theater impressario and composer ( born 1847 )

Oscar Hammerstein I was born in Stettin, Prussia, ( now, Szczecin, Poland ), to German-Jewish parents Abraham and Berthe Hammerstein.

David Hammerstein Mintz ( born on 23 September 1955 in Los Angeles ) is a Spanish politician and former Member of the European Parliament for Los Verdes, part of the European Greens.

Arthur Hammerstein was born and educated in New York City.

Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz first tried, and then Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II attempted, but gave up and Hammerstein told Lerner " Pygmalion had no subplot ".

The Wordsmiths: Oscar Hammerstein 2nd and Alan Jay Lerner.

Past writers and directors have included Columbians Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, I. A. L.

Many Columbia alumni have gone on to renowned careers in the arts, such as the composers Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Lorenz Hart, and Art Garfunkel.

* 1895 – Oscar Hammerstein II, American songwriter, director, and producer ( d. 1960 )

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.

* 1847 – Oscar Hammerstein I, American businessman, impresario, and composer ( d. 1919 )

Hammerstein contributed the lyrics to 850 songs, according to The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II, edited by Amy Asch.

The Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre is presented annually.

* Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II at RNH Official Site

* Oscar Hammerstein II interviewed by Mike Wallace on The Mike Wallace Interview March 15, 1958

ca: Oscar Hammerstein II

cy: Oscar Hammerstein II

de: Oscar Hammerstein

es: Oscar Hammerstein II

fr: Oscar Hammerstein II

id: Oscar Hammerstein II

Hammerstein also collaborated with Vincent Youmans ( Wildflower ), Rudolf Friml ( Rose-Marie ), and Sigmund Romberg ( The Desert Song and The New Moon ).

In 1950, the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award " in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York.

In 1950, Rodgers and Hammerstein received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award " in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York.

This era of Hollywood Squares recorded three weeks of show in the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York during Season 3 ( November 6 – 24, 2000 ), but was more notable for its reliance on " theme weeks.

Other movies influenced by or making use of Uncle Tom's Cabin include Dimples ( a 1936 Shirley Temple film ), Uncle Tom's Uncle, ( a 1926 Our Gang episode ), its 1932 remake Spanky, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I ( in which a ballet called " Small House of Uncle Thomas " is performed in traditional Siamese style ), and Gangs of New York ( in which Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis's characters attend an imagined wartime adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin ).

The first presentation of the film was at the Palace Theater in Chicago on February 8, 1914 ; later performances were at the Hammerstein Theater in New York City.

Merman accepted, but in November Kern suffered a stroke while in New York City visiting Rodgers and Hammerstein ( the producers of the show ) and died a few days later.

A few of the hundreds of hours of rehearsal tapes featuring Toscanini, residing in the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound, a division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

The New York City winner, Tyrone Good was presented a train ticket from Penn Station to travel to Philadelphia and rode with the tour the rest of the way starting in Philadelphia ( The Electric Factory ), Boston ( The Orpheum Theater ), and finally New York City ( The Hammerstein Ballroom ).

* Flower Drum Song, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, book by David Henry Hwang ; based upon the libretto by Oscar Hammerstein, II and Joseph Fields and the novel The Flower Drum Song by C. Y. Lee ; New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2003.

* On September 26, 1997, Bryan Adams performed on Unplugged at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City and released an album.

Hammerstein, a co-writer of the popular Rudolf Friml 1924 operetta Rose-Marie, and Sigmund Romberg operettas The Desert Song ( 1926 ) and The New Moon ( 1928 ), began a successful collaboration with composer Jerome Kern on Sunny ( 1925 ), which was a hit.

In 1950, the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award " in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York.

He appeared as Gerkie again at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom on December 6, 2009, during Matt Pinfield's Holiday Extravaganza Show and at the premiere of his movie Don't Go in the Woods at Joe's Pub on May 28, 2010.

The band also performed two sold-out American shows on Halloween weekend in 2011, playing at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on 28 October, and at the Fox Oakland Theater in Oakland, California on 29 October.