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Jerome Kern (credit: EB Inc.)
Jerome Kern (credit: EB Inc.)
For more information on Jerome David Kern, visit Britannica.com.
Jerome Kern
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Jerome David Kern |
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| American Theater Guide: Jerome [David] Kern |
Kern, Jerome [David] (1885–1945), composer. Born in New York, the son of a German‐born immigrant who became a moderately successful merchandiser and an American‐born mother of Bohemian descent who had once contemplated a career as a professional pianist, he moved with his family to Newark when he was ten and started music lessons with his mother. While still in high school, Kern composed music for a class show as well as for a production by the Newark Yacht Club. His success prompted him to quit high school after his junior year and enroll instead at the New York College of Music, where his teachers included Paolo Gallico, Alexander Lambert, and Austin Pierce. He employed what was then the accepted method of breaking into Broadway: interpolating songs into other men's scores. Playgoers first heard Kern melodies when Lew Fields inserted two numbers into a 1903 importation, An English Daisy. A year later, when E. E. Rice allowed Kern to write half the score for another importation, Mr. Wix of Wickham, recognition began to come Kern's way. His first big hit, “How'd You Like to Spoon with Me?,” was interpolated into The Earl and the Girl (1905), then for the next decade the young composer shuttled back and forth between New York and London where he picked up an abiding love for Gaiety musical comedy and met his future wife, Eva Leale. Among the shows with inserted Kern melodies during these years were The Doll Girl, The Dairymaids, Fascinating Flora, Fluffy Ruffles, and The Girl from Montmartre. He soon developed a unique musical idiom, a distinct amalgam of his German and Bohemian heritage, turn‐of‐the‐century English musical theatre styles, and identifiable American mannerisms. An especially important influence was “the dancing craze,” a rage for ballroom dancing that exploded across America shortly before World War I. It was in answer to this demand for new dance songs that Kern finally found his first real style and achieved lasting recognition. In 1914 Charles Frohman brought the London hit The Girl from Utah to New York and added some Kern songs, most memorably “They Didn't Believe Me,” which changed the course of American musical comedy writing. This great, enduring composition established the ballad as the most basic style of popular song in place of the heretofore‐reigning waltz. Within a year Kern had joined forces with Guy Bolton and the pair began to write intimate musical comedies for the tiny Princess Theatre. The first, Nobody Home (1915), was a modest hit, but Very Good Eddie (1915) was a huge success. When P. G. Wodehouse joined the team, adding his incomparable lyrics, the shows hit full stride with Oh, Boy! (1917), Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), Have a Heart! (1917) and
Kern's remarkable melodic gifts and his crucial pioneering—popularizing the ballad, modernizing musical comedy, and creating the modern American operetta or musical play—have won him general recognition as the father of the American musical theatre as we know it today. Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Arthur
| Music Encyclopedia: Jerome (David) Kern |
(b New York, 27 Jan 1885; d there, 11 Nov 1945). American composer. His first scores were failures, but in 1915-18 he composed four shows for the Princess Theatre, New York, a new type of sophisticated musical show with much more fully integrated songs and story than was usual; the best (written with Guy Bolton) was Very Good, Eddie (1915). He wrote many musical comedies, of which the most successful was Show Boat (1927). From 1939 he lived in Hollywood, contributing to films some of his best-known songs, notably The last time I saw Paris and The way you look tonight. He bridged the stylistic gap between the European operetta tradition and the American musical, using lyrical song to advance plot and character.
| Biography: Jerome David Kern |
Jerome David Kern (1885-1945), American composer, wrote the scores for several of the musical theater's greatest successes.
Jerome Kern was born in New York City on Jan. 27, 1885. His first music teacher was his pianist-mother. He later studied at the New York College of Music as well as in Europe.
After working in the London theater, Kern returned to America, where the only work he could find was as a song plugger and pianist with a music publishing company. From 1905 to 1908 he was associated with a music company, rising to the vice presidency. He married Eva Leale in 1910, and they had a daughter. His first published score was an operetta, The Red Petticoat (1912).
Between 1914 and 1929 Kern was represented on Broadway by at least one show a season. His prolific output included Rock a Bye Baby (1918), Sally (1920), and Sunny (1925). In 1926 he wrote the score for a Broadway adaptation of an Edna Ferber novel, and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote the lyrics. The result was the musical classic Show Boat. It opened in 1927 and ran for 572 performances. It was later twice made into a Hollywood film. One of its songs, "Ol' Man River," is perhaps Kern's most famous. In 1941 Show Boat was transposed into symphonic form and performed by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
Other Kern successes include Music in the Air (1932) and Roberta (1933) and, for the movies, Swing Time (1936), You Were Never Lovelier (1942), and Centennial Summer (1946). Among his most popular songs are "My Bill," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "Who?," "They Didn't Believe Me," "Look for the Silver Lining," and "The Last Time I Saw Paris" (his only hit song not written for a specific show).
In the realm of serious music, Kern composed Portrait for Orchestra (Mark Twain), which had its world premiere in 1942 by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and Montage for Orchestral Suite for full orchestra and two pianos.
Kern was interested in a number of scholarly pursuits. His collection of rare books brought nearly $2 million at auction in 1929. He was also a collector of art, a numismatist, and philatelist.
In his 40-year career Kern wrote 104 stage and screen vehicles. At the time of his death on Nov. 11, 1945, he was in New York to cosponsor a new production of Show Boat. A film biography, Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), was one of many tributes paid to him.
Further Reading
An entertaining account of Kern's life is David Ewen, The Story of Jerome Kern (1953), which makes it clear that Kern was the first to break from the style of European operettas. See also Ewen's The World of Jerome Kern (1960). Background studies include Cecil M. Smith, Musical Comedy in America (1950), and David Ewen, The Story of America's Musical Theater (1961; rev. ed. 1968) and Great Men of American Popular Song (1970).
Additional Sources
Bordman, Gerald Martin, Jerome Kern: his life and music, New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Lamb, Andrew, Jerome Kern in Edwardian London, Brooklyn, N.Y.: Institute for Studies in American Music, Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, 1985.
Freedland, Michael, Jerome Kern, New York: Stein and Day, 1981, 1978.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Jerome Kern |
Kern, Jerome (kûrn), 1885-1945, American composer of musicals, b. New York City. After studying in New Jersey and New York he studied composition in Germany and England. His first success was the operetta The Red Petticoat (1912). Among the numerous musicals that followed were Leave It to Jane (1917), Sally (1920), Sunny (1925), The Cat and the Fiddle (1931), and Roberta (1933). After 1931 he wrote scores for many films, including versions of several of his stage successes. His outstanding work is Show Boat (1927), for which Oscar Hammerstein II wrote an adaptation of Edna Ferber's novel. Kern's many famous songs include "Ol' Man River," from Show Boat, and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," from Roberta. He also wrote an orchestral work, A Portrait of Mark Twain (1942).
Bibliography
See biographies by G. Bordman (1980) and M. Freedman (1986).
| Artist: Jerome Kern |
Similar Artists:
Cole Porter,
Johnny Mercer,
Oscar Hammerstein II,
Ira Gershwin,
Irving Berlin,
Rodgers & Hammerstein,
George Gershwin
Followers:
Formal Connection With:
- Born: January 27, 1885, New York, NY
- Died: November 11, 1945, New York, NY
- Active: '20s, '30s, '40s
- Genres: Soundtrack
- Instrument: Composer
- Representative Albums: "A Jerome Kern Songbook," "Till the Clouds Roll By: The Songs of Jerome Kern," "Melodies: The 1955 Walden Sessions"
- Representative Songs: "Ol' Man River," "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man," "The Folks Who Live on the Hil"
Biography
Jerome Kern (1885-1945) is arguably the father modern American musical theater. Born in New York of German heritage, he attended the New York College of Music and began to break into Broadway theater during the first decade of the century by having songs of his interpolated into shows. An Anglophile and friend of P.G. Wodehouse, Kern scored his first success with songs inserted into The Girl from Utah, a British import, in 1914, including the ballad "They Didn't Believe Me." Breaking away from the European model of waltz music, Kern proved adept at adapting contempoarary dance music into his songs as well as producing subtle, inventive ballads. He collaborated with Guy Bolton and, later, Wodehouse on a series of shows presented at the Princess Theater in the middle of the decade, notably Very Good Eddie, and continued to score successes into the '20s.But Kern really entered the history books with Show Boat (1927), the first truly modern American musical, with an integrated story and such memorable songs as "Ol' Man River" and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man." Like many of his contemporaries, Kern divided his time between Broadway and Hollywood in the '30s, after sound came into the movies, and his movie hits included the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film Swing Time, with such songs as "A Fine Romance" and "The Way You Look Tonight" (with lyrics by Dorothy Fields). Kern worked steadily -- he wrote or contributed to 37 shows during his career -- and was beginning work on Annie Get Your Gun when he died suddenly in 1945. He left behind one of the richest catalogs of show music in history. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
| Discography: Jerome Kern |
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| Writer: Jerome Kern |
- Born: Jan 27, 1885 in New York City, New York
- Died: Nov 11, 1945 in New York City, New York
- Occupation: Writer
- Active: '20s-'50s, '80s
- Major Genres: Musical, Comedy
- Career Highlights: Chinatown, Swing Time, Cover Girl
- First Major Screen Credit: Sally (1929)
Biography
American composer Jerome Kern was trained at home by his mother, then went on for formal study at the New York College of Music and at Heidelberg University. Gravitating to the lucrative fields of operetta and popular music, Kern wrote his first hit song in 1905, and seven years later composed his first Broadway score for the now-forgotten The Red Petticoat. Public recognition of Kern's skills accelerated after he contributed several new songs to the pre-packaged British musical The Girl From Utah (1914). With his close friends Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, Kern became a leading light of New York's Princess Theatre, which eschewed the pomp and spectacle of the European operettas in favor of small casts, "intimate" stories, and well-integrated songs. Kern's biggest Broadway success of the 1920's was Show Boat, though when it was first filmed in 1929 the producers threw out most of Kern's songs because they were already "too familiar" to the audience (subsequent filmizations of Show Boat in 1936 and 1951 not only restored the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein score, but also -- in the case of the 1936 version -- added two new tunes to the manifest). In addition to the film adaptations of Kern's stage shows, including Sunny (1941) and Roberta (1935), the composer has written several scores expressly for the screen, beginning with his orchestra accompaniment for the silent 1916 serial Gloria's Romance. He wrote the songs for the 1936 Astaire-Rogers musical Swing Time, including the Oscar-winning "The Way You Look Tonight," and also labored on the solo Astaire vehicle You Were Never Lovelier. Kern's movie assignments ranged from the celebrated (Cover Girl (1944), Centennial Summer ) to the disappointing (High Wide and Handsome, One Night in the Tropics). In 1941, he won his second Oscar for "The Last Time I Saw Paris," which was the highlight of the otherwise negligible Lady Be Good (1941). Though well known for being helpful and solicitous to up-and-coming composers like George Gershwin, Kern had his darker side -- especially when insisting that radio orchestras play his songs exactly as written or face legal action. Kern had just inherited Annie Get Your Gun from the too-busy Rodgers and Hammerstein, and was busy fashioning songs to suit the style of star Ethel Merman, when he died suddenly at the age of 60 (he was succeeded on Annie Get Your Gun by Irving Berlin). Jerome Kern was portrayed on screen by a grey-templed Robert Walker in the 1946 biopic Till the Clouds Roll By. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide| Filmography: Jerome Kern |
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| Wikipedia: Jerome Kern |
| Jerome Kern | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Jerome David Kern |
| Born | January 27, 1885 |
| Origin | New York City, United States |
| Died | November 11, 1945 (aged 60) New York City, United States |
| Occupations | Composer |
| Associated acts | Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II |
Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of popular music. He wrote around 700 songs, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight", "Long Ago (and Far Away)" and "Who?", a 6-week number 1 hit for George Olsen & his Orchestra in 1925. His career spanned dozens of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films from 1902 until his death. Although Kern wrote almost exclusively for musical theatre and musical film, the harmonic richness of his compositions lends them well to the jazz idiom (which typically emphasizes improvisation based on a harmonic structure) and many Kern melodies have been adopted by jazz musicians to become standard tunes.
Contents |
Early life and career
Jerome Kern was born in New York City to Fanny and Henry Kern, both German Jews. They named him Jerome because they lived near Jerome Park (named after Winston Churchill's grandfather, Leonard Jerome), a favorite place of theirs. Kern grew up on East 56th Street in Midtown Manhattan, where he attended public schools. The family then moved to Newark, New Jersey where Kern attended Newark (now Barringer) High School, but left during his senior year prior to graduation. Fanny Kern encouraged her son to take piano lessons. Henry Kern was a merchandiser and sold pianos among other items. Although Henry wanted his son to go into business with him, Jerome insisted on staying with music. While in high school Kern composed his first musical shows, one for the Ramblers organization at the high school; the second for the Newark Yacht Club. Some of these tunes were eventually recycled for the score of Showboat.
Kern studied at the New York College of Music and then briefly in 1904, in Heidelberg, Germany. From 1905 on, Kern spent large blocks of time in London, contributing songs to numerous London shows. In 1909 he took a boat trip on the River Thames with some friends, and when the boat stopped at Walton-on-Thames, Kern went to a pub and inn called the Swan to have a drink. The proprietor's daughter, Eva Leale, was working behind the bar, and on October 25, 1910, the two were married at St. Mary's in Walton.[1]
In New York, he started working as a rehearsal pianist, initially contributing numbers for interpolation into other composers' scores. On May 1, 1915, Kern was supposed to accompany Charles Frohman to London on board the RMS Lusitania, but overslept after staying up late playing poker.[2] Frohman died in the sinking of the ship.
At the end of 1915, Kern was contracted by producer George Kleine to supply the music for an early movie serial, Gloria's Romance from 1916. (One of the first starring vehicles for Billie Burke, this 16-part serial is now considered a lost film.) In the style of silent film music, he supplied a series of themes for basic characters and turns of plot.
Kern's biggest hit of his early career was the song "They Didn't Believe Me" (lyric by Herbert Reynolds) that was interpolated into the 1914 production The Girl from Utah.[3][4]
The Princess Theatre musicals
Kern composed sixteen Broadway scores between 1915 and 1920, with the most notable being the shows he wrote for the Princess Theatre, a small (299-seat) house built by Ray Comstock. Comstock and agent Elizabeth Marbury joined forces to produce intimate, small-cast, low-budget musicals and hired Kern and librettist Guy Bolton. These shows were unique on Broadway not only for their small size, but their coherent plots, integrated scores and naturalistic acting. After a modest success adapting a London operetta (Nobody Home in 1915), the team created an original piece, Very Good Eddie. British lyricist-librettist P.G. Wodehouse joined the Princess team in 1917, adding his impeccable humor to the succeeding shows: Oh, Boy! (1917), Leave It To Jane (1917), Oh, Lady! Lady! (1918),[5] and Oh, My Dear! (1918), the last of which had music by Louis Hirsch.
The 1920s
The 1920s were an extremely productive period in American musical theatre and Kern created at least one show per year for the entire decade.
In 1920, Kern wrote the entire score for the musical Sally, with book and lyrics by Otto Harbach. This popular show introduced the song "Look for the Silver Lining", performed by the rising Broadway star Marilyn Miller.
1925 was a major turning point in Kern's career when he met Oscar Hammerstein II with whom he would entertain a lifelong friendship and collaboration. Their first show (written together with Harbach) was Sunny, which featured the song "Who (Stole My Heart Away)?". The by-now renowned Marilyn Miller played the title role in Sunny, as she had in Sally.
In 1927, Kern and Hammerstein wrote Show Boat, which musical theatre historian Miles Kreuger has hailed as "the greatest single step forward in American musical theatre, enabling composers, lyricists and librettists to introduce more mature subject matter into their shows." Based on the the novel of the same name by Edna Ferber, the sprawling work featured an unusually serious plot highlighting racism and miscegenation. The score is, arguably, Kern's greatest and includes the well-known songs "Ol' Man River" and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" as well as "Make Believe", "You Are Love", "Life Upon the Wicked Stage", "Why Do I Love You", and "Bill". Although Ferber's novel was filmed unsuccessfully as a part-talkie in 1929 (using few songs from the Kern score), the musical itself was filmed twice, in 1936, and, with Technicolor, in 1951. Both the 1936 and 1951 films were box-office successes; the 1936 film was especially acclaimed by critics.
While most Kern musicals have largely been forgotten except for their songs, Show Boat remains well-remembered and frequently seen. It is a staple of stock productions and has been revived numerous times on Broadway and in London. A 1946 revival integrated choreography into the show, in the manner of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, as did the 1993 Harold Prince revival. Several of the songs from Show Boat were arranged by Charles Miller into the orchestral work Scenario for Orchestra: Themes from Show Boat in 1941 and premiered by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodziński, a unique honor for a Broadway musical.
Kern as book collector
In January 1929, at the height of the Jazz Age and with Show Boat still playing on Broadway, Kern sold at auction at New York's Anderson Galleries the splendid collection of English and American literature he had been forming for more than a decade. The collection, rich in inscribed first editions and manuscript material of eighteenth and nineteenth century authors, sold for a total of $1,729,462.50—a record for a single-owner sale which stood for over fifty years.
Kern in Hollywood
In 1930, Kern was placed under contract by Warner Brothers to produce a series of musicals. The first product of that contract was Men of the Sky which was released in 1931 but largely ignored due to public backlash against the early glut of film musicals that greeted the advent of film sound. Consequently, Warner Bros. bought out his contract and he returned to the stage.
In 1935, when musical films had become popular once again, Kern relocated to Hollywood, although he continued working on Broadway productions as well. This second phase of Kern's Hollywood career was greeted with considerably greater artistic and commercial success, including the 1936 film version of Show Boat. For Swing Time (starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire), he wrote "The Way You Look Tonight" (with lyrics by Dorothy Fields), which won the Academy Award in 1936 for the best song. Other songs in the film include "A Fine Romance", "Pick Yourself Up", and "Never Gonna Dance". In 1940, Kern and Hammerstein wrote "The Last Time I Saw Paris", in homage to the French city just recently occupied by the Germans. Originally a hit for Tony Martin, the song was used in the film Lady Be Good (1941) and won another Oscar for Best Song - the only time a song not written for the film it appears in won the Oscar. (It would later inspire the title of the 1954 film The Last Time I Saw Paris.) In 1944, Kern teamed up with Ira Gershwin to write the songs for one of his best-remembered film musicals, Cover Girl, starring Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly. It featured the classic song "Long Ago (and Far Away)", and an unusual instrumental musical number in which Kelly, through trick photography, danced with himself. That same year Kern also wrote the music for songs in Universal Pictures' Deanna Durbin musical comedy, Can't Help Singing.
Later Broadway work
Kern and Otto Harbach's The Cat and the Fiddle (1931), about a composer and an opera singer, featured the songs "She Didn't Say Yes" and "The Night Was Made for Love". Eddie Foy, Jr. played a role in it.
Music in the Air (1932) was another Kern-Hammerstein collaboration that is best remembered today for the song "The Song Is You". Another tune from the show, "In Egern on the Tegern See", is parodied by the song "In Izzenschnooken on the Lovely Essenzook Zee" in Rick Besoyan's satirical 1959 musical Little Mary Sunshine.
Roberta (1933) by Kern and Otto Harbach included the songs "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "Yesterdays" and featured, among others, Bob Hope, Fred MacMurray, George Murphy and Sydney Greenstreet all in the early stages of their careers. The 1935 film adaptation of the show was another Astaire/Rogers vehicle that jettisoned much of the Broadway score but added "Lovely to Look At" and "I Won't Dance". A 1952 Technicolor remake, entitled "Lovely to Look At", included more of the score, including the two added numbers written for the 1935 film version, but was not as successful as the earlier one. Roberta is the only one of Kern's shows to have been adapted twice for television, both times especially as a vehicle for Bob Hope.
Kern's last Broadway show was the rather unsuccessful Very Warm for May (1939), although the score included another Kern/Hammerstein classic, "All The Things You Are". In 1985, the centenary of his birth, a rediscovered recording of a radio production featuring the original cast received a Grammy Nomination as Best Cast Show Album. "All the Things You Are" has been recorded countless times as a jazz standard, including a flamboyant 1949 version by high-note trumpeter Maynard Ferguson that enraged Kern's widow and was withdrawn from sale.
Kern suffered a heart attack in 1939 and was told by his doctors to concentrate on film scores - a less stressful task since Hollywood songwriters were not as deeply involved with the production of films as Broadway songwriters were with the production of stage musicals.
Death
In the fall of 1945, Kern returned to New York City to oversee auditions for a new revival of Show Boat, and began to work on the score for what would become the musical Annie Get Your Gun, to be produced by Rodgers and Hammerstein. On November 5, 1945, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while walking at the south west corner of Park Avenue and 57th street, apparently in search of a drugstore for the pills he depended on, but had forgotten to bring with him. Identifiable only by his ASCAP card, Kern was initially taken to the indigent ward at City Hospital, later being transferred to Doctors Hospital in Manhattan. Collaborator Oscar Hammerstein II was at his side when Kern's breathing stopped. Hammerstein hummed or sung the song "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star" (a personal favorite of the composer's) into Kern's ear. Receiving no response, Hammerstein knew Kern had died.[6]
Kern is interred at Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester County, New York.[7] Kern was survived by his wife Eva and a daughter, Betty. At the time of Kern's death, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was filming a fictionalized version of his life, Till the Clouds Roll By, which was released in 1946 starring Robert Walker as Kern. Rodgers and Hammerstein then assigned the task of writing the score for Annie Get Your Gun to veteran Broadway composer Irving Berlin, who proceeded to create an American masterpiece.
Academy Award Nominations and Wins
Jerome Kern was nominated 8 times for an Academy Award, and won twice:
- he was nominated 7 times for Best Original Song; these included a posthumous nomination in each of 1945 and 1946
- he was posthumously nominated in 1945 for Best Original Music Score.
Best Original Song
- 1935 - Nominated for "Lovely to Look at" (lyrics by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh) from Roberta
- 1936 - Won for "The Way You Look Tonight" (lyrics by Dorothy Fields) from Swing Time
- 1941 - Won for "The Last Time I Saw Paris" (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) from Lady Be Good
- 1942 - Nominated for "Dearly Beloved" (lyrics by Johnny Mercer) from You Were Never Lovelier. (The winner that year was Irving Berlin's White Christmas)
- 1944 - Nominated for "Long Ago (and Far Away)" (lyrics by Ira Gershwin) from Cover Girl
- 1945 - Posthumously nominated for "More and More" (lyrics by E Y Harburg) from Can't Help Singing
- 1946 - Posthumously nominated for "All Through the Day" (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) from Centennial Summer.
Best Original Music Score
- 1945 - Posthumously nominated for Can't Help Singing (with H. J. Salter).
Complete work for Broadway
Note: All shows are musical comedies for which Kern was the sole composer unless otherwise specified.
During his first phase of work for Broadway theater (1904-11), Kern wrote songs that were featured in revues or other collaborative musicals and occasionally co-wrote comic musicals with one or two other composers. In some cases, the show had opened in London, and Kern contributed additional music for songs interpolated into the New York production. During visits to London in 1905-10 he also composed songs that were first performed in London shows.
- Mr. Wix of Wickham (1904) - co-composer and co-lyricist
- The Catch of the Season (1905) - contributing composer
- The Earl and the Girl (1905) - featured songwriter
- The Rich Mr. Hoggenheimer (1906) - featured songwriter
- The Dairymaids (1907) - featured songwriter
- The Girls of Gottenberg (1908) - featured songwriter for "I Can't Say That You're The Only One"
- Fluffy Ruffles (1908) - co-composer (for eight out of ten songs, including "Fluffly Ruffles")
- Kitty Grey (1909) - featured composer for "If The Girl Wants You (Never Mind the Color of Her Eyes)" and "Just Good Friends"
- King of Cadonia (1910) - co-composer
- La Belle Paree (1911) - revue - co-composer
- Ziegfeld Follies of 1911 (1911) - revue - featured composer for "I'm a Crazy Daffy-Dill (Daffydil)"
Beginning in 1912, the more-experienced Kern began to work on dramatically-concerned shows, including music for plays, and for the first time in his young career, he wrote musicals as the sole composer. His regular lyricist collaborators during this period were Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Harry B. Smith, Anne Caldwell, and Howard Dietz.
- The Girl from Montmartre (1912) - play - co-incidental music composer
- The "Mind-the-Paint" Girl (1912) - play - incidental music composer
- The Red Petticoat (1912)
- Oh, I Say! (1913)
- When Claudia Smiles (1914) - featured co-lyricist for "Ssh! You'll Waken Mr. Doyle"
- The Girl from Utah (1914) - Added five songs to the American production of this Paul Rubens musical, including the classic "They Didn't Believe Me"
- 90 in the Shade (1915)
- Nobody Home (1915)
- Cousin Lucy (1915) - play - incidental music composer
- Miss Information (1915) - play - incidental music composer
- Very Good Eddie (1915)
- Revived in 1975
- Ziegfeld Follies of 1916 (1916) - revue - featured composer for "When the Lights Are Low", "My Lady of the Nile", and "Ain't It Funny What a Difference Just a Few Drinks Make?"
- Have a Heart (1917)[8]
- Love o' Mike (1917)
- Oh, Boy! (1917)
- Ziegfeld Follies of 1917 (1917) - featured composer for "Because You Are Just You (Just Because You're You)"
- Leave It to Jane (1917)
- revived in 1958
- Oh, Lady! Lady! (1918)
- Toot-Toot! (1918)
- Rock-a-Bye Baby (1918)
- Head Over Heels (1918)
- She's a Good Fellow (1919)
- The Night Boat (1920)
- Hitchy-Koo of 1920 (1920) - revue
- Sally (1920)
- Revived in 1923, 1948
- Good Morning Dearie (1921)[9]
- The Cabaret Girl (London 1922)
- The Bunch and Judy (1922)
- Stepping Stones (1923)
- Sitting Pretty (1924)
- Dear Sir (1924)
During the last phase of his life, Jerome Kern continued to work with his previous collaborators but also met Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach, with whom Kern wrote his most lasting, memorable, and well-known works.
- Sunny (1925)
- The City Chap (1925) revised version of the UK The Cabaret Girl
- Criss Cross (1926)
- Lucky (1927) - co-composer
- Show Boat (1927) - (2 out of 19 songs were written by others; the music for the song Bill was by Kern, but the lyric was co-written by P.G. Wodehouse)
- Revived in 1932, 1946, 1954, 1961, 1966, 1976, 1983, 1994
- Sweet Adeline (1929)
- The Cat and the Fiddle (1931) - co-composer, co-lyricist, co-bookwriter, and outliner of orchestrations which were done by Robert Russell Bennett)
- Music in the Air (1932) - composer and co-director
- Revived in 1951
- Roberta (1933)
- Mamba's Daughters (1939) - play - featured songwriter
- Revived in 1940
- Very Warm for May (1939)
In addition to revivals of his most popular shows, the music of Jerome Kern was posthumously featured in a variety of revues, musicals, and concerts on and off Broadway.
- Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood (1986) - revue consisting solely of songs composed by Kern and with lyrics by twelve different writers
- Big Deal (1986) - dance revue - featured composer for "Pick Yourself Up"
- Something Wonderful (1995) - concert celebrating Oscar Hammerstein II's 100th birthday - featured composer
- Paul Robeson (1995) - one-man play - featured composer for "Ol' Man River"
- Dream (1997) - revue - featured composer for "You Were Never Lovelier", "I'm Old Fashioned", and "Dearly Beloved"
- Swing! (1999) - dance revue - featured songwriter for "I Won't Dance"
- Elaine Stritch at Liberty (2002) - one-woman show - featured songwriter for "All In Fun"
- Never Gonna Dance (2003) - musical consisting solely of songs composed by Kern and with lyrics by nine different writers
- Jerome Kern: All The Things You Are (2008) - biography of Jerome Kern featuring songs composed by Kern
Kern's songs
Main article: List of Jerome Kern songs
References
- ^ Banfield, Stephen, and Geoffrey Holden Block (2006). - Jerome Kern. - New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. - pp.13-14. - ISBN 9780300110470.
—Blackman, Michael Ernest (1989). - A short history of Walton-on-Thames. - Walton and Weybridge Local History Society. - p.10. - OCLC 24159639.
—History. - The Swan at Walton-on-Thames. - ^ Denison, Chuck, Charles Denison, Duncan Schiedt (2004). - The Great American Songbook. - Bandon, Oregon: Robert D. Reed Publishers. - pp.21-22. - ISBN 9781931741422.
—McLean, Lorraine Arnal (1999). - Dorothy Donnelly. - Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarlan. - p.98. - ISBN 9780786406777. - ^ Kenrick, John. "Jerome Kern: 'They Didn't Believe Me'", History of The Musical Stage, 1910-1919: Part I, The Cyber Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre, TV and Film (2008)
- ^ "The Girl from Utah", American Theater Guide, The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. Oxford University Press (2004)
- ^ Vocal score for Oh, Lady! Lady!
- ^ Hugh Fordin, "Getting to Know Him: A Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II", page 237 Hugh Fordin, Stephen Sondheim (1995). Getting to Know Him. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306806681. http://books.google.com/books?id=jPnW73J9xBMC&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=kern+hospital+hammerstein&source=web&ots=VgN9aTxYjN&sig=6khBF_RpbLebM45LNvyOFjnjCD4&hl=en.
- ^ Jerome Kern at Find a Grave
- ^ Vocal score for Have a Heart
- ^ Vocal score for Good Morning Dearie
External links
- Jerome Kern's biography at the "Songwriters Hall of Fame".
- Jerome Kern at the Internet Broadway Database
- "Dorothy Fields on Kern" at the Dorothy Fields website; describes circumstances of the composer's sudden demise.
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 | Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| American Theater Guide. The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
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Mentioned in
- Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II (literature)
- Meet Andre Kostelanetz (1955 Album by Andre Kostelanetz & His Orchestra)
- Lovely to Look At [Original Soundtrack] (1952 Album by Original Soundtrack)
- “Ol' Man River” (Fine Arts)
- Till the Clouds Roll By [Sony Bonus Tracks] (1992 Album by Original Soundtrack)
- Die Dollarprinzessin
- Sings the Jerome Kern Song Book (1963 Album by Ella Fitzgerald)
- B. G. De Sylva (literature)
- Hammerstein, Oscar, II (Fine Arts)
- Steppin' Out (1993 Album by Tony Bennett)
- Heritage of Broadway, Vol. 1: Irving Berlin/Jerome Kern (1994 Album by Various Artists)
- A Night With Jerome Kern/A Night With Sigmund Romberg (2001 Album by Percy Faith Featuring Earl Wrightson)
- Till the Clouds Roll By: The Songs of Jerome Kern (2001 Album by Jerome Kern)
- Complete Jerome Kern Songbooks (1997 Album by Various Artists)
