Happy Birthday to Pulitzer-winning writer Sheldon Harnick, born April 30, 1924, in Chicago. He began composing while at Carl Schurz H.S. and graduated from Northwestern (1949) with a bachelor’s in music. After working with various Chicago orchestras, he moved to New York and made his Broadway debut with the revue New Faces of 1952. He later contributed to the Broadway revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac (1953) and the Off-Broadway revues Shoestring Revue (1955), The Littlest Revue (1956), and Kaleidoscope (1957). Below is Alice Ghostley singing “The Boston Beguine” in a 1960 TV recreation of New Faces, introduced by Virginia de Luce.
Around 1956, Harnick met composer Jerry Bock, who became his most frequent collaborator. Their first Broadway musical was The Body Beautiful (1958), which ran for only 60 performances but landed them on the pop charts with Steve Lawrence’s version of “Uh-Huh, Oh Yeah.” They fared much better with their next show: Fiorello! (1959), which ran for 795 performances and earned them a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award, as well as their first Grammy nod. Their Fiorello! sequel, Tenderloin (1960), featured “Artificial Flowers,” a Top 40 hit for Bobby Darin. Below is Howard Da Silva recreating “Little Tin Box” for HBO’s 1980 special Standing Room Only: Showstoppers.
Bock and Harnick’s 1963 Broadway show She Loves Me earned them a Tony nomination and a Grammy win. The next year, they made theater history with Fiddler on the Roof, which brought them two Tonys and a Grammy nod and went on to become the longest-running musical on Broadway. In 1966, they premiered The Apple Tree on Broadway (earning Tony and Grammy nods) and The Canterville Ghost on TV. Below is a rare bootleg of “Tradition” and “If I Were a Rich Man” from the 1977 revival of Fiddler starring original star Zero Mostel.
Bock and Harnick split after The Rothschilds (1970), which brought them Tony and Grammy nods. The following year, the Oscar-winning adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof premiered, and in 1972, the duo was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Bock retired but Harnick continued with Mary Rodgers on Free to Be … You and Me (1974), from which you can watch “William’s Doll” below, as well as Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1975) with Jack Beeson, Alice in Wonderland (1975) with Joe Raposo, the Grammy-nominated Rex (1976) with Richard Rodgers, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1979) with Michel Legrand, and Dr. Heidegger’s Fountain of Youth (1979) with Beeson.
Harnick earned his sole Emmy nomination for the song “In the Beginning,” written with composer Larry Grossman for the TV special The Way They Were (1981). His next musicals included an adaptation of the novel A Christmas Carol (1982) with Michel Legrand and an adaptation of the film A Wonderful Life (1986) with Joe Raposo. Below is a medley from the Goodspeed revival of A Wonderful Life with Duke Lafoon (George Bailey), Ed Dixon (Mr. Potter), Ella Briggs (Zuzu), and Kirsten Scott (Mary Hatch).
In the 1990s, Harnick paired with composer Stephen Lawrence on the TV movie The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1991), composer Ad Van Dijk for the Broadway musical Cyrano (1993), and composer Henry Mollicone on the opera Coyote Tales (1998). Below is a rare TV profile of Cyrano leading man Bill Van Dijk, featuring the song “When I Write.”
Harnick went solo for Dragons (2003), reunited with Bock for the new song “Topsy Turvy” in the 2004 revival of Fiddler on the Roof, and collaborated with composer Arnold Black for The Phantom Tollbooth (2007). The same year as Fiddler’s revival, Gwen Stefani had a Top 10 hit with “Rich Girl,” which interpolated “If I Were a Rich Man.” At decade’s end, Bock and Harnick were presented with the York Theatre Company’s Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre.
In the past decade, Harnick released the album Hidden Treasures (1949-2013) and received both the Drama Desk Award for Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre and a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. Most recently, he earned a Lortel nomination for the 2018 Yiddish-language revival of Fiddler. Below is Michael Kerker’s 2010 interview with Harnick at the Kennedy Center, accompanied by performances from Kate Baldwin, Karen Mason, and Ron Raines.