| E. Y. Harburg |
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Information AboutE. Y. Harburg |
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E. Y. ''"Yip"'' Harburg ( April 8 , 1896 – March 5 , 1981 ) was a Lyricist who worked with many well-known composers. Born Isidore Hochberg to immigrant . He attended Townsend Harris High School , where he and Ira Gershwin , who met over a shared fondness for Gilbert And Sullivan , worked on the school paper and became life-long friends. They went on to attend City College (later part of the City University Of New York ) together. After graduating university, Harburg spent three years in Uruguay to avoid involvement in WWI , which he opposed as a committed Socialist . There he worked as a journalist. After the war he returned to New York, married and had two children and started writing light verse for local newspapers. He became co-owner of Consolidated Electrical Appliance Company . The company went bankrupt following the Crash Of 1929 , leaving Harburg "anywhere from $50,000 - $70,000 in debt," 1 which he insisted on paying back over the course of the next few decades. At this point, Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg agreed that Yip should start writing songs. Gershwin introduced Harburg to , for which he wrote the lyrics of '' Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? '' to the tune of a lullaby Gorney had learned as a child in Russia . This song swept the nation, becoming an anthem of the Great Depression . Harburg and Gorney were offered a contract with , Harburg worked with composers Harold Arlen , Vernon Duke , Jerome Kern , Jule Styne , and Burton Lane , and wrote the lyrics for '' The Wizard Of Oz '' for which he won the Academy Award For Best Music, Original Song for '' Somewhere Over The Rainbow ''.
Working in Hollywood did not stop Harburg's career on Broadway. In the 40s he wrote a series of ''book'' musicals with social messages, including the quite successful '' Bloomer Girl '' ( 1944 ) (about suffragette and abolitionist Dolly Bloomer ) and his most famous Broadway show, '' Finian's Rainbow '' (1947) (perhaps the first Broadway musical with a racially integrated chorus line, featuring Harburg's "When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich."). During the McCarthy era, from about 1951 to 1962 , Yip Harburg was a victim of the Hollywood Blacklist when Movie Studio bosses Blacklist ed industry people for their left-wing political activity. No longer able to work in Hollywood, he continued to write musicals for Broadway, among them was '' Jamaica '', which featured Lena Horne . Harburg was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall Of Fame in 1972 . In April 2005 , the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp recognizing his accomplishments. The stamp depicts him from a portrait taken by photographer Barbara Bordnick in 1978 along with a rainbow and lyric from ''Over the Rainbow''. The first day ceremony was held at the 92nd Street Y in New York. __NOTOC__ SONGS
BROADWAY REVUES
Post-retirement or Posthumous credits:
BROADWAY MUSICALS
FILMS
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