| E.y. Harburg |
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E. Y. ''"Yip"'' Harburg ( April 8 1896 – March 4 1981 ) was an American Lyricist who worked with many well-known composers. BACKGROUND Harburg was born Isidore Hochberg to immigrant Jew ish parents on the Lower East Side of New York City . His irrepressible energy as a child earned him the nickname "Yipsel", meaning "squirrel" in Yiddish . This was often shortened to "Yip", and, even after he adopted the name Edgar Harburg, he was best known as Edgar "Yip" Harburg. Harburg 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. Spotlight on E. Y. Harburg After graduating from university, Harburg spent three years in Uruguay to avoid involvement in World War I , which he opposed as a committed Socialist . There he worked as a factory supervisor. 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," Democracy Now article 25, November, 2004 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 song lyrics. 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 . A good example of his clever lyrics is in the "Riddle Me This?" (a song sung in a Casino setting) from Ballyhoo Of 32 ; "Love a little, sin a little; play the game and win a little; Lonely to lose. Listen to the money jingle; isn't it a funny chingle; ending with blues." 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 '' Over The Rainbow ''. Another excellent example of his lyric brilliance is the obscure song "Down With Love" from the 1937 show 'Horray For What?" (music by Harold Arlen): "Down with love, flowers and rice and shoes. Down with love, the root of all midnight blues. Down with things that give you that well-known ping. Take that moon and wrap it in cellophane! Down with love, let’s liquidate all its friends: Moon and June and roses and rainbow’s ends. Down with songs that moan about night and day. Down with love, just take it away, away. Away. Take it away. Give it back to the birds and bees and the Viennese! Down with eyes, romantic and stupid, Down with sighs, down with cupid. Brother, let’s stuff that dove! Down with love!"
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 involvement with the American Communist Party . No longer able to work in Hollywood, he nevertheless continued to write musicals for Broadway, among them was '' Jamaica '', which featured Lena Horne . AWARDS In 1940 Harburg won an Oscar , shared with Harold Arlen , for Best Music, Original Song for " The Wizard Of Oz ", (1939). In addition, he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song, along with Arlen, for " Cabin In The Sky ", (1943) and Best Music, Original Song Harburg was inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 1972; nine years later (1981) he died in a Los Angeles car accident. In April 2005 , the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp recognizing his accomplishments. The stamp is drawn 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. In 1998 Harburg received a pop culture credit by having a ship's captain named after him in the ''Wizard of Oz''-themed ''X-Files'' episode entitled "Triangle". __NOTOC__ SONGS
BROADWAY REVUES
Post-retirement or posthumous credits:
BROADWAY MUSICALS
FILMS
BOOKS BY HARBURG
NOTES REFERENCES
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