Background
Oscar Hammerstein I was born on May 8, 1846 in Stettin, Kingdom of Prussia (now Stettin, Poland), to German Jewish parents Abraham and Berthe Hammerstein. His mother died when he was fifteen years old.
Businessman composer impresario inventor
Oscar Hammerstein I was born on May 8, 1846 in Stettin, Kingdom of Prussia (now Stettin, Poland), to German Jewish parents Abraham and Berthe Hammerstein. His mother died when he was fifteen years old.
Hammerstein took up the flute, piano, and violin at an early age. During his youth, his father wanted him to continue with his education, and to specialize in subjects such as algebra, but Hammerstein wanted to pursue music.
After Hammerstein went skating in a park one day, his father found out and whipped him as punishment; this would spur Hammerstein to run away to North America. After selling his violin, Hammerstein ran away to Liverpool, and from there, took a three-month journey to the United States arriving in New York City in 1864.
His first employment was in a Pearl Street cigar factory filling rush orders for the army. After he had been at work for a while, he devised and patented a machine for spreading and shaping the tobacco leaf by air suction. From this and from several later inventions he is said to have made over $1, 000, 000. Meanwhile he used his first royalties to start the United States Tobacco Journal, which he conducted successfully until 1885, began to speculate in Harlem real estate, and then, in accord with his strongest inclinations, ventured into the theatrical business.
In 1868 he wrote three one-act comedies in German and got them produced in New York. Some years later, when he was well established as a manager, he made a wager with Gustave Kerker, the composer of The Belles of New York, that he could write an operetta, words and music, in forty-eight hours. He locked himself in a hotel room and set to work; a relay of organ grinders, subsidized by Kerker, played in the street beneath his window; trays of cocktails and ham sandwiches were passed through his transom, and returned empty; and at the end of the stipulated period Hammerstein emerged smiling with the manuscript of The Kohinoor. Considerably revised, it was produced a few months later and made money.
His first venture in management was the Stadt Theatre, in New York, which he leased in 1870. In 1880 he completed the Harlem Opera House, where, against the advice of his friends, he produced several operas in English. They were failures artistically and financially; but Hammerstein recouped his losses by erecting the Columbus Theatre. Among his other New York properties were the Olympia Music Hall (1895), the Victoria Music Hall (1899), which opened to the strains of his own "Victoria Festival March, " and the Republic Theatre (1900). He was also part owner of Koster and Bial's vaudeville house and of other theatres.
His lifelong ambition was to give grand opera in the English language at popular prices. The most gigantic of all his attempts to realize this ambition was the building of the Manhattan Opera House, on 34th Street. Before it was finished he decided to make it a rival of the Metropolitan and opened it December 3, 1906, with a lavish production of Bellini's I Puritani. For some three years the two establishments engaged in furious and costly competition. Hammerstein forced his rivals to extend their repertoire and to improve their standards of production, but single-handed could not continue to maintain the struggle. In April 1910 he was compelled to sell his interests to the Metropolitan for $2, 000, 000 and to agree not to produce grand opera in their territory until April 1920.
He built the Philadelphia Opera House, opened November 17, 1908, but sold it two seasons later. After his New York defeat he went to England and opened his London Opera House, Nov. 13, 1911, with a sumptuous performance of Nouguès's panoramic Quo Vadis, but at the end of the season was forced to close for lack of patronage. Upon his return to New York he built the American Opera House (1912), but was enjoined from using it for opera. He renamed it the Lexington Theatre and devoted it to ordinary forms of entertainment. Probably no other theatrical manager of his day spent money more lavishly to realize his own artistic ideals.
He died in New York City in 1919.
Oscar Hammerstein I was a noted composer, businessman and theater impresario. His development of Times Square and other theater districts in New York City, his acoustic and populist innovations in theater design, his introduction of the new and controversial into the staid conventions of opera, his bankrolling of opera productions with the profits from vaudeville comedy and cigar machines, and, above all else his passion and resilience in the face of overwhelming odds all combined to create the theatrical world within which his family, and so many others, would creatively thrive for generations to come. He was the father of Times Square. The Manhattan Opera House on 34th Street in New York City was renamed the "Hammerstein Ballroom" at the Manhattan Center Studios in his honor.
Quotations: "I am never discouraged. I don't believe in discouragement. To do anything in this world, a man must have full confidence in his own ability. "
For Hammerstein, money was a means to an end, not the end itself. He cared very little for the comforts of success. He paid the highest salaries in the business, yet seemed oblivious to his own needs. His sons had to hide money in his top-hat so he wouldn't be stuck without trolley fare. He was equally indifferent to failure.
Hammerstein was thrice married: first, to Rosa Blau; in 1879 to Malvina Jacobi of Selma, Alabama; and in 1914 to Mary Emma (Miller) Swift, who survived him.
Hammerstein had two sons, Arthur and Willie. Arthur continued the family business as an opera and Broadway producer, director, theater owner, and songwriter. Willie managed Oscar's Victoria Theatre, and Willie's son Oscar Hammerstein II was one of Broadway's most influential lyricists and bookwriters, as well as a director and producer.
He was also the grandfather of American lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.
He was an American songwriter, dramatist, playwright and theater manager.
He was an American theater manager.
