Background

Youmans was born on September 27, 1898, in New York City, the son of Vincent M. Youmans and Lucy Gibson (Millie) Youmans. He was of Anglo-Irish heritage, his mother having come from a socially prominent family. Youmans' father and his uncle Daniel operated prosperous stores along Broadway that set the style in silk hats and derbies for fashionable turn-of-the-century New Yorkers.

Education

At age four, Youmans began the privileged child's obligatory piano lessons, but his parents did not expect that the lessons would amount to more than an extra social grace. As befit his background, Youmans attended private schools in Mamaroneck and Rye, New York, and planned, at his parents' urging, to study engineering at Yale. Instead, he clerked for a Wall Street broker's office.

Career

Youmans enlisted in the navy upon the outbreak of World War I. Assigned to an entertainment unit at the Great Lakes Training Station, he was fortunate enough to spend his service years composing musical shows; one joyous song that attracted the navy bandmaster's attention survived to become "Hallelujah!" in Hit the Deck (1927). Upon leaving the service, he went to work for the Harms Music Company in New York as a "song-plugger. " His duties included rehearsing singers in Victor Herbert's musicals, and he later acknowledged Herbert's influence on his own development. In 1920 Youmans published his first song and made his first stage contributions for Two Little Girls in Blue (1921), with lyrics by Ira Gershwin; the particularly popular song was "Oh Me! Oh My! Oh You!" The producer of Two Little Girls was persuaded by composer George Gershwin, another former Harms employee, to hire Youmans, his friend and close contemporary. The year 1923 saw two Youmans' shows: the short-lived Mary Jane McKane, distinguished only in that one of its melodies would, with minor variations, become the title song for No, No, Nanette one year later; and Wildflower, one of the greatest successes of the 1920's. The New York World described the songs from the latter show, which included the title song and "Bambalina, " as "really gorgeous. " With lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Wildflower ran for over 400 performances, the longest Broadway run enjoyed by any Youmans' show. Only three years after Youmans' first produced show, he composed the music for No, No, Nanette, a fluffball farce that captured the gaiety of the 1920's in the United States and quickly became probably the biggest international hit of any of the conventional musical comedies of the decade. Skillfully managed by producer H. H. Frazee, Nanette survived a less than overwhelming first few weeks of its Detroit tryout to take Chicago by siege as longer and longer lines formed outside the box office. It eventually did so well there that Frazee kept the show running for over a year before moving it to New York. This turnabout in public opinion stemmed in part from the addition of Louise Groody and Charles Winninger to the cast but also in part from several new songs added by Youmans and lyricist Irving Caesar, two of which have become American standards, "Tea for Two" and "I Want to Be Happy. " No, No, Nanette opened in London in March 1925 and in New York that same September. Although Wildflower ran longer on Broadway, within months seventeen companies were performing Nanette around the world, and the urbane simplicity of "Tea for Two" floated over audiences in Europe, South America, China, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Java. The show reputedly earned the astronomical amounts of $2 million for Frazee and $500, 000 for Youmans. Oh, Please! (1926) contained one song that has remained popular, "I Know That You Know, " called by Wilder "a rousing rhythm song". By the following year, Youmans' stature as a musical-theater composer was secure, but he was artistically unsatisfied with the performance of his songs, having been unable to work steadily with any one producer or lyricist. As a result, he became his own producer at the age of twenty-eight to present Hit the Deck (1927), a Herbert Fields adaptation of a Broadway comedy. Rainbow (1928) closed approximately one month after it opened, but its Youmans score, Oscar Hammerstein lyrics, and book by Laurence Stallings and Hammerstein have been praised by subsequent critics as forward-looking in their integration of music and spoken dialogue to achieve a coherent dramatic effect. Youmans had production difficulties with Rainbow and with Great Day! (1929), which he conceived, scored, and produced at the former Cosmopolitan Theatre, purchased by Youmans and renamed Youmans' Cosmopolitan. Great Day! lasted scarcely longer than Rainbow but contributed a substantial number of songs to Youmans' enduring catalogue: the lilting "Happy Because I'm in Love"; the shout-and-clap-your-hands title song; and two of his best-known songs, the understated ballad "More Than You Know" and the stirring "Without a Song. " Youmans composed several songs for Florenz Ziegfeld's Smiles (1930), although his best effort, "Time on My Hands, " became popular only after being removed from the show because the star refused to sing it. Youmans himself produced Through the Years (1932), a failure whose title song was reputedly the composer's favorite. Take A Chance (1932) was his last Broadway contribution, with five Youmans songs supplementing the basic score by Nacio Herb Brown. The young Ethel Merman shone brightly in the latter show, and the song "Rise 'n' Shine" joined the earlier "Hallelujah!" , "Great Day!" and "Drums in My Heart" (from Through the Years) to reveal Youmans' predilection for up-tempo, inspirational, almost gospel (albeit patently "white" gospel) songs. His final work of any substance was the film score for Flying Down to Rio (1933). The film's South American settings and its stars, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in their first picture together, shaped the Latin dance qualities of its two biggest hits, "Carioca" and "Orchids in the Moonlight. " Illness and worry claimed the remainder of Youmans' relatively short life. Tuberculosis abruptly terminated his Broadway career in 1933. Forced to spend the next eleven years resting in Colorado and California, he studied classical music when able and reportedly composed show songs, a symphony, and an opera. The extent to which any of these works were ever completed and whether they survive has been inconclusively debated by musical-theater scholars. Youmans' retirement furthered his reputation for being aloof, which derived from real shyness. Having gone bankrupt in 1936, Youmans returned to New York in 1943-1944 in an attempt to reestablish himself as a producer with the Vincent Youmans Ballet Review, a spectacular large-cast potpourri of modern dance, classical ballets (staged by Leonide Massine), and puppets, with music by the Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona and financed by Doris Duke Cromwell. Sadly, but predictably, it closed before reaching Broadway. Youmans entered Doctors Hospital in New York in early 1945 and returned to Colorado in January of 1946. Only forty-seven years old, he died of tuberculosis at the Park Lane Hotel in Denver. After services in New York's St. Thomas (Episcopal) Church, he was cremated and his ashes scattered near the Ambrose lightship off the New Jersey coast.

Achievements

• Youmans was a songwriter best known for writing the scores for the musicals No, No, Nanette (1925), Hit the Deck (1927), and the first Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers vehicle, Flying Down to Rio (1933).

Works

More photos

• book

  • Hallelujah -- The Great Songs of Vincent Youmans: Piano/Vocal/Chords

    (The great songs from this songwriting master: Time on My ...)

  • The MUSICality OF YOUMANS

    (In the 1920s, Vincent Youmans led a vanguard of fresh inn...)

  • Vincent Youmans' Through the Years (2001 Studio Cast)

    (In his day, Vincent Youmans was every bit as famous as hi...)

  • Songs By Vincent Youmans

    (Songs by Vincent Youmans. World and Music Complete Chord ...)

  • The Best of Vincent Youmans / Advanced Piano Solos

    (Sheet music for piano.)

  • Tea For Two in the Modern Idiom for Piano stylized by Cy Walter

    (Advanced piano solo)

  • The American Songbook Series: Vincent Youmans

Connections

Youmans married Anne Varley, a dancer in Hit the Deck, on February 7, 1927, and twins named Vincent and Cecily were born in the same year; this first marriage ended in divorce in 1933. His October 1935 marriage to Mildred Boots, a former Follies girl, lasted until 1946, when it too resulted in divorce three months before Youmans died.

Father:

Vincent M. Youmans

Mother:

Lucy Gibson (Millie) Youmans

Spouse:

Anne Varley

Spouse:

Mildred Boots

Daughter:

Cecily Youmans

Son:

Vincent Youmans

Friend:

Ira Gershwin

He was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century.

References

• Show Tunes: The Songs, Shows, and Careers of Broadway's Major Composers
• The Making of No, No, Nanette
• The Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music
• Days To Be Happy, Years To Be Sad: The Life and Music of Vincent Youmans