Broadway’s golden era of the 1960s just lost one of its greats. Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist of Fiddler on the Roof – the final survivor of that classic musical’s creative team – has died at the age of 99.
If he only wrote Fiddler, Harnick’s place among the top tier of musical wordsmiths would be secure. (Has there ever been a Jewish wedding in the past half a century that did not feature “Sunrise, Sunset”?) But, in fact, Harnick wrote dozens of shows, including such other collaborations with his most successful songwriting partner Jerry Bock as She Loves Me, Fiorello!, The Apple Tree and The Rothschilds.
I interviewed Harnick on several occasions, most recently in his Upper West Side apartment as he was turning 90, a year that coincided with the 50th anniversary of Fiddler. Although he was invariably upbeat and soft-spoken, those milestones did have him thinking of his own mortality.
“When I really think about it, then I realize that within 5 or 10 years I will no longer be here,” he told me. “So it’s a reminder that whatever I want to do, I damn well better discipline myself to do it, because I won’t have that much time. (Fiddler’s book writer) Joe Stein lived, I believe, ’til he was 98. He was, like me, energetic and compos mentis right up until the end.”
Harnick was an exacting writer, whose lyrics were precise without ever sounding forced. They could be comic (“Oh, To Be a Mooovie Star” from The Apple Tree), heartfelt (“When Did I Fall in Love?” from Fiorello!), stream-of-consciousness conversational (“Ice Cream” from She Loves Me) and specific yet universal (“Miracle of Miracles” from Fiddler on the Roof).
Fiddler, based on folk tales by Sholom Aleichem set in a Russian shtetl at the turn of the 20th century, has been seen around the world, translated into dozens of languages. There is an oft-told tale about the original Japanese production that Harnick has since insisted is apocryphal, but is too good not to repeat here.
It seems that during rehearsals, the Japanese producer contacted Harnick asking whether the show were really popular in the United States. “Absolutely,” Harnick replied, “why do you ask?” “Because it’s such a Japanese show. How did American audiences understand it?”
Having many years to analyze the success of Fiddler, Harnick told me he felt it came down to one word. No, not “tradition,” but “family.”
“Almost every family has to face the problem that the parents have certain values which may not be shared by the children. And for the children to break away and go sometimes in directions that are anathema to the parents, it’s a very difficult thing to deal with. At best, parent-children relationships can be difficult and so there’s a lot to identify with in this.”
Early in his career, Harnick wrote both words and music, but was advised by the legendary Yip Harburg (Finian’s Rainbow) to concentrate solely on lyrics. Why? “He said, ‘In my experience, there are more capable theater composers than there are theater lyricists. So if the opportunity comes to work with different composers, don’t hesitate.’”
Soon after that, Harnick was enlisted to go out of town to help assist on the lyrics to a show called Shangri-La. There he was introduced to composer Jerry Bock, who had recently split from his lyricist. The two of them hit it off quickly and a significant collaboration began.
Asked about their chemistry together, Harnick explained that it was an attraction of opposites. “One of the things, I find that I tend to be apprehensive when I work. I run scared. So I love to work with composers who are very outgoing and confident and ebullient, and Jerry was all of that. But also we had the same sense of humor.”
Harnick and Bock wrote together for more than a dozen years, breaking up abruptly after The Rothschilds in 1970. In the time since then, Harnick has written with many different composers – Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), Arnold Black (The Phantom Tollbooth), Mary Rodgers (Pinocchio) and Richard Rodgers (Rex) – as well as returning to composing by himself.
Harnick’s passing will undoubtedly trigger revivals of his less well-known shows, as well as Fiddler on the Roof, which seems to be perpetually produced in South Florida. As he wrote many years ago, “It’s a tradition.”