Harburg, Edgar Y.

HARBURG, EDGAR Y. (1898–1981). A lyricist who called for theater that presented the “guts of life,” “Yip” Harburg began writing song lyrics while a student at the City College of New York. In the early years of the Great Depression, he collaborated with composer Jay Gorney on several musical revues. One of these, Americana (1932), included “Brother Can You Spare a Dime,” which has long been associated with the Great Depression in the United States. A 1932 collaboration with Vernon Duke (Vladimir Dukelsky) produced Walk a Little Faster, the show that included “April in Paris.” Duke and Harburg also wrote the 1934 Ziegfeld Follies. Harburg’s career also included long working relationships with composers Harold Arlen and Burton Lane. He worked with Arlen on the 1934 production of Life Begins at 8:40 and brought his satirical pen to a discussion of the prewar arms race in Hooray for What! in 1937. His films written in collaboration with Arlen included Gold Diggers of 1937, At the Circus (1939), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Cabin in the Sky (1943), Meet the People (1944, with Sammy Fain and Burton Lane), and Gay Purr-ee (1962).

Harburg was named Isadore Hochberg by his Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents, who raised him in New York’s Lower East Side. As a high school student in Queens, he met Ira Gershwin, who became a life-long friend and encouraged his passion for musicals. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1921, married and had two children, and only with the onset of the Great Depression did he start to write lyrics for songs. “Brother Can You Spare a Dime,” which became an instant hit, set him on the path to a successful career on Broadway and in Hollywood.

Harburg worte for the stage, and his most famous work, Finian’s Rainbow (book by Harburg and Fred Saidy, music by Burton Lane), ran on Broadway for 725 performances, starting on 10 January 1947. Using a fantastic setting and fanciful characters, Finian’s Rainbow confronted the issues of segregation and race relations in American society. Commenting on Broadway theater in the 1940s, critic Brooks Atkinson noted that “Harold Arlen’s Bloomer Girl and Burton Lane’s Finian’s Rainbow, full of political satire and comic caprice [both with lyrics by Harburg], helped to redeem Broadway from drudgery.” When Finian’s Rainbow was revived in 1967, Harburg told the New York Times that his goal as a writer was to create “entertainment that brings people laughter and hope, but also spurs them to action.” Finian’s Rainbow received an award in 1967 from Ebony magazine for the play’s contribution to improving interracial understanding. Finian’s Rainbow was released as a film in 1968.

Harburg remained dedicated throughout his career to the causes espoused by various groups on the Left, although he did not have a specific party affiliation. As did those in Finian’s Rainbow, the lyrics in Bloomer Girl (with S. Herzin and Fred Saidy, with music by Harold Arlen, 1944) and Jamaica (with Fred Saidy, music by Harold Arlen, 1957, starring Lena Home and Ricardo Montalban) encouraged audiences to think critically about social problems and to consider seriously the writer’s not-too thinly veiled critique of capitalism while enjoying the highest quality theatrical productions. He worked tirelessly in the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers to improve royalty payments to composers and writers, who often lost control over their creative work when it was produced on recordings. In addition to his work for stage and screen, Harburg published two volumes of poetry, much of which focused his wit and satire on current social issues.

Rhymes for the Irreverent (1965) was dedicated to his wife, and he published At This Point in Rhyme in 1976. Harburg was closely associated with many members of the staff of Monthly Review and composed “Birthday Song” for the journal’s fifteenth anniversary in 1964. It was reprinted in tribute to Harburg in April 1984, one month after his death. The Harburg Foundation, financed mainly by residual payments to Harburg’s estate, has funded research and production projects in the arts.

Alonso, Harriet. “Yip” Harburg: Legendary Lyricist and Human Rights Activists. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012.

Bordman, Gerald. “E. Y. Harburg.” In The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1986.

Claghorn, Charles Eugene. Biographical Dictionary of American Music. West Nyack, N.Y.: Parker Publishers, 1973.

Meyerson, Harold, and Ernie Harburg with the assistance of Arthur Perlman. Who Put the Rainbow in “The Wizard of Oz”? Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.

E.Y. (Yip) Harburg Papers, 1913-1985. Collection Overview. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. http://archives.nypl.org/the/21281