Appreciation: Sheldon Harnick, prolific lyricist at the rear of ‘Fiddler’ and other beloved musicals

In 2016, when the prolific, award-successful Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick was 92, I questioned him if he realized the mystery to his longevity. “No,” replied the gentleman who brought us the lyrics to this sort of beloved musicals as “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Fiorello!” and “She Loves Me.” “But I’m grateful for it.”

When a lot of of us assumed he just could possibly live eternally, Harnick died Friday early morning at age 99 of normal leads to, noted his publicist Sean Katz, at his longtime condominium on New York’s Upper West Side.

Harnick very long lived on Central Park West, where by his sunlit dwelling home hosted several paintings by his wife of 58 years, artist and photographer Margery Gray Harnick, as properly as magnificent views.

I very first spoke with Harnick when I wrote an posting for The Instances about “Fiddler on the Roof” in 2002, but I acquired to know him most effective when I wrote a ebook about the clearly show in 2014. He was heat, welcoming, extremely amusing and his memory was razor sharp.

The baby of dad and mom born in Eastern Europe, Harnick grew up on the northwest side of Chicago, actively playing the violin and contemplating he would come to be a violinist. But right after likely to Northwestern University, in which he severely examined violin, he was also very seriously drawn to creating for the school’s lavish college student revues, and “by the time I graduated, I knew my heart was with the theater, not the violin.”

Basically, he possibly understood it even just before college. His mother “celebrated every situation with a poem,” he when advised me. And really quickly, he far too was producing poems, then track lyrics, sketches and parodies in significant school and higher education. Later on, in the military, he would create tracks and sketches to entertain the troops.

Harnick’s initial clearly show with Joseph Stein and Jerry Bock was 1958’s “The Physique Gorgeous,” which ran just 6 weeks on Broadway — Harnick preferred to quip that it would have operate 7 months but there was a blizzard—but its rating impressed producer/director Harold Prince. It indirectly led to 1959’s “Fiorello!”, the musical tale of New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, which Prince co-generated with a score by Bock and Harnick and a reserve by writers Jerome Weidman and George Abbott it went on to get the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Bock and Harnick wrote seven Broadway scores collectively, such as “She Enjoys Me” in 1963 and “The Apple Tree” in 1966.

When practically all of Harnick and Bock’s displays have accomplished effectively about the several years, their most significant hit was “Fiddler.” It opened on Broadway on Sept. 22, 1964. Although its very first review, from pointed out critic Walter Kerr, was not very great, it rarely mattered. The next day, there ended up traces about the block, and nearly eight several years and 3,300 performances afterwards, it turned the longest-working present on Broadway at the time. It gained nine Tony Awards, such as ideal musical, and was nevertheless on Broadway when United Artists produced Norman Jewison’s movie of the exact same name in 1971. There have been stage productions all more than the world, as nicely as in 1000’s of universities, community centers and regional theaters.

Harnick was also very arranged, blessed for me. He retained all the lyrics for “Fiddler on the Roof” in a thick pale-blue 3-ring binder, and after heading off to another area to get it all through our job interview, he commenced calling out titles for tracks going back to 1961, and laughing aloud at some of them.

Contemplate Fiddler’s initial music, initially known as “We’ve Hardly ever Missed a Sabbath However.” Its to start with opening strains were about finding prepared for the Sabbath — cleansing the household, plucking the hen for supper and this kind of. It finally turned “Tradition,” one particular of musical theater’s ideal-recognised tunes.

Harnick, Bock and Stein experienced prepared virtually a finish display before conference with director Jerome Robbins, Harnick once informed me, and Robbins saved asking them what the demonstrate was about. “We would say it’s about this dairy man and his daughters,” Harnick told me, until finally eventually Harnick reported, “It’s about tradition.” Robbins replied, “That’s it. Produce that.”

So they did. Other tracks, too, arrived and went. There was a discarded music published for the butcher, and another, also discarded, for Motel the tailor, referred to as “Dear Sweet Sewing Equipment,” which featured the tailor’s promise to appreciate, honor and retain polished his new sewing device.

Harnick would compose lyrics on hotel stationery, scraps of paper and simply just in his head. One time he was concentrating so hard on placing lyrics to a melody that Bock experienced prepared, he stepped appropriate in entrance of a truck. “The driver slammed on the brakes and honked his horn,”Harnick told me. “I seemed up, startled and then held right on walking, doing work on the song. Jerry told me to be a lot more very careful.”

Barbara Isenberg is a former Instances staff members writer and the creator of “Tradition! The Very Unbelievable, Finally Triumphant Broadway-to-Hollywood Tale of ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ the World’s Most Beloved Musical.”