Christopher Bray

As normal as blueberry pie: Oscar Hammerstein II, through his letters

He emerges from his correspondence as a devoted family man, with a mission to ‘improve’ his audiences through faith in the power of love

Hammerstein at home c. 1944. A contented family man, he was forever turning down work to be with his wife and children. [Getty Images] 
issue 10 September 2022
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  • The Letters of Oscar Hammerstein II

    edited by Mark Eden Horowitz

    OUP, pp. 1054, £33

Tolstoy or Dostoevsky? Picasso or Matisse? Lennon or McCartney? Impossible to call? No such quandary with Rodgers and Hart and Rodgers and Hammerstein. There are those that laugh at the city smarts of the words Larry Hart wrote with Richard Rodgers. And there are those that weep at Oscar Hammerstein’s home-on-the-range cornpone lyrics.

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