Milk Punck & Dubonnet. Oscar's father was Jewish, his mother Episcopalian, the faith in which he was reared. He lived in Manhattan's 125th Street, then a fairly well-to-do residential section. For a few years he lived with his maternal grandfather, a white-haired Scotsman named James Nimmo. Oscar fondly remembers rising with Grandfather Nimmo early every day and sharing the old man's milk punch, which was spiked with Scotch. Evenings there was stout for both. At 52, Oscar's digestion is perfect, his appetite enormous and he drinks little.
Before his father, William Hammerstein, died, he left instructions: "Watch over Oscar. He has a great name, but never let him get near the stage." At Columbia, Oscar got good grades in his law courses, played first base (he was too light for football) and then--fatefully--wrote some varsity shows. His favorite contained a fat part for himself: a comic French waiter called Dubonnet (acting is still one of Hammerstein's secret ambitions). Slowly, he began to dream of the theater. But he had the promise of a law job at $15 a week. Says he: "'If they had offered me $20, I would have forgotten all about the stage. But they didn't. So I went to my Uncle Arthur and said: 'Forget that promise to Dad. I want to go into show business."' Arthur gave him a job as an assistant stage manager at $20 a week.
The Magic Mechanics. For a year, Oscar slipped through the wings, cueing actors, switching lights and, once, ringing up the curtain prematurely to reveal the property man sitting on a gilded throne with a chorus girl on his knee. He learned the magic mechanics of the theater ("I may write bad scenes, but I never write impractical ones"). His first play (The Light, a drama about a small-town girl) left New Haven completely unmoved. His first success was Tickle Me in 1920. After three years and four flops came his first hit, Wildflower, and his first smash hit, Rose Marie (both with Otto Harbach).
Then he achieved his triple triumphs of Desert Song, Show Boat and New Moon. There was nothing very revolutionary about any of these shows. But they were charming and carefully dreamed. In Show Boat (probably the alltime favorite U.S. musical), there was a song for which Hammerstein wrote the words one afternoon sitting on his bed; he needed a number to pull the somewhat rambling plot together. And as long as Americans sing, they are likely to remember those simple lyrics:
Ah gits weary
An' sick of tryin',
Ah'm tired of livin'
An' skeered of dyin',
But ol' man River,
He jus' keeps rollin' along.
An Inner Conceit. In 1929, Hammerstein was divorced from his first wife and married mahogany-haired Dorothy Blanchard, daughter of an Australian sea captain. With her he answered a syncopated summons from Hollywood. He arrived on the Coast amidst expectant huzzahs. But soon he was weighed in Hollywood's inexplicable scales, and found wanting. One M-G-Mogul passed the verdict around commissaries and conference rooms: "Oscar is a very dear friend of mine, but be can't write his hat."
