Yip Harburg
From Philosopedia
Harburg, Edgar (Yip) (8 April 1896 - 5 March 1981)
- They who live on love and laughter
- Don't mess around with the hereafter.
Isidore Hochberg, the son of immigrants from Russia, was born in New York and, after graduating from high school, found work as a meat-packer.
His nickname is short for yipsel, meaning squirrel. He attended Townsend Harris High School where he and Ira Gershwin worked on the school newspaper, both attended City College, and became life-long friends.
In 1920, changing his name to Edgar (Yip) Harburg, he became a successful electrical contractor. During the Depression, however, his company went bankrupt. Out of work, he luckily was introduced by songwriter Ira Gershwin to a musician, Jay Gorney, and in 1930 they wrote the very successful
- Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?
- They used to tell me I was building a dream
- And so I followed the mob
- When there was earth to plow or guns to bear
- I was always there - right on the job.
- They used to tell me I was building a dream
- With peace and glory ahead -
- Why should I be standing in line
- Just waiting for bread?
- Once I built a railroad, made it run,
- Made it race against time.
- Once I built a railroad, now it's done -
- Brother, can you spare a dime?
He then went to Hollywood, where he wrote the lyrics for a series of musicals including The Singing Kid (1936), Gold Diggers (1936), The Wizard of Oz (1939), a film for which he won an Academy Award, Cabin in the Sky (1943), Can't Help Singing (1944), California (1946) and Centennial Summer (1946). These films included songs such as "Only a Paper Moon," "April in Paris," "Over the Rainbow," "Old Devil Moon," and "If This Isn't Love."
Lyricist, librettist, and author, Harburg wrote Earl Carroll’s Sketchbook (1929), Ziegfield Follies (1934), and Bloomer Girl (1944). He wrote lyrics for such films as Wizard of Oz (1937) and Kismet (1944). For “Over the Rainbow,” he received an Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Freedom From Religion Foundation sells a book of his, Rhymes for the Irreverent [[1]].
In 1947 the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood, people who attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses." During their interviews they named several people who they accused of holding left-wing views. This included Robert Taylor, who complained about the radical lyrics of Harburg's song, "And Russia is Her Name," in his film, A Song of Russia.
As a result, Harburg was blacklisted in Hollywood. After two years without film work, he returned to New York where he wrote Broadway shows, being co-librettist of Finian‘s Rainbow (1947), a play that because of the blacklisting was not filmed until 1968, one that had a racially integrated chorus line.
Harburg was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 1972.
In April 2005, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp recognizing his accomplishments. The stamp depicts him from a portrait taken by photographer Barbara Bordnick in 1978 along with a rainbow and lyric from Over the Rainbow. The first day ceremony was held at the 92nd Street Y in New York.
Although a cultural Jew, Harburg once wrote
- Poems are made by fools like me,
- But only God can make a tree,
- And only God who makes the tree
- Also makes the fools like me.
- But only fools like me, you see,
- Can make a god, who makes a tree.
Harburg died in Los Angeles on 5 March 1981. A biography by his son, Ernie, is Who Put the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz: Yip Harburg Lyricist, University of Michigan Press (1993).
