Jerome Kern

Jerome Kern was born in New York City. He grew up on East 56th Street in Midtown Manhattan, where he attended public schools. He studied at the New York College of Music and then in Heidelberg, Germany. When he came back to New York, he started working as a rehearsal pianist, but it didn't take long for him to become a prominent and renowned composer. By 1915, he was represented in many Broadway shows. In 1920, he wrote Look for the Silver Lining for the musical Sally.

1925 was a major turning point in Kern's career, for he met Oscar Hammerstein II, with whom he would entertain a lifelong friendship and collaboration. Their first show (written together with Otto Harbach) was Sunny. Together, they produced next the famous Show Boat in 1927, which includes the well-known songs Ol' Man River and Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man. The musical Roberta (1933) gave us Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.

In 1935, Jerome Kern moved to Hollywood and started working on music for films, but continued working on Broadway productions, too. His last Broadway show was the rather unsuccessful Very Warm For May in 1939; the score included another Kern–Hammerstein classic, All The Things You Are.

Kern's Hollywood career was successful indeed. For Swing Time (starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire), he wrote The Way You Look Tonight (lyrics: Dorothy Fields), which won the Academy Award in 1936 for the best song. In 1941, he and Hammerstein wrote The Last Time I Saw Paris, a hommage to the french city just recently occupied by the Germans, which was introduced in the movie Lady Be Good and won another Oscar for the best song.

Jerome David Kern died at the age of 60 in New York.

External link

• Jerome Kern's biography at the "Songwriters Hall of Fame".

Referenced By