Review, Harriet Hyman Alonso, Yip Harburg: Legendary Lyricist and Human Rights Activist (Wesleyan University Press, 2012)

Peace and Change, April 2014

E. Y. (Yip) Harburg (1896-1981) largely wrote the lyrics to the soundtrack of the 1930s. From the social realism of "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" to the wistful romanticism of "It's Only a Paper Moon" to the bawdy comedy of "Lydia, the Tatooed Lady" to the wishful escapism of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," Harburg worked with a variety of collaborators to limn the dreams and realities of Americans facing the Great Depression. And throughout his career, as Harriet Hyman Alonso makes clear, Harburg consistently viewed his lyrics as a means for expressing his opinions against war and in favor of racial equality and economic justice.

From the beginning of his career, Harburg worked steadily on Broadway, collaborating with a variety of composers, including Vernon Duke (“April in Paris”), Harold Arlen (“If You Believe in Me,” later titled “It’s Only a Paper Moon”) and Jay Gorney, with whom he wrote the memorable portrait of the dark years of the early Depression, “Brother Can You Spare a Dime,” contrasting the past accomplishments and present condition of American workers.

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?

By the late-thirties, Harburg was also working regularly in Hollywood, where he and Arlen collaborated on the soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz (1939). Alonso includes several interesting facts concerning the making of this classic. For instance, W.C. Fields originally was supposed to play the Wizard, but he wanted $75,000 while the studio would offer only $50,000. Thus, as Harburg commented, he is another “example . . . of a man giving up immortality for a lousy few dollars he didn’t need.” Also, director Victor Fleming originally cut out the song “Over the Rainbow” because he felt it made the first section of the movie drag. Harburg and Arlen threw a fit and ultimately Louis B. Mayer himself intervened and, mainly to mollify the composers, agreed to leave the song in. A wise decision, as it turned out, as “Over the Rainbow” won the 1940 Academy Award for best song and, in 2001 the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts named Judy Garland’s recording of the song the top recording of the twentieth century.

In the 1940s, Harburg continued to write for Hollywood, including such songs as “And Russia is Her Name” (Jerome Kern, composer) for “Song of Russia” (1944). He also continued to speak out against racism in such songs as “Free and Equal Blues” (music by Earl Robinson). And he returned to the stage in such shows as Finian’s Rainbow, with music by Burton Lane, in which Harburg addressed issues of racism and economic justice with his typical wit and good humor. But as American politics shifted rightward in the late-1940s, not everyone was so beguiled by Harburg’s wit and he found himself blacklisted and unable to work in Hollywood. While he continued to write for the stage with some success, the economics of staging musicals meant that by the mid-1960s Harburg’s career as a lyricist gradually dried up.

This book is advertised on the dust jacket as “an interview-based biography,” and that represents both its strength and weakness. Alonso forgoes the critical role of biographer, seeming content to let Harburg speak for himself, with quotes sometimes running virtually uninterrupted for several pages. And while he can be a charming raconteur, Harburg can also come across as cranky and not very likeable, as when he complains that gay directors don’t know how to portray heterosexual love scenes. When Alonso occasionally quotes Harburg’s collaborators, he often comes across as overbearing and difficult to work with, prompting Alonso to wonder about what she terms “the intriguing and unanswered questions” raised about the relationship between Harburg and his partners. But isn’t it the job of a biographer to answer just such intriguing questions?

When his songwriting career faded in the 1960s, Harburg turned to writing poetry, publishing two books of verse. His politics remained pointed, focusing on such targets as Presidents Johnson and Nixon, the Pentagon, and the Vietnam War. But as always, his tone remained whimsical as he delighted in the sheer pleasure of language, as in this “Epitaph”:

I’ve whittled my wit

And whipped my rhymes,

For a small obit

In the New York Times.