Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick

The biggest testament to the remarkable writing of Fiddler on the Roof might be that whether staged by seasoned professionals, community theaters, or grade school children, the musical never fails to prove compelling in its dramatic moments. Written from 1961 to 1964 by lyricist Sheldon Harnick, composer Jerry Bock, and librettist Joseph Stein, the original production won the Tony Award for Best Musical and became the longest-running show of its time on Broadway. Fiddler has been a sensation in subsequent productions around the world and is one of the rare musicals that has risen from its origins on Broadway to become, along with such groundbreaking works as Oklahoma! and West Side Story, part of the global cultural framework. Even today, 40 years after it first opened originally in New York on September 22, 1964, the show is entertaining audiences on Broadway in a lavish new production.

Although Fiddler was Bock and Harnick's grandest success, the songwriters, working together from 1956 until 1970, wrote seven finely -- crafted Broadway musicals typified by songs that were integrally woven into the dramatic structure of their works and that most often made their point with heart and humor.

Jerrold Bock was born November 23, 1928. He was raised in New York and proved musically talented as a youngster and through high school, where he gained acclaim for writing the class musical My Dream. Bock went on to study music at the University of Wisconsin where he also began collaborating with a college classmate, Larry Holofcener. Bock and Holofcener moved to New York and around 1950 were hired to write songs for Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar. In the off season they headed for the Tamiment resort in the Catskills, where they worked with such future entertainment notables as Dick Shawn, Jack Cassidy, Neil Simon, and Barbara Cook creating a show a week for the vacation spot's guests. After writing three songs for a short-lived Broadway musical, Catch a Star, Bock and Holofcener (and George Weiss) were hired to write Mr. Wonderful, a 1956 show that starred Sammy Davis, Jr.

Sheldon Harnick was born in Chicago on April 30,1924. He studied violin thoughout his childhood, and after graduating from Northwestern University worked briefly as a professional violinist. At the urging of his brother Jay, an actor working on Broadway, Harnick moved to New York in 1950 to pursue his songwriting career. He first gained attention for a satirical song, "The Boston Beguine," which was a standout in the revue New Faces of 1952. This led to other opportunities including writing for John Murray Anderson's Almanac and The Shoestring Revue.

Bock and Harnick met in 1956 through a mutual acquaintance, musical theater performer Jack Cassidy. They first collaborated on The Body Beautiful, a 1958 musical about the tribulations of a professional boxer. The production lasted on Broadway for only sixty performances but brought Bock and Harnick to the attention of director George Abbott and producer Harold Prince, who were in search of songwriters for their musical about New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

Fiorello! was a major critical and commercial success. Its score featured clever satire, like the show-stopping examination of political graft, "Little Tin Box," as well as a gentle period waltz, "Til Tomorrow," and love songs like "When Did I Fall in Love?" The 1959 musical ran 795 performances and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

The story of a crusading minister in 1890s New York was the basis for Bock and Harnick‘s next musical, Tenderloin, which opened in 1960. Although the show failed to meet expectations generated by Bock and Harnick's previous success, the team produced a collection of well-received songs. The score included rousers like "The Picture of Happiness," along with such tender efforts as "My Miss Mary," and the haunting "My Gentle Young Johnny."

The original 1963 production of Bock and Harnick's next musical, although critically well-received, was overshadowed by the season's big hit, Hello Dolly!. The show gained a cult following, however, and an appreciation of She Loves Me's charming, intimate score built steadily throughout the years. Its stature rose even further after a highly successful Broadway revival in 1993. The musical focuses on Georg and Amalia, clerks in an Eastern European parfumerie. Although the two bicker constantly in person, neither realizes that they are engaged with each other in a romance conducted anonymously by letter. She Loves Me's refreshing and abundant score includes the atmospheric opener, "Good Morning, Good Day," the exuberant title song, and several songs such as "Where's My Shoe?" and "Grand Knowing You" that are funny and heartfelt while masterfully carrying forward the musical's dramatic action.

Bock and Harnick's next work, Fiddler on the Roof, was based on a selection of stories by Sholom Aleichem, and focuses on Tevye the milkman as he and his family live through the sudden shifting of the traditions that have guided life in their village. Many of the songs from Fiddler on the Roof, including "To Life," "If I Were a Rich Man," "Sunrise, Sunset," and "Matchmaker, Matchmaker," have become beloved popular standards.

Bock and Harnick followed Fiddler in 1966 with The Apple Tree, a three-act musical based on short stories by Mark Twain, Frank R. Stockton, and Jules Feiffer. Bock and Harnick's final collaboration, The Rothschilds, which opened in 1970, depicted the rise of the international banking family. Bock and Harnick also created the score for a spectacle staged at the 1964 World's Fair called To Broadway with Love and wrote songs on an uncredited basis for the 1965 musical Baker Street, based on Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.

After The Rothschilds, Harnick wrote musicals and operettas with several different composers, most notably Richard Rodgers, with whom he wrote the 1976 show Rex. He also collaborated with Michel Legrand, translating The Umbrellas of Cherbourg to the stage and writing a stage version of A Christmas Carol. With Joe Raposo he created Sutter's Gold, a cantata premiered in 1980 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and in 1986 A Wonderful Life, based on the classic film. Harnick also wrote both music and lyrics for the 1984 work Dragons, which was produced at his alma mater, Northwestern University, and was given its first professional production at the Luna Stage in Montclair, New Jersey, in 2003.

He has also written librettos for numerous operas, including collaborations with Jack Beeson, Thomas Z. Shepard, and Arnold Black. His television and film work includes songs for the HBO animated film The Tale of Peter Rabbit, with Stephen Lawrence, and themes for the movies The Heartbreak Kid and Blame It on Rio, both with Cy Coleman.

Jerry Bock worked on a musical murder mystery called Caper with Evan Hunter and Stuart Ostrow and recently has been working with the University of Houston's Children's Theatre Festival.

Bock and Harnick have occasionally joined forces to edit or enhance their musicals for new productions and even reunited to write a new song, "Topsy-Turvy," for the production of Fiddler on the Roof that opened in February 2004 on Broadway. Very few shows have had an impact like that of Fiddler, which not only advanced the form of the Broadway musical but has remained popular for five decades. But almost all of Bock and Harnick's musicals are regularly produced and continue to provide a sense of warm delight to the audiences who see them across the country and around the world.

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Contact: Nancy Donner, Herb Scher, or Lindy Regan at 212.704.8600.


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