Jerome Kern

Jerome Kern (1885-1945) stands out as the pioneering architect of contemporary American musical theater. New York-born and of German descent, he studied at the New York College of Music before gradually infiltrating Broadway in the century’s opening years through individual song placements in existing productions. A devoted Anglophile and close associate of P.G. Wodehouse, he achieved his initial breakthrough in 1914 when numbers he supplied to the British import The Girl from Utah—most notably the ballad “They Didn’t Believe Me”—captured public attention. Departing from the prevailing European waltz tradition, Kern demonstrated skill at folding current popular dance rhythms into his melodies while also crafting nuanced, imaginative ballads. During the mid-1910s he joined forces with Guy Bolton and later Wodehouse on a run of productions at the Princess Theater, among them Very Good Eddie, and maintained his momentum with further hits throughout the 1920s.

Kern secured his lasting place in theater history, however, with Show Boat (1927), widely regarded as the first fully integrated modern American musical, featuring an interlocking narrative and enduring numbers such as “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” Following the advent of sound film, he—like many peers of his era—split his energies between Broadway and Hollywood during the 1930s; among his screen successes was the Fred Astaire–Ginger Rogers vehicle Swing Time, which introduced “A Fine Romance” and “The Way You Look Tonight” (lyrics by Dorothy Fields). Throughout a career that encompassed writing or contributing to 37 shows, Kern maintained a steady output and had begun preparations for Annie Get Your Gun when he died suddenly in 1945, bequeathing one of the most substantial bodies of theatrical song in the American canon.