Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist and composer, was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 30, 1924, to Harry Michael and Esther (Kanter) Harnick. He graduated from Chicago's Carl Schurz High School in 1942 and received musical training at Chicago's Boguslawski Music School, 1940-1942, and the Lewis Institute, 1942-1943. In addition to private lessons in violin and harmony and counterpoint, he received a B. Mus. from Northwestern University in 1950.
Harnick began his professional career as a violinist with Chicago dance orchestras. Following a tour of duty with the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II, he wrote the music and lyrics for a Northwestern University show. During these early years of his career, when Harnick was writing his own music as well as lyrics, he was already developing his own style--a witty, vivid social commentary set to music. Among the influences on his writing Harnick has mentioned such diverse sources as Gilbert and Sullivan, Robert Benchley, James Thurber, Groucho Marx, Upton Sinclair, E. Y. Harburg, and serious music.
Shortly after his graduation from Northwestern, Harnick went to New York, where his first venture on Broadway was a song in the production, New Faces of 1952. He contributed songs to eleven other professional theatrical productions, both Broadway and regional, between 1952 and 1958. In that latter year he also wrote the lyrics for The Body Beautiful; the show marked the beginning of a happy collaboration between Harnick and composer Jerry Bock.
In 1959 Harnick scored his first hit--he wrote the lyrics for Fiorello!, the musical based on the life of New York's colorful mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia. Fiorello! ran for 796 performances on Broadway, and for it Harnick won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and the BMI Achievement Award.
After Fiorello!, Harnick and Bock collaborated on Tenderloin (1960) and She Loves Me (1963), and Harnick wrote the lyrics for the title song of Never Too Late (1962) and the lyrics for The Man in the Moon (1963). Then in 1964 the musical team, together with writer Joseph Stein, created a musical based on the stories of Sholem Aleichem. The result was Fiddler on the Roof, one of Broadway's most successful and longest-running musicals. “Musicals come and go,” wrote Clive Barnes, “but Fiddler on the Roof seems to play on forever.” Fiddler won the 1965 New York Drama Critics Award as best musical, as well as earning the Tony award for lyricist Harnick.
Harnick's most recent collaborations with his composer are The Apple Tree, which opened in 1966, and The Rothschilds, which opened in 1970 and has settled in for a long run on Broadway.
Sheldon Harnick and his wife, Margery Gray, reside in New York City.
