Vincent Youmans: Broadway’s Melodic Innovator
Vincent Youmans (September 27, 1898 – April 5, 1946) was an American Broadway composer and producer. He created some of the most enduring musical-theater standards of the 1920s, including “Tea for Two” and “I Want to Be Happy” from No, No, Nanette.
Early Life and Education
Youmans was born in New York City into a prosperous family of hat makers. When he was two, his father moved the family to Larchmont, New York. He attended Trinity School in Mamaroneck and Heathcote Hall in Rye, both in New York. His initial ambition was to become an engineer, and he attended Yale University briefly before dropping out. He then worked as a runner for a Wall Street brokerage firm until being drafted into the Navy during World War I. While stationed in Illinois, he developed an interest in theater and began producing troop shows for the Navy.
Career and Achievements
After World War I, Youmans worked as a song-plugger for Jerome H. Remick Music Publishers and later as a rehearsal pianist for composer Victor Herbert’s operettas. In 1921, he collaborated with lyricist Ira Gershwin on Two Little Girls in Blue, which gave him his first Broadway composing credit and his first hit, “Oh Me! Oh My!” This success led to a contract with T. B. Harms.
His next major work was Wildflower (1923), with lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. The show proved to be a major success and established him as a serious Broadway composer. Youmans went on to collaborate with virtually all the greatest lyricists of the era, including Irving Caesar, Anne Caldwell, Leo Robin, Howard Dietz, Clifford Grey, Billy Rose, Edward Eliscu, Edward Heyman, Harold Adamson, Buddy DeSylva, and Gus Kahn.
His most enduring success came with No, No, Nanette (1925), with lyrics by Irving Caesar. After an unprecedented try-out in Chicago and subsequent national and international tours, the show reached Broadway in 1925 and became the biggest musical-comedy success of the 1920s in both Europe and the United States. The two songs “Tea for Two” and “I Want to Be Happy” became worldwide hits and are considered standards; “Tea for Two” was consistently ranked among the most recorded popular songs for decades.
Beginning in 1927, Youmans produced his own Broadway shows and began publishing his own songs after leaving T. B. Harms Company. That year he had a major success with Hit the Deck!, which featured the hit songs “Sometimes I’m Happy” and “Hallelujah”. His subsequent productions after 1927 largely failed commercially, though they contained notable songs such as “Great Day” and “Without a Song” from Great Day (1929), “Time On My Hands” from Smiles (1930), and the title song from Through the Years. His last Broadway contributions were additional songs for Take a Chance (1932).
In 1933, Youmans wrote the score for Flying Down to Rio, the first film to feature Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as a featured dancing pair. The score included “Orchids in the Moonlight”, “The Carioca”, “Music Makes Me”, and the title song. The film was a tremendous hit and revived his professional prospects, though he never again wrote for Astaire and Rogers.
Youmans’ compositional style evolved over time. His early songs were remarkable for their economy of melodic material, with two-, three-, or four-note phrases constantly repeated and varied by subtle harmonic or rhythmic changes. In later years, he turned to longer musical sentences and more rhapsodic melodic lines. Though he published fewer than 100 songs, 18 of these were considered standards by ASCAP, a remarkably high percentage.
Notable Events and Milestones
After contracting tuberculosis, Youmans was forced into retirement in 1934 after a professional career of only 13 years. He spent the remainder of his life battling the disease. His only return to Broadway was Vincent Youmans’ Ballet Revue (1943), an ambitious production mixing Latin-American and classical music, including Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, and choreographed by Leonide Massine. The production lost approximately $4 million.
Awards and Honors
In 1970, Youmans was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1983, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. The 1971 Broadway revival of No, No, Nanette, starring Ruby Keeler and choreographed by Busby Berkeley, was widely credited with beginning the nostalgia era on Broadway.
Additional Resources
Youmans died of tuberculosis on April 5, 1946, at a hotel in Denver, Colorado, with Mary Chase, author of the 1944 Broadway play Harvey, at his bedside. At the time of his death, he left behind a large quantity of unpublished material. Readers seeking more detailed information about Youmans’ life, compositions, and influence on American musical theater can consult Wikipedia and other biographical archives.
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