Sheldon Harnick, lyricist best known for Fiddler on the Roof – obituary

Sheldon Harnick
Sheldon Harnick - Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist, who has died aged 99, was one half of the creative partnership, with the composer Jerry Bock, that had a massive international hit with Fiddler on the Roof.

The pair also wrote such lesser-known though much-admired musicals as Fiorello!, a 1960 Pulitzer and Tony winner, and She Loves Me, an epistolary romance which flopped initially but subsequently became a cult hit.

According to Harnick, he and his co-creators, Bock and scriptwriter Joe Stein, never thought their musical adaptation of stories by Sholem Aleichem about a pious Jewish dairyman would find a wide audience.

The three creators of Fiddler on the Roof, l-r, jerry Bock, Joe Stein and Harnick, in 1990
The three creators of Fiddler on the Roof, l-r, Jerry Bock, Joe Stein and Harnick, in 1990 - Marty Reichenthal/AP

Indeed, when it had its original out-of town try-out in Detroit, with Zero Mostel as Tevye the milkman, the Variety critic dismissed it as “mildly amusing, moderately melodic and completely predictable” with songs that were “ordinary and serviceable, rather than singable or haunting”.

Harnick recalled: “During the intermission, I went to the men’s room, and there were two well-dressed men standing peeing. I heard one say, ‘If I’d known this was about Jews, I wouldn’t have come.’ On the other hand, Joe Stein told us he heard a woman on the phone calling her husband, saying: ‘Harry, I told you you should have come. There’s a pogrom and everything!’ ”

In fact Fiddler ran on Broadway from 1964 to 1972, setting a record which stood for several years, its appeal owing much to Harnick’s wit and gift for conveying a sense of character – as for example in the famous number If I Were a Rich Man: “All day long I’d biddy biddy bum/If I were a wealthy man,” sings Tevye. Fiddler won 10 Tony Awards, has been staged all over the world and was made into the 1971 Oscar-nominated film starring Topol.

Sheldon Mayer Harnick was born in Chicago on April 30 1924 and learnt the violin as a child. After wartime service as a radio repair man in the US Army, he studied at Northwestern University School of Music on the GI bill. His aim was to be a concert violinist but he got involved in writing songs and sketches for student revues, and by the time he graduated he was hooked on musical theatre.

Moving to New York, he took a job as assistant to the poet and humorist Ogden Nash. In 1952 he had his first song in a Broadway revue, The Boston Beguine, for which he wrote both music and lyrics, and his songs featured in several other revues before he teamed up with Bock in 1958.

Their first collaboration, The Body Beautiful, a musical comedy about a boxer, was a flop. But their Broadway career was made with Fiorello!, about the colourful New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, which shared the Tony for best musical with The Sound of Music. They also won Tony nominations for She Loves Me, The Apple Tree and The Rothschilds (1970), though their partnership broke down during the making of the last of these.

Topol in the film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof
Topol in the film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof - Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

In later years Harnick worked with other composers, collaborating with Richard Rodgers on Rex (1976), a musical about Henry VIII that closed on Broadway after two months. He also found success as an opera translator.

But Harnick never pretended that his career had all been plain sailing and enjoyed recounting his role as “play doctor” (brought in to rescue others’ scripts) for such turkeys as Shangri La (in which, he recalled, a Japanese actress constantly took low bows whenever she sang so that she could see the lyrics, which were written on the floor), or Portofino (“The opening night party lasted long enough to be the closing night party... I would have been well advised to take the money and get no credit.”)

Harnick’s first two marriages were dissolved. He is survived by his third wife, Margery, and by a son and a stepdaughter.

Sheldon Harnick, born April 30 1924, died June 23 2023