Early life and career Harburg, the youngest of four surviving children (out of ten), was born Isidore Hochberg on the
Lower East Side of
New York City on April 8, 1896. His parents, Lewis Hochberg and Mary Ricing, were
Yiddish-speaking who had
emigrated from
Russia. He later adopted the name "Edgar Yipsel Harburg", and came to be best known as "Yip". Harburg told
Studs Terkel that he took the name "Yipsel" because it meant "squirrel" in Yiddish, but there is no such Yiddish word and it is possible that the name was derived from that of the
Young People's Socialist League (1907), the youth group of the
Socialist Party of America, whose members were called "yipsels". Harburg’s love of theater came from his boyhood visits with his father to Yiddish theater and vaudeville reviews. His love of rhyme and wordplay was nurtured hearing Mother Goose nursery rhymes and, later, learning the poetry of Tennyson, Longfellow, Kipling and other late Victorian poets, and “light verse of all kinds.” Harburg attended
Townsend Harris High School, where he and
Ira Gershwin worked on the school paper and became lifelong friends. They bonded over a shared fondness for
Gilbert and Sullivan. Until he met Gershwin, Harburg knew of
W. S. Gilbert only as a writer of light verse, especially the collection,
Bab Ballads. When Harburg shared Gilbert's poems with his friend, Gershwin informed him that many of Gilbert's poems were in fact lyrics that went with music. As Harburg wrote later, Gershwin took him home and played him
H.M.S. Pinafore. "There were all the lines I knew by heart put to music. I was dumfounded, staggered." According to his son Ernie Harburg, Gilbert and Irish dramatist
George Bernard Shaw taught his father—a "democratic socialist, [and] sworn challenger of all tyranny against the people"—that "'humor is an act of courage' and dissent". When the United States entered the First World War, Harburg, a conscientious objector, moved to Uruguay for three years because he did not believe in the war and refused to fight. After World War I, Harburg returned to New York and graduated from
City College (later part of the
City University of New York), which Ira Gershwin had initially attended with him, in 1921. After Harburg married and had two children, he started writing light verse for local newspapers. He became a co-owner of Consolidated Electrical Appliance Company, but the company went bankrupt following the
crash of 1929, leaving Harburg "anywhere from $50,000 – $70,000 in debt", which he insisted on paying back over the course of the next few decades. At this point, Harburg and
Ira Gershwin agreed that Harburg should start writing song lyrics. Gershwin introduced Harburg to
Jay Gorney, who collaborated with him on songs for an
Earl Carroll Broadway revue (''Earl Carroll's Sketchbook
): the show was successful and Harburg was engaged as lyricist for a series of successful revues, including Americana'' in 1932, for which he wrote the lyrics of "
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" to the tune of a lullaby Gorney had learned as a child in Russia. This song swept the nation, becoming an anthem of the
Great Depression. Harburg was a staunch critic of both high society and religion. He wrote a poem entitled "Atheist" that summarized his views on God.
Blacklisting Although never a member of the
Communist Party (he was a member of the
Socialist Party, and joked that "Yip" referred to the
Young People's Socialist League, nicknamed the "Yipsels"), Harburg had been involved in radical groups, and was blacklisted. Harburg was named in a pamphlet
Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television; his involvement with the Hollywood Democratic Committee, and his refusal to identify reputed communists, led to him being blocked from working in Hollywood films, television, and radio for twelve full years, from 1950 to 1962. "As the writer of the lyric of the song 'God's Country', I am outraged by the suggestion that somehow I am connected with, believe in, or am sympathetic with Communist or totalitarian philosophy", he wrote to the
House Un-American Activities Committee in 1950. In 1966, songwriter
Earl Robinson sought Harburg's help for the song "
Hurry Sundown"; the two collaborated on the song and are credited as co-writers. The song was intended for the film
Hurry Sundown, but was not used in the film. It was, however, recorded by
Peter, Paul and Mary for their 1966 album
The Peter, Paul and Mary Album. The song was released as a single in 1967, and reached No. 37 on the
Billboard Easy Listening chart. It was also nominated for the
Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording.
Death Harburg died while driving on
Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles on March 5, 1981, at the age of 84. While he was initially reported to have been killed in a traffic accident, it was later determined that he suffered a heart attack while stopped at a red light. ==Awards and recognition==