The Broadway musical
The American musical was shaped decisively by Jewish composers and lyricists such as Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II and Stephen Sondheim; it has no single founder.
Early-to-mid 20th century
New York City (Broadway), USA
The modern Broadway musical, blending song, story and dance, became a defining American art form in the 20th century — and it was written to an astonishing degree by Jewish composers and lyricists. From Show Boat (1927), by composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, the classic repertoire belongs to Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim. The Peabody-winning PBS film Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy (2013), directed by Michael Kantor and narrated by Joel Grey, documents that over the half-century in which the form was built, its songs were created almost exclusively by Jewish Americans — a dominance so nearly complete that, among the giants of the songbook, the Episcopalian Cole Porter stood as the famous exception. On the Being Jewish with Jonah Platt podcast, in a clip the show itself published, the figure is put plainly by the film's director Michael Kantor: 'Try 97%' — ninety-seven per cent of Broadway musicals with a Jewish writer or composer.
Part of “The Gifts of the Jews” — verified Jewish contributions to the world, with sources.