Sheldon Harnick Dies: ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ Lyricist Was 99

Sheldon Harnick, whose lyrics for the acclaimed stage and film musical Fiddler on the Roof are some of the most recognizable and beloved in Broadway history, died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 99.

His death was announced by spokesman Sean Katz.

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In collaborations with composer Jerry Bock, Harnick gave Broadway some of its most publicly adored and critically acclaimed musicals, including 1959’s Pulitzer-winning Fiorello!, 1963’s She Loves Me and, of course, Fiddler on the Roof, the massively successful 1964 musical with a book by Joseph Stein that told the story of Jewish dairyman Tevye who struggled to support his wife and daughters on a shtetl in the Imperial Russia of 1905.

Fiddler, revived on Broadway and other stages countless times and adapted into a successful 1971 movie musical, included what would become some of the most familiar songs of the post-War Broadway era, including “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” “Do You Love Me?” and the glorious “If I Were a Rich Man.”

Born Sheldon Mayer Harnick in Chicago, Harnick was encouraged to pursue a career in musicals by an acquaintance – and his idol – songwriter Yip Harburg, and by 1956 Harnick had teamed up with Bock to begin what would be one of the most successful and illustrious careers in Broadway history, even if their first musical, 1958’s short-lived The Body Beautiful, didn’t exactly portend great things.

The hits began the following year, with Fiorello!, the musical about New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia that delighted critics and audiences, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Other productions quickly followed, with She Loves Me, an adaptation of the classic film comedy The Shop Around The Corner, arriving in 1963 and delivering charming confections such as the title song and “Vanilla Ice Cream.” The musical would be revived numerous times in New York City and around the world over the next decades.

But the Bock-Harnick masterpiece would come in 1964 with their songs based on the Tevye tales of Sholem Aleichem. The musical to delivered to the stage such indelible characters as Tevye, wife Golde, headstrong daughters Tzeitel, Hodel and Chava, gossipy matchmaker Yente and hapless tailor Motel, among many others, Fiddler On The Roof is among the most cherished Broadway musicals in history, a staple of major stages and high school auditoriums. “Sunrise, Sunset,” with Harnick’s poignant lyrics about watching children grow up and away, would find its way into untold numbers of wedding receptions, and “If I Were A Rich Man” becoming a universal anthem of longing and what if fantasies, marked by daydreams of wealth and “ya ba dibba dibba” musings.

If I were a rich man
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum
All day long, I’d biddy biddy bum
If I were a wealthy man
I wouldn’t have to work hard
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum
If I were a biddy biddy rich yidle-diddle-didle-didle man

Later projects with Bock, who died in 2010, included Later The Apple Tree (1966), The Rothschilds (1970), and The Madwoman of Central Park West (1979).

For TV, Harnick wrote lyrics for the Marlo Thomas 1970s children’s classic Free to Be… You and Me, and the HBO animated film The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1991). He wrote lyrics for movie theme songs The Heartbreak Kid in 1972 and Blame it On Rio in 1984.

Harnick is survived by wife Margery, daughter Beth Dorn, son Matthew Harnick, and four grandchildren.

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