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Clare Kummer
Clare Kummer
Clare Kummer
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Clare Kummer (January 9, 1873 – April 21, 1958) was an American composer, lyricist, and playwright.

Early life

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Kummer was born Clare Rodman Beecher in Brooklyn, New York, the granddaughter of Rev. Edward Beecher and great-granddaughter of Lyman Beecher.[1] Her great-uncle was Henry Ward Beecher, and her great-aunt was Harriet Beecher Stowe, among other notable members of their family. Her parents were Eugene Francis Beecher and Susan Wood Beecher.[2]

Career

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Rollo's Wild Oat: a comedy in three acts (1922)

Kummer wrote songs for musicals in New York beginning in 1903 such as in Sergeant Blue (1905) and A Knight For a Day (1908), before she started writing whole shows, usually musical comedies.[3] Her plays included Noah’s Ark (1906), The Opera Ball (1912), The Choir Rehearsal (1914), Good Gracious, Annabelle (1916-1917), A Successful Calamity (1917), The Rescuing Angel (1917), Be Calm, Camilla (1918), Rollo's Wild Oat (1920), The Choir Rehearsal (1921, one-act), Chinese Love (1921, one-act), The Robbery (1921, one-act), Bridges (1921, one-act), The Mountain Man (1921), Banco (1922), One Kiss (1923), Annie Dear (1924), Madame Pompadour (1924), Pomeroy's Past (1926), So's Your Old Antique (1930), Amourette (1933), Her Master's Voice (1933), Spring Thaw (1938), and Many Happy Returns (1945),[2][4][5] "Any one of them had meant to me a gay and frolicsome evening, clever and fresh and full of grace," recalled one critic of Kummer's earlier plays.[6]

Good Gracious, Annabelle (1919), silent film poster crediting Clare Kummer

She is credited on at least eight films and three television programs, usually the adaptations of her stage shows (including two screen adaptations of Good Gracious, Annabelle, silent in 1919, and sound, as Annabelle's Affairs, in 1931). She also wrote several books, including Bible Rimes for the Not Too Young (1910).[7]

She had one-act plays staged at the Punch and Judy Theatre.[8]

Personal life

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Kummer married twice; her first husband was fellow playwright and author Frederick Arnold Kummer. They married in 1895 and divorced in 1903. They had two daughters, Marjorie (who married English actor Roland Young) and Frederica. Her second husband was Arthur Henry; they met through their mutual acquaintance, Theodore Dreiser, and married in 1910. She was widowed when Arthur died in 1934.[9] Kummer died in Carmel, California, at the age of 85, in 1958. Princeton University[10] and the New York Public Library hold some of her papers.[11]

References

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Clare Kummer

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''Clare Kummer'' is an American playwright, lyricist, and composer known for her witty Broadway comedies and popular early 20th-century songs. Born Clare Rodman Beecher on January 9, 1873, in Brooklyn, New York, into a distinguished literary family as the great-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe and cousin of actor William Gillette, she began her career as a songwriter, achieving a million-selling hit with "Dearie" in 1905 and contributing to numerous stage productions. She transitioned to playwriting, authoring 18 Broadway plays celebrated for their subtle humor and sharp dialogue, including successes such as A Successful Calamity (1917), Rollo's Wild Oat (1920), and Her Master's Voice (1933). Kummer's versatile career spanned five decades from the 1900s to the 1950s, encompassing work as a librettist, adaptor of European operettas, director, producer, and occasional performer, with credits on Broadway, in vaudeville, film, and later television. Her contributions also included original musical works and adaptations, helping pave the way for women creators in American musical theater and dramatic writing. She died on April 21, 1958, in Carmel, California.

Early life

Family background

Clare Kummer was born Clare Rodman Beecher on January 9, 1873, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the great-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the acclaimed author best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Kummer was also a cousin of the actor William Gillette, celebrated for his stage portrayals of Sherlock Holmes. She was born into a prominent literary and relatively wealthy family with deep roots in American intellectual and clerical life, the Beecher family having produced several influential ministers and writers across generations. Her great-uncle was the noted preacher Henry Ward Beecher, further connecting her to this distinguished lineage.

Education and early talents

Clare Kummer received her formal education at the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, beginning at age 12, an opportunity that stood out as unusually comprehensive for women of her era. She supplemented this schooling with private music study to cultivate her evident gifts. From childhood, Kummer displayed a pronounced musical talent, particularly on the piano. In a later self-written interview styled as a playlet, she reflected on this early ability in the third person: “When she was still nobody, in particular, and yet that most important person, a child, she could improvise beautiful music on the piano.” This recollection underscores her innate capacity for improvisation and her self-recognition as musically gifted, a view she expressed in subsequent interviews. Born into a family with a rich literary heritage, including her status as the great-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kummer's early environment likely fostered her creative inclinations.

Personal life

Marriages and family

Clare Kummer married playwright Frederic Arnold Kummer on October 15, 1895, in Nutley, New Jersey, when she was 22 years old. The couple had two daughters: Marjorie Beecher Kummer (born 1896) and Fredericka Beecher Kummer (born 1899, died in infancy). The marriage was unsuccessful and ended in divorce in 1903. In 1910, Kummer married author and playwright Arthur Henry. She was with him at the time of his death in 1934. Kummer's plays repeatedly dealt with themes of divorce and unhappy marriages. She was known for doing most of her writing in bed, a habit she openly discussed in interviews.

Career

Clare Kummer began her career as a songwriter with her first full-length musical attempt, Captain Kidd, or the Buccaneers, a Gilbert and Sullivan-style work that previewed in London in 1898, though the score has been lost and it never reached Broadway. She went on to publish approximately 85 separate sheet music publications throughout her career, establishing her as a prolific composer of popular songs. Her major hit came with "Dearie" in 1905, which sold over 1 million copies of sheet music and was interpolated into the musical Sergeant Brue. Other notable standalone or interpolated songs include "Egypt" (1903), "Miranda" (1904), "Sufficiency" (1905), "My Very Own" (1907), "Lonely in Town" (1915), "To Love is to Live" (1936), and "I Want to be Loved" (1944). In the early 1900s, Kummer also performed some coon songs in variety theaters, including an appearance in London. She joined ASCAP in 1934 and collaborated with composers such as Jerome Kern and Sigmund Romberg on various projects. Some of her songs were later incorporated into her own musicals, though those works are covered in detail elsewhere.

Playwriting

Clare Kummer transitioned successfully from songwriting to playwriting in the mid-1910s, achieving her breakthrough with the comedy Good Gracious Annabelle, which premiered on Broadway in 1916 and established her as a notable writer of light, witty plays. She followed this success with a prolific period of original comedies, often featuring clever dialogue and domestic situations that resonated with audiences. Among her major early works were A Successful Calamity (1917), which ran for 144 performances and, per a 1917 New York Tribune report, was reportedly selected by the Pulitzer committee but no award was given in 1917 (the first Pulitzer Prize for Drama was awarded in 1918); The Rescuing Angel (1917); Be Calm, Camilla (1918); Rollo’s Wild Oat (1920), which she later repurchased from its original producers to stage herself; Bridges (1921); The Mountain Man (1921); Banco (1922); Pomeroy’s Past (1926); and Her Master’s Voice (1933). These plays contributed to a body of work that sources describe as totaling 18 Broadway productions during her career, primarily light comedies that frequently explored themes of marriage and relationships. Kummer continued to write for the stage into the 1940s, with later productions including Spring Thaw (1938) and Many Happy Returns (1945), maintaining her output of original dramatic works even as her earlier successes defined her reputation as a playwright.

Musical theater and adaptations

Clare Kummer's involvement in musical theater began early in her career with an ambitious but unfulfilled project, the full-length musical Noah’s Ark, which received a production in Philadelphia in 1907 but never transferred to Broadway. She subsequently turned to shorter forms, creating one-act musicals such as Chinese Love and The Choir Rehearsal, the latter originating in vaudeville in 1917 before receiving a Broadway staging in 1921. Her principal achievement in full-scale musical theater came with Annie Dear in 1924, for which she served as composer, lyricist, and librettist, with additional musical numbers provided by Sigmund Romberg. This production represented her most comprehensive contribution to the book, music, and lyrics of a Broadway musical. Kummer also devoted significant effort to adaptations and translations of existing musical works, beginning with The Opera Ball in 1912. She adapted Madame Pompadour in 1924 and later collaborated with Rowland Leigh on Three Waltzes in 1937. In addition to her writing roles, Kummer occasionally functioned as a director and producer for theatrical productions, while she earned substantial income during the 1920s through her work as a play broker and script doctor, helping to develop and place scripts for Broadway stages.

Film and television work

Several of Clare Kummer's Broadway plays were adapted into films, beginning with silent-era productions of her light comedies. Her 1916 play Good Gracious Annabelle was adapted as the silent film Good Gracious Annabelle (1919), now considered lost. This was followed by a sound remake, Annabelle's Affairs (1931), which survives only in a single reel and is otherwise lost. Other film adaptations of her stage works include The Rescuing Angel (1919) from her play of the same name, Lost: A Wife (1925) based on Banco, A Successful Calamity (1932), and Her Master's Voice (1936). Beyond adaptations of her plays, Kummer made direct contributions to screenwriting and music. She provided dialogue for Pleasure Crazed (1929), performed adaptation and screenplay duties for Harmony at Home (1930), and wrote lyrics for songs in One Mad Kiss (1930). By 1933 she worked as a staff script writer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, later transitioning to Paramount Pictures. Adaptations of Kummer's plays also appeared on early television anthology programs. These include episodes drawn from her works on Kraft Theatre (1947–1949), Lux Video Theatre (1951), Betty Crocker Star Matinee (1952), and Broadway Television Theatre (1953).

Later years and death

Later career and contributions

In the 1930s and 1940s, Clare Kummer continued to write for the stage, though with less frequency than in her earlier decades of prolific output. Her Broadway play Amourette opened in September 1933, followed shortly by Her Master's Voice, a comedy for which she also provided the music and lyrics to the song "Only With You." In 1937, she contributed the book to the musical Three Waltzes, serving in an adaptor role for this romance production that ran for over three months. Additional plays included the comedy Spring Thaw in 1938 and the short-lived Many Happy Returns in January 1945, which closed after one performance. Kummer also published occasional popular songs later in her career, including "To Love is to Live" in 1936 (with words by Kummer set to music by Johann Strauss Jr.) and "I Want to be Loved" in 1944. These works reflect her continued activity as a composer and lyricist even as her primary focus shifted toward playwriting and other contributions. During this period, Kummer engaged in screenwriting, serving as a staff script writer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer beginning in 1933 and moving to Paramount in 1934. She accumulated eleven film and television credits overall, though many of her script contributions remain under-documented or uncredited in available records. Her later professional activities also included work as a script doctor and adaptor, building on her earlier reputation for improving plays and librettos, even if specific later examples are sparsely recorded. This sustained involvement across theater, music, and film underscores the continuity of her multifaceted career into her later years.

Death

Clare Kummer died on April 21, 1958, in Carmel, California, at the age of 85. Her obituaries in contemporary press, including major newspapers, primarily identified her as a composer, highlighting her contributions to popular music and songs rather than her playwriting or other work. Her career had spanned approximately 50 years, from her early songwriting successes in the 1900s through her later theatrical works. No immediate cause of death was widely reported in the obituaries.

Legacy

Recognition and historical assessment

Clare Kummer achieved considerable commercial success during her lifetime, with numerous Broadway productions of her plays and musicals and 85 published songs across a 50-year career that spanned vaudeville, Broadway, productions and tours in the UK and Australia, film, and television. Among her major hits was the song "Dearie" (1905), which sold over one million copies of sheet music, alongside multiple successful Broadway productions that established her as a popular figure in early 20th-century American theater. Kummer stood out as a pioneer among women in the theater industry, as one of the few to serve as the complete author—book writer, composer, and lyricist—of musicals during an era when such multifaceted roles were rarely held by women, and she attained notable commercial viability as a female playwright and songwriter. Despite these accomplishments, her contributions remain largely overlooked in contemporary Broadway and musical theater histories, where she is seldom featured alongside more frequently discussed figures from her period. Recent efforts to restore visibility to her work include the New York Public Library's 2019 transcription of the libretto for her one-act musical The Choir Rehearsal, as part of initiatives to highlight early female creators in American musical theater.
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