Otto Harbach

Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach (August 18, 1873 – January 24, 1963) was an American lyricist and librettist of nearly 50 musical comedies and operettas. Harbach collaborated as lyricist or librettist with many of the leading Broadway composers of the early 20th century, including Jerome Kern, Louis Hirsch, Herbert Stothart, Vincent Youmans, George Gershwin, and Sigmund Romberg.

Harbach believed that music, lyrics, and story should be closely connected and, as Oscar Hammerstein II's mentor, he encouraged Hammerstein to write musicals in this manner. Harbach is considered one of the first great Broadway lyricists, and he helped raise the status of the lyricist in an age more concerned with music, spectacle, and stars. Some of his more famous lyrics are "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "Indian Love Call" and "Cuddle up a Little Closer, Lovey Mine".

Otto Abels Hauerbach was born on August 18, 1873, in Salt Lake City, Utah to Danish immigrant parents. His family's original surname was Christiansen, but shortly after settling in the United States near Salt Lake City in the 1830s, they took Hauerbach, the name of the farm on which they worked, as their new surname.

He attended the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute, transferring to Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois. There he became a friend of poet Carl Sandburg, joined Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, and graduated in 1895. Knox has since named its 599-seat Harbach Theatre in his honor.

Hauerbach started his career teaching English and public speaking at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. He intended to become an English professor and started graduate work at Columbia University in New York.

In the early 1900s, complaining of eye difficulties that made prolonged reading uncomfortable, he became a newspaper reporter. He also worked at various advertising agencies, at an insurance firm, as a copywriter in advertising, and later as a journalist. He had to withdraw from Columbia when he could not financially support himself.^{[citation needed]}

In 1902, he spotted an advertisement for a new Joe Weber and Lew Fields musical with a picture of star Fay Templeton. He had not been interested in theatre but more in literary classics. After seeing the show, he realized he liked the lighthearted genre.^{[citation needed]}

That same year, he met composer Karl Hoschna. They wrote a comic opera together, The Daughter of the Desert, but no producer was interested in producing the work.