Nancy Hamilton papers

Nancy Hamilton, Broadway actress, lyricist, author, scriptwriter, producer, and playwright was born in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, July 27, 1908, daughter of Charles Lee Hamilton and Margaret Miller Marshall. She was educated at Miss Dickinson's School in Sewickley, at the Sorbonne, and received a B.A. from Smith College in 1930. Hamilton began writings songs and sketches while at Smith, acting in and directing The Chocolate Soldier in her senior year. She was Producing Director of the Dramatic Association Council at Smith. After a period of amateur acting and producing in Pittsburgh and Montclair, New Jersey, she moved to New York City in 1932 and leased a large apartment with an assortment of women friends. For a short time she worked for Stern's Department Store and then for RKO Pictures as a spy checking audience reactions and reporting on vaudeville acts. She began her acting career as understudy to Katharine Hepburn in The Warrior's Husband and also had a walk on part in the play. She made her Broadway debut in 1934 in New Faces, not only appearing in the show but also writing many of the lyrics. When it closed she turned to play writing. She collaborated with Rosemary Casey and James Shute on Return Engagement which was made into a film entitled Fools for Scandal. During the next two years Hamilton wrote radio scripts for comic actress Beatrice Lillie, Fred Astaire, and Lois Long, and published articles and poems in Stage Magazine and Harper's Bazaar. She went on to write lyrics for three successful Broadway revues (a genre of musical theater that flourished in the 1930s): One for The Money (1939) ran for 132 performances, Two for the Show (1940) ran for 124 performances, and Three to Make Ready (1946) ran for 323 performances. These revues launched the careers of Alfred Drake, Keenan Wynn, Gene Kelley, Betty Hutton, Eve Arden, and Ray Bolger. Song lyrics written by Hamilton include "How High the Moon," "The House with the Little Red Barn," "The Old Soft Shoe," "I Hate the Spring," "The Old Gavotte," "Lovely Lazy Kind of Day," and "Clambake." In 1945 she spent six months with the American Theater Wing War Players touring the battle areas of France, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In the mid-1950s Hamilton produced Helen Keller In Her Story (also known as The Unconquered), a documentary on the life of Helen Keller narrated by Katharine Cornell. It won an Academy Award in 1955 for the best documentary.

Nancy Hamilton is known as one of the first women to succeed as a lyricist. Korey Rothman in her dissertation, "Somewhere There's Music: Nancy Hamilton, The Old Girls Network, and the American Musical Theatre of the 1930s and 1940s,"¹ states that Hamilton is "…an important unsung figure of the twentieth century musical theater" and that she "…was part of a large network of women with whom she maintained overlapping professional and romantic relationships." She was the life-long partner of actress Katharine Cornell. Hamilton died in New York City, February 18, 1985, after a long illness.

[¹ PhD Dissertation, University of Maryland at College Park, 2005]