Yip Harburg is featured in Groucho and Cavett, a 2022 installment of the PBS series American Masters. The episode recounts the years-long friendship between talk show host Dick Cavett and comedian Groucho Marx. One of Groucho’s favorite songs was “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady,” written by Yip with Harold Arlen for the 1939 MGM feature film At the Circus. Groucho performed it often throughout the ensuing decades, including on Dick Cavett’s talk show. Yip talked about Groucho and the song on one of Cavett’s 1978 PBS broadcasts, excerpts from which are part of this documentary.
Category Archives: News
SETTING THE STANDARD
Beginning Nov. 15, 2022, Yip Harburg is the focus of one of the podcasts in the “Setting the Standard” series by Warner Chappell Music and Bang/Audiation. The podcast features stories from the Great American Songbook. Interviewees include Ernie Harburg (Yip’s son), Deena Rosenberg Harburg (Yip’s daughter-in-law), Adam Gopnik, Rufus Wainwright and Walter Rimler.
JOHN MURELLE’S “SPOTLIGHT ON YIP HARBURG”
In November 2021 and March 2022 vocal coach and musical theatre historian John Murelle paid tribute to Yip and his work in “Look to the Rainbow” (epidodes 1 and 2) part of his “Spotlight” series on YouTube.
Who Wrote That Song? – Yip Harburg
“Who Wrote That Song? with Jim Haynes.” Host John Stanley chats with historian/entertainer Jim Haynes about Yip Harburg on the Oct 7, 2022 broadcast of Nights with John Stanley, 873AM Radio, Australia.
YIP HARBURG NIGHT AT THE 2022 CABARET CONVENTION
The 2022 Mabel Mercer Foundation Cabaret Convention will kick off this year’s events with a tribute to Yip Harburg hosted by Andrea Marcovicci and Jeff Harnar. Read the press release and this New York Sun feature story by Will Friedwald.
YIP’S FAMILY INTERVIEWED
In August 2021 Molly Dubin, curator of the Jewish Museum, Milwaukee, interviewed Ernie Harburg (Yip’s son) and Deena Rosenberg Harburg (Yip’s daughter-in-law) for the podcast “Conversation Starter: Over the Rainbow with the Family of Lyricist Yip Harburg” on the occasion of the Museum’s exhibit “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Jewish Artists of the WPA.”
BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A DIME?: JEWISH ARTISTS OF THE WPA
The Jewish Museum of Milwaukee’s exhibit, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”: Jewish Artists of the WPA, named after the Depression-era song by Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney, features creations by Jewish artists as part of the Works Progress Administration, a branch of the Federal Arts Project launched by the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in 1935. The exhibit, running from June 17 to September 5, 2021, is originally curated from local and regional private and personal collections.
ASHLEY PARK SINGS “OVER THE RAINBOW”
Broadway singer Ashley Park did an a cappella rendition of the Yip Harburg-Harold Arlen song classic “Over the Rainbow” on The Drew Barrymore Show on Oct. 30, 2020. See it here.
CHER AND MELISSA SING YIP… FOR JOE BIDEN
Cher has contributed a slightly rewritten lyric to the Yip Harburg-Harold Arlen classic “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe” as her pitch for the 2020 Presidential candidacy of Joe Biden. See it here. Previously, Broadway singer Melissa Errico, accompanied by Lara Downes, performed the same song for the same campaign, with her own rewrite of the lyric. See it here. Melissa and Errico have also released the track for streaming and it can be accessed here.
RANDY RAINBOW’S “JITTERBUG” PARODY
See and hear Randy Rainbow’s clever parody of the Yip Harburg-Harold Arlen song “The Jitterbug” (cut from The Wizard of Oz film) in which the singer-satirist skewers the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd killing.