Silvio Hein

Silvio Hein (March 15, 1879 – December 19, 1928) was an American composer, lyricist, book writer, conductor, and theatrical producer born in New York City. His father emigrated from Hungary and his mother from Italy, and both family background and formal instruction shaped his musical development. In a 1927 interview published in The Musical Observer, Hein named several teachers he had studied under in Boston, New York, and Italy, among them Professor Cosmo in Trieste; John C. Mullally, a Boston-based conductor and instrumentalist with ties to the Boston Symphony Orchestra; John M. Flockton, a brass player and conductor who was a founding member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra's brass section and a leader of military bands in Massachusetts; and James Huneker, a New York music critic and piano teacher. Hein also credited family members as formative influences, including his mother, his aunt Madame Riva who sang with the Paris Opera, his maternal grandfather who had worked as a singer at the Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste, and his uncle Albert Pardo, a tenor who served as a professional singer and church musician at St. Francis Xavier Church in Manhattan for twenty-six years.

Hein began composing as a teenager and completed his first operetta before the age of twenty. His earliest notable song, "Every Morn I Bring Thee Violets," was interpolated into the 1901 musical The Little Duchess, where it was performed by Sydney Barraclough, and its sheet music became a bestseller. He also wrote "I Want to be a Drummer Boy" with lyricist Matt Woodward, which was used as the Act I finale in Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.'s The Follies of 1907, the first production in the Ziegfeld Follies series. His Broadway debut as a composer came with Moonshine, which premiered at the Liberty Theatre on October 30, 1905, as a starring vehicle for Marie Cahill. The production ran through January 1906 and subsequently toured nationally under the retitled Molly Moonshine.

Over the following two decades Hein composed scores for fourteen Broadway musicals. Marrying Mary opened at Daly's Theatre in 1906 with lyrics by Benjamin Hapgood Burt and was adapted from Edwin Milton Royle's 1903 play My Husband's Wife. The Boys and Betty followed in 1908 at Wallack's Theatre, another vehicle for Marie Cahill drawn from the 1907 French farce Le Papillon by René Peter and Robert Danceny. In 1910 Hein had three productions reach Broadway: The Yankee Girl at the Herald Square Theatre, crafted for Blanche Ring; A Matinee Idol at Daly's Theatre, a loose adaptation of Molière's 1645 play Le Médecin volant; and Judy Forgot at the Broadway Theatre, a third Marie Cahill show in which she played a woman suffering amnesia following a train crash. When Dreams Come True arrived at the Lyric Theatre in 1913 and was created for dancer and actor Joseph Santley, who both starred in and choreographed the production. Miss Daisy opened at the Shubert Theatre in 1914 with playwright Philip Bartholomae contributing both the lyrics and book.

The year 1917 brought Hein his two most prominent productions. Furs and Frills, staged at the Casino Theatre, holds a particular place in Broadway history as the show that contained "Make Yourself at Home," the first song to carry a lyric credit for Oscar Hammerstein II, with music composed by Hein. That same year, Flo-Flo opened at the Cort Theatre and became the biggest commercial success of Hein's career. He developed the musical with French librettist and playwright Fred de Gresac. He Didn't Want to Do It followed in 1918 at the Broadhurst Theatre, created with lyricist and playwright George Broadhurst and adapted from a stage play of the same name co-authored by Broadhurst and Walter Hackett. Look Who's Here arrived in 1920 at the 44th Street Theatre as a starring vehicle for the married acting team of Cecil Lean and Cleo Mayfield. That same year The Girl from Home opened at the Globe Theatre, based on Richard Harding Davis's 1904 play The Dictator. Hein's final musical, Some Party, a revue he created with R. H. Burnside, played Jolson's 59th Street Theatre in 1922. Beyond composing, Hein served as conductor for many of his own Broadway productions as well as for shows written by others, and he produced the 1917 Broadway revival of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Park Theatre. His Broadway credits also include the play Experience and the musical A Matinee Idol, among other productions.

In 1914 Hein was a founding member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. He was married to actress Anna Mooney, who appeared in several of his musicals, and he was a member of the Lambs Club. A chronic lung infection affected much of his adult life, eventually compelling him to retire at the age of forty-six and relocate to a sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York, where he lived under medical care until his death on December 19, 1928, at the age of forty-nine. His funeral service, held on December 21, 1928, at Campbell's Funeral Church at Broadway and Sixth Street, was officiated by Rabbi Nathan D. Krass of Temple Emanu-El. The pallbearers included composers Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and John Philip Sousa; actor Fritz Williams; producer and playwright R. H. Burnside; songwriter Raymond Hubbell; and music publisher George Maxwell, the first president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. Hein was buried at The Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn.