Harold Rome: 

Maker of Musicals

Harold J. Rome was a songwriter who penned not only the lyrics but the music for most of his work. When he moved to Ridgefield in 1944, he was already well known for writing the Broadway musicals “Pins and Needles” and, with Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, “Sing Out the News.” 

He was also known for his song “Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones,” sung by Ella Fitzgerald in 1938 and Judy Garland in the 1941 movie “Babes on Broadway.”

In December 1944, The Ridgefield Press reported that “Corp. Harold J. Rome, the Army’s songwriter, and Mrs. Rome, paid their first visit over the weekend to their newly acquired Ridgefield home … in the Limestone District.”

While living in Ridgefield, he was officially stationed at Fort Hamilton, Long Island. The 1944 Press article said, “Rome now turns out tunes tailor-made for scripts written by the orientation department. According to an article in Sunday’s ‘Times’ magazine section, ‘Rome has already written four such tunes with sophisticated lyrics that might easily be removed — sometimes after only a bit of scouring — to a Broadway musical show.

“He produced ‘The Gripers’ for a script on soldier gripes; ‘It’s a Small World’ for a dramatic interpretation of geopolitics; ‘All GI’s Got Rights’ for a show on the GI Bill of Rights; and ‘Do a Favor for Adolph, Please,’ to explain to the soldiers why they are given orientation instruction.”

After the war, Rome gained greater fame, writing such musicals as “Wish You Were Here” in 1952, “Fanny” in 1954, “Destry Rides Again” in 1959, and the show in which Barbra Streisand made her Broadway debut, “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” in 1962.  A less-known show, “The Zulu and the Zayda” in 1965, dealt with racial and religious intolerance.

Rome was probably drawn to Ridgefield by his friend James Waterman Wise of Pumping Station Road. Wise was an author who was writing books exposing Nazism before Hitler even came to power. He was also a biographer of Vice President Henry Wallace, who lived in South Salem and was active in St. Stephen’s Church. 

Mr. and Mrs. Wise often got together with the Romes and with Mr. and Mrs. Paul Draper — Paul Draper was a then-famous tap dancer and choreographer. All were involved in liberal causes, and Draper was once accused of being a communist.

Florence Rome, Harold’s wife, bought the 21-acre spread on the west side of lower Great Hill Road, but the couple apparently didn’t find country life to their liking. She sold the place a couple of years later. 

Harold Rome, who was also a painter and art collector, died in 1993 in New York City at the age of 85. Florence died four years later.  

Larry Adler: 

Harmonica Virtuoso

Harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler lived here during a difficult part of his life. 

It was the late 40s and early 50s when the House Un-American Activities Committee sought out suspected communists, and a Greenwich woman had publicly claimed that Adler and his friend and longtime performance partner, dancer Paul Draper, had been communists. The story made national headlines,  and syndicated Columnist Westbrook Pegler of Ridgefield joined in the accusations against Adler and Draper.

Adler denied supporting the communist cause, but refused to take a loyalty oath and vociferously criticized the House Unamerican Activities Committee. He and Draper filed a libel suit against the Greenwich woman who had accused them, but the trial ended in a hung jury. The ensuing case was dismissed because Adler and Draper did not have the funds to continue it.

Born in Baltimore in 1914, Lawrence Cecil Adler taught himself the harmonica and was playing professionally by the age of 14. In 1927, he won a contest sponsored by The Baltimore Sun, playing a Beethoven minuet. About a year later, only 15 years old, he went to New York City where, with the help of singer Rudy Vallée, he began working as a vaudeville performer.

Over his long career he has performed everything from classical to jazz and pop music. He brought the “mouth organ” to the serious stage, gained worldwide recognition as a musician, and performed with leading symphony orchestras worldwide. Many works for harmonica were written with him in mind, including Ralph Vaughan Williams' “Romance in D-flat for Harmonica, Piano and String Orchestra.”

During World War II he entertained the troops on many USO tours with comedian Jack Benny. 

Adler, who lived at the James Waterman Wise home on Pumping Station Road (Paul Draper also stayed there), wrote several film scores including “High Wind in Jamaica” and  “Genevieve”; for the latter, written while he was in Ridgefield, he received an Academy Award nomination in 1953. Because he was blacklisted, his name was originally kept off the film’s credits in this country, but was eventually added; he still made a sizable amount of money from “Genevieve.”

He also appeared in five movies in the 1930s and early 40s.

In 1952, discouraged with the communist witch hunt, he moved to England from which continued to give concerts around the world, make recordings, write books, and even work as a food critic for a British magazine. He wrote “Jokes and How to Tell Them” (1963) — one of his oft-quoted lines is, “Vasectomy means never having to say you’re sorry.”   His autobiography, “It Ain't Necessarily So,” was published in 1985. He died in 2001.

A biographer once observed that Adler is “a good example of the adage, ‘Living well is the best revenge.’”