Willie Hammerstein two Eunuch Servants." Hammerstein also put on novelties like Don the Talking Dog. Sports celebrities like boxer James J. Corbett and baseball pitcher Rube Marquard also drew audiences. Hammerstein was unusual in making a sharp separation between his work in the theater, which he loved, and his home life. He would not pose for a photograph, and told his press agents not to use his name in publicity. Hammerstein married Alice Nimmo in 1893, and they had two sons, Oscar and Reginald. They lived at 315 Central Park West. His wife died in 1910 and he married her sister, Annie
Oscar Hammerstein I own. Infamously, he compared paying his daughters to "the eccentricities and actions of the late lamented King Lear." Hammerstein contracted kidney problems and paralysis, eventually permanently falling into a coma. He died in 1919 in Lenox Hill Hospital at Park Avenue and 77th Street in Manhattan. His contractual ban on presenting opera was due to expire in 1920; at his death he was busy planning his return to the opera stage. A 1910 song by Jack Norworth entitled "For Months and Months and Months" references Hammerstein himself, during the first verse. The Manhattan Opera House was bid for $145,000 by