Stella Hammerstein Stella Hammerstein Stella Hammerstein was an American actress. She was sometimes billed as Stella Steele. Hammerstein was the daughter of Oscar Hammerstein I and Malvina Jacobi Hammerstein, both of whom initially opposed her going into show business as a profession. In 1908, she told a "New York Times" reporter of her father's reaction when, at age 20, she told him that she was going into musical comedy: "Papa without more ado piled me over his knee and applied the hairbrush vigorously." Eventually he accepted her desire to be an actress. In 1902, Hammerstein joined the stock theater company headed by
Oscar Hammerstein II Jerome Kern had written "Ol' Man River." "Indeed not," she retorted. "Jerome Kern wrote 'dum, dum, dum-dum.' My husband wrote 'Ol' Man River'." Other Kern-Hammerstein musicals include "Sweet Adeline", "Music in the Air", "Three Sisters", and "Very Warm for May". Hammerstein also collaborated with Vincent Youmans ("Wildflower"), Rudolf Friml ("Rose-Marie"), and Sigmund Romberg ("The Desert Song" and "The New Moon"). Hammerstein's most successful and sustained collaboration began when he teamed up with Richard Rodgers to write a musical adaptation of the play "Green Grow the Lilacs". Rodgers' first partner, Lorenz Hart, originally planned to collaborate with Rodgers on this piece,