Robert Kimball, 1939 – 2026

Musical-theater historian Robert Kimball, 86, died on July 1. Kimball discovered long-lost scores by composers George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Sissle and Blake, Jerome Kern, Victor Herbert, Sigmund Romberg, and others in 1982, in a warehouse in Secaucus, NJ. Kimball was working as a lawyer when he got a job as curator of Yale’s American musical theater collection. That led to the discovery in Secaucus, of a long-forgotten hoard kept by Warner Bros. “The first envelope I opened, which had ‘Cole Porter’ written on it, had songs I’d never heard of — and I’m a Cole Porter scholar and biographer,” Kimball said. “I sat there quite stunned.” He also worked a music and dance critic for The New York Post, and wrote (or co-wrote) books Porter and the Gershwins, and helped put together volumes of the music he had helped rediscover.