Rodgers and Hammerstein

• 1. Introduction

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  Rodgers and Hammerstein changed American theater so completely that historians began marking time by them - eras defined by what came before Oklahoma! and what came after. Richard Rodgers was born in 1902; Oscar Hammerstein II was born in 1895. Together they became what many have called the greatest theater-writing partnership of the 20th century. Their partnership produced five extraordinary Broadway hits in roughly two decades, won 34 Tony Awards, fifteen Academy Awards, and two Pulitzer Prizes. But how did two men who had each built major careers apart from each other come to collaborate at all? And what was it about their first show together that made everything that followed possible?

• 2. Two Men, Two Careers

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  Long before Rodgers and Hammerstein ever collaborated seriously, each had carved out a distinct creative life. At Columbia University, the two men had briefly crossed paths on the 1920 Varsity Show, Fly With Me, and again on the 1921 production You'll Never Know, with Hammerstein serving as Director of Production. But those early meetings did not lead anywhere lasting.

  Rodgers spent the next two decades working with lyricist Lorenz Hart. Their partnership produced a string of Broadway hits including A Connecticut Yankee in 1927, Babes in Arms in 1937, The Boys from Syracuse in 1938, Pal Joey in 1940, and By Jupiter in 1942. Film projects added to an already impressive body of work.

  Hammerstein, meanwhile, co-wrote the 1924 Rudolf Friml operetta Rose-Marie and worked on Sigmund Romberg operettas including The Desert Song in 1926 and The New Moon in 1928. His collaboration with composer Jerome Kern began with Sunny in 1925. Their 1927 musical Show Boat is now regarded as one of the masterpieces of the American musical theater. A later Kern collaboration, Very Warm for May in 1939, was panned by critics despite containing one of their most beloved songs, "All the Things You Are".

  By the early 1940s, Hart had sunk into alcoholism and emotional turmoil, making him unreliable. Rodgers approached Hammerstein about working together, and a new chapter began.

• 3. Oklahoma and a Revolution

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  Both men had independently been drawn to Lynn Riggs' stage play Green Grow the Lilacs as source material for a musical. When Jerome Kern declined Hammerstein's overture and Hart refused Rodgers', the two turned to each other. What resulted was Oklahoma!, which opened on the 31st of March, 1943, at the St. James Theatre on Broadway.

  The production broke from convention in ways that are still discussed. Earlier musicals were typically built around the talents of a specific star - performers like Ethel Merman or Fred Astaire. Oklahoma! used no stars. The original cast included Alfred Drake as Curly, Joan Roberts as Laurey, Celeste Holm as Ado Annie, Howard Da Silva as Jud Fry, and Betty Garde as Aunt Eller. The show ran for a then-unprecedented 2,212 performances, finally closing on the 29th of May, 1948.

  Before Broadway, the show was called Away We Go! and opened at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven on the 11th of March, 1943. Three changes proved consequential: the addition of a show-stopping number called "Oklahoma!"; the deletion of "Boys and Girls Like You and Me" replaced with a reprise of "People Will Say We're in Love"; and the decision to rename the show after that added song.

  The songs "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'", "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top", "I Cain't Say No", and "People Will Say We're in Love" became enduring standards. The show's popularity prompted Decca Records to produce an original cast recording with the original orchestrations - the first time a musical had done this, establishing what is now standard practice. In 1955, the film version became the first feature shot using the Todd-AO 70 mm widescreen process. Rodgers and Hammerstein also received a special Pulitzer Prize for Oklahoma! in 1944.

• 4. Carousel and Dark Territory

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  Carousel opened at Broadway's Majestic Theatre on the 19th of April, 1945, running for 890 performances and closing on the 24th of May, 1947. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, the cast included John Raitt, Jan Clayton, Jean Darling, Christine Johnson, and Bambi Linn. "The Carousel Waltz", "If I Loved You", "June Is Bustin' Out All Over", and "You'll Never Walk Alone" all came from this production.

  Adapted from Ferenc Molnar's play Liliom, Carousel was among the first musicals built around a tragic plot and an antihero. It contained an extended ballet crucial to the plot and several extended scenes mixing sung and spoken material with dance. These were not decorative additions; they were structural.

  Carousel is also singular among Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals for having no overture. Both the stage and the 1956 film versions opened directly with the Carousel Waltz. That same music appeared on Rodgers' 1954 Columbia Records album, which he conducted himself with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. It was later included in John Mauceri's Philips Records recording of the complete Rodgers and Hammerstein overtures performed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

  The 1956 film version, made in CinemaScope 55, again featured Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones - the same leads who had starred in the film version of Oklahoma! - an unusual pairing of actors across two separate adaptations.

• 5. South Pacific and the Song They Refused to Cut

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  South Pacific opened on Broadway on the 7th of April, 1949, and ran for over five years. Its source material was two short stories by James A. Michener from his book Tales of the South Pacific, which had itself won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948. For their adaptation, Rodgers and Hammerstein and co-writer Joshua Logan won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950.

  Mary Martin starred as Nellie Forbush in the original production. Opera star Ezio Pinza played Emile de Becque, the French plantation owner. Juanita Hall, Myron McCormick, and Betta St. John rounded out the cast. "Bali Ha'i", "Younger Than Springtime", and "Some Enchanted Evening" became standards.

  The song "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" generated controversy for its explicit support of interracial marriage. Rodgers and Hammerstein refused to remove it, even when told the show might fail as a result. When the production toured Atlanta, Georgia, some state lawmakers were so offended that they proposed legislation to ban entertainment they deemed inspired by Moscow. The songwriters did not back down.

  The 1958 film version, also directed by Joshua Logan, starred Mitzi Gaynor, Rossano Brazzi, John Kerr, Ray Walston, and Juanita Hall. Brazzi, Kerr, and Hall all had their singing dubbed by other performers - a reminder of how differently Hollywood and Broadway treated the same material.

• 6. Television, Cinderella, and 107 Million Viewers

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  On the 31st of March, 1957, CBS broadcast a Rodgers and Hammerstein Cinderella to more than 107 million viewers - their only collaboration written specifically for television. Rodgers himself explained why they had agreed: "What won us over was the chance to work with Julie." Julie Andrews played the title role and received an Emmy nomination for her performance. Edith Adams played the Fairy Godmother; Kaye Ballard and Alice Ghostley played stepsisters Joy and Portia; Jon Cypher played Prince Christopher.

  The broadcast was made in color, but only a black and white kinescope survived. Rodgers and Hammerstein had originally agreed to work with NBC; CBS came back with the offer to pair them with Andrews, and the two switched networks quickly. Songs from that original broadcast, including "In My Own Little Corner", "Ten Minutes Ago", and "Impossible: It's Possible", have remained treasured.

  A second television version followed in 1965, broadcast annually on CBS and starring Lesley Ann Warren, Stuart Damon, Celeste Holm, and Walter Pidgeon. A third version aired in 1997 on ABC, produced by Walt Disney Television, with Brandy as Cinderella alongside Whitney Houston, Bernadette Peters, and Whoopi Goldberg. The musical did not reach Broadway until 2013, when a revised book by Douglas Carter Beane incorporated four additional songs from the broader Rodgers and Hammerstein catalog.

• 7. The Final Curtain

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  The Sound of Music was Rodgers and Hammerstein's last work together. Based on the story of the Austrian Von Trapp family, it starred Mary Martin as Maria and Theodore Bikel as Captain von Trapp. It opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Broadway on the 16th of November, 1959. "Edelweiss" was the last song the two men wrote together.

  Hammerstein died in August 1960, before the 1965 film version was produced. When Rodgers was asked to write two new songs for the film - "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good" - he wrote both the music and the lyrics himself. The film starred Julie Andrews as Maria and Christopher Plummer as the Captain, and won five Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for Robert Wise. It became the most financially successful film adaptation of a Broadway musical ever made.

  Flower Drum Song, which opened in 1958 and preceded The Sound of Music, was directed by Gene Kelly and based on a 1957 novel by C. Y. Lee. It broke new ground by using a mostly Asian cast, taking place in San Francisco's Chinatown. A 2002 Broadway revival starred Lea Salonga and featured a rewritten book by David Henry Hwang, though it retained the original's immigrant and inter-generational themes.

  In 2009, Forbes ranked Rodgers and Hammerstein second on its list of top-earning dead celebrities, at $235 million. The Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York City still carries one partner's name. In 2010, original film arrangements of the team's music were performed at the Proms concerts in London's Royal Albert Hall by the John Wilson Orchestra.

• 8. A Changed Art Form

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  Stephen Sondheim has cited Rodgers and Hammerstein as having had a crucial influence on his work - a lineage that runs directly through Broadway's later decades. Before Oklahoma!, most musicals were whimsical or farcical and built around a star. After Oklahoma!, the integrated musical - where song, dance, and drama all serve the same story - became the dominant form.

  William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird wrote that Oklahoma! "like Show Boat, became a milestone, so that later historians writing about important moments in twentieth-century theatre would begin to identify eras according to their relationship to Oklahoma!" Mark Lubbock wrote in The Complete Book of Light Opera that after Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein were "the most important contributors to the musical-play form," and that their example gave encouragement to other writers to create musical plays of their own.

  Critics have also noted what some call the "formula musical" - Rodgers and Hammerstein productions tended toward a strong baritone lead, a light soprano lead, a supporting tenor, and a supporting alto. This predictability, borrowed in part from Viennese operetta like The Merry Widow, gave audiences reliable vocal expectations even as the subject matter grew darker and more serious.

  In 1950, the pair received the Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award for outstanding contributions to the city. A United States Postal Service stamp honored their partnership in 1999. Their willingness to stage domestic violence in Carousel, racism in South Pacific, and the Nazi annexation of Austria in The Sound of Music left a template for how serious theater could be written in a popular form.