Richard Rodgers

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• Born: 28 June 1902
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: 30 December 1979
• Best Known As: Composer of Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music

Name at birth: Richard Charles Rodgers

Richard Rogers was one of the most successful and celebrated composers of the 20th century. His partnerships with lyricists Lorenz Hart (1895-1943) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) resulted in dozens of hit musicals for the stage and screen, from Babes in Arms to The Sound of Music. A published songwriter by the age of 17, Rodgers and Hart began collaborating in the 1920s. Between 1920 and 1943 they wrote dozens of musicals for the New York stage and Hollywood movies, including The Boys of Syracuse and Pal Joey. In 1943 Rodgers teamed with Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma!, a box office smash and a landmark in the history of musical theater. Rodgers and Hammerstein went on to write and produce hit musicals such as Carousel, State Fair, The King and I and The Sound of Music, all of which were adapted for the movies. After Hammerstein's death in 1960, Rodgers continued composing, sometimes writing his own lyrics. Rodgers was known for his catchy melodies and ability to incorporate other musical styles into popular tunes. Some of his songs, such as "My Funny Valentine" and "The Lady is a Tramp" have become jazz standards.

Rodgers also composed for television, winning an Emmy for the music of the documentary series Victory at Sea (1952).

Richard Rodgers

For more information on Richard Rodgers, visit Britannica.com.

Rodgers, Richard [Charles] (1902–79), composer. He was born in New York and educated at Columbia, where he wrote music for college shows. The first part of Rodgers's remarkable career was collaborating with lyricist Lorenz Hart on the songs and occasionally the books of imaginative musical comedies. Their work for Broadway was heard initially in Poor Little Ritz Girl (1920), but success did not begin to come until they wrote “Manhattan” for the first Garrick Gaieties (1925). Other musicals with Hart included Dearest Enemy (1925), Garrick Gaieties of 1926, The Girl Friend (1926), Peggy‐Ann (1926), Betsy (1926), A Connecticut Yankee (1927), Present Arms (1928), She's My Baby (1928), Chee‐Chee (1928), Heads Up! (1929), Spring Is Here (1929), Simple Simon (1930), America's Sweetheart (1931), Jumbo (1935), On Your Toes (1936), Babes in Arms (1937), I'd Rather Be Right (1937), I Married an Angel (1938), The Boys from Syracuse (1938), Too Many Girls (1939), Higher and Higher (1940), Pal Joey (1940), and By Jupiter (1942). After breaking with Hart he joined Oscar Hammerstein and largely abandoned musical comedy for the musical play. Their Oklahoma! (1943) revolutionized American operetta writing, just as their next success, Carousel (1945), explored new ways of integrating song and character and their disappointing Allegro (1947) experimented with new ways of storytelling. The subsequent Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals were South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), Me and Juliet (1953), Pipe Dream (1955), Flower Drum Song (1958), and The Sound of Music (1959). After Hammerstein's death, Rodgers's luck soured although he continued to compose fine music, most notably when he set his own lyrics to his melodies for No Strings (1962). Hs later scores, with various lyricists, were Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965), Two by Two (1970), Rex (1976), and I Remember Mama (1979). Rodgers sometimes co‐produced his shows and those by others, such as I Remember Mama (1944), Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Happy Birthday (1946), and John Loves Mary (1947). From the start Rodgers's music was both traditional and inventive. One notable point was his steady return to the waltz at a time when many composers neglected it. Perhaps his most remarkable effort in this style was “The Carousel Waltz.” Because of the types of musicals for which he was writing and because of his lyricist, his material with Hart tended to be lighter and jauntier. Working with Hammerstein, both his sentimental and humorous moments tended to become more heavy‐handed. But his gift for incomparable melody never deserted him, nor did his willingness to attempt musicals on fresh, challenging themes. Few theatre composers were more popular than Rodgers; his songs still are performed in various venues perhaps more than any of his contemporaries. His enticing use of melody and harmony, his endless variety, and his ability to capture a mood or an entire culture in a few notes are among the talents that make Rodgers one of the greatest musical artists America ever produced. Autobiography: Musical Stages, 1975; biographies: Richard Rodgers, William Hyland, 1998; Somewhere for Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers, Meryle Secrest, 2001.

(b Hammels Station, 28 June 1902; d New York, 30 Dec 1979). American composer. He studied at Columbia University (1919-21) and the Institute of Musical Art (1921-3). With Lorenz Hart, he aimed to use good poetry in place of the banal lyrics of current popular songs. Their association produced 30 stage musicals as well as films. On Hart's death in 1943 Rodgers formed a partnership with Oscar Hammerstein II which led to a series of musicals that enjoyed unprecedented success, from Oklahoma! (1943, which integrated song, dance and drama) to South Pacific (1949) and The Sound of Music (1959).

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Richard Charles Rodgers (1902-1979), American composer, wrote the music for over 50 stage and film musicals and helped make the American musical a legitimate art form.

When Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, and Dorothy Fields collaborated in 1925 on Dearest Enemy, "an American musical play" (as they called it), contributing respectively music, lyrics, and book, something new was added to the theatrical scene. Not only was the material original, charming, and witty, but the form and subject of the entertainment were distinctly unusual. Here was a play based on American history with unpredictable and pertinent musical sections. Rodgers and his lyricists, Hart and, later, Oscar Hammerstein II, were to repeat this sort of innovation on several occasions. Each occasion marked an important contribution to a more original, indigenous popular musical theater in the United States.

Richard Rodgers was born near Arverne, Long Island, New York, on June 28, 1902. His father was a successful physician and his mother, a well-trained amateur musician. Rodgers heard music in his home from earliest childhood and was regularly taken to the theater. He was especially delighted by the operettas of Victor Herbert and other popular composers. A little later he was inspired by the musicals of Jerome Kern, whose influence, Rodgers said, was "a deep and lasting one."

By the age of six Rodgers was playing the piano by ear and had begun receiving piano lessons. He attended secondary schools in New York. By the age of 14 he had written two songs in the popular vein (he was never interested in purely instrumental composition). His direction seemed fixed. Before he entered Columbia University in 1919, he had already written music for two amateur shows and had met Lorenz (Larry) Hart, a literate, amusing, somewhat driven creator of verse, with whom Rodgers would collaborate for the next 24 years. Their first published song was "Any Old Place with You" (1919), and hundreds followed. Rodgers left Columbia at the end of his second year to devote full time to musical studies at the Institute of Musical Art, where he spent another two years.

Collaboration with Hart

After working on amateur shows and on a few unsuccessful professional attempts, Rodgers and Hart won acclaim for their review Garrick Gaieties in 1925. Dearest Enemy, their second success, opened the same year. During the next decade they wrote three shows for the London stage and a number of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films. Though not all of them were successful, they were distinguished by a number of fine romantic ballads such as "My Heart Stood Still" (1927), "With a Song in My Heart" (1929), "Dancing on the Ceiling" (1930), and "Lover" (1932). Hart's lyrics always managed nicely to skirt sentimentality, and Rodgers matched them with tunes of grace and skill.

Among the nine stage shows written between 1935 and 1942 were several of Rodgers and Hart's most famous: Jumbo (1935); On Your Toes (1936), for which the distinguished Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine created the ballet Slaughter on Tenth Avenue; Babes in Arms (1937); The Boys from Syracuse (1938); and Pal Joey (1940). A number of the songs written during this time are among Rodgers and Hart's most durable: "There's a Small Hotel," "Where or When," "My Funny Valentine," "This Can't Be Love," and "The Lady Is a Tramp." These are sophisticated pieces which display a firm control of the medium.

Collaboration with Hammerstein

After Hart died in 1943, Rodgers entered a period of unprecedented success with lyricist Hammerstein. Of their 10 musicals, 5 were among the longest-running and biggest-grossing shows ever created for Broadway: Oklahoma (1943), Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959).

If the best work of Rodgers and Hart was marked by a considerable measure of wit and sophistication, the style of the Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration was dominated by a basic, almost folklike, simplicity. In many songs both music and words seem stripped to the barest essentials. Romantic sentiment is a major ingredient.

Through touring productions, film versions, and recordings, the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows have become known around the world. Songs that have become standards in the popular repertory include "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning," "People Will Say We're in Love," "If I Loved You," "You'll Never Walk Alone," "Some Enchanted Evening," "Hello, Young Lovers," and "Climb Every Mountain." After Hammerstein's death in 1960 Rodgers for the first time served as his own lyricist for the score of No Strings (1962).

Rodgers's long association with the popular musical theater was an important one. His best projects were aimed at giving the musical play an ever more natural American expression. Oklahoma, especially, brought an engaging simplicity and earthiness to the form. On many occasions his choice of subject matter was unconventional, involving certain characters, situations, and themes of a seriousness seldom encountered previously in musical comedy. His work enriched and broadened a genre once regarded as little more than frivolous entertainment and helped make it into an authentic American art form.

Rodgers' death on December 30, 1979 didn't stop the popularity of his musical works, which enjoyed numerous revivals. Vintage original cast reissues and contemporary recordings, movies and videos, Broadway and community playhouse productions and even illustrated books abounded. They became the medium through which the timeless works credited with launching the 20th Century musical continued to exist.

Rodgers' shows didn't seem to lose dramatic impact. Their stories remained vividly current in South Pacific, encompassing the uncertainties of its World War II setting and The King and I, soon after, that began to deal with racism and the despotism of absolute authority.

Since music had to be hand-copied during most of Rodgers' lifetime, the musical scores from different productions did not always agree. Although there are some early recordings to follow for authenticity, it still left room for changes in interpretation or even omission of particular numbers during performances.

The original shows were lavished with honors, from an Academy Award for best song (It Might as Well be Spring, 1945 from State Fair) to another one 10 years later for best score for Oklahoma!. Three shows, South Pacific (1949); The King and I (1951); and The Sound of Music (1959) won Tony Awards for "Best Musical."

Later performances continued to bring notoriety and additional awards as top stars such as Julie Andrews and Patti LuPone starred in reissues and revivals. Rodgers himself was featured in one collection of vignettes on video in a scene of him conducting an orchestra on the fabled Ed Sullivan Show.

One of the biggest breakthroughs in perpetuating Rodgers' work was the transfer of a superior 1954 original movie of Oklahoma! to videotape. It surpassed a same-cast, second filming of inherently poorer quality and performance that had circulated for years. It took until 1994 when equipment finally was developed to transfer the "original edition" defunct Todd-AO process onto video for mass distribution.

Further Reading

David Ewen, Richard Rodgers (1957), a laudatory full-scale biography which contains lists of Rodgers's stage and film works, is quite comprehensive, although not without minor errors. Deems Taylor, Some Enchanted Evenings (1953), is a chatty, informal account of the Hammerstein collaboration and contains some musical analysis of Rodgers's songs and has numerous photographs. See also Stanley Green, The Rodgers and Hammerstein Story (1963). For additional information, see also Publisher's Weekly (July 18, 1994); Entertainment Weekly (January 20, 1995 and December 23, 1994); and Newsweek (May 15, 1995).

(1902-1979)

1936	On Your Toes. In this innovative musical a dancer gets involved with both a Russian ballet company and gangsters. It features choreography by George Balanchine (1904-1983) and his celebrated ballet-within-the-play, "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue," set in a sleazy West Side bar.
1938	The Boys from Syracuse. Considered the first musical based on a classic, this Rodgers and Hart collaboration, with book by George Abbott, is derived from Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors.
1943	Oklahoma! The landmark musical, based on the folk comedy Green Grow the Lilacs (1931) by Lynn Riggs, with choreography by Agnes De Mille, opens on Broadway. It wins a special Pulitzer Prize and is consistently cited for transforming the American musical by successfully blending music and dance into its plot.
1945	Carousel. The writing team follows the exuberant Oklahoma! with a more somber musical drama based on Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár's Liliom (1909). Relocated in Maine, it concerns the tragic consequence of a young girl's love for a carnival roustabout. Agnes De Mille choreographs the production.
1951	The King and I. The musical, based on Margaret Landon's novel Anna and the King of Siam (1943), transports its audience to nineteenth-century Siam, where a Welsh schoolteacher attempts to instruct the children of the imperious king. It is the final role for actress Gertrude Lawrence, who died during its run, and the star-making role for Yul Brynner, who would continue to perform the role of the king until his death in 1985. The popular musical features a lengthy Siamese ballet version of Uncle Tom's Cabin, choreographed by Jerome Robbins.

A twentieth-century American popular composer. He is known for writing the music to a long succession of musical comedies, including Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. In all these musicals, the spoken dialogue and lyrics were written by Oscar Hammerstein II.

• Born: June 28, 1902, New York, NY
• Died: December 30, 1979, New York, NY
• Active: '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s
• Genres: Soundtrack
• Instrument: Composer, Songwriter
• Representative Albums: "Victory at Sea, Vol. 2", "Victory at Sea, Vol. 3", "Victory at Sea, Vol. 1"
• Representative Songs: "Some Enchanted Evening", "My Funny Valentine", "The Blue Room"

Biography

Richard Rodgers was the most successful composer of popular music for the theater in the 20th century. Over the course of a 60-year career, he wrote the song scores for 42 musicals staged on Broadway or in the West End, as well as 11 movie musicals and two television musicals (not counting numerous film and TV adaptations of his stage productions), along with a few instrumental works. Although many of his songs became popular hits in sheet music and on records, he never wrote music independent from some dramatic context. In addition to composing, he also occasionally collaborated on librettos for his shows and served as a producer for them. His work won him Pulitzer Prizes, Tony Awards, Grammy Awards, and an Academy Award. For most of his career, he worked exclusively with one of two lyricists, Lorenz Hart (from 1919 to 1943) or Oscar Hammerstein II (from 1943 to 1960). His 38 professional shows and films with Hart are remembered primarily for the individual songs that came out of them, including "Manhattan," "Blue Moon," "It's Easy to Remember," "Soon," and "There's a Small Hotel," all of which were recorded for major hits. For the 11 productions with Hammerstein (nine stage musicals, one movie musical, and one television musical), it's the works themselves that remain memorable, particularly Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music, each of which produced an original-cast and/or soundtrack album that topped the charts. Rodgers adapted his writing style to each partner. With Hart, who usually wrote the lyrics after Rodgers had composed the tune, he wrote catchy songs that matched his partner's wit and wordplay, resulting in compositions that attracted jazz musicians as well as pop singers. With Hammerstein, who usually wrote the words first, he created sweeping, long-lined melodies that sometimes recalled operetta. (He once said that he often met people who thought that the Rodgers of Rodgers & Hart was a different person from the Rodgers of Rodgers & Hammerstein, and he wasn't entirely sure they were wrong.) After Hammerstein's death, Rodgers continued to work for another 19 years -- right up to his own death, in fact -- sometimes collaborating with new lyricists, but frequently writing both words and music by himself, and some of his more successful works late in life were the ones he did alone.

Rodgers was born into an upper-middle-class family in New York; his father, William Abraham Rodgers, was a physician. Dr. Rodgers and his wife, Mamie (Levy) Rodgers, frequently attended Broadway musicals and would buy the scores of the shows to sing and play at home. Rodgers early on showed an interest in music, picking out melodies on the piano. By the age of nine, he was writing them himself. The first complete song he recalled writing was "Campfire Days," a tribute the summer camp he attended in 1916. His older brother Mortimer attended nearby Columbia University, and on March 28, 1917, still 14 years old, Rodgers attended the Columbia Varsity Show, Home, James, after which his brother introduced him to Oscar Hammerstein II, then a Columbia law student, who had written the book and lyrics for the show and appeared in it. (Lorenz Hart, also a Columbia student and also a participant in the show, did not meet Rodgers on this occasion.)

Rodgers' brother also provided him the opportunity to write the music for his first show. Mortimer Rodgers belonged to the Akron Club, an athletic organization, which decided to raise money to buy cigarettes for American troops fighting in World War I and to that end put on a musical revue. None of the members were musically inclined, however, so Rodgers was recruited to write the tunes, and the show, One Minute Please, gave one performance at the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel on December 29, 1917. A little over a year later, in the late winter of 1919, while working on a second benefit show, Up Stage and Down (also mounted for one performance, at the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on March 8, 1919), Rodgers finally was introduced to Lorenz Hart, who was then adapting German plays into English for the Schubert theatrical organization; the two agreed to form a songwriting partnership. Hart directed a revised version of Up Stage and Down called Twinkling Eyes that played for one performance in a Broadway theater on May 18, 1919, although he did not write any of the songs, many of which had lyrics by Rodgers, along with three contributed by Hammerstein (who was already launched on a professional career).

Rodgers & Hart scored an early success when they persuaded veteran comic actor and producer Lew Fields to interpolate one of their songs, "Any Old Place With You," into his show A Lonely Romeo in the late summer of 1919, Rodgers' first composition to be heard in a regular Broadway show. Meanwhile, the budding composer was still only 17 years old, and in the fall of 1919 he began taking extension courses at Columbia, making him a freshman and eligible to write the varsity show, which he admitted was his only reason for going to the college. The songs he wrote for the show, Fly With Me (which had four performances starting on March 24, 1920), convinced Fields to let Rodgers & Hart write the songs for his next Broadway musical, Poor Little Ritz Girl. Fields later hedged his bet and replaced half of the songs with ones by Sigmund Romberg and Alex Gerber, but Rodgers & Hart still could claim they had had their first show on Broadway when the production opened for a 93-performance run on July 28, 1920.

Up to this point, the career of the 18-year-old Rodgers seemed to be moving very fast; it then slowed down considerably. He again wrote the Columbia Varsity Show, You'll Never Know, directed by Hammerstein and others, which played four performances starting on April 20, 1921. But after that he left Columbia and enrolled at the Institute of Musical Art (later renamed Juilliard) to concentrate on music, staying until June 1923. During this period, he and Hart wrote songs for a number of amateur shows, but their next professional effort came when they, along with Lew Fields' son Herbert, wrote a play, The Melody Man, under the pseudonym Herbert Richard Lorenz, along with a couple of songs for it, and Lew Fields produced it starting on May 13, 1924, for 56 performances. At this point, finished with his education and having reached the age of 23, Rodgers considered giving up music as a career. He had been offered a job as a salesman and was about to accept it when the Theatre Guild asked him and Hart to write the songs for another benefit show, a musical revue called The Garrick Gaieties. The show played its scheduled two performances on May 17, 1925, but proved so popular that it was given a regular commercial run, eventually amounting to 161 performances, Rodgers & Hart's first hit show. Their score produced two song hits, as well. "Manhattan" was given popular instrumental recordings by the Knickerbockers and Paul Whiteman's orchestra. The Knickerbockers also recorded "Sentimental Me," as did the Regent Club Orchestra led by pianists Victor Arden and Phil Ohman. (Rodgers would have been more interested in the success of these songs in sheet music sales, however. Like such peers as Jerome Kern and Cole Porter, he much preferred to have his songs performed exactly as they had been written for the stage, not as they were rearranged by dance bands or reinterpreted by pop singers on records, even though those recordings helped popularize his work.)

The success of The Garrick Gaieties launched Rodgers & Hart. Over the next six years, they mounted a remarkable 16 additional shows in New York and London, all but three of which ran at least 100 performances each, a benchmark of profitability in the period. With the exception of 1927's A Connecticut Yankee, none proved memorable as shows, but they provided a steady stream of songs that produced hit recordings and went on to become standards: from Dearest Enemy (1925), "Here in My Arms," recorded instrumentally by the orchestras of Leo Reisman and Jack Shilkret; from The Girl Friend (1926), the title song, recorded by George Olsen & His Orchestra, and "The Blue Room," recorded vocally by the Revelers and instrumentally by Sam Lanin & His Orchestra and the Melody Sheiks, and revived for a chart entry in 1949 by Perry Como, who sang it in the Rodgers & Hart film biography Words and Music; from the second edition of The Garrick Gaieties (1926), "Mountain Greenery," recorded instrumentally by the orchestra of Roger Wolfe Kahn; from Peggy-Ann (1926), "Where's That Rainbow?," recorded by Olsen, and "A Tree in the Park," recorded by Helen Morgan and by Frank Black's orchestra; from A Connecticut Yankee (1927), "Thou Swell," recorded by the Broadway Nitelites, and "My Heart Stood Still" (originally heard in the London revue One Dam Thing After Another), recorded by Olsen, the Broadway Nitelites, and Paul Whiteman; from Present Arms (1928), "You Took Advantage of Me," recorded by Whiteman, and "Do I Hear You Saying 'I Love You'?," recorded by the team of Vaughn DeLeath and Frank Harris; from Spring Is Here (1929), "With a Song in My Heart," recorded by Reisman and by James Melton; from Simple Simon (1930), "Ten Cents a Dance," recorded by Ruth Etting, who introduced it on-stage; from Ever Green (1930), "Dancing on the Ceiling," recorded by Jack Hylton & His Orchestra; and from America's Sweetheart (1931), "I've Got Five Dollars," recorded by the orchestras of Emil Coleman and Ben Pollack.

The introduction of sound in movies in 1927 led to an interest in film musicals, and several of Rodgers & Hart's shows were adapted as motion pictures, often much altered. Spring Is Here, Leathernecking (based on Present Arms), and Heads Up all opened as movies in 1930. Not surprisingly, the film studios became interested in hiring songwriters to write musicals directly for the screen. At the same time, the onset of the Depression in late 1929 made it more difficult to mount shows on Broadway. Starting in 1930, Rodgers & Hart began working regularly in Hollywood, and they did not have a new musical on Broadway for nearly five years between 1931 and 1935. (Meanwhile, Rodgers married Dorothy Feiner on March 5, 1930. Their first daughter, Mary, went on to become a musical theater composer, as did her son, Adam Guettel.) Rodgers & Hart signed a contract with Warner Bros., but eventually worked for several of the movie studios. Their first major film was The Hot Heiress, released in March 1931, but their first real success in the movies came with Love Me Tonight, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, which opened in August 1932 and featured the song hits "Love Me Tonight" (recorded by Bing Crosby and by George Olsen), "Lover" (recorded by Paul Whiteman, Guy Lombardo, and Greta Keller, and revived for a Top Ten hit by Peggy Lee in 1952), "Isn't It Romantic?" (recorded by Harold Stern & His Orchestra), and "Mimi" (recorded by Chevalier and by Frank Crumit with the Paul Biese Trio). Al Jolson, who starred in Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (February 1933), made a recording of the Rodgers & Hart title song. Their last significant success in Hollywood came the film Mississippi, starring Crosby and released in April 1935. "Soon," which Crosby recorded, was number one on the first broadcast of the radio series Your Hit Parade on April 20, 1935, and "It's Easy to Remember," also recorded by Crosby, was on the list as well.

One other major Rodgers & Hart song dates from their Hollywood period. They wrote a song called "Prayer" for the film Hollywood Revue, but it was cut before release. With a new set of lyrics, it became "The Bad in Every Man," sung by Shirley Ross in Manhattan Melodrama in 1934. Hart then wrote yet another lyric, and it was published independently as "Blue Moon," earning successful recordings by Glen Gray & the Casa Loma Orchestra, Benny Goodman & His Orchestra, and Al Bowlly. After Mel Tormé sang it in Words and Music, he recorded it for a chart entry in 1949, as did Billy Eckstine. Elvis Presley had a chart entry with it in 1956, and in 1961 the Marcels took a doo wop treatment to number one, followed by charting covers by Herb Lance and the Ventures.

Rodgers became disenchanted with the lax work ethic and the lowly status of songwriters in Hollywood, and he and Hart returned to New York, where they re-established themselves with their score for the stage extravaganza Jumbo. Opening November 16, 1935, it ran 233 performances, and such songs as "Little Girl Blue," "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World," and "My Romance" might have become hits at the time if the producer had not placed a ban on radio performances of them in a misguided attempt to boost the box office. (That producer had his name over the title when Billy Rose's Jumbo was released as a film starring Doris Day in 1962, accompanied by a soundtrack album that reached number 33 in the charts.) Over the next seven years, Rodgers & Hart put nine new musicals on Broadway, of which eight ran for at least 235 performances each, enough to ensure a profit. These shows from the team's second phase of theatrical work tend to be somewhat better known for themselves, especially because many were adapted as popular motion pictures. Increasingly, too, the songwriters also served as librettists or producers of the shows. On Your Toes (1936), with a book by Rodgers, Hart, and George Abbott, included "There's a Small Hotel," which was recorded by Hal Kemp & His Orchestra and had ten weeks in the hit parade, as well as "Glad to Be Unhappy," revived for a Top 40 hit by the Mamas & the Papas in 1967. It also featured a ballet, "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue," and when this was recreated in Words and Music in 1948, it became popular, with chart recordings by Lennie Hayton & the M-G-M Studio Orchestra (excerpted from the soundtrack) in 1949, Ray Anthony in 1952, and the Ventures in 1964. Babes in Arms (1937), with a book by Rodgers & Hart, was full of songs that became standards, among them "I Wish I Were in Love Again," "The Lady Is a Tramp," and "My Funny Valentine," as well as "Where or When," which Dion & the Belmonts revived for a Top Ten hit in 1960 and the Lettermen charted with in 1963. The title song from I Married an Angel (May 1938), another show with a Rodgers & Hart libretto, was recorded by Larry Clinton & His Orchestra and spent seven weeks in the hit parade. The Boys From Syracuse (November 1938) included "This Can't Be Love," recorded by Benny Goodman, and spent ten weeks in the hit parade. Too Many Girls (1939) included "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," recorded by Goodman, with seven weeks in the hit parade. A dispute between the songwriters' licensing agency ASCAP and the radio networks probably prevented any of the songs from Pal Joey (1940) from being hits at the time. But "Bewitched" belatedly scored in 1950 with no less than nine chart recordings, five of which reached the Top Ten, the most successful being the one by Bill Snyder & His Orchestra. Columbia Records' 1950 studio-cast recording of the score helped lead to a Broadway revival that was even more successful than the original production. Frank Sinatra starred in a movie version in 1957, resulting in a number two soundtrack album.

By the late '30s, Rodgers was finding Hart more and more difficult to work with. An alcoholic, the lyricist became increasingly unreliable to the point that Rodgers sometimes had to finish the words to songs himself, and he was only able to get Hart to work on the team's 1942 musical By Jupiter by taking a room in the hospital where Hart was recovering from alcohol-related illness. Rodgers had been approached by the Theatre Guild with an offer to adapt the play Green Grow the Lilacs, about life in the Indian Territory at the turn of the century, into a musical. Hart was not interested in such homespun subject matter, and the two agreed to work with outside collaborators for the first time since in 20 years. Hart took up projects with other composers, none of which came to fruition. Rodgers called Hammerstein, who agreed to write the book and lyrics for the show that became Oklahoma!

Oklahoma!, which opened on Broadway on March 31, 1943, was a milestone in several respects. First, it was wildly successful, running for more than five years, a total of 2,212 performances, which made it the most popular stage musical in Broadway history up to that time. One result of that success was that it changed expectations about musicals, many of which had been loosely plotted combinations of songs and dances up to that time. Oklahoma! was not the first "integrated" musical in which the songs are written in character and serve to advance the plot, but its success made such musicals the dominant style for Broadway thereafter. Oklahoma! also revolutionized the record business when Rodgers & Hammerstein agreed to let Decca Records record the original cast on an album of the show's songs. In its initial release as a set of 78s, that album sold half a million copies; it was thought to have sold another two million by 1960. Alfred Drake, who starred in the show, reached the charts with his recording of "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top," excerpted from the cast album. Pop singers were quick to cover other songs: "People Will Say We're in Love" was given three chart recordings, two of which reached the Top Ten, a duet by Bing Crosby and Trudy Erwin, and a solo version by Frank Sinatra; Crosby and Erwin also bested Sinatra on "Oh! What a Beautiful Mornin'," getting to number five as he peaked at 15; and "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" was a Top Ten hit for Hildegarde with Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians.

The success of Oklahoma! did not immediately spell the end of Rodgers & Hart and the establishment of Rodgers & Hammerstein. Rather, Rodgers went back to working with Hart on a revised version of A Connecticut Yankee, while Hammerstein wrote an English-language, musical-theater adaptation of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen. But five days after A Connecticut Yankee's opening on November 17, 1943, Hart died of pneumonia. After the successful opening of Hammerstein's Carmen Jones, with Oklahoma! still doing sellout business, Rodgers proposed making their partnership permanent. Their next musical was Carousel, based on Liliom, a Hungarian play by Ferenc Molnár that had been translated by Hart. Opening on April 19, 1945, it ran 890 performances, with a cast album that spent six weeks at number one on Billboard magazine's newly created album chart. "If I Loved You" was given four Top Ten recordings, the most successful by Perry Como (with a Top 40 chart revival by Chad & Jeremy in 1965), while Frank Sinatra recorded "You'll Never Walk Alone" for a Top Ten hit. (There were four chart revivals in the 1960s, the most successful of which was Patti LaBelle & Her Bluebelles' Top 40 hit in 1964.) Rodgers & Hammerstein then accepted an offer to write songs for a musical remake of the film State Fair. Released in August 1945, the movie boasted six songs, among them the Academy Award-winning "It Might as Well Be Spring," of which there were three Top Ten recordings, the most successful by bandleader Sammy Kaye. There were also three chart recordings of "That's for Me," two in the Top Ten, with Jo Stafford having the most popular one. Dick Haymes, who appeared in the film, charted with both songs and also recorded his own State Fair solo album, which hit number one. (Much later, the film was adapted into a stage musical that reached Broadway in 1996.) Returning to Broadway, Rodgers & Hammerstein next launched Allegro (October 10, 1947), their first commercial disappointment, although it had a run of 315 performances and "So Far" brought three chart recordings, with one, Frank Sinatra's, making the Top Ten. In December 1948, Words and Music opened in movie theaters. Its biography of Rodgers & Hart was largely fictionalized, but it was full of the songwriters' classic songs, and the soundtrack album featuring Mickey Rooney (who played Hart), Judy Garland, Lena Horne, and others, topped the charts for six weeks.

Rodgers & Hammerstein bounced back from Allegro with South Pacific (April 7, 1949), based on two stories in James Michener's bestseller Tales of the South Pacific and starring Broadway veteran Mary Martin and opera star Ezio Pinza. Winning the Tony Award for best musical, the show ran 1,925 performances, second at the time only to Oklahoma!, and the cast album spent a record 69 weeks at number one, reportedly selling nearly three million copies by 1963. It also produced several pop hits: "Bali Ha'i" (five chart recordings, two in the Top Ten, with Perry Como in the lead), "Some Enchanted Evening" (seven chart recordings, six in the Top Ten, with Como hitting number one, plus a Top 40 revival by Jay & the Americans in 1965 and a chart entry by Jane Olivor in 1977), and "A Wonderful Guy" (four chart recordings, led by Margaret Whiting). The King and I (March 29, 1951), Rodgers & Hammerstein's fifth show, was their third to have more than a thousand performances, 1,246 to be exact, and their second Tony Award winner for best musical. Although the cast album stopped at number two in the charts, the score included "We Kiss in a Shadow," taken into the charts by Sinatra as "We Kissed in a Shadow," along with such future standards as "Hello, Young Lovers," which Paul Anka revived for a Top 40 hit in 1960; the instrumental "March of the Siamese Children," a chart entry for Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen in 1962; and "I Have Dreamed," a chart record for Chad & Jeremy in 1965.

Rodgers had taken occasional assignments to write purely instrumental music over the years, but his most ambitious was the score for the documentary television series Victory at Sea, telling the story of the naval battles of World War II, broadcast weekly over NBC in 26 half-hour installments from December 26, 1952, to April 6, 1953. After it was edited and released as a feature film, a soundtrack album became a Top Ten hit in 1954, followed by equally successful successors in 1958 and 1961.

Rodgers & Hammerstein worked regularly through the rest of the 1950s, generally without matching the success of their previous shows on-stage, although films of those shows were massively popular. Their next musical, Me and Juliet (May 28, 1953) had a disappointing 358-performance run, but the cast album reached number two and "No Other Love" became a number one hit for Perry Como. The first of several big-budget film versions of Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals, Oklahoma! was released in October 1955, accompanied by a soundtrack album that spent four weeks at number one and sold two million copies. In contrast, the next of the team's stage shows, Pipe Dream (November 13, 1955), was their least successful, with a run of only 246 performances, although Como hit number 11 with "All at Once You Love Her" and Eddie Fisher reached number 20 with "Everybody's Got a Home but Me," beating out a competing chart version by Roy Hamilton. Carousel reached the screen in February 1956, along with its soundtrack LP, which hit number two and sold a million copies, and The King and I followed in July, its soundtrack hitting number one and going gold, with sales eventually passing the one-million mark. Ella Fitzgerald hit the charts with her double LP Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Song Book in March 1957, reaching number 11. Rodgers & Hammerstein turned to television, writing their own version of Cinderella, which was broadcast live on CBS March 31, 1957, starring Julie Andrews, followed by a charting album and charting cover of "Do I Love You (Because You're Beautiful)" by Vic Damone. (There were subsequent versions in 1965 and 1997.) Then came the South Pacific movie in March 1958, accompanied by a soundtrack that spent 31 weeks at number one. Both the film and LP were the year's most successful, and the album reportedly sold eight million copies worldwide. Rodgers made a rare appearance as a recording artist himself in 1958, accompanying Mary Martin at the piano for the LP Mary Martin Sings, Richard Rodgers Plays.

Rodgers & Hammerstein's eighth stage musical, Flower Drum Song (December 1, 1958) was their biggest success in seven years, running 601 performances, with a number one, gold-selling cast album that eventually sold over a million copies worldwide. (The movie version that followed two years later produced a soundtrack that hit number 15.) But the duo scored their last great success with The Sound of Music (November 16, 1959), again starring Mary Martin. It tied for the Tony Award for best musical and ran 1,443 performances, with a Grammy-winning cast album that spent 16 weeks at number one (with a reported sale of over two million copies). The score included such favorites as "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" (which produced chart recordings for Tony Bennett in 1960 and the Hesitations in 1968), "The Sound of Music" (a chart entry for Patti Page), "Do-Re-Mi" (a chart entry for choral leader Mitch Miller who employed the children from the cast on the recording), and "My Favorite Things" (a Christmastime chart entry for Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass in an instrumental recording that helped establish it as a holiday classic). But on August 23, 1960, the Rodgers & Hammerstein team ended when Hammerstein died of cancer. 1

Rodgers, then 58 years old, initially went on alone while seeking another collaborator. His music was heard in the documentary television series Winston Churchill - The Valiant Years, running from November 27, 1960, to May 21, 1961. Then he turned his attention to Broadway, writing both words and music for No Strings (March 15, 1962). The show ran a profitable 580 performances and produced a Top Ten cast album that won a Grammy Award, while "The Sweetest Sounds" was nominated for the Grammy for Song of the Year. He also wrote new songs for a 1962 remake of State Fair starring Pat Boone, Ann-Margret, and Bobby Darin. The soundtrack album reached number 12. Also in 1962, Rodgers was appointed president and producing director of the Music Theater of Lincoln Center, an organization devoted to mounting limited-run summer revivals of great musicals in the New York State Theater at the recently constructed Lincoln Center for the Arts complex in New York. From 1964 to 1969, he put on a series of shows including revivals of his own works and such classics as Annie Get Your Gun and Show Boat.

Rodgers' last great triumph came in March 1965 with the opening of the film version of The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews. He wrote two new songs ("I Have Confidence" and "Something Good") for the film, which went on to best Gone with the Wind as the highest grossing motion picture in history up to that time, with a soundtrack that hit number one and went gold, reportedly selling seven million copies worldwide. The same month brought a new Rodgers musical, Do I Hear a Waltz?, for which he enlisted Stephen Sondheim (West Side Story, Gypsy) as lyricist. But the show was a disappointment, running only 220 performances, with a cast album that barely reached the Top 100. Another generation became aware of Rodgers' early work with The Supremes Sing Rodgers & Hart, which entered the charts in June 1967 and rose to number 20. Rodgers returned to writing by himself for a television musical version of George Bernard Shaw's play Androcles and the Lion starring Noël Coward that aired in November 1967. His last profitable musical was Two by Two, which paired him with lyricist Martin Charnin (later known for Annie) and starred Danny Kaye; it ran 343 performances after opening November 10, 1970. Rex (1976), written with Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof) was a flop, but Rodgers, by now in his 70s, continued to work. I Remember Mama, his final musical, with lyrics by Charnin, opened May 31, 1979, and ran 108 performances, until September 2, 1979. Four months later, Rodgers died of heart failure at age 77.

Well into the 21st century, interest in Rodgers' music showed no signs of dying out, however. On the contrary, his songs with Hart continued to form a basic vocabulary (along with his peers, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Cole Porter) for jazz musicians and traditional pop singers, while his musicals with Hammerstein were revived frequently on stages from Broadway to grade schools. (Even some of the Rodgers & Hart musicals enjoyed revivals, albeit with drastically revised librettos and numerous song interpolations.) As his centenary passed in 2002, Rodgers' reputation as the pre-eminent composer for the American musical theater seemed secure. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide

Command Performance Buy this CD

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Victory at Sea [Original Television Soundtrack] Buy this CD

Golden Age of Light Music: Great Light Orchestras Salute Richard Rogers Buy this CD

• Born: Jun 28, 1902 in New York, New York
• Died: Dec 30, 1979 in New York, New York
• Occupation: Writer
• Active: '30s-'60s
• Major Genres: Musical, Comedy
• Career Highlights: The Sound of Music, The King and I, South Pacific
• First Major Screen Credit: Heads Up (1930)

Biography

American composer/producer Richard Rodgers had his first song published at 17; one year later, he wrote his first stage musical. An alumnus of Juilliard and Columbia University, Rodgers came to critical prominence with the many '20s editions of The Garrick Gaieties, in which Rodgers and his lyricist collaborator Lorenz Hart were responsible for such instant hits as "Mountain Greenery" and "I'll Take Manhattan". Though Hart was erratic and self-destructive, Rodgers stuck with the talented wordsmith through such Broadway blockbusters of the '20s, '30s and '40s as The Connecticut Yankee, Babes in Arms, On Your Toes (which contained Rodger's first true "concert piece," "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue") and Pal Joey. Rodgers and Hart travelled to Hollywood in 1929, where after guest-starring in the short subject The Melody Makers they hunkered down to compose such favorites as "Mimi," "Lover" and "Isn't it Romantic?" (this last song became virtually the signature theme of Paramount Pictures, popping up in everything from Jerry Lewis movies to Betty Boop cartoons). When he discovered that the head of Paramount didn't even know his name, Rodgers decided to leave Hollywood before he became just another anonymous studio hack. In 1942, Rodgers and Hart planned to write a musical version of Lynn Riggs' Green Grow the Lilacs, but Hart was in no condition to work (he died shortly afterward). Rodgers' new partner was Oscar Hammerstein Jr.: their version of Green Grow the Lilacs was Oklahoma, and the rest, as they say, is history. Rodgers and Hammerstein returned to Hollywood in 1955 with their own production company, overseeing the movie adaptations of Oklahoma (1955) and South Pacific (1958); three years earlier, R and H played cameo roles in the New York-filmed Main Street to Broadway, for which they contributed one forgettable number. After Hammerstein's death in 1960, Rodgers wrote both music and lyrics for the 1961 Broadway production No Strings; previous solo assignments for Rodgers included the scores for the TV documentary series Victory at Sea (1952) and Winston Churchill (1960). The 1965 screen adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music, which included two new songs written by Richard Rodgers alone, ended up as the most profitable movie musical of all time. Though he never wrote anything directly for the screen after 1965, Richard Rodgers was well represented in films by his previous body of work, including filmizations of On Your Toes (1936) Babes in Arms (1939) Pal Joey (1957) and all but three of the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage collaborations. In 1948, MGM produced a fanciful biopic of Rodgers and Hart titled Words and Music, wherein Charles Drake's colorless interpretation of Richard Rodgers was virtually muscled off the screen by Mickey Rooneys high-octane portrayal of Lorenz Hart. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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