Bennett, Robert Russell (1894–1981), orchestrator. He was born into a musical family and learned harmony, counterpoint, and composition under Carl Busch before migrating to New York from his native Kansas City, Missouri, in 1916 and getting work as a copyist with Schirmer, Inc. His first orchestrations were heard in Hitchy Koo, 1919. Among the more than three hundred musicals Bennett orchestrated were Rose‐Marie (1924), Show Boat (1927), Of Thee I Sing (1931), Music in the Air (1932), Anything Goes (1934), Oklahoma! (1943), Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Kiss Me, Kate (1948), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), My Fair Lady (1956), The Sound of Music (1959), and Camelot (1960). Bennett was the leading orchestrator of his day, and his rich, well‐balanced arrangements established the Broadway musical “sound” for the 1940s, 1950s, and much of the 1960s.

The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.