Richard Rodgers

In the twentieth century no one surpassed Richard Rodgers in the creation of widely appealing music for the stage. Across six decades he supplied the complete scores for forty-two Broadway and West End productions, eleven Hollywood musicals, and two original television musicals, not including the numerous screen and small-screen versions of his stage works, in addition to several instrumental pieces. Although countless individual numbers became standards in printed music and on discs, he composed exclusively within a dramatic framework. He also contributed libretto material on occasion and took on producing duties for several of his own projects. These efforts earned him Pulitzer Prizes, Tony Awards, Grammy Awards, and an Academy Award. For the bulk of his professional life he maintained exclusive partnerships with two lyricists, Lorenz Hart between 1919 and 1943 and Oscar Hammerstein II between 1943 and 1960. The thirty-eight shows and films written with Hart are chiefly recalled today through standout songs such as “Manhattan,” “Blue Moon,” “It’s Easy to Remember,” “Soon,” and “There’s a Small Hotel,” each of which achieved major commercial recordings. By contrast, the eleven Hammerstein collaborations—nine stage musicals, one film musical, and one television musical—remain memorable as complete productions, above all Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music, every one of which generated an original-cast or soundtrack album that reached the top of the charts.

Rodgers adjusted his compositional approach to suit each collaborator. Working with Hart, who typically supplied words after the music existed, he produced tuneful numbers that reflected his partner’s verbal dexterity and thereby appealed to both jazz players and popular vocalists. With Hammerstein, who usually supplied lyrics first, he fashioned expansive, arching melodies occasionally reminiscent of operetta. He once remarked that he frequently encountered listeners who believed the Rodgers of Rodgers & Hart was an entirely separate individual from the Rodgers of Rodgers & Hammerstein, and he was not altogether certain they were mistaken. Following Hammerstein’s death he remained active for another nineteen years, continuing until his own passing, sometimes teaming with fresh lyricists yet often supplying both words and music himself; several of his later successes were among those solo efforts.

Born into an affluent New York household, Rodgers was the son of physician William Abraham Rodgers. Dr. Rodgers and his wife Mamie (Levy) Rodgers regularly attended Broadway musicals and purchased sheet-music scores to perform at home. The future composer displayed an early fascination with music, reproducing melodies on the piano; by age nine he was inventing his own. The earliest complete number he remembered composing was “Campfire Days,” written in tribute to the summer camp he attended in 1916. His brother Mortimer studied at nearby Columbia University, and on 28 March 1917, still only fourteen, Rodgers attended the Columbia Varsity Show Home, James. After the performance Mortimer introduced him to Oscar Hammerstein II, then a Columbia law student who had authored the book and lyrics and appeared onstage. Lorenz Hart, likewise a Columbia student and contributor to the revue, did not meet Rodgers that evening.

Mortimer Rodgers also arranged his younger brother’s first opportunity to score a complete show. As a member of the Akron Club, an athletic group raising funds to purchase cigarettes for American soldiers in World War I, Mortimer helped organize a musical revue. Lacking musical talent among its ranks, the club enlisted Richard Rodgers to write the songs. The resulting production, One Minute Please, received a single performance at the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel on 29 December 1917. Slightly more than a year later, while preparing another benefit revue, Up Stage and Down—staged once at the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on 8 March 1919—Rodgers was finally introduced to Lorenz Hart, then engaged in adapting German plays for the Shubert organization. The two immediately decided to form a songwriting team. Hart later staged a revised edition titled Twinkling Eyes for one performance in a Broadway theater on 18 May 1919, although he supplied none of the songs; many carried lyrics by Rodgers, with three additional contributions from Hammerstein, who had already embarked on a professional career.

Rodgers & Hart secured an early breakthrough by convincing veteran comic actor and producer Lew Fields to insert one of their numbers, “Any Old Place With You,” into his production A Lonely Romeo during the summer of 1919, marking Rodgers’ debut composition in a regular Broadway run. Still only seventeen, the composer enrolled in extension courses at Columbia that autumn, thereby qualifying as a freshman and gaining eligibility to write the varsity show, which he later admitted was his sole motivation for attending. The resulting score for Fly With Me, presented in four performances beginning 24 March 1920, persuaded Fields to commission Rodgers & Hart for his next Broadway musical, Poor Little Ritz Girl. Fields later substituted roughly half the songs with contributions from Sigmund Romberg and Alex Gerber, yet Rodgers & Hart could still claim their first Broadway credit when the show opened for a ninety-three-performance engagement on 28 July 1920.

The momentum of the eighteen-year-old composer’s career then slackened. He again supplied the Columbia Varsity Show You’ll Never Know, staged under Hammerstein’s direction for four performances beginning 20 April 1921. Afterward he withdrew from Columbia and enrolled at the Institute of Musical Art (subsequently renamed Juilliard), remaining until June 1923. During this interval he and Hart contributed songs to several amateur productions. Their next professional venture arrived when they joined Lew Fields’ son Herbert to write the play The Melody Man under the collective pseudonym Herbert Richard Lorenz, along with a pair of songs; Lew Fields produced it for fifty-six performances beginning 13 May 1924. At twenty-three and finished with formal education, Rodgers contemplated abandoning music professionally. Offered a sales position he was on the verge of accepting when the Theatre Guild invited him and Hart to compose for another benefit revue, The Garrick Gaieties. The scheduled pair of performances on 17 May 1925 proved so successful that the production transferred to a commercial run totaling 161 showings, Rodgers & Hart’s first hit. Its score yielded two song successes as well. “Manhattan” received popular instrumental treatments by the Knickerbockers and Paul Whiteman’s orchestra; the Knickerbockers and the Regent Club Orchestra under pianists Victor Arden and Phil Ohman also recorded “Sentimental Me.” Rodgers himself placed greater value on sheet-music sales, preferring, like Jerome Kern and Cole Porter, that his numbers be heard exactly as written for the stage rather than rearranged by dance bands or reinterpreted by pop vocalists, even though recordings aided their dissemination.

The triumph of The Garrick Gaieties established Rodgers & Hart. Over the ensuing six years they mounted sixteen further productions in New York and London, all but three achieving at least one hundred performances, then the threshold of profitability. Except for 1927’s A Connecticut Yankee, none endured as fully integrated shows, yet each supplied a stream of songs that generated hit recordings and later became standards. Dearest Enemy (1925) produced “Here in My Arms,” recorded instrumentally by Leo Reisman’s and Jack Shilkret’s orchestras. The Girl Friend (1926) offered both a title song recorded by George Olsen & His Orchestra and “The Blue Room,” captured vocally by the Revelers and instrumentally by Sam Lanin & His Orchestra and the Melody Sheiks; Perry Como later revived it for a chart entry in 1949 while appearing in the Rodgers & Hart screen biography Words and Music. From the second Garrick Gaieties edition (1926) came “Mountain Greenery,” recorded instrumentally by Roger Wolfe Kahn’s orchestra. Peggy-Ann (1926) yielded “Where’s That Rainbow?,” recorded by Olsen, and “A Tree in the Park,” recorded by Helen Morgan and Frank Black’s orchestra. A Connecticut Yankee (1927) included “Thou Swell,” recorded by the Broadway Nitelites, and “My Heart Stood Still,” first heard in the London revue One Dam Thing After Another and recorded by Olsen, the Broadway Nitelites, and Whiteman. Present Arms (1928) featured “You Took Advantage of Me,” recorded by Whiteman, and “Do I Hear You Saying ‘I Love You’?,” recorded by Vaughn DeLeath and Frank Harris. Spring Is Here (1929) contributed “With a Song in My Heart,” recorded by Reisman and James Melton, while Simple Simon (1930) gave Ruth Etting “Ten Cents a Dance,” which she introduced onstage. Ever Green (1930) produced “Dancing on the Ceiling,” recorded by Jack Hylton & His Orchestra, and America’s Sweetheart (1931) yielded “I’ve Got Five Dollars,” recorded by Emil Coleman’s and Ben Pollack’s orchestras.

The advent of sound films in 1927 prompted interest in movie musicals, and several Rodgers & Hart stage works were adapted, often substantially altered. Spring Is Here, Leathernecking (derived from Present Arms), and Heads Up all reached screens in 1930. Studios soon sought songwriters to create original film musicals. Concurrently, the Depression, beginning in late 1929, complicated Broadway productions. From 1930 onward Rodgers & Hart worked extensively in Hollywood and mounted no new Broadway musical for nearly five years. Meanwhile Rodgers married Dorothy Feiner on 5 March 1930; their daughter Mary later became a musical-theater composer, as did her son Adam Guettel. After signing with Warner Bros. the team eventually worked at multiple studios. Their first significant film, The Hot Heiress, appeared in March 1931, yet genuine cinematic success arrived with Love Me Tonight, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, which opened in August 1932 and introduced the hits “Love Me Tonight” (recorded by Bing Crosby and Olsen), “Lover” (recorded by Whiteman, Guy Lombardo, and Greta Keller; 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 Frank Crumit with the Paul Biese Trio). Al Jolson, star of Hallelujah, I’m a Bum (February 1933), recorded the title song. Their final major Hollywood achievement was Mississippi, starring Crosby and released in April 1935; “Soon,” recorded by Crosby, reached number one on the inaugural broadcast of Your Hit Parade on 20 April 1935, while “It’s Easy to Remember,” also recorded by Crosby, appeared on the same chart.

Another enduring Rodgers & Hart song originated during the Hollywood years. Written as “Prayer” for the uncompleted film Hollywood Revue, it was retitled “The Bad in Every Man” and sung by Shirley Ross in Manhattan Melodrama (1934). After Hart supplied a fresh lyric it was published independently as “Blue Moon,” generating successful recordings by Glen Gray & the Casa Loma Orchestra, Benny Goodman & His Orchestra, and Al Bowlly. Following Mel Tormé’s performance in Words and Music, both Tormé and Billy Eckstine charted with it in 1949. Elvis Presley reached the charts in 1956, and in 1961 the Marcels’ doo-wop arrangement attained number one, followed by charting covers from Herb Lance and the Ventures.

Disillusioned by Hollywood’s relaxed pace and the secondary status accorded songwriters, Rodgers and Hart returned to New York and re-established themselves with the lavish stage production Jumbo. Opening 16 November 1935, it completed 233 performances; songs such as “Little Girl Blue,” “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” and “My Romance” might have become immediate hits had producer Billy Rose not imposed a radio-performance ban in an ill-conceived effort to boost ticket sales. That same producer received billing above the title when Billy Rose’s Jumbo reached screens starring Doris Day in 1962, accompanied by a soundtrack album that peaked at number thirty-three. Over the next seven years Rodgers & Hart presented nine additional Broadway musicals, eight of which ran at least 235 performances, ensuring profitability. These later works are better remembered as complete shows, many of them adapted into popular films, and the songwriters increasingly assumed librettist or producer roles. On Your Toes (1936), with a book by Rodgers, Hart, and George Abbott, included “There’s a Small Hotel,” recorded by Hal Kemp & His Orchestra and residing ten weeks in the hit parade, as well as “Glad to Be Unhappy,” revived for a Top Forty hit by the Mamas & the Papas in 1967; it also contained the ballet “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” which gained renewed popularity when recreated in Words and Music (1948), spawning chart recordings by Lennie Hayton & the M-G-M Studio Orchestra in 1949, Ray Anthony in 1952, and the Ventures in 1964. Babes in Arms (1937), with a book by Rodgers & Hart, yielded standards including “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “My Funny Valentine,” and “Where or When,” the last revived for a Top Ten hit by Dion & the Belmonts in 1960 and charted by the Lettermen in 1963. The title song from I Married an Angel (May 1938), another Rodgers & Hart libretto, was recorded by Larry Clinton & His Orchestra and spent seven weeks in the hit parade. The Boys From Syracuse (November 1938) featured “This Can’t Be Love,” recorded by Goodman and residing 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. An ASCAP-radio networks dispute likely prevented songs from Pal Joey (1940) from charting contemporaneously, yet “Bewitched” belatedly succeeded in 1950 with nine chart recordings, five reaching the Top Ten; the most successful was by Bill Snyder & His Orchestra. Columbia Records’ 1950 studio-cast album helped prompt a Broadway revival more prosperous than the original, and Frank Sinatra starred in a 1957 film version whose soundtrack reached number two.

By the late 1930s Rodgers found Hart increasingly difficult to collaborate with. As alcoholism rendered the lyricist unreliable, Rodgers occasionally completed lyrics himself. He secured Hart’s participation in the 1942 musical By Jupiter only by renting a hospital room while Hart recovered from alcohol-related illness. Meanwhile the Theatre Guild had proposed adapting the play Green Grow the Lilacs, depicting life in the Indian Territory at the turn of the century, into a musical. Hart declined the homespun subject, and the partners agreed to work with outside collaborators for the first time in twenty years. Hart pursued other projects that never materialized. Rodgers contacted Hammerstein, who consented to write the book and lyrics for what became Oklahoma!.

Opening 31 March 1943, Oklahoma! constituted a landmark in multiple respects. Its unprecedented success—2,212 performances over more than five years—made it the longest-running Broadway musical to that date. The achievement altered prevailing assumptions about musical theater, previously often loosely assembled sequences of songs and dances. Although not the first integrated musical in which songs emerged organically from character and advanced the plot, Oklahoma! established that model as the dominant Broadway style thereafter. It also transformed the recording industry when Rodgers & Hammerstein permitted Decca to capture the original cast performing the score. The initial 78-rpm album sold half a million copies; by 1960 another two million were thought to have been sold. Alfred Drake, the star, reached the charts with his recording of “The Surrey With the Fringe on Top” drawn from the cast album. Popular singers quickly covered additional numbers: “People Will Say We’re in Love” generated three chart recordings, two reaching the Top Ten—a duet by Bing Crosby and Trudy Erwin and a solo by Frank Sinatra; Crosby and Erwin also outperformed Sinatra on “Oh! What a Beautiful Mornin’,” reaching number five while he peaked at fifteen; and “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” became a Top Ten hit for Hildegarde with Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians.

The triumph of Oklahoma! did not instantly dissolve Rodgers & Hart or formalize Rodgers & Hammerstein. Rodgers returned to Hart for a revised A Connecticut Yankee while Hammerstein prepared an English-language musical-theater adaptation of Georges Bizet’s Carmen. Five days after the revised Yankee opened on 17 November 1943, Hart succumbed to pneumonia. Following the successful premiere of Hammerstein’s Carmen Jones and with Oklahoma! still selling out, Rodgers proposed a permanent partnership. Their next musical, Carousel—drawn from Ferenc Molnár’s Hungarian play Liliom as translated by Hart—opened 19 April 1945, completed 890 performances, and produced a cast album that spent six weeks at number one on Billboard’s newly instituted album chart. “If I Loved You” received four Top Ten recordings, the strongest by Perry Como (later revived in the Top Forty by Chad & Jeremy in 1965), while Sinatra recorded “You’ll Never Walk Alone” for a Top Ten hit; four additional chart revivals appeared in the 1960s, the most successful being Patti LaBelle & Her Bluebelles’ Top Forty entry in 1964. Rodgers & Hammerstein next accepted an assignment to score a musical remake of the film State Fair. Released August 1945, the picture contained six songs, among them the Academy Award-winning “It Might as Well Be Spring,” which generated three Top Ten recordings, the most successful by bandleader Sammy Kaye, and three chart versions of “That’s for Me,” two in the Top Ten, led by Jo Stafford. Dick Haymes, appearing in the film, charted with both songs and released a solo State Fair album that reached number one. (The film later received a stage adaptation that reached Broadway in 1996.) Returning to Broadway, the team launched Allegro on 10 October 1947, their first commercial disappointment despite 315 performances; “So Far” produced three chart recordings, one—Sinatra’s—reaching the Top Ten. In December 1948 the film Words and Music opened; although its Rodgers & Hart biography was largely fictional, the soundtrack album featuring Mickey Rooney as Hart, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, and others topped the charts for six weeks.

Rodgers & Hammerstein recovered from Allegro with South Pacific, which opened 7 April 1949, adapted from two stories in James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific and starring Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza. The Tony Award-winning production ran 1,925 performances—second only to Oklahoma! at the time—and its cast album spent a record sixty-nine weeks at number one, reportedly selling nearly three million copies by 1963. It also generated pop hits: “Bali Ha’i” (five chart recordings, two in the Top Ten, led by Como), “Some Enchanted Evening” (seven chart recordings, six in the Top Ten, with Como reaching number one; later revived in the Top Forty by Jay & the Americans in 1965 and charted by Jane Olivor in 1977), and “A Wonderful Guy” (four chart recordings, led by Margaret Whiting). Their fifth show, The King and I, opened 29 March 1951, completed 1,246 performances—their third to exceed one thousand—and earned their second Tony Award for best musical. Although the cast album peaked at number two, the score included “We Kiss in a Shadow,” charted by Sinatra as “We Kissed in a Shadow,” along with future standards such as “Hello, Young Lovers” (revived for a Top Forty hit by Paul Anka in 1960), the instrumental “March of the Siamese Children” (a 1962 chart entry for Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen), and “