by Frank McGilly

All lovers of musical theatre and of popular song know the label "Rodgers & Hammerstein". Ever since Oklahoma opened in 1943, R&H has stood for the very best in musical plays -- real plays in which the music contributes indispensably to the drama, be it mostly light, as in Oklahoma itself, or mostly serious, as in our present offering, South Pacific. They raised the standard of musical, lyrical and dramatic quality by which shows of the genre would be judged. "Rodgers & Hammerstein" as a brand name has imprinted itself much as "Gilbert & Sullivan" has done.

By the time this marriage in show business heaven came about, however, both Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein had, separately, signed their names to enough successes to assure them of immortality, even if circumstances, happy and unhappy, had not linked them in 1942.

Rodgers
Richard Rodgers rose to fame as the composer half of the team of Rodgers and Hart - Lorenz Hart being the other half. The list of hit songs from their shows is all but endless. When Ella Fitzgerald recorded the "Rodgers and Hart Songbook", she chose 34 songs, almost all of which would be familiar to anyone reading this (for a start, "Blue Moon", "My Romance", "My Heart Stood Still"), and left out many more. Her selection deliberately avoided the tricky rhyme schemes that Larry Hart favoured, and all the mildly and not so mildly raunchy turns of phrase for which Hart was justifiably notorious.

Over a span of approximately twenty years, Rodgers and Hart wrote the words and music for one, two, and in their early days three shows a year. Most of the shows have sunk into oblivion, but the flow of memorable songs started early ("Manhattan", 1925) and continued long ("Bewitched", 1941; "Wait Till You See Her", 1942). As years and shows went by, they made the musical numbers adhere more and more faithfully to the characters and the story line, as in On Your Toes and The Boys from Syracuse. Their second-to-last show, Pal Joey, largely embodied this principle. Its gritty realism also broke the mould. The male lead is an unmitigated heel - an unquestioned 'first' in Broadway musicals -- and the female lead is not conspicuously better.

Around 1942 Rodgers and Hart were considering a musical version of a play called Green Grow the Lilacs, by Lynn Riggs. Unfortunately, Larry Hart has fallen prey to emotional demons that made him virtually impossible to work with. Exasperated, Rodgers contacted Oscar Hammerstein. The outcome was Oklahoma, followed by the familiar parade of mega-hits, among them South Pacific.

(Hart recovered sufficiently to work with Rodgers on a 1943 revival of one of their best shows, A Connecticut Yankee. Tragically, he collapsed on the opening night of the revival and died. One must regret the untimely end of such a career - and wonder what might have been, and what might not have been, if Hart had written the book and lyrics to the musical Green Grow the Lilacs.)

Hammerstein
Oscar Hammerstein was born in 1895, seven years before Rodgers, into a family two generations deep into show business, his grandfather a builder of theatres and a highly versatile producer, his father a theatre manager. If the family connection eased Oscar's entry into show business, his early-blooming talent assured him of a long stay. The string of musicals to which he contributed as lyricist and scriptwriter began in 1920. He worked with some of the most distinguished composers of the day - Sigmund Romberg (The Desert Song), Rudolf Friml (Rose Marie, with its kitschy presentation of the Mounties), Vincent Youmans, even, fleetingly, with George Gershwin. His best known work was done in collaboration with Jerome Kern, capped of course in 1927 by Show Boat ("Ol' Man River", etc.).

There is no single answer to the question of which musical show launched the movement towards musical plays in which music and lyrics were integrated with the characters and the plot. Many shows contributed to this process. But Show Boat is universally recognized as an outstanding landmark on this journey. And apart from this integration of elements, Show Boat stood out for its frank treatment of serious, even unpleasant matters: issues of race, an unhappy marriage.

Hammerstein enjoyed some success after Showboat, including his contributions to some Hollywood movies. Between 1930 and 1942 he wrote, among others, "The Song Is You", "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star", "All the Things You Are" and "The Last Time I Saw Paris", hardly a shabby output. But by 1942 his reputation had foundered somewhat, as he had not had a really successful show in ten years.

By the time Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein joined forces on Oklahoma, between them they had worked, separately, on close to 60 Broadway shows. It could be expected that their work would be, at the very least, expertly crafted. But from the first, they fitted together just about perfectly. This surprised some, because Hart, while capable of a moving love lyric, had had a hard-boiled, edgy cynical streak, while Hammerstein was more sentimental and optimistic, and, where Hart's lyrics bristled with complicated rhyming devices, Hammerstein's rhymed flowed so smoothly they are hardly noticed. Rodgers, however, shifted compositional gears seamlessly. The explosive success of Oklahoma went way beyond anyone's expectations, and, together, they found themselves once again making history.