Richard Rodgers Okay I Got Something Else Again

Richard Rodgers

— By Paul Zollo

And then famous are the classic musicals he created as function of non one but two of America's most celebrated songwriting duos, that his name is rarely heard or seen alone. More than unremarkably it'southward linked to the proper name of one of his lyricist-partners, either Lorenz "Larry" Hart or Oscar Hammerstein, considering it's as the musical one-half of both Rodgers & Hart every bit well as Rodgers & Hammerstein that Richard Rodgers is best known. Without him, the Broadway musical equally we know it would have been something else entirely; his work forever changed its course. It's a torso of work that is phenomenal for its greatness and lasting power and also for the sheer volume of it, an output unrivaled by any other Broadway composer: some 40 Broadway musicals (26 with Hart and nine with Hammerstein), one Broadway play, 3 London musicals (all with Hart), 10 original movie musicals (9 with Hart, i with Hammerstein), two television musicals, the scores for two telly documentaries, a ballet, and one nightclub revue. His shows have been performed more than 30,000 times, and it's said that somewhere in the world the audio of his music is heard on phase every nighttime of the year.

The son of a doc, Richard Rodgers was born on June 22, 1902, in New York. His first two songs, "Love Old Wigwam" and "Army camp-Fire Days," were written when he was but fourteen. At 15 he wrote his get-go total score, for an amateur show called I Minute, Please. And at the age of xvi, in 1918, he met and teamed up with Lorenz "Larry" Hart, with whom he shared a passion for expressive, inventive songwriting.

Rodgers & Hart were introduced by a mutual friend at New York'due south Columbia University. Though Hart was six years older than Rodgers, he still lived with his parents, and it was in their business firm that he first welcomed Rodgers wearing tuxedo pants, slippers, and in bad need of shave. Years later Rodgers related how the two had an immediate connection talking near the intricacies of songwriting; Rodgers was especially impressed with Hart'southward appreciation of lyrical techniques such as inner rhyming. On that beginning twenty-four hours, Rodgers said, he discovered "a career, a partner, a best friend and a source of permanent irritation."

Rodgers & Lorenz "Larry" Hart

From the start, Rodgers saw that all was non right in the world of Larry Hart. Though he was a warmly sweetness guy, Hart went through bouts of night depression that he would boxing by drinking. These tendencies but increased in time and led to erratic, dangerous behavior. Rodgers did what he could to dissuade his partner from his demons, but never to much avail.

But when they worked together, things tended to click. One of the first songs they wrote, and the get-go 1 to be published, was "Whatsoever Old Place With Yous," which was used in the 1919 testify A Lone Romeo. All of their first songs were written for various Broadway revues which were more than vaudevillian than dramatic; loosely-linked presentations of songs, dances and comic routines. But in 1925, Rodgers & Hart created their own show Dearest Enemy that instead of beingness a revue was a "musical play," a show with a narrative progression in which the songs fit and furthered the plot. The subject was a serious one: the American Revolution.

It was the get-go of many successful musicals the team would create. Adjacent came Garrick Gaieties, also in 1925, followed by A Connecticut Yankee and Evergreen. Rodgers & Hart were then lured West to write for films and spent four years in Hollywood writing songs which were featured in such movies as Love Me Tonight, with Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier; Hallelujah, I'1000 a Bum!, with Al Jolson; and The Phantom President, starring George M. Cohan.

Unlike the mode Rodgers wrote songs after in life with Oscar Hammerstein, who would provide him with a finished lyric, with Hart he would write a melody start and then hand it over to Larry, who would never write a unmarried give-and-take until receiving that melody was complete. Then Hart would get to work writing the lyrics, simply always with Rodgers in the room, playing the piano for him, trying out various versions every bit the verses began to form. Rodgers once said that all of their songs were written on "the stationery of defunct companies with grand sounding names that Larry'southward father had started."

According to Rodgers' daughter Mary, Rodgers & Hart each inspired and enabled the other to devise the ideal fusion of lyric and melody. "I fed off the other's ideas, and theirs was a mutual respect," she said. "Daddy was very expert with languages and a very skilful lyric author himself, and Larry was very musical. He couldn't have written those genius rhythms of his if he had not understood music so well. Interestingly enough, in their piece of work together, the music commonly came first, where with Oscar [Hammerstein] and Daddy the lyrics came first."

When asked about the unique chemistry that existed between Rodgers & Hart, Mary Rodgers said, "To start with, they were both so talented, and they had higher aspirations for musical theater than anyone before them, with the obvious exception of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and Jerome Kern's Showboat. Daddy used to say that with Larry Hart he had met the partner of his life and the almost irritating man he had e'er known. But then, talented people are frequently very difficult people."

Rodgers & Hart returned to New York in 1935 to write songs for Jumbo, based on the story of the famous circus elephant. More than spectacle than the kind of human being musical the two songwriters yearned to create, information technology was a success only not the kind they wanted. In 1936, they created On Your Toes, their first prove to have a lasting upshot on Broadway, ushering in what has been chosen the Smashing White Way's "Golden Era." They followed it with a prolific string of hit shows, each exemplifying their witty, urbane, romantic fashion: Babes in Arms (1937), I'd Rather Be Correct (1937), I Married an Angel (1938), The Boys From Syracuse (1938), Likewise Many Girls (1939), Higher and Higher (1940) and Pal Joey (1940), which bankrupt new ground on Broadway past revolving around the life of an anti-hero, performed by Factor Kelly in the role that fabricated him a star.

Time magazine reported on the miracle of Rodgers & Hart in 1938: "… what was killing music comedy was its sameness, its tameness, its eternal rhyming of June with moon. [Rodgers & Hart] decided it was non enough to be just adept at the task; they had to be constantly different also. The i possible formula was: Don't have a formula; the one rule for success: Don't follow it upwardly."

By 1942, however, problems with Larry Hart had intensified, and knowing that in fourth dimension he would need a new collaborator, Rodgers turned to an sometime schoolhouse chum, Oscar Hammerstein Two. Rodgers' fame and then far outweighed Hammerstein'southward, and he knew his friend would do good from a collaboration. Fifty-fifty then, Hammerstein declined; he felt it would be best for Rodgers to go along his piece of work with Hart but said he would offering anonymous lyrical support if needed.

Information technology was then that the Theater Guild suggested to Rodgers & Hart that they create a musical that took place in the American West based the play Green Abound the Lilacs. It was a play that Hammerstein had already expressed some interest in, and and so it was decided that Rodgers & Hart would write the songs and Hammerstein the book. This programme was short-lived, though, every bit Hart decided nigh immediately that this was not his milieu: "Cowboy hats and gingham is non for me," he said. Then, with Hart removing himself from the equation, the team of Rodgers & Hammerstein was born, equally was the first Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma!.

"It was just likewise folksy for him," said Mary Rodgers, when asked why Hart dropped out of Oklahoma. "And too, [Hart] was coming to the end of his emotional tether. He was a prime candidate for Prozac, if it had but been available then. If he could have dealt with his emotional problems, God simply knows what more he might have washed."

Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein

Though he embarked on the writing of Oklahoma with Hammerstein, Rodgers never felt he was finished forever with Hart and entertained the promise that they could revitalize their partnership. Along these lines, he decided to produce a new version of their 1927 show A Connecticut Yankee. Hart returned to revise the show with Rodgers, work which temporarily buoyed his spirits; they wrote six new songs for the show, including "To Keep My Beloved Live," the concluding lyric ever written by Larry Hart, who speedily began to deteriorate over again when the piece of work was complete. On Nov 17, 1943, A Connecticut Yankee opened, and less than a week later, Hart was dead from pneumonia.

Rodgers then went to work writing Oklahoma! with Hammerstein, with whom he connected to write exclusively for the side by side 17 years. Together they created Broadway history, writing one enduring Broadway musical treasure later the side by side: after Oklahoma came Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The Male monarch and I (1951) and their final show, The Sound of Music (1957).

In addition to their archetype Broadway musicals, all of which were made into movies, Rodgers & Hammerstein also wrote 1 show straight for the silver screen, State Fair, that was so adjusted to the phase in 1995. They besides wrote a wonderful musical for idiot box in 1957, Cinderella, which was revised in 1965 and most recently in 1997, with Brandy in the pb role. Altogether, the musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein have earned a remarkable 34 Tony Awards, 15 Academy Awards, ii Pulitzer Prizes, 2 Grammy Awards and two Emmy Awards. In 1998, Rodgers & Hammerstein were cited by Time Magazine and CBS News equally among the twenty most influential artists of the 20th century.

Amidst devout Rodgers & Hart fans, however, the musicals Rodgers wrote with Hammerstein stake in comparison to those he wrote with Hart. Many felt that Hammerstein was too sentimental and lacked the urbane wit and cynical outlook that Hart brought to his lyrics. In fact, Hammerstein was also a vivid lyricist whose work far surpassed the only sentimental. Every bit Sheridan Morley wrote in Hammerstein's defense, "Those who wrote off his second partner Oscar Hammerstein II…needed to look a little closer at the shows he was at present writing with Rodgers: Oklahoma! and Carousel are centrally about death (and in the case of Carousel, wife-beating), S Pacific is near racial intolerance, and but perhaps in the terminal Rodgers-Hammerstein score, The Sound of Music, is there the sweet, sugary sound of which they were ofttimes wrongly accused, and even there, Nazis are a central element of plot."

Asked about the differences betwixt her father'south collaborations with Hart and Hammerstein, Mary Rodgers explained that their distinctive personalities as well equally the times themselves contributed to these differences: "With Larry [Hart], Daddy'southward music was quirkier and more mischievous. It was the music of his youth, less folksy and more sophisticated. Both of these qualities existed in my father. What Oscar [Hammerstein] did was to bring out the deep-seated, perfectly beautiful sounds of German Romanticism that were latent in Daddy's writing. These enabled him to attain a new dimension in moments like the death scene in Carousel or the opening of South Pacific.…There had been no opportunity to write anything similar that in a Rodgers & Hart musical. The field of study thing wouldn't have brought it out, and the art form hadn't advanced to the point where you could present extended musical ideas."

Rodgers besides outlived Hammerstein, who died in 1962. Rodgers wrote his adjacent testify subsequently Hammerstein'due south death all lonely; it was the first and concluding bear witness for which he wrote both the words and music, No Strings. It was likewise the offset Broadway musical to ever pair a white leading human with a blackness leading woman.

He then began to interact on Practice I Hear a Waltz? with a young man who had been a student of Hammerstein's, a songwriter quite capable of writing his ain music as he would prove quite convincingly in later years, Stephen Sondheim. In 1967, Rodgers wrote a musical for TV based on George Bernard Shaw's Androcles and the Panthera leo, starring Noel Coward, who once commented that composing seemed to come so easily to Rodgers that it was as if he but "pissed melody." Rodgers' daughter Mary quarreled with the notion. "It's true Noel Coward said that, but it'south just not so; Daddy put a lot of thought into his writing."

Rodgers' final three Broadway shows were Ii by Ii (1970, lyrics by Martin Charnin), King (1976, lyrics past Sheldon Harnick) and I Recollect Mama (1979, lyrics by Martin Charnin and Raymond Jessel), as Broadway audiences were moving towards new kinds of musicals such equally Hair and A Chorus Line. Rodgers died at his habitation in New York Metropolis on December 30, 1979, at the age of 77. On March 27, 1990, he was paid a great tribute by the Broadway customs when the 46th Street Theatre was renamed The Richard Rodgers Theatre. In the lobby of the historic theater is the Richard Rodgers Gallery, a permanent exhibit expanse presented by ASCAP that celebrates his life and piece of work.

The impact of Rodgers' career—which is truly tantamount to two full careers— greatly changed the course of American musical theater throughout the 20th century. With Hammerstein and Hart he created a tradition and standard which has rarely been achieved since, and against which all subsequent musicals take been measured. As Sheridan Morley wrote, the songs and shows of Richard Rodgers were congenital to last: "He was a carpenter who believed in adroitness above all else, and frequently drew his musical inspiration from deep in the soil of his native America. If a line can be traced from Aaron Copland, whose Rodeo led Rodgers to the discovery of the choreographer Agnes de Mille and Oklahoma!, then in some curious way it stops again at Rodgers." And every bit Alec Wilder wrote, "Fable has it that somewhere amid the many radio stations of the U.s., a vocal past Richard Rodgers may be heard at any time, day or night, the year round. Well, I, for one, hope this is so."

—By Paul Zollo

From Performing Songwriter Effect 59, Jan/February 2002

Category: Legends of Song

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Source: https://performingsongwriter.com/richard-rodgers/

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