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RICHARD RODGERS
The Centenary Year

If one name stands out in the history of the great American Musical, that name is Richard Rodgers. Sing any tune from the rich repetoire of that jazzy period between the wars and those vibrant years in the middle of the last century, when the Hollywood Musical was in its heyday and the odds are you'll be singing a Richard Rodger's song. Even now, 20 years after his death, those melodies are being played and sung on stages somewhere in the world. He truly was the 'sound of music'.
Richard Rodgers had a precocious talent. By the age of seventeen he had linked up with Lorenz Hart and they had their first musical 'Poor Little Ritz girl' on Broadway the following year and there Rodgers stayed for the next 55 years. During that time his output was phenomenal and his successes legendary.
His partnership with Hart lasted for 24 years and Rodgers's melodies during this period reflected Hart's jazzy and urbane lifestyle and his quick wit. That their partnership survived for so long is a tribute to their friendship, although they were vastly different characters, but as they say opposites attract.
Rodgers was a New Yorker. Born on 28th June 1902 into a well-to-do family, his father was an affluant doctor, and had Russian Jewish origins. In spite of early success which catapulted him into High Society, he quickly settled down and became a devoted family man. Hart on the other hand never lost his man about town attitude. He was wildly irresponsible and could never be persuaded to buckle down to writing until deadlines had come and gone, and producers and backers were tearing their hair out. In spite of this they wrote between them 26 Broadway, 9 original Hollywood and 3 London musicals over these 24 years, which is going some. Culminating in 1940 with the musical 'Pal Joey' when musicals lost some of their sugary content, as it became the first successful downbeat musical, which featured a heel as a hero, and incidentally made a star of Gene Kelly.
They were fortunate insomuch as their talented and tuneful musicals featured songs which were quickly taken up by the radio and the fledgling TV and became familiar all over the world far quicker than any of their predecessors, who had to rely on the sale of sheet music.
After Pal Joey the duo were asked to collaborate with an old school friend of Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, in putting music to a play about the American West called 'Green Grow the Lilacs', in which Oscar was to write the book to a Rodgers and Hart score. This threefold partnership quickly faltered when Hart withdrew saying cowboy hats and levis were not for him. It is easy to see where the remaining duo got the idea for Oklahoma from, which was their first successful collaboration.
Around this time Hart's condition was deteriorating rapidly and Rodgers asked Oscar to make their cooperation more permanent, but Oscar persuaded him to ginger Hart back to work and they eventually collaborated for the last time in a new version of their 1927 hit 'A Connecticut Yankee', which opened in November 1943 and five days later Hart was dead.
And so, as one collaboration was brought to an end another quickly sprang up in its place.This second collaboration was even more successful than the first. Few composers can be either as fortunate or as bright in their choice of partners as Richard Rodgers.
With the help of Hammerstein the musicals became even more exciting and impressive, and the first few years of their partnership produced massive hits such as Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song and The Sound of Music. In spite of the fact that these were often criticised for their sugary, sometimes syrupy content, they were more complex and the themes had more serious undertones than they were given credit for.
Following Hammerstein's death, Rodgers went on to produce several musicals on his own, writing both words and music for No Strings, Two by Two, I Remember Mama and Rex, plus Do I hear a Waltz in collaboration with his protege Stephen Sondheim. These however never found favour as shows like Hair, Oh Calcutta and Godspell were changing the public's perception of the musical and ushering in the era of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, but that's another story.
So June of this year (2002) sees the centenary of Richard Rodgers birth and I would be interested to know whether any local group intends to celebrate this milestone with a gala production of one of his musicals? There's a vast repertoire to choose from. RS