Rodgers and Hammerstein

(vs. Rodgers and Hart)

Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and Oscar Hammerstein (1895-1960) were by far the most popular and successful authors of musical theater and film in America from the 1940s to the 1960s. If you know anything about musicals, you're at least familiar with the titles of their shows. These include Oklahoma, Carousel, State Fair, South Pacific, The King and I, Cinderella, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music. All of these were hits in their era. All of them (except Cinderella, which was made for TV), started as Broadway stage shows, and went on to be remade as extremely successful musical films (although some more extremely successful than others).

The problem is that IMHO, none of these shows play well today. They were all very much of their era. Today, they seem stilted, corny, artificial, often too sweet or melodramatic. The acting seems odd and off-putting, the colors too saturated, the sets oddly theatrical... and perhaps above all, the shows are so long. How anyone could sit through the 157 minute standard version or the 171 extended roadshow version of South Pacific, or the 174 minutes of The Sound of Music today, is frankly beyond me (I know there have got to be some of you out there who love this stuff, but I think you're in the small minority). Further, the shows seem so utterly unconnected with the world as it was in the mid 20th century, and people as they are today (this is a partial truth). Though Rodgers and Hammerstein were not racists, when they deal with issues of culture and race (as they do in The King and I, Flower Drum Song, and South Pacific), they do so in ways that are uncomfortable today.

Because these shows are so difficult to watch, it's easy to dismiss them as just plain bad. However, this is a mistake for two reasons. First, they were incredibly popular in their day and this gives us insights into the tastes and culture of Americans in the mid-century post-war period. Second, some of the music really is extraordinarily good.

Here are some examples of Rodgers and Hammerstein songs that you may know. Listen to a couple of them (you don't have to play every link). Then skip down and read the section of the page beginning "HOWEVER." At the end, you can make up your own mind about which songs you like better.

First, and, I think, for American audiences, strangely, R and H wrote what is very arguably the most successful sports anthem ever. It's "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel. The song was covered by a British group called Gerry and the Pacemakers and from there it went on to become associated with the Liverpool football club and from there to be associated with professional soccer around the world. Here is a video in which almost 100,000 Liverpool fans sing it together:

Here's the original film setting: You'll Never Walk Alone from Carousel (orig. Broadway, 1945 film 1956. Song begins at about 4 minutes)

Here are a few more classics:

Oh What a Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma (orig 1943, film 1955)

Some Enchanted Evening from South Pacific (orig 1949, film 1958)

Shall We Dance from The King and I (orig 1951, film 1956)

Edelweiss from The Sound of Music (orig 1959, film 1965)

However:

There is a contrary case: That Rodgers and Hammerstein were really very mediocre, and that is bolstered by the enormous number of really great songs by Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (1895-1943)*. Rodgers and Hart wrote more than 500 songs together and this corpus is, I think, far greater than the Rodgers and Hammerstein corpus, and holds up far better. Most Rodgers and Hart shows were not made into films and some of those that were have been lost. Rodgers and Hammerstein shows captured the spirit of the 1950s, but Rodgers and Hart shows from the 1920s and 1930s probably play better today. Hart was, again IMHO, simply a better lyricist than Hammerstein. He was smarter, funnier, and, at his best, pretty brutal. Hart was also a very difficult person to work with (and Rodgers wasn't a bargain either). Hart was alcoholic, erratic, undisciplined, depressive... Rodgers was something of a control freak and was often brutal to Hart. It didn't help that Hart was gay in a straitlaced era and Rodgers was somewhat homophobic (Rodgers defended Hart against rumors that he was gay...important at a time when it could end one's career... but also referred to him as a "little fag"). You can read a long but outstanding essay on their relationship here.

It's also easy to appreciate Rodgers and Hart because their songs were covered by some of the greatest vocal artists of the mid 20th century, particularly Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Here are a few examples:

Ella Fitzgerald sings You Took Advantage of Me (from Present Arms 1928)

Rita Hayworth lip syncs (Jo Ann Greer sings) Zip from Pal Joey (orig 1940, this film version 1957)

Judy Garland sings Johnny One Note from Babes in Arms (orig 1937, this film version 1939. Babes in Arms was a classic back stage musical)

 

Ella Fitzgerald sings The Lady is a Tramp from Babes in Arms 1937

Nat King Cole sings This Can't be Love from The Boys from Syracuse 1938 (BTW, Boys from Syracuse is a musical version of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors).

Ella Fitzgerald sings Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered from Pal Joey 1940 (see the film original, Rita Hayworth lip syncing for Jo Ann Greer here. If you want another Rodgers tune from Pal Joey check out Miles Davis' version of I Could Write a Book)

Billie Holiday sings Blue Moon from... well, it's complicated, but we'll say Manhattan Melodrama from 1934 (See the original version in Manhattan Melodrama here).

You can make your own choice between the two. But, for me, Hammerstein was barely fit to clean up after Hart. And here's the last easter egg of the class. Write a brief essay (50-100 words) in which you answer the following questions: 1) which do you like better, Rodgers and Hart or Rodgers and Hammerstein? Did you grow up watching or listening to musicals and if you did, do you know any of the songs by heart? What songs do you know all the lyrics to? If you answered no and no to those last two, tell me which of the excerpts we saw in class is your favorite and why. Either way, tell me what your favorite song is from the ones on this page. Upload your response to canvas practice with the file name musicals before the final exam and I'll add 5 points to your first exam grade. Please note that this is an easter egg for students who make the effort read carefully and on time. This only works if you don't tell your classmates about it and don't ask me about it in class (if you do I'll deny any knowledge). It won't show up officially in grade book but the points will be added to your grade. If you want to talk to me about it, please either come by my office or send me an email.

Now, if you haven't already, go watch Shmigadoon!

And... That's All Folks! Hope that you enjoyed the course. It's been my great pleasure and an honor to present this material to you this semester and to write this website. I started doing both in fall 2001 when the department needed someone to teach a film course that was already on the books. The course has evolved quite a bit since those days. Over the years, it has truly become a labor of love.

*One last personal note. I have a kind-of odd personal connection with Rogers and Hart. We were all at the same summer camp (though many, many years apart). Rogers and Hart were both councilors at Camp Paradox in the Adirondack Mountains in New York State in the early 1920s and together wrote many of the camp songs. We still sang those songs when I spent summers there as a young kid in the late 1960s. The camp still had an extensive musical theater program. I had absolutely nothing to do with that EXCEPT that the campers put on a different show, usually a musical, every week and we all went to see all of them. Seeing those shows was a critical part of my childhood and one of the sources of both my love of theater and knowledge of the sort of music I wrote about on this page. If you want to learn a little more about Camp Paradox you can follow this link. BTW, spending summers at a place called Paradox may have given me an early philosophical bent... but it had that name because it was on Lake Paradox.