Richard Rodgers
What awards did Richard Rodgers achieve during his career?
Who were Richard Rodgers’s main collaborators?
What is significant about Richard Rodgers’s musical Oklahoma!?
Richard Rodgers (born June 28, 1902, Hammels Station, New York, U.S.—died December 30, 1979, New York City) was one of the dominant composers of American musical comedy, known especially for his works in collaboration with the librettists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. Rodgers wrote more than 1,500 songs and more than 50 musicals, including such landmarks of American theater as Pal Joey (1940), Oklahoma! (1943), and The Sound of Music (1959). Rodgers is one of the few entertainment figures to have achieved EGOT status, having won all four of the major performing-arts awards in North America: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony.
Early life
Rodgers was one of two sons born to Russian Jewish immigrants. His father, William Rodgers (changed from Rogazinsky), was a physician, and his mother, Mamie Rodgers (née Levy), was an amateur musician. As a youth Rodgers learned to play piano and composed songs for amateur boys’ club shows. By the time he was a teenager, he was writing full musicals and had copyrighted some of his compositions.
Collaboration with Lorenz Hart
In 1919 he met Hart through a friend of Rodgers’s brother. Seven years older than Rodgers, Hart was a Columbia University dropout who worked as a translator of German operas and plays. He and Rodgers shared an admiration for the work of Jerome Kern, the composer of such successful musicals as Show Boat and a pioneer in a distinctly American style of musical theater. Rodgers soon enrolled at Columbia, and he and Hart collaborated on the university’s varsity show of 1919, Fly with Me. After a year and a half he left Columbia, intending to work full time composing for the musical theater. He studied composition for two years at the Institute of Musical Art (now Juilliard School of Music) in New York City and produced several amateur shows with Hart.
Rodgers and Hart’s first professional success was a revue, The Garrick Gaieties (1925), which included the song “Manhattan.” In 1936 their comedy On Your Toes was produced. This production, with the jazz ballet Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (choreography by George Balanchine), introduced ballet and established serious dance as a permanent part of musical comedy. Among their other collaborations were Babes in Arms (1937), including the songs “My Funny Valentine” and “The Lady Is a Tramp”; I Married an Angel (1938); and The Boys from Syracuse (1938), adapted from Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. Their Pal Joey (1940), adapted by John O’Hara from a series of his short stories, turned away from purely escapist entertainment to serious drama. Too realistic for its time when first produced, it was revived in 1952 with enormous success. Among its songs was “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.”
Rodgers and Hart also wrote many songs for films as well as “Blue Moon” (1934), their only song not introduced in a stage or film production. Their final collaboration, one year before Hart’s death, was By Jupiter (1942).
Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, and other works with Oscar Hammerstein
In 1942 Rodgers began working with Hammerstein on an adaptation of Lynn Riggs’s play Green Grow the Lilacs. The result, the 1944 Pulitzer Prize-winning Oklahoma! (1943; film, 1955), enjoyed a then-unprecedented Broadway run of 2,248 performances. Choreographed by Agnes de Mille and including the songs “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” and “People Will Say We’re in Love,” it marked the beginning of a 17-year partnership that only ended with Hammerstein’s death.
Carousel (1945; film 1956) and the experimental Allegro (1947) were somewhat less successful, but South Pacific (1949; film 1958) had a Broadway run almost as long as that of Oklahoma! and won the composers a second Pulitzer Prize (1950). Rodgers also received a Tony Award for best original musical score. Unusual in its treatment of racial prejudice and skillful matching of music to character, South Pacific included the songs “Younger than Springtime,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” and “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.” Rodgers and Hammerstein followed with The King and I (1951; film 1956), remarkable for its exotic character; Pipe Dream (1955); The Flower Drum Song (1958; film 1961); and one of their major successes, The Sound of Music (1959).
Several of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s productions won Tonys for best musical, including South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. The latter production also garnered the composers a Grammy Award for best show album in 1961. Additionally, the pair wrote music for movies, and in 1946 they received the Academy Award for best original song for “It Might as Well Be Spring,” from the 1945 film State Fair.
Solo compositions, additional honors, and death
Rodgers also wrote the music for the documentary film Victory at Sea (1952) and the television series Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years (1961–63), which earned him an Emmy Award in 1962. For the blockbuster film version of The Sound of Music (1965), starring Julie Andrews, Rodgers contributed a new song, “I Have Confidence.”
After Hammerstein’s death in 1960, Rodgers continued to compose for the theater. His musical No Strings (1962) notably involved placing the orchestra onstage instead of in the pit. Rodgers received a special Tony for this decision (the award also remarked upon “all he has done for young people in the theatre”) as well as the Tony for best score and a Grammy for the album recording of No Strings.
His many other accolades include induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and a Kennedy Center Honor in 1978. Rodgers published his autobiography, Musical Stages, in 1975. In 2003 the U.S. Library of Congress added the 1943 cast recording of Oklahoma! to the National Recording Registry, a list of audio recordings deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
- Born:
- June 28, 1902, Hammels Station, New York, U.S.
- Died:
- December 30, 1979, New York City (aged 77)
After years of many health challenges such as bouts with cancer and a heart attack, Rodgers died at age 77 in 1979, several months after the debut of his musical I Remember Mama.