Speaker 1 No, they aren’t the main reason is that the musicals of the 20s and 30s, which is the Rodgers and Hart era, basically were silly fun. They were the stories were the least interesting thing about them. They’d have an odd premise, like six day bicycle races or Amazon women embossing their men around and the jokes and the dances and the songs were what mattered was

Speaker 2 a question or

Speaker 1 I can do it. The musicals that Rodgers did with heart are less survivable because in the 1920s, in the 30s, which was their time, musicals basically were zany, fun, and the story was the least important thing. Characters were also unimportant. What was important was good music, good dancing and the jokes. And with Hammerstein, Rodgers moved into a more sophisticated art in which story was important. The stories were character driven and who had strong characters. He was something like the king and Anna who are are so intensely involved and so antagonistic to each other. There is nothing like that in the musical comedy of the 20s and 30s, literally nothing ever so that you, Hammerstein shows are constantly revived because there are so many interesting ways to play people like that. Is she in love with him, for instance? Sometimes she isn’t. She isn’t. Is is there a real animal attraction on his part? There usually is, because that’s the way your brain originated it. There’s a moment in the movie it’s the Shall We Dance sequence. And she wants to dance as with him, as far apart as possible. And he wants to get as close. And he remembers that the Europeans were dancing, you know, arm in arm sort of, and he says was something like this. And he almost goes for her. There’s a that’s a key moment in the show. And as I say, the the earlier shows don’t have anything that that densely interesting. So they have wonderful scores. And even if the books are good, they are good books about nothing so that a show like the boys from Syracuse can be revived very successfully. But it simply isn’t as interesting a work as Oklahoma Carousel King and I, that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 Tell us the world Broadway world that Rodgers and Hart were coming into. Um, maybe you could do the link to coming out of vaudeville burlesque

Speaker 1 that, you know, I should warn you that that’s too large. It really is too large a question. There’s no short answer to that was. No, I’m afraid not. No.

Speaker 2 OK, what was let’s go back to the beginning of Rodgers. What was his mother bringing home to him? What were his influences as a child?

Speaker 1 I honestly don’t know much about that.

Speaker 2 OK, that we don’t

Speaker 1 I can tell you heart, but I don’t think that’s

Speaker 2 apropos. No, it’s not. Um, do you can you talk about the composers that Rodgers influenced by?

Speaker 1 Yes. There was one major composer that they all were influenced by, Jerome Kern and Rodgers. And I think Vincent Humans and George Gershwin all said, I’m not sure about Gershwin, but certainly Rodgers above them all. They would go back again and again to the Jerome Kern shows, because, of course, in those days they really weren’t cast albums in this country. There were in England. We didn’t have them until the 1940s. So in order to hear the scores, as they were meant to be heard, not played by a, you know, a small salon group, let’s say, and not cut down for one or two cuts on 78, but really to hear them as they were meant to be heard in the context of the show, you had to go back to those shows again and again. And that’s what Rodgers did. He’d sit up in the balcony of the Princess Theatre drinking and Jerome Kern, which is why probably in the long run, although they don’t sound alike and certainly Rodgers didn’t need to imitate anyone, Kern and Rodgers were probably the two outstanding composers of the golden age that is before Sondheim, the other one being Gershwin. But Gershwin is kind of in another world because of opera concert and so on. Of the people who only wrote for Broadway, it was Kernen and then it was Rodgers

Speaker 2 talk for a moment about Rodgers style, especially in the early days. You know, when we’re young, we don’t have a style yet necessarily. And I’m wondering if when he hits the Broadway scene, if he does, do we have links to Victor Herbert or Jerome Kern that that play through some of the early ones or even the later

Speaker 1 in the way the music runs, it seems to me, is that in the 1910s, Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin are busy creating American music. They are breaking away entirely from the the the sound that still has a little bit of Europe in it. And sometimes they sound like each other in odd ways. Sometimes there’ll be a song that sounds like the verse will sound like Irving Berlin. Imitating Jerome Kern in the chorus will sound like somebody else imitating Irving Berlin. And you have no idea whether it’s Kern or Berlin who wrote it. So by about 1919, 1920, they have invented American music. And now everyone who follows them, which includes Richard Rodgers, can do whatever he wants because the context has been developed.

Speaker 2 Um, can you set the stage in the teens for us? How much Broadway was there? How many shows going on? What were what was the. Was it super competitive? What were they going into when

Speaker 1 they were trying to break in? Broadway was very busy in those days, and the 20s saw a constant expansion of Broadway. And of course, the national theater was very big to at the turn of the century, there were 50 theaters in Chicago. I don’t mean movie theaters. Obviously, as the 20s were on, you had they were building more and more theaters. Most of the theaters that we go to today on Broadway were built in that decade. And I think the 26, 27 or maybe the 27 or 28 season was the peak and Broadway had overexpanded at that point. It began to explode even before the stock market crash. Theaters were empty. People were losing their theaters. There were simply too many shows for a limited audience to see. The audience couldn’t expand as much as the the business had. And no, it wasn’t competitive. On the contrary, you had unlimited opportunity, which makes it surprising that it took Rodgers and Hart five years to break in, that the first show in 1920, they went nowhere with it. They didn’t have another show until 1925. They just hung around writing songs, looking for work.

Speaker 2 She’s mine. OK, is what is something that I can ask you about the Writers Waltz, because you talk about in your new book about, um, walls that came before Rogers. With so singular right to tell me about Waltz’s in the genre,

Speaker 1 the Rogers Waltz is famous. It’s a phrase the Rogers Waltz. I don’t think anyone knows what it means, though. They just mean they like his waltzes. What it means, in fact, is that when anyone else in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s right to waltz, it sounds like old Vienna. And when Rogers writes a waltz, it sounds like pop music. Today he had that gift. And it’s I can’t describe it any better than that. It’s in the music. Falling in love with love, for instance, is the kind of song that. It just sounds like something that someone wrote last Thursday, whereas anyone else writing a waltz in the late 30s, it sounds like something left over from, you know, like an early movie musical or something.

Speaker 2 We’d love for you to take particular shows or songs and talk about them is a one in the 20 years that we’d like to end with shows or songs. What are we still dancing on the ceiling? Is there anything in any of those or something else that you think

Speaker 1 they’re all good? I mean, I don’t have anything specific to say about one song. OK.

Speaker 2 OK, um,

Speaker 1 can I say one thing that that you’re not questioning me about, but I think might be pertinent. Sure. The one thing to know about Rogers is he was the only one in the entire history of Broadway who loved going out of town with a musical. Every musical goes through what they call tryout hell, which is a redundant phrase, a tryout is hell. Rodgers loved it because he loved the challenge of seeing what was wrong, if anything was and usually something is very few musicals don’t undergo a lot of changes out of town. And of course, if you see some mistakes and you try to fix them, you can fix other things and the whole thing can fall like a house of cards. Rodgers love the challenge of seeing what was wrong, writing a new song, cutting out that scene, changing that character. Well, not so much changing character because the kind of shows he wrote with Hammerstein, certainly the characters are fixed. There’s not much you can do. But for instance, Agnes Dumbell always said that she on all the flop musicals she was involved with and try out, they’d be sitting around a table and someone would say, we’ve got to fix that song. And someone said, we’ve got to fix that scene. And someone say, you’ve got to fix my part. But they wouldn’t somehow they could not connect, you know, the problem to its solution. There was no direct line with Rodgers and Hammerstein. They were such pros, they would say Tuesday. The new song goes in Wednesday. We’re going to write this. Everything was very precise. That’s why those shows are so good. They are like them or not. They are executed as fully as the authors have the power to do.

Speaker 2 Talk for a moment then about being producers and about I mean, it was Rodgers just a composer?

Speaker 1 No. In fact, Rodgers became a producer because he had a number of bad experiences with producers who threw songs out that the show needed, who made executive decisions in a very rough and insensitive way. And he resolved to become his own producer as early as he could to be the muscle in the show. And sometimes you don’t have to be the producer to be the muscle, but it helps. So Oklahoma Carousel and Allegro were produced by the Theatre Guild, but Rodgers and Hammerstein were in charge and after that they were their own producers. Also, Rodgers loved the theatre when he was with Hart. He wrote so many shows that he was constantly in the theatre with Hammerstein. They wrote a show every two years. So in order to stay in the theatre since they had a producing office anyway to cover all their productions they decided to produce, it was more Rodgers and Hammerstein. But it always said Rodgers and Hammerstein presents and they would produce other people’s shows they produced. I remember Mama as a play, for instance, and they produced Annie Get Your Gun, which confuses people, because if that’s what it says Rodgers and Hammerstein presents, well, then who wrote it? They didn’t write it. They produced it. And it was really more Rodgers feeling that he was never as happy as when he was at a rehearsal watching the choreographer put them through their paces or he was in the house at auditions or he was even in the box office finding out how much they took in that night. He loved the theatre probably as much as anyone living, you know, in his time.

Speaker 2 You mentioned choreography. Does his choreography obviously is important in his shows. Is there something special about his music that makes it choreographed? Football? Is it just is choreography easy to compose?

Speaker 1 There’s nothing uniquely danceable about Roger’s music as opposed to the music of other composers of his time, because the dance arranger, if necessary, would would do what the choreographer needed him to do to give them the music based, usually on a song or two. Rodgers occasionally wrote his own dance music. Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, for instance, is by Rodgers, and he did enjoy doing that. And it is very danceable. But many composers could do that.

Speaker 2 Take us to the 30s. What is there a change from the 20s to the 30s? Is there a change in what Rodgers and Hart are doing? Is there a change in what Rodgers is composing? Actually, himself? There is. Is he evolving?

Speaker 1 There’s no change from the 20s and 30s in the Rodgers Hart partnership, except that there was a Hollywood interlude in the early 30s. Hart loved it. Rodgers hated it, couldn’t wait to get back to New York. In fact, they wrote a song in one of the movies. Eileen, I’ve called I’ve Got to Get Back to New York. The only difference is that Hart became harder to find. Hart was elusive in the 20s. In the 1930s, he was invisible, and occasionally Rodgers had to write the lyrics himself. He simply could not find Hart, and that really was why the partnership broke up. It didn’t break up because Rodgers New Hart was about to die. Obviously, it broke up because Hart was about to stop working. He just didn’t want to do it anymore. And Rodgers was in the middle of his career.

Speaker 2 And that doesn’t happen until the mid 40s. Yes. Tell us about the 40s. Are they let me ask a bigger question and maybe you can hold it out for us. Are they reflecting the times, are they reflecting the culture or are they reflecting back on us at all? And if they are, maybe you can give specifics

Speaker 1 if they’re not, I can’t really answer that question. If it’s too large and it’s not real, musicals don’t really do that. Actually, musicals of that day at least didn’t they would make jokes about the personalities of the day. And of course, Rodgers and Hart wrote a musical in which Franklin Roosevelt is the lead character. But beyond that, no, they don’t really do any reflecting.

Speaker 2 So tell me what’s happening in the 40s. And I think a lot of people actually think that part died and it wasn’t a choice to go with Hammerstein.

Speaker 1 No, Hart died after heart saw Oklahoma. And he loved it, by the way, ironically, he turned it down when they were going to do it, and that’s when the partnership really broke up. But he was a great guy and he was man enough to say that is a terrific show. He didn’t say all this, apparently, but he just did not see the possibilities. And who but Rodgers and Hammerstein did. It was a very strange idea for a show in certain respects and certain others it wasn’t. It was also strange for Rodgers and Hammerstein to team up. They were completely unsuited to each other. That’s what’s so strange about all the history that they made. They are the two significant figures in the development of the American musical. It went from Xenephon to to art just in time because it was really running out of zany fun after, you know, two decades and. Just the notion of green grow the lilacs as a musical was not bizarre, you know, sort of was a musical and was first done with folk songs. It was a dark story. That was that was what was odd about it. What was odd was Roger’s come from had come from musical comedy. Hammerstein had come from operetta, the so-called musical play.

Speaker 2 Have to stop. But that’s exactly what we want. Why do you think it was such a weird partnership? And why would Rodgers even choose Hammerstein? I mean, do you think he was his first choice?

Speaker 1 Yes. Sorry to interrupt. The Rodgers Hammerstein partnership was inevitable because Rodgers knew that Hammerstein was the genius among the WORDMAN and he was the most significant figure in the history of American musical is Oscar Hammerstein. He invented the musical as a really worthwhile adventure, a story with powerful characters. That is the Hammerstein notion. He kept doing that all through the 20s and his operettas all through the 30s. That’s what he was working toward. Rodgers must have known that. And he did enjoy working with Hart and he did enjoy the kind of musicals that they made. But he must have been ready for partnership with someone who would give him something to bite into in the characters. After all, that’s why they chose Oklahoma and why they chose green grow the lilacs. It has very substantial characters. It has no story. But the great musical comedy numbers aren’t about fun. They’re about character. They aren’t about story. They’re about conflict. They’re about I’m not sure where I’m going. The heroine’s wanting song one the most basic things in the American musical. And I think Rogers must have seen that Hammerstein could give him that. And it was time to write shows like that. He probably considered IRA Gershwin simply because IRA Gershwin was closest to heart of everybody. And he certainly didn’t know what he didn’t realize what kind of history he was about to make. I don’t think it was a conscious choice to take his destiny upon himself. But he knew that Hammerstein was the great one and it was the right thing to do.

Speaker 2 Let’s pause for another. Let’s see. Yeah, yeah, with a down a little bit, yeah, yeah, if you really

Unidentified have to be, you want to pick up.

Speaker 2 Just to finish with this Hammerstein transition, um. First, do you think he went through some terrible emotional angst to try to say, I can’t work with heart anymore? And second, a lot of people said Hammerstein, why would you go with Hammarstedt?

Speaker 1 The break up with heart was very painful because they had been very good friends for two decades, very good friends. And when they met, Rodgers was a kid. Hart was a few years older and very end. Sophisticated, smart, very smart, hard is one of the smartest people around at the time, and I don’t think Rogers ever really lost that. It must have been a very wrenching thing. And Hammerstein, remember, not only was of a different form theatrically than Rodgers, but he’d had nothing but bombs for years. So I imagine the smart money thought Rogers was really scraping the barrel.

Unidentified But not a bad choice.

Speaker 1 There’s a story that I keep forgetting who this is always have to look it up, it’s either Billy Rose or one of those guys goes up to New Haven for the premiere of A Way We Go, which, of course, is Oklahoma. And being the kind of guy that he is, he has to leave after Act one to bail somebody out of jail. So he only sees the first act and he makes this famous comment, no gags, no gags, no chance. And everyone was so wrong about that show. And there are all these legends attached to it. How, you know, finally it opened on Broadway and everyone was proved wrong. But after several weeks in Boston, do you really think that audiences were sitting through Oklahoma and not enjoying themselves? I mean, I think right from the first night in New Haven, there are a lot of people who said, oh, my gosh, this is a good show. I didn’t expect it to be one, but it really has turned out to be quite something. It’s just that that doesn’t suit legend, but the people who are in the movie The Wizard of Oz always love to say the reviews were terrible, they weren’t terrible. But it’s more exciting to be in something that at first was misunderstood and has become a classic. People don’t like to say, you know, everyone who was intelligent knew we had a great film right from day one. And it’s the same thing with Oklahoma. People love to say it was so misunderstood. It was such a strange idea. The strange idea was Roger’s hooking up with Hammerstein. That was musical play meets musical comedy. And at the time they were two very separate forms. And the exciting thing about them is they combined them. And that’s the strength of those shows. They’re still fun in the way that musical comedy was fun and they’re not operetta. They’re not so exotic and and old fashioned as operetta. The very word suggests something is going to be. But they have the the ecstasy, the rhapsody of operetta, and they have the fun of musical comedy. And that’s the form they invented. And that’s why those shows are still being done.

Speaker 2 Tell me whether Roger’s the composer changes. And from Rodgers and Hart, the composer, to Rodgers and Hammerstein was there, and if he does change the music, then his writing. Can you explain

Speaker 1 this? Gene Rodgers, the composer, is completely different with Hart than he is with Hammerstein. And I think the reason is because the shows are completely different. If you really study all of Rodgers and Hart, you occasionally find a little suggestion of the coming Rodgers and in like three notes, you know, in one song. But it’s pointless to start trying to, you know, Sherlock Holmes about the fact that he changed completely because Oklahoma was so different from the kind of shows he had been writing in Carrousel even more so.

Speaker 2 Can you explain the difference?

Speaker 1 Well, detractors like to say, well, you know, as soon as he hooks up with Hammerstein, he starts singing about larks, learning to pray. It’s all anthems and it’s it’s Mother Earth figures exhorting you to climb every mountain kind of thing. It’s June is busting out all over. There’s a folk lyric quality. There’s an anthem quality to it that I think is only a small part of it. The fact is he’s dealing with powerful characters who represent great things that are clashing in a moral world. South Pacific, for instance, musicals entirely about racism entirely. Every single scene is about that. And two leading figures are put through a test. Can you. The question the show asks is, can you break away from your inherited white racism and she, the heroine can and he that is also capable of the secondary love plot cat, so he dies. That’s his reward. Even though he understands racism and doesn’t like it, he isn’t willing to, you know, to combat it, whereas Nelly, out of the simple humanity of her soul, is able to see that it’s wrong and conquers it. So she gets the happy ending and Joe Cable gets killed. And this is a large idea and the music has to accommodate it. The first thing Roger said when they were planning the show was, I’m going to start with the ocean. It’s the high theme and that’s the first thing you hear when the overture begins. You hear this big sound because after all, you’ve got a show that has to suggest the ocean without ever showing you the ocean. You can’t do that. And, you know, in a show, Titanic had the same problem. But Titanic wasn’t about the sea or the boat. It was about the people. South Pacific is partly about that place of the ocean is important. So he starts with this giant clashing noise, which is basically waves breaking on the sand.

Speaker 2 Can you talk about his successes in bringing us to other places or other emotions or being in a sorry with a horse? Can you talk about the way he is able to do that? And in a few notes, the

Speaker 1 the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, unlike the Rodgers and Hart shows, have a very strong sense of community. They are taking place somewhere where people have certain folkways and they dress and they speak in a certain way. And yes, that’s in the music. It’s in the. There’s a. A sound of the place in each of them, in each of their better shows, shows that have have their shows that haven’t survived, let me enjoy it and pipe dream have less of a sense of community in that sense. That made me one of the problems. And that’s why Rodgers and Hammerstein were eager to do the musical that ultimately other people wrote as Fanny, because there’s a very strong sense of the fisherfolk of Marcey, a very strong sense of community. And you do hear that in the music, not necessarily in these notes or those notes, but there’s a June is busting out all over is a perfect example. That song could only come from that show. It couldn’t couldn’t be any other people singing it.

Speaker 2 We’re trying to show innovations of these guys, of this kind of RODGERS. Um, can you talk about what he was trying to do with his partner sort of throughout his career and maybe just sort of take off things that you saw as his innovations that were not I mean, was he doing just another show for Broadway that everybody else was also doing in the 50 other theaters?

Speaker 1 The main innovation in Roger’s career, but also in the career of his contemporaries, was getting away from the song into the musical scene. The song in the 1910s would be verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, followed by a funny dance. And then they make a funny exit. Then they have to come out and start the scene again. And in the musical scene instead, you have a mixture of the song underscore dialogue, sort of Arreaza, which is half speaking, half singing. And the whole thing takes you from one point to the next point. There’s no funny dance and there’s no funny exit that that that earlier form never advanced the story, never developed characters that simply said the same thing over and over and over again, followed by the funny dance and the funny exit that was the main innovation. I think it took different forms. Sometimes there was this rhythmic dialogue, which was basically lyrics that aren’t sung. Rodgers and Hart did that a lot. Rodgers and Hammerstein didn’t do that at all with Rodgers and Hammerstein. You have the musical scene. And just to pick one example, people will say where love begins out of a conversation in the dialogue. And so the first song line is, why do they think of stories that link my name with yours? They’re just talking and suddenly they’re still talking, but they’re singing. There’s a natural feeling for where the song comes in. That’s the innovation. But it’s not just Rodgers innovation. It’s it’s the the innovation of his generation. A really good example of the musical scene is in South Pacific twin soliloquies, because basically what you have is a trio for two people and the orchestra, the orchestra is telling us what’s on their minds because they’ve only just met and they can’t articulate it. They do to a certain extent, of course, not to each other privately. But at the climax, you actually hear them falling in love. And that’s something that lyrics don’t dare do. It’s too large. The orchestra has to take over. It’s a fascinating way to. To start the love plot off, actually start the show off, because the show has only been on for about six minutes at that point, may maybe even less. And it certainly is a jump from the kind of love plots that Rodgers and Hart were working with in the 1920s, where you did the first chorus, verse, chorus and the funny dance.

Speaker 2 How does that orchestra do?

Speaker 1 By climaxing.

Speaker 2 Give me the orchestra. I need this. This is one of the things I need a subject in front of the bus and the bus to pass,

Speaker 1 I you know, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s not there aren’t words to it.

Speaker 2 While it’s I mean, you write about it brilliantly in the book about just I think people would

Speaker 1 I don’t entirely it’s I really need my notebook in front of me and the score to do

Speaker 2 that. Could you talk to us about the slaughter on Tenth Avenue and music dance.

Speaker 1 That’s a horribly overrated piece, slaughter on Tenth Avenue. It’s wonderful music as Balanchine choreography, but it’s always thought to be. I think I made this mistake myself, a breakthrough in coordinating dance to the story. It’s a totally self contained piece that has nothing to do with the story that ballet company is putting on a ballet called Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. It’s not a breakthrough. It’s just a wonderful dance.

Speaker 2 Um, how about the score of the first act of Babes in arms? Where does this come from? Why that show? Because we I mean, it’s got some unbelievable songs right right away, I mean, you look at today versus then.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, this is another question entirely, but it does seem as though Broadway is running out of music, going back to Babes in arms. Broadway was loaded with it. And you didn’t need story or characters to write wonderful songs. They simply Rodgers was a bottomless well of tunes and Hart could write about anything. However, these aren’t great character songs. There’s no story being told in the score. If I played you the old Mary Martin studio album of The Babes in Arms because you would say wonderful songs, what on earth is that show about? If I play you Carrousel, you don’t have to ask me what the show is about. You hear it in the songs. That’s why Carousel is a better score. Maybe not more enjoyable, but it’s it’s art. And Babes in Arms is basically a cabaret.

Speaker 2 About pal Joey, can you talk about zero tolerance, the score, lyrical, cheesy, you know,

Speaker 1 the tone of Pal Joey in terms of the score is really no different from the other Rodgers and Hart scores. The characters are certainly different. It’s a it’s a real underworld. Everyone’s a sneak of some kind. And Hart does pull off one wonderful. Just some of the the numbers in the nightclub are grammatically incorrect in a way that Hart never is otherwise, as if a cheesy nightclub also has a cheesy lyricist and he’s getting everything wrong. But other than that, no, it’s another wonderful Rodgers and Hart score. They’re all wonderful scores, whether they’re famous shows are not famous shows, but they’re basically just making songs out of their heads. They don’t have anything to write about. There isn’t that much going on and the story’s more so in pal Joey, I will say, than in others. But Joey is a very overrated show. People seem to think it’s some kind of breakthrough in the writing of in the structure of musical and the telling of a story. And it most certainly is not. It’s got a very loose, disjointed story by John O’Hara, who didn’t know anything about writing musical comedy books. The the breakthrough lies in the seamy nature of the background that had never been tried before, and that was very interesting to everybody. There’s another legend to attach to Pal Joey that at first it flopped. And the revival in the early 50s was this huge success. They were both huge successes originally and revival. The revival simply ran longer.

Speaker 2 Can you bring back I want to go back to we were talking about going to Hollywood in the 30s. Can you bring us to them coming back in thirty five and tell us what Brian was like and what was changing to was there was happening.

Speaker 1 I’m sorry, there’s no short answer to that. It wasn’t really anything

Speaker 2 give us the long answer.

Speaker 1 Rodgers and Hart had basically been gone for five years, the first five years of the 30s. They were involved heavily in the creation of the Hollywood musical because talkies came in in 1929 and they were there right at the beginning. But they they weren’t very influential. It wasn’t a good form for them. Although Hart had a terrific time on the coast, he loved the nightlife. He loved the the fun. He never really was much for working. And Rodgers so loved the theater that he felt very fish out of water. He was glad to be back. But the the Broadway scene in 1935 was no different from the scene that they had left, except that, of course, the depression was still on. And the three big producers of musicals, Ziegfeld, Dillingham. Well, I’ve lost this, but there was third. They all lost their theaters. Who was the other? Was it was it was it being free when they were still producing? No. No. That they had broken up. Friedly was, but his partner was gone. Now, they lost their theater, too, by the way. But the three of them, the globe was lost. That’s Lunt Fontanne. Ziegfeld lost his theater. Oh, Hammerstein, can I do that again? Absolutely. The three big producers of musicals, Arthur Hammerstein, that’s Oscar’s uncle and Ziegfeld and Charles Dillingham, all lost their flagship theaters. Also, Ziegfeld had died. Dillingham also died in disgrace worth. Other than that, there really wasn’t anything different in the Broadway that they returned to the same kinds of musical comedies that had vapid, silly, unbelievable plots but were wonderful fun, were still in session, and they set right into it as if they hadn’t been gone a day. Nothing had happened. Absolutely no history had been made. Showboat had come and gone. Showboat had left its mark. The year they returned to Broadway was the year Porgy and Bess had its premiere. Didn’t matter. These were one of a kind shows that had absolutely no influence whatsoever. So they went back to the kind of musical comedies they had been doing in the 20s, except they were a little more risque. That’s really the only difference you can hear. No difference in the songs they were writing in the late 20s and the songs they were writing in the late 30s.

Speaker 2 What would the question be? I want to get back to talking to my producers about that.

Speaker 1 I do, but it’s not a very good one. It goes on a little bit too long and it doesn’t have one of those great endings where you go, oh, so it’s not worth telling. OK, that’s the unfortunately, that’s the only anecdote that exists as far as I know, about Rodgers and his his conflicts with producers.

Speaker 2 We know that Rogers preferred carrousel

Speaker 1 to his other shows, I heard him say so

Speaker 2 can you tell us you heard him say so? And can you tell us why you think he does?

Speaker 1 Did why would Rogers favorite musical of all of his big carrousel? Well, arguably, it’s the best score, it’s the most wonderful show, I think it’s something as simple as that. A lot of times if you ask someone what his favorite work of his is, it’s that sick child syndrome, the one that didn’t run. For instance, I think Jerry Herman’s favorite musical is Dear World, his biggest bomb kind of thing. And he’ll never give up on that. He’ll he’ll he’ll be trying to rescue that show forever. Hello. Dolly isn’t as interesting as hello. Dolly doesn’t need his, you know, his loving support. This is the sick child. Rogers wasn’t like that. Rogers knew or felt. Let’s just say that Carousel was the finest work of art he had been involved in the writing of. Sometimes with Rodgers, the simple solution is the solution with some people, the complex solution. Rodgers was the kind of man who took instant like or dislike to everybody and never veered from it. And it wasn’t based on something strange. It was based on how he was treated, what they said to him, how they looked at the world. He wasn’t a simple man. I don’t think anyone is simple. He was complex, but he was easy to understand. If you knew what his worldview was, he was a very logical, a very consistent person, apparently. And there were people who hated him and there were people who loved him. But I guess that’s true of everybody.

Speaker 2 What were the simple solutions in Karasin?

Speaker 1 Well. I don’t mean to say that they were simple. It’s a complex thing to put together the architecture of a show like that is amazing, actually, once you start taking it apart. But what for some people is a difficult leap was for Rogers, the logical thing. For instance, in 1945, when Carrousel was first done, every musical began with an overture. It was smart. You gave people a chance to hear the score, the best numbers of the score, an extra time before they heard it. In context. Albums were new in the 40s. Most shows didn’t get them, so you might as well hear the score. But that was part of what you were paying for, was to hear get your money’s worth of the music. Also simply what was done. And if something is done eight times, eight times, eight times, then it’s very hard not to do it. But it was very easy for Rodgers not to. And for carrousel he and Hammerstein Hammerstein decided not to have an overture. They were going to start with an eight minute pantomime to music, not a dance. The Carousel Waltz is not a dance everyone seems to think it is against and fought bitterly with the director, Reuben Mamoulian, over whether it was a dance or not. They never decided they kind of coast staged it, you know, and the cast didn’t know whom to listen to. He says, go there. She says go here. The fact is the the orchestra plays for a while. It’s basically carousel tuning up music. And then the carousel, you can hear it in music starts to turn. I don’t even know why that show was called Carousel, by the way. There’s a carousel in it, but it’s nothing to do with the story. But I digress with pleasantry. And then the curtain very suddenly goes up after about a minute of music that had never happened. That’s what I mean about simple solutions. It’s simple to Rogers, but no one else ever thought of it.

Speaker 2 What about the can you can you talk about the scene in the last twelve minutes and how they come to each other and talk around each other than love or not in love? You can’t say, can you? Is that something that strikes you? Is that a wonderful thing to talk us through it?

Speaker 1 The bench scene of Carousel is yet another example of the great Rodgers and Hammerstein musical scenes. It’s probably the best example. It’s the longest, the most happens in it. It’s got very strange, strange things in it. For instance, at one point I think it’s Julie mentions death and the orchestra goes and, you know, death music just for one second so that we know someone’s going to die in the show, which is not a bad guess because in fact, someone dies and just about every once and Hammerstein show. But what happens so amazingly in that scene is that it takes a typical musical scene, which is the lovers meet and fall instantly in love. We’ve had it in show, but we’ve had it in student prints and countless shows. But here it’s done so naturalistically and so weirdly because they’re both very strange people. Everyone knows Billy Strange. He fights with everybody. He’s the David Merrick, you know, of Carousel. And Julie is thought to be very normal, except that she’s a little bit of a she gets into a bad marriage and she doesn’t want to leave it. What’s the use of wanderin? He’s going to beat me, but I’ll stay with him. Actually, all he does is hit her once somebody becomes beating. But they’re both very weird people. Her friend says of her, you know, I get up in the morning and I see you staring out the window. What are you looking at? And Julie says, I like to watch the river meet the sea. What does that mean, deep girl? So you have two very strange people and they have met in this very weird way. He’s been flirting with her on the carousel. The woman who’s keeping him gets mad, tries to chase the girl away. They end up, both of them, without a place to go to that night. And they’re on this bench and the leaves are coming down and they’re falling in love and they’re singing about how they’re not going to fall in love. And then while we’re trying to figure out what this is about, she looks up and she sees the leaves coming down and she says just their time to fall, I reckon. And that’s the end of the scene. And so much has been said, but not articulated directly. Again, it’s very simple solution if you’re a genius. And I think both Hammerstein and Rodgers were geniuses, I don’t think anyone else living then could have written that he’d be Kurt Weill. And certainly once they wrote those shows, they opened the possibilities for everybody. I don’t think anything would have happened after Oklahoma. If it hadn’t been for Oklahoma and Carousel, I think that’s where the history changes Showboat, for instance, which was my idea of the great American musical, had no influence. It was simply too weird and too early. 1927 was too early to persuade people to start writing intelligent, strange, epic shows, especially because two years later, money got very tight when the stock market crashed. But by 1943 and 1945, the years of Oklahoma and Carousel, it was possible. In fact, it was necessary. One more season of those zany, empty, silly musical comedies. I don’t know what would have happened

Speaker 2 in 52, Rogers had three shows running concurrently on Broadway, two by Hammerstein The Revival by Hart. What can you describe? Tell us about that. Tell us about that happened and tell us what that was like. Was that a normal occurrence for a Broadway producer?

Speaker 1 It was unusual, but it’s happened at other times and I don’t think there was anything special about it. By 1952, Rodgers and Hammerstein were the kings of the Broadway musical. For instance, in 1945, they interrupted their victory, in 1944, they interrupted their career to write a Hollywood musical state fair because after Oklahoma they were such acknowledged masters of folkloric Americana that Darryl Zanuck at Fox thought this was buying the best. He would not only get the best movie, he would get the best prestige. Interesting story. Hammerstein did not want to go out to the coast and convince Rogers didn’t like it. So they said, we’ll do it if we can write it in New York. We are not coming out there. And Zanuck doesn’t like that, does not like people telling him, the master of Fox, what will happen and what won’t happen. But he says fine, because otherwise he can’t have them and they write the film and it’s a big success. And carousels coming up to and Zanuck says, I’d like to speak to you boys about something. Could you come out here? And Roger says, why not? We need a vacation. Let’s do it. I take the train out and they meet Zanuck in his office. And all he does is thank them for writing State Fair and doing such a wonderful job. And Hammerstein says, what was that all about? And Roger says he just had to make sure if not now, then later, if for no reason, if for some reason that he got us out to California. That’s the way these people are. But I think everyone was richer for the experience. And what’s interesting to me is that state fair remained a legend, but was never seen after that. When I was growing up, constantly heard about State Fair, I’d hear people whistling that silly title tune in the elevator sometimes. But the movie was never available for viewing. And then, of course, Fox remade it. And when a studio remakes the movie, they’d like to get rid of the earlier one because they’re always afraid somehow that people are going to see it and prefer it. But it’s funny to me that the classic shows of Rodgers and Hammerstein are so classic and they’re always being done and they are so famous even now. And most people don’t know anything about what happened before last Thursday. These are famous shows, but the shows that were not hits and state fair to really the film, they are just they’re getting more obscure every day. There are people who to whom the sound of music means so much to them that they’ve seen it 30 times, 40 times. And they’ve never heard of pipe dream. They’ve never heard of me and Juliette. It’s almost as if they’re not responding to Rodgers and Hammerstein as a cultural force or as music and lyrics. They’re just responding to one work, one title, one thing.

Speaker 2 Can you talk about Juliette for

Speaker 1 me and Juliet, as I mean, Juliette is an interesting show simply because they decided to write something they wanted to write and present it the way they wanted to present it and was going to be very expensive and it was probably not going to be one of their classics. I think they must have known that this was a show that would be unreliable because it would be so expensive. It’s it’s takes place almost entirely in the theater in which they’re putting on the show. It’s a backstage or without any of the cliches. For instance, it’s not about a show about to open. It’s about a show in the middle of it’s run. In fact, at one point we see them auditioning for replacements. So it doesn’t have any of those those famous backstage or things. Certainly no one goes on for anyone else, but. I think Hammerstein, after a life in the theater, had noticed a few things that he wanted to get in, for instance, odd and pointless, but I’m going to mention it anyway. At one point backstage, some dancer had a hole in his tights and a chorus girl took off a little of her mascara and covered the hole for him so that he wouldn’t have a hole in his tights. Hammerstein had to use that in a show. So this was the show. I honestly don’t think that that they were worried at that point about maintaining their reputation and about topping themselves because they couldn’t at the time. Me and Juliette, they had Oklahoma, they’d carousel South Pacific and the King and I. You can’t top those shows. So they just went about doing what attracted them. And Hammerstein had wanted to do Allegro and Rodgers didn’t. So now Rodgers wanted to do a backstage musical comedy and get back into the style of music he was writing when he wrote with Hart. And there are some numbers in me and Juliet that do sound like the old Rodgers of Rodgers and Hart there, even at least one number called meat and potatoes that turned out to be so risque they dropped it on the road rather than bring it into New York, which finds Hammerstein in a very unusual mood. But basically, it is a wonderful show of the kind that they used to have in the 1950s that would run for season and delight people and would have a cast album, but it wouldn’t turn into a movie and it wouldn’t become a classic. And in fact, it would become totally forgotten and unreliable after that.