Something Wonderful
Page 37
The following abbreviations are used in the notes:
AMPAS
Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Margaret Herrick Library
CU
Columbia University Oral History, widely available in reference libraries, including AMPAS Library.
DBH
Dorothy Blanchard Hammerstein
DFR
Dorothy Feiner Rodgers
JLL
Joshua Lockwood Logan
LOC
Library of Congress
NYPL
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
OH
Oral History
OHII
Oscar Hammerstein II
R&H
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
RR
Richard Rodgers
SMU
Southern Methodist University, Ronald L. Davis Oral History Collection
PROLOGUE: ALL THEY CARED ABOUT WAS THE SHOW
This evening’s production: Harold Messing, “The CBS Television Production of Cinderella” (unpublished master’s thesis, Stanford University, 1957), on file in R&H office.
Rodgers and Hammerstein had first met Andrews: Bonus interview track, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, Image Entertainment, 2004.
“I just thought it was going to be the greatest train wreck”: Ibid.
“That boy in the second row”: Ibid.
The special effects were crude: Messing, The CBS Television Production of Cinderella, pp. 25–28.
The final run-through ended: Ibid., p. 56.
“I walked outside the theater”: Bonus interview track, Cinderella.
By the time the two men finally teamed up: OHII OH, CU, p. 28.
At the height of the partners’ success: David Ewen, Richard Rodgers (New York: Henry Holt, 1957), p. 18.
As for Hammerstein: Philip Hamburger, “The Perfect Glow,” pt. 1, New Yorker, May 12, 1951, p. 35.
“Dick loved money more”: Ballard interview, SMU.
For eighteen years: Oscar Hammerstein II, Lyrics (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Books, 1985), p. 7.
Hammerstein once complained: Laurence Maslon, script for his American Masters PBS documentary, Richard Rodgers, The Sweetest Sounds, 2002; RR to Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, March 8, 1963.
A glimpse of the careful, starchy formality: R&H Archives, New York. See also RR NYPL.
“I guess like Gilbert and Sullivan”: Irving telephone interview with author.
1: THE SENTIMENTALIST
“There is no limit to the number of people”: Frederick Nolan, Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 54.
By one later account, he went home: Hamburger, “The Perfect Glow,” pt. 1, p. 35.
Oscar would later attribute his love: Hamburger, “The Perfect Glow,” pt. 2, New Yorker, May 19, 1951, p. 46.
He didn’t like the theater: Letters to William Hammerstein, Box 28, OHII LOC.
“He seldom scolded me”: Ibid.
“She was my friend, my confidante”: Ibid.
Allie’s death from a botched abortion: Hugh Fordin, Getting to Know Him: A Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II (New York: Random House, 1977), p. 23.
“I never feel shaken by death”: Arnold Michaelis interview with OHII, circa 1959, transcript in OHII LOC, pp. 13–14.
“whatever order or form I have got”: OHII to William Hammerstein, January 18, 1953, Box 28, OHII LOC.
Indeed, Stephen Sondheim: Hammerstein, Lyrics, p. xv.
“Oscar is a comedian”: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 28.
“It’s in my blood,” Oscar insisted: Hamburger, “The Perfect Glow,” pt. 2, p. 50.
“Make yourselves at home”: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 35.
“In those days, it was more of a free-for-all”: OHII OH, CU, p. 2.
“I don’t think I had any high-minded notions”: Ibid.
when white dinner jackets were in vogue: Mitzi Gaynor interview with author.
“not that he was a dandy”: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. xii.
“While I was sitting there, an idea came”: Ibid., p. 38.
The music was “catchy”: Stanley Green, ed., Rodgers and Hammerstein Fact Book: A Record of Their Works Together and with Other Collaborators (New York: Lynn Farnol Group, 1980), p. 255.
This discovery gave birth to a lifelong conviction: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 44.
He likened the construction: Ibid., p. 47.
Harbach would not only impress: Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), p. 36.
The show opened in New York: Green, Fact Book, pp. 258ff.; Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 48.
The next four years: Green, Fact Book, pp. 262–89.
Many years later, Oscar himself: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 50.
“A Long Island commuter, I prided myself”: Hammerstein, Lyrics, p. 35.
Though she pines only for the trapper: Green, Fact Book, pp. 291ff.
“The fertile brain of Oscar Hammerstein”: Ibid.
“‘when do I do my tap specialty?’”: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 62.
“It isn’t just the controversial subject matter”: Oscar Hammerstein II: Out of My Dreams, PBS documentary, 2012.
Catching them all singing one day: Edna Ferber, Show Boat (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1926), p. 123.
“If a listener is made rhyme-conscious”: Hammerstein, Lyrics, p. 21.
“This was great music”: Edna Ferber, A Peculiar Treasure (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1939), p. 306.
Richard Rodgers, attempting to contrast: Arnold Michaelis interview with RR, circa 1959–60, R&H office files.
That purity went hand in hand: Sondheim, Finishing the Hat, p. 36.
Hammerstein himself once explained: Hamburger, “The Perfect Glow,” pt. 1, p. 46.
Show Boat opened: Green, Fact Book, pp. 52–53.
But the next morning: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 75.
“He looked at me”: Out of My Dreams documentary.
“Oscar snapped”: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, pp. 92–93.
Two months later, Dorothy told Oscar: Letters to Dorothy Box, OHII LOC.
At the end of his life: Statement of May 28, 1959, Box 29, OHII LOC.
James, the son he had: Ethan Mordden, On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 3; Out of My Dreams documentary.
“They are not companionable to each other”: OHII to Myra Finn, November 13, 1934, Box A, OHII LOC.
“Pretty soon we were all shipped back on the Chief”: OHII OH, CU, p. 12.
After its failure, Oscar asked Jerry: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 128.
So the Hammersteins returned: Ibid.
“Their chief interest is developing me”: Letter to Myra Finn, Box A, OHII LOC.
“The saddest word I know is ‘but’”: OHII to Norman Zierold, August 7, 1954, Box 2 of 3, OHIII LOC.
“I was selling words instead of gambling with them”: OHII OH, CU, p. 20.
“In Hollywood above all other places”: OHII to Myra Finn, June 11, 1934, Box A, OHII LOC.
Later that year, in a letter to his lawyer: OHII to Reinheimer, November 13, 1934, Box 8 of 9, OHII LOC.
But he would never forget this fallow period: John Mosher to OHII, July 1, 1936, Box A, OHII LOC.
“Forgive me for not writing sooner”: OHII to Hy Kraft, November 28, 1938, Box 29, OHII LOC.
Wolcott Gibbs in the New Yorker pronounced it: Green, Fact Book, pp. 493–94.
“I was pretty blue”: Hamburger, “The Perfect Glow,” pt. 2, p. 59.
On January 2, 1942: Max Gordon to OHII, January 2, 1942, Box 6 of 9, OHII LOC.
2: A QUALITY OF YEARNING
Richard Rodgers was once asked: Charlotte Greenspan, “Richard Rodgers: Collaborator,” Musical
Quarterly 98, nos. 1–2 (March 1, 2015): 81–99.
Like Oscar Hammerstein, he spent his early childhood: RR OH, CU, p. 41.
“there was music every day”: James Day interview of RR, May 13, 1974, http://www.cuny.tv/show/dayatnight/PR1012249.
By age six, he was fiddling around: Meryle Secrest, Somewhere for Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), p. 22.
Decades later, he would wonder: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1975), p. 14.
“The Kern scores had the freshness”: RR OH, CU, p. 52.
“The sound of a Jerome Kern tune”: Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 20.
In his autobiography: Ibid., p. 24.
Dick’s vivid first impressions: Ibid., p. 27.
But what really dazzled: Samuel Marx and Jan Clayton, Rodgers & Hart: Bewitched, Bothered, and Bedeviled (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976), p. 38.
As Dick would famously recall: Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 28.
Lorenz Hart was born: Robert Gottlieb, “Rodgers and Hart’s Dysfunctional Partnership,” Atlantic, April 2013; Secrest, Somewhere for Me, p. 32.
“In all the time I knew him”: Max Wilk, They’re Playing Our Song: Conversations with America’s Classic Songwriters (Westport, CT: Easton Studio Press, 2008), p. 49.
at a time when homosexual acts were still a crime: Marx and Clayton, Rodgers & Hart, p. 190.
“It wasn’t much of a splash”: Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 30.
“The world was going to have to get along”: Ibid., p. 61.
“This show’s gonna run a year!”: Ibid., p. 66.
The reviews were raves: Green, Fact Book, p. 25.
She did, and the Gaieties ran: Rodgers, Musical Stages, pp. 65ff.; Green, Fact Book, pp. 20–27.
“No, Larry,” Dick replied: Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 67.
While Rodgers did not need a piano: Marx and Clayton, Rodgers & Hart, p. 86.
“Our fights over words were furious”: Richard Rodgers, preface to The Rodgers and Hart Songbook (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1951), p. 3.
What made a Rodgers song?: Alec Wilder, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 163.
The result is that thousands of songs: William Knowlton Zinsser, Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs (Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine, 2001), p. 44.
“There’s a sigh in the music that’s emotional”: Pomahac interview with author, Racine, Wisconsin, July 24, 2017.
The music critic Winthrop Sargeant: Secrest, Somewhere for Me, p. 383.
Rodgers once told an interviewer: Michaelis interview with RR, New York, circa 1960, widely available in reference libraries and Rodgers and Hammerstein archives, see for example: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25602279. 4–8.
“I knew exactly what was happening to me”: Ibid., p. 2–2 (same page numeration system as in above note).
Decades later, he would insist: Tony Thomas interview with RR, January 28, 1960, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8UpXPU_myw.
“Larry and I used to thrash around”: RR OH, Columbia, p. 109.
It would make an equal impression back in New York: Margaret Case Harriman, “Words and Music,” pt. 1, New Yorker, May 28, 1938, p. 19.
Only one song: Green, Fact Book, p. 93.
Asked why he wanted to grapple: Gary Marmorstein, A Ship Without a Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 148.
The veteran Broadway music director Buster Davis: Ibid., p. 150.
“My prepubescent fantasies”: Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 17.
From his teenage years on: Ibid., p. 44.
“Although I had seen her at the theatre”: Ibid., p. 74.
Dorothy and Dick had many mutual friends: Dorothy Rodgers, A Personal Book (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 50.
Not realizing he’d intended to start a conversation: Secrest, Somewhere for Me, p. 111.
When the notion of marriage first came up: Ibid., p. 135.
His letters to Dorothy when they were apart: RR to Dorothy Feiner Rodgers, August 9, 1934, Boxes 6,7, RR NYPL.
“There is in Rodgers’s music”: Crouse e-mail to author, July 5, 2017.
“it was a lot to take on a ménage à trois”: Dorothy Rodgers, A Personal Book, p. 69.
Dorothy would flee upstairs: Ibid., p. 73.
“What we had in mind”: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 150.
Dick summed up their entire output: Ibid., p. 164.
“As a matter of clinical fact”: RR to DRF, July 4, 1933, RR NYPL.
Around the same time, he confided: RR to DFR, August 1, 1934, Box 6, 7, RR letters, NYPL.
It was in these dark days: RR OH, Columbia, p. 155.
“I didn’t know a thing about choreography”: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 175.
The other notable Rodgers and Hart show: Ibid., p. 199.
The most famous first-night review: Green, Fact Book, p. 219.
Gene Kelly would recall waiting: Gene Kelly OH, SMU.
Still, the show ran for eleven months: Green, Fact Book, p. 221.
The Broadway publicist Gary Stevens: Secrest, Somewhere for Me, pp. 101–2.
“Had dinner with the shrimp last night”: RR to DFR, May 7, 1937, Box 6, 7, RR letters, NYPL.
But by 1941, Hart was barely functioning: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 204.
Suddenly that summer: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 174.
Over lunch, Dick poured out his worries: Ibid., p. 185.
3: AWAY WE GO
“Indeed, the subtitle might almost be”: Phyllis Cole Braunlich, Haunted by Home: The Life and Letters of Lynn Riggs (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), p. 73.
He would call his drama: Lynn Riggs, Green Grow the Lilacs (New York: Samuel French, 1958), p. 7.
Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times: Braunlich, Haunted by Home, p. 97.
“After the show, Terry came backstage”: Max Wilk, OK!: The Story of Oklahoma! (New York: Applause Theater & Cinema Books, 2002), p. 25.
There were “prospects of utter disaster”: Lawrence Langner, The Magic Curtain (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1951), p. 368.
Years later she would confess: Theresa Helburn, A Wayward Quest (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), p. 283.
Rodgers called his bluff: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 216.
Hart went off to Mexico: Ibid., p. 217.
Meantime, backstage at the Shubert: Author conversation with Rose Inghram, circa 1990.
At this point, two developments occurred: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 184; “Road to Oklahoma.”
Strawberry festivals, sewing parties, quilting bees: Hammerstein, Lyrics, p. 8.
“It is a radiant summer morning”: Riggs, Green Grow the Lilacs, p. 3.
“Well,” Rodgers would recall: RR OH, Columbia, p. 228; Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 189.
He would not sing in the standard: Jack Viertel, The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built (New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2016), p. 30.
Now those old lines: Hammerstein, Lyrics, pp. 10–11.
Rodgers was similarly open: Mark Eden Horowitz, “The Craft of Making Art: The Creative Processes of Eight Musical Theatre Songwriters,” Studies in Musical Theatre 7, no. 2 (June 2013): 274.
Oscar was instantly proud: OHII to William Hammerstein, April 22, 1943, “New Box,” OHII LOC.
“What was the third act of this play”: OHII OH, Columbia, p. 25.
After lunch at one: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 210.
Dick and Oscar then hit upon the notion: Hammerstein, Lyrics, p. 15.
On his trusty yellow pad: OHII undated sketches, “Oklahoma! Materials” Box, OHII LOC.
Years later, someone would ask Rodgers: Wilk, OK!, p. 84.
Even as Oscar began collaborating: Meryle Secrest, Stephen Sondheim: A Life (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), p. 32.
For his
part, Sondheim would acknowledge: Ibid., p. 37.
“So I did,” Holm would recall: Holm OH, SMU.
The show was “too clean”: Langner, Magic Curtain, p. 376.
“The entire show was a bald contrivance”: Ethan Mordden, Rodgers and Hammerstein (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), p. 24.
“Coming out of a clear blue sky”: OHII eulogy for Helburn, Box 33, OHII LOC.
The Guild had decided to invest: Wilk, OK!, pp. 99–105.
“First, I informed him”: Agnes de Mille, Dance to the Piper (Boston: Little, Brown, 1952), pp. 246–47.
In a later draft titled simply: OHII draft, “Oklahoma Materials” folder, OHII LOC.
She repeatedly asked Rodgers: Jeff Lunden OH of de Mille, provided to author.
“The first three days were absolutely crucial”: Ibid.
Hammerstein was equally impressed: Hammerstein essay for Dance, Box 33, OHII LOC.
Rehearsals began on February 8: Irving telephone interview with author.
“It was like being in a cement mixer”: Lunden OH of de Mille.
“You know, we had no real chorus kids”: Garde OH, SMU.
That night, Betty Garde would remember: Ibid.
In her dressing room at the Shubert: Holm OH, SMU.
Greenstone would not only reap: Wilk, OK!, pp. 245–48.
Richard Rodgers interrupted: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 198.
Still, Mamoulian would remember: Mamoulian OH, SMU.
Then a member of the ensemble: Wilk, OK!, p. 200.
Leonard Bernstein once described: New York Times, “Does Music Trump Story? More Answers to Your Broadway Questions,” December 8, 2010.
The assertion was true enough: New York Times, “Eight Bars and a Pencil: Music Arranger Tells The Secrets of The Tunes You Hum,” June 8, 1947.
But Bennett, a musical polymath: Robert Russell Bennett, The Broadway Sound: The Autobiography and Selected Essays of Robert Russell Bennett, ed. George J. Ferencz (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1999), p. 2.