“Mother brings a beautiful baby”: Ibid., p. 300.
An orchestrator’s pay was good: Steven Suskin, The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 31.
So he hopped a train for Boston: Ibid., pp. 190–91.
“But I certainly could hear it!”: Wilk, OK!, p. 223. (Note: Blackton’s original name was Jacob Schwartzdorf; he changed it shortly after Oklahoma! opened.)
Still, Oscar was cautiously optimistic: OHII to William Hammerstein, undated, Box 6 of 9, OHII LOC.
Among the options floated: Wilk, OK!, p. 196.
Betty Garde would insist: Garde OH, SMU.
The word had already been reproduced: Wilk, OK!, p. 205.
“I don’t know what to do”: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 201.
“‘Stop making love to Rodgers’”: Lunden OH of de Mille.
The critics were just as effusive: Green, Fact Book, p. 514.
“No, thanks, Jules”: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 226.
“Shall we sneak off to someplace quiet”: Ibid.
“No, legs, no jokes, no chance”: RR to Walter Winchell, June 27, 1961, RR NYPL.
The first five shows alone: Wilk, OK!, pp. 232–33.
When Oscar’s tenant farmer, Peter Moen: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 203.
At one point in the run, Armina Marshall: Langner, Magic Curtain, p. 377.
By May, Helburn and Langner: Correspondence, Box 5 of 9, OHII LOC.
By 1949, a year after the Broadway run ended: Correspondence, Box 6 of 9, OHII LOC.
Press reports noted: Harry Ruby to OHII, Box 5 of 9, OHII LOC.
When Celeste Holm was cast: Holm OH, SMU.
And indeed, at every performance: Wilk, OK!, p. 237.
The theater historian Ethan Mordden: Mordden, Rodgers and Hammerstein, p. 45.
In the succinct summation of the theater historian Max Wilk: Wilk, OK!, p. 262.
“I’d had a pretty crummy night”: John Hersey to RR, December 14, 1979, RR NYPL.
4: BUSTIN’ OUT
“I am suddenly a much cleverer man”: OHII to William Hammerstein, April 12, 1943, “New Box,” OHII LOC.
“Of course the red carpet was rolled out”: OHII to William Hammerstein, July 14, 1943, Box 6 of 9, OHII LOC.
“Dick and I don’t want”: OHII to William Hammerstein, May 2, 1943, Box 6 of 9, OHII LOC.
For his part, Rodgers would recall: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 235.
Shortly after Oklahoma! opened: Ibid., p. 234; OHII to William Hammerstein, April 22, 1943, “New Box,” OHII LOC.
By Sunday, his white blood count: Marmorstein, Ship Without a Sail, pp. 428–31.
“To those of us in the hospital”: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 231.
Without confiding his plans to anyone: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, pp. 179–81.
Finally, that November: Ibid., pp. 181ff., 204ff.
He wrote to his son Bill: OHII to William Hammerstein, October 13, 1943, Box 6 of 9, OHII LOC.
“Bravo!” wrote the Herald Tribune: Green, Fact Book, p. 501.
That Christmas, Oscar took out an ad: Photostat of ad, Box 3, OHII LOC.
“I thought it was quite the opposite”: Michaelis interview with OHII, New York, circa 1959-60, available in reference libraries, for eg. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25602279, p. 94.
“He had paid us a lot of money”: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 237.
Oscar himself was under no illusions: OHII to William Perlberg, June 4, 1945, Box 4 of 9, OHII, LOC.
“Nice, I believe, would be the word for it”: Green, Fact Book, p. 548.
“Is it possible for someone to hit you”: Ferenc Molnár, Liliom: A Legend in Seven Scenes and a Prologue (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1921), p. 137.
John Mason Brown summed up: Secrest, Somewhere for Me, p. 273.
“And I studied that”: Michaelis interview with OHII, p. 80.
Finally Rodgers lit upon the idea: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 238.
“I began to see an attractive ensemble”: New York Times, “Turns on a Carousel: An Account of Adventures in Setting the Play ‘Liliom’ to Music,” April 15, 1945.
After a meeting with Dick and Oscar: Theresa Helburn to R&H, December 17, 1943, R&H office files.
By the next month, Helburn was advising: Ibid.
“There will be no dialogue or lyric”: OHII to William Hammerstein, August 15, 1944, “New Box,” OHII LOC.
By the time of the producers’ story conferences: Theresa Helburn memo, December 17, 1943, R&H office files.
“Yes, I would,” Julie replies: Molnár, Liliom, p. 32.
Oscar’s first stab at a lyric: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 225.
Stephen Sondheim would call: Ethan Mordden, Beautiful Mornin’: The Broadway Musical in the 1940s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 87.
The scene ends as it did: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Six Plays by Rodgers and Hammerstein (New York: Modern Library, 1953), p. 111.
Oscar’s portrait of Victorian New England: Lillian Ross, “Enchanted Evening,” New Yorker, April 7, 2008.
So exhaustive were her labors: Playbill.com, September 19, 2011, http://www.playbill.com/article/getting-to-know-her-meet-alice-hammerstein-mathias-oscars-daughter-com-182717.
But consider her careful précis: Robert P. Tristam Coffin, Mainstays of Maine (New York: Macmillan, 1945), pp. 119–22; see also Alice Hammerstein notes, Carousel Green Box, OHII LOC.
After a backers’ audition: OHII exchange with Gerald Loeb, Box 2 of 9, OHII LOC.
“What you say about sheep”: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 228.
Rodgers and Hammerstein themselves tangled: Theresa Helburn to OHII and reply, circa October 5, 1944, R&H office files.
At the end of Clayton’s next audition: Clayton OH, SMU.
“There is our Liliom!”: Langner, Magic Curtain, p. 391.
From the outset: Theresa Helburn to R&H, December 17, 1943, R&H office files.
Raitt would never forget: Raitt OH, SMU.
“It was not the anxiety to have a happy ending”: Michaelis interview with OHII, p. 81.
“I tell you,” she remembered years later: Johnson to Ted Chapin, R&H News, July 1, 2003, http://www.r http://www.rnh.com/news/588/CHRISTINE-JOHNSON-RECALLS-HER-RIDE-ON-CAROUSEL-by-Ted-Chapin.nh.com/news/588/CHRISTINE-JOHNSON-RECALLS-HER-RIDE-ON-CAROUSEL-by-Ted-Chapin.
When Ferenc Molnár showed up: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 241.
“Apparently, certain kinds of fur”: Secrest, Stephen Sondheim, p. 53.
“The staff repaired”: Agnes de Mille, And Promenade Home (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958), p. 243.
“We veterans are”: Boston Post, March 25, 1945.
In the second act, he had discarded: OHII script draft, Carousel Green Box, OHII LOC.
But there wasn’t enough time: OHII red leather scrapbook, Carousel, OHII LOC.
“We gotta get God out of the parlor”: New York Times, “Carousel: Surviving to Become a Classic,” April 7, 1996.
Mamoulian proposed adding: Mamoulian OH, SMU.
Agnes de Mille, for one: de Mille, And Promenade Home, p. 238.
“Now I can write you”: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 242.
He managed to drag himself: Ibid., p. 243.
The session went badly: Langner, Magic Curtain, p. 392.
After the show, Molnár approached: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 243.
The reviews were rapturous: Green, Fact Book, pp. 535–37.
The original production would run: Ibid., p. 537.
Jan Clayton would recall: Clayton OH, SMU.
“I think it’s more emotional”: RR OH, CU, p. 264.
5: SO FAR
“Many of the old managers died broke”: RR in New York World-Telegram & Sun, September 3, 1952.
The partners were ably abetted: New York Times, August 8, 1970.
A priva
te and practical man: Howard Reinheimer Jr., telephone interview with author, February 2017.
“Business, business, all the time business”: Don Walker, Men of Notes (Pittsburgh: Dorrance, 2013), p. 86.
But Rodgers’s daughter Mary: Mary Rodgers OH, SMU.
Music copyrights typically lodged: OHII to William Hammerstein, April 22, 1943, “New Box,” OHII LOC.
“This is all pretty complicated,” Oscar told Bill: Ibid.
“More than anything, these recordings”: Philip Furia, Irving Berlin: A Life in Song (New York: Schirmer Books, 1998), p. 217.
“We were anxious to keep active”: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 235.
“For as long as I could remember”: John Van Druten, quoted in Joseph E. Mersand, ed., Three Comedies of American Family Life (New York: Washington Square Press, 1961), p. 8.
“A show about a dame who knows”: Charlotte Greenspan, Pick Yourself Up: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 152.
“So Herbert said to me”: Wilk, They’re Playing Our Song, p. 366.
“I asked Dorothy to give me time”: Ethel Merman, Merman: An Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), p. 139.
Dick and Oscar set out to woo him: Laurence Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin (New York: Viking, 1990), p. 448.
Logan had even studied briefly: Joshua Logan, Josh: My Up and Down, In and Out Life (New York: Delacorte Press, 1976), p. 51.
In a call with Rodgers: Ibid., p. 219.
Dorothy Rodgers was forced to reply: Mary Ellin Berlin Barrett interview with author, 2015.
Berlin was an inveterate worrywart: Mary Ellin Barrett, Irving Berlin: A Daughter’s Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 235.
In the end, Berlin turned out: Jeffrey Magee, Irving Berlin’s American Musical Theater (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 243.
Years later, when asked: Ted Chapin e-mail to author.
“I would say Irving Berlin”: Barrett, Irving Berlin, p. 239.
Berlin also proved: Logan, Josh, p. 225.
It opened at the Imperial Theatre: Brian Kellow, Ethel Merman (New York: Viking, 2007), p. 112.
“I don’t think I had ever seen dogged pride”: Logan, Josh, p. 231.
As if this frantic pace of producing were not enough: Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 179–87.
Dick Rodgers was just as busy: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 250.
There would be no walls, no windows: Rodgers and Hammerstein, Six Plays, p. 185.
When their ship docked: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 250.
Typically, Rodgers immediately sat down: William G. Hyland, Richard Rodgers (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 167.
Years later, Oscar would describe: Michaelis interview with OHII, p. 90.
“I always felt his songs came out”: Frederick Nolan, The Sound of Their Music: The Story of Rodgers and Hammerstein (New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2002), p. 170.
“That’s not the play you’ve written”: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 254.
Still, Mielziner was a genius: Ibid., p. 253; Mordden, Rodgers and Hammerstein, p. 97.
All this spectacle sent the budget: Secrest, Somewhere for Me, p. 283.
That August, a reporter for Cue: OHII red leather Allegro scrapbook, OHII LOC.
“It was a seminal influence”: Secrest, Stephen Sondheim, pp. 53–56.
So Hammerstein took on direction: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 254.
“It was not a satisfactory solution”: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 251.
The opening night of the New Haven tryout: Nolan, The Sound of Their Music, p. 172.
Luckily, the Shubert Theatre in New Haven: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 252.
“Need I tell you, the audience”: Nolan, The Sound of Their Music, p. 172; Secrest, Stephen Sondheim, p. 55.
Even with the opening night mishaps: Joshua Logan to OHII, September 4 and September 6, 1947, Box 24, JLL LOC.
And the reaction of the Boston critics: OHII red leather Allegro scrapbook, OHII LOC.
“like a wet firecracker”: Mordden, Rodgers and Hammerstein, p. 99.
The New York critics were just as divided: OHII red leather Allegro scrapbook, OHII LOC.
“In Allegro, he was writing about the conflict”: Stephen Sondheim, liner notes for Allegro studio cast album (First Complete Recording), Masterworks Broadway, 2009.
The New Republic archly observed: OHII red leather Allegro scrapbook, OHII LOC.
Rodgers’s music came in for more than its share: Ibid.
Near the end of the run, the company dropped: Mordden, Rodgers and Hammerstein, p. 102.
A scaled-down, sixteen-city tour: Mary C. Henderson, Mielziner: Master of Modern Stage Design (New York: Back Stage Books, 2001), p. 160.
Cole Porter once remarked: Nolan, The Sound of Their Music, p. 172.
Josh Logan’s take: Ibid., p. 171.
“I think it was too preachy”: RR OH, Columbia, p. 282.
For his part, Hammerstein said: OHII OH, Columbia; Box A, OHII LOC.
“Of all the musicals I ever worked on”: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 253.
Normally the most unsentimental of men: Michaelis interview with OHII, p. 89.
6: ENCHANTED EVENING
“Josh, we’re going to buy this son of a bitch!”: Logan, Josh, p. 261.
“They’ll want the whole goddamn thing”: Ibid., p. 262.
“Did I owe someone money”: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 258.
Logan was the SOB in question: Logan, Josh, p. 266.
Hammerstein at first had trouble: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 260.
In the end, Michener accepted: James A. Michener, The World Is My Home: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1992), p. 291.
“Those fellows are so mad”: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 261.
“I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific”: James A. Michener, Tales of the South Pacific (New York: Dial Press, 2014), p. 3.
“Lieutenant one bullshit goddam fool”: Ibid., p. 209.
On a sheet of yellow legal paper: South Pacific Green Box, OHII LOC.
At an audition at Oscar and Dorothy’s: Mary Martin, My Heart Belongs (New York: Quill, 1984), pp. 59–60.
Years later, Rodgers would recall: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 260.
“Do we have to wait”: Martin, My Heart Belongs, p. 160.
After some initial reluctance: Business Week, June 18, 1949.
“I suggested that he would probably run a laundry”: Michener, The World Is My Home, p. 292.
He had written just twenty-six pages: South Pacific correspondence, Box 2, OHII LOC.
He offered to drive down to Doylestown: Logan, Josh, pp. 273–74.
“I realized that Oscar was throwing me”: Ibid., p. 275.
But Logan was so excited: Ibid., p. 277.
“If this isn’t the damnedest show”: Laurence Maslon, The South Pacific Companion (New York: Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 2008), p. 116.
He was relieved to find that the only instrument: New York Herald Tribune, April 3, 1949.
“I spent a minute or so studying the words”: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 268.
In fact, the first three notes of the song: Amy Asch, ed., The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), p. 338.
That in turn inspired Oscar: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, p. 268.
“They said I was balmy”: Martin, My Heart Belongs, p. 162.
And because Martin could never get: Ibid., p. 173.
“I will never forget”: Ibid., p. 163.
“She’ll have to pay the price for her antecedents”: Fordin, Getting to Know Him, pp. 183–84.
In the draft of the South Pacific script: Draft script, R&H office files.
“Y
ou’ve got to be carefully taught!”: Rodgers and Hammerstein, Six Plays, p. 346.
“It will grow like a weed”: Draft script, R&H office files.
“‘I wish I’d said it first’”: Logan, Josh, p. 278.
But the next day: Logan, Josh, p. 279; South Pacific Green Box, OHII LOC.
Logan was crushed: Logan, Josh, p. 280.
“The New York opening may be”: Ibid., pp. 284–85.
For South Pacific, Rittmann would write: Logan OH, SMU.
“As her role in the shows increased”: Susanna Krebs Drewry e-mail to author.
Rittmann’s own account: Trude Rittmann interview by Nancy Reynolds, December 9, 1976, transcript call number *MGZMT 3-1187, Dance Oral History Project, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, NYPL.
“Dick looked me right in the eye”: Boston Globe, “A Lifetime of Stories from Musical Theater,” October 3, 1997.
“We used to stand in the wings and marvel”: Don Fellows interview, CUNY Theater Talk, June 18, 1999, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Sb0sJQdalQ.
“No sooner would I adjust myself”: Ezio Pinza, Ezio Pinza, an Autobiography (New York: Rinehart, 1958), p. 240.
Pinza himself acknowledged: Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, p. 261.
“You can’t have a really moving and believable romance”: Boston Herald, March 14, 1949.
“Then I asked Trude”: Logan, Josh, p. 286.
The movements were so complicated: Fellows, Theater Talk.
Logan sent the men: Ibid.
“Talk about breakfus’ coffee and toast”: South Pacific Correspondence, Green Box 2, OHII LOC.
Logan took Betta St. John: Logan, Josh, p. 286.
“Well, my friend”: 92nd Street Y performance, “Lyrics and Lyricists: Getting to Know You, Rodgers and Hammerstein,” April 6, 2014.
“That’s awful!” Logan blurted out: Logan, Josh, p. 287.
“Suddenly lucky”: Asch, Complete Lyrics, p. 343.
“Younger than springtime are you”: Ibid., p. 340.
“Now is the time”: Ibid., p. 343.
“If Cable and Emile were going on a mission”: Logan, Josh, p. 287.
After seeing an early run-through: Nedda Harrigan Logan memo, February 21, 1949, Box 124, JLL LOC.
“That’s it,” Dick said: Logan, Josh, p. 287.
“I planned a lovely tomorrow”: South Pacific Correspondence, Green Box, 2, OHII LOC.
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