Richard Rodgers

The family name was Rogazinsky until his father, a Manhattan physician, changed it. Richard Rodgers grew up in a Jewish household in Queens that took him to Broadway operettas while he was small, and he was at the piano by six and writing songs at a Maine summer camp by his teens. At Columbia he wrote the varsity show, and in 1921 he enrolled at the Institute of Musical Art. A friend of his older brother had already introduced him, in 1919, to Lorenz Hart, seven years older and translating German lyrics for the Shuberts. They sold one song that year and then almost nothing for six. Rodgers was arranging to take a job selling children's underwear when the Theatre Guild handed the pair a benefit revue.

Before Oklahoma! opened on March 31, 1943, a Broadway musical was a set of good songs hung on a plot thin enough to ignore, held together by stars, gags and a chorus line. Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II built one in which the songs told you what the characters wanted and the story moved because they sang. Agnes de Mille's 15-minute dream ballet did plot work a scene would otherwise have had to do. It ran 2,212 performances, took a special Pulitzer in 1944, and the shows that followed were written to its shape.

With Hart the music ran fast and ironic, minor-key and urbane, cut to a lyricist who rhymed like a man who wanted you to notice — The Lady Is a Tramp, Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, and in Pal Joey a heel for a leading man. Hart also vanished for weeks on drinking binges, and when Rodgers brought him the rural folk play that became Oklahoma!, Hart said he could not write it. Rodgers went to Hammerstein, sincere where Hart was arch and reliable where Hart was not, and the music opened out — warmer, wider, built to hold a whole scene. Hart came to the premiere, told Rodgers it would still be playing in 20 years, and left early with his mother. He died of pneumonia on November 22, 1943, at 48.

He drank, and he was hospitalized once for depression. In 1965 he wrote Do I Hear a Waltz? with Stephen Sondheim, Hammerstein's protégé, who had not wanted the job. Rodgers drank through rehearsals and dismissed the lyrics in front of the company as shit. The show ran 220 performances and the four after it ran shorter. He survived cancer of the jaw, a heart attack and a laryngectomy, and died at home in Manhattan on December 30, 1979. The songs stayed. The man got a harder look — his daughter Mary's 2022 memoir Shy is the frankest account of him anyone has written. In 1990 the 46th Street Theatre, where the Sondheim show had played, took his name.

Richard Rodgers's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Pal Joey other
  With Hart — a nightclub heel for a leading man, and Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered 1940
• Oklahoma! other
  First with Hammerstein — 2,212 performances and a special Pulitzer in 1944 1943
• Carousel other
  A murder and a dead husband inside a musical comedy form 1945
• South Pacific other
  Won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Hammerstein and Joshua Logan 1949
• The King and I other
  Written around Gertrude Lawrence, who died during the run 1951
• The Sound of Music other
  The last Rodgers and Hammerstein show — Edelweiss was Hammerstein's last lyric 1959

• 1919 aged ~17 Meets Lorenz Hart through a friend of his older brother Their song Any Old Place With You reached Broadway that year in A Lonely Romeo. Rodgers was 17 and Hart was 24.
• 1925 aged ~23 The Garrick Gaieties breaks them through after six lean years The Theatre Guild meant it to run a single day. Manhattan was the hit, and Rodgers said it made them.
• 1936 aged ~34 On Your Toes puts a Balanchine ballet inside a Broadway show Slaughter on Tenth Avenue was choreographed by George Balanchine and became a concert piece in its own right.
• 1940 aged ~38 Pal Joey opens with an unlikeable man at the centre of it Critics were divided over whether an audience would sit with a heel. The 1952 revival settled the argument.
• March 31, 1943 aged 40 Oklahoma! opens at the St. James Theatre Directed by Rouben Mamoulian and choreographed by Agnes de Mille. It had tried out as Away We Go! in New Haven three weeks earlier and ran 2,212 performances.
• November 22, 1943 aged 41 Lorenz Hart dies at 48, days after their Connecticut Yankee revival He had turned up drunk on opening night, went back out into the cold, and developed pneumonia.
• 1950 aged ~48 South Pacific wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama Shared with Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan. Rodgers and Hammerstein had already taken a special Pulitzer for Oklahoma! in 1944.
• August 23, 1960 aged 58 Oscar Hammerstein II dies and the partnership ends Rodgers wrote his own lyrics for the next show, No Strings, and never found a permanent partner again.
• March 18, 1965 aged 62 Do I Hear a Waltz? opens after a collaboration both men regretted Sondheim had not wanted the job. Rodgers was drinking through rehearsals and dismissed the lyrics in front of the company.

• Stephen Sondheim 1930–2021
  Composer and lyricist whose formal and psychological innovations transformed the American musical theater. collaborated with once, unhappily
• Irving Berlin 1888–1989
  Songwriter whose vast catalog, from 'God Bless America' to Broadway standards, helped define the American popular songbook. Broadway rival
• Cole Porter 1891–1964
  Composer and lyricist of Broadway standards including Anything Goes and Kiss Me Kate. Broadway rival
• George Gershwin 1898–1937
  Composer who fused jazz, popular song, Broadway, and concert music into a distinctly American style. Broadway contemporary
• Leonard Bernstein 1918–1990
  Conductor, composer, and educator who brought classical music to mass audiences and reshaped American musical theater. wrote for the form he built
• Frank Sinatra 1915–1998
  Crooner and actor whose voice and charisma made him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. sang his songbook