"Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest of Sounds"
William Schulz
October 19, 2005
"He is the world's most-played composer of any kind of music who ever lived. This is not negotiable. Think of it: Bach, Beethoven, Irving Berlin, anyone."
The assertion by noted musicologist Jonathan Schwartz is sweeping. But after viewing the American Masters tour de force, "Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest of Sounds," one is hard pressed not to concede that Schwartz makes a very strong case.
Rodgers' was a career that spanned more than six decades, encompassing more than 40 Broadway musicals, 900 published songs, Hollywood and TV triumphs, and every award imaginable – Pulitzers, Tonys, Oscars, Grammys, Emmys.
Born June 28, 1902, in New York, Rodgers was raised in comfortable middle class circumstances. His father was a doctor, his mother a lover of turn-of-the-century Broadway tunes she played on the family Steinway. But it was not an idyllic childhood. As Rodgers' daughter Mary relates, "He grew up with a lot of fear and anxiety and that's what you use when you're a writer."
And writer he was. As theater historian Ethan Morden notes, "He wasn't just a composer. He wasn't just a producer. He was an author of musicals."
Rodgers composed his first music when he was nine and, with lyricist Lorenz Hart, his first Broadway musical, "Poor Little Ritz Girl," at 18. The collaboration of Rodgers and Hart would last for nearly a quarter century and it would transform the American musical theater, indeed popular culture. But it was always an uneasy partnership.
Rodgers was a workaholic, obsessive, even neurotic. The theater, as his daughters admit, was his first love. His wife and children, whom he also loved, came second.
Hart, who was homosexual, is described here as a cynic, a lost soul, depressed, deeply sad, undependable, a musical genius who suffered his entire life from writer's block. He was also, to quote Rodgers, "a brilliant drunk . . . a constant source of irritation."
But what joy Rodgers and Hart gave to the world. From 1925 to 1930, they brought 15 musicals to Broadway, then decamped to Hollywood where they wrote scores for Maurice Chevalier, Al Jolson and George M. Cohan.
Rodgers hated Hollywood. He missed Broadway and his family, who stayed for the most part in New York. In a letter to his wife, Dorothy, Rodgers told how desperately lonely he was: "I have an active and intense feeling of depression which is impossible to shake off."
As soon as his Hollywood contract ended, he rushed home to Gotham. Hart followed and Broadway would never be the same. "On Your Toes" (1936), choreographed by George Balanchine, would be the first musical heavily influenced by classical ballet. "The Boys from Syracuse" (1938) was based on Shakespeare. "Pal Joey" (1940), based on a series of John O'Hara stories about a sleazy nightclub emcee, introduced the anti-hero to the musical stage. (Rodgers described "Pal Joey" as a "very good show about rotten people. They were all very bad people except one, the girl, and she was stupid.")
Hart died in 1943 at the age of 48, leaving behind a play list of classics written with Rodgers that endures to this day: "Blue Moon," "My Funny Valentine," "Lover," "My Favorite Things," "Bewitched," "Thou Swell," "Isn't it Romantic," "I Could Write a Book," "Where or When," "I Wish I Was in Love Again," "The Lady is a Tramp." For composers with more than their share of demons, they brought sunshine to countless millions.
For his new collaborator, Rodgers turned to Oscar Hammerstein II, like both Rodgers and Hart an alumnus of Columbia University, and they took the American musical to its highest level ever. "Oklahoma" (1943) was followed by "Carousel" (1945), "South Pacific" (1949), "The King and I" (1951), "Flower Drum Song" (1958) and "The Sound of Music" (1959).
When Hammerstein died the following year, Rodgers wrote his first solo musical, "No Strings," winning Tony Awards for both music and lyrics. He composed his final musical, "I Remember Mama," in 1979 and died later that year at the age of 77.
The life and career of Richard Rodgers are so incredible that it would be difficult for any competent biographical team not to do him justice. But Executive Producer Susan Lacy and the others who created "Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest of Sounds" have produced an absolute gem.
Using archival footage from early 1900s New York to the Ed Sullivan Show, scenes from Broadway and Hollywood productions, insightful observations of theater experts, artists, contemporaries and Rodgers himself, "The Sweetest of Sounds" captures the greatest figure in the history of musical theater.
Singing the Rodgers songbook are the legends of theater, screen and cabaret: Julie Andrews, Judy Garland, Gertrude Lawrence, Mary Martin, Ezio Pinza, Mary Claire Haren, Maurice Chevalier, Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr, John Raitt, Diahann Carroll, Lena Horne, Frank Sinatra, Maureen McGovern, Louis Armstrong, Bernadette Peters, Gene Kelly, Barbra Streisand.
Julie Andrews put it best: "All Rodgers' songs, with the wonders of the lyrics woven into them, around them, through them, hit you somewhere in the solar plexus . . ."
As does this superb documentary.