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MR. MUSIC AND MR. WORDS
By John Ardoin
In 1938, TIME magazine wrote these prophetic words: "As Rodgers and Hart see it, what was killing music comedy was its sameness, its tameness, its eternal rhyming of June with moon. They decided it was not enough to be just good at the job; they had to be constantly different also. The one possible formula was: Don't have a formula; the one rule for success: Don't follow it up."
That concisely sums up the phenomenon of two Broadway giants who came to symbolize "Mr. Music" and "Mr. Words." Although in later years Rodgers produced words of his own and collaborated as well with Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents, in his peak years he had only two partners -- Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. So close were these partnerships that no one ever spoke of a "Rodgers musical." It was always a "Rodgers and Hart" or a "Rodgers and Hammerstein" show.
Rodgers met Hart in 1918 at New York's Columbia University. Both were aching to break into the theater, and they found themselves in immediate agreement that poetry and wit were needed to replace the banalities of the musicals of the time. One of their first efforts -- and their first published song -- was "Any Old Place with You," which was used in the 1919 show "A Lonely Romeo." Rodgers was only 17; Hart was 24.
Although they contributed more songs to other shows and revues, the first musical that was truly all their own came in 1925. In "Dearest Enemy," they abandoned the standard song-and-dance format and came up with what could only be called "a musical play," one in which song and drama were integrated into a cohesive whole and combined with a serious subject -- the American Revolution -- and a set of believable characters. One wise critic at the time said: "We have a glimmering notion that someday [Rodgers, Hart, and Herbert Fields, who provided the book] will form the American counterpoint of the once great triumvirate of [Guy] Bolton, [P. G.] Wodehouse and [Jerome] Kern."
Top banner photos: Lena Horne in STORMY WEATHER (1943); Doris Day in LULLABY OF BROADWAY (1951); Judy Garland in A STAR IS BORN (1954). |
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Frank Sinatra stars in IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN and sings "Time After Time" by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn. |
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Alice Faye performs "After the Ball" by composer Charles Harris in the movie LILLIAN RUSSELL (1940). |
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