Richard Rodgers

Richard Charles Rodgers, born June 28, 1902, in Queens, New York, was an American composer, lyricist, and book writer who worked primarily in musical theater. He died on December 30, 1979. Over the course of his career, Rodgers composed music for 43 Broadway musicals and more than 900 songs, making him one of the most prolific and widely recognized American composers of the twentieth century.

Rodgers grew up in a Jewish family in New York. His father, William Abrahams Rodgers, was a prominent physician who had changed the family surname from Rogazinsky. His mother was Mamie Rodgers, née Levy. Rodgers began playing the piano at age six and attended P.S. 166, Townsend Harris Hall, and DeWitt Clinton High School. During his early teenage summers, he attended Camp Wigwam in Waterford, Maine, where he wrote some of his earliest songs. As a child, his parents took him to see operettas on Broadway, and composers such as Victor Herbert and Jerome Kern became significant influences on his musical development. Rodgers attended Columbia University, where he joined the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity, and in 1921 he began studies at the Institute of Musical Art, now known as the Juilliard School.

His professional career began through a partnership with lyricist Lorenz Hart, whom Rodgers met in 1919 through a mutual acquaintance. Their first professional collaboration was the song "Any Old Place With You," featured in the 1919 Broadway musical comedy A Lonely Romeo. Their first full production, Poor Little Ritz Girl, opened in 1920 and also featured music by Sigmund Romberg. After several years of struggle, Rodgers and Hart broke through in 1925 when they wrote songs for a Theatre Guild benefit production called The Garrick Gaieties. Though originally planned for a single performance, the show's success led the Guild to reopen it. The song "Manhattan," which Rodgers credited with establishing the team's reputation, emerged from that production. During the late 1920s, Rodgers and Hart produced a series of hit shows for Broadway and London, including Dearest Enemy, The Girl Friend, Peggy-Ann, A Connecticut Yankee, and Present Arms. Those productions yielded standards such as "Here in My Arms," "Mountain Greenery," "Blue Room," "My Heart Stood Still," and "You Took Advantage of Me."

In the early 1930s, Rodgers and Hart moved to Hollywood, where they wrote film scores including Love Me Tonight, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, which introduced the songs "Lover," "Mimi," and "Isn't It Romantic?" Additional film work during this period included scores for The Phantom President, starring George M. Cohan, Hallelujah, I'm a Bum, starring Al Jolson, and Mississippi, starring Bing Crosby and W. C. Fields. A melody Rodgers composed during this period, after three rejected Hart lyrics, eventually became "Blue Moon" on the fourth attempt. Returning to Broadway in 1935, Rodgers and Hart produced an almost unbroken string of successful shows until Hart's death in 1943. Among the most notable were Jumbo, On Your Toes, which featured the ballet "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" choreographed by George Balanchine, Babes in Arms, I Married an Angel, The Boys from Syracuse, Pal Joey, and By Jupiter. Rodgers also contributed to the books of several of these productions. Songs from this period include "My Funny Valentine," "The Lady Is a Tramp," "Falling in Love with Love," "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," and "There's a Small Hotel," among others. In 1939, Rodgers wrote the ballet Ghost Town for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, with choreography by Marc Platoff. In November 1943, Rodgers and Hart mounted a revival of A Connecticut Yankee; Hart died from alcoholism and pneumonia just days after its opening.

As Hart's health declined due to alcoholism, Rodgers began collaborating with Oscar Hammerstein II, with whom he had previously written songs before his partnership with Hart. Their first musical together, Oklahoma!, opened in 1943 and became a landmark production in American theater history, integrating songs and dances fully into a cohesive dramatic narrative. In 1943, Rodgers also became the ninth president of the Dramatists Guild of America. The Rodgers and Hammerstein partnership produced Carousel in 1945, South Pacific in 1949, The King and I in 1951, and The Sound of Music in 1959, each of which was subsequently adapted into a film. South Pacific won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Additional Rodgers and Hammerstein projects included Flower Drum Song, Allegro, Me and Juliet, Pipe Dream, the film score for State Fair, and a television musical of Cinderella in 1957. Songs from the Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration include "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'," "You'll Never Walk Alone," "Some Enchanted Evening," "Getting to Know You," "My Favorite Things," "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," and "Edelweiss," which was Hammerstein's final lyric. Much of Rodgers's work with both Hart and Hammerstein was orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett.

Among Rodgers's Broadway credits are A Celebration of Richard Rodgers, A Connecticut Yankee, Carousel, The Boys from Syracuse, and Babes in Arms. His awards include the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1950 and 1952, and the Tony Award for Best Original Score in 1950. Rodgers was the first person to win all four major American entertainment awards — an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony — a combination now referred to as an EGOT. His Pulitzer Prize made him the first person to receive all five of those distinctions. In 1978, Rodgers was among the inaugural group of Kennedy Center Honorees recognized for lifetime achievement in the arts.