Word: hammersteins
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Five new shows opened on Broadway last week, but this was the opening night most filled with expectant excitement. About to be unveiled at the Majestic Theater was the latest show by Rodgers & Hammerstein, the most smashingly successful writing-composing-producing team now in show business. Across the street, the Rodgers & Hammerstein Oklahoma!, in its fifth year, was still playing to standees. Playing a few blocks away were three other big hits which the team produced (Annie Get Your Gun, Happy Birthday, John Loves Mary). As the first-night crowd, fully as conscious of its looks as an Agnes...
...ninth row orchestra, way over on the right side of the house (permitting a dash backstage in case of a crisis), sat the man responsible for this unconventional musicomedy opening scene. Oscar Hammerstein II, a bulky man with a friendly, roughcast face, kept his bright blue eyes fixed on the stage. Could it be that Oscar Hammerstein was worried...
...Songs. He had already survived many such moments. No living American has fashioned so many rhymes that are familiar to so many people. Oscar Hammerstein (rhymes with fine) is one of the highest-paid men in show business (one estimate places his yearly income at $500,000).* He has written book and lyrics for 30-odd musicals, including Rose Marie, Sunny, Desert Song, Show Boat, New Moon, Carmen Jones, Oklahoma!, Carousel. He has written the lyrics for nearly 1,000 songs (which has earned him a coveted AA rating by ASCAP), including such imperishables as Indian Love Call...
...Everyman of Hammerstein's Morality is the son of a struggling, intensely moral country doctor. The play watches its hero from birth through incidents of his childhood and college days and of his life as a successful doctor to the rich of Chicago. Finally, it records his return to the faith of his father, as he departs from the big city to minister again to the good people of the land. Money, sex--all the usual temptations--attract Joseph Taylor, Jr., on his journey through Vanity Fair...
...conclusion is that Rodgers and Hammerstein should have made up their minds whether to write their Morality and have it done with or else to strike bravely out with a musical that stuck to the "Allegro" theme and hit its audiences with a new punch. As it is, the team will probably recover its *400,000 investment neatly, but it has muffed a chance to create a dynamic new form instead of some elever, but seattered, effects...