Word: hammersteins
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TIME has posed that question about many runaway hits and hitmakers over the years. We asked it of Lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, who appeared on our cover in 1947, when he and his partner, Composer Richard Rodgers, had five shows, including their musicals Oklahoma! and Allegro, playing on Broadway. (For all his popularity, Hammerstein had a yearly income of $500,000 -- roughly half of Lloyd Webber's present monthly royalties.) We wrote then that Hammerstein's words "carry a gentle insight and a sentimental catch in the throat to millions of people who are only dimly aware of his name." Within...
...when talking about musical things." That passion bubbled over at one point during Walsh's interviews for this story. "Lloyd Webber sat down at the piano and started playing songs from his new show," Walsh recalls. "Pretty soon we were making up words and music to a Rodgers and Hammerstein-type song. When he's unbuttoned like that, he can be very congenial." Now that must have been entertainment...
...couple of years after the divorce, however, Sondheim's mother made a doting gesture that transformed his life. Stephen, then 12, had made a new friend named Jamie Hammerstein, son of Oscar, the lyricist of Very Warm for May, and was invited to the family farm in Doylestown, Pa., for a weekend. The weekend turned into a summer and, not long after, Mrs. Sondheim bought a house in Doylestown so Stephen could live there year-round. She continued to commute to Manhattan, often stayed there during the week and on weekends typically brought along guests. But as Jamie Hammerstein recalls...
Critics have often labeled Sondheim's work special or even avant-garde. In fact, Sondheim is simply carrying forward an innovative tradition in which he was steeped from youth. Born into a prosperous New York City dress- manufacturing family, Sondheim had as friend and mentor Oscar Hammerstein II. Although Hammerstein became a pillar of the mainstream musical, some of his revered standards, notably Oklahoma! and South Pacific, were seen the way Sondheim's work often is now, as daringly unromantic and political. Where Sondheim genuinely differs from the past is in his effort to avoid writing pop ditties so catchy...
Although the music and lyrics, written by Stephen Schwartz, sound as innocent and cheery as any song from a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, the plot and dancing would give Jerry Falwell an apoplectic fit. Haunted by a vague sense that something is missing, Pippin sings and dances his way through battles, assassinations and orgies. David Chase's direction never shrinks from graphic depictions of decadent revelry, so this Pippin is not a show for the faint of heart or the prudish...