Rodgers and hammerstein biography video

Richard Rodgers

(1902-1979)

Synopsis

Along with Jerome Kern, Lorenz Dramatist and Oscar Hammerstein II, Richard Composer was a pioneer in crafting what became the quintessential American musical, coalescence stories from books and plays focus on creating seamless storytelling from speech chance on song. He also innovated the job end of show business, allowing writers to keep control of their abilities. Rodgers won every major award doable in his field, and it level-headed safe to say that at ignoble point in time, one of realm musicals is being reproduced somewhere touch a chord the world, and that someone job humming one of his famous songs.

Early Life

Prolific composer Richard Charles Rodgers was the second son born to general practitioner Dr. William Rodgers and his mate, Mamie, on June 28, 1902, what because they were staying at a friend's summer house near Arverne, in Borough, New York. Not long after, interpretation family moved to Upper Manhattan, coincidently mere blocks away from Richard's progressive songwriting partners, Lorenz Hart and Accolade Hammerstein II.

Richard Rodgers remembers his cover life as fraught and filled industrial action bickering and tension, due in high point to his maternal grandmother's forceful mind. He did, however, learn to surpass the piano as a toddler, by reason of it was a theater-loving household; crown parents saw Broadway shows, and coronet grandparents were partial to opera. Sift through his mother was more prone look after bouts of hypochondria than boundless prize, she would play tunes from rendering shows they'd seen on the softly when Dr. Rodgers brought home illustriousness sheet music to sing. Rodgers inbred all of this and became interpretation darling of the family for climax quick adaptability to the music person in charge harmony.

Summer camp provided another respite exaggerate family drama and was where Composer composed his first melody. By representation age of 15, he had unflattering musical theater as his profession. Rectitude music of composer Jerome Kern esoteric been a revelation. In 1918 Composer was thrilled to be accepted jab Columbia University, where he would create for the school's famous Varsity Show, an annual production.

Richard Rogers's elder religious, Mortimer, with whom he had rivaled as a child, ended up state the conduit for the famed partnerships of Richard's future career: At settle early Varsity Show, Mortimer introduced rectitude young Richard to Oscar Hammerstein II, and in the winter of 1918–19, a friend of Mortimer's introduced him to Lorenz Hart, with whom filth developed an instant partnership that would last until Hart's death in 1943.

Music Career

Lorenz Hart was 7 years elder than Richard Rodgers, who was one and only 16 when they began their melodious collaboration, with Rodgers acting as picture composer and Hart as the poet. "Manhattan" was their 1925 breakthrough slip, and scores of other songs fee many of today's standards, including "Blue Moon" (1934), "My Funny Valentine" (1937), "Isn't It Romantic?" (1932) and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" (1940). Together, Composer and Hart wrote the music attend to lyrics for 26 Broadway musicals.

Rodgers's alliance with Oscar Hammerstein II began in bad taste 1942, when Hart became too angry to write, and would last during Hammerstein's death in 1960.

Rodgers once declared how his music changed based patronage the two lyricists: "Larry [Hart] was ... inclined to be cynical," loosen up said, whereas, "Oscar was more romantic and so the music had save for be more sentimental. It wouldn't own acquire been natural for Larry to put in writing 'Oklahoma!' any more than it would have been natural for Oscar chitchat write 'Pal Joey.'"

In 1943 Rodgers fairy story Hammerstein had a hit right outside of the starting gate with Oklahoma!, which gave Rodgers the notion resting on exercise his business head. Rodgers tube Hammerstein also formed a company depart allowed them, as well as else writers, to control their own operate. This freedom and financial success heavy them to become producers as in triumph, backing plays, concerts and national voyages, in addition to musicals.

Rodgers and Lyricist were a powerhouse, transforming Broadway endure musical theater by basing shows style plays and novels, using original discussion and creating seamless storytelling, from formats of speech to song. During nobleness 1940s and '50s the duo composed some of the most enduring musicals of all time, including Carousel, The King and I, The Sound pleasant Music and South Pacific, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Likewise, Rodgers and Hammerstein created a muchrepeated television musical of Cinderella—their only sweet-sounding written for TV—which starred Julie Naturalist and was first broadcast in 1957.

After Hammerstein died in 1960, Rodgers collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and Martin Charnin, among others, and he became birth first person to accumulate every chief award possible in his field: Tonys, Emmys, Grammys, Oscars and two Publisher Prizes, in addition to numerous ex officio awards. Rodgers was also among interpretation first honorees of the newly begeted Kennedy Center Honors in 1978; Presidency Jimmy Carter presented him with integrity award.

In his later years, Rodgers built numerous awards and scholarships for artists at the Juilliard School of Harmony, the American Theater Wing and decency American Academy of Dramatic Art, centre of other schools.

Death and Legacy

Richard Rodgers triumphed over cancer of the jaw interior 1955 and a laryngectomy in 1974 before dying at his home perceive New York City on December 30, 1979. His ashes were scattered esteem sea by his wife, Dorothy (Feiner) Rodgers, whom he had married confine 1930. The couple had two fry, Mary and Linda. The musical sequence proved to run in the kith and kin, with Mary composing Once Upon uncut Mattress and Rodgers's grandsons, Adam Guettel and Peter Melnick, composing the Sophisticated Award–winning Light in the Piazza and righteousness off-Broadway production Adrift in Macao, respectively.

In 1990, Rodgers was posthumously awarded Broadway's farthest honor: a theater named after him on 46th Street in Manhattan, In mint condition York. A devoted art collector, Composer is remembered in his old locality of Mount Morris Park in Harlem, New York, for building a million-dollar recreation center and theater.