Richard Rodgers – Part 01
This beautifully written (and volumous) biography of Rodgers brings the reader into the feel of New York City’s bustling Broadway through the 20th Century. The career Rodgers had was successful, but always fraught with dilemmas to surmount, all the way to the end of his life. Among his greatest personal attributes were his strong work ethic, his determination to look for what was beautiful in the midst of dark situations, and his commitment to developing his talent in the areas of his specific love of musical theater over a lifetime.
Rodgers was born June 28, 1902 in Harlem, New York to his Jewish parents who were immigrants from Russia (1860). Harlem, at this time was known as “the aristocratic Jewish neighborhood of New York.” Richard’s father was a doctor, and had hoped that he would follow in his footsteps. But, by the time Richard was five years old, he began showing talent musically. The family frequented many classical music concerts in New York, having a season subscription to the Metropolitan Opera. “The whole family went to the musical comedies and operettas of the day. After each performance…(his parents) bought the printed sheet music for sale in the lobby and played it the minute they got home. If daily life took place in no-man’s-land, the piano, and a sizable area around I, was the demilitarized zone…All those tiny green silk tassels around the edge of the piano stool fascinated the infant Rodgers, and perhaps they were at eye level, because he had to be lifted up whenever he wanted to play. That was often; he would sit down and energetically band away. Pretty soon, threads of something more were appearing in the cacophony. People noticed that he was repeating sounds he had heard his mother play. He was finding melodies, and at a very young age. He does not remember the moment when he began playing by ear, but he know it was soon.” We teach students in our music school in Odessa, Texas the value of both knowing how to improvise, as well as read and write music.
At that time, Viennese operetta was the rage…The Merry Widow was the sensation of 1907…(Rodger’s) knew it by heart, “and his marked responsiveness to, and feeling for, the waltz form must have had something to do with this indoctrination when he was five years old.”
He began composing at age 11, and was frequenting great performances of classical music there in New York. “He saw Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes make its celebrated debut in New York and, a few years later, stood in the back of Carnegie Hall to hear Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 played by Josef Hofmann. His grandparents had regular weekly seats in the third row of the Metropolitan Opera, and one night Rachel gave her seat to Dick. Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar were singing Carmen.”
“From the age of nine, he was allowed to attend the theatre by himself, and would go to the old Standard Theatre at Broadway and Ninety-first Street ‘as regular as a clock’ every Saturday afternoon…Music conjured up roseate dreams of happiness; and the stage, the musical-comedy stage in particular, was a place where such visions could be realized. He said years later that he had only to walk into a theatre to find himself in a good mood. ‘If I’m unhappy,’ he said, ‘it takes my unhappiness away; if I’m happy, I get happier.’” We encourage students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to take every opportunity to listen to music that moves them.
When he was eight years old, he woke up one night in great pain. “His right index finger was ‘flame-red and swollen almost to the thickness of my wrist…He had contracted osteomyelitis, and infection of the bone marrow, with an abscess at the site.” He was taken to the hospital and operated on, “but ended up with a badly deformed index finger which, in an early experiment in plastic surgery, was given a new tip…because of it, any thoughts he might have had of a concert career were at an end.”
As a teen-ager, he continued to go to concerts “of Bach, Beethover, Mozart, and Brahms, but the music that informed his ear originated from …one of the first truly American writers of the theatre music…Jerome Kern.”
Rodgers eventually attended Columbia University, where he found an opportunity to write music for their Varsity Show. Columbia is where he met Oscar Hammerstein, and Larry Hart.
“Hart was dedicated to the perfection of meter and rhyme and shared Rodgers’ devotion to Kern and Wodehouse. His shrine was a phonograph that continuously spilled out the music of the Princess Theatre shows…Hart’s single major drawback manifested itself at an early stage. Rodgers, who was wide awake and ready for work after breakfast, discovered that Hart was useless before noon. This was because he loved carousing until all hours of the night…Theirs was the perfect match of opposites. Hart’s exuberance, impulsiveness, and unpredictability appealed to the side of Rodgers that admired such …freedom.”
“If they were working on a comic song, the lyrics came first, since, he explained, many of them were just musical dialogue, in which case the sense was more important than the sound. However, when a ‘melodic’ song was called for, Hart let his composer write the music first. Then, he said, ‘I take the most distinctive melodic phrase in his tune and work on that. What I choose is not necessarily the theme of first line, but the phrase that stands out. Next I try to find the meaning of that phrase and to develop a euphonic set of words to fit it. For example, in one of my songs just published the first line runs like this: ‘Here in my arms it’s adorable.’ The distinct melodic phrase came on the work ‘adorable,’ and the word ‘adorable’ is the first word that occurred to me, so I used it as my pivotal musical idea. And as the melodic phrase recurs often in the chorus it determined my rhyme scheme. Of course, in a song of this sort, the melody and the euphonics of the words themselves are really more important that the sense.”
“You’d Be Surprised reached an audience in the spring of 1920; two weeks later, Rodgers and Hart opened their first Varsity Show…They submitted their script to three judges. One of them happened to be Hammerstein…Rodgers made himself the orchestra’s conductor. To do that he had to join the musicians’ union and became the youngest conductor in the city.”
Hoping to break into the Broadway musical theatre scene, he and Hart continued working towards that goal. Broadway, however, was not easy. “If a musical or play lasted for a hundred performances, its financial success was practically guaranteed, and even those that did not last could often cover their production casts by going on tour…by the spring of 1921 Broadway was experiencing one of its periodic busts.”
Although Rodgers was talented, his talent was not always seen or appreciated. Not getting the ‘breaks’ he was hoping for, he wrote, “I hated myself for sponging off my parents, and I hated myself for the lies I would rattle off about this producer or that publisher being so impressed with my work that it wouldn’t be long before everything was just dandy.”
“Rodgers was in debt…had been borrowing money, five dollars at a time, from a friend, a young businessman named Earl Katzenstein, and now something had to be done because he owed Earl one hundred and five dollars. In something of a panic, he went to his friend’s office and said, ‘I’m through trying to get anywhere in music. I want a job.’”
Katzenstein led Rodgers across the hall the a Mr. Marvin who had a small business in children’s underwear, buying, selling, and traveling on the road, and offered Rodgers the ‘fantastic’ sum of fifty dollars a week. Just before starting the new job, a new musical opportunity came, “he rang to say there was yet another amateur musical in need of a composer…no ordinary benefit show. This was in aid of the Theatre Guild, which, in its seventh season, had acquired a reputation on Broadway for its high-minded productions.”
Rodgers and Hart began immediately to work on The Garrick Gaieties. When the show was finally performed, “Rodgers, conducting the orchestra, turned around after the finale to look at the audience ‘standing and clapping, cheering, yelling, stomping, waving and whistling. I turned back to the orchestra and had the boys strike up Manhattan. The cast sang it. The musicians sang it. Even the audience sang it. After about ten curtain calls, the house lights went on, but still no one wanted to go.’ It had been extraordinary, magnificent, and unbelievable success.” We hope to instill into the students of our music school in Odessa, Texas the value of perseverance through difficult times, in order to get to a moment of success that can change the trajectory of a career.
“The Garrick Gaieties began its regular run on June 8 and stayed for twenty-five weeks, a total of 211 performances. Rodgers and Hart each received about %50 a week from their percentage of the gross; in addition, Rodgers was earning the handsome sum of $83 a week, union scale, for being the show’s conductor. It was the first actual wages either of them had earned for their work on musicals since the day they joined forces nine years before.”
“That summer of 1925 made up, to Rodgers, for all the rejection and misery of the past few years. Night after night he exulted as audiences ‘laughed, clapped, cheered.”
This was, however, only a short-lived situation. “Broadway…was hard and unforgiving, even for those who were successful. ‘What you accomplished last season doesn’t matter. ‘What have you got now?’ is the incessant query.’
This could be the same for “Rogers’ fears for the future, which were precariously balanced on the edge of his equally fervent hopes. It was true that crowds were roaring their approval, but he already knew how fickle the public’s taste could be, and all his life he hated to gamble.”
During the Great Depression, Rodgers and Hart travelled to London and Paris, where they met an extremely talented American orchestrator, Robert Russell Bennett, who was to later to play a major role in the development of Rodgers’ work for decades.
Back in the states, Rodgers and Hart continued to write successful shows, like A Connecticut Yankee , and Present Arms.
Present Arms, however, was “another failure as far as Rodgers was concerned. (Actually, it had a respectable run o 155 performances, although it may not have made much money.) He was back again in the old dilemma of how to be commercially safe while also satisfying his own standards, or, as a writer for the Evening Post phrased it in the spring of 1928, how to be ‘clever without being too clever.’”
Hart explained, “Of course, as we grow older we learn. And we have tried to be simpler in what we hope to make song hits. The music in our biggest sellers is becoming more melodic and more definite in rhythm, the lyrics less complex…” They were, he insisted, ‘striving to write for the public consumption.’ Privately, however, “they had agreed very early in their careers that the only safe way to exist in the theatre was to take chances, as Rodgers put it.” This is another important concept we try to instill in the students in our music school in Odessa, Texas. Without risk, there can be no reward.
Rodgers, at this time, became engaged to Dorothy Belle Feiner. Their relationship was cautioned by her father. “He told her, ‘Look, I like him very much, but I think you must realize that he is going to be surrounded by the most attractive women and they’ll be coming along new every year, younger and younger. And as you get older, they’ll still be coming.’ So, Benjamin Feiner concluded, ‘if this is going to worry you, you shouldn’t marry him.’” They did marry, but her father’s words became truer than she would like to have believed. Throughout their married life Rodgers had an affinity with, in particular, his leading actresses, which on a number of times led to infidelity. Dorothy stayed with him, but their relationship was tenuous, at best.
“One area of her husband’s life to which the door was locked and bolted…was his work. ‘Dick…felt it would be awkward and embarrassing to have a wire- or anybody who wasn’t actively connected with the show- present. I understood his point of view, but I resented it at the same time.’ What was most annoying of all was having him gone night after night.”
Rodgers and Hart had a dream of doing something which had not yet been done on Broadway. They were, “in pursuit of their goal of a fully integrated musical.” On Your Toes and Babes In Arms were musicals produced at this stage in their career, in which they worked with George Balanchine.
Larry Hart was “drinking …more than usual…it was having an effect on his health. He ate less and less and had frequent blackouts when he would forget whom he had just seen or what he was doing.” He would be gone, and nobody knew where he was. “His disappearances left more and more responsibility on his partner’s shoulders, and Rodgers often found himself writing lyrics as well.”
Rodgers knew he was going to have to leave the relationship. “His whole career was shackled to a man who had no sense of responsibility, either to others or to himself, and who seemed at his most self-destructive just as the partnership was at the pinnacle of its success. What he could not afford to do was let matters slide until Hart had ruined them both.”
Rodgers was aware that Hammerstein lived nearby. He wrote, “Dependable, realistic, sensitive Oscar Hammerstein was the right man, possibly the only man, who not only would be understanding about my problem but would make constructive suggestions.” Larry Hart’s health continued to decline, and April 1943, the day of his mother’s funeral, he died.
“When he began his famous collaboration with Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein was at a low point in his career. An aristocrat of the theatre, he was born into a family of impresarios. He was named for his grand-father, whose Manhattan Opera House was briefly as important as the Metropolitan Opera. His uncle Arthur was a noted Broadway producer, and his father, managed a theatre, the Victoria. As has been noted, he attended Columbia and almost immediately began to make a name for himself as a librettist and lyricist; while Rodgers and Hart were still struggling, his uncle Arthur had produced what Oscar Hammerstein chose to call ‘a musical play’, even in those early days.”
Hammerstein admired Hart’s work, stating, “Do you realize how difficult it was for me to follow behind Larry Hart? I was such a great admirer of Larry’s that I never thought I could do it.’”
It was in 1943 that Rodgers and Hammerstein produced an American folk opera, Oklahoma.
“Oklahoma!’s uniqueness did not altogether lie in the willingness of its creators to tackle serious themes; Show Boat had done so sixteen years before, and so had Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Nor was the claim, so often made, that this was the first integrated musical particularly valid. Gilbert and Sullivan had led the way; the Princess Theatre show had emphasized a logical meshing of song and story; and Hammerstein had made it his life-long ambition and demonstrated his growing master of that goal with Rose-Marie…Oklahoma!’s uniqueness stemmed from the extent to which song, dance, story, costumes, scenery, and lighting had coalesced into the kind of total theatre so often extolled in theory and so difficult to achieve in fact. As mark Steyn wrote, ‘Rogers and Hammerstein…fused the naturalism of the straight play, the musicality of operetta, the colour and imagery of musical comedy lyrics and the emotional sweep of dance. Not bad for one revolution.’ This quintessentially American invention was, nevertheless, eminently exportable.” We hope to instill in the students in our music school in Odessa, Texas the value of a cumulative approach to the arts. Interweaving multiple artistic disciplines can be a powerful thing.
Even though success was in the career, at home Dorothy’s health was troubling. Their daughter once stated that “despite her mother’s professed pride in not being jealous of other women in her father’s life, ‘I think her jealousy showed up in the fact that she was constantly sick from the age of about forty on, but even before that. She became addicted to a drug (Demerol).”
Hammerstein also had a secret long-term affair with a beautiful show-girl and Rogers was very protective of that. The show-girls found Rodgers witty and attractive. While they enjoyed success in the theatre, both of their homes were on tenuous grounds.
As they continued to succeed, they transitioned from ‘trying to please’ audiences into striving for artistry. “They would not do today what they did yesterday…That dictum, Hammerstein said confidently, did not include worrying about what the public wanted. ‘We decide on what we want to do and then we hope the public will want it.’”
Some of their most successful musicals were: Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. By 1951, “Receptions were being held and awards were showered upon (them). They were becoming the equivalent of national treasures and the subject of numerous radio and television specials. There was an evening of Richard Rodgers of NBC-TV…followed by two one-hour programs on the Ed Sullivan show devoted to his career…a year later, the mayor of New York declared a Rodgers and Hammerstein week. In 1954, a one-and-a-half-hour program featuring the works of Rodgers and Hammerstein was carried on all four networks: NBC-TV, CBS-TV, ABC-TV and Dumont-TV. But to Rogers, the crowning moment came in 1954 when he conducted the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a program of his own music. It was the fulfillment of a lifetime’s ambition.”
We encourage the students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to listen to and appreciate the beauty of the musical language at this time in American history.