The 'real' Rodgers and Hammerstein

Music team wasn't all sweetness and light

THE SOUND OF THEIR MUSIC: THE STORY OF RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN, by Frederick Nolan, Walker & Co., 272 pp., $12.95.

By Peter Bellamy

At last a biography of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the most successful musical writing team in Broadway history, which presents them as recognizable human beings.

To read most other accounts of their lives, one would conclude that their domination of the Broadway musical scene for 20 years was one, long sweet song, without anybody ever having said a harsh word about them:

Nolan reports composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, a Hammerstein. protege, as saying that Hammerstein was a "man of limited talent but infinite soul and Rodgers a man of infinite talent and limited soul."

Sondheim found his association with Rodgers as lyricist for the illfated "Do I Hear a Waltz?” highly

disagreeable. Nolan reports that when Rodgers came to the theater for rehearsals everybody would say: "Here comes Godzilla.”

Nolan also makes this enigmatic statement: "Rodgers is not a demonstrative man, yet he delights in the company of beautiful women, which it has been taboo to discuss in writing about him for as many years as he has been in the theater.”

Standing by itself, this paragraph doesn't make much sense since most men prefer the company of beautiful women to ugly ones and Rodgers is still very much married to Dorothy, his wife of 48 years.

The main cause of resentment of Rodgers and Hammerstein was their complete control of their productions. To purchase film rights to their musicals, a studio had to give them 40% of the profits and no arguments.

If one collaborated with them, they got 51% of the credit and 51% of

the billing. They had a set rule not to share a copyright and only grudgingly gave credit to Joshua Logan as co-author of the stage book for "South Pacific."

In defense of the duo's business practices, for which Rodgers took a lion's share of the blame, it must be said that Broadway is a tough, ruthless street and its Mr. Nice Guys usually end up in bankruptcy.

It cannot be disputed that the world owes the team a great debt for their scores of melodies and lyrics and such hits as the revolutionary "Oklahoma!," "South Pacific," "Pal Joey," "Carousel,” “Sound of Music” and “The King and I.”

The profit figures of "South Pacific" are awesome. It opened April 7, 1949, at a cost of $163,000 and by January 1957 had made a profit of nearly $5 billion, not counting the sale of movie rights. The long-playing cast album sold more than 1 million copies at $4.85. -

Rodgers' powers of survival are remarkable. In 1954 he underwent an operation for removal of his left jaw and some neck glands because of cancer. In 1958 before the opening of "Sound of Music" he committed himself briefly to an institution because of depression.

In 1969 Rodgers survived a heart attack. In 1974 he underwent a laryngectomy and now communicates through esophageal speech. He will be 76 June 28. Hammerstein died in 1960 of cancer.

Nolan, who wrote the "Richard Rodgers Story" for the BBC and is a novelist, treats of the careers of Rodgers, Hammerstein and Lorenz Hart, the brilliant, malajusted homosexual lyricist who was Rodger's first partner.

The book is filled with amusing anecdotes and has 101 illustrations.

Peter Bellamy is critic-at-large for The Plain Dealer entertainment department.

Songwriters Richard Rodgers (left) and Oscar Hammerstein II.