- Born
- Died
- Birth nameRichard Charles Rodgers
- Nickname
- Dick
- Richard Rodgers is an American composer, known largely for his work in musical theater.
With 43 Broadway musicals and over 900 songs to his credit, Rodgers was one of the most significant American composers of the 20th century, and his compositions had a significant impact on popular music.
He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart, with whom he wrote several musicals throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including Pal Joey (1957), A Connecticut Yankee (1955), On Your Toes (1939), Babes in Arms (1939), and Oscar Hammerstein II, with whom he wrote musicals through the 1940s and 1950s such as Oklahoma! (1955), Carousel (1956), South Pacific (1958), The King and I (1956), and The Sound of Music (1965). His collaborations with Hammerstein, in particular, are celebrated for bringing the Broadway musical to a new maturity by telling stories that were focused around characters and drama rather than the light-hearted entertainment that the genre was known for beforehand.
Rodgers was the first person to win what are considered the top American entertainment awards in television, recording, movies and Broadway - an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award, now known collectively as an EGOT. In addition, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, making him one of only two people to receive all five awards (Marvin Hamlisch is the other).- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tango Papa
- SpouseDorothy Rodgers(March 5, 1930 - December 30, 1979) (his death, 2 children)
- Often worked with Oscar Hammerstein II, and prior to that, Lorenz Hart
- Wrote over 1,500 songs (at least 85 regarded as standards) and 42 musicals, 19 of which were transferred to film.
- Grandfather of composer/lyricist/actor Adam Guettel and composer Peter Melnick.
- He was one of the pioneers, along with Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, in the creation of a less frivolous type of musical theater than had been the case, in which musicals were adapted from well-known plays or novels, and featured dialog taken directly from those plays and/or novels, as well as believable, realistic characterizations, with dramatic storylines which sometimes contained tragedy and did not necessarily follow the usual formulas. His first musical using an unusual storyline and characters was "Pal Joey" , written with Lorenz Hart and produced in 1940, based on short stories by John O'Hara, about an unprincipled but sympathetic nightclub hoofer who does not reform. It was not very successful in its first run, but became a hit in 1952 (and was unfortunately watered down in its 1957 film version). The musicals Rodgers wrote, beginning in 1943 with Oscar Hammerstein II, overthrew many of the usual musical theater formulas of the time and continued the path begun by Hammerstein and Kern in their 1927 "Show Boat". The Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals sometimes used ballet sequences to reveal what was happening in the mind of one of the characters, the lead characters were not necessarily admirable people (i.e "Carousel"'s Billy Bigelow), one or more characters were sometimes killed off in the storylines, the hero and heroine did not necessarily fall in love or have a love scene (as in "The King and I"), and very often subjects which were then considered taboo in musicals were used. The songs in most of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals (with the exception of some of the musical numbers in "The Sound of Music") developed the storyline and the characters, and could not be removed from the shows without seriously damaging them.
- In addition to their phenomenal success as writers of their own shows, Rodgers and Hammerstein produced shows by other writers, as well, most notably Irving Berlin's "Annie Get Your Gun" and John Van Druten's "I Remember Mama." The latter, incidentally, became the basis for Rodgers' last completed show. Written in collaboration with Martin Charnin and starring Liv Ullmann, Rodgers' "I Remember Mama" was one of the most notorious Broadway flops of the 1970s, running only a few months in 1979, largely on advance ticket sales. Rodgers died shortly after it closed. Most agreed that it was a sad end to an otherwise distinguished career.
- Along with his lyricist-partner Oscar Hammerstein II, he made more than ten appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948), Ed Sullivan's television show. They are probably the only American musical play creators to have made that many personal appearances on one television series.
- [Defending his songs and style in a changing world] What's wrong with sweetness and light? It's been around quite awhile.
- Whenever I get an idea for a song, even before jotting down the notes, I can hear it in the orchestra, I can smell it in the scenery, I can see the kind of actor who will sing it, and I am aware of an audience listening to it.
- [Referring to Oscar Hammerstein II and the song "It Might As Well Be Spring"] He gave me a lyric. And when he gives me a lyric, I write music.
- Frank Loesser as a man is a book in himself. He was happy; he was strong; he had enormous peaks and frightening depths. This is only to say that he was intensely human. With it all, he was a living refutation of the theory that composers are not very bright. Frank was a first-rate businessman without ever having to resort to tricks. He knew his own value, and he recognized the value of others.
- The well-tempered songwriter creates his own sort of "scherzo"--not necessarily fast, but surely joyous. It is difficult to listen to "Standing on the Corner" without wanting to giggle at, not just at the words, but at the music. This gifted man [Frank Loesser] could wander off the conventional 32-bar reservation without getting lost. Thus, "I Believe in You" is a full-fledged operatic aria with a beat. It is also a statement of self-faith. Was Frank singing to himself? He was entitled to do it.
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