Book review: “Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical” by Laurie Winer

In mid-century America, it was easy enough to find out what the nation stood for — just go to a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music embodied what Americans of the time felt were their best and deepest values.  Although Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II tackled difficult and sometimes shameful aspects of American life, their words and music exuded optimism and hope.

As Laurie Winer writes in Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical:

They were artists who had created a unified definition of Americanness. Their productions made audiences feel proud of not only what the country was but what it could be — that beacon of hope and fairness for which we strive yet find so elusive.

This optimism and hope was, in its way, a product that they were selling — and a very profitable one at that.  Indeed, Winer notes that they became a kind of assembly line, quoting 25st-century critic John Lahr:

In show-biz terms, Rodgers and Hammerstein had hit the mother lode.  They had engineered the musical equivalent of the interchangeable part, which insured a sort of quality control.  Improvisation was no longer an element, and the musical was now, in principle, anyway, infinitely repeatable. Rodgers and Hammerstein were not just a sensation — they were a corporation.”

By the 1960s, however, their product was going out of fashion.  The nation, particularly its youth, was fed up with optimism and hope.  Instead, in books, movies, plays and musicals, writers began to tell darker stories, offering more pain than pleasure, few happy endings and much angst.

Initially, the hugely successful musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein were ripped by subsequent generations of playwrights, directors and critics for being too sunny, too sentimental and too pollyannaish.  Later, they were panned for being too white and too middle-class, for being racist and sexist.

Yet, for the past half century and more, those musicals have been revived — sometimes with minor tweaks, sometimes with major ones — over and over again, on Broadway and anywhere plays are produced.  Audiences loved them and still do.

 

“Transformed the musical”

In Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical, Winer is charting the evolution of the American musical over the past century, basically from the opening of the groundbreaking Show Boat by Jerome Kern and Hammerstein in 1927 to the present day, epitomized by Stephen Sondheim.

And, in telling her tale, Winer uses the life story of Hammerstein as the framework.  Because, after all, he was the single most important figure in American musical theater over those hundred years, responsible for the two greatest works of that era.

In Show Boat, Hammerstein and Kern “created the first fully realized American musical play…[an] epic tapestry of racism and ill-fated romance and a meta-analysis of theater itself,…[laying] the groundwork in tone and content for everything significant that followed.”

Sixteen years later, this time with Rodgers, Hammerstein “fundamentally transformed the musical again” with Oklahoma!, “a celebration of country with none of the crude jingoism common in wartime musicals; its definition of America was distilled in generous possibility.”

And, if that weren’t enough, Hammerstein mentored Stephen Sondheim who thought of him as a surrogate father and went on, in his own way, to re-create the musical for his own era.

 

“Reaches a spiritual plane”

Winer, who has worked as a theater critic for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, argues that Show Boat and Oklahoma! are the cultural equivalent of Thomas Edison’s lightbulb.

Musical scholars, she writes, “consistently divide the development of the musical into one of two categories — everything that came before and after Show Boat, or everything that came before or after Oklahoma!”  And she goes on:

In the hands of great theater artists, Hammerstein’s work still reaches a spiritual plane, carrying audiences to blissful absolution before sending them back out into the night feeling reconnected to their own imperfect world. 

His work appeals to the best in human nature with an astonishing force that can still be accessed today.

 

“Like a stove”

The Oscar Hammerstein II of Winer’s book is the child of well-to-do theater people who wrote warm and tender lyrics, was a steady presence in his private, social and musical life and was a distant father who best communicated with his sons in letters.

For instance, when Oklahoma! was being fine-tuned on the road before Broadway, everyone was working overtime and nerves were strained.  But, according to choreographer Agnes de Mille, Hammerstein never seemed flustered:

He sat through endless nights, quietly giving off intelligence like a stove.  He never got angry, or nasty, or excited, but when people were beating their heads on the orchestra rail he made the one commonsense suggestion that any genius might think of if he was not at the moment consuming himself.

From the very beginning, the collaboration of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Winer writes, was like a love affair and worked so well because “it was not a love affair.”

Most of the time, they worked separately, and Rodgers told an earlier biographer of the lyricist, “I’m not sure how much I can help you.  I never knew whether he liked me or hated me.”

Rodgers had had an earlier successful although bumpy partnership with Lorenz Hart because of Hart’s alcoholism.  Hammerstein was a much different story, as Winer relates:

With Hart, Rodgers had been the high school principal, insisting on work not play.  Now he was the one who hid the dimensions of his drinking.  He was the insecure one who wondered what he meant to Hammerstein, and who sometimes felt his partner’s attempt to lead a purposeful life as a kind of reproach. 

On top of that, people preferred Hammerstein; he was warmer, more empathetic, funnier, he could discuss a wider range of subjects, and women knew they could chat with him without having to fend off advances.

 

“It works fine”

Usually, Hammerstein gave little intimation of any irritation he had with Rodgers.  However, in 1950, he had been working for a month on the lyrics for “Hello, Young Lovers” for The King and I.

This is a song that Winer greatly admires.  She calls it “the apotheosis of all those eulogies Hammerstein had been called upon to deliver (and the one he would soon give at the funeral of Gertrude Lawrence),” and writes that it “is difficult to think of another song that achieves this particular poignancy.”

After weeks of work, Hammerstein “was satisfied he had captured something subtle and unique — a grief that is diffused by understanding its place in a continuum of death and renewal.”  So he took the unusual step of sending the lyrics by special messenger to Rodgers.

Hearing nothing back, Hammerstein stewed about it for days until the composer phoned to discuss some other matters.  As he was about to sign off, Rodger said, “Oh, I got that lyric.  It works fine.”

Livid, Hammerstein called a friend to vent his anger.

 

“The character of our country”

Hammerstein’s lyrics and stories, particularly in Show Boat, South Pacific and The King and I, are criticized today for feeding racial stereotypes.  He even used the n-word freely in the original version of Show Boat.

Yet, in contrast to the general attitudes of white America, he dealt with racial questions with great nuance and sensitivity.  The curtain for Show Boat, for instance, rises “on a sight previously undepicted in musical theater: Black men loading and unloading heavy items on the levee.”  Then, Winer writes, onto the stage come white folk, “strolling, chatting, and flirting.”

Though a few Broadway musicals had featured multiracial casts before, they had kept the choruses segregated.  None had offered the stark and telling juxtaposition that opens Show Boat. 

The first thing this show says is the Black and white realities coexist, and neither one is possible without the other.  This is a sea change in musical theater.  We have gathered here tonight, this opening suggests, to address the character of our country.

 

“The evil of stereotypes”

Perhaps it’s best to give Hammerstein the last word here on such questions.

After their success with Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein not only wrote shows together but produced their own and the work of others.  So, in 1948, they decided to revive Show Boat for a short run in New York and then a national tour.

Lee Newton, a critic at the Daily Worker, wrote a piece asking the duo to omit “all the Uncle Tom business.”

The two men co-wrote a reply although I have to guess that the actual writing was done by Hammerstein. It was printed in the Daily Worker and said, in part:

We deplore the evil of stereotypes in fiction on the stage and on the screen — the crap-shooting, razor wielding Negro, the crafty and penurious Jew, the pugnacious whisky-drinking Irishman…When races are invariably symbolized by these types, the result is not only harmful but it is likely to make dull entertainment….

On the other hand, we would be the last to advocate the theory that never again shall a Negro character gamble or be lazy or that never again shall a Jewish character be anything but honest in any business dealing, that never again shall an Irish character raise his fists…..

We believe all races should be represented by their good types as well as their bad types, that all races should be regarded as having their share of imperfections  as well as virtues because this is the truth.

 

Patrick T. Reardon

11.21.24