Richard Rodgers (review)

Geoffrey Block's Richard Rodgers inaugurates the Yale Broadway Masters series, slated at this point also to include studies of Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Frank Loesser, Cole Porter, and Sigmund Romberg. According to Block's preface, the series is for the general reader and students, "serious scholarly books that wear their scholarship lightly" (p. [ix]). The volumes will vary in contents, but each will include a biographical survey, at least one chapter on a single show, an assessment of the composer's legacy, a worklist, and bibliography.

This description is important to help one understand Block's intentions. Richard Rodgers is the subject of recent, full-length biographies by William G. Hyland (Richard Rodgers [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998]) and Meryle Secrest (Somewhere for Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001]), and there are several other related studies, especially on Rodgers's collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein II. Block complements these sources in a compact book, forcing difficult choices concerning coverage. He compiled The Richard Rodgers Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) and has an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject that shines through in this study. Anyone interested in Rodgers and his musicals must read Block, but some will find his coverage idiosyncratic. This is, after all, a book with scant mention of Pal Joey, Oklahoma!, Carousel, The King and I, or The Sound of Music. These shows have been covered elsewhere⁸Block himself wrote about Pal Joey (in tandem with On Your Toes)and Carousel in his outstanding Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from "Show Boat" to Sondheim (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)⁸but a volume on Rodgers without significant mention of these shows is unusual.

So what does Block cover? In his "Introduction: Rodgers, the Workaholic," he notes that the composer loved his work so much that he wrote until the end. He mentions the problematic shows that Rodgers created after Hammerstein's death in 1960 and returns to these in his last chapter. The first chapter is a biographical sketch entitled "From Apprentice to Musical Dramatist." Block briefly covers Rodgers's childhood and his amateur shows with Lorenz Hart, then approaches the composer's musical education and analyzes mostly early songs to illustrate Rodgers's style. In the chapter's last segment, Block considers his subject's development as a musical dramatist. Like most of the musical analysis in the book, it is not too technical. Block barely mentions Rodgers's later career in this chapter.

Chapter 2, "A Tale of Two Connecticut Yankees," is a telling comparison between the 1927 version of Rodgers and Hart's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and the 1943 revival. Block makes numerous useful observations about this show, one of the few from its decade that was revived in the 1940s. He demonstrates the difficulty in getting to know a Broadway show from that period, but brings us closer to the stars, the score, and what the audience saw. He documents differences in the later version, concluding that neither could be revived effectively. This is the bulk of what Block offers concerning Rodgers's career in the 1920s.

At the outset of chapter 3, Block notes that Rodgers and Hart returned from Hollywood in 1935. He briefly reviews their film work, but mostly considers the remainder of their Broadway collaboration, which included ten new shows between 1935 and 1943. Given the fairly stable group of co-creators with whom they worked, Block compiles a list of the "Rodgers and Hart Repertory Company, 1935-1943" (pp. 81- 82), including talented librettists, directors, choreographers, and other figures. The chapter then becomes a source guide, with brief commentary, on each show's innovations, commonly cited anecdotes, and critical reception, followed by brief comments on sources. (A table of these sources appears at chapter's end.) The section continues with an essay on The Boys of Syracuse...