Rodgers and Hart Trivia Quiz

Answer:

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart first worked together on the musical 'Fly With Me' for the 1920 Varsity show at Columbia University. It was such a success when performed at the Astor Hotel that the producer Lew Fields commissioned them to write some songs for a play to be staged later in the year. 'Fly With Me' was not completely the work of Rodgers and Hart - Milton Kroopf and Phillip Leavitt wrote the book, which was adapted by Lorenz Hart, and Oscar Hammerstein II provided some additional lyrics.

'The Garrick Gaieties', produced in 1925, was their first Broadway success. This was a revue (a series of skits) with musical numbers which included the major hit 'Manhattan'. The lyrics of this song, ostensibly about the pleasures to be found for young lovers in Manhattan during the summer, show Hart's sense of humor, as he describes all kinds of mundane activities in lyrical terms - totally ignoring the fact that these activities mostly just involve wandering the streets of the city, as the couple have no money.

1928 saw Lew Fields produce 'Present Arms', with a book by Henry Field and musical numbers staged by Busby Berkley, who also played one of the characters who sang 'You Took Advantage of Me', the show's biggest hit.

In 1930, 'Simple Simon', produced by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., was a comedy vehicle for Ed Wynn, who played a newspaper vendor living in a dream world. It included the song 'Ten Cents a Dance', and was supposed to include 'Dancing on the Ceiling', but that number was cut during previews and later appeared as a production number in the London show 'Ever Green'.

'Jumbo', produced in 1935 by Billy Rose, starred Jimmy Durante, whose schtick included finishing each show by lying down and having a live elephant place its foot on his head. The show was about a struggling circus, and much of the show involved circus performers presenting their acts. Songs included 'The Most Beautiful Girl in the World' as well as 'Litte Girl Blue' and 'My Romance', both sung by Doris Day in the 1962 movie (very loosely) based on the musical.

In 1936, Rodgers and Hart worked with George Abbott to develop the book for 'On Your Toes', as well as producing the songs. The project was initially planned to be a film starring Fred Astaire, but he felt the part was not right for his image, so the production was transformed into a stage musical featuring Ray Bolger as a ballet dancer who becomes the target of thugs. This breakthrough role set Ray Bolger on the route to stardom - you may recall him as the Scarecrow in the 1939 film 'The Wizard of Oz', or the villainous Barnaby in 1961's 'Babes in Toyland'. 'On Your Toes' contains an inset ballet, 'Slaughter on Tenth Avenue', with music by Rodgers and choreography by George Balanchine, in which Bolger's character performed the role of a dancer who falls in love with a dance hall girl who has a jealous boyfriend, leading to a tragic ending (which is not replicated in the framework musical).

The 1937 show 'Babes in Arms' included a number of songs which have since become classics, including the show's title song, 'Where or When', 'My Funny Valentine', 'The Lady Is a Tramp', 'Johnny One Note' and 'I Wish I Were in Love Again'. Only the first two of these were retained for the 1939 movie version starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, which also had a dramatically different script. 'The Lady is a Tramp' was included as an instrumental number in the film (and was added to the film version of 'Pal Joey').

'The Boys from Syracuse' again saw Rodgers and Hart working with librettist George Abbot, who adapted Shakespeare's 'The Comedy of Errors' to produce a show about two pairs of identical twins, separated at birth, manage to find themselves in the same place, leading to plenty of identity confusion. The musical numbers included 'This Can't Be Love', 'Falling in Love with Love' and 'Sing for Your Supper'.

'Pal Joey', a 1940 musical based on a series of short stories published in The New Yorker magazine by John O'Hara (which he later published as a book), starred Gene Kelly in his first lead role as the anti-hero Joey Evans. Joey was an unabashed cad, but not unlikable. The most famous song from the show is probably 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered', sung by Vivienne Segal (playing the socialite Vera Simpson); 'I Could Write a Book', which Joey sings to impress a naive young Linda, has also come to be considered a standard.

The last collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart was the 1943 revival of 'A Connecticut Yankee', which had originally been produced in 1927. The book by Herbert Fields was based on Mark Twain's 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court', extracting the comedy and ignoring many of the more serious elements of the novel. After all, this is musical comedy! The revival included several new songs, including 'To Keep My Love Alive', written expressly for Vivienne Segal to perform as Morgan La Fey. It was the last song Lorenz Hart was to write before his death from pneumonia a few days after the show opened.

The incorrect options, whose names may be more familiar because of their highly successful film adaptations, were written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, a partnership that came together in the early 1940s, as the Rodgers and Hart partnership was struggling. Their first collaboration, 'Oklahoma!', the 1943 show that created the musical as we now know it, with songs an integral part of the story, has often been described as revolutionary. It was followed by 'Carousel' (1945), 'South Pacific' (1949), 'The King and I' (1951), 'Flower Drum Song' (1958) and 'The Sound of Music' (1959).