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[0:28] David Armstrong: Welcome to Broadway Nation, the podcast that explores the remarkable history of the Broadway musical with a particular focus on the immigrant, Jewish, queer, and Black artist who invented it. My guest again today is the noted journalist and theater critic, Laurie Winer, who returns for part 2 of our conversation about her book, Oscar Hammerstein II and the invention of the musical. If you missed part 1, you may want to catch up with that before listening to this one. Before we begin, I must give a big shout out to all of the patrons of Broadway Nation, whose generous contributions help in part to make this podcast possible, especially producer-level members Paula and Steve Reynolds. If you would like to help support the work of Broadway Nation, please listen for the information at the end of the episode about how you, too, can become a patron.

Following the triumph of Show Boat, during the 1930s, Hammerstein experienced a very dark decade of devastating flops on Broadway and limited achievement in Hollywood. And that's where we pick up our conversation.

[1:31] Laurie Winer: I guess he went out there for the first time in 1930, when everyone was going out there, and the entire Broadway community was just replanted in Beverly Hills. Some of them had more success than he did, because as I said in the book, Oscar's holy grail was the continuity of the story, the integrity of the story. That was not a primary virtue in Hollywood. That's part of the reason he had such a hard time there. Another reason he had such a hard time there was his relentless optimism, which is such a big part of his art, actually did not serve him well in Hollywood, because he kept reading the tea leaves wrong. He kept thinking the studio loved him and was going to promote him and make him a producer, and they weren't, and they didn't. His optimism hurt him. So, it is doubly miraculous that he didn't let go of it and didn't lose it.

[2:21] Paul Jay: Hollywood only cares about whether it makes money or not. One movie that he worked on there, I think you said, and I don't remember whether it was Louis B. Mayer or who it was, but said this is the best movie we've ever made, couldn't be more happy about it. And then the movie opened and it was a flop, and he wouldn't even speak to Hammerstein after that. That kind of experience, obviously, is very different than the Broadway experience, where, of course, money is very important, but it's not the only way the community judges the worth of something.

[2:50] Laurie Winer: It's true, and that still goes on all the time. We call it the Hollywood No. A friend of mine had a project at HBO about a dozen years ago. At the meeting, the executive said to him, I cannot imagine any circumstance under which this would not get made. And that was a no.

[3:07] Paul Jay: That is hilarious. So he hangs on to this optimism, in spite of all this, through quirk of fate to a certain extent, although they had known each other and were, I don't know how you could describe them as friends, but they're certainly colleagues and hung out together. I'm always struck by how many times there's a party and everybody's there, whether it's Hammerstein and Rogers and Irving Berlin and the Gershwins and Dorothy Fields, all seem to constantly be socializing with one another on two coasts.

[3:36] Laurie Winer: It was a way of, you know, treating their homesickness. I mean, they were replanted, and I think they really needed each other's company to feel better. To justify why they were there. So yeah, they would run into each other, Rogers and Hammerstein, at lots of dinners and parties. Do you have a sense of why Rogers clearly has Hammerstein in mind, even in the final years of his working with Hart? He threatens Hart, basically, with Hammerstein as being who will go to if Hart doesn't do Green Grove the Lilacs.

[4:05] Laurie Winer: That's right. I believe Rogers spoke to other lyricists as well, that it wasn't just Hammerstein. I think that people were really drawn to Hammerstein because he was very pleasant to be with because of his humility, his humor, and he seemed like he was kind of a lovely person. That may also have been a reason why Rogers was drawn to him because, as Rogers himself pointed out ungenerously several times, Hammerstein had not had a hit in a very long time. He wasn't coming off of some great success. Richard Rogers was always successful. In some ways, this is an unusual match or an unlikely match of two men who are very, very different. Hammerstein's wife was a little wary of this. Rogers was a well-known womanizer.

He really slept with a lot of showgirls and actresses. Obviously, during that time, it was what a very successful composer would do. Let's face it, songwriters, they need to fall in love all the time for their art, and they often are not necessarily captains of monogamy. Rogers was really, really bad in terms of sheer number of people. One thing that doesn't get told a lot is all of the women who slept with him because they were afraid that they'd be punished in some way. It's a very ugly little world, and everyone knew about it. Dorothy Hammerstein, therefore, was very nervous about Hammerstein's becoming so close with Rogers. I think you say something about she was afraid, a good boy was getting involved with a bad boy, is the way she phrased it.

We've all read now a lot about Richard Rogers, especially from Mary Rogers' book, and certainly from Agnes De Mille, and you went back and read all of this yourself. Many, many people have had a lot of bad things to say about Richard Rogers over the years, especially in terms of his ethics and his business practices.

[5:53] Laurie Winer: I hated him, of course.

[5:55] Paul Jay: That seems fairly ubiquitous, although even Mary Rogers, who probably has the most right to be critical, will then say, and then there's the music. Let's touch on each of these shows, at least briefly. You go into fascinating detail about each of them, both from the work that people saw on the stage and that we still see on the stage today, and their various contemporary ramifications, and what was going on behind the scenes. Not only how they happened, but what was important about what happened. Of course, Oklahoma is the initiator here. As you have said, we still come down to talking about everything that happened before Oklahoma and everything that happened after Oklahoma. Whether you want to give Hammerstein credit for inventing the musical, that's still a moment that is undeniable in the history of the Broadway musical. It is a change point. Why? What was it about Oklahoma that was so revolutionary?

[6:45] Laurie Winer: One thing that I think was extremely lucky for them, they could not have known this when they were writing Oklahoma, is that in January of '43, two months before Oklahoma premiered on Broadway, the Battle of Stalingrad was lost by the Germans. That was a huge turning point in the war. When Oklahoma opens, the country has gone from being just terrified and devastated about this war to feeling it might be okay. There was starting to be this excitement for the end of the war and this feeling that we were going to win. I think that helped the show's phenomenal success because it tapped into this love of country, but not in a jingoistic, traditionally patriotic way. It was subtle in the way it tapped into what we were proud of as Americans, what we were proud of being.

I loved Oh, What a Beautiful Morning, the first song he wrote with Richard Rodgers, which is the song that Curly, the hero, sings at the very beginning of the musical. Curly is a man, as detailed in the song Oh, What a Beautiful Morning, who doesn't mind being laughed at. A bird is laughing at him. He enjoys that. He's part of nature. He observes nature. He doesn't feel like he's a conqueror of nature. He's a part of the world. He's just a lovely, democratic person. He's funny, and he's handsome, and he's expansive. He and Laurie, the heroine, are symbols of Americans' expansive nature, that we're growing, and we're good. We're good people, and we're hard workers, and we take joy in things, but we also don't take any shit.

There's the farmer in the cowhand where Ann Heller fires a gun in the air. It was just a depiction of the quality of the American character that felt so good, still feels really good, I would argue, but felt so extraordinary at this moment in 1943. And the score is just fantastic. I mean, it's just a great score. So I think the two of them were so relieved to be working together after a really difficult collaboration for Rodgers with Larry Hart, and then Oscars, 11 years of irrelevance, coming together was so sweet for them to be working with an artist the equal of stature and talent. I think the joy of their partnership, which was a professional joy and not a friendship joy, but I think that's also part of the outpouring of that show, the gloriousness of that show.

And the focus that they put on the story, which, as you said, comes from Harbuck and this idea that the story's supposed to be the central element of a musical, they had the ability with that show to really follow through with that idea, to not have to deal with producers or stars dissuading them from what they were trying to do.

[9:36] Laurie Winer: Well, yeah, I mean, you have to give credit to the Theatre Guild because they were producing it and they did allow Rodgers and Hammerstein to be Rodgers and Hammerstein. They were in a desperate situation themselves. They were about to close. So sometimes when producers are desperate, they take great chances. I like to think of Breaking Bad happened at AMC, I think, at a time when they had nothing. They had to take a chance. They had to say to Vince Gillian, go, bless you, do it, please. And we're trying to control the project. So yeah, I think that's part of it, too. And of course, the Theatre Guild, it was their idea to take a play they already owned, which was probably part of their financial aspect of it, and make that into a musical.

So they were probably more supportive of do what you need to do to tell that story. And that story, that play, someone, I think, Philip Barry refused to invest in Oklahoma, which was too bad for him. This was like $200 you made for every $1 you invested or more. I can't remember the figure, but Philip Barry said, I'm not going to invest in that. Green Grove, The Lilacs is the most boring play I've ever seen. It is kind of a little bit boring. And so it wasn't at all an obvious choice for a musical. And I really think that it was Hammerstein and Rodgers' pleasure in coming together that somehow made that not amazingly sexy play suddenly incredibly sexy. They imbued it with their own joy. And some very smart changes in the plot and the characters.

[11:02] Laurie Winer: Absolutely. And hiring Agnes De Mille, which I think was Rodgers' idea, was obviously crucial to that as well.

[11:08] David Armstrong: Absolutely. And did they pay her for it?

[11:14] Laurie Winer: Not according to Agnes. When I first moved to New York around 1980, I became a member of the SDC, what was then the SSDC, Stage Directors and Choreographers Union. Agnes was around still very much. I got to be in rooms with her quite a bit in those days. Yeah, which was so amazing to see her talk and hear her. She was very adamant about the union, as you can imagine, and was crucial in helping to form the union originally. She was not shy about talking about how she'd been paid nothing to do Oklahoma and didn't receive royalties. I think at that point, Mary Rogers hadn't persuaded the Rodgers and Hammerstein organization to start paying her royalties on the show. So I think it was maybe just before that.

[11:52] Laurie Winer: Interesting. Of all of those people who wrote memoirs, hers is the best written memoir. She was a good writer. And I've listened to interviews that she's done, and she's so frank. She doesn't roll back. She's like Mary Rogers that way. Totally. Really fun to listen to. So that must have been amazing.

[12:06] David Armstrong: It was really thrilling to be not one-on-one, but, you know, in the small room with her and to hear her talk about things like that. That 1979 Oklahoma that Billy Hammerstein directed with Christina Andreas, did she choreograph that? Or maybe she was around.

[12:23] Laurie Winer: I think she was around. Her work was recreated for it. I don't think she was there every day at rehearsal, but I think she did supervise her work on that show. So yes, I think she was very involved.

[12:32] David Armstrong: Did you get to see that production?

[12:34] Laurie Winer: I did see that. Wasn't it great?

[12:38] David Armstrong: Yeah, it was very, very good. I think I was a little, you know, I was just out of college. I know everything about show business kind of attitude, as we all have at that point. Yes. So I think I was a little confronted by feeling old-fashioned to me to a certain extent. In hindsight now, I can see much more the value of it. And at the time, the performances I thought were sensational.

[13:00] Laurie Winer: Amazing. Just amazing. Yeah, really, really great. I came to New York just the year before you did, and then Sweetie Todd changed my life.

[13:09] David Armstrong: Totally. Yeah, yeah, I was there. We were probably there at the same performances several times.

[13:13] Laurie Winer: I'm sure, because I thought a lot. I think you said 23 times or something.

[13:17] David Armstrong: Yeah, yeah. Hey, while I think of it, how about marrying me?

[13:28] Laurie Winer: Gracious? Who would I want to do that for? Couldn't you maybe think of some reason why you might?

[13:37] David Armstrong: I can't hardly think of nothing just yet. Laurie, please now, marry me.

[13:49] Laurie Winer: I don't know what I'm going to do if you don't.

[14:01] David Armstrong: Hey, Curly, of course I'll marry you if you want me to. Hey, if there's anyone out around this yard can hear my voice, I just want for you to know that Laurie Williams is my girl. Curly. And she's went and got me to ask her to marry me. She's got to hear you on the way to get married.

[14:48] David Armstrong: Don't go away. Laurie and I will be back with more Broadway Nation right after this quick break.

[25:02] Laurie Winer: As it turned out, Hammerstein didn't really have to be that worried about it because he never was a sellout, even when he wrote The Sound of Music, which might seem too commercial, especially if you look at the movie, which was made after he died, and cut all the interesting songs out. Oh, not all the interesting songs, but the two most interesting songs. He was never a sellout. It turned out that he didn't need to worry about that. But that's what that show is about. It's about worrying about the new success that has come to him and how it's going to change his life.

[25:31] Laurie Winer: You know you're back where there's work to do. Where there's love for you. For the love you give. There is no better life for a man to live. Come home, Joe. Come home. Come home, son. Come home.

[26:22] Laurie Winer: Also, they were trying to do something for the first time that I would say is the hardest possible thing to do, which is to create an original story and create a musical. When you put those two things together, you've created something really difficult, even for Oscar Hammerstein to pull off. And it seems to me that the story just isn't very interesting or satisfying. All of their really successful musicals were adaptations of existing works. Even when he made giant changes to a show, he still was starting with something, like with Carousel or especially with Oklahoma, where he's adding characters, inventing new plot lines. Robert Towner, one of the great screenwriters, said he always wanted to start with a dirty page. To rewrite somebody else's screenplay was a lot easier than starting from scratch.

[27:06] Laurie Winer: Definitely. But then from the failure of Allegro comes the unbelievable success of South Pacific.

[27:13] David Armstrong: Yeah. Please join me for the next episode of Broadway Nation when Laurie Winer returns with further discussion of her book, Oscar Hammerstein, the second and the invention of the musical. Now, here's the information about how you, too, can become a patron of Broadway Nation for just seven dollars a month. You'll receive exclusive access to never before heard unedited versions of many of the interviews you hear on Broadway Nation. And all patrons will receive special shout outs and acknowledgments of your vital support to join. Simply go to Broadway Nation podcast dot supercast dot tech. That's Broadway Nation podcast dot S.U.P.E.R.C.A.S.T. dot tech or simply click the link in the show notes to this episode.

[28:11] David Armstrong: Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pals Max for his help with editing this episode and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.