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[0:29] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African-Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process. I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode "Getting To Know Him, Inside the Mind of Oscar Hammerstein." My guest today is Mark Eden Horowitz, who is here to talk about his fascinating new book, The Letters of Oscar Hammerstein II. Mark is Senior Music Specialist in the Music Division of the Library of Congress, where he's been an archivist or co-archivist for the papers of Jerome Kern, Vernon Duke, Cole Porter, Frederick Loewe, Alan Jay Lerner, Leonard Bernstein, Richard Rodgers, and of course, Oscar Hammerstein.

He is also the author of the award-winning book Sondheim on Music, and for 10 years he served as the contributing editor for the Sondheim Review. This latest book contains hundreds of previously unpublished letters to and from Hammerstein that Mark compiled and edited, and through these letters we get to go inside the mind of Oscar Hammerstein and get an extraordinary, never before seen view of both his professional and personal life. It's one of those books where you can turn to any page and find something fascinating that you never knew before. Mark will also be joining me for a special Broadway Nation live stream on Friday, May 19th, at 7 p.m. Eastern Time, 4 p.m. Pacific. This event will include trivia contests, book giveaways, and the chance to ask Mark any questions that you might have about his new book, Hammerstein, or his work at the Library of Congress.

You can find us live on both the Broadway Nation and the Broadway Podcast Network's YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram feeds, and if you miss it live, we'll be posting a recording of the event later on YouTube. Now it's my great pleasure to introduce you to Mark Eden Horowitz.

[2:26] David Armstrong: First of all, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today on Broadway Nation.

[2:30] Mark Eden Horowitz: Thank you.

[2:31] David Armstrong: In your introduction to the book, you call Oscar Hammerstein II the most consequential figure in the history of the American musical, and I happen to agree with you. But from your point of view, why do you make this bold statement? What is it about him that makes him so important?

[2:46] Mark Eden Horowitz: Well, I think he invented what we think of as the modern musical. The adult musical, I think before Oscar, it was mostly musical comedies and operettas, and he showed the way that you could deal with serious issues seriously and still be entertaining. I think his vision, his shows had reasons behind them. They had points behind them. The biggest evolution in my way of thinking about him over time was I think Oscar always had a subtext of trying to improve his audiences. I don't think that that had happened before, and I don't know that it's happened much subsequently. And certainly the fact that he mentored Stephen Sondheim, if there hadn't been Oscar, there wouldn't have been Steve, and if there hadn't been Steve, then Lord knows where we would be.

[3:33] David Armstrong: Exactly. He is the surrogate father of arguably the second most consequential person in the history of the musical, or at least one of the top five.

[3:41] Mark Eden Horowitz: There's no question. Sondheim is the best, but Sondheim wouldn't have been there if it hadn't been for Oscar.

[3:46] David Armstrong: Exactly. It's an amazing legacy. I do an episode where I talk about the legacy from Otto Harbach to Oscar Hammerstein to Stephen Sondheim, and I even take it to Lin-Manuel Miranda, because it brings it up to today, although Sondheim affected a lot of the current generation of writers. But just within those four people, you get the entire history of the Broadway musical.

[4:07] Mark Eden Horowitz: Pretty much, yeah. Doesn't quite go back to the Black Crook, but...

[4:11] David Armstrong: Almost. With Oscar I, you go back that far, practically.

[4:14] Mark Eden Horowitz: Oh, there you go. You win.

[4:16] David Armstrong: It's not quite the same thing. So where did these letters come from? Where do you find them?

[4:21] Mark Eden Horowitz: The vast majority came from the Oscar Hammerstein collection at the Library of Congress, and the wonderful thing, which made the whole project possible, is that Oscar kept carbons of most of his outgoing correspondence. And if it had not been for that, then this project wouldn't have happened. There were also letters from him in other collections in the library, primarily the Ruben Mamoulian collection, the Josh Logan collection. But then there were letters that came from some other sources, some that are still in private hands that people sent me copies of, and I had some friends who did some ferreting out at NYPL and other places. But 98% from Oscar's own collection.

[5:01] David Armstrong: It's amazing. I teach at the University of Washington, and my students will not understand this kind of correspondence. It's so alien to anyone who grew up in the world of texting and emails and things like that. Describe what this correspondence is like.

[5:16] Mark Eden Horowitz: It's sort of remarkable. It's almost shocking how broad it is. You know, certainly you would have expected the business correspondence to be there and to be typed and have carbons as a result, but so much of it is personal. The letters with both wives, his children, friends, colleagues, and they deal with just about every issue in his life.

[5:39] David Armstrong: They really run the gamut from love letters to correspondence with his fans. Almost every category is captured in this book.

[5:47] Mark Eden Horowitz: Absolutely. I had a year to go through and gather all the letters, and over that year, my guess is I read about 10,000 letters and I transcribed about 4,500 of them, and somewhere between 900 and 1,000 end up in the book.

[6:02] David Armstrong: That's amazing.

[6:03] Mark Eden Horowitz: You know, as vast as the book is, there's a lot more.

[6:07] David Armstrong: And what years do they cover?

[6:08] Mark Eden Horowitz: I think the first letter is from 1917, as I recall, and the last letter is from 1960, the year that Oscar died.

[6:17] David Armstrong: What was your criteria for deciding which of these 10,000 letters you were going to include in the book and which ones could be left to Volume 2 and Volume 3 at some point?

[6:26] Mark Eden Horowitz: Well, there are two parts to that. One is the agreement I made with the publisher is that we would wait at least two years after the book is done, and then the Library of Congress could put all of the letters up online. So I didn't have to worry about that. Basically, my first criteria was how close it related to Oscar, because there's a lot of correspondence where Oscar is not the focus. For instance, he had this very quirky friend named Layton K. Brill, who's a real character. They were childhood friends. His nickname was Goofy. And during World War II, he was in England working for the Red Cross doing shows for the Army, and he writes these long, detailed letters about the shows that they're performing for the military, but it has nothing to do with Oscar.

It's interesting, and it has, I think, great research value, but it made no sense to put them here. So that was a big part of the criteria. I wanted to show as many different sides of Oscar as possible. I wanted the book to be a fun read, so I went for entertainment and interest, and I basically did my best to cut all the boring parts. Most of the letters are full, but in some cases I excerpted letters, not because I was censoring, but there are some letters where there's really just one paragraph or sometimes even one sentence that's really rich or not duplicative of something else you hear or read.

[7:53] David Armstrong: I think you did a fantastic job in that regard, even though it's a large volume and it's not the kind of book you read straight through. It's one of those wonderful books that you pick up over and over again and turn to a page and find something new. I really enjoy those books.

[8:08] Mark Eden Horowitz: Yeah, that was my hope.

[8:10] David Armstrong: Every page is going to have something to discover on it. There's a whole range of people that corresponded with Oscar Hammerstein, all of the ones that we would expect there to be, but who are some of the ones that might surprise us that he corresponded with?

[8:24] Mark Eden Horowitz: Oh, the biggest surprise was General Douglas MacArthur. I did not expect correspondence between them. In the last few years of Oscar's life, one of the things he became passionately involved with is something which I'd never heard of before, which was an organization called the United World Federalists. And their goal seems to have been to do what they could to prevent another world war, and particularly a nuclear war. Their notion of how one would accomplish that was a little off the wall, and Oscar even would admit it. But his argument when people would question him is, give me another option, and I'm open to any ideas. Their notion was basically to militarize the UN and have a United Nations army that would sort of police the world, which I guess we could use these days.

Maybe it was very prescient. And Oscar was trying to bring General MacArthur on board and get him to be a supporter. And I was shocked, frankly, at how aligned MacArthur seemed to have been with Oscar's ideas. He was not the strident military person I would have expected. I'm trying to think, you know, it's not so much that I'm surprised at the people that he corresponded with as what I learned about the people themselves who were unknowns to me in terms of their characters. Harry Ruby turned out to be one of my favorite authors of the letters to Oscar. He writes the funniest letters and, you know, is sort of charming, and you can see how entertaining he is to Oscar. Josh Logan is the most intense person.

You can sort of almost see his manic side in the letters. He gets so worked up about things and very detailed and over the top. I fell for Jerome Kern. Kern has always been somebody that I'd never had a real sense of his persona before. I knew his music, but I never really could picture him as a character. And the letters brought him to life to me. And he's obviously one of Oscar's closest friends, or Oscar was one of his closest friends. And getting to know Jerry, as he was called, was one of the great pleasures as well.

[10:30] David Armstrong: I read that letter from Josh Logan where he's giving his advice about how they should fix Allegro.

[10:35] Mark Eden Horowitz: Two letters. He sends one letter, and then he sends another one the next day.

[10:38] David Armstrong: Yeah, and they're brilliant. They're really smart and interesting, but they do go on. They are very detailed. And he clearly is not afraid to share his opinions of the show.

[10:50] Mark Eden Horowitz: One of my favorites between the two of them is apparently they had a difference of opinion. It's after South Pacific had opened, and Josh is in the midst of directing Broadway replacements for the leads and also directing the national tour of the show. And it's clear that he's been making changes, and Oscar is not happy about the changes. And Logan goes into great, great detail for many tight pages about why he's doing what he's doing, the reasons behind it, his arguments for why it's good and important. And I'm absolutely, totally convinced. And then I read Oscar's reply, and I'm almost convinced the other way. And it's sort of the perennial argument of how much change do you allow or should you allow. I'm convinced, though, that as a result that Oscar would have hated the fish version of Oklahoma.

[11:44] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[11:45] Mark Eden Horowitz: Whether that's right or wrong, but I think he would not have approved.

[11:49] David Armstrong: Well, especially as you say, how did you express it right at the beginning? You said his shows were...

[11:55] Mark Eden Horowitz: I think part of his goal was to improve his audiences.

[11:58] David Armstrong: Exactly.

[11:58] Mark Eden Horowitz: His goal was to improve the audience through his work.

[12:01] David Armstrong: You mean improve the audience by educating them, I guess, in some way or elevating them.

[12:06] Mark Eden Horowitz: I think Oscar was the humanist. And I think he wanted his audiences to understand and understand his characters, and see themselves and their flaws and the flaws of those they loved, and if not necessarily forgive them, at least to understand them. Even Judd is in some ways sympathetic.

[12:37] Mark Eden Horowitz: On a broom, and I sit by myself, like a cobweb on a shelf, by myself in a lonely room. They create such empathy for that character, in spite of him being an attempted rapist and a probable serial killer. He seems to have killed people before. He tries to kill Curly, and then an attempted murderer there. And yet, what's so amazing in that show, with that song, "Lonely Room," they create this incredible empathy and understanding for him.

[13:54] David Armstrong: It's really unprecedented. I mean, before that, in Showboat, Gaylord Ravenel is a very, very flawed character. But the audience sympathizes with him, at least to some degree. I think one of the things that, with Flower Drum Song, the song, "I Enjoy Being a Girl," I think is now considered very, not passe, but it's no longer appropriate.

[14:37] Mark Eden Horowitz: But I think it was there very intentionally on Oscar's part, because he wanted his audiences to think of this Asian woman, Asian-American woman, as no different than any blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl from Kansas next door. And I think that was the point of that song. And it's not a sexist number in that way. It was to sort of break the barrier that people were feeling about the other. And that was a theme throughout Oscar's life, and both his own life and his career. One of the things I wasn't aware of, he and Dorothy and Pearl Buck and James Michener founded an organization called Welcome House for the adoption of Asian and Anglo-Asian children. And his first grandchild was adopted from Welcome House.

[16:08] David Armstrong: I've loved all those observations. Yeah, really fascinating. You spent two and a half years immersing yourself really in the mind of Oscar Hammerstein, because that's really what you get to be, is in the mind of him through these letters. And you probably know him better than anybody else who's still alive.

[16:25] Mark Eden Horowitz: Continue that vein. His stepdaughter is still alive.

[16:29] David Armstrong: Oh, who's that?

[16:30] Mark Eden Horowitz: His stepdaughter is still alive at 94.

[16:32] David Armstrong: Wow. None of the children are still alive.

[16:35] Mark Eden Horowitz: No, she's the only one who's left. So with the possible exception of his stepdaughter, you may know him better than anyone else. What do you make of him? Who is Oscar Hammerstein? What is the character of him?

[16:45] Mark Eden Horowitz: I fell in love with Oscar. He has no feet of clay. He's about as wonderful as you could imagine. Giving, funny, warm, caring. He certainly did not suffer fools gladly. And there were a couple of things that got under his skin. And every once in a while, he, I don't even want to say loses his cool, but buttons can definitely be pushed. But I don't think he ever goes too far with it. He's something of a product of his times. Some of his letters to his first wife after their divorce are perhaps a little sexist, but I think he grew out of it, sort of. The role of the man versus the role of the woman. And he's clearly sort of following the pattern. There's letters with his eldest son, William. And what I really like about their correspondence is, it starts off very, the father, the son.

And Oscar is clearly concerned about his son's, I don't even want to say failings, but he's tough. And when William goes off to war during World War II, he's in the South Pacific on a ship. And they start corresponding. And by that point, Oscar treats him as an equal. And there's almost this sigh of relief that their relationship has matured to the point where it's reached that next level. And Oscar isn't sort of looking over his shoulder and judging or criticizing and takes him seriously.

[18:11] David Armstrong: He does seem to relate much more strongly to his children once they're adults. It seems like that relationship does.

[18:17] Mark Eden Horowitz: Yes. Yeah. I actually even talked a little bit about it with Sondheim. And my sense is Sondheim's friend, who was his son, was jealous of the relationship Steve had with Oscar because it was warmer and more comfortable than his own was.

[18:33] David Armstrong: Yeah, I don't know that that's unusual, though. Sometimes parents have an easier time relating to other people's children than their own in some ways. It's interesting. One of the things I thought that was really amazing about this, as opposed to reading a biography or an autobiography, which of course are written in hindsight, this story is being told in the moment. So it's really fascinating to read about these legendary shows and these people that were involved with them. And like anybody working in show business, they have no idea whether any of this is going to turn out, whether this show is actually going to be significant and a legend or a giant flop. A lot of this material, if you're interested in this stuff, you've experienced it before, but only from hindsight, not as it's rolling out.

[19:15] Mark Eden Horowitz: Oh, absolutely. And I'll tell you, the Hammerstein Collection also includes a lot of his lyric sketches. And you get the same sense there. You know these iconic songs and you see where, and sometimes you want to scream at Oscar. His sketch for "Do, Re, Mi," there are several pages. It's almost from the beginning, he's sort of got the song, "Do a deer, a female deer, Re a drop of golden sun, Mi a name I call myself." Then he gets to, "So a thing you do with wheat. So a thing you do with oats." And you're saying, Oscar, Oscar, come on. And finally, you know, over a period of like three or four days, finally he gets "So a needle pulling thread." And you sort of heave the sigh of relief there.

[19:54] David Armstrong: Yeah, it's amazing. Even the first half of the book, there's a real feeling that his career might be over. He doesn't know if he's ever going to work again. He's worried about money. And in fact, one of the big revelations, I thought, was that he almost deserts Broadway for Hollywood in the 1930s, like so many other people did. And to think of what would have happened to Broadway if that had happened is sort of mind-blowing in reverse.

[20:15] Mark Eden Horowitz: So imagine what would have happened to Hollywood.

[20:17] David Armstrong: It's true. Very true. Was that something you knew about before you found these letters, that he was that far down that road?

[20:25] Mark Eden Horowitz: I knew a bit, but it's one thing to sort of hear things and to read them, to have a sense of something. And certainly I knew he'd done a fair amount of film stuff. I think people don't realize how much he had done. How many screenplays he wrote. And things he didn't always get as much credit for as he should have. The story of Vernon and Irene Castle, one of the things that upset him was that he didn't get the credit he thought he was due for that. I also loved seeing the contrast between what we know now are these big, momentous issues that are being discussed, and then these small, mundane, sometimes even petty details that are of equal concern to them at the time. And yet, looking back, we see, well, that's not important at all.

[21:07] David Armstrong: Not important to us, but important to Oscar.

[21:10] Mark Eden Horowitz: Exactly. But that's just like our lives. Well, you asked about the things that I included and didn't. One of the things that surprised me is his Highland farm that he lived was a working farm. But there are a lot of letters that show how involved Oscar was in the breeding of the cows and how concerned he was. There's letters back and forth with breeders and things like that. And I think I included one of them just to give people a taste, because in general, they're not that interesting. But it's another side of Oscar and another surprise.

[21:43] David Armstrong: Yeah, it's fascinating to see this multi-layered aspect of him. I also found it really fascinating to see people experiencing these innovations that we've heard about in theatrical production as they're happening. I think it was his first wife who wrote to him about the seamless staging of South Pacific and how she was so thrilled that there were no waits between the scene changes and having to sit in the dark, which, of course, is something we take for granted. And we've heard that this is an innovation, but to hear people talk about it, and he has some correspondence back and forth with Joe Melziner about that.

[22:16] Mark Eden Horowitz: Talking about innovations, the one that I think surprised me more than anything was there's a letter from a Milton Biao, who was a friend of Oscar's around South Pacific. And Milton Biao was a major figure in the creation of the advertising industry. Basically, he thought he had a deal with Oscar for product placement in South Pacific, that he had negotiated which brand of cigarettes, the sailors would smoke, which brand of beer they would drink, and whether they would drink Coke or Pepsi.

[22:43] David Armstrong: In terms of like holding the bottles on the stage.

[22:46] Mark Eden Horowitz: Yeah, I knew there was marketing that had happened. You know, they would sell clothing or things like that. But to actually have product placement on the stage, I had no idea. And as far as I know, it might have started with South Pacific. And I will tell you, after I did the book, one of the big jobs was trying to track down the estates to get permissions to publish their letters. And it turns out Matthew Broderick is Milton Biao's grandson.

[23:12] David Armstrong: Wow, small world in the theater, especially. Don't go away. Mark and I will be back to talk about the letters between Sondheim and Hammerstein right after this quick break.

[23:26] ♪ Musical number: "Getting to Know You" ♪

[23:57] David Armstrong: So of course, very famously, Hammerstein, as you mentioned before, becomes a surrogate father to Stephen Sondheim and professional mentor of Stephen Sondheim. How much of that can we witness in the letters in your collection?

[24:09] Mark Eden Horowitz: One of my great frustrations is there wasn't more correspondence between them. There's not that much. There are a handful. The richest letter is a letter from Oscar to Steve after having read through the script of Climb High, which was the fourth and last of the projects that Oscar had assigned him to write an original musical. Oscar is treating it very seriously and giving him advice on what he thinks works and doesn't work and what he thinks he needs to change or look at. There's one letter that doesn't mention Steve but refers to him unnamed. It's a thank you letter from Oscar to somebody who sent him, apparently, an ornate chess set. And he says to the fellow, thank you for the chess set and I look forward to our game but I'm not as good as you might think I am.

I only came to it late in life. I was taught chess by, I think he was 11 at the time, something like that, a fellow who's something of a genius. At least I think he's a genius. And we know that that was Steve.

[25:14] David Armstrong: Eftes wrote a very wonderful blurb for your book, and I assume had a chance to read the galleys of it.

[25:21] Mark Eden Horowitz: I will make a confession here. I asked him if he would write a blurb, and he very sweetly declined. He sent me an email saying, I hope you'll forgive me, but I just, you know, he begged off.

[25:34] David Armstrong: Right.

[25:35] Mark Eden Horowitz: And I said, of course, I understand. Then he was on Colbert, not long before he died. And the first thing Colbert asked him about was Oscar, and he was talking about the advice Oscar had given him.

[25:48] Mark Eden Horowitz: And so after I saw that, I emailed Steve with about, I think, six letters of advice that Oscar had sent other songwriters and people sort of in the same vein, just to show Steve how generous he was, not just with him, but with others.

[26:03] Mark Eden Horowitz: And he wrote me back almost immediately, and I showed his response to a friend who said, there's your blurb.

[26:10] Mark Eden Horowitz: And so I emailed Steve and said, can I use this as a blurb? And he agreed with some changes.

[26:16] Mark Eden Horowitz: So he just modified a few words here and there, and then gave me his blessing. I had sent him over the last three years, as I came upon letters I thought he'd be interested in, I'd send them to him.

[26:27] Mark Eden Horowitz: So he had a pretty good sense of what was there. But I don't know that he read through the galleys, to be honest.

[26:33] David Armstrong: Well, I think it's close enough, certainly. Who were some of those other songwriters that Oscar was helpful with, was mentoring?

[26:40] Mark Eden Horowitz: Nobody you ever heard of. They were just young people, no names. Not that I recall. It was just Oscar being generous with other people, you know, young and up and coming or hopefully up and coming people.

[26:52] Mark Eden Horowitz: But they didn't come. They didn't up. They didn't up and come. Certainly that's something else he passed down to Sondheim was this generosity, this mentorship, this feeling of, I don't know whether they thought it was a D or just whether they enjoyed it, but to invest in the next generation.

[27:07] Mark Eden Horowitz: I don't know if enjoy is the word, but I do think there is a sense of duty to it and just a sense of this is what a good person does. I think both of them were gentlemen in the old fashioned sense, and they both tried to do the right things in a way that I think is now very rare.

[27:26] David Armstrong: I think you're right. And it takes time to do that. They were willing to invest time in it. We talked about this a little bit earlier, but Hammerstein was an early and strong advocate for social justice of all kind, for anti-racism of all kind. What are some of the letters that reveal that, that talk to those issues?

[27:44] Mark Eden Horowitz: Probably the one that fascinated me the most is where Oscar lived, U.S. Steel had a factory not far away, and it wasn't a Levittown, but it was something like that was being built in the area, but it was going to be whites only.

[28:01] Mark Eden Horowitz: And U.S. Steel said they wanted to hire blacks, but there weren't enough of them living in the area. And Oscar really did what he could to try and change the perception of the appropriateness of segregated housing.

[28:17] Mark Eden Horowitz: And he crafted a letter over a period, there's at least two drafts of it, an earlier draft, and then the one that was actually sent later to a hundred prominent Americans, including people like Eleanor Roosevelt, where he states his feeling about the importance of integrated housing and asks for their opinions.

[28:37] Mark Eden Horowitz: The frustrating thing is I can't find out anything that happened with their responses subsequently, except Oscar compiled them. And he selected out paragraphs that he put together, whether he tried to get them published or I just, I don't know.

[28:51] Mark Eden Horowitz: And that's been one of my big frustrations, but it was obviously something he was very passionate about and invested a lot of time, thought and energy in. Clearly to send letters to 100 people to try to rally this kind of support is really amazing.

[29:26] Mark Eden Horowitz: I would say that so many of his shows advocate for this kind of social justice. But of course, front and center is the song "You've Got To Be Taught," which so clearly states what the intention of that show is.

[30:03] Mark Eden Horowitz: I make my students identify the themes of shows as we analyze them in the course I teach. That one's so easy because there's a song that just tells you what the show is about.

[30:13] Mark Eden Horowitz: But that song faced a lot of objection right from the beginning. And I was interested in some of the letters that dealt with that.

[30:19] Mark Eden Horowitz: Yeah, there were some supporters from the beginning, but definitely there were at least two or three letters from people who were very critical. Some of them couched it as they thought it was too preachy as opposed to offensive.

[30:33] Mark Eden Horowitz: But Oscar said the point needed to be made and without that song, the point wasn't made strongly enough. But then there's also correspondence that makes clear it's more in the business side of correspondence where productions wouldn't happen of the show unless that song were removed and Oscar refused.

[30:51] Mark Eden Horowitz: Oscar was interested in doing a production in South Africa, and it was clear that the only way they would do it is if that song was cut and Oscar wouldn't allow that.

[31:01] Mark Eden Horowitz: One of the things that shocked me was two, I think it was congressmen from the South, and the things they said about that song and that show that were published are so blatantly, horrifically prejudiced and awful.

[31:17] Mark Eden Horowitz: And I included the excerpt from the UPI piece in the book because it was so extraordinarily shocking. So we certainly cannot take that song for granted in terms of the risk of including that song in that show at that time.

[31:31] Mark Eden Horowitz: This was a big, risky, not subtle move that Hammerstein was making, and yet he then dealt with it and he doesn't back down.

[31:40] David Armstrong: He does not. Oscar took risks and was fervent in his beliefs.

[31:45] Mark Eden Horowitz: I will say, he was not perfect. And it reminds me, a favorite letter of mine is from Islanda Robeson, who was Paul Robeson's wife, and she saw South Pacific out of town in Boston and writes a beautiful letter to Oscar about how wonderful the show is.

[32:03] Mark Eden Horowitz: But then as sort of a PS, she says, there's one black sailor in the show. And she asks if he would consider not having him jitterbug every time he appears.

[32:16] Mark Eden Horowitz: And Oscar writes back saying, basically agreeing, but saying, just so you know, we'd already made that change before I got your letter, and there is at least one scene where he is no longer jitterbugging.

[32:27] Mark Eden Horowitz: The fact that most scenes would have him jitterbugging is now sort of offensive. So Oscar wasn't perfect, but...

[32:33] David Armstrong: That activism got him into some trouble, too, in the 50s.

[32:37] Mark Eden Horowitz: Well, during the McCarthy era, yeah. He was on the list. And in fact, I'm trying to remember the details, but I think at one point they were not going to renew his passport, and he had to get a special passport that was more limited in time.

[32:52] Mark Eden Horowitz: And he was a supporter of Adlai Stevenson. And as a result of that, people called him a communist. And there are some strong letters to Oscar from, at least one from a stranger that's sort of outrageous, but one from a friend.

[33:10] Mark Eden Horowitz: And Oscar is very strong in his self-defense and doesn't waver, and God love him for that.

[33:16] David Armstrong: That's quite amazing.

[33:18] Mark Eden Horowitz: And he didn't have to appear before the committee or anything like that.

[33:21] David Armstrong: As far as I know, no. We do have his FBI files are part of the Hammerstein collection, but I don't think they could pin anything on him. It was all innuendo.

[33:31] David Armstrong: When Oscar is making these decisions, like, the only way it's going to South Africa is if it keeps that song, which means it's not going to South Africa. Is Rogers right there with him? Does he consult with Rogers about this? Are they in line on all of these issues?

[33:45] Mark Eden Horowitz: I think they are. I do think they are. Yeah. There's certainly mutual respect between them.

[33:52] Mark Eden Horowitz: It's disappointing that there's not more correspondence between them, but there are certainly a fair amount. There's only one series of letters that actually sort of has them collaborating by mail.

[34:03] Mark Eden Horowitz: And it's fun to see that, because clearly, usually when they were collaborating, they were together. But when they were writing Cinderella, Oscar was in Australia for the Olympics, and they work on the song, "Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful, or Are You Beautiful Because I Love You," by mail, basically.

[34:20] Mark Eden Horowitz: And Oscar asks Rogers' opinions about some of the lyrics, and would it be OK if, I forget how he phrases it exactly, but basically wants to know if it would be kosher for the song to start in minor and end in major, which Rogers says is absolutely fine and a method often used.

[34:39] Mark Eden Horowitz: But then Rogers questions a split infinitive that Oscar wants to use.

[34:43] David Armstrong: So they got in each other's business.

[34:45] Mark Eden Horowitz: A little bit.

[34:46] David Armstrong: Yeah. That's collaboration.

[34:48] Mark Eden Horowitz: Absolutely. There are so many legends about Rogers and Hammerstein that have come down to us, but some of the letters you found debunk a few of those. What are some of those that are stories that we may think are true, but you discovered are not?

[35:00] Mark Eden Horowitz: Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is the legend is that they started working on Pygmalion to become a musical, which we all now know is My Fair Lady, and gave up because they couldn't figure out how to do it.

[35:14] Mark Eden Horowitz: Yeah, we've heard that over and over again. But my sense from the letters and basically from looking at the Hammerstein collection is the reason they abandoned it is because it became clear that working with the rights holder would be so difficult because he wanted his name above the title with theirs and was starting to make demands.

[35:32] Mark Eden Horowitz: And I think they just became too nervous about that relationship in that situation and backed out pretty quickly because I've found no signs that Oscar began any work on it.

[35:42] Mark Eden Horowitz: There's no outlines. There's nothing that suggests they've gotten beyond the sort of discussion part of it.

[35:49] David Armstrong: Yeah. I thought that was interesting. Of course, it makes a great story from the Lerner and Lowe's perspective to say everybody else tried and failed and then they were able to succeed.

[35:57] Mark Eden Horowitz: Could be a press agent story that came out. There were two major things that kept coming up and up and up throughout the letters that I did not expect, certainly not to the degree that I saw.

[36:08] Mark Eden Horowitz: One was the importance of casting, and the other was the number of things that were pitched to them, some of which they considered seriously and some of which they didn't.

[36:17] Mark Eden Horowitz: I think I made a list of about 120 projects that were possible that people wanted them to write, and in some cases they wanted to write or were interested in, too.

[36:29] Mark Eden Horowitz: In addition to Pygmalion, they were pitched Gone with the Wind. Hedy Lamarr owned the rights to The Little Prince and wanted them to do a musical version of that.

[36:38] Mark Eden Horowitz: Sam Goldwyn wanted them to do the songs for Hans Christian Andersen. The list goes on. Then they optioned Tevye and his daughters at some point, which most people now know as Fiddler on the Roof.

[36:51] Mark Eden Horowitz: What's not clear to me is whether they were interested to turn it into a musical themselves or to produce it. But they contacted Josh Logan to see if he'd be interested in directing it, and it seems like once he said no, that that's when they backed out.

[37:04] Mark Eden Horowitz: At least that's how it comes across through the correspondence. Any others that come to mind?

[37:09] Mark Eden Horowitz: B. Lilly wanted them to do Mary Poppins for her.

[37:12] David Armstrong: Wow, that would have been phenomenal.

[37:14] Mark Eden Horowitz: Talk about different. That's interesting. And actually, she writes a letter to Dorothy Hammerstein asking her, tell your husband I want him to do this.

[37:23] Mark Eden Horowitz: And one of the things I hadn't realized is Dorothy Hammerstein had been in the 20s in a show with B. Lilly in the Cochran Review of 1924, I think it was.

[37:34] Mark Eden Horowitz: So they were sort of friends from before she and Oscar.

[37:38] David Armstrong: That's amazing.

[37:39] Mark Eden Horowitz: And of course, Mary Poppins.

[37:40] David Armstrong: Andre Charlotte's Review.

[37:41] Mark Eden Horowitz: Andre Charlotte's Review. Yeah. That's one of the shows that Stephen Sondheim tried to adapt as one of his assignments that Oscar had given him.

[37:48] David Armstrong: Yeah. The timing is not that different from when.

[37:52] Mark Eden Horowitz: From when the letter from B. Willey came. And I know he said he was defeated by it because I think it was too episodic, sort of. Yeah, that's my impression, too. More like a series of short stories that had to be then put together into a show. Maybe they should have done it backwards in time and that would have solved it. As you're looking through these letters, I imagine you're hoping that there will be some dirt. As the kids would say today, was there any tea to be spilled? What's the spiciest gossip that you uncovered?

[38:20] Mark Eden Horowitz: Oh, gosh. I don't know if there's what I think of as dirt. I think the closest thing I can think of is Oscar's love letters to Dorothy are not dirt, but they're pretty steamy. Yeah. And I didn't expect that from Oscar. I mean, they verge on the erotic. I mean, certainly they show a very passionate, very romantic fellow there. And I don't see it anywhere else except those. And the thing is, these are letters while she's in Reno getting a divorce from her first husband so that they can marry. And the aside to that is these letters came to the library subsequently from the Hammerstein Collection, but were a gift from Dorothy's daughter from her first husband. So Oscar's stepdaughter is the one who gives the letters from the man who broke up her mother's marriage to her father. So that shows a certain braveness on her part. Or I was very touched by that. And she's a fascinating character, too. She was married four times and her first husband was Henry Fonda.

[39:23] David Armstrong: I didn't know that.

[39:24] Mark Eden Horowitz: Yeah. I think her fourth husband was Robert Mitchum, I think. Amazing. There's a lot of correspondence with various directors of the shows. And you make a point in your introduction, which I have to say, I think is one of the best summations of Oscar's career that there could possibly be. But you mentioned how much directing he did, which I don't think we think about, both officially and unofficially. Certainly he directed productions of Showboat and other things with Kern. And there were several shows pre-Rogers. My understanding from people is John Van Druten was purportedly the director of The King and I. But my sense is that Oscar was sort of the director behind the director. Van Druten was, this was his first musical.

My sense was he was a little out of his depth with it. And Oscar sort of kept things going. And one of my favorite sets of letters is, you know, I think both Rodgers and Hammerstein were famous for doing the best they could to maintain the standards of their shows after they opened. And with The King and I, there are letters from Oscar to the stage manager after watching performances with notes and very detailed, rich notes. Some broad and some very, you know, that exit, the lighting here, the whatever it is. But then the woman who's now playing Anna talking about how when she's singing Hello Young Lovers, instead of looking down at the orchestra pit, she should be looking up to the balcony because it's about all lovers everywhere.

And before the Shall We Dance number, describing how she should look at The King. And instead of just sort of glancing up him, that she should make a point of looking at first his shoes, then his belt, and then his face in three distinct moves. I mean, so very detailed things.

[41:11] Mark Eden Horowitz: And then a very strong director like Josh Logan, there's a lot of correspondence with him as well. What are some of the things that stand out in those letters?

[41:19] Mark Eden Horowitz: There's some interesting correspondence around the filming of South Pacific and Josh defending his notion of using the colored filters on the cameras that are now so derided and clearly wanting Oscar's blessing and approval. And Oscar is concerned and isn't willing to quite bend fully his way. But he's open to listening. And they let him do it eventually, ultimately. Alas, alack. You know, what's interesting is I show that film to my students. It's one of the things I assigned to them because I can't get the Lincoln Center version to show them, which I'd rather do. But they love those filters. They have no problem with that. I mean, this is 20 year olds coming to it who's never seen South Pacific, have no preconceived ideas or notions about anything. So it's always fascinating to hear what they have to say about these shows. And they actually bring it up as something that they thought was really cool about the movie.

[42:10] David Armstrong: Huh.

[42:11] Mark Eden Horowitz: Yeah. You talked about this desire to improve the audience. And in 1953, Oscar received a letter from a college student. It was entitled The Theme of Brotherhood and Tolerance in the Place of Oscar Hammerstein II. And he asked if Oscar could send a personal statement on that subject. What was Oscar's response to that?

[42:30] Mark Eden Horowitz: Certainly ties a lot into what we've been talking about. I think I have it here. I suppose that my best personal statements on the subject of brotherhood and tolerance are in the place that you intend to deal with. I am very happy that you are writing this essay because none of the references to this theme in my plays is accidental. They are quite deliberate and conscious. I believe that the introduction of this theme in plays is more effective than plays that are written obviously to propagate these virtues. The public resists direct propaganda in our country anyway. So he was very aware of what he was doing and what he wanted the effect of these shows to be and what the effect really was.

[43:09] Mark Eden Horowitz: The biggest revelation to me or I think the thing that I hope this book will change about people's view of Oscar is how sophisticated he is. I think people have developed this image of him as sort of naive and innocent and—

[43:26] David Armstrong: You call him a hayseed in the book.

[43:28] Mark Eden Horowitz: Yeah, but he is a smart cookie and in every way. And he's a real businessman and he's on top of everything. In some ways, he's an intellectual and he's well-read. He knows music. He knows theater. He knows politics. He knows economics. He's as sophisticated as they come, but he's not arrogant or showy about it. It's interesting because he's one of the heroes that you can actually find is even better than you thought they were. Usually it's dangerous to look at your theatrical heroes sometimes.

[43:58] David Armstrong: Yeah, absolutely.

[44:00] Mark Eden Horowitz: I hope everyone falls in love with Oscar the way I did. I think doing this made me a better person. I hope it did. It's sort of like he showed me the way. In 50 years from now or 80 years from now, whoever comes after you at the Library of Congress is going to do the book on the collected letters of Lin-Manuel Miranda. What are they going to have to work with? Is this something that we are not going to be able to see again once we get past these figures of the 20th century?

[44:26] Mark Eden Horowitz: Yes. I mean, it's sad and it's something we're concerned about. We do talk about people saving emails, and the library has already gotten collections with some emails in them, but it's not the same. And frankly, what people don't remember is how expensive long-distance phone calls used to be. It's not even the difference between mail and email. I think it's once long-distance calls became cheaper, people stopped writing letters. The Leonard Bernstein collection at the library has enormous quantities of brilliant, wonderful correspondence. I think there's over 15,000 personal letters, several thousand fan letters, and about 100,000 of business correspondence. And it's spectacular, and that may be the last one.

And it's not just letters that we're concerned about, but we have all these wonderful musical sketches by all these composers. And most composers these days don't put pen or pencil to paper. It's all done on a computer, and the final versions will be there, but we're going to lose the drafts and the evolution of these songs. You know, we also have Rogers' manuscripts and his music sketch for Oh, What a Beautiful Morning. If you look very closely, you can see he erased the original melody, which was, Oh, what a beautiful morning. It's only a difference of, I think, three notes, but it makes all the difference in the world. And seeing that is breathtaking, and we're not going to see that anymore, I don't think, or very rarely. It makes this book even more special because it is maybe among the last of these kinds of opportunities that we have, certainly the last of these kinds of collections.

[46:05] Mark Eden Horowitz: Talk just a little bit about your job at the Library of Congress, what you do. What should we know about what the Library of Congress does for us in terms of the world of musical theater, especially?

[46:16] Mark Eden Horowitz: It drives me crazy. If people knew what we had, I don't understand why there aren't lines out the door every day, because our collections are so breathtakingly rich. The Music Division of the Library, actually, we call ourselves the Music Division, but they've become the Performing Arts Division. We collect music, theater, and dance materials, and we estimate our holdings at over 25 million items just in our division. And it's divided between published materials, published music, published biographies, all of that kind of thing, and special collections. And special collections are the papers of composers, lyricists, musicians, performers, choreographers, directors, producers, designers. And the collections that we have there from the world of musical theater include Sigmund Romberg, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, George and Ira Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Jonathan Larson, Howard Ashman, Adam Gettle, Janine Tesori, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, Oliver Smith. I mean, the list just goes on and on, and they're just dripping with wonderful materials. Some people take advantage, but there's so much more to be taken advantage of.

[47:30] David Armstrong: I think maybe one of the things that keeps people away is feeling that it's not going to be accessible, but that's really not the case, right? You're welcoming people to come to do this.

[47:38] Mark Eden Horowitz: Nothing makes me happier, and I know my colleagues say that. I mean, you put all this work and effort into acquiring a collection and then processing a collection, and you want people to enjoy it. You want people to appreciate it. You want to feel that you've done this for good purposes. When people are doing research in collections and I find out discoveries that they make, I'm just thrilled. It makes me feel like a meaningful human being.

[48:02] Mark Eden Horowitz: I think the Library of Congress sounds intimidating to some people, and so it may be keeping people away, but hopefully we'll make a little dent in that today and encourage people to get over whatever intimidation they might have and come and knock on your door and use this resource, this incredible resource.

[48:18] Mark Eden Horowitz: Well, I will tell you, the researchers I know that come, and many of them have become friends of mine, they tell me how wonderful it is to research at the library and how much they enjoy it compared to many of the other places they go. So unless they're just trying to make me feel good, I take them at their word, and I think it's true.

[48:37] David Armstrong: I've heard the same thing, absolutely.

[48:39] David Armstrong: So why haven't you been there?

[48:40] Mark Eden Horowitz: Well, I need to get there. In fact, I directed a show in Washington a few years ago, and one of my goals was to get over there, and I just never made it because you know what it's like when you're directing a show. It's on my list.

[48:53] David Armstrong: Thank you, Mark Eden Horowitz, so much for joining us today on Broadway Nation. It's been a pleasure to talk to you about the letters of Oscar Hammerstein.

[49:01] Mark Eden Horowitz: Thank you. It's been my pleasure.

[49:03] David Armstrong: Getting to know you, getting to feel free and easy. And don't forget to join Mark and I on May 20th for a special Broadway Nation live stream at 7 p.m. Eastern Time, 4 p.m. Pacific Time, streaming live on both the Broadway Podcast Network and the Broadway Nation Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube feeds. And if you're not able to join us live, we'll be posting a recording of the event on YouTube after the fact.

[49:33] David Armstrong: Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pals Mox for his much-appreciated help with editing this episode, to KVSH 101.9, the voice of beautiful Vashon Island, Washington, and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.

[49:51] Mark Eden Horowitz: Getting to know what to say.

[49:57] Mark Eden Horowitz: Haven't you noticed? Suddenly I'm bright and breezy because of all the beautiful and new things I'm learning about you day by day.