{"product_id":"musical-stages-an-autobiography","title":"Musical Stages: An Autobiography","description":"341 pp. Includes black \u0026amp; white photographs. \"Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28, 1902 - December 30, 1979) was one of the great composers of musical theater, best known for his song writing partnerships with Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. He wrote more than 900 published songs, and forty Broadway musicals. Many of his compositions continue to have a broad appeal and have had a significant impact on the development of popular music. Born in Arverne, Queens, New York to a prosperous Jewish family, Richard Rodgers was the son of Dr. Will Rodgers, a prominent physician who had changed the family name from Abrahams.Richard Rodgers attended the same public school as Bennett Cerf and began playing the piano at age six. Rodgers attended Townsend Harris Hall and DeWitt Clinton High School. In 1919 Phillip Leavitt, a friend of Rodger's older brother, introduced him to lyricist Lorenz Hart. Rodgers, Hart, and Rodgers' later partner Oscar Hammerstein II all attended Columbia University; Rodgers dropped out in 1921 and then attended the Institute of Musical Art (Juilliard). Rodgers was influenced by composers Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, and Arthur Sullivan. Rodgers and Hart struggled for years in the field of musical comedy, writing a number of amateur shows, but they made their professional debut with the song \"Any Old Place With You,\" featured in the 1919 Broadway musical comedy A Lonely Romeo. Their first professional production was Poor Little Ritz Girl in 1920, and their next professional show was not until The Melody Man in 1924. Rodgers was considering quitting show biz to sell children's underwear when he and Hart finally broke through in 1925. They wrote the songs for a benefit show presented by the prestigious Theatre Guild, called The Garrick Gaieties, and the critics found the show fresh and delightful. Only meant to run one day, the Guild knew they had a success and allowed it to re-open later. The show's biggest hit, the song that Rodgers believed \"made\" Rodgers and Hart, was \"Manhattan.\" The two were now a Broadway songwriting force. Throughout the rest of the decade, the duo wrote several hit shows for both Broadway and London, including Dearest Enemy (1925), The Girl Friend (1926), Peggy-Ann (1926), A Connecticut Yankee (1927), and Present Arms (1928), among others. Their 1920s shows produced standards such as \"Here In My Arms,\" \"Mountain Greenery,\" \"The Blue Room,\" \"My Heart Stood Still\" and \"You Took Advantage Of Me.\" With the Depression in full swing, the team sought greener pastures in Hollywood during much of the first half of the 1930s. The hardworking Rodgers later regretted these relatively fallow years, but he and Hart did create some classics while out west, writing a number of songs and five film scores by 1934, including Love Me Tonight (1932) (directed by Rouben Mamoulian, who would direct Rodgers' Oklahoma! on Broadway) which included such hits as \"Lover,\" \"Mimi\", and \"Isn't It Romantic?.\" Also, after trying several different lyrics that didn't quite work, they put out a song that became one of their most famous, \"Blue Moon.\" They also wrote The Phantom President, starring George M. Cohan, I'm a Bum, starring Al Jolson, and Mississippi, starring Bing Crosby and W.C. Fields. In 1935 they returned to Broadway with a vengeance (while also continuing to write film scores), writing an almost unbroken string of hit shows that only stopped when Hart, a troubled alcoholic, died in 1943. Among the most notable are Jumbo (1935), On Your Toes (1936, which included the ballet \"Slaughter on Tenth Avenue\", choreographed by George Balanchine), Babes In Arms (1937), I Married an Angel (1938), The Boys From Syracuse (1938), Pal Joey (1940), and their last original work, By Jupiter (1942). Rodgers also contributed to the book on several of these shows. Many of the songs from these shows are still being sung today, including \"The Most Beautiful Girl In The World,\" \"My Romance,\" \"Little Girl Blue,\" \"There's A Small Hotel,\" \"Where","brand":"Random House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40397954875462,"sku":"2329317","price":7.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1232\/9510\/products\/2329317.jpg?v=1668118761","url":"https:\/\/ym-demo.myshopify.com\/products\/musical-stages-an-autobiography","provider":"Yesterday's Muse","version":"1.0","type":"link"}