Oklahoma!

Oklahoma! premiered on Broadway on 31 March 1943 under the auspices of the Theatre Guild, and today it is performed more frequently than any other Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. When this book was first published in 2007, it offered the first fully documented history of the making of the show based on archival materials, manuscripts, journalism, and other sources. The present revised edition draws still further on newly uncovered sources to provide an even clearer account of a work that many have claimed fundamentally changed Broadway musical theater. It is filled with rich and fascinating details about the play on which Oklahoma! was based (Lynn Riggs’s Green Grow the Lilacs); on what encouraged Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner of the Guild to bring Rodgers and Hammerstein together for their first collaboration; on how Rouben Mamoulian and Agnes de Mille became the director and choreographer; on the drafts and revisions that led the show toward its final shape; and on the rehearsals and tryouts that brought it to fruition. It also examines the lofty aspirations and the mythmaking that surrounded Oklahoma! from its very inception, and demonstrates just what made it part of its times.

Setting the Stage

The pre-premiere publicity for Oklahoma! generated by the Theatre Guild fixed many of the themes that would dominate its reception history. The Guild had already established a pattern of creating musical versions of plays it had previously staged, by way of George and Ira Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess of 1935. Its executive director, Theresa Helburn, tried to persuade a number of Broadway composers to pick up the torch, including Kurt Weill (for Ferenc Molnár’s play Liliom, which later became Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel). She also saw some potential in Lynn Rigg’s Green Grow the Lilacs, first done by the Guild in late 1930. Riggs was one of a new generation of “regional” playwrights, and he drew on his own upbringing in Claremore, Oklahoma, for a work interweaving vernacular dialogue and cowboy songs. Rodgers and Hammerstein, however, came from quite other theatrical traditions; anything they did would necessarily be very different.

From Stage to Screen

Oklahoma! was a surprising success on Broadway, and although the Theatre Guild considered other possible creative teams for new musicals, the now-sealed Rodgers and Hammerstein partnership proved hard to resist. A touring company was in place by late summer 1943, and Oklahoma! traveled internationally after the end of World War II (not least, to London’s West End in 1947); meanwhile, the Guild needed to replace cast members leaving one or other productions of the show. In 1953, Rodgers and Hammerstein bought the Guild’s rights to all three of the shows they had done under its auspices (including Carousel and Allegro). In part, this was to maximize their profits from intended film versions. The 1955 film of Oklahoma! took advantage of the new Todd-AO wide-screen process and location shooting to produce a vivid rendition of the show that, however, also needed to be followed, or resisted, in subsequent stage versions.

Lawson, John Howard (1894–1977)

John Howard Lawson was born in New York City on September 25, 1894. His first major play, Roger Bloomer (1923), advanced expressionism in the United States, trading the pessimism that frequently defined the form for optimism. Processional (1925), produced by the Theatre Guild, was also formally adventurous. Combining jazz, vaudeville, and Dada, and focussing on a labor dispute, it is Lawson’s masterwork.

Tola

On her return to the United States, Hopkins meets Russian-born director Anatole Litvak. They become close, and she stars in his first American film, The Woman I Love. Her costar Paul Muni is bothered by Hopkins’s interference, and fights ensue. Hopkins buys the former estate of John Gilbert. Warner Bros. plans to make Jezebel, a part Hopkins wants, however, she is tricked into selling her rights and the role is given to Bette Davis. Discouraged, Hopkins returns to Goldwyn and makes Woman Chases Man. Polls claim that Hopkins is the number one choice to play Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, but David O. Selznick has other plans. Hopkins moves into her new Tower Grove home. She elopes with Anatole Litvak and appears in Wine of Choice for the Theatre Guild, but it fails to meet her standards. She is devastated at the death of her ex-husband “Billy” Parker. After the funeral, she collapses and is admitted to the hospital.

Performers in Catfish Row

This chapter challenges the assumption that George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess is something done by whites to blacks by highlighting the indispensable, active role played by African American performers in every critically successful production of the opera. Porgy and Bess has been the subject of controversy for decades owing to its depiction of African Americans. Many of the arguments against Gershwin's work casts African Americans as the victims of malevolent or thoughtless white actions. This chapter examines how Porgy and Bess came into being as an opportunity for productive interracial collaboration by focusing on the Theatre Guild production of 1935, one of several postwar productions of Porgy and Bess that have managed to bring performers and the director together. It also considers Gershwin's respect for his cast members as individuals and concludes with a discussion of five case studies that speak of the tension in the relationship between white directorial staff and black performers in Porgy and Bess, including the production of Samuel Goldwyn's 1959 Technicolor film about Catfish Row.