An exuberant celebration of musical genius.
From an incomparable partnership, musical theater rang out with ebullience, lyricism, and soaring melodies.
Composer Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) had worked with the lyricist Lorenz Hart before teaming up with Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) in 1942; Hammerstein already had decades of experience in theater, beginning in 1915 when he joined a university troupe as a writer and performer. As Politico senior writer Purdum (An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 2014) amply shows in his joyous, brisk, and gossipy dual biography, their partnership brought out the best in both men: from Hammerstein, lyrics of “shimmering loveliness.” His lyrics, Julie Andrews remarked with admiration, were “rich, brilliantly constructed and so very specific to the worlds they created together,” scored by Rodgers’ “melodically glorious” music. They worked independently but with uncanny synergy: Hammerstein wrote the words first, sending them to Rodgers, who composed with incredible speed. Once asked how long it took him to compose the entire score of Oklahoma!, he estimated “about five hours.” Purdum calls their creativity “alchemy,” which aptly describes the magic that resulted in some of the most iconic Broadway shows of the mid-20th century, including Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. The author traces the chronology of each show—even the lesser-known productions and the flops—from lighting upon an idea through developing a storyline, writing music, finding a director, hiring a cast (many young singers rose to stardom in the duo’s musicals), and assembling a team. Although they closely managed their productions, they depended on other talented participants, notably orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett; choreographers Agnes de Mille and Jerome Robbins; vocal arranger Trude Rittmann; and scenic designer Jo Mielziner. Aside from work, Rodgers and Hammerstein were not confidants, although they signed their correspondence “love.” Yet they revealed depths of emotion in music, as one friend put it, that “parses the grammar of the heart.”
An exuberant celebration of musical genius.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62779-834-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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