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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was Dee Dee Myers’s idea, and for it—and for so many other good ideas and good times—she has my everlasting love. She knows how much I care about this subject, and how long I have cared about it, and she had the good sense to propose that I write about it when I lacked the confidence to try. Book writing can be a lonely exercise, but Dee Dee and our children, Kate and Stephen—themselves avid fans of the musical theater—were always there at the end of the day. They’re Something Wonderful, and the book is for them.
Paul Golob, executive editor at Henry Holt and Company, seconded Dee Dee’s enthusiasm and made the book a reality, backed by Holt’s publisher, Steve Rubin, and their strong editorial team. This is the third book I have written with Paul, and I can’t imagine a better, more patient, more caring, or more diligent partner. As always, it was a pleasure to work with him.
My debt to Ted Chapin, president and chief creative officer of Rodgers and Hammerstein, is incalculable. From the start, he offered unstinting cooperation and unfettered access, while imposing no editorial control or conditions. He answered arcane queries at all hours and opened countless doors in the world of Dick and Oscar and the theater more broadly. I could not have written the book without him, and I record my thanks here with the greatest warmth. Ted’s assistant, Nicole Harman, and his former R&H colleagues Bert Fink and Bruce Pomahac were also helpful beyond measure. Bert has been the go-to source for information about Rodgers and Hammerstein over a professional working friendship that has now spanned more than twenty years, while Bruce generously conducted a four-hour master class in the mechanics of Rodgers’s music that was a highlight of my research and the best part of a fine Wisconsin summer day. My in-laws, Steve and Judy Myers, let Bruce and me borrow their piano—just one of the many things I’ve had to thank them for over these twenty-plus years.
Once again, my old friend Karen Avrich contributed peerless fact-checking and backstopping, while my lawyer Bob Barnett ably handled the practicalities of the contract. The bosses at my day jobs—John Harris and Carrie Budoff Brown at Politico, and Graydon Carter and Cullen Murphy at Vanity Fair—indulged this project with a generosity above and beyond any reasonable measure, and Cullen read the manuscript with his usual keen eye and wise heart. Melissa Goldstein unearthed the compelling photographs that help bring Dick and Oscar to life in these pages.
I owe particular thanks to a new friend, Joan Saltzman, a recovering Philadelphia lawyer and playwright, who is an expert on all things Hammerstein. Joan shared Oscar Hammerstein’s official FBI file, which she had obtained through a Freedom of Information request, and she also hunted in vain for the passport files of both Rodgers and Hammerstein. Her research, and her infectious enthusiasm, enriched my work. Timothy Crouse shared excerpts from his father’s diary from the production of The Sound of Music and also read parts of my manuscript, offering valuable advice and saving me from inelegant errors. Amy Asch, the editor of The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II, was a valued research resource, as was her mentor, the great musical theater historian Robert Kimball, the only man I know who is an equal authority on the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Annie Get Your Gun. Mana Allen, a third-generation member in good standing of the Broadway tribe, went out of her way to help research the papers of Trude Rittmann and generously opened other doors at the New York Public Library’s theater, dance, and photo collections at Lincoln Center. The theater historian Laurence Maslon, an expert on South Pacific and The Sound of Music, shared original interviews for the script of his and Roger Sherman’s American Masters PBS documentary, Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest Sounds, along with his time and a tour of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where he teaches. NPR’s Jeff Lunden likewise unstintingly shared interview tapes from his compelling radio documentaries on Rodgers and Hammerstein and their work.
The Library of Congress is a national treasure—and so is Mark Eden Horowitz, a senior music specialist in its Music Division and the keeper of its priceless archives of the Great American Songbook. Mark and his colleagues, especially Caitlin Miller, provided invaluable guidance and support in my repeated forays through the Hammerstein papers, and both also read parts of the manuscript. At the New York Public Library’s Lincoln Center branch, Annemarie van Roessel, assistant curator at the Billy Rose Theatre Division, gave me a detailed tour d’horizon of its Richard Rodgers archive and other holdings, while Cassie Mey of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division granted permission to quote from an oral history of Trude Rittmann, and Jeremy Megraw, photograph librarian in the Rose Division, was a generous guide to its images. I am grateful to Terre Heydari, operations manager at the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, for assistance in securing permission to quote from the revealing oral histories that Professor Ronald Davis conducted over many years with Broadway and Hollywood luminaries—and to Professor Davis for compiling them in the first place. Special thanks to Patricia Ward Kelly for permission to quote from the interview with her late husband, Gene Kelly. At the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, Jenny Romero cheerfully helped access the Davis oral histories, as well as the papers of Fred Zinnemann, Arthur Hornblow Jr., and others. Martin Gostanian at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills was a cheerful guide to recordings of some of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s many television appearances.
Dame Julie Andrews, and her manager Steve Sauer, took time
to answer e-mail queries, even though she was at work on her own memoir covering some of the same material, and I can attest that her kindness and graciousness are, indeed, “practically perfect, in every way.” Mary Ellin Berlin Barrett, André Bishop, John Steele Gordon, Sheldon Harnick, Frank Rich, Jonathan Schwartz, and Claudette Sutherland all generously answered questions by phone or in person, and Stephen Sondheim offered revealing insights in several e-mail exchanges. Will Hammerstein gave me a moving tour of his grandfather’s Highland Farm. The late Barbara Cook, Florence Henderson, and George S. Irving, who were, before their deaths, among the last living collaborators to have worked with Rodgers and Hammerstein firsthand, all gave lively and helpful telephone interviews, and I will treasure their memory. Owen Shribman shared memories of his mother, Temple Texas, and Howard Reinheimer Jr. did the same for his father. Gigi Reinheimer helped with family photos.
For permission to quote from the published works of Rodgers and Hammerstein I thank Rodgers and Hammerstein, a division of Concord Music, and for permission to quote from unpublished letters and other writings of Rodgers and Hammerstein I thank their heirs and literary executors, especially Adam Guettel. Similarly, for permission to quote other letters and unpublished writings, I thank John Brown and Catherine Collins (John Mason Brown); Tita Cahn (Sammy Cahn); Benn Clatworthy (Gertrude Lawrence); Susanna Krebs Drewry (Trude Rittmann); Anne Fadiman (Clifton Fadiman); Julie Gilbert (Edna Ferber); Dr. Catherine Carlisle Hart and Christopher Hart (Moss Hart); Brook Hersey (John Hersey); Christopher Knopf (Edwin H. Knopf); Tom and Harrigan Logan (Joshua Logan); Marcia Messing (Harold Messing); Jonathan Prude (Agnes de Mille); Elizabeth Winick Rubinstein (John Steinbeck); and Tim Zinnemann (Fred Zinnemann). Terrell Dougan allowed me to publish her touching letter to Richard Rodgers.
At Holt, I also owe thanks to the marketing and publicity mavens, Maggie Richards, Pat Eisemann, and Carolyn O’Keefe; the managing editor, Kenn Russell, who supervised the book’s production; Muriel Jorgensen, the copy editor; Kelly S. Too, who designed the book; and Nicolette Seeback and Karen Horton, who created the jacket. Caroline Wray kept track of all the paper. Margo Feiden and Daria Enrich paved the way for use of the wonderful Al Hirschfeld lithograph.
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