When both Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) were rebuffed by others in their efforts to turn the play Green Grow the Lilacs into a musical, the composer and the librettist turned to each other, made Oklahoma! in 1943, and the rest is musical theater history. In this glowing dual biography of the team that revolutionized the American musical and ushered the form into its golden age, Purdum, a staff writer for The Atlantic, gives a detailed portrait of both men and delves into their creative process. He looks at the challenges they faced in bringing their greatest shows—Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music—to fruition, surveys some of the many productions, and explores the duo’s recurrent doubts about their work and about their partnership.
