Isn't It Romantic? Richard Rodgers at the Movies
November 21–December 2, 2002
The Department of Film and Media celebrates the centennial of Richard Rodgers's birth with a multipart program devoted to the composer's relationship with the cinema. The first section focuses on films for which Rodgers wrote original songs while working in Hollywood, including The Hot Heiress (1931), Love Me Tonight and The Phantom President (both 1932), and Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (1933), all with Lorenz Hart, and State Fair (1945), with Oscar Hammerstein II. The second features contemporary films distinguished by Rodgers's music, including Shall We Dance? (1996) and Dancer in the Dark (2000). Two exceptional adaptations of Rodgers's stage work, Evergreen (1934) and The Sound of Music (1965), are also shown.
Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator. Made possible in part by a grant from the Rodgers and Hammerstein Foundation, and presented with the assistance of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization with the particular help of Bert Fink. Thanks go to the UCLA Film and Television Archive, Turner Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Florentine Films, New Line Cinema, and Miramax for their generous loans to this program.
1931. USA. Directed by Clarence Badger. Screenplay by Herbert Fields.
With Ben Lyon, Ona Munson, Walter Pidgeon. Rodgers and Hart's rarely
seen debut musical comedy begins with a socialite assaulted in her
bedroom by an incendiary rivet that comes flying through the window.
The rescuing riveter follows. 85 min.
2001.
USA. Directed by Roger Sherman. Screenplay by Laurence Maslon. An
American Masters production for Thirteen/WNET. A celebration of
Rodgers's music and an investigation into the genius of a composer,
whose melodies emerged from a "fundamental River of Sadness." With,
among others, Julie Andrews, Diahann Carroll, Celeste Holm, John
Macueri, Maureen McGovern, Trevor Nunn, Billy Taylor, Andrew Lloyd
Webber, and Rodgers's daughters, Linda and Mary. Video. 115 min.
1933. USA. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard. Screenplay by Allen Rivkin,
P. J. Wolfson. With Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Fred
Astaire. Rodgers and Hart are among the three teams of songwriters
contributing to this musical melodrama, in which a burlesque chorine
falls for the director of her exciting new show, unaware that her
millionaire playboy suitor is financing it. 90 min.
1929. USA. Produced by Jay Kaufman. In Paramount's Astoria studios,
Rodgers and Hart speak about their collaboration and perform some
of their songs. 18 min.
1932. USA. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Screenplay by Samuel Hoffenstein,
Waldemar Young, George Marion, Jr. With Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette
MacDonald, Myrna Loy. A gem of a musical featuring some of Rodgers
and Hart's most memorable songs, including "Isn't It Romantic" and
"Mimi." 104 min.
1994. New Zealand. Directed by Peter Jackson. Screenplay by Jackson,
Frances Walsh. With Melanie Lynskey, Kate Winslet. Based on a true
story, this sinister yet enrapturing film shadows the fanatical
relationship between two teenage girls that eventually drives them
to murder. 108 min.
1935. USA. Directed by A. Edward Sutherland. Screenplay by Francis
Martin, Jack Cunningham. With Bing Crosby, W. C. Fields, Joan Bennett.
Set in the antebellum South, Mississippi is uncertain just
how silly or serious it wants to be. Although Rodgers and Hart wrote
four dreamy ballads for crooner Crosby, the energy is supplied by
the incomparable Fields as an inembriated riverboat captain. 80
min.
1932. USA. Directed by Norman Taurog. Screenplay by Walter De Leon,
Harlan Thompson. With George M. Cohan, Claudette Colbert, Jimmy
Durante. A Depression-era fantasy, in which Cohan plays the dual
role of a bland banker, whom four senators enlist to run for President,
and his double, a charismatic salesman who substitutes for the kidnapped
candidate. 78 min.
1965. USA. Directed by Robert Wise. Screenplay by Ernest Lehman,
based on the book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. With Julie
Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker. The most popular movie
musical ever made, and still influential almost forty years after
its premiere. 173 min.
1933. USA. Directed by Lewis Milestone. Screenplay by S. N. Behrman,
based on an original story by Ben Hecht. With Al Jolson, Madge Evans,
Frank Morgan. One of cinema's most unusual musicals (for which Rodgers
and Hart provided not only four songs, but also "rhythmic dialogue"),
this socially conscious fantasy about tramps in Central Park was
Al Jolson's comeback film. 83 min.
2000. Denmark/Sweden/France. Written and directed by Lars von Trier.
With Björk, Catherine Deneuve, Joel Grey. Selma (Björk),
a single mother, struggling to save her son from hereditary blindness
and slowly losing her own sight, dreams of performing several numbers
from her favorite musical, Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound
of Music. 137 min.
1945. USA. Directed by Walter Lang. Screenplay by Oscar Hammerstein
II. With Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, Dick Haymes. After a ten-year
absence from Hollywood, Rodgers returned with his new lyricist,
Oscar Hammerstein II, to turn State Fair, a folksy comedy
from 1933, into a Technicolor musical. Two of the six Rodgers and
Hammerstein songs have become classics: "It's a Grand Night for
Singing" and the Oscar-winning "It Might as Well Be Spring." 100
min.
1934. Great Britain. Directed by Victor Saville. Screenplay by Marjorie
Gaffney. With Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale, Betty Balfour. Rodgers
and Hart wrote the songs for the musical Ever Green, staged
in London in 1930. Four years later Saville, one of Britain's leading
filmmakers, transformed this play about a young singer masquerading
as her famous mother into a memorable feature. 90 min.
1996. Written and directed by Masayuki Suo. With Shohei Sugiyama,
Mai Kishikawa, Tomio Aoki. A box-office smash hit at home and abroad,
Shall We Dance? takes its title from the Rodgers and Hammerstein
standard from The King and I, and its cue from the shy-boy-meets-shy-girl
musicals of 1930s Hollywood. A film about the liberating value of
ballroom dancing, from a country where public hand-holding is discouraged
even among married couples. 118 min.
1998. Australia/Great Britain. Directed by Stephan Elliot. Screenplay
by Michael Thomas, based on the novel by Douglas Kennedy. With Jonathon
Schaech, Rod Taylor, Susie Porter. Celebrated for his feature The
Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Elliot returns
to the Australian outback, where he imagines a town in which the
only songs broadcast are by Rodgers and Hammerstein. 102 min.
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