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.