# What is your favourite Rodgers and Hammerstein Musical?



## AddisonAl (Nov 13, 2008)

I love the sexual tension in _Oklahoma!_
_Carousel_ - what a gem!
_Allegro - _paved the way for the concept musical
_South Pacific_ - is it possibly a perfect musical?
_The King and I_ - written as a star vehicle for Gertrude Lawrence, evolved into a star vehicle for Yul Brynner
_Me and Juliet_ - the first 'setsical'?
_Pipe Dream_ - never saw
_Cinderella_ - impossible things are happening every day!
_Flower Drum Song_ - is it possibly under-rated?
_The Sound of Music_ - schmaltzy, yet fun.
What's _your_ favorite?

Cordially,

Al


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## Kav (Jun 19, 2005)

I'm in the barracks T.V. lounge in Kodiak Alaska Airstation on a friday night. Everybody else not on watch was in town. I'm a few days out of bootcamp, excited, but feeling lost.
T.V. in those days was a 48 hour delay tape from Seattle.
I settled down to watch South Pacific.
This 1st class petty officer walks in with a brown paper sack and a pizza.He stops at the entry, seeing the glow of the T.V. and a sole occupant.
Uh, hello. Were you going to watch anything SPECIAL?
uh, well, South Pacific is coming on and...
He sits down next to me, pulls a bottle of blackberry brandy from the base 'package store' and pours two shots into coffeecups, opens the pizza and tells me to help him eat it.
within a few minutes four more senior petty officers strollled in to watch South Pacific.
My military 'career' was off to a positive start, making friends with the right people.


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## Penang Lawyer (May 27, 2008)

It is diffcult to say which was my favorite. When Gertrude Lawrence died and they blacked out Broadway in her memory I was there and just before Yul Brenner died we took our son to see him in it.


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## Miket61 (Mar 1, 2008)

A good friend was a reporter in Vermont in the 80s. He had several occasions to interview Baroness Maria Von Trapp.

She was a short, stocky, reserved, and occasionally foul-tempered woman. She tolerated Mary Martin's stage version and didn't care for Julie Andrews' movie version AT ALL. Her stock line, which she also used when she appeared as a contestant on _To Tell The Truth_, was "It's a beautiful story, but it's not MY story."

She was hired to be a nurse to the oldest daughter, not a governess to the family. The children didn't like her at first, and weren't happy that she married their father. They had three children together before fleeing Austria during WWII.

Neither she nor the children like the way the Baron was depicted in the movie. The real Georg von Trapp was a jovial man with a walrus mustache who encouraged his children exploring the outdoors and their singing. The bo'sun's whistle did indeed exist, but they didn't have separate calls for each child.

_Flower Drum Song_ was a good show in its original form, but the recent revival tried to modernize a story that is very much set in its place and time. The tradition-bound elders were seen as backwards in the 1960s; trying to place it in the current time did NOT work.


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