Oklahoma! premieres on Broadway
The financial risk of mounting a Broadway musical is so great that few productions ever make it to the Great White Way without a period of tryouts and revisions outside of New York City.This was as true in the 1940s as it is today and especially so during the war years when the producers of an innovative little musical called Away We Go had real concerns about their shows commercial viability.Even with lyrics and music by two of theaters leading lights Away We Go was believed by many to be a flop in the making.
Indeed an assistant to the famous gossip columnist Walter Winchell captured the prevailing wisdom in a telegram sent from New Haven Connecticut during the shows out-of-town tryout.His message read No girls.No legs.
No chance.This would prove to be one of the most off-base predictions in theater history when the slightly retooled show opened on Broadway on March 31 1943 under a new titleOklahomaand went on to set a Broadway record of 2212 performances before finally closing more than 15 years later.What was it that made Oklahoma seem so risky For one it was the first show undertaken by the already legendary composer Richard Rodgers without his longtime partner Lorenz Hart.Harts drinking and other personal problems had rendered him unable to work by 1942 so Rodgers would undertake his next project with a new partner lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.
While Rodgers and Hammerstein almost instantly clicked as a songwriting duo the creative chances they were taking with Oklahoma were significant.The show had no big-name stars involved in it it was based on relatively obscure source material and it was an ambitious experiment in integrating music and dance in service of storytelling rather than spectacle.At a time when Broadway musicals always opened with a bang Oklahoma would open with a lone cowboy singing a gentle idyll about corn and meadows.From the very first moment on opening night however Oklahoma hit a nerve.
The shows choreographer the legendary Agnes DeMille later recalled the audience reaction to that opening number Oh What a Beautiful Mornin [It] produced a sigh from the entire house that I dont think Ive ever heard in the theater.It was just aaaahh It was perfectly lovely and deeply felt.Of the reaction to the title song Oklahoma actress Joan Roberts the original Laurey said The applause was so deafening and it continued and continued.
We repeated two encores and we stood there until they stopped applauding And I didnt think they ever would That famous number had been changed from a solo to a full-cast showstopper only weeks earlier during the shows final tune-ups in Boston before the beginning of its history-making Broadway run on this day in 1943.
