A CLASSIC IS 75 – AT 1:30 P.M. ET:   "Oklahoma!" is 75 years old today.  It was March 31, 1943, in the midst of World War II, when the show that was to become an American classic opened at the St. James Theater on Broadway. 

The audience didn't know quite what to expect.  "Oklahoma!" was based on a little-known play, "Green Grow the Lilacs," by a little-known playwright, Lynn Riggs.  It was written by two well-known men of the theater, the composer Richard Rodgers and the lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, but they had never worked together, and Hammerstein, who had co-written the brilliant "Show Boat" in the 1920s, hadn't had a hit in 11 years. 

When the show was in try-outs before opening in New York, it was called "Away We Go," not exactly a grabber.  It had no major stars.  And advance word was hardly encouraging.  It wasn't a funny show, it had no chorus girls, and prospects on Broadway were dicey.  One out-of-town critic wrote, "No jokes, no legs, no chance." 

But "Oklahoma!" the name under which it opened on Broadway, had a secret.  From the first moment the audience heard Curly, played by a young Alfred Drake, sing "There's a bright golden haze on the meadow..." something magical happened.  We were a nation at war.  We had taken heavy casualties.  There had been some progress in the almost year and a half we'd been fighting, but victory was far from assured in either Europe, against the Nazis, or the Pacific, against the Japanese.  And here was a ray of light, of optimism, of the real America, of a place where, in Hammerstein's words, "the corn is as high as an elephant's eye."

It was a time when the songs of Broadway played an outsized role in what music was broadcast on radios across the United States.  And the songs of "Oklahoma!" traveled quickly.  Some, like "People Will Say We're in Love," became major hits.  The rousing finale, "Oklahoma!" became the state song of Oklahoma.  The original-cast album sold more than a million copies, and it was truly an album.  The recordings were on 78 rpm easily breakable records, one song to each side.  My family had a copy.  I played it often, with one record plopping down over the other in what was called a record changer.  The cast album was the first ever to include the entire original cast, including the chorus and the Broadway orchestra.

"Oklahoma!" was the lift America needed.  And it was certainly what Oscar Hammerstein II needed.  His simple but heartfelt lyrics, set to Richard Rodgers's superb melodies, captivated the nation.  A genuinely modest man, Hammerstein took out an ad in Variety after the smash opening of "Oklahoma!" and listed some of his flops, writing "I've done it before and I can do it again." 

He rarely did it again.  Rodgers and Hammerstein went on to write "Carousel," "South Pacific," "The King and I," "Flower Drum Song," and "The Sound of Music."  Rodgers went on to write the score for the immortal television documentary, "Victory at Sea." 

"Oklahoma!" produced no giant stars, but Alfred Drake became an important leading man in other Broadway productions, like "Kiss Me Kate."  Celeste Holm, who played Ado Annie ("I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say No") had a long career as a successful actress.  Joan Roberts, a New Yorker with a New York accent, lost the accent to play the female lead, Laurey, who was decidedly Oklahoman.  Joan Roberts did some other work in theater and television before retiring into near-obscurity.

There is only one surviving member of the original cast – the dancer Bambi Linn.  Ironically, she achieved her greatest fame, not in "Oklahoma!" but as one of television's first musical stars.  In the 1950s she and her husband, Rod Alexander, became dancing regulars, with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, on "Your Show of Shows."

Many reading this were probably in school productions of "Oklahoma!" or have relatives or friends who were.  It seems it has always been with us.

It always will be.

March 31, 2018