What Counts

Tunesmith Richard Rodgers well remembers May 17, 1925. That was the day a group of Theatre Guild youngsters bounced onto the stage of Broadway's Garrick Theatre and sang, danced and mugged their way through a little revue named Garrick Gaieties. In the pit, conducting his own catchy, melodious score, was Richard Rodgers himself. Garrick Gaieties was supposed to be a one-night stand, to raise money for new tapestries for the Theatre Guild. But when it was all over and the audience had gone home humming Rodgers' tunes (Manhattan, Sentimental Me), the Guild had more than its tapestries. It had a hit show. And 22-year-old Richard Rodgers had been launched on one of the most successful careers in U.S. show business.

Last week, 25 years after the opening at the Garrick, the Theatre Guild called together some of the old gang and threw a silver anniversary party for Songwriter and Pulitzer Prizewinner (South Pacific) Dick Rodgers. On the silver platter that the oldtimers handed him were engraved a few bars from some of the hits he has turned out in the intervening years for Theatre Guild shows, e.g., Oklahoma!, If I Loved You, So Far.

For Rodgers, composing melodious, palatable music has always been "easier than bending over and tying my shoelaces." In restaurants, Pullmans, theater lounges or his own living room, he has been known to whip out a song in 15 minutes, even with interruptions. He can also tailor his tunes to fit almost any situation, or any set of words from the tricky, involuted lyrics of his first partner, the late Lorenz Hart, to the straight-spoken, folksy verses of Oscar Hammerstein II, his current collaborator. In 25 years he has written the music for 32 Broadway shows (including A Connecticut Yankee, Pal Joey, Carousel), some dozen movies (which he would like to forget except for Love Me Tonight and State Fair).

Last week Rodgers was busy with a new assignment: a musical version of Anna and the King of Siam due on Broadway next winter. "I am doing just exactly what I have wanted to do all my life," he said. To Rodgers, Broadway means no tinsel-and-tin-horn land where a songwriter makes his pile with apologies to more devoted, less successful longhairs. It is a place where he can display "humanity," the quality he values most in music, and get "a direct reaction" to it. Said satisfied Dick Rodgers: "We move a lot more people to tears at the Majestic [where South Pacific is playing] than they do at the Met. And that's what really counts."

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