Richard Rodgers' contribution to the musical theatre of his day was extraordinary, and his influence on the musical theatre of today and tomorrow is legendary. His career spanned more than six decades, his hits ranging from the silver screens of Hollywood to the bright lights of Broadway, London and beyond. He was the recipient of countless awards, including Pulitzers, Tonys, Oscars, Grammys and Emmys. He wrote more than 900 published songs and 40 Broadway musicals.

Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and Lorenz Hart (1895-1943) wrote their first shows together when both were still students attending Columbia University. Their breakthrough came with the score for a 1925 charity show, The Garrick Gaieties, which introduced the classic valentine to their hometown, "Manhattan."

Over the next five years they wrote 15 musical comedies for Broadway and London's West End before relocating to Hollywood in 1930, where they contributed songs and wrote the scores for several movie musicals, most notably Love Me Tonight, starring Maurice Chevalier.

In 1935 they returned to New York to write the score for Billy Rose's circus musical Jumbo, launching a golden era that included On Your Toes, Babes In Arms, I'd Rather Be Right, I Married An Angel, The Boys From Syracuse, Too Many Girls, Higher And Higher, Pal Joey and By Jupiter. In 1943 the partnership disbanded temporarily when Rodgers collaborated with Oscar Hammerstein II on Oklahoma!, but it resumed with a revision of their 1927 hit A Connecticut Yankee, which opened on November 17, 1943 – less than a week before Lorenz Hart's death.

For the next two decades Richard Rodgers collaborated exclusively with Oscar Hammerstein II on such musicals as Carousel, Allegro, South Pacific, The King And I, Pipe Dream and The Sound of Music. Collectively, their musicals have garnered dozens of awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, Tonys, Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, and Drama Desk, Drama Critics’ Circle, Outer Critics’ Circle, Laurence Olivier, and Evening Standard Awards.

After Hammerstein's death in 1960, Rodgers continued to write for the musical stage, including No Strings, and collaborations with Martin Charnin, Stephen Sondheim and Sheldon Harnick. His fortieth, and final, Broadway musical, I Remember Mama, opened on Broadway less than eight months before his death on December 30, 1979.

The Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway was renamed in his honor, and Rodgers and Hart were each commemorated on a US postage stamp at the end of the last century.

Oscar Hammerstein II was born on July 12, 1895 in New York City. His father, William, was a theatre manager and for many years director of Hammerstein's Victoria, the most popular vaudeville theatre of its day. His uncle, Arthur Hammerstein, was a successful Broadway producer and his grandfather, Oscar Hammerstein, a famous opera impresario.Hammerstein started writing lyrics for the Columbia University Varsity shows while studying law. His earliest works included musical comedies written with a Columbia undergraduate seven years his junior named Richard Rodgers. (The 1920 varsity show, Fly With Me, was composed by Rodgers with lyrics by both Hammerstein and a fellow classmate of his named Lorenz Hart.) Withdrawing from Columbia Law School after his second year to pursue a career in theatre, Hammerstein took a job with his uncle as an assistant stage manager.In 1919 Hammerstein's first play, The Light, was produced by his Uncle Arthur; it lasted four performances. Undaunted, he continued to write both lyrics and librettos, principally with Otto Harbach as his collaborating author. His first success, with Harbach, Vincent Youmans and Herbert Stothart, was Wildflower in 1923. Hammerstein found his niche with some of the greatest composers of his day, breathing new life into the moribund artform of operetta with such classics as Rose-Marie (music by Rudolf Friml), TheDesert Song (Sigmund Romberg), The New Moon (Romberg), and Song of the Flame (George Gershwin). With Jerome Kern, Hammerstein wrote eight musicals, including Sweet Adeline, Music in the Air and their masterwork, Show Boat. His last musical before embarking on an exclusive partnership with Richard Rodgers was Carmen Jones, the highly-acclaimed 1943 all-black revision of Georges Bizet's tragic opera Carmen.During the years that Hammerstein was redefining the terms of operetta, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were challenging the accepted norms of musical comedy with shows that set new standards for wit, sophistication and innovation. The Rodgers & Hammerstein partnership began with Oklahoma! (1943). Like Hammerstein's Show Boat and Rodgers & Hart's Pal Joey, the first Rodgers & Hammerstein musical was a groundbreaking milestone, blending musical comedy and operetta into a whole new genre - the musical play. Oklahoma! was also the start of the most successful partnership in Broadway history and was followed by Carousel, Allegro, South Pacific, The King And I, Me And Juliet, Pipe Dream, Flower Drum Song and The Sound of Music. Rodgers & Hammerstein wrote one musical specifically for the big screen - State Fair - and one for television - Cinderella. Collectively, their musicals have garnered dozens of awards including: Pulitzer Prizes; Tonys, Oscars, Emmys, and Grammys; and Drama Desk, Drama Critics’ Circle, Outer Critics’ Circle, Laurence Olivier, and Evening Standard Awards.As producers, Rodgers & Hammerstein presented plays, musicals and revivals, including John van Druten's I Remember Mama, Anita Loos' Happy Birthday, Irving Berlin's blockbuster Annie Get Your Gun, the national tour of Show Boat (1947-49) and six of their own stage musicals (from the Pulitzer-winning South Pacific in 1949 to the Tony-winning The Sound of Music ten years later). They also produced the motion picture version of Oklahoma! and founded their own music publishing firm, Williamson Music (basing the name on the fact that both of their fathers were named William.)Oscar Hammerstein II was a member of the board of directors of many professional organizations, including the Dramatists Guild and the Screen Writers' Guild. He received many personal honors and awards including five honorary degrees, two Pulitzer Prizes, two Academy Awards and five Tony Awards.His last musical was The Sound of Music, written with Richard Rodgers in 1959; his last song was "Edelweiss," written for that musical during its Boston tryout. Oscar Hammerstein II died at his farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, on the morning of August 23, 1960.In 1995 Hammerstein's centennial was celebrated worldwide with commemorative recordings, books, concerts and an award-winning PBS special, Some Enchanted Evening. The ultimate tribute came the following season, when Oscar Hammerstein II had three musicals playing on Broadway simultaneously: Show Boat (1995 Tony Award winner, Best Musical Revival); The King and I (1996 Tony Award winner, Best Musical Revival); and State Fair (1996 Tony Award nominee for Best Score.)"The Careful Dreamer," a Time Magazine cover story on Oscar Hammerstein II, was published on October 20, 1947. A biography, Getting to Know Him by Hugh Fordin, was first published by Random House in 1977. A revised edition of Hammerstein's Lyrics, edited by his son William Hammerstein and containing an introductory essay by the lyricist, plus a preface by his protege Stephen Sondheim, was published by Hal Leonard Publishing in 1985.The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2008.

Although Agnes de Mille (1905-1993) seemed destined to perform on Broadway, since her paternal grandfather, father, and uncle, Cecil B. de Mille, were all successful writers and actors involved in the theater, she avoided the easy path to Great White Way. Instead, she struggled in obscurity and poverty, courageously pursuing a career as a dancer and choreographer. When her amazing talent was finally recognized, and she made her way to the stage, she transformed the world of musical comedy forever.

De Mille was born in Harlem in 1905, but moved with her family to Hollywood when she was still a young girl. Always very dramatic, de Mille and her sister gave piano recitals and staged drama productions for their friends, but her parents refused to let her take dancing lessons. It was widely believed in those days that dancers were slightly disreputable. She did have the opportunity to see a dance performance, however, by Anna Pavlova. The performance inspired in young Agnes the desire to become a famous dancer.

When de Mille's sister's arches in her feet fell, her doctor recommended that she take dancing lessons. Agnes convinced her parents to allow her to do the same, but recalled later that she was considered "a perfectly rotten dancer."

A professor de Mille had at UCLA told her that she was too fat to become a dancer, but commended her on her acting ability. This did not dissuade de Mille in the least. Upon graduating from UCLA, she moved to New York, where she struggled to make a living as a dancer. Her first real job came when she was hired as a dancer-choreographer in Christopher Morley's revival of a 19th-century melodrama, The Black Crook, in Hoboken.

In 1932, de Mille moved to London, where she received extensive dance training at Madame Marie Rambert's Ballet Club. Here, she studied with and was influenced by fledgling choreographers, including Fredrick Ashton and Anthony Tudor, who would join her later in her efforts to revolutionize the ballet and dance worlds. Her experience at the Ballet Club marked one of the most significant phases of her training.

Throughout the 1930s, de Mille returned to the United States to take odd jobs. She danced in her uncle's staging of Cleopatra in 1934, and she choreographed for the Leslie Howard/Norma Shearer film version of Romeo and Juliet in 1936. Most of her time, however, was spent battling poverty in London while trying to become an original choreographer.

De Mille's career made a change for the better in the late 1930s and 1940s. In 1939, she was invited to join the American Ballet Theatre's opening season. Here, she created her first ballet, Black Ritual, in 1940. This ballet became the first ever to use black dancers. In 1942, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a company that came to the United States because of World War II, invited de Mille to choreograph a ballet for their repertory. She created Rodeo, a highly energetic work with a uniquely American spirit that captured its opening night audience so much that it received 22 curtain calls. One critic called it "refreshing and as American as Mark Twain." Also in 1942, de Mille choreographed her ballet, Three Virgins and a Devil, for the American Ballet Theater. The following year, she joined Rodgers and Hammerstein to create the triumphant Oklahoma!, a musical that revolutionized the art form by integrating its choreographic numbers with the plot in a way that had not been done before.

De Mille went on to choreograph some of the biggest Broadway hits in the 1940s and 1950s, such as One Touch Of Venus in 1943, Carousel in 1945, Brigadoon in 1947, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1949, and Paint Your Wagon in 1951. She also furthered her innovative style with Tally-Ho in 1944 and Fall River Legend, a haunting version of the Lizzie Borden axe murder case, in 1948.

Throughout the 1950s, de Mille embarked on a variety of endeavors. In 1952, she published the first volume of her autobiography, Dance to the Piper. The following year, she founded the Agnes de Mille Theater and toured with them in 126 cities from 1953 through 1954. In 1955, she choreographed the numbers for a film version of Oklahoma!. She also made her way to the world of television when she narrated and directed two hour-long programs on the dance for the Omnibus series the very next year. De Mille published the second volume of her autobiography, And Promenade Home, and choreographed the musical Goldilocks, both in 1958. In 1959, she supplied the dances for the musical Juno.

During the 1960s, de Mille continued to produce many memorable ballets, including The Bitter Weird (1962), The Wind In The Mountains (1965), and The Golden Age (1967). She also found time to publish several more dance books, such as To a Young Dancer (1962), The Book of the Dance (1963), and Lizzie Borden Dance of Death (1968).

From 1973 to 1974, the tireless de Mille founded and toured with the Agnes de Mille Heritage Dance Theater. She suffered a debilitating stroke in 1975, but fought her way back to health in time to receive the Handel Medallion, New York's highest award for achievement in the arts, in 1976.

In 1979, she helped in staging a revival of Oklahoma!, and she engrossed television viewers with her lecture on the history of American dance in Conversations About the Dance, a PBS program which included dancing by the Joffrey Ballet. She also published her tenth book, American Dances, an intriguing and vivid account of how the different varieties of dance have grown and developed in the United States. De Mille continued to be very actively involved with artistic endeavors up until her death in 1993.

Lynn Riggs was the author of Green Grow the Lilacs, originally produced by the Theatre Guild in 1931 and later used by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II as the basis for their musical Oklahoma!. The original play had a New York run of 64 performances, while its musical adaptation had an original Broadway run of 2,202 performances.

Riggs' first play to receive a New York production was The Big Lake, which was presented by the American Laboratory Theatre. As a result, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent a year in France, where he wrote Lilacs.

Born in Claremore, Oklahoma, Riggs studied for three years at the University of Oklahoma. As a youth, he worked various jobs, including singing in a musical film house. He later moved to New York, where he worked as a proofreader and clerked for Macy's department store and the American Express Company.

Riggs' other plays include The Lonesome West, The Cream In The Well, Laughter From A Cloud, Russet Mantle and Borned In Texas.