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Title: Somewhere for Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers by Meryle Secrest ISBN: 0-375-40164-4 Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Pub. Date: 06 November, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.36 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Somewhere for Me
Comment: Secrest is a skilled biographer, witness her excellent Stephen Sondheim: A Life (CH, Mar'99). She now adds another musical theater leader to her list. This volume complements Rodgers's own autobiography, Musical Stages (CH, Feb '76), and supplements many other books about the composer, including William Hyland's Richard Rodgers (CH, Jan'99). Secrest benefited from the cooperation of Rodgers's daughters and the Rodgers and Hammerstein organization and from many interviews with Rodgers's colleagues; thus this new biography serves as a major source document on the composer's life. Its principal strength is in the details about Rodgers's early years, his family, his marriage, and his relations with his wife and two daughters. Basically he was a cold individual incapable of much empathy or care for others. Add to that alcoholism, womanizing, and mental problems. Still his artistic achievement was phenomenal. Though Secrest provides anecdotes on the production history of his shows, the book does not replace earlier works that have their own supply of stories. The photographs throughout excellently support the narrative, and the extensive notes function as a bibliography. For all collections.
Rating: 4
Summary: A skillful chronicle of an immeasurably important composer
Comment: We can be grateful to Secrest for toiling on Rodgers with her usual thorougness and objectivity, and for doing so when many of Rodgers's friends and colleagues, not to mention his thoughtful daughters, are still here to contribute. If the result is not quite as good a read as her works on Bernstein and Sondheim, we have to blame the subject, not the author. Rodgers was not an easy man to get to know, and while his music was often original and sophisticated, his life was marked by a dull and distant anger. A lesser biographer might have added a larger dose of amateur psychoanalysis and squeezed more dramatic juice out of alcohol and infidelity, but Secrest knows that her job is to depict a life, not to make a sport of it. Given the scope of Rodgers's influence on 20th century culture, Secrest's book will no doubt be invaluable when this fascinating musical era is approached by future writers.
Rating: 4
Summary: There's No Business---
Comment: Richard Rogers is a hard nut to crack. Author Secrest does a workmanlike job of peeling back the layers, but can't quite reach the inner core that made Rogers the composer-genius he was. Rogers was urbane, witty, hypochondriacal, magnetizing, petty, alcoholic, competitive, gloomy, secretive, philandering and funny. How do all of these traits combine to bring about some of the most beautiful songs of the 20th century? Reading about Richard Rogers and then hearing -- say "You'll Never Walk Alone" from "Carousel" makes you exclaim (like Oprah), "How'd he DO that?"
Richard Rogers was born to a moderately wealthy Jewish family in New York City. He was composing music for the stage by the time he was seventeen. He had his first Broadway hit by the time he was 24, and after he partnered with Lorenz Hart produced one hit after another. In the meantime, he married the fragile beauty Dorothy, had two daughters and became increasingly wealthy. Sounds like a trip to the pinnacle, a stairway to the stars, doesn't it? Well, not exactly. Rogers and Hart broke up mainly because of Hart's alcoholism and mental fragility. But Rogers got the rap for "deserting" him and banning him from the theatre. This wasn't quite fair to Rogers, but it wasn't untrue either. Rogers' storybook marriage was complex also. Dorothy was a perfectionist and emotionally needy. Rogers' response was a parade of infidelity. And yet. I believe Rogers loved her all his life as much as he was able to love anyone, and she fulfilled some deep-seated need in him. As parents, they both were failures. The daughters were marginally fonder of Richard who they considered distant and savagely critical. Dorothy was seen as a selfish tyrant. The daughters' recollections are not kind. His last years were a combination of poor health, increasing alcoholism, and being out of touch with modern day musicals. Yet honors were heaped upon him and the money kept pouring in.
Ms. Secrest did a mountain of research, and it shows. She not only had the full cooperation of his daughters; they commissioned her to do the work. The book is well notated and indexed, and has a bibliography. She gives a fair and balanced accounting of a many-sided man. There are not many lighthearted moments, but Richard Rogers was not a lighthearted man.
-sweetmolly-Amazon Reviewer
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Title: Musical Stages: An Autobiography by Richard Rodgers, Mary Rodgers ISBN: 0306811340 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: 16 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
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Title: The Richard Rodgers Reader (Readers on American Musicians) by Geoffrey Block ISBN: 0195139542 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $32.50 |
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Title: Getting to Know Him: A Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II by Hugh Fordin, Stephen Sondheim ISBN: 0306806681 Publisher: Da Capo Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
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Title: Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway by Frederick Nolan ISBN: 0195102894 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1995 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical "Follies" by Ted Chapin ISBN: 0375413286 Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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