Rodgers Hammerstein

By Ethan Mordden

Book Overview

Revised

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810929112
• ISBN13: 9780810929111
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Abrams, Inc.
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 2.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 9.0" x 11.5"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Great reading and viewing

I have thoroughly enjoyed this book. Being a Rodgers and Hammerstein fan, anyway, I was interested to see how this author evaluated their work. I especially liked some of the inside about their working relationship and their different personalities. Happily, Mordden was not content to write about just R & H shows, but to make comparisons to others of their era. The pictures accompanying the text simply added to the appeal. Not only pictures taken for publicity purposes, but set designs, album covers, etc. I do not agree with all of Mordden's conclusions; but he supported his thoughts well. After all, critics do not have to agree. I am anxious now to read and look at his series of the decades of the Broadway musical.

A beautiful and fascinating book for those who love R & H

This could have just been a coffee-table book with beautiful photos but a negligible text. Fortunately, someone had the excellent idea of asking Ethan Mordden to write the text. The result is that a very informative, insightful, well-written text accompanies the beautiful photos. If you love Rodgers and Hammerstein, you probably will get great pleasure from this book. One tiny quibble: Mordden is wrong when he says that Hammerstein invented the lyric form used in "I Am Going to Like It Here." Hammerstein used a Malayan poetic form called the pantoum.