Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest Sounds is an American Masters documentary about the most prolific Broadway musical composer of all time.

His work as a Broadway composer spans 1920-1979, teaming up with composers Lorenz Hart or Oscar Hammerstein II for much of his career. As for composing for film, Rodgers’ work spans 1930-1967, including movie musicals adapted from Broadway. Appropriately enough, the documentary starts out with a clip from The Sound of Music. It soon segues into a montage introducing us to the work of Richard Rodgers. In any event, Rodgers wrote over 900 songs for 70 shows in a seven-decade career. To this date, nobody has been able to match his work.

A select list of musicals include:

• Pal Joey
• Babes in Arms
• The Boys From Syracuse
• On Your Toes
• A Connecticut Yankee
• Oklahoma!
• Carousel
• South Pacific
• The King and I
• The Sound of Music

Despite his work for Broadway and movies, there’s more to his personality than we hear through the music. He was rather dark and solitary. Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest Sounds is able to go behind the curtain and pull back the façade in this unprecedented look at the composer’s life and career. Daughters Mary and Linda Rodgers open up about their childhood and growing up as the daughters of the composer. Their father was depressed but this never stopped him from working so much.

Rodgers grew up in a comfortable Jewish home. While his father was a doctor, his mom had sung to him when he was a child, which probably had an influence on his deciding to pursue a career on Broadway. After seeing the annual Columbia musical and being introduced to Oscar Hammerstein II, Rodgers decided to attend Columbia. Rather than turn this piece into a Wikipedia review, so to speak, I’m just gonna touch on a couple of notes.

“He’d sit up in the balcony of the Princess Theatre drinking and Jerome Kern, which is why probably in the long run, although they don’t sound alike and certainly Rodgers didn’t need to imitate anyone, Kern and Rodgers were probably the two outstanding composers of the golden age,” said theater historian Ethan Mordden.

The fact that Rodgers had a show on Broadway when he was 18 years old is just astounding! Many of the early years are depicted in the not-s0-good Words and Music. Where that film took way too many dramatic liberties, Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest Sounds is more truthful regarding what happened. There was a brief pause for Rodgers and Hart’s Hollywood career, of course. We also know they turned out hit after hit upon their return to Broadway in the 1930s. Hart had brief periods of sobriety but it worsened late in his short and tragic life. It’s not an understatement to say that their parting was painful.

What’s interesting about the final months of the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart relationship is that Rodgers was still working with Hart when he began to team up with Hammerstein II for Oklahoma! Rodgers and Hart had written many musicals throughout their career but Rodgers and Hammerstein elevated the Broadway musical to the next level. Archival interviews offer insight into their professional relationship. After teaming up, their work won them 34 Tony Awards, 15 Oscars, 2 Pulitzer Prizes, 2 Grammy Awards, and 2 Emmy Awards. That’s enough to make them double PEGOT winners!

“The strange idea was Rodgers hooking up with Hammerstein,” said Mordden about Rodgers and Hammerstein II. “That was musical play meets musical comedy. And at the time they were two very separate forms. And the exciting thing about them is they combined them.”

Rodgers continued working after Hammerstein II’s death in 1960. He worked solo on No Strings, winning a pair of Tony Awards. He died in December 1979 at the age of 77. One year prior to his death, he was part of the inaugural class of Kennedy Center Honors recipients in 1978.

Archival clips include performances from Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Diahann Carroll, Mary Martin, John Coltrane, and Barbra Streisand. Every now and then, the documentary cuts to singer Mary Cleere Haran and arranger/composer Richard Rodney Bennett. The beauty of American Masters profiling a composer like Rodgers is that there is a dearth of material to pull from. The complete footage of interviews is more than enough to make a two-part documentary. But at some point, it becomes a question of what stays in and what stays out.

Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest Sounds celebrates the work of Richard Rodgers and his contributions to the Great American Songbook. It’s a far better celebration of his work than Words and Music could ever be.

DIRECTOR: Roger Sherman
SCREENWRITER: Laurence Maslon
NARRATOR: Tony Roberts
FEATURING: Richard Rodgers, Julie Andrews, Richard Rodney Bennett, Geoffrey Block, Diahann Carroll, Ted Chapin, Barbara Cook, Rob Fisher, Mary Cleere Haran, Sheldon Harnick, Jeffrey Harris, Celeste Holm, Shirley Jones, John Lahr, Baayork Lee, John Mauceri, Maureen McGovern, Ethan Mordden, Trevor Nunn, Linda Rodgers, Mary Rodgers, Jonathan Schwartz, Billy Taylor, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Max Wilk

Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest Sounds premiered November 4, 2001 on PBS. Grade: 4/5

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