American composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) wrote more than 900 songs and over 40 musicals. His music greatly influenced the entire American music culture. His famous collaborations with
lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II were well known. Rodgers was one of the few artists awarded all five of the most prestigious performance music awards – the Academy Award, the Emmy
Award, the Grammy Award, the Tony Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. He was born in a wealthy Jewish family in New York, and later studied at Columbia University. In 1919, he met Lorenz Hart. Rodgers had almost given up show business, when along with Hart he achieved his first great success with the musical The Garrick Gaieties, received with wide acclaim amongst critics. Rodgers’s most famous works include Jumbo (1935), On Your Toes (1936), Babes In Arms (1937), I Married an Angel
(1938), The Boys from Syracuse (1938), as well as By Jupiter (1942), the duo’s last work. Hart’s death in 1943 ended their collaboration. Later on, Rodgers began working with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.
Their first musical, Oklahoma!, was a great hit and received a Pulitzer. The two artists then went on to create a series of works, some of which were adapted for the big screen – Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949, Pulitzer Prize), The King and I (1951) and The Sound of Music (1959).
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musicals received a total of 35 Tony Awards, 15 Academy Awards, two Grammy and two Emmy awards, as well as two Pulitzer Prizes.