Oklahoma!

Oklahoma! is a 1943 Broadway musical with music by Richard Rodgers and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, adapted from Lynn Riggs's play Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in the Indian Territory that became Oklahoma just after the turn of the century, it was the first major collaboration between Rodgers and Hammerstein and ran on Broadway for five years and 2,212 performances, at the time the longest run in Broadway history.^{1 • 2}

Creation

Richard Rodgers (born in New York City on June 28, 1902) had written musicals since high school, mostly with lyricist Lorenz Hart. Oscar Hammerstein II (born in New York City on July 1, 1895) came from a theater family and left law school to write for the stage. Their first major collaboration began when Rodgers, wanting to adapt the 1930s rural folk drama Green Grow the Lilacs, found that Hart was not interested in the farmers-versus-cowboys Western story; Hart died in 1943, the year the show opened.^{3 • 7}

The working method was unusual for its time: Hammerstein wrote the lyrics first, and Rodgers set them to music afterward.³ The show was tried out in New Haven under the title Away We Go!, and the producers had real concerns about its commercial viability during the war years; many believed it would flop.^{3 • 8} The title was changed to Oklahoma! and two songs were added, including the title song itself. According to Tim Carter, a musicologist whose book Oklahoma! The Making of an American Musical examines the show's creation, the musical contents remained unsettled until the week before the Broadway opening.⁹

The original production

The Theatre Guild produced the show, with Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner as administrative directors, at the St. James Theatre, owned by the Shubert Organization.¹ Rouben Mamoulian directed and Agnes de Mille choreographed, including the Dream Ballet, which became one of the production's signature elements.¹

The reviews were excellent, and the applause for the title song left a marked impression on the original Laurey, actress Joan Roberts, who recalled that it "continued and continued."^{3 • 8} The first run closed on May 29, 1948 after 2,212 performances, a five-year run that was, at the time, the longest in Broadway history.^{1 • 7}

Songs and recordings

Several songs escaped their theatrical context to become pop hits. "People Will Say We're in Love" was a number-one song in 1943, and "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" and "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" also topped the charts; singers such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra released recorded versions.^{10 • 4}

The show also changed how musicals were preserved on record. The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture credits an album of show tunes performed by the original cast in 1943, recorded in 78 rpm format, as the first use of this music-marketing technique.² The Library of Congress's National Recording Preservation Board study dates Decca Records' assembly of the original Broadway cast to 1945 and credits that album with launching the tradition of preserving musical theater through original cast recordings.¹¹

Cultural impact

The title song became the official state song of Oklahoma in 1953.⁵ The show won a special Pulitzer Prize, and its success carried abroad: it opened in London's West End in April 1947, the first American musical to travel to London after the war, where it played to audiences still living with wartime rationing and bomb damage.^{12 • 13}

Fred Zinnemann directed the 1955 film adaptation, filmed in Todd-AO with Gordon MacRae playing Curly and Shirley Jones playing Laurey; it earned four Academy Award nominations, taking home two Oscars, one for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture and one for Best Sound, Recording.^{6 • 14}

Reputation and revision

The show's historical reputation rests partly on claims of formal innovation: the Oklahoma Historical Society describes it as the first musical to blend comedy, drama, dance, and song.⁶ Carter's assessment is more cautious. In his view, the claims that Oklahoma! was the first "play with music," the first integrated musical show, or the first to incorporate ballet are all easily disproved, and the show pushed innovation less strongly than predecessors such as Show Boat, Of Thee I Sing, and Lady in the Dark.¹² A study by James O'Leary, a musicologist publishing in The Journal of Musicology, argues that the show's famed "integration" of dialogue, lyrics, and music was in significant part a marketing construction: promoters called it a "musical play" rather than a "musical comedy," and critics' descriptions of its transcendent quality were reflected back to the press by the Theatre Guild.¹⁵

The show has also proven adaptable to reinterpretation. Daniel Fish's 2019 revival, staged with a small band, house lights left on, and a radically reimagined Dream Ballet, drew attention for its darker reading of the material, and toured North America in 2021 and 2022.^{16 • 17} The Guardian's review of John Wilson's 2023 recording calls it the work that first gave the Broadway musical real dramatic and musical coherence.¹⁸

References

1. Oklahoma! – Broadway Musical – Original, IBDB
2. Oklahoma!, Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture
3. Rodgers and Hammerstein Create a Musical, Oklahoma Historical Society
4. Oklahoma! – 1943 Original Broadway Production, Rodgers & Hammerstein
5. Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, Oklahoma Historical Society
6. Cultural Impact of Oklahoma!, Oklahoma Historical Society
7. Can Even a Cranky Guy Fall for The Sound of Music?, TIME
8. "Oklahoma!" premieres on Broadway, March 31, 1943, HISTORY
9. Heading for Broadway, Oklahoma! The Making of an American Musical, Oxford Academic
10. Oklahoma!, Broadway: The American Musical, PBS
11. Oklahoma!, National Recording Preservation Board, Library of Congress
12. Classical Net Review – Carter, Oklahoma! The Making of an American Musical
13. The Surprising Broadway Musical That Provided the Soundtrack to a Real-Life Royal Romance, TIME
14. Oklahoma!, Rotten Tomatoes
15. Oklahoma! Changed Musical Theater Forever. Or Did It?, JSTOR Daily
16. Oklahoma! Reviews at the Young Vic, West End Theatre
17. Review Roundup: North American Tour of OKLAHOMA!, BroadwayWorld
18. Rodgers and Hammerstein: Oklahoma! review, The Guardian

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Music › Musical works and recordings › Compositions and songs › Musical theater works › Golden Age and classic musicals

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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