Carousel is the second musical by the team of Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II. The 1945 work was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline. The story revolves around carousel barker Billy Bigelow, whose romance with millworker Julie Jordan comes at the price of both their jobs. He participates in a robbery to provide for Julie and their unborn child; after it goes tragically wrong, he is given a chance to make things right. A secondary plot line deals with millworker Carrie Pipperidge and her romance with ambitious fisherman Enoch Snow. The show includes the well-known songs "If I Loved You", "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" and "You'll Never Walk Alone". Richard Rodgers later wrote that Carousel was his favorite of all his musicals.
Mandel Bruce Patinkin is an American actor and singer, known for his work in musical theatre, television, and film. As a critically acclaimed Broadway performer he has collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Patinkin's leading roles on stage and screen have received numerous accolades including a Tony Award, a Primetime Emmy Award as well as nominations for seven Drama Desk Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Rodgers and Hammerstein was a theater-writing team of composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), who together created a series of innovative and influential American musicals. Their musical theater writing partnership has been called the greatest of the 20th century.
Bernadette Peters is an American actress, singer, and children's book author. Over a career spanning more than six decades, she has starred in musical theatre, television and film, performed in solo concerts and released recordings. She is a critically acclaimed Broadway performer, having received seven nominations for Tony Awards, winning two, and nine Drama Desk Award nominations, winning three. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards.
Edward William May Jr. was an American composer, arranger and trumpeter. He composed film and television music for The Green Hornet (1966), The Mod Squad (1968), Batman, and Naked City (1960). He collaborated on films such as Pennies from Heaven (1981), and orchestrated Cocoon, and Cocoon: The Return, among others.
Albert Gordon MacRae was an American actor, singer, and television and radio host. He appeared in the film versions of two Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, Oklahoma! (1955) and Carousel (1956), and played the leading man opposite Doris Day in On Moonlight Bay (1951) and sequel By The Light of the Silvery Moon (1953).
The Desert Song is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel. It was inspired by the 1925 uprising of the Riffs, a group of Berber fighters, against French colonial rule in Morocco. It was also inspired by stories of Lawrence of Arabia aiding native guerrillas. Many tales romanticizing Saharan North Africa were in vogue, including Beau Geste and The Son of the Sheik.
Thomas Z. Shepard is an American record producer who is best known for his recordings of Broadway musicals, including the works of Stephen Sondheim. Shepard is also a composer, conductor, music arranger and pianist.
"Ol' Man River" is a show tune from the 1927 musical Show Boat with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, who wrote the song in 1925. The song contrasts the struggles and hardships of African Americans with the endless, uncaring flow of the Mississippi River. It is sung from the point of view of a black stevedore on a showboat, and is the most famous song from the show. The song is meant to be performed in a slow tempo; it is sung complete once in the musical's lengthy first scene by the stevedore "Joe" who travels with the boat, and, in the stage version, is heard four more times in brief reprises. Joe serves as a sort of musical one-man Greek chorus, and the song, when reprised, comments on the action, as if saying, "This has happened, but the river keeps rolling on anyway."
John Emmet Raitt was an American actor and singer best known for his performances in musical theatre.
"Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love" is a popular song written in 1928 by Cole Porter. It was introduced in Porter's first Broadway success, the musical Paris (1928) by French chanteuse Irène Bordoni, for whom Porter had written the musical as a starring vehicle.
"It's Magic" is a popular song written by Jule Styne, with lyrics by Sammy Cahn, published in 1947. They wrote the song for Doris Day in her Warner Brothers film debut, Romance on the High Seas. In the autumn of 1948 Vic Damone, Tony Martin, Dick Haymes, Gordon MacRae and Sarah Vaughan all charted on Billboard magazine charts with versions of the song, but none as successfully as Day's recording. "It's Magic" received an Academy Award nomination for Best Song, but in March 1949 lost to "Buttons and Bows" by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans.
"Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" is the opening song from the musical Oklahoma!, which premiered on Broadway in 1943. It was written by composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist/librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The leading male character in Oklahoma!, Curly McLain, sings the song at the beginning of the first scene of the musical. The refrain runs: "Oh, what a beautiful mornin'! / Oh, what a beautiful day! / I've got a beautiful feelin' / Ev'rythin's goin' my way." Curly's "brimming optimism is perfectly captured by Rodgers' ebullient music and Hammerstein's buoyant pastoral lyrics."
A Man and His Music is a 1965 double album by Frank Sinatra. It provides a brief retrospective of Sinatra's musical career. The album won the 1967 Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
"Where or When" is a show tune from the 1937 Rodgers and Hart musical Babes in Arms. It was first performed by Ray Heatherton and Mitzi Green. That same year, Hal Kemp recorded a popular version. The song also appeared in the film version of Babes in Arms two years later.
"If I Loved You" is a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.
Carousel is a 1956 American drama fantasy musical film based on the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical of the same name, which in turn was based on Ferenc Molnár's 1909 non-musical play Liliom. The film stars Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones and was directed by Henry King.
"Younger than Springtime" is a show tune from the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. It has been widely recorded as a jazz standard.
General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein is a two-hour TV special broadcast live on March 28, 1954, on all four major TV networks of the time, DuMont, CBS, NBC, and ABC.
Hugh Jackman: in Concert is a music concert by Australian actor, musician, and dancer Hugh Jackman.
