Top 31 Hammerstein Quotes & Sayings

In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.

My grandmother had always played show tunes from classic musicals at the piano when we were growing up, so that helped me fall in love with Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Lerner and Loewe, etc.

Like Rodgers and Hammerstein, I'm not afraid to deal with themes about the ups and downs of life, yet which are still entertaining, and you still feel these stories.

I've never met a Mormon I didn't like. They're really nice people. They're so Disney. They're so Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Asking me what I think of Oscar (Hammerstein) is like asking me what I think of the Yankees, Man o' War and Strawberry Sundaes.

I can't wait to play the Hammerstein shows. Things have been exploding in the last week, and that's going to be the exclamation point.

The history of popular music is littered with great partnerships. Rodgers had his Hammerstein, Lennon had his McCartney, and Lloyd Webber had... his photocopier.

I think we sublimated our Broadway desires by doing theater in Hollywood - not on stage but by doing the movies of 'Chicago' and 'Hairspray' and also musicals on TV. We did Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'Cinderella' and 'Gypsy' and 'Annie.' Even 'Smash' was like doing theater.

My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director. ... (when asked who wrote 'Some Enchanted Evening') Rodgers and Hammerstein, if you can imagine it taking two men to write one song. ... Good authors, too, who once knew better words now use only four-letter words writing prose. ... Brush up your Shakespeare and they'll all kowtow.

Stephen Sondheim told me that Oscar Hammerstein believed everything that he wrote. So there's great truth in the songs, and that's what was so wonderful to find.

The genius of Rodgers and Hammerstein is that their songs become a part of the DNA of the audience.

And what could be a hotter ticket than the improbable triumph of 'The Book of Mormon,' the musical-comedy moon shot of the season? Its creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, of Comedy Central's 'South Park,' are the most unlikely Rodgers and Hammerstein team ever to bowl a thundering strike.

Rogers and Hammerstein were such a genius pair. They were able to touch on subject matter so far ahead of its time.

Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn't see my own father.

When I was 12 years old and first decided I wanted to be a songwriter, the people that I always looked up to were Rodgers and Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, and people like that.

Not being a natural songwriter... for me the appreciation of a great song and the writers came early on, growing up in a musical family. My dad got to sing songs by some of the greatest writers of all time, Rodgers and Hammerstein.

I've been singing Rodgers and Hammerstein all my life.

In their plush melodies and plummy platitudes, many Rodgers-and-Hammerstein songs were secular hymns, which so insinuated themselves into the ear of the Eisenhower-era listener that they became the liturgical music for the American mid-century.

I'm a Mexican girl from California, and I never grew up thinking I could be in a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. I didn't really see myself in that. Not that I didn't grow up loving Rodgers and Hammerstein, but I don't know - I just never put myself there.

Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father. I liked my father a lot, he was a swell fellow, but I didn’t see him very often because my mother was bitter about him and did everything she could to prevent me from seeing him.

I was essentially trained by Oscar Hammerstein to think of songs as one-act plays, to move a song from point A to point B dramatically.

One musical that deeply influenced me - and continues to do so - is the 1997 ABC TV movie of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'Cinderella,' starring Brandy, with Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother and Whoopi Goldberg as the prince's mom.

Rodgers & Hammerstein shows have a purity of unironic emotion that imprints itself upon people's hearts. They seem to touch our feelings so effortlessly. They have a scope and ambition that's missing from many musicals now.

I have only one bit of advice to beginning writers: be sure your novel is read by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

It may sound amazing to people today, but Rodgers and Hammerstein were considered by - how can I put it? - the sort of opinion-making tastemakers and everything to be 'off the scale as sentimental.'

I'd love to tackle a classic Shakespeare play or take on Nora Helmer in 'A Doll's House.' Musical theater, it's the classics like Rodgers and Hammerstein and Cole Porter's 'Kiss Me Kate.' I'm much more a Julie Andrews-type soprano than an Idina Menzel.

After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.

The music and lyrics of Rodgers & Hammerstein connect seamlessly. Singing those beautiful songs was a joyous experience for me, and one that I will never forget.

Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't mean anything to me. I just wanted to have a hit, I just wanted to be like those people on the radio. It was all of a case of the present tense with no projecting into the future, particularly.

I feel very fortunate to have been associated with people such as Rodgers and Hammerstein. I think they were geniuses of their time.

I have only one bit of advice to the beginning writer: Be sure your novel is read by Rodgers and Hammerstein.