Oklahoma!
New York: Random House, 1943. Item #05884
Warmly Inscribed by Rouben Mamoulian Director of the Original Broadway Production of Oklahoma!
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning Landmark Musical
[MAMOULIAN, Rouben, director]. RODGERS, Richard. HAMMERSTEIN, Oscar II. Oklahoma! A Musical Play by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein 2nd. Based on Lynn Riggs’ Green Grow the Lilacs. Book and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein 2nd. New York: Random House, [1943].
Inscribed on the front free endpaper: “For Ken — With thanks for the warm enthusiasm with which he appreciates the right and the beautiful wherever he finds it. Rouben [Mamoulian].”
First edition. Small octavo (8 x 5 3/8 inches; 203 x 137 mm.). [x], [1]-146 pp. Photogravure frontispiece and four inserted photogravure plates. Final few leaves with slight crease to lower corner.
Publisher’s original light gray cloth, front cover pictorially stamped with a pair of cowboy boots in blue and brown, spine blocked in brown and blue and lettered in white. A near fine copy in the original pictorial dust jacket, lightly worn at extremities.
A superb association copy of one of the defining achievements in American musical theater, warmly inscribed by Rouben Mamoulian, the visionary director responsible for bringing the original Broadway production of Oklahoma! to the stage.
Opening at the St. James Theatre on March 31, 1943, Oklahoma! transformed the American musical. Rodgers and Hammerstein abandoned the star-driven conventions of earlier Broadway productions in favor of dramatically integrated storytelling in which music, dance, character, and narrative functioned as a unified whole. The result was revolutionary. The production became an unprecedented critical and commercial success, running for 2,212 performances and fundamentally redefining the modern musical.
Based on Lynn Riggs’s 1931 play Green Grow the Lilacs, the story is set in the Oklahoma Territory in 1906 and follows the courtship of Laurey Williams by two rival suitors: the charismatic cowboy Curly McLain and the dark, brooding farmhand Jud Fry. Alongside the principal romance runs the comic relationship between Will Parker and the irrepressible Ado Annie.
Mamoulian’s contribution to the success of the production was immense. With the full support of Rodgers and Hammerstein, he insisted upon casting performers capable of genuine dramatic expression rather than relying upon established theatrical celebrities - a radical departure for Broadway at the time. He also embraced Agnes de Mille’s groundbreaking choreography, including the celebrated “dream ballet,” which became one of the most influential moments in twentieth-century musical theatre.
The production received a special Pulitzer Prize in 1944 and later inspired the Academy Award-winning 1955 film adaptation. Its influence on virtually every subsequent American musical can scarcely be overstated.
Rouben Zachary Mamoulian (1897–1987), the Armenian-American director of stage and screen, was among the great theatrical innovators of the twentieth century. In addition to Oklahoma!, he directed the original Broadway productions of Carousel (1945) and Lost in the Stars (1949), while his film work included such classics as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Love Me Tonight (1932), and Blood and Sand (1941).
Price: $2,500.00