Oscar Hammerstein II (1895 -1960) was an American writer, producer, and director of musicals for almost forty years. At Columbia University ,while a student he participated in his first plays with several Varsity Shows. Throughout the next forty years of his life, he would team with many composers such as Jerome Kern producing their biggest hit, Show Boat, in 1927. Show Boat is still considered to be one of the masterpieces of the American musical theatre.

Hammerstein most successful and sustained collaboration came in 1943 when he teamed up with Richard Rodgers. The result of this new collaboration was Oklahoma!, a show which revolutionized the American musical theatre by tightly integrating all the aspects of musical theater, with the songs and dances arising out of the plot and characters. It also began a partnership which would produce such classic Broadway musicals as Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Me & Juliet, Pipe Dream, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music as well as the musical film State Fair .

Oscar Hammerstein is today considered the most important figure in the history of American musical theater for it was he, probably the best "book writer" in Broadway history, who made the story, not the songs or the stars, central to the American musical and brought it to full maturity as an art form.

He won two Oscars for best original song. He died at the age of 65. He was universally mourned, with the lights of Times Square and London 's West End being dimmed in recognition of his contribution to the American musical.

Some songs you will hear in the show:

Old Man River

Can't Help Lovin 'Dat Man,

Make Believe

Softly As In A Morning Sunrise

All The Things You Are

The Song Is You

I Won't Dance

Yesterdays

The Rodgers and Hamerstein list is so long and full and comes mostly from the 1950's, favorites like: Surry With The Fringe On Top, Sound Of Music, It Might As Well Be Spring, Eidleveiss, People will Say We're In Love, If I Loved You, Oh What A Beautiful Morning, Do-Re-Mi, Hello young Lovers, Some Enchanted Evening and on and on. But one of my favorites of their's is I am 60 Going On 70.... ( Just kidding)