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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780794201685
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0794201687
Label: Wellspring
Manufacturer: Wellspring
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Wellspring
Region Code: 1
Release Date: February 19, 2002
Running Time: 117 minutes
Sales Rank: 51776
Studio: Wellspring
Theatrical Release Date: September 07, 2001
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
How did some of the most beautiful melodies of the 20th century come out of a man described as depressive, hypochondriacal, remote, and alcoholic? This stirring 2001 documentary cannot answer that question about Richard Rodgers, but it provides a near-perfect blend of biography, personal reminiscence, and music appreciation. The latter comes via experts sitting at their pianos: Richard Rodney Bennett, Barbara Carroll, Andrew Lloyd Webber. The composer himself gives a lucid explanation of his working method, as he demonstrates how the lyric of 'It Might as Well Be Spring' inspired the melody. Interviewees include Rodgers's daughters, who provide suitably unsentimental memories of dad. At the heart of the story is Rodgers's brilliant collaborations with two great lyricists: mercurial Lorenz Hart, whose problems made Rodgers look non-neurotic, and steady Oscar Hammerstein II. Ample clips give the best evidence of all, from Frank Sinatra upper-cutting 'The Lady Is a Tramp' to John Coltrane jazzily bending 'My Favorite Things.' --Robert Horton
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - A complex, unhappy man...and probably the greatest theater composer America has produced
Compare the difference between the gorgeous, witty, romantic songs from a man who probably was America's most outstanding popular songwriter with these quotes about the man himself: "For somebody who gave such incredible pleasure to so many millions of people, not to have had the same kind of joy and contentment and comfort in his own life is just awful," says one of his daughters. She continues, "He was worried about all kinds of things, but he didn't talk about them." Says his other daughter, "He was deeply neurotic, deeply, and very unhappy unless he was writing."
Richard Rodgers was born in 1902. He starting composing when he was 9. He had his first show on Broadway when he was 18. He and his partner Larry Hart became Broadway's song-writing darlings with The Garrick Gaieties in 1925. Between then and the death of his second partner, Oscar Hammerstein II, in 1960 (Hart died in 1943), he had hit after hit on Broadway and an unparalleled catalogue of marvelous songs. When Rodgers died in 1979 at the age of 77, a survivor of jaw cancer, a stroke, a heart attack, depression, a laryngectomy and alcoholism, his latest show had just opened. "He had one interest," said an observer, "and that was to write music to stories for the stage."
Richard Rodgers: The Sweetest Songs is in my view the best of the documentaries on America's great theater composers. During the period from the early Twenties through the Forties, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter ... Read More
Rating: - The Music of Richard Rodgers . . . The Sweetest Sounds
"The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears."
~ The Sound of Music ~
Words & Music by Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II
One of my favorite composers, the brilliant Richard Rodgers, known as the "Broadway Baby" had been composing music since age nine and by eighteen had his first Broadway show. Having written 900 some melodies for more than 70 shows in a career that spanned for seven decades, he was one of the most prolific composers of all-time in the league with George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin.
If you're a fan of his music, you'll love this documentary narrated by Tony Roberts about his celebrated life as a composer. His collaborations with two of the most talented lyricists in American music history, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II, resulted in the most remarkable and most-loved musicals of all-time. He had also briefly collaborated with Stephen Sondheim.
The highlights are archival snippets from performers Frank Sinatra (I Could Write A Book and The Lady Is A Tramp), Julie Andrews (The Sound of Music), Louis Armstrong (You'll Never Walk Alone), composer/arranger/pianist Richard Rodney Bennett and singer Marie Cleer Haran (Manhattan and The Lady Is A Tramp), Mel Torme (Blue Moon - his the biggest hit), Lena Horne and Lionel Hampton (Where Or When), Barbara ... Read More
Rating:  - A well done documentary about an insanely talented man
Featuring in depth interviews with friends, family and co-workers as well as rare film clips of Rodgers shows such as "No Strings", "Pal Joey" and "Babes and Arms", this is a very well done documentary.
Although it doesn not cover the era of Rodgers and Hammerstein as fully as it covers the era of Rodgers and Hart (perhaps because of Hart's horrific and awful fall into the world of alchohal and depression), it does give us information about the man. Besides being a musical genius, Richard Rodgers had many demons. However, when he was working on a show, he truly produced The Sweetest Sounds.
Rating: - The man was a genius
The only way to describe the musical composition of Richard Rodgers is that he was a genius, it's just that simple. In every age is seems like we are visited by someone who just seems to have a certain gift, an ability to communicate in an artistic medium such as music, so that all can understand. As Mozart wrote popular music of his own time, (it is the ages that have determined this to be called the classics), it is Richard Rodgers music that the future ages will consider classics. This is not so hard to imagine, considering Oklahoma still draws sells out shows in a revival of the musical, and it first premiered over 60 years ago, his music will transcend the ages. One could ask, how could this beautiful music come from a depressed, hypochondriac with a drinking problem, then I will simply respond with Mozart. Mozart had many of the same human frailties as Richard Rodgers, or Visa Versa. Like Mozart, Rodgers was also something of a prodigy getting his first show to Broadway by the age of 18. In short, this program captures the essence of this genius. You probably won't keep a dry eye while watching, the experience is just that moving, but when it is over, you will know that you have visited the presence of greatness. In addition to having a tremendous respect for Richard Rodgers, you may find your faith in the human endeavor renewed just a bit, remembering the greatness that the human mind and spirit can achieve.
Rating: - Almost perfect
The few other "reviews" seem more paeans, eulogies to Rodgers, all deserved, but with little about the documentary, which I liked. Larry Hart was my first hero. Keats my second. But that's beside the point. I consider Richard Rodgers the finest composer (and he himself preferred the word "composer" to "songwriter") America has yet (and it seems, will ever) produced. After Hart died and Hammerstein took over, the life and lively interest seemed to go out of Rodgers' music, it seemed to become bland and simplistic, consider his chords as well as his tunes. But in his first show after Hammerstein died (also young, like Hart, though not AS young), the magic returned. This of course was "No Strings" for which Rodgers wrote his own words, and very good ones I thought. The plot, incidentally, is a love affair between a black woman and a white man, and the show was driven out of the south. (America is a very Christian country, as you know, especially in the south.) I saw this show live in SF, and it is my favorite Rodgers' score. Hart, incidentally (I don't remember whether the film stated this) was homosexual. I especially wanted to mention this and the plot of "No Strings". Bigotry should stop where another person's life begins. In the film, it was with sad horror that I saw Rodgers in his dotage so sick and ravaged he didn't even look human. But consider all those wonderful years that came before, genius, songs, work and more work. And he loved it. I had only a few, very few, quibbles with ... Read More
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