Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution

by Todd S. Purdum

In a letter to Richard Rodgers in December 1979, after the opening of a smash-hit revival of Oklahoma!, thirty-six years after its debut, the writer John Hersey would recall a morning on the battlefront in Sicily in 1943. “I’d had a pretty crummy night,” Hersey wrote, “sleeping on the ground, muddy and damp, nothing to look forward to but cold C-rations for breakfast. A G.I. who might perfectly well get killed that day (because though the Italians were retreating there were some nasty skirmishes) got up and stripped to the waist and poured some cold water in his helmet and began to shave. The sun hit us. Everyone was grumbling as usual. Suddenly the soldier stood up and began singing, ‘Oh, what a beautiful morning.’ A pretty good voice. There was a fair amount of irony in his singing, and his pals laughed. All the same, it was a beautiful morning, and all of a sudden there was an almost unbearable intensity in the way the men looked around at the view.”