Quotes

[on Oscar Hammerstein's response to the question of whether he wrote 'Ol' Man River' as a protest song]'No', replied my father, 'I wrote it because we needed it for a spot in the first act'. He went on to explain that he conceived it as a sort of cord to hold together the whole sprawling story. Remember, no one up to that time had ever tried to spread such an expanse of epic drams, covering such a span of time, over the musical stage, and it had to be held together somehow. He felt that the one constant element was the river, and that's what he wrote about.

Perhaps he wouldn't agree with this, but I don't think dad ever felt comfortable in the movie medium. He understood the stage - he had a fantastic instinct for timing, for climactic construction of a play, how to deal with a live audience, how to fashion an entertainment for the people sitting in a legitimate theater. But I don't think he ever really grasped the movie as a form.