On this date in 1931, composer and writer Mary Rodgers was born in New York City to Dorothy (née Feiner) and Richard Rodgers. Her father was at the time close to royalty as a show tunes composer teamed with lyricist Lorenz Hart. He would only gain in stature for his compositions “South Pacific,” “Carousel,” “Oklahoma!” and numerous others with Oscar Hammerstein II after Hart died at age 48 in 1943.
Mary grew up with her sister Linda, four years younger, in privileged circumstances that included expensive apartments and private schools but rarely included the parental unconditional love and acceptance that helps children thrive. Getting in the way were alcohol, Demerol and, on Richard’s part, serial womanizing.
Dorothy Rodgers was Jewish but unattached to Judaism. Richard was dismissive of all religions and gods. Mary later explained: “When I was 12, I said to him, daddy, do you believe in God? And he said, no, I don’t. And I said, good, because I don’t think I do either. Why? And he says, well, he said I believe in people. For instance, if you have a really sick kid, or if I have really sick kids, I do not pray. I get the best doctor in New York.” (PBS “American Masters,” Aug. 6, 1998)
In her witty and no-holds-barred autobiography (published posthumously in 2022) titled “Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers” — co-written with chief New York Times drama critic Jesse Green — Rodgers wrote about her decision to join the Catholic Church and be confirmed at age 20 as part of her quest to find a loving father. “God, as the Catholics presented him, with all his theatrical accoutrements, was the best showbiz father I could find.” It was also “a way to rebel, not so much against Jewishness as against our house brand of Jew-flavored atheism.” She soon came to see “I had concocted this whole Catholic Fantasyland as an escape route, not a destination.”
She became “permanently smitten” with Stephen Sondheim when they were in their early teens and embarked on a “trial marriage” that involved sleeping together but not a hint of sex. They remained close for seven decades. “Let’s say it plainly,” Rodgers wrote in “Shy” after her two marriages, one a failure and the other a long-term success. Sondheim, who was gay, “was the love of my life.”
She played piano “moderately well” and started writing music professionally at age 16 for Little Golden Records, which were albums for children with three-minute songs. She transferred from Wellesley College to Smith College but left in her last year of school to marry Julian Beaty Jr. in 1951. He was 15 years her senior. The marriage ended in 1957 amid allegations of physical abuse and Beaty’s assignations with other males. At 24, she had three children under age 4.
Rodgers added Guettel (rhymes with metal) to her name in 1961 when she wed Henry “Hank” Guettel, a theatrical and film executive, in a marriage that lasted until his death in 2013. They had three children but their son Matthew died in 1966 at age 3 of pulmonary edema. Their son Adam, a composer and lyricist, has won Tony Awards and Drama Desk Awards and wrote the Broadway musicals “Floyd Collins” (1994), “The Light in the Piazza” (2003) and “Days of Wine and Roses” (2023).
She wrote songs for TV ads and shows that featured characters like Captain Kangaroo, Rin Tin Tin and Lassie. Developing a subspecialty in dog tunes, she titled one “Cold Nose, Warm Heart.” She was floundering professionally amid struggles to become fluent in musical notation, once proclaiming that “the pencil is harder to play than the piano.” The struggle abated when she collaborated with lyricist Marshall Barer on what became her crowning achievement, the musical “Once Upon a Mattress,” a humorous adaptation of the 1835 Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea.”
Debuting Carol Burnett on Broadway, it opened in 1959, followed by a U.S. tour, a production in London’s West End, three TV productions (1964, 1972, 2005) and a Broadway revival (1996). Over 50 years after its original run, her “Mattress” royalties still exceeded $100,000 a year. “If that seems impressive, consider this: Even into the 21st century, the Rodgers and Hammerstein families were each collecting $7 million a year.” (New York Times, Aug. 5, 2022)
Another significant compositional project for Rodgers was “The Mad Show” (1966), a musical revue based on Mad magazine which opened Off Broadway and ran for 871 performances. While she continued to write for other musicals and revues, none of her other shows had the same level of success.
She later wrote young adult books, most notably the popular “Freaky Friday” (1972), which was made into a 1976 feature film, for which she wrote the screenplay, and was remade for TV in 1995 and again for cinemas in 2003.
“Shy” co-author Jesse Green said Rodgers had an active but frustrating career as a theatrical songwriter: “Mary was quite talented, but was somewhat done in by being a talented person who was the daughter of the nearly universally acknowledged great composer of American musical theater.” (NPR “All Things Considered,” Aug. 11, 2022) “I had a pleasant talent but not an incredible talent,” Rodgers said in a 2003 New York Times interview. “I was not my father or my son.”
She was a director of the Rodgers and Hammerstein organization, a board member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and served for several years as chairperson of the Juilliard School. She died at age 83 from heart failure at her home in Manhattan, a year after her husband of 52 years died. (D. 2014)
