ABSTRACT
After the innovative mid-’40s and the jubilant late-’40s, American musical theatre coasted. It had the wherewithal—the momentum, talent, and money—to produce Guys and Dolls, The King and I, The Pajama Game, My Fair Lady, The Most Happy Fella, The Golden Apple, Candide, The Music Man, and West Side Story. But at the same time it began to languish. Imitation of Rodgers and Hammerstein, was too universal, and their fresh inventions were inevitably reduced by their imitators to formula and hack work. Because it failed to renew itself, the American musical couldn’t win new audiences. By the mid-’60s, its customers were the same romantics—or the same tired businessmen—who had first set foot in the theatre to see Oklahoma! in 1943. But time had diminished both their numbers and their love for musical comedy. Young people stayed away. And expenses rose. Musical theatre lost earning power and popularity. By the end of the 1960s it had the reputation of being senile. Even the last collaboration of Rodgers and Hammerstein The Sound of Music (1960), gave off a faded, oppressive odor, something between lilac and camphor.
