Oklahoma: The American Frontier and its Legendary Musical with Sharon McMahon

Here's Where It Gets Interesting

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2022

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sharon returns for a solo episode about the musical that opened the floodgates to the nation’s obsession with Broadway. Oklahoma!, the infamous Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, opened on a Broadway stage in the spring of 1943. It was wildly successful from the get-go, and it ushered in the golden age of musical theater. Listen while Sharon explains why Oklahoma! hit such a nostalgic chord with audiences who longed for the simple joys of homesteading on the American Frontier. You’ll also learn how the musical was reworked from its original play which had been written by a Cherokee man who came of age as Oklahoma was declared the 46th state of the Union. (This episode may also contain some singing!)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends welcome so glad you're joining me today and I have a really fun
0:08.0	story about the fantastic state of Oklahoma so let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon and welcome to the
0:16.4	Sharon Says So podcast. Okay let me start by saying I've been to Oklahoma a
0:22.1	number of times. The people in Oklahoma are incredibly nice. But what I want to talk about today is a man named Lynn Riggs. Do you know who Lynn Riggs is? He is
0:38.9	the author of 21 full-length plays. One of his most famous plays was called Green Grow the Lilacs.
0:50.0	So let me give you just a little bit about Lynn Riggs and then we're going to tell you why you actually do know who he is.
1:00.0	So Lynn Riggs was born in 1899 on a farm in Claremore, Oklahoma.
1:10.0	And his father was a cowboy and his mother was part Cherokee Indian.
1:18.0	So Riggs was very well known for being the sort of quiet, reserved, mild-mannered man who started writing after high school.
1:27.3	He never married.
1:28.2	He did live with a male companion.
1:31.2	There's a lot of speculation that perhaps Riggs had a male like a male companion. There's a lot of speculation that perhaps Riggs had a male life partner. So I already
1:36.6	mentioned that he wrote 21 full length place and eventually his play Green Grow the Lylocks headed to Broadway.
1:50.0	And Lynn Riggs is the only Native American dramatist playwright who was writing for the Broadway stage in the first half of the 20th century.
2:02.3	So Green Grotely Lylax was not a the liked a lot of aspects that the play depicted, but not a huge box office success.
2:16.0	You know exactly the type of piece that I'm talking about that happens with movies, etc.
2:20.8	As well today.
2:22.4	In 1942, Riggs was drafted into the Army and while he was in the
2:29.4	Army, somebody gave the script of Green Grew the Lylax to two gentlemen and I bet you
2:36.2	will recognize their names Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein. And so Rogers and Hammerstein had never worked together before but they became
2:50.1	one of the most famous and prolific duos in Hollywood. They took this play of
2:59.4	Green Rose the Lylax and decided that they were going to rework it into a musical and they were going
	...

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