Posted: 11/28/21 at 6:16am
Not to nitpick, but Soupy Sales outlived Richard Rodgers by three decades.
I didn't check. The name popped into my head, and it's a funny name which might have brought back some dormant memories to a few and I didn't think anyone would nitpick. 
No one questions Hammerstein’s historical significance, nor does the popularity of these six musicals show any sign of diminishing. But there is a gap between that popularity and the esteem in which he is held by many critics. Kenneth Tynan summed up the conventional wisdom about the alleged sentimentality and naiveté of Hammerstein’s work when he dismissed The Sound of Music as “a show for children of all ages, from six to about eleven and a half.” Stephen Sondheim, Hammerstein’s protégé, put it more forgivingly when he described him as “easy to make fun of because he is so earnest.”
https://www.commentary.org/articles/terry-teachout/solve-problem-like-oscar-hammerstein/
The following may generalize a bit, so please pik if you must but don't nitpik.
Magnolia and Ravenol, Curly and Laurey, Julie and Billy, Nellie and Emile, Cable and Liat, Tuptim and Lun Tha, Maria and the Captain.
What do these have in common? The couples all fell into deeply conventional love with each other and at curtain that love was intact even if death would keep them apart.
Hammerstein also shamelessly depicts the short and simple annals of the poor. Clam bakes, lunch basket socials, hokey amateur entertainment for homesick servicemen, family singing contests, state fairs.
I'm no Sondheim scholar but I believe he deals almost exclusively with the difficulties and the termination of relationships. "People Will Say We're in Love" vs. "Not a Day Goes By."
When scholars infer that a work of art is shallow because it has been too popular with too many for too long, I usually refer them to Shakespeare. And there is ample conflict in Hammerstein's shows. He just doesn't deal with couples falling out of love.
In recent times there has not been that much criticism of Rodgers and Hammerstein as in the past. I think Hammerstein is a giant of American culture, having been the driving force behind two musicals spaced about fifteen years apart that transformed the genre from entertainment to art.
Still I wonder what Sondheim truly thought of the shows of his mentor. I can't imagine Sondheim writing anything like them.
[I encountered Soupy in a doctors' office once. Even behind a much older façade, the expression was unmistakable.]
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