WONDERFUL

fan of musical theater, he delved into the collaboration between composer Rodgers and lyricist Hammerstein, whose work — including songs such as “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” “Do-Re-Mi,” “Some Enchanted Evening” and “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” — is ubiquitous not only in theater and film but also on soundtracks played in amusement parks, shopping malls and elevators.

Collectively, the duo won 34 Tony Awards, 15 Academy Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes, two Grammys and two Emmys — an unparalleled feat among songwriting teams.

Purdum writes that, on one spring evening alone in 2014 in the United States, there were 11 productions of “Carousel,” 17 of “The King and I,” 26 of “South Pacific,” 64 of “Oklahoma!” and 106 of “The Sound of Music.”

The book traces the duo’s working styles. Rodgers was astonishingly quick in creating melodies and Hammerstein painstaking and deliberate with his lyrics. Rodgers worked from his country house in Connecticut or his New York apartment; Hammerstein wrote lyrics at his farm in Pennsylvania.

Their early, and perhaps most important, hit was “Oklahoma!” (1943).

Marking the musical’s 75th anniversary in an April 1 column in The New York Times, Purdum wrote that “Oklahoma!” was as radical and innovative in its day as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “‘Hamilton’ is in 2018 — and for many of the same reasons: It seamlessly blended story, song and dance in the service of realistic character development in ways that made the typical froth of 1940s Broadway musical comedy seem puny by comparison.”

In his book, subtitled “Rogers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution,” Purdum deftly blends the behind-the-scenes crafting of the duo’s hits (as well as a few flops) with descriptions of the men’s characters and personal lives. (Both men married women named Dorothy, both of whom were interior decorators.)

Famous artists and personalities of Broadway and film permeate the narrative: Mary Martin, star of Broadway’s “The Sound of Music;” Steven Sondheim, a young protege of Hammerstein’s; choreographer Agnes de Mille; Ezio Pinza, the planter of “South Pacific”; director Joshua Logan; dancer and director Gene Kelly; and young ingenues Shirley Jones and Julie Andrews, stars of the films of “Oklahoma!” and “The Sound of Music.”

In his epilogue, Purdum gives Andrews nearly the last word about Rodgers and Hammerstein’s effect: “They thought big,” she said, “and wrote about important and often quite uncomfortable themes — bigotry in ‘South Pacific,’ for instance, or cultural and societal differences in ‘The King and I’ and ‘Flower Drum Song’ — which was brave and gave each musical a spine.

“Rodgers’ music was always melodically glorious, simple yet soaring. ... Hammerstein’s lyrics were equally rich, brilliantly constructed and so very specific to the worlds they created together. Their shows managed to be both timely and timeless — the epitome of classic.”