Celebrating a Dynamic Duo

"The Sound of Music": The hills are alive with Julie Andrews. (Twentieth Century Fox)

Composer Richard Rodgers was an essential figure in American musical theater for more than 50 years, scoring his first hit in 1925 with "The Garrick Gaieties" and bowing out with "I Remember Mama" in 1979 -- the very year that Stephen Sondheim's epochal "Sweeney Todd" appeared and revolutionized the medium.

Over the decades, Rodgers worked with several gifted lyricists, including Lorenz Hart, Sheldon Harnick and even Sondheim himself (the disappointing "Do I Hear a Waltz?" in 1965). But Rodgers is best remembered for musicals he created with Oscar Hammerstein II -- a collaboration that began with the smashingly successful "Oklahoma!" in 1944 and continued through "The Sound of Music" in 1959, which, in 1965, was turned into what was for many years the most popular film ever made.

Now Fox Home Entertainment has assembled five of Rodgers and Hammerstein's most popular stage works in a 12-DVD set, "The Rodgers and Hammerstein Collection" ($99.98), and added the only piece they wrote specifically for the movies, the patchy "State Fair" (1945). (In fact, there are two versions of "State Fair" here, including a lesser-known remake from 1962, with Bobby Darin, Pat Boone and Ann-Margret.) If the films are somewhat uneven, so are the musicals. Those who love "The Sound of Music" will not hear a word against it, of course. My own interest in the score pretty much begins and ends with "Edelweiss," and the play's representation of songful nuns and cute, plucky Austrians fighting against the Nazis is only a step or two above "Hogan's Heroes" in historical authenticity. In short, I find the film insipid (as did Julie Andrews's co-star Christopher Plummer, who always referred to it as "The Sound of Mucus").

Still, in recent years, a small but fervent group of filmgoers has rediscovered "The Sound of Music" as high camp, along the lines of "Mommie Dearest." They attend screenings dressed as favorite characters and sing along with the ultra-familiar songs. Now this ritual can be re-created at home, as the new version features karaoke titles in English, French and Spanish, and even a doubter has to confess that it might make a pretty good party.

For me, the most moving of these films is "Carousel" (1956). The authors were clearly after big game here; the score -- indeed, the whole show -- is shot through with a near-operatic emotional intensity that puts it on a level with Jerome Kern's "Show Boat" or George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess." The mood is unusually dark for a musical of its time -- seemingly too dark for Hollywood, which turned Billy Bigelow's death into a tragic accident, rather than the suicide in the original play. Gordon MacRae is a dashing Billy, and the mood is leavened by the very young Shirley Jones, who also contributes her memories of the production in one of many extras on the DVD.

"The King and I" combines some of Rodgers's most original and esoteric music with a decidedly politically incorrect image of Asian life. (One of the team's few box-office flops, "Flower Drum Song," which features sentiments that are even more out of fashion, is also being reissued this fall by Universal.) Yul Brynner made a career out of portraying imperious and somewhat dangerous characters, and this is his signature role. Deborah Kerr, who retired much too early, is a charming and subtle Anna, and her part is sung sweetly and with character by Marni Nixon (who spent her days performing the then-avant-garde music Schoenberg and Webern when she wasn't making money doing Hollywood voice-overs).

The film version of "Oklahoma!," also with MacRae and Jones, creaks a bit nowadays -- Fred Zinnemann was perhaps too ponderous a director for this brisk burst of American energy -- although much of the music remains appealing. I wish "South Pacific" had been cast with the two great stars who sang the Broadway premiere, Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza (they are featured in some excerpts), but Rosanno Brazzi (with his voice dubbed by Giorgio Tozzi) and Mitzi Gaynor do well enough. One oddity of this film is its ultra-vivid color, as though every frame were dyed artificially -- very "1950s."

The extras are fascinating, including a complete film of "Liliom" (the play that inspired "Carousel") directed by Fritz Lang; several newsreel documentaries celebrating the films' premieres; the A&E "Biography" of the von Trapp family (on whom "The Sound of Music" was loosely based); production shots and trailers; karaoke titles for "Carousel," "South Pacific" and "Oklahoma!" as well as "The Sound of Music"; and plentiful commentary from cinema historians and stars.

Together, these films took home 14 Academy Awards among them, and while a plethora of Oscars is hardly a sure sign of quality (as those who have managed to sit through "Titanic" can attest), their impact on popular culture in the United States cannot be denied. Nor can the continuing appeal of the best of these songs.