Rodgers and Hammerstein Rodgers and Hammerstein Rodgers and Hammerstein refers to composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), who together were an influential, innovative and successful American musical theatre writing team. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s, initiating what is considered the "golden age" of musical theatre. Five of their Broadway shows, "Oklahoma!", "Carousel", "South Pacific", "The King and I" and "The Sound of Music", were outstanding successes, as was the television broadcast of "Cinderella" (1957). Of the other four that the team produced on Broadway during their lifetimes, "Flower Drum Song" was
Pat Carroll (actress) as "The Red Buttons Show", "The Danny Kaye Show", "The Red Skelton Show", and "The Carol Burnett Show". In 1965, she co-starred as "Prunella", one of the wicked stepsisters in the 1965 production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical version of "Cinderella". In the late 1970s Carroll's successful one woman show on Gertrude Stein, "Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein" (by playwright Marty Martin), won several major theater awards, her recorded version won a 1980 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama. In early 1976, Carroll was cast as Lily, the mother of Shirley Feeney (played by Cindy Williams)