Rodgers and Hammerstein, despite extraordinary early successes, such as "Oklahoma!", "Carousel" and "South Pacific", had suffered back-to-back Broadway flops in the mid-1950s with "Me and Juliet" and "Pipe Dream". While "Oklahoma!" had broken new ground in 1943, any new project in the late 1950s would have to compete with modern musicals and techniques, like the brutal realism in "West Side Story", and with other Broadway musical hits such as "The Music Man", "My Fair Lady" and "The Pajama Game". Rodgers and Hammerstein had made it their rule to begin work on their next musical as soon as the last opened on Broadway, but by the start of 1957, six months after "Pipe Dream" closed, the pair had no new stage musical in prospect. They had, however, been working since 1956 on the popular television version of "Cinderella", which was broadcast on CBS on March 31, 1957. Rodgers was still recovering from an operation for cancer in a tooth socket, and he was drinking heavily and suffering from depression. In June 1957, Rodgers checked himself into Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, and he remained there for twelve weeks. According to his daughters, Mary and Linda, this did not put a stop to his drinking.