The team of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II produced many hit musicals, but they only collaborated on one original film project. One of the songs, “It Might as Well Be Spring,” became a standard.

After long and successful collaborations with others, Rogers and Hammerstein teamed up to write Oklahoma! in 1943. It became not only a smash hit, but a turning point in musical theater.

Seeing Oklahoma! on Broadway inspired Darryl Zanuck, an executive at 20th Century Fox, to hire Rogers & Hammerstein to provide the book and songs for a musical version of State Fair. Phil Strong wrote his novel State Fair in 1932, and the following year, 20th Century Fox issued a movie of it starring Will Rogers and Janet Gaynor.

To persuade Rogers and Hammerstein to take on the project, Zanuck arranged for a private showing of the earlier film in New York. Rogers noted in his autobiography that the team was “immediately won over.”

Although writing for a Hollywood film, Rogers and Hammerstein insisted on working from their homes on the East Coast. That way, it wouldn’t interfere with other activities. Rogers, at least, had prior experience in Hollywood and had no interest in spending any more extended time there.

Writing for film made Hammerstein uncomfortable. He could see everything unfolding before his eyes on Broadway. He compared writing for a film with navigating without a compass. Although he felt lost, he completed the book and words for six songs.

The team of Rogers and Hammerstein

Richard Rogers first gained fame in partnership with Lorenz Hart. From 1921 to 1930, they wrote two Broadway shows every year. After spending 1931-1935 collaborating in Hollywood, they returned to New York, where they continued to write for Broadway until shortly before Hart’s death in 1943. See my earlier posts on Blue Moon and My Funny Valentine.

In that year, Rogers teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II, who had achieved great success writing lyrics for operettas.

Hammerstein grew up in a theatrical family. He was grandson of operatic impresario Oscar Hammerstein. His father William managed a vaudeville theater and his uncle Arthur produced Broadway plays.

Although the younger Hammerstein earned a law degree from Columbia University, he soon joined the family business as assistant stage manager for his uncle. As a writer of books and lyrics for operettas, he saw his first success in 1923 as co-writer of Wildflower. In 1927, he teamed up with Jerome Kern for an important milestone in American musical theater, Show Boat. Nothing before matched it either for its complexity or seriousness of purpose.

The 1930s saw as many flops for Hammerstein as successes. Nonetheless, when Rogers finally gave up on the unstable Hart, he turned to Hammerstein.

The blend of Rogers’ experience on Broadway with Hammerstein’s experience in operetta produced a totally new kind of American musical theater. They became the most successful partnership in the history of Broadway. It lasted until Hammerstein’s death in 1960.

Their musicals won 35 Tonys, 15 Oscars, 2 Grammys, 2 Emmys, and 2 Pulitzers. No one else had won something in all those categories. See my earlier posts on “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” from Carousel and South Pacific.

Working with a succession of other collaborators and occasionally writing his own lyrics, Rogers continued to write for Broadway until his own death in 1979.

Two different working relationships

Collaborating with Hart, Rogers usually wrote a tune and Hart fit words to it. As Hammerstein later explained,

The hit melodies of that time had to be good dance melodies. This being the most important consideration, it was better for the lyric writer to trail along after the composer and fit his words to a refrain written mainly to be danced to.

The Rogers and Hammerstein team, on the other hand, sought to integrate the songs into the story line. They fulfill a dramatic function rather than simply punctuating the action. And so Hammerstein usually wrote the lyrics and gave them to Rogers to set them to music.

Critic William Zinsser notes, “nothing that Rogers wrote with Hammerstein reminds me of anything he wrote with Hart.” More Rogers and Hart songs became standards, but only Rogers and Hammerstein plays have continued in the repertoire.

State Fair and “It Might as Well Be Spring”

A young girl named Margy Frake is unhappy at the prospect of the family’s annual trip to the state fair. Hammerstein conceived of her mood as spring fever, but state fairs always occur in the fall. He later wrote,

Then, wanting desperately to write a song about spring fever, I toyed with the notion of having her say, in effect, “It’s autumn, but I have spring fever so ‘it might as well be spring.’” Rather half-heartedly I threw the idea at Dick. He jumped up excitedly and said. “That’s it.”…In about a week I had written a refrain to this title. An hour after I gave the lyric to Dick he had set the melody.

But which melody? Alone among all the songs he wrote, Rogers composed two different melodies for this text.

The familiar one more nearly resembles a Rogers and Hart tune than the typical Rogers and Hammerstein tune. Rogers intended it to be sung in a bright, medium tempo. The studio’s music director, Alfred Newman, insisted it should be a slow ballad. Rogers lobbied hard to get him to change his mind. The studio only promised to reshoot the scene if it didn’t impress a preview audience. But when Rogers saw it, he had to admit that Newman had been right.

So either Rogers wrote a tune in an hour, as Hammerstein said, and later changed his mind, or he wrote another slow ballad trying to satisfy the studio.

The structure of “It Might as Well Be Spring”

The song shows the meticulous attention to detail of both partners. Hammerstein chose alliteration and vowel coloring to underscore Margy’s unease.

Rogers’ tune feeds off the opening lines: “I’m as restless as a willow in a windstorm. I’m as jumpy as a puppet on a string.” So both the rhythms and melodic intervals are restless and jumpy. The last note of the first line is an unexpected chromaticism that reinforces the unsettled mood. But Margy becomes more reflective as the song progresses, so Rogers provided a smoother line for the bridge.

It’s interesting that the film’s director completely missed all the emotional cues in the lyrics. Margy sings of her restlessness and jumpiness while languidly sitting on a windowsill.

Performances and recordings of “It Might as Well Be Spring”

The first choice for the part of Margy, Kathryn Grayson, was not available, so the studio hired Jeanne Crain.

Both opera and musical theater need people who can both sing and act. Failing that combination, opera tends to favor singers who can’t act. Musical theater tends to favor actors who can’t sing. Jeanne Crain couldn’t sing.

But film allows a compromise. Someone else can dub the singing. In this case, Louanne Hogan actually sang the song.

Margaret Whiting made the first of hundreds of recordings of “It Might as Well Be Spring.” Its six-week run on the Billboard chart began in November 1945 and peaked at number six.

Numerous singers have successfully performed “It Might as Well Be Spring.” Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Mel Torme head the list of artists of their generation. Younger singers, including Julie Andrews, Karrin Allyson, and Stacey Kent have continued to show interest in it. Numerous jazz soloists and ensembles have issued instrumental versions.

Sources:

It might as well be spring / Café Songbook
It might as well be spring (1945) / JazzStandards.com
It might as well be spring / Mark Eden Horowitz. In the Muse Performing Arts Blog (Library of Congress). March 22, 2021
Oscar Hammerstein / Song Writers Hall of Fame
Richard Rogers / Song Writers Hall of Fame