Books and Manuscripts

A heartwarming letter from acclaimed composer Richard Rodgers to author, longtime friend and neighbor, Edna Ferber, only days after the Broadway premiere of his classic musical, The Sound of Music

New York, November 24, 1959. One sheet, 10 1/2 x 7 in. (267 x 178 mm). Typed letter, signed by Richard Rodgers, on his personal 488 Madison Avenue office stationery, to American novelist, friend, and neighbor, Edna Ferber, concerning his play, The Sound of Music: "Your heartwarming/note about THE SOUND OF MUSIC did exactly/that--it warmed my heart. I think and/hope that there's a large public for some-/thing essentially decent in the musical/theatre and you, as well as other people, seem to think that that is what this play/is. Anyway, we'll see, but in the meanwhile/I am deeply grateful for your sweet words./Much love from/Dorothy and me./Always affectionately,'Dickie". Creasing from original folds. In fine condition.

A warm and intimate letter, written by acclaimed American composer, Richard Rodgers (1902-79), to his longtime friend, American author, Edna Ferber (1885-1968), thanking her for her kind words about his and Oscar Hammerstein II's now classic musical, The Sound of Music. The show premiered on Broadway, for the first time, only eight days before this letter, on November 16. This production would go on to win five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. This would be Rodger and Hammerstein's last collaboration together, as Hammerstein would die the following year.

Rodgers signs off this letter with the affectionate nickname given to him by Ferber, "Dickie".

Richard Rodgers and his wife Dorothy were longtime friends with Edna Ferber. According to Julie Gilbert's Ferber: A Biography, Dorothy and Edna "met in 1928, before Dorothy was married to Richard Rodgers, but she knew of Ferber prior to their first meeting. Ferber had taken an apartment at the Lombardy Hotel in New York, and while she was vacationing in Europe, Richard Rodgers rented the apartment right next door to hers. The news reached her, whereupon, she sent a scathing letter to the management. She stated that of all the discourteous things they could do, putting a songwriter (not a composer, but a common songwriter) on her floor right next door to her was the worst. The lambasting went on and on, practically demanding that they evict him. The management showed the letter to Rodgers, who got the general idea that Miss Ferber was not pleased. He asked to know the date of her return, and arranged to have her living room filled with flowers. Ferber was a sucker for flowers; it was just the touch, and Rodgers kept the apartment, becoming 'the Composer next door.' A bit later, Rodgers invited her to a party, where she meet Dorothy, and the three of them remained friends for the duration of her life. Had Rodgers not filled her bower with flowers, he probably would have remained, according to the Ferber lexicon, 'that songwriter.'" (p. 32)

Ferber lived in the Lombardy Hotel in the early 1930s to 1934, and then at 730 Park Avenue--where this letter is addressed to--from 1950 until her death in 1968. During the time of this letter, the Rodgers's lived a few floors below Ferber in a co-op. Dorothy was responsible for finding this apartment for Ferber, to which Ferber later recorded in her diary, "Dorothy always seems to find me exactly what I didn't know I was looking for."

According to Frederick W. Nolan in his The Sound of Their Music: The Story of Rodgers & Hammerstein (2002), it was through Ferber's novel Saratoga Trunk (1941), that Rodgers and Hammerstein began their correspondence that would blossom into their most successful collaborations of the 40s and 50s, the so-called "golden-age" of musical theater: "In the summer (1941), Oscar received an approach from an unexpected quarter: Richard Rodgers, who was considering a musical based on an Edna Ferber novel, Saratoga Trunk...As it turned out, the project never got off the ground, but it had opened a door...it was a direct invitation toward eventual partnership and Oscar knew it."

Edna Ferber (1885-1968) was an acclaimed author, most known for her novels So Big (1942), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize; Show Boat (1926), the basis for the wildly successful 1927 stage production by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II; Cimarron (1930), the basis for the 1931 Academy Award-winning Best Film; and later, Giant (1952), adapted to film in 1956, and starring James Dean in one of his last roles. Ferber was also a member of the Algonquin Round Table.