Rodgers and Hammerstein was the songwriting partnership of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist-librettist Oscar Hammerstein II, active on Broadway from 1943 until Hammerstein’s death in 1960. Their debut collaboration, “Oklahoma!” (1943), revolutionized the American musical by integrating song, dance, and story into a unified dramatic whole rather than treating numbers as standalone entertainment. They followed it with “Carousel” (1945), “South Pacific” (1949, which confronted racial prejudice), “The King and I” (1951), and their final work, “The Sound of Music” (1959), along with the television musical “Cinderella” (1957).

Rodgers and Hammerstein are credited with ushering in the “golden age” of American musical theatre, winning 34 Tony Awards, fifteen Academy Awards, and two Pulitzer Prizes across their body of work, and directly influencing later musical-theatre writers including Stephen Sondheim, who apprenticed under Hammerstein.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodgers_and_Hammerstein