Composer Richard Rodgers had wanted to adapt a rural folk drama of the 1930s -- "Green Grow the Lilacs" -- to the musical stage and felicitously, lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, who also admired the play, accepted Rodgers' proposition to collaborate. By the spring of 1942, they were officially partners. From the beginning, their collaboration was going to be different: Hammerstein would write the lyrics first and Rodgers would set them to music. And both collaborators were determined to put the narrative of the story and the journeys of their characters before any concessions to musical comedy conventions. Aided by the brilliant choreography of Agnes de Mille, their simple tale of cowhands and farmers finding love and community in the Oklahoma territory caught the imagination and patriotic passion of wartime America. Laurey, a spunky girl who runs her aunt's farm, is courted by two very different young men: Curly, an brash cowhand, and Jud, a surly, pathological farmhand. Her journey to find the man of her dreams and the satisfaction of settling down with the right one (it's Curly, if you hadn't guessed) underscores the journey of the territory toward progress, community, and statehood.

In the decade before "Oklahoma!" opened, not a single hit show ran over 500 performances; "Oklahoma!" ran for 2,212. Even the songs, which Rodgers and Hammerstein worked so hard to keep within the context of the setting, broke out to achieve extraordinary popularity; the self-defensive love song "People Will Say We're in Love" was a number-one song in 1943 and "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" and "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" also topped the charts. "Oklahoma!" was more than a hit -- it was the first real phenomenon in modern Broadway history.

"Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'
"The Surrey with the Fringe on Top"
"Kansas city"
"I cain't say no"
"People Will Say We're in Love"
"Lonely Room"
"The Farmer and the Cowman"
"Oklahoma"

"All er' nothin'"

"Many a new day"

Curly - Brandon Michael

Laurey - Sarah Hoover

Aunt Eller -  Theresa Reed

Ado Annie - Rhonda Boynton

Will Parker - Sylvain Demers

Jud Fry - Jason Sanders

Ali Hakin - Shannon Luster

Andrew Carnes - Thom Van Dorp

Gertie - Kristi Leet

Ellen - Sydney Stone

Kate - Kathy Taylor-Yokel

Sylvie - Emily Dourte

Armina - Jill Rosholt

Aggie - Mimi Haffle

Fanny - Stephani Schruf

Lizbet - Lacy Griffin

Flossie - Sara Buzby

Samantha - Colleen McGee

Widow Woman Helena - Janice Ott

Widow Woman Clara - Mary Lou Bickner

Little Mary Ann - Shauna Gloria

Pigtails - Lilly Gesin

Cord Elam, Federal Marshall - P.J. Gesin

Slim - Frank Yaska

Young Feller - Zane Kohrt

Jess - Dave Snyderman

Chalmers - Robert Stansberry

Ike Skidmore - Tom Hewitt

Mike - Mark Frank

Joe - James Begg

Zeke - Seth Flater

Rowdy - Michael Hunter 

Director: Peggy Ferguson

Music Director: Patti Gallagher

Dances Choreographer: Gay Ellen Heath Griffin

• First Premiered: March 31, 1943

• Premier Theater: St. James Theater

• Based on: "Green Grow the Lilacs" by Lynn Riggs--a part-Cherokee playwright born in Oklahoma

• The song "Kansas City" was edited for censors. Will sang it, "I could swear that she was padded from her shoulders to her heel. And then she started dancing and her dancing made me feel that every single thing she had was absolutely real." In the original play script it went, "I could swear that she was padded from her shoulders to her heels. And later in the second act when she began to peel. She proved that everything she had was absolutely real."

• The world premiere of OKLAHOMA, by Cinemascope, was preceded by a parade of fringed surreys, led by then-Oklahoma Gov. Raymond Gary (1908-1993, governor 1955-1959), which made its way from the St. James Theater, where the stage version of "Oklahoma" had opened 12 years earlier, to the Rivoli Theater for the film premiere.

• The musical was originally entitled "Away We Go!" The title was changed to "Oklahoma!" after the popularity of that song with the play's initial audiences.