FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 11, 2002

Contact:

Cristin Callaghan

(212) 621-6710

Rachael Narins

(310) 786-1042

• Performances by Julie Andrews, Noël Coward,

● Seminar in New York on April 9 with panelists Ted Chapin, Martin Charnin, Skitch Henderson, Mary Rodgers, Roger Sherman, and Peter Stone

Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY—The Museum of Television & Radio will participate in the Richard Rodgers 2002 Centennial with a screening series highlighting some of the great American composer's television appearances and musicals written for television, as well as special televised tributes to him. The series, which will run in New York and Los Angeles from April 5 to June 30, 2002, will feature rarely seen and recently discovered programs including Rodgers's appearances on the first season of Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, and The Perry Como Show, as well as Rodgers and Hart Revisited (broadcast only locally in New York), and the long-unseen An Evening for Richard Rodgers featuring Vivienne Segal, Alfred Drake, and Mary Martin who sings "Wonderful Guy" as Rodgers himself accompanies her on the piano. In conjunction with the screening series, the Museum will present a listening series featuring radio versions of Cleopatra, A Connecticut Yankee, South Pacific, and Allegro, and the Museum in New York will also present a seminar on April 9 featuring panelists Ted Chapin, Martin Charnin, Skitch Henderson, Mary Rodgers, Roger Sherman, and Peter Stone.

Having published his first song when he was only fifteen years old, Rodgers went on to create some of the most instantly recognizable and most beautiful melodies in the history of the American musical. Such standards as "Manhattan," "With a Song in My Heart," "Isn’t It Romantic?," "My Funny Valentine," "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’," "You’ll Never Walk Alone," "Shall We Dance?," and "The Sound of Music" do not even begin to suggest the number of enduring songs he created. At the time of his death in 1979, Rodgers had published some nine hundred compositions including those written for forty Broadway musicals, ten motion pictures, two original television specials, and two television documentary series.

Television made the composer a familiar face—to go with the famous name. The Museum's series will include Rodgers appearing on tributes, talk shows, and variety series, where his songs were performed for an eager public. In addition, the series will feature television adaptations of his musicals ranging from A Connecticut Yankee and Dearest Enemy to Rodgers’s personal favorite, Carousel, which he wrote with Oscar Hammerstein II. Rodgers & Hammerstein’s one original work for television, Cinderella, with Julie Andrews in the lead, became one of the highest-rated specials in history. (For a complete listing of programs featured in the screening and listening series, please see attached schedule).

The Museum's screening series is part of a yearlong, worldwide centennial celebration which will include three Broadway musicals (Oklahoma!, The Boys from Syracuse, and Flower Drum Song); television specials on PBS and A&E; musical tributes at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, NHK Hall in Tokyo, and the Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills; album releases from the Boston Pops, Bernadette Peters, and others; programming at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the New-York Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York, the San Francisco

The Museum of Television & Radio, with locations in New York and Los Angeles, is a nonprofit organization founded by William S. Paley to collect and preserve television and radio programs and advertisements, and to make them available to the public. From its inception in 1975, the Museum has organized exhibitions, screening and listening series, seminars, and education classes to showcase its collection of over 100,000 television and radio programs and advertisements. Programs in the Museum's permanent collection are selected for their artistic, cultural, and historic significance. The Museum has initiated a process to acquire Internet programming for the collection.

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The Museum of Television & Radio in New York, located at 25 West 52 Street in Manhattan, is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 6:00 p.m., until 8:00 p.m. on Thursdays, and Friday evenings until 9:00 p.m. (theaters only). The Museum of Television & Radio in California, located at 465 North Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, is open Wednesdays through Sundays from noon to 5:00 p.m. and until 9:00 p.m. on Thursdays. Both Museums are closed on New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The public areas in both Museums are accessible to wheelchairs. Programs are subject to change. You may call the Museum in New York at (212) 621-6800 or in California at (310) 786-1000. The Museum's website can be accessed at http://www.mtr.org.