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Broadway's Golden Age: 1943–1970
The shows that defined American musical theatre's classic period
5 selections · Stage Door Society Editorial
What Made It Golden
The period from Oklahoma! (1943) to Company (1970) is Broadway's most consequential. In those twenty-seven years, the integrated musical was invented and perfected, the serious dramatic musical established its claim to permanence, and the form absorbed every significant influence — jazz, Latin music, folk, classical — without losing its distinctiveness.
The Central Achievement
What Rodgers and Hammerstein achieved in Oklahoma! — the full integration of book, music, lyrics, choreography, and staging toward a single dramatic purpose — seems obvious now only because it succeeded so completely. Before 1943, musicals were revues with connecting tissue. After 1943, every serious musical aspired to a different standard.
The Dissidents
Not everyone followed Rodgers and Hammerstein's template. Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957) imported tragic structure from European art music. Bob Fosse's Chicago (1975, in revival) introduced pure theatricality divorced from emotional naturalism. Sondheim's Company (1970) — this collection's end point — announced that the golden age was over and something more difficult had begun.
