How a lyricist without a composer and a composer without a lyricist found each other and created the show that defined the musical play. Illustrated by scenes from the 1999 Hugh Jackman revival.

Their follow-up to Oklahoma! is considered to have the most beautiful score Richard Rodgers ever wrote, and was named by Time magazine as the greatest musical of the 20th century.

How they adapted an obscure first novel by James Michener — which subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize, and so did their show, becoming a massive popular and critical success.

Written as a vehicle for its female star, it ended up as the star-making vehicle for its unknown opposite lead: the last of four landmark shows that drained Rodgers & Hammerstein in eight years.

Their last show became, in its film version, bigger than the rest. We'll learn the absurd way they became involved, and speculate how Hammerstein might have written "Do-Re-Mi."

From Shaw's 1912 intellectual drawing room comedy Pygmalion and its 1938 film version to a universally beloved musical triumph: their most difficult and most stunning achievement.

Their last great musical almost killed two great talents. Lerner and director Moss Hart were both hospitalized during the tryout period. It took two events, one unlikely, one tragic, to make it a legend.

Jerome Robbins guided his creative team to find universality in the stories of Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem, resulting in a new opening number and one of the world's most beloved musicals.

An under-appreciated Bock & Harnick masterpiece: the perfect musical, adapted from the Ernst Lubitsch-Jimmy Stewart 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner (later You've Got Mail).

America's first successful concept musical. Director Harold Prince led his writers into uncharted Broadway territory in 1966 and Bob Fosse's 1972 film dramatically revised and perfected the hit musical.

Bob Fosse's 1975 "Musical Vaudeville" — you'll hear the historic originals that inspired each pastiche number, learn about 1920s Chicago, plus the novice playwright who supplied the musical's source.

Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, and an unknown 25-year-old Sondheim: the daring collaboration behind Broadway's boldest musical tragedy, which almost didn't reach the stage.

Sondheim and veteran tunesmith Jule Styne were forced to pair up by the dictates of star Ethel Merman and went on to write one of the most memorable scores in Broadway history.

Sondheim's first show with both his lyrics and music, based on the works of an ancient Roman playwright, turned from a disaster to a hit with one new song that he wrote out of town.

Sondheim's most delightful and approachable show of his mature period, based on a rare Ingmar Bergman comedy, and featuring his most popular song ever, "Send in the Clowns."

Studio intrigue, bad decisions reversed, a brilliant choice by "the man behind the curtain" and the struggle to write and retain "Over the Rainbow": the real story behind the most-watched film of all time.

Believed by many people to be the greatest movie musical ever. When Gene Kelly signed on and cast Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds, it was on its way to becoming a beloved classic!

How a former schoolteacher turned the Continental Congress into a gripping Broadway musical, dramatizing the most consequential three months in American history with song and historical fidelity.

The unlikely journey from a concept album to a global phenomenon: how Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice dramatized the life of Eva Perón and invented the modern sung-through mega-musical.

The turbulent creation of the show that made Barbra Streisand a star: the true story of Fanny Brice, Ziegfeld Follies sensation, told against the backdrop of Broadway's most demanding production.

Frank Loesser's adaptation of Damon Runyon's Broadway low-lifes became one of the most beloved American musicals: a show built on comic gamblers and some of the wittiest songs ever written.

Two no-name actors wrote a musical about the counterculture evolving around them in New York City's East Village, found a composer to set their lyrics, and their creation became an unlikely hit.

Cole Porter's triumphant show came along at a most propitious time, when he'd been given up as passé by Broadway audiences, and when the show's Shakespearean subject matter was particularly pertinent.

Gershwin's operatic masterpiece: how a New York Jewish composer created the definitive dramatic work about the African American experience, blending blues, jazz, and operatic tradition.

The last great musical of the 20th century — the bookend to the first great musical, Show Boat. This retelling of E.L. Doctorow's novel was the culmination of 100 years of accumulated theatre technique.

Unanimously acclaimed the first great American musical — this Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein show was so ahead of its time that nothing comparable would arrive for nearly twenty years.

A single person wrote this singular classic — Meredith Willson, after a five-year struggle to write a musical about his beloved Iowa hometown, find a producer for it, and finally a star.

The longest-running Broadway show of this century: how Gregory Maguire's novel played off The Wizard of Oz and inspired Stephen Schwartz's comeback after nearly 30 years.