2 - Victory at Sea: A Chronology

Summary

1894 Robert Russell Bennett born in Kansas City. His early work as a musician there includes performances with his father's concert band; violinist with the Kansas City Symphony; piano, organ, and conducting for vaudeville and silent films. Moves to New York 1916; stateside Army service during WWI.

1902 Richard Rodgers born in New York; studies at Institute of Musical Art; first Broadway shows with Larry Hart, 1925.

1917 Henry Salomon born; later attends Harvard (1939). Serves in US Navy, 1942–48.

1927–30 Bennett's first theater orchestrations for Rodgers: One Dam Thing after Another (London), A Connecticut Yankee, She's My Baby, Heads Up, Ever Green (London).

1936–40 Bennett mostly in Hollywood, providing arranging and composing for Gershwin, Kern, and Berlin musicals as well as dramatic and comic films.

1940 17 November: “Russell Bennett's Note Book” (WOR/Mutual radio) debuts; all-American orchestral fare is mostly composed by music director and commentator Bennett.

1942 5 May: Harvard's Samuel Eliot Morison joins the Naval Reserve, commissioned by Roosevelt to prepare the History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Salomon joins Morison's research-writing team in 1943.

1943 31 March: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, orchestrated by Bennett, opens in New York.

1945 19 April: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel opens in New York. Don Walker is orchestrator, Bennett leading his Stars of the Future radio program.

1947 10 October: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro, orchestrated by Bennett, opens in New York.

1948 30 September: FCC announces “freeze” on new television station licenses.

1949 4 April: Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, orchestrated by Bennett, opens in New York. 5 May: First installment of ABC-TV's Crusade in Europe airs, based on Eisenhower's memoir. Summer: Henry Salomon first proposes “Navy Project” TV series to Robert Sarnoff. Fall: Morison offers TV rights for his HUSNO to Salomon.

1950 Robert Montgomery joins NBC as an executive TV producer; NBC evaluates Salomon's Navy Project proposal. In December, Navy pledges its cooperation.

1951 The NBC Symphony Orchestra's salaried core of fifty-five to sixty-five salaried staff musicians is supplemented by roughly thirty additional strings for Toscanini’s recordings and broadcasts. January: American ownership of TV receivers has grown from ca. 1 million to more than 10 million sets since early 1949. NBC approves Navy Project funding, and NBC and Navy finalize their agreement, publicized in March.