No One Is Alone, Except Maybe Stephen Sondheim

Despite favoring sometimes-ghastly subjects, overly calculated lyrics, and eminently unhummable music, composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim was something of a conservative when it came to acknowledging his forebears. In Sondheim's case, that chiefly meant lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, who gladly accepted the role of substitute father to the boy then known as Stevie—a comprehensively unhappy child of divorce—and even more eagerly agreed to school him in musical-making. That he wanted to make musicals in the first place is a testament to the outsized influence of Hammerstein, who, with composer Richard Rodgers, created such masterpieces as Oklahoma! and South Pacific.

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