<P> The show 's creativity stimulated Rodgers and Hammerstein 's contemporaries and ushered in the `` Golden Age '' of American musical theatre . Americana was displayed on Broadway during the `` Golden Age '' , as the wartime cycle of shows began to arrive . An example of this is On the Town ( 1944 ) , written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green , composed by Leonard Bernstein and choreographed by Jerome Robbins . The story is set during wartime and concerns three sailors who are on a 24 - hour shore leave in New York City , during which each falls in love . The show also gives the impression of a country with an uncertain future , as the sailors and their women also have . Irving Berlin used sharpshooter Annie Oakley 's career as a basis for his Annie Get Your Gun ( 1946 , 1,147 performances ) ; Burton Lane , E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy combined political satire with Irish whimsy for their fantasy Finian 's Rainbow ( 1947 , 725 performances ) ; and Cole Porter found inspiration in William Shakespeare 's The Taming of the Shrew for Kiss Me , Kate ( 1948 , 1,077 performances ) . The American musicals overwhelmed the old - fashioned British Coward / Novello - style shows , one of the last big successes of which was Novello 's Perchance to Dream ( 1945 , 1,021 performances ) . The formula for the Golden Age musicals reflected one or more of four widely held perceptions of the `` American dream '' : That stability and worth derives from a love relationship sanctioned and restricted by Protestant ideals of marriage ; that a married couple should make a moral home with children away from the city in a suburb or small town ; that the woman 's function was as homemaker and mother ; and that Americans incorporate an independent and pioneering spirit or that their success is self - made . </P>
<P> The show 's creativity stimulated Rodgers and Hammerstein 's contemporaries and ushered in the `` Golden Age '' of American musical theatre . Americana was displayed on Broadway during the `` Golden Age '' , as the wartime cycle of shows began to arrive . An example of this is On the Town ( 1944 ) , written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green , composed by Leonard Bernstein and choreographed by Jerome Robbins . The story is set during wartime and concerns three sailors who are on a 24 - hour shore leave in New York City , during which each falls in love . The show also gives the impression of a country with an uncertain future , as the sailors and their women also have . Irving Berlin used sharpshooter Annie Oakley 's career as a basis for his Annie Get Your Gun ( 1946 , 1,147 performances ) ; Burton Lane , E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy combined political satire with Irish whimsy for their fantasy Finian 's Rainbow ( 1947 , 725 performances ) ; and Cole Porter found inspiration in William Shakespeare 's The Taming of the Shrew for Kiss Me , Kate ( 1948 , 1,077 performances ) . The American musicals overwhelmed the old - fashioned British Coward / Novello - style shows , one of the last big successes of which was Novello 's Perchance to Dream ( 1945 , 1,021 performances ) . The formula for the Golden Age musicals reflected one or more of four widely held perceptions of the `` American dream '' : That stability and worth derives from a love relationship sanctioned and restricted by Protestant ideals of marriage ; that a married couple should make a moral home with children away from the city in a suburb or small town ; that the woman 's function was as homemaker and mother ; and that Americans incorporate an independent and pioneering spirit or that their success is self - made . </P>
the twentieth-century american composer associated with the golden age of musical theatre is
the twentieth-century american composer associated with the golden age of musical theatre is
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein