"Oscar Hammerstein II: Out of My Dreams" falls flat

This special includes clips from some of the films, original interviews with Stephen Sondheim, Harold Prince, Mitzi Gaynor and Shirley Jones, as well as family members. (Outtakes of an old interview with son James, who died in 1999, are also included.)

Hammerstein also had a huge impact on that other giant of musical theater, Sondheim -- a close friend of James in childhood, and effectively apprenticed by Hammerstein -- who says that as a boy and musical theater aspirant, "he treated me like an adult ... so the result was that I came away with dignity and a feeling like I was worth paying attention to."

The special does, in fact, do an adequate job of positioning Hammerstein's legacy within musical theater, but it also feels hasty and incomplete. There's almost nothing about his early life, even less about the Kern collaboration (no mention at all of Vincent Youmans), while the discussion about Rodgers is fleeting. Some of this may be of necessity -- figure about a half-hour of this 90-minute special will be devoted to the pledge drive -- but musical theater buffs may still be disappointed.

However, what's especially good here, besides the Sondheim asides, is the focus on Hammerstein's politics, which his best work reflected.