Known to three generations of New York society as Dorothy Rodgers, the former Dorothy Belle Feiner was the wife of composer Richard Rodgers, whose musical comedies with collaborators Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II will always be with us. Never content to be a conventional wife, she was a writer, a businesswoman, an interior decorator – and the inventor of the Jonny-Mop™, a device to clean toilet bowls. She was a philanthropist, an inveterate and expert collector of art, and a humanitarian. She was also less than happy, but that’s life, even among the privileged.

Married to Rodgers in 1930, Dorothy was a fairly typical upper-middle-class Jewish New Yorker of her generation. She’d had the trips to Europe for the purpose of absorbing culture, and the Horace Mann education and art classes that were all a young woman of her day was supposed to need. The extent of her original horizons can be seen in the confirmation present she begged for, and got – a Tiffany compact in green gold.

Marriage to Richard Rodgers thrust her into a larger world; the composer was already successful, and part of a theatrical universe that, at first, almost proved too much for Dorothy. Her sheltered existence had not prepared her for running her husband’s house, nor for being part of his whirlwind career – let alone being around his alcoholic, mercurial, gay collaborator Lorenz Hart. After a few fluffs, Dorothy made the sensible decision to become very, very good at being all the things expected of her, learning to decorate, to entertain with perfect dinners and parties, and to make the house run so that Rodgers had maximum work time and minimum distraction.

That it wasn’t enough for her was apparent early on. She began by using her art training to start a collection that eventually became one of the most important private ones in America. Leading off with a de Chirico, the Rodgerses eventually acquired works by many an important Impressionist and Modernist artist. There were at least three Picassos, two Renoirs, a Rodin, a Magritte, a Corot, a Giacometti, a Gauguin, a Degas, a Dalí, a Toulouse-Lautrec, a Dufy, and a Bonnard. As time went by, she began to collect up-and-coming artists, like Alan Davie, Pierre Soulages, Francesco Somaini, Giacomo Manzú, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and a new kid named Jackson Pollock. Eventually, her collecting began to benefit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Rodgerses donated the Toulouse-Lautrec to the institution, among other works. (For examples from the Rodgers art collection, click here).

Needing more outlet for her inexhaustible energies, Dorothy found it after her husband’s musical fame took them to Hollywood. Subletting their handsome New York apartment at the Carlyle, the Rodgerses headed for the land of sunshine and easy money, and made an important discovery- they hated it. The instant Richard Rodgers had fulfilled his commitments to the studios, they returned to New York, where Dorothy’s first career fell into her lap. Their sub-lessors had reduced their home to a shambles, with broken furniture and dirty walls. Dorothy wailed, ‘I wish there was a place you could call and just say, fix everything!’ Richard Rodgers said, ‘Why don’t you start one?’ – and she did. Known as Repairs, Inc., the company became famous for being able to restore anything and everything, from houses in need of redecorating to one bent vermeil fish fork. The secret behind the business was typically Dorothy; she had badgered museums to find out who did their work, then had checked each craftsman’s approach to restoration for herself. Those who passed muster became Repairs, Inc., suppliers, and the treasures they restored were delivered back to their owners in chic maroon boxes tied with white cloth tape.

World War II meant that Repairs, Inc. could not continue as it had, and the business was sold. The Rodgerses moved temporarily from the city to Fairfield, Connecticut, where Dorothy did some war work, and also took in an English refugee child who was the daughter of a friend. This first Connecticut sojourn was something of a pinched, cramped time. Household help was hard to find, gasoline, food and clothing rationed, and the house less than perfect for the needs of the family, which now included two daughters, Mary and Linda, as well as the refugee and her nanny. Never fazed by limited horizons, Dorothy turned her hands-on experience with keeping this house to good account. She found herself scrubbing toilets when no one else was available to do it, and her distaste for the usual cleaning brushes led her to invent the Jonny-Mop, a reusable handle holding a flushable, detergent-impregnated pad. By 1950, to the vast amusement of friends and family, she had licensed the invention to a manufacturer. Daughter Mary irreverently dubbed her the ‘Toilet Queen’, giving Dorothy a small gold Jonny-Mop charm. Finding as much humor in the situation as everyone else did, the elegant Mrs. Rodgers framed the Jonny-Mop royalty check and hung it in – where else? – her bathroom.

Something important changed for the Rodgerses in 1943; Lorenz Hart’s various dysfunctions had led Richard Rodgers to the sad conclusion that a new collaborator would be a professional necessity. His choice was his old Columbia classmate Oscar Hammerstein II, and their first joint effort was the blockbuster musical hit, Oklahoma! As solid as the Rodgers financial base had been in the Lorenz Hart days, the new team of Rodgers and Hammerstein began to make amounts of money unheard-of before its time. In 1949, South Pacific was such a triumph that the Rodgerses were able to jettison the old Connecticut house in favour of another, more beautiful one on Hull’s Farm Road in Southport, called Rockmeadow. This Colonial house became Dorothy’s pet extravagance, with every beautifully decorated nook and cranny buffed to a glow, every blade of turf babied, and a constant stream of famous houseguests. As the years passed, Rockmeadow’s delights were augmented with a croquet field (Dorothy was a world-class player, often invited to play in venues traditionally limited to men), and an artificial pond. Not that the Rodgerses abandoned New York; an exquisite co-op in the East Seventies was their year-round base after 1945.

They could afford it all; a 1951 Business Week article estimated the weekly income of the R&H team at $31,000. Even assuming a fifty-fifty split between the two collaborators, it was a vast amount for the time- and the Fifties brought more hits. The King and I, Flower Drum Song, Cinderella, The Sound of Music – as well as movie versions of Oklahoma!, Carousel, and South Pacific – delighted audiences, and fattened the Rodgers exchequer even more. The Connecticut and New York homes became ever more beautifully decorated, with increasingly finer art on their walls. The quality of housekeeping and cuisine in both establishments was so superb that friends like Slim Hayward dubbed Dorothy ‘La Perfecta’. It was a fond joke, but a certain rigidity was beginning to manifest itself in Dorothy’s persona. As famous as she was for perfect entertaining, she became equally famous for her stonily silent anger when something went wrong at a party, or when a guest misbehaved. Publisher Bennett Cerf enjoyed goading Dorothy at parties by moving one of her perfectly placed ashtrays, and watching her compulsive efforts to get it back where it ‘belonged’ without being noticed.

There were other problems, too. The Rodgers marriage was not all it appeared to be; Richard Rodgers had developed a serious drinking problem that was carefully concealed from the public. He was also notably unfaithful to his wife, worrying her with liaison after liaison with showgirls and starlets. It had to have hurt deeply; Dorothy’s father had jumped or fallen to his death from a rooftop in 1931after suffering deep depression over his losses in the stock market crash of 1929. Symbolically abandoned by the first significant male in her life, Dorothy surely wanted her husband to be an emotional anchor. That anchorage would be the sole luxury she never attained, and if she later became as demanding and imperious as some authors have written, it may be that unfulfilled needs were the cause.

Still, the public façade held for the couples’ lifetimes, aided considerably by Dorothy’s next career, that of writer. In 1964, she put her best Delman-shod foot forward in a book titled My Favorite Things, sharing her views on decorating and entertaining. Her tips ranged from the practical (how to create storage space in small apartments), to the tasty (a flotilla of luxurious menus, with Dorothy’s own delectable recipes) to the grand (how many servants it took to serve seated dinners with various numbers of guests). The scale of her life was perfectly summed up in one of the book’s photos showing that her Jackson Pollock hung in her New York elevator hall, not in the apartment itself. In the text, Dorothy was careful to declare her love for Richard Rodgers, as indeed he would be careful to declare his for her in his 1975 autobiography, Musical Stages. Dick and Dorothy, Dorothy and Dick. It played well; they saw to that.

Life changes were in store. With servants difficult to find, the fabled Rockmeadow was becoming impossible to run, even with the income at the Rodgerses’ disposal. Dorothy met the challenge by commissioning an entirely new house, planned for entertaining with less help. Set on ten Fairfield, Connecticut acres, the huge contemporary structure was not nearly as simple as Dorothy liked to think it was; few country houses have a major Picasso over their living-room mantels. The house was modern, but the décor wasn’t. Dorothy’s favorite French Provincial pieces, both antiques and hand-made reproductions, were used as furnishings. Counterpoint was provided by more modern art, including paintings by Graham Sutherland and Zao-Wou-Ki, as well as a Judith Brown sculpture. True to form, Dorothy got another book out of it, 1967’s The House in My Head. Aided by House Beautiful’s coverage of the new house’s creation, the book was a detailed look at the process of its planning and building, and gave an excellent idea of how meticulous Dorothy Rodgers was in everything she did. Once again, the extravagance was quite affordable; a little R&H film project called The Sound of Music was bringing in what could only be described as Big Bucks.

More trouble came Dorothy’s way; she who had been around alcoholics for so long fell prey to addiction herself. Possibly beginning with a 1965 knee injury, she became dependent on Demerol, and there are stories that the drug unleashed a less pleasant side of her personality. That, however, was private business; the public Dorothy was as genial and elegant as ever. In 1970, she and daughter Mary Rodgers turned their sometimes opposing viewpoints into a book of advice titled A Word to the Wives, with each woman offering her generation’s take on every aspect of decorating, entertaining, child-rearing, and marriage. The book evolved into a McCall’s magazine series called Of Two Minds, answering readers’ questions selected by the editors, as well as a radio show covering the same subject. Running successfully for eight years, the project folded when Dorothy Rodgers demanded a raise and didn’t get it. In 1977, she published a new volume that gave some carefully edited autobiographical details and some observations on life, titled A Personal Book.

Her final decades were a mixed bag. Richard Rodgers became increasingly ill, and his formerly effortless success became more elusive when Oscar Hammerstein II died in 1960. Dorothy enjoyed the success of his 1962 hit, No Strings, Rodgers’ first musical for which he wrote both music and lyrics. But shows like Do I Hear A Waltz?, Two By Two, and Rex brought difficulties with collaborators and diminishing critical and financial success. In 1979, Richard Rodgers died; Dorothy was alone, and largely in control of the R&H empire. Hardly a passive participant, she made decisions on what might be produced in revival, and what she felt was better left locked away, like 1937’s Babes In Arms, which she evidently thought was too dated.

She also devoted a great deal of time and money to her various causes and philanthropies, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Jewish Museum, and the Red Cross. She died of emphysema in 1992 at age 83, one of New York’s best-known citizens. The sale of the astounding art collection netted millions at a Christie’s auction, with collectors and museums everywhere vying for something, anything, from it.