Oklahoma! (1955)
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
There's a box social coming up, and Curly asks Laurey if she'll be his date. Trouble is, Laurey thinks he's waited too long, and in a fit of pique accepts an offer from the boorish ranch hand Jud instead. Meanwhile, Laurey's friend Ado Annie is also torn between two men: cowboy Will and foreign peddler Ali Hakim. Both women struggle to know their own hearts before it's too late.
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What critics compared Oklahoma! to
There is no song in the second act that rivals those two and the musical doesn’t end with a rousing chorus like “Oklahoma!”
The Sound of Music was based on a 1959 Broadway production by composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, whose stagework had already been adapted by Hollywood numerous times, including Oklahoma!
Though Fred Zinnemann lamented late into his life the decision to direct Oklahoma!, the real compromise in this arena would appear to be Val Lewton-tutored Robert Wise following his astonishingly edgy musical adaptation of West Side Story (1961) with the legendarily squishy The Sound of Music a mere four years later.