Rodgers and Hart's Dysfunctional Partnership
Culture
Richard was disciplined and controlling. Lorenz was undisciplined, uncontrollable, and often drunk. But it worked.
By Robert Gottlieb
“It’s smooth! It’s smart!
It’s Rodgers! It’s Hart!”
It’s Cole Porter from DuBarry Was a Lady—the song, “Well, Did You Evah!”; the singers, Betty Grable and Charles Walters; the year, When the song was recycled for Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in the movie High Society, this snatch of Porter’s lyric was gone, but smooth, smart Rodgers and Hart weren’t, and more than half a century later they’re still with us, on scores of CDs and on iTunes, their most famous songs the meat and potatoes (or maybe the caviar) of countless jazz and cabaret artists. The year before Porter’s DuBarry, R&H had triumphed with both I Married an Angel and The Boys From Syracuse. A slew of other hit shows lay in the past, and Pal Joey was coming up, with By Jupiter on its heels.
The quality of their work was at its peak, their fame and fortune at their height. Yet just a few years later, the partnership was over, and Larry Hart—at forty-eight—was dead, while Dick Rodgers, only for
The movie is highly fictional, and there are not may facts in the movie other than the wonderful songs. I read more into Hart's life, an I realized that even though he wrote the words to countless great song, his life was much more sadder than the movie portrayed.
Hart was born in Harlem, New York on May 2, , the older of two sons, to Jewish immigrant parents, Max M. and Frieda (Isenberg) Hart, of eastern Europe and German descent. A business promoter, his father sent Hart and his brother Teddy to private schools. (His brother Teddy Hart also went into theatre and became a musical comedy star. His wife Dorothy Hart wrote a biography of Lorenz Hart.
Hart attended Columbia University School of Journalism for two years. A friend introduced him to Richard Rodgers, and the two joined forces to write songs for a series of amateur and student productions.
By , Larry Hart was working for the Shubert brothers, partners in theatre, translating German pla
Lorenz Hart
Hart, Lorenz Milton (May 2, &#; Nov. 22, ), musical comedy lyricist, was born in New York City, the elder of two sons of Max M. and Frieda (Isenberg) Hart. Of Jewish background, he traced his descent through his mother from the German poet Heinrich Heine. His father, a business promoter, was sufficiently prosperous to enable Lorenz, after preparation at two private schools, to spend two years () at the School of Journalism of Columbia University. Reared in a worldly, bibulous home, temperamentally alienated from a rather coarse-grained father, indifferent to academic studies outside literature and drama, Hart was perhaps even more than Cole Porter the expressive bard of the urban generation which matured during the interwar years Much of his work &#; slick, breezy, and yet mordant, even morbid &#; reflects their tart disillusion. A bachelor living with his widowed mother, whom he once described as a &#;sweet, menacing old lady,&#; he was a restless world traveler and, especially after his mother&#;s death, an alcoholic who disappeared for weeks on end to escape a life periodically unbearable. But with all his moody unreliability he found his destiny as lyricist to
In they went to Hollywood to write for such talents as Maurice Chevalier, Bing Crosby, and Al Jolson. They rereleased “Blue Moon” with new lyrics, and it became a million seller and a big hit for the Casa Loma orchestra in
The team returned to Broadway with two successes in , one of which, On Your Toes, included Rodgers’ ballet, “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.” ’s Babes in Arms produced half a dozen hit songs such as “Where or When,” “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” “My Funny Valentine,” and “The Lady Is a Tramp,” and the intervening years brought more. But in the team shocked Broadway with the harsh realism of Pal Joey although the show produced the popular “I Could Write a Book” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” Their last show was By Jupiter ().
Rodgers began the second stage of his remarkable career teaming with
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