Each month, Jason Fortner spotlights one or more musical theatre composers and/or lyricists, offering his own unique perspective on the songwriting legends of musical theatre. Send your comments/questions on this column to happgood@aol.com.

Lorenz Hart Source: PBS.org

This month I want to take a brief look at one of my favorite lyricists, Lorenz Hart (1895-1943). From his first New York show in 1920 to his final lyrics in 1943, Larry Hart delighted audiences on Broadway, the West End and on screen with his amazing mix of clever wordplay, newly invented rhymes and sometimes heartbreaking pathos.

Partnered with Richard Rodgers (1902-1979), Hart would struggle for five years after their first Broadway show THE POOR LITTLE RITZ GIRL, which the team, much to their surprise, found augmented with tunes by Sigmund Romberg on opening night. After years of trying to get a second chance, Hart would find his first great success with a little song he & Dick wrote for the Theatre Guild's GARRICK GAIETIES in 1925. This showstopper paved the way for their future, delighting audiences with verse after verse about the city of New York, all wrapped up in a tune entitled “Manhattan”. Here's a section of the song:

We'll go to Yonkers
Where true love conquers in the wilds.
And starve together, dear, in Childs'.
We'll go to Coney and eat baloney
On a roll.
In Central Park we'll stroll,
Where our first kiss we stole, soul to soul.
Our future babies
We'll take to "Abie's Irish Rose."
I hope they'll live to see it close.
The city's clamor can never spoil
The dreams of a boy and goil.
We'll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy.

Soon they had shows in the subsequent Broadway seasons and were the talk of the town. The latter half of the twenties would see such Rodgers & Hart shows as PRESENT ARMS, PEGGY-ANN, THE GIRL FRIEND, SIMPLE SIMON and many others. As the talkies were born Hollywood beckoned, and the lure of a four year contract brought Dick & Larry to Lala Land. Despite the success of their experimental score for the film LOVE ME TONIGHT, they were rather unhappy during their Hollywood years, longing for New York and feeling creatively underappreciated.

The ultimate example of this would be a little song they wrote for Jean Harlow in the film HOLLYWOOD PARTY. It was entitled “Prayer” and featured Miss Harlow asking the following:

Oh, Lord, If you ain't busy up there,
I ask for help with a prayer,
So please don't give me the air.
Oh, hear me, Lord. I must see Garbo in person
With Gable when they're rehearsin'
While some director is cursin'.

Both the song and the actress were cut from the film. The tune was recycled with a new Hart lyric as the title song for the film MANHATTAN MELODRAMA but was rejected. Here's a lyric from that variation:

Act One: You gulp your coffee and run;
Into the subway you crowd.
Don't breathe, it isn't allowed !

In the same film it was retried as a song called “It's Just That Kind Of A Play” but it too was cut.  It finally was filmed as a song for Shirley Ross with the title “The Bad In Ev'ry Man” and featured the following lyric:

Oh, Lord …I could be good to a lover,
But then I always discover the bad in ev'ry man

MANHATTAN MELODRAMA would gain notoriety as the film John Dillinger was watching before he was gunned down by the G-men, but the song did not prove a hit. Finally Jack Robbins, head of M.G.M.'s publishing company, told Hart to write a “hit” lyric with words like moon and dream, and from this suggestion “Blue Moon” was born, the most successful collaboration of Rodger's Hart and their only song not connected to a play or film.

After their Hollywood hiatus Rodgers & Hart returned to Broadway with shows like PAL JOEY, JUMBO, BY JUPITER, THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE, TOO MANY GIRLS, and I MARRIED AN ANGEL. The latter provided one of my favorite Hart lyrics, all about the famed Roxy Theater in NYC. Here's a partial lyric:

Where an usher puts his heart in when he ushes…
Where the fountain changes color when it gushes…
Where the seats caress your carcass with it's plushes!
At the Roxy Music Hall

Where the acrobats are whirling on their digits,
Where the balcony's so high you get the fidgets,
Where the actors seem to be a lot of midgets!
At the Roxy Music Hall!

Of course hit songs were common in the Rodgers & Hart shows, but no show had quite so many as BABES IN ARMS (1936). This score included such gems as “My Funny Valentine”, “Where Or When”, “I Wish I Were In Love Again”, “Johnny One Note”, “All At Once” and “The Lady Is A Tramp”.  Another of my favorite Hart lyrics is in “I Wish I Were In Love Again”:

The furtive sigh, the blackened eye
The words “I love you til the day I die”
The self-deception that believes the lie.
I Wish I Were In Love Again…

When love congeals it soon reveals
The faint aroma of performing seals
The double-crossing of a pair of heels
I Wish I Were In Love Again!

But in spite of his delightful humor, Hart led a sad and often troubled existence. You can see glimpses of this inner sadness in his achingly true lyrical ballads, especially in songs like “Glad To Be Unhappy” from ON YOUR TOES:

Fools rush in, so here I am,
Very glad to be unhappy.
I can't win, but here I am.
More than glad to be unhappy.

Unrequited love's a bore,
And I've got it pretty bad.
But for someone you adore,
It's a pleasure to be sad

Like a straying baby lamb
With no mammy and no pappy,
I'm so unhappy,
But oh, so glad.

Another exquisite Hart lyric is from BY JUPITER, the ode to unrequited love called “Nobody's Heart”:

Nobody's heart belongs to me,
Heigh-ho! Who cares?
Nobody writes his songs to me,
No one belongs to me,
That's the least of my cares.

I may be sad at times,
And disinclined to play.
But it's not bad at times,
To go your own sweet way.

Nobody's arms belong to me,
No arms feel strong to me,
I admire the moon.
As a moon, just a moon.
Nobody's heart belongs to me today.

Hart would pass away in 1943, but not before creating a few new lyrics for that year's Broadway revival of their 1927 hit A CONNECTICUT YANKEE.  Hart's final song was one he penned for the evil “Morgan Le Fay”, in which she details how she killed off all her late husbands. The title is “To Keep My Love Alive” and is a fitting finale to this brief look at the gifted talent of Lorenz Hart:

I've been married and married,
And often I've sighed,
I'm never a bridesmaid,
I'm always the bride!
I never divorced them-
I hadn't the heart.
Yet remember these sweet words
"Till death do us part."

I married many men,
A ton of them,
And yet I was untrue to none of them
Because I bumped off ev'ry one of them
To keep my love alive

Sir Paul was a frail;
He looked a wreck to me.
At night he was a horse's neck to me
So I performed an appendectomy
To keep my love alive.

Sir Thomas had insomnia
He couldn't sleep at night.
I bought a little arsenic
He's sleeping now all right.

Sir Philip played the harp;
I cussed the thing.
I crowned him with his harp
To bust the thing.
And now he plays where harps are
Just the thing,
To keep my love alive.

I thought Sir George had possibilities,
But his flirtations made me ill at ease,
And when I'm ill at ease
I kill at ease
To keep my love alive.

Sir Charles came from a sanitorium
And yelled for drinks in my emporium
I mixed one drink
He's “in memoriam”
To keep my love alive.

Sir Francis was a singing bird
A nightingale. That's why
I tossed him off my balcony
To see if he could fly
Sir Athelstane indulged in fratricide;
He killed his dad and that was patricide
One night I stabbed him by my mattress side
To keep my love alive,
To keep my love alive.