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Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, and Herbert Fields had been working intermittently on a show called Winkle Town, in which a fellow invents an electronic system that renders electric wires obsolete and tries to sell the idea to the city fathers of the eponymous town. Taking their chutzpah in both hands, they decided to ask their old pal Oscar Hammerstein II for help. When the triumvirate got through with it, the story had turned into a satire on Tin Pan Alley called The Jazz King. To their delight, Lew Fields not only liked the play but decided to put it into production. The authorship of the play was attributed to Herbert Richard Lorenz, a pseudonym which seems to have succeeded in fooling hardly anyone. The critics split: Woollcott liked the show, and Quinn Martin thought it “tremendously funny.” However vitriol-tongued George Jean Nathan put an end to the newborn career of Herbert Richard Lorenz.

In this chapter the New York Times correctly identifies Lorenz Hart's personal tragedy; but practically all of the other “facts” which preceded it were wrong. Hart never graduated from Columbia, nor did he and Richard Rodgers meet there: Rodgers was still in high school, Hart a long way past postgraduate work. The student body did not invite them to write the 1920 Varsity Show: they wrote one of five that were submitted that year. Hart was not yet translating shows, and when he did, it was not for the Shuberts, but United Plays. Rodgers and Hart did not write The Greenwich Village Follies, although a couple of their songs were used in the touring version of one edition. The book aims to set the record straight. The place to begin is at the beginning: with Max Meyer Hertz and Frieda Eisenberg.

In 1915, Lorenz Hart transferred from Columbia Grammar to the Columbia University School of Journalism. There he joined an extension class in dramatic technique conducted by Professor Hatcher Hughes, himself an aspiring playwright who would collaborate with Elmer Rice on the 1921 production Wake Up, Jonathan and win a Pulitzer Prize in 1924 with his play Hell-Bent fer Heaven. Hart apparently never had any serious intention of becoming a journalist, but his interest in literature, poetry, and the theatre soon led him, along with many of his classmates, to submit smart little verses and prose items to the famous “Conning Tower” column written by Franklin P. Adams. Through Philip Leavitt, Richard Rodgers meets Hart. They were a study in opposites. Of Hart's feelings there can equally be no doubt. As Philip Leavitt put it with such unwitting percipience, it was love at first sight.

As fall drew in, work began on the new show, which now had the title The Boys from Syracuse. Lorenz Hart had contacted George Abbott soon after his return from Atlantic City and asked him to work up a tentative script, intending to collaborate on it with him. When Richard Rodgers and Hart saw Abbott's treatment — borrowing only the setting of ancient Greece and the principal characters of Antipholus and the Dromio twins — it was so completely in line with their thinking, and so totally in keeping with the bawdy Shakespearian tradition, that they never felt the need to change a word. Some indication of Abbott's approach may be had from the opening announcement, made before the show itself begins. “If it's good enough for Shakespeare, it's good enough for us!”

It would have been a squalid end to the story, but for the fact that the story has no end. In the years following Lorenz Hart'ss death — and to what was often Richard Rodgers's intense annoyance — the music of Rodgers and Hart became and has gone on growing increasingly popular. The renaissance began five years after Hart's death with Arthur Freed's MGM film biography, Word and Music, and has continued to the present day. Even people to whom the names Rodgers and Hart mean nothing know “The Lady Is A Tramp,” “My Funny Valentine,” and many more of their songs. Few of these people either know, or care, that the man who wrote the words virtually changed the craft of lyric writing singlehanded. Hart brought to lyric writing not just his erudition but his own wit and charm, in a way that seems always spontaneous and effortless. Equally significant was his contribution to the musical theatre.

It is hard to escape the impression that in early 1921 the partnership of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart was very much in the doldrums: on one hand, Hart putting lyrics to Mel Shauer's songs; on the other, Rodgers working with a different lyricist. Clearly inspired by the huge success of the new Kern-Wodehouse-Bolton hit Sally, which had opened at Ziegfeld's New Amsterdam a few days before Christmas 1920, and which featured Marilyn Miller singing “Look For The Silver Lining,” Rodgers concocted a tune to lyrics by Frank Hunter, who had worked with him on Say It with Jazz. He managed to persuade Lew Fields to interpolate it into a new revue called Snapshots of 1921. The song was called “Every Girlie Wants To Be A Sally,” and if neither the song nor the show (it ran six weeks) was a big hit, the venture presented Rodgers with another opportunity for personal advancement.

Arthur Schwartz realized his ambition to work with Lorenz Hart on the fortnightly camp shows. One of them was Dream Boy, about a fellow who doesn't care for the energetic, athletic activities of summer camp, but would rather stay in his tent and read books all the time — a character not all that far from Hart's own. They decided they needed a theme song for him, and Hart suggested the title “I Love To Lie Awake In Bed.” However the melody Hart kept reprising was the first one Arthur had written, “I Love To Lie Awake In Bed.” So enthusiastic a fan of Richard Rodgers's tunes and Hart's lyrics did Arthur become that he actively proselytized on their behalf. He found out that a fellow summer camper named Marshall Rosett had an uncle in the music publishing business. His name was Elliott Shapiro, of the firm of Shapiro, Bernstein & von Tilzer.

Irresponsible and raffish though he might often have appeared to be, Lorenz Hart loved his creature comforts. Dorothy Hart said he bought Irish linen handkerchiefs by the dozen and lost them as fast as he took them out of the box. Hart also avoided looking in mirrors: the reverse of vanity. He spent a great deal of his time with Doc Bender. As Hart grew more successful, Bender — perceiving Hart as “big-time” — dug in his claws all the more deeply. It was a merry ride, all expenses paid. Nanette Guilford recalled Hart giving Doc a hundred-dollar bill to go out and buy sandwiches for some unexpected guests. A wisecrack, a clever pun, a prank, a carefully orchestrated practical joke — these were Hart's meat and drink. He needed the excitement, the frenetic activity, as another man needs peace and quiet. The singer Mabel Mercer said: “He was the saddest man I ever knew.”

Early in 1941, shortly after Lorenz Hart and Doc Bender got back from their annual trip to Miami, RKO Pictures, encouraged by the success of Too Many Girls, gave producer Lou Brock approval to go ahead with another Good Neighbor movie based on his own story about a Texas oil millionaire who goes to Argentina to buy a famous race horse. Brock commissioned Richard Rodgers and Hart to write a score for the movie, which was to be called They Met in Argentina. Rodgers and Hart composed a dozen songs; the producers in Hollywood showed how impressed they were by dropping five of them from the finished print. Maybe they were smart, at that; certainly those that remained, including “Simpatica,” “Lolita,” “Never Go To Argentina,” and “Amarillo,” were no better than they had to be. However, not a single musical opened on Broadway between Lady in the Dark in January and Best Foot Forward in October.

Lorenz Hart called at his brother's apartment and delivered a dozen tickets for the night's premiere to be distributed to friends. Just the night before, he had telephoned Dorothy Hart to ask her to buy a gold cigarette case for Herbert Fields and something special for Vivienne Segal. When he arrived at Teddy Hart's he was already on his way to not being sober, which was not good news; he would be smashed by curtain-up. They knew, and Lorenz probably knew, too, that Richard Rodgers had given orders to the stage manager to have him removed from the theater if he became difficult. The signs were they were in for a bad night. Later they learned Hart's heart had stopped twice and was restarted after emergency treatment. He lapsed into a coma. George Ford said last thing Hart said to the nurse was, “What have I lived for?” Then, he was gone.

Still determined to break into the theatre on the production side, Lorenz Hart had meanwhile managed somehow to scrape together enough money to stage the long-deferred one-off production of Henry Myers's play, The Blond Beast. Myers's mother, a formidable lady known as “Muzzie” who was living on the tail end of a fortune at the Majestic Hotel, had ambitions for her son to become a concert pianist and composer. During rehearsals Henry Myers showed some resistance to aspects of Hart's staging, and asked whether there wasn't some way an author could stop production of his play if he didn't like what was being done with it. Myers recalled that Hart became furious, promising that if Henry ever again mentioned stopping the production, he would find some especially dreadful way to kill him. Hart's plan to attract the attention of the leading entrepreneurs of Broadway worked beautifully. Every one of the major producers either attended or sent a representative.

In November 1930, in association with Max Dreyfus, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart announced the formation of a new music publishing house, its name a melding of theirs: Rodart Music Publishing Company. Its purpose was to exploit the existing catalogue and publish their future songs: they needed the money. The establishing of Rodart turned out to be their farewell to Broadway for four years. Just a few days later they received a call from Mel Shauer, Hart's old camping and songwriting companion, who had gone out to California the preceding year and was now a producer at Paramount. Shauer had met Maurice Chevalier in Paris, and they had become very friendly. When Chevalier came to work in Hollywood, Shauer put up the suggestion that Rodgers and Hart be hired to write songs for him. The studio was not enthusiastic. His persistence paid off, however; Jesse Lasky decided to give them a chance.

Summer was almost over, and the new Broadway season shaping up. It was time to get down to some serious business: Lorenz Hart was broke and Richard Rodgers needed work, too. However, producers were hardly beating a path to their door; Hart and Rodgers were chastened to discover they were looked on as yesterday's men. Oh yeah, Rodgers and Hart, that collegiate stuff. It doesn't go any more. Rodgers and Hart did some more work on On Your Toes and tossed some other ideas around, but nothing jelled. Toward Christmas, Larry and an old collaborator, the one-legged Laurence Stallings, down on his luck after a spell in Hollywood, decided to put together a revue, which seemed to be the kind of entertainment producers were looking for. They had a “bicycle” — an idea — for something with a South American flavor; they even wrote a song for it called “Muchacha,” which Rodart published at the beginning of 1935.

Writing the kind of cynical, callous, suggestive lyrics needed for characters like Joey Evans was a paid vacation for Lorenz Hart. He was writing for Gene Kelly, whom he idolized, for Vivienne Segal, whom he adored. Every step of the way Richard Rodgers matched his partner, producing melodies ranging from the torrid to the tawdry. In fact, when he first played “Bewitched,” George Abbott took him to one side and said, “Dick, don't you think that melody is too sweet for the kind of lyrics Larry has written?” By the time Brooks Atkinson revised his opinion, Hart was not around to see his faith in the play vindicated, to hear “Bewitched” become the number one song in the Hit Parade. Unquestionably the finest achievement of the Rodgers and Hart partnership, Pal Joey, is notable for one other reason: it marked the beginning of the end for Hart.

Under the title All's Fair, the show was scheduled to begin a month of rehearsals and everything about the show was looking good — except Lorenz Hart, who was on another binge. He disappeared again. Just a few days after this, Hart's doctor, Harold Hyman, went over to the Hart apartment with Richard Rodgers, where they found Hart lying in a semicoma on his bed. They got him across to Doctors' Hospital. Rodgers rented a room adjacent to Hart's and had them send up the piano and they work on the score. Most of the thirteen songs that comprised the original score included two gems: “Wait Till You See Her” and the affecting “Nobody's Heart.” There are lines in the latter song between which one might read unutterable sadness. It was as if Hart had realized at long, long last that even his love for Rodgers had died, and there was nothing left to live for.

Richard Rodgers had still not entirely given up hope that Lorenz Hart could be persuaded to participate in the new show; but Hart was adamant. Toward the end of the year, an item appeared reporting that Rodgers and Hart had dropped a Mexican musical called Muchacha they were working on; whose imagination this may have been a figment of, one can only guess. Hart was meanwhile noisily discussing several new projects. One of these, brought to him by author-playwright Paul Gallico, was a story called Miss Underground, for which Gallico proposed they enroll the talents of refugee Emmerich Kalman, the famous Viennese composer. Larry liked it enough to set to work; with great energy he produced seventeen or eighteen lyrics. Joshua Logan always said Rodgers was a superlative editor of Hart's work. Perhaps that was what was missing here.

Theresa Helburn was initially uncertain about whether to treat Green Grow the Lilacs as a “cowboy play” with songs by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Tex Ritter, as something aspiring to higher artistic status (music by Aaron Copland or Roy Harris), or somewhere in between. Richard Rodgers also needed to deal with his longtime but collapsing partnership with Lorenz Hart. Even after Helburn had fixed on Rodgers and Hammerstein, in summer 1942, there were important decisions to be made about the director (eventually, it was Rouben Mamoulian), choreographer (Agnes de Mille, chosen because of her work on Copland’s Rodeo), and the casting of the show. The Guild approached various Hollywood stars (Deanna Durbin, Groucho Marx, Anthony Quinn, Shirley Temple) but took a different path in the end. No less troublesome was how to generate the large amount of money needed to get a musical onto the stage.

Fly with Me opened in the Grand Ballroom of the Astor Hotel on Times Square on March 1920, and got some rave reviews. Much more important, however, it convinced Lew Fields that Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart had real talent. To their further astonishment, he told them he was so impressed with their work he wanted them to write the score of his next Broadway show. What he did not tell them was that he was in deep trouble. The new show, which was to be called Poor Little Ritz Girl, was booked to open its Boston tryout on May 28, and Fields had already ditched one score. He shrewdly figured that Rodgers and Hart — just a couple of college kids, after all — would be so thrilled at the idea of writing a Broadway score they would not read the small print in the contract; and he was right.

By the time Ziegfeld Follies opened at the Casino, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were enmeshed in not one but two musicals, destined to open within twenty-four hours of each other. They wasted no time getting back together with Herbert Fields. It looked like they were going to have a happy show, except: they didn't have a leading lady. Audition after unsuccessful audition was held; they were getting desperate, not only because they had to bring the show into New York in a month, but because while they were still writing it they were summoned by Florenz Ziegfeld and invited to write the score for his new show, Betsy. Since Larry's attitude toward the Great Ziegfeld was demonstrably short of awe, perhaps there was some other reason. An incident from the life of Sigmund Romberg may help to illuminate what actually happened.