Richard Linklater's film about the superb lyricist Lorenz (Larry) Hart stars Ethan Hawke and is a tour de force for theater aficionados. Hart provided lyrics for a host of Broadway musical shows with Richard Rodgers composing the music. These included The Boys From Syracuse, A Connecticut Yankee, Babes in Arms, On Your Toes, and Hallelujah, I'm a Bum. He's probably best remembered, however, for the many songs for which he penned the lyrics, mostly with Rodgers doing the music: "Blue Moon"; "The Lady Is a Tramp"; "Manhattan"; "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"; "We'll Take Manhattan"; "Mountain Greenery"; and "My Funny Valentine."
Hart's own story--which is portrayed in the movie--was not all that happy. He and Rodgers met at Columbia where they worked on several college shows and then hit Broadway with The Garrick Gaieties. Hart was short and always had trouble dealing with that: he never married and became an alcoholic, which led to Rodgers dropping him as a partner and then replacing him with Oscar Hammerstein II, who, when paired with Rodgers, produced a series of tremendously successful musicals, beginning with Oklahoma! That opening night in 1943 provides the setting for 'Blue Moon' the movie. Hart has arrived early for the opening night party at Sardi's and takes up his position at the bar, vowing not to drink but eventually having a few.
Hart had become too unreliable to work with Rodgers on Oklahoma! but the book was much too corny and sentimental for his rapier wit and highly sophisticated words. He likely was concealing some jealousy at the party but he had predicted that the show would be a great success and run indefinitely--it ended up capturing the prize of longest-running musical on Broadway, which it held until succeeded by several later blockbusters.
Aside from the book, which suited Hammerstein's somewhat corny and sentimental side--indeed, recent productions of Oklahoma! have returned to the darker theme of the drama which was the musical's source: Lynn Riggs's Green Grow the Lilacs--, the show was the first to advance the plot through the songs as well as dance, choreographed by Agnes DeMille. This kind of show was anathema to Hart--even if he hadn't been drowning in booze. During the movie, Rodgers expresses interest in working on a project with Hart but warns him that he had better be "professional", i.e., come into the office at 9 A.M. like the rest of the working world.
Hart remains a star member of the small group of clever, witty lyricists on Broadway: Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, E.Y. (Yip) Harburg, but he likely was already feeling that postwar America was more attuned to Hammerstein's comparatively cornball creations. Rodgers was easily able to write his fabulous melodies for either wordsmith; he even produced an instruments-only masterpiece--the background music for the TV series on WWII naval battles, Victory at Sea.
Cole Porter did come back after the war with a success, Kiss Me, Kate, but he was in a different line because he was, like Irving Berlin, one of the rare Broadway figures who wrote both his own words ad music. He demonstrated with Kate that he could also produce a musical that was more than a string of songs by designing the complicated format of a play within a play, the original of course provided by Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. Ira Gershwin was devastated by the early death of his brilliant brother and partner, George, in 1938. But Ira did team up some years later with Kurt Weill to give us Lady in the Dark, which took on the rare topic of psychoanalysis but had room for both Danny Kaye's memorable tour de force, "Tchaikovsky" and Ira's clever "Story of Jennie."
Would Hart have similarly adjusted his focus had he come back from his alcoholism? We'll never know, but one of the later Rodgers & Hart shows as the dramatic Pal Joey, drawn from John O'Hara's New Yorker stories about a total heel, until then not considered a fit subject for Broadway musicals. True, some critics wouldn't buy it, including the Times's Brooks Atkinson showed his limitations by being unable to get past opining that sweet water couldn't be drawn from a poisoned well. Whatever, Pal Joey was no mere string of songs, even if the wonderful "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" gets more than one reprise.
Hart receives his due in Linklater's film, which is fitting in view of the delight his lyrics brought to the Broadway stage. And we might note that the story of a man who passed on 82 years ago is itself a tribute to his continuing presence in the songs he wrote that we still enjoy.
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