Lorenz Hart

Life and career

Hart was born in Harlem, New York City, the elder of two sons, to German Jewish immigrant parents, Max M. and Frieda (née Isenberg) Hart. Through his mother, he was a great-grandnephew of the German poet Heinrich Heine. His father, a business promoter, sent Hart and his brother to private schools. (His brother, Teddy Hart, also went into theatre and became a musical comedy star. Teddy Hart's wife, Dorothy Hart, wrote a biography of Lorenz Hart.)

Hart’s exposure to theater began through his parents who took him to Yiddish and German theater productions in New York. When they were old enough, Hart and his brother Theodore (Teddy) attended the theater on their own. Precociously well read, he published poems and fiction in student publications and at summer camp wrote comedic revues for fellow campers.

Hart received his early education from Columbia Grammar School and entered Columbia College in 1913 and graduated in 1918. From 1914 to 1916, he also spent two years at Columbia University School of Journalism. While he had no special interest in becoming a journalist, he was drawn to the school's steady requirement of writing. While at Columbia, he also took a class in dramatic technique.

By 1918, Hart was working for the Shubert brothers, partners in theatre, translating German play songs into English. In 1919 a friend introduced him to Richard Rodgers, and the two joined forces to write songs for a series of amateur and student productions. That year, his and Rodgers' song "Any Old Place With You" was included in the Broadway musical comedy A Lonely Romeo. In 1920, six of their songs were used in the musical comedy Poor Little Ritz Girl, which also had music by Sigmund Romberg. They were hired to write the score for the 1925 Theatre Guild production The Garrick Gaieties, the success of which brought them acclaim.

Rodgers and Hart subsequently wrote the music and lyrics for 26 Broadway musicals during a partnership of more than 20 years that ended shortly before Hart's death. Their "big four" were Babes in Arms, The Boys from Syracuse, Pal Joey, and On Your Toes. The Rodgers and Hart songs have been described as intimate and destined for long lives outside the theater. Many of their songs are standard repertoire for singers and jazz instrumentalists. Hart has been called "the expressive bard of the urban generation which matured during the interwar years". But the "encomiums suggest[ing] that Larry Hart was a poet" caused his friend and fellow writer Henry Myers to state otherwise. "Larry in particular was primarily a showman. If you can manage to examine his songs technically, and for the moment elude their spell, you will see that they are all meant to be acted, that they are part of a play. Larry was a playwright."

Rodgers and Hart wrote music and lyrics for several films, including Love Me Tonight (1932), The Phantom President (1932), Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (1933), and Mississippi (1935). With their successes, during the Great Depression Hart was earning $60,000 annually, and he became a magnet for many people. He gave numerous large parties. Beginning in 1938, he traveled more often and suffered from his ongoing drinking. Nevertheless, Rodgers and Hart continued working together through mid-1942, with their final new musical being 1942's By Jupiter.

The New York Times reported on July 23, 1942: "The Theatre Guild announced yesterday that Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II will soon begin work on a musical version of Lynn Riggs's folk-play, Green Grow the Lilacs, which the Guild produced for sixty-four performances at the Guild Theatre in 1931." Rodgers had brought Hammerstein onto the project due to Hart's skepticism that the play could be adapted into a musical. Hart would admit he had difficulty writing a musical for such a rural setting as Oklahoma. He wasn't alone in this assessment. Jerome Kern who'd also been offered it as a musical project, was equally doubtful that the play, which had run only 64 performances, would succeed as a musical. Disappointed at Hart's refusal, Rodgers turned to Oscar Hammerstein. Complicating this was Hart's worsening mental state and the exhaustion he felt following his work on the show By Jupiter. This left an eager Hammerstein to complete what would eventually become Oklahoma!. Rodgers and Hammerstein would continue collaborating for 16 years (ending in Hammerstein's death in 1960), a partnership that made the duo one of the most successful composing teams of the 20th century.

Hart, meanwhile, was much affected by his mother's death in late April 1943. Regrouping somewhat, Rodgers and Hart teamed a final time in the fall of 1943 for a revival of A Connecticut Yankee. Six new numbers, including "To Keep My Love Alive", were written for this reworked version of the play; it would prove to be Hart's last lyric.

Lyrical style

According to Thomas Hischak, Hart "had a remarkable talent for polysyllabic and internal rhymes", and his lyrics have often been praised for their wit and technical sophistication.

Writer, composer and critic, Anthony Burgess singled out Hart as among the first to use polysyllabic rhyme not to be humorous but as a source of wit and insight: "wit in the service of frustration or neurosis." In Burgess' view, Hart was also among the early practitioners of a more colloquial, conversational style of lyric writing for musical theater: "The effect is of a very conversational declaration, which by the happiest of accidents, has rhymes in it."

According to The New York Times music critic Stephen Holden, "Many of Hart's ballad lyrics conveyed a heart-stopping sadness that reflected his conviction that he was physically too unattractive to be lovable." Holden also noted that "In his lyrics, as in his life, Hart stands as a compellingly lonely figure. Although he wrote dozens of songs that are playful, funny and filled with clever wordplay, it is the rueful vulnerability beneath their surface that lends them a singular poignancy."

Personal life and death

Hart lived with his widowed mother Frieda. He was an alcoholic, and would sometimes disappear for weeks at a time on drinking binges.

Hart experienced depression and sadness throughout his life. His erratic behavior was often the cause of friction between him and Rodgers and led to Rodgers teaming with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II in 1942. On March 31, 1943, Hart attended the Broadway premiere of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!. Then Hart put in a brief appearance at the opening night party at Sardi's where he told Rodgers, "This is one of the greatest shows I've ever seen, and it'll be playing twenty years from now!" He left with his mother immediately afterwards, saying she was tired.

In April 1943, Hart was devastated by the loss of his mother and did not recover emotionally.

Many of Hart's contemporaries who knew him socially have stated he was a discreet homosexual, with a reputation as a voyeur, though his friends did not go into detail about people he watched or mention their genders.

Robert Gottlieb wrote in the April 2013 edition of The Atlantic magazine, There were rumors about Larry [Lorenz Hart] while he was alive, but nothing about his sexuality ever appeared in print. One night in Los Angeles, in 1933, someone from a Hollywood trade magazine approached Dick [Richard Rodgers] at a party and said, "I've got to ask you something about Larry ... Is it true Larry's a fairy?" Dick grabbed him by the collar, [biographer Gary] Marmorstein recounts, and said, "I never heard that. And if you print it, I'll kill you."

Though Richard Rodgers became celebrated for his music for Oklahoma! in 1943, later that year he decided that he and Hart should reunite and create a revival of A Connecticut Yankee, their successful musical from 1927. Hart composed new lyrics for many of the songs in anticipation of the revival's November 17, 1943, premiere at the Martin Beck Theatre.

At the theater on opening night, Hart showed up drunk in the audience. His condition was noticed by his sister-in-law. She persuaded him to accompany her to her Manhattan home. Sometime after they arrived, Hart left, venturing into cold weather to resume drinking. A friend of Hart's found him sitting on the curb in front of a bar that he favored on Manhattan's Eighth Avenue. Hart was shivering, and his friend accompanied him to a hospital, where it was determined that Hart had developed pneumonia from exposure. On November 22, 1943, approximately four days after admission to the hospital, Hart died.

Hart is buried in Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens County, New York.

In popular culture

The circumstances of Hart's life were heavily altered and romanticized in the 1948 MGM biopic Words and Music, with fictitious personal details such as changing his sexual orientation and attributing his erratic behavior and depression to an obsession with a woman, played by Betty Garrett, who turns down his marriage proposal.

In 2025, the film Blue Moon was released. It is set during Hart's last days, mostly around Sardi’s Restaurant on March 31, 1943, on the opening night of Oklahoma!. Written by Robert Kaplow, the film is directed by Richard Linklater and stars Ethan Hawke as Hart, alongside Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, and Andrew Scott as Rodgers. The film had its world premiere at the main competition of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, on 18 February 2025, where it won the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance for Scott. It received two nominations for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical for Hawke and Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy at the 83rd Golden Globe Awards. Blue Moon received a widespread release on October 24, 2025.

Selected stage works

• 1920 Fly with Me
• 1920 Poor Little Ritz Girl
• 1925 The Garrick Gaieties
• 1925 Dearest Enemy
• 1926 The Girl Friend
• 1926 Peggy-Ann
• 1926 The Garrick Gaieties (2nd Edition)
• 1927 A Connecticut Yankee, based on the Mark Twain novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
• 1928 Present Arms
• 1930 *Simple Simon *
• 1935 Jumbo
• 1936 On Your Toes
• 1937 Babes in Arms
• 1937 I’d Rather Be Right
• 1938 The Boys from Syracuse, based on William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors
• 1938 I Married an Angel
• 1939 Too Many Girls
• 1940 Higher and Higher
• 1940 Pal Joey, based on John O'Hara's novel Pal Joey
• 1942 By Jupiter

Notable songs

• "A Ship Without a Sail"
• "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"
• "Blue Moon"
• "Blue Room"
• "Dancing on the Ceiling"
• "Falling in Love with Love"
• "Glad to Be Unhappy"
• "Have You Met Miss Jones?"
• "He Was Too Good to Me"
• "I Could Write a Book"
• "I Didn't Know What Time It Was"
• "I Wish I Were in Love Again"
• "I'll Tell the Man in the Street"
• "I've Got Five Dollars"
• "Isn't It Romantic?"
• "It Never Entered My Mind"
• "It's Easy to Remember"
• "Johnny One Note"
• "Little Girl Blue"
• "Lover"
• "Manhattan"
• "Mountain Greenery"
• "My Funny Valentine"
• "My Heart Stood Still"
• "My Romance"
• "Sing for Your Supper"
• "Spring Is Here"
• "Ten Cents a Dance"
• "The Lady Is a Tramp"
• "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"
• "There's a Small Hotel"
• "This Can't Be Love"
• "Thou Swell"
• "To Keep My Love Alive"
• "Wait till You See Her"
• "Where or When"
• "With a Song in My Heart"
• "You Took Advantage of Me"

References

References

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2. Hollander, Jason. (May 16, 2001). "Varsity Show's 107th Production: A Modern Spectacle That Evokes Rich Tradition".
3. Mooney, Hughson. (2004). "Lorenz Hart".
4. "Lorenz Hart".
5. (June 2006). "Another Op'nin', Another Show: 15 Broadway Favorites for Solo Singers". Alfred Music Publishing.
6. Nolan, Frederick. (1995). "Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway". [[Oxford University Press]].
7. (2004). "Broadway: The American Musical". Bullfinch Press.
8. Layne, Joslyn. "Lorenz Hart Biography".
9. Nolan, Frederick. (2002). "The Sound of Their Music: The Story of Rodgers and Hammerstein". Applause Books.
10. Hischak, Thomas. (2007). "The Rodgers and Hammerstein Encyclopedia". Greenwood Publishing Group.
11. (1983). "This man and music". McGraw-Hill.
12. Holden, Stephen. (January 6, 1999). "Television Review: Thou Rodgers, Thou Hart, So Fizzy, So Smart". [[The New York Times]].
13. Holden, Stephen. (April 30, 1995). "Pop View: Just a Sap For Sugar, Love And Sorrow". [[The New York Times]].
14. Gottlieb, Robert. (April 1, 2013). "Rodgers and Hart's Dysfunctional Partnership".
15. Nolan, p. 2.
16. Wilson, Scott. (2016). "Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons". McFarland & Company, Inc.
17. (November 25, 1943). "Larry Hart Honored by 300 at Rites Here — Cast of 'A Connecticut Yankee' at Song Writer's Funeral". [[The New York Times]].
18. "Words and Music (1948)".
19. Vlessing, Etan. (2024-06-18). "Richard Linklater's 'Blue Moon' Lands at Sony Pictures Classics".
20. Ntim, Zac. (2025-02-22). "Berlin Film Festival: Norwegian Film 'Dreams (Sex Love)' Wins Golden Bear, Andrew Scott & Rose Byrne Take Acting Honors — Full List".
21. Ryan, Patrick. (October 24, 2025). "'Blue Moon' tells the little-known true story of 'lost soul' Lorenz Hart". USA Today.