Lorenz Hart turned Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee into song

Person: Lorenz Hart
Lived: 1895–1943
Field: Broadway lyricist
From: American

The story

Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers made their name in 1925 with The Garrick Gaieties, a Theatre Guild revue that gave them their first major hit song, 'Manhattan'. Over the next two years they wrote a run of successful shows, deliberately choosing varied subjects so they would not be typecast. In 1927, working again with the librettist Herbert Fields and his father, the producer Lew Fields, they adapted Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court for Broadway.

In the musical, a young man in 1920s Connecticut is knocked out by his jealous fiancée and dreams that he is at the court of King Arthur, where he is nicknamed Sir Boss and sets about modernising Camelot with telephones and radios. The show opened at the Vanderbilt Theatre on 3 November 1927, with dances by Busby Berkeley, and ran for 421 performances. EBSCO's biography of Hart says it confirmed his pre-eminence as a lyricist.

In songs such as 'Thou Swell', Hart mixed Shakespearean words with New York slang and New England cadences, showing his ear for language and dialect. In 'My Heart Stood Still' he proved he could also write simple, tender love ballads. The show demonstrated that Hart was far more than a clever rhymer, and its songs, which also included 'On a Desert Island with Thee', became lasting favourites.

Sixteen years later, in 1943, Rodgers proposed a revival. The show was updated to a wartime setting, and Hart wrote new lyrics for many of the songs, along with six new numbers, including 'To Keep My Love Alive', written for the star Vivienne Segal as the sorceress Morgan Le Fay. The revival opened on 17 November 1943 at the Martin Beck Theatre, and it contained Hart's last lyrics. He died five days later, on 22 November.

The revival ran for 135 performances, and a recording was released by Decca in 1944. The show was later adapted for television in 1955 and presented in concert by New York City Center Encores! in 2001. It framed Hart's career, from the early triumph that established him to the witty farewell he wrote at the end.

Why it matters

A Connecticut Yankee brought a classic of American literature to the musical stage and gave the songbook enduring standards such as 'Thou Swell' and 'My Heart Stood Still'.

About Lorenz Hart

Lyricist of Rodgers and Hart, whose witty, rueful words for “Blue Moon” “My Funny Valentine” and “The Lady Is a Tramp” helped make the Broadway song an art form.

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Lorenz Hart

1895–1943 · Broadway lyricist

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