- Person
- Lorenz Hart
- Lived
- 1895–1943
- Field
- Broadway lyricist
- From
- American
The story
Lorenz Hart was born in New York City in 1895 to German Jewish immigrant parents and traced his descent through his mother to the German poet Heinrich Heine. He studied at Columbia, including two years at its School of Journalism, and worked translating German plays for the Shubert brothers. In 1919 he was introduced to Richard Rodgers, a fellow New Yorker from a Jewish family who was then still in high school. The two formed one of the great songwriting partnerships of the twentieth century.
Between 1919 and Hart's death in 1943 they worked on 28 stage musicals and more than 500 songs. Their 1925 revue The Garrick Gaieties, produced for the Theatre Guild, made their name and introduced 'Manhattan'. From 1925 to 1931 they had fifteen scores on Broadway. After a spell writing for Hollywood films in the early 1930s, they returned with Jumbo in 1935 and wrote a string of hits including On Your Toes, Babes in Arms, The Boys from Syracuse and Pal Joey, often called their masterpiece. In 1938 Time magazine put them on its cover.
They believed that monotony was killing the musical and that songwriters must integrate story, lyrics and music. They based shows on Mark Twain and Shakespeare, satirised a sitting president, and brought George Balanchine's ballets into musical comedy, most famously with 'Slaughter on Tenth Avenue' in On Your Toes (1936).
Hart's lyrics were witty, intricately rhymed and often tinged with melancholy, capturing the moods of urban life between the wars. PBS calls him perhaps even more than Cole Porter the voice of the city generation that came of age between 1919 and 1941. Songs such as 'Blue Moon', 'Manhattan', 'Thou Swell', 'My Funny Valentine', 'The Lady Is a Tramp' and 'Little Girl Blue' remain standards sung by generations of performers.
Their catalogue has been embraced especially by jazz and cabaret artists. Ella Fitzgerald recorded a celebrated Rodgers and Hart songbook album, and 'Blue Moon' reached number one in two different decades. After Hart's death Rodgers went on to his partnership with Oscar Hammerstein II, but the songs he wrote with Hart remain a central part of the Great American Songbook.
Why it matters
Hart's lyrics helped turn Broadway songs into lasting art, and the Rodgers and Hart catalogue remains a core part of the Great American Songbook.
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.
More about Lorenz Hart
- One Hart show gave the world 'My Funny Valentine'Babes in Arms (1937) alone gave the world 'My Funny Valentine', 'The Lady Is a Tramp', 'Where or When' and 'Johnny One-Note'.
- Lorenz Hart helped bring Shakespeare to musical comedyRodgers and Hart's The Boys from Syracuse (1938), based on The Comedy of Errors, was a pioneering Shakespeare adaptation for musical comedy.
- Lorenz Hart turned Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee into songRodgers and Hart's A Connecticut Yankee (1927), based on Mark Twain's novel, confirmed Hart as a leading lyricist; he revised it as his final work.
- Lorenz Hart pioneered the conversational song lyricLorenz Hart was among the first lyricists to use polysyllabic rhyme for wit and insight and to write in a natural, conversational voice.
- Lorenz Hart wrote 'Isn't It Romantic?' for the moviesIn Hollywood in the early 1930s, Lorenz Hart wrote film songs including 'Isn't It Romantic?' for Maurice Chevalier, as well as 'Lover' and 'Blue Moon'.
- Hart's I'd Rather Be Right satirised a sitting presidentRodgers and Hart's 1937 musical I'd Rather Be Right took the unprecedented step of satirising an American president still in office.
- Lorenz Hart's Pal Joey triumphed when revived in 1952Pal Joey (1940), the first musical with unromanticised realism, won the New York Drama Critics Award when revived in 1952.
Sources
- Lorenz Hart PBS, Broadway: The American Musical
- Rodgers and Hart Wikipedia
- Lorenz Hart Wikipedia
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