Лоренц Харт: Американдық лирик және «Роджерс пен Харт» дуэтінің жартысы

American lyricist

Lorenz Milton Hart (May 2, 1895 – November 22, 1943) was an American lyricist and half of the Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart. Some of his more famous lyrics include "Blue Moon"; "The Lady Is a Tramp"; "Manhattan"; "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"; and "My Funny Valentine".

Hart was born in Harlem, New York City, the elder of two sons, to Jewish immigrant parents, Max M. and Frieda (Isenberg) Hart, of German background. 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.) 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. 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." 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 worsening mental state; Hart would admit he had difficulty writing a musical for such a rural setting as Oklahoma and departed, leaving an eager Hammerstein (whose own songwriting partner Jerome Kern had no interest in the project) 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. Hart had taken off the night of the opening and was gone for two days. He was found ill in a hotel room and taken to Doctors Hospital, Upper East Side, but died within a few days. and his lyrics have often been praised for their wit and technical sophistication. 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."

Hart lived with his widowed mother. He had alcoholism, and would sometimes disappear and be gone for weeks at a time on alcoholic 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 a breakup of their partnership in 1943 before his death. Rodgers then began collaborating with Oscar Hammerstein II. Devastated by the death of his mother seven months earlier, Hart died in New York City of pneumonia from exposure on November 22, 1943, after drinking heavily. His remains are buried in Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens County, New York.

The circumstances of Lorenz 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 in the film by Betty Garrett) who turns down his marriage proposal.