Greetings from East Arlington, MA — just outside of Boston in the USA!
Today I am featuring a beautiful song with lyrics by Lorenz Hart and music by Richard Rodgers.
As this TIME Magazine cover attests, they were a very potent musical and cultural force in the early-middle 20th century.
And I am very happy that a recent movie — BLUE MOON (made by the wonderful director Richard Linklater and starring Ethan Hawke as Larry Hart) — has renewed interest in Hart’s life and musical legacy.
It turns out that BLUE MOON was a decade-long labor of love which was filmed on a beautifully re-created version of Sardi’s — a famous bar/restaurant in Manhattan’s theatre district.
And I once wrote a blog post about two of his and Rodgers’ hit songs — “You Took Advantage Of Me” and “I Could Write A Book” — which you can read by clicking here.
Not mentioned in the BLUE MOON movie is how devoted Hart was to his mother — with whom he lived his entire life.
Hart’s mother died around the same time that OKLAHOMA (the first musical his decades-long collaborator Rodgers created with another lyricist — their mutual friend Oscar Hammerstein II) opened on Broadway.
So he was grieving this huge familial loss simultaneously with the at-least-partial loss of his friendship AND professional relationship with Rodgers.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
And I had forgotten (until I re-read my blog post from ten years ago) that Mr. Hart had also begun a collaboration about underground freedom fighters in France with a composer who had recently escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe.
So, as an American-born Jew whose parents had emigrated to NYC in the late 19th century from Germany, he also may have also been feeling a significant amount of grief, rage, despair, terror, and “there but for the grace of G-d” empathy for the millions of Jews still remaining in Europe.
And let’s not forget that American Nazis were holding huge rallies at places like Madison Square Garden during this time as well!
Yet another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
I don’t know how much it was public knowledge that LGBTQ folks were being sent to Nazi death camps, but I am guessing that theater people — such as composer Kurt Weill, who had managed to escape from Berlin to Paris to Manhattan — had plenty of heart-breaking anecdotes to share about the fates of their previous artistic partners who happened to be LGBTQ and/or Jewish and/or Roma.
All of this was also not mentioned in BLUE MOON. although Mr. Hawke and Mr. Linklater and some of the other actors such as Andrew Scott apparently did a lot of research before they began filming the movie — so I am guessing that they had most/all of this information influencing the subtexts of their acting performances.
And another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
There are certainly some powerful parallels with what was happening leading up to Larry’s death in 1943 and what is currently unfolding here in the USA.
One thing I wrote about in my blog post from ten years ago — and which BLUE MOON does explore — is the paradox of Larry Hart (a somewhat closeted gay man) falling in love with and proposing to women.
And the song “Falling In Love With Love” may illuminate some of Hart’s thoughts and feeling on this topic/phenomenon/tendency.
What do YOU think?
Thank you to Doug Hammer for his exquisite piano playing and comprehensive production skills.
Thank you to John Childress (and his collaborator at the time named Laurel, I think…) for taking this photo many years ago when I still had plenty of hair.
amusicalifeonplanetearth 