There are recordings of revivals of the major shows, though: On Your Toes, Babes in Arms, The Boys from Syracuse, and Pal Joey.īut then, in the era of Rodgers & Hart, the individual songs are arguably more important than any show as a whole. The cast album as we know it today was not yet common during Hart's career, so there are no complete recordings of the original productions most of his shows. Hart died on November 22, 1943, of pneumonia caused by exposure after another round of heavy drinking. He pulled himself together long enough to write a few songs with Rodgers for a revival of their 1929 show A Connecticut Yankee, including his last song, "To Keep My Love Alive." He began drinking even more heavily, and his periodic disappearances became longer and more frequent. He had lived with her since the death of his father some years earlier, and was devastated by the loss. There were reports in mid-1942 that Hart, Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein would be working on a new musical together, but Hart dropped out of the project, which became the first in a string of successful Rodgers & Hammerstein shows, Oklahoma! The last new Rodgers & Hart musical was 1942's By Jupiter. By all accounts, he was harshly self-critical, and saw himself as an unlovable man, condemned to an unhappy life of solitude. He was homosexual in an era when that was not accepted, and he was unusually short, not quite five feet tall. Hart had always struggled with alcoholism and depression. He also began drinking heavily, occasionally disappearing for several days at a time on alcoholic binges. He threw much of his money into socializing, throwing large parties. Their best work for the movies, Love Me Tonight, stars Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette McDonald, and introduced the songs "Isn't It Romantic?" and "Lover."īetween Hollywood and Broadway, it was estimated that Hart was earning $60,000 a year in the early 1930s, quite a sum during the Great Depression.
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Hart and Rodgers also ventured into Hollywood for a few years, writing scores to several movie musicals. Perhaps their most impressive achievement was 1937's Babes in Arms, which included the enduring standards "Where or When," "I Wish I Were in Love Again," "My Funny Valentine," and "Johnny One Note." And that was just Act I you had to wait until after intermission for "The Lady Is a Tramp." Their best work came in the late 1930s, when their shows included On Your Toes, The Boys from Syracuse, and Pal Joey.
Over the next fifteen years, Rodgers and Hart wrote more than two dozen Broadway musicals. The Garrick Gaieties was a revue, an evening of songs and sketches that commented on and parodied the issues of the day the enduring song from this score was "Manhattan." They wrote another set of songs for a 1926 edition of the Gaieties "Mountain Greenery" was the standout of that set. They continued to place songs in Broadway shows for a few years, and in 1925, had their first success as the sole writers of a musical. In this era, it wasn't unusual for shows to include songs by several different writers, and the now-forgotten musical A Little Romeo featured their song "Any Old Place With You." Their first efforts were for student and other amateur productions, but by the end of the year, they had their first song on Broadway.
In 1919, Hart met Richard Rodgers, and they began writing songs together.
Hart spoke German well enough that his first job in the theater was translating German plays into English for the Shubert brothers, who were among the major theatrical producers of the era. Hart's parents were German Jewish immigrants. Hart was one of the great lyricists of the 1930s with his composing partner, Richard Rodgers, he wrote dozens of songs that have become popular standards.
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