When I was growing up I thought all musicals were by Rodgers & Hammerstein. South Pacific, The King and I, The Sound of Music – these were the shows whose tunes my parents hummed and sang and when they were made into movies they took us to see them, usually at the drive-in because you never saw musicals on TV and we were too poor to go to live productions.
Later in life I came to learn that before Rodgers & Hammerstein there’d been a Rodgers & Hart. Their stuff was way before my time: Babes in Arms, On Your Toes – never heard of them. I’d heard of Pal Joey, but if asked about A Connecticut Yankee I would have said it was a book by Mark Twain (full title A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur.)
Until I saw Blue Moon I knew nothing about the rift between Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, or what drove composer Rodgers to choose a new lyricist in the person of Oscar Hammerstein.
It’s an interesting story, and kind of sad. The movie starts with Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) falling down drunk in the rain in a cold Manhattan street. This was in November 1943.
Flashback to March of that year and he’s attending the opening night of Oklahoma! with his mother. He rolls his eyes at the rhyming of ‘land’ with ‘grand’ in the title song. Way too obvious and corny for his taste. He leaves the theatre and heads for legendary New York showbiz hangout Sardi’s, where the after-party is to be held for the cast and crew of what turns out to be a massively successful debut for Rodgers & Hammerstein.
The rest of the movie follows the course of that evening, as Hart regales anyone who cares to listen with his opinions about Oklahoma! (he’s scornful about that exclamation mark) about songwriting, about musicals in general, and about the young woman (Margaret Qualley) he’s expecting to arrive soon and about whom he’s waxing romantically lyrical, which is curious because he was a gay man who still lived with his mother.
Those who care to listen include a sympathetic bartender (Bobby Cannavale) who knows about Hart’s alcoholism and is keeping a lid on it, a pianist (Jonah Lees) playing classics from the American songbook, and a quiet man in the corner who turns out to be the writer EB White, who says he’s about to take up writing children’s books. (He went on to write Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, the latter allegedly inspired by an anecdote Hart relates that night about a mouse.)
The bartender and the pianist are curious about this pretty, smart young object of Hart’s desire. Has he scored with her? He brushes off their prurient interest. It’s all about romance and mutual adoration. When she does turn up, it becomes clear it’s really about her ambition and his celebrity, of which she wants a piece along with an introduction to Rodgers.
Rodgers turns up eventually too, along with Oscar Hammerstein and the rest of the jubilant Oklahoma! crew. Hart zips his sarcasm and buttonholes Rodgers with a mixture of effusive congratulation and pathetic ingratiation. Rodgers is firm: he’s fed up with Hart’s alcoholic delinquency and he’s on a confident new path with Hammerstein, but out of respect for his old partner he offers him five songs for his new musical, a remake of A Connecticut Yankee.
Hart did end up writing those songs, but 8 months after the Oklahoma! debut he was dead from pneumonia, having resumed the heavy drinking which led to his fall in the rain in the cold Manhattan street.
Apart from the personal tragedy of his alcoholism and his then-unacceptable sexuality, Hart was a victim of changing tastes and fashions in music. The songs for which he is best known – My Funny Valentine, Manhattan, Blue Moon, The Lady Is a Tramp, Bewitched Bothered & Bewildered – were sophisticated and even edgy compared to the wholesome, corny optimism of any song you might pick from Oklahoma!, Carousel, The Sound of Music, The King and I or South Pacific. But that’s what the public wanted in the postwar years.
The supporting cast are all good, especially rising star Andrew Scott (he was creepily perfect in that noir version of The Talented Mr Ripley) who plays Rodgers, and Bobby Cannavale as the bartender.
But it’s Ethan Hawke’s Oscar-worthy turn as Lorenz Hart that makes the movie. Incidentally, Ethan Hawke is a tall fellow where Lorenz Hart didn’t even crack five feet. It’s quite marvellous how they manage to keep him small using sundry ingenious cinematic tricks. You can google those if you’re interested.
Blue Moon is not a conventional biopic. It’s very talky, and I could have done with the odd change of scene and a spot more action – no, I didn’t want a car chase – but I did wonder whether it was originally written as a stage play. (It wasn’t.).
Nevertheless, it’s a poignant and moving cinematic portrait of a brilliant songwriter whose career is on the slide and whose smart talk is a cover for his desperate yearnings: for recognition, for love, for control of the alcoholic demon.
I suspect Blue Moon will come to be regarded as a modern classic.