Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer certainly loved those musical biography films. The Arthur Freed unit there produced films about Rodgers&Hart, Jerome Kern, and Sigmund Romberg and managed not to tell the real story about any of them. But Arthur Freed shouldn't feel too bad because over at Warner Brothers they did one for Cole Porter starring Cary Grant and hardly got that one right either.
I suppose the reason Mickey Rooney was cast as Lorenz Hart was that he was short and a bundle of energy. They gave him some big black cigars to smoke which Hart was known to do and it seemed a natural and it was as far as it went.
But back in 1948 gay was a complete taboo on the screen and society in general. You just did not talk about it. Larry Hart was gay and that was the cross society made him bear during his life in more homophobic times. Like so many others he probably felt cursed.
The Betty Garrett character here is based on Vivienne Segal who was the leading lady in many Rodgers&Hart shows. Hart in fact did propose marriage to her on many occasions. My guess is that he thought Vivienne might 'cure' him. Vivienne being the wise woman she was, said no every time.
Many years ago when I lived in Brooklyn roughly in the early Eighties, I knew a man who would have been in his late sixties then. He was a chorus boy back in the early forties and was involved with Larry Hart. What information I had about Hart came from a biography of Richard Rodgers by David Ewen written in the middle fifties. My friend's name was Frank and he told me about places like the Luxor Baths and a bar called Ralph's. They were mentioned in passing in Ewen's book, but Frank mentioned to me that the Luxor Baths was a really ritzy place for upper class gay men and Ralph's was a known gay bar that catered to the gay show business crowd. Frank carried Larry Hart all barely five feet of him, stinking drunk out of those places many nights.
What would Larry Hart think of the gay rights movement if he were alive and over 110 now? I think he'd welcome it, but probably be a little jealous that Cole Porter and Noel Coward are now such gay icons and he is not.
The film itself does not even keep any kind of chronology in the same way that these others do. The show names are barely mentioned and the songs are sung completely out of chronological order. Tom Drake is a rather bland Rodgers, probably deliberately so to keep the focus on the Hart character. Janet Leigh is given little to do, but look supportive and kind as Dorothy Feiner Rodgers. Marshall Thompson plays Herbert Fields who wrote the book on a number of Rodgers&Hart shows and it is true that he introduced the team to each other.
The musical numbers however are in Hart's own words, swell, witty and grand. Perry Como sang great, but this was his last film, he was to score his great success in that new medium that was making its debut. Ann Sothern, June Allyson, and Lena Horne all sung those Rodgers&Hart songs each in their inimitable style. This film proved to be the last teaming of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney as they sang I Wish I Were in Love Again and then Judy sang Johnny One Note as a solo.
That by the way is an example of the bad chronology here. Rodgers and Hart were in Hollywood in the first half of the Thirties and Judy herself and arrived there until the second half. She was still in vaudeville as the youngest of the Gumm Sisters then and if she were to be dueting with Larry Hart he would have been in his late thirties and Judy would have been about 12.
What is true is the reason why Rodgers and Hart broke up and the manner of his death. For whatever reason Hart was drinking and partying, he started to do that more and more and would not and then could not sit down to work. The witty and romantic lyrics stopped pouring from him. Dick Rodgers got an offer to do a show with Oscar Hammerstein, II and he took it. Larry Hart did see the opening of Oklahoma and did go out and get totally snoggered and caught pneumonia and died. His body had been substance abused and he lost his will to create. What you see in Words and Music about that is completely accurate.
Now that Cole Porter got a truer portrait of himself done by Kevin Kline though hardly in a straight biographical narrative form, maybe someone will do Larry Hart's tragic story about a man who wrote some of the most beautiful poetry of the last century.
I suppose the reason Mickey Rooney was cast as Lorenz Hart was that he was short and a bundle of energy. They gave him some big black cigars to smoke which Hart was known to do and it seemed a natural and it was as far as it went.
But back in 1948 gay was a complete taboo on the screen and society in general. You just did not talk about it. Larry Hart was gay and that was the cross society made him bear during his life in more homophobic times. Like so many others he probably felt cursed.
The Betty Garrett character here is based on Vivienne Segal who was the leading lady in many Rodgers&Hart shows. Hart in fact did propose marriage to her on many occasions. My guess is that he thought Vivienne might 'cure' him. Vivienne being the wise woman she was, said no every time.
Many years ago when I lived in Brooklyn roughly in the early Eighties, I knew a man who would have been in his late sixties then. He was a chorus boy back in the early forties and was involved with Larry Hart. What information I had about Hart came from a biography of Richard Rodgers by David Ewen written in the middle fifties. My friend's name was Frank and he told me about places like the Luxor Baths and a bar called Ralph's. They were mentioned in passing in Ewen's book, but Frank mentioned to me that the Luxor Baths was a really ritzy place for upper class gay men and Ralph's was a known gay bar that catered to the gay show business crowd. Frank carried Larry Hart all barely five feet of him, stinking drunk out of those places many nights.
What would Larry Hart think of the gay rights movement if he were alive and over 110 now? I think he'd welcome it, but probably be a little jealous that Cole Porter and Noel Coward are now such gay icons and he is not.
The film itself does not even keep any kind of chronology in the same way that these others do. The show names are barely mentioned and the songs are sung completely out of chronological order. Tom Drake is a rather bland Rodgers, probably deliberately so to keep the focus on the Hart character. Janet Leigh is given little to do, but look supportive and kind as Dorothy Feiner Rodgers. Marshall Thompson plays Herbert Fields who wrote the book on a number of Rodgers&Hart shows and it is true that he introduced the team to each other.
The musical numbers however are in Hart's own words, swell, witty and grand. Perry Como sang great, but this was his last film, he was to score his great success in that new medium that was making its debut. Ann Sothern, June Allyson, and Lena Horne all sung those Rodgers&Hart songs each in their inimitable style. This film proved to be the last teaming of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney as they sang I Wish I Were in Love Again and then Judy sang Johnny One Note as a solo.
That by the way is an example of the bad chronology here. Rodgers and Hart were in Hollywood in the first half of the Thirties and Judy herself and arrived there until the second half. She was still in vaudeville as the youngest of the Gumm Sisters then and if she were to be dueting with Larry Hart he would have been in his late thirties and Judy would have been about 12.
What is true is the reason why Rodgers and Hart broke up and the manner of his death. For whatever reason Hart was drinking and partying, he started to do that more and more and would not and then could not sit down to work. The witty and romantic lyrics stopped pouring from him. Dick Rodgers got an offer to do a show with Oscar Hammerstein, II and he took it. Larry Hart did see the opening of Oklahoma and did go out and get totally snoggered and caught pneumonia and died. His body had been substance abused and he lost his will to create. What you see in Words and Music about that is completely accurate.
Now that Cole Porter got a truer portrait of himself done by Kevin Kline though hardly in a straight biographical narrative form, maybe someone will do Larry Hart's tragic story about a man who wrote some of the most beautiful poetry of the last century.