ABSTRACT
Lorenz Milton Hart was born May 2, 1895, in the Lower East Side of New York City. Besides Lorenz, or Larry, as he was called, the Harts had one other child, Theodore Van Wyck Hart, who as Teddy Hart became a well-known actor in theatrical comedy. When Hart was twenty-three and Richard Rodgers sixteen, a friend brought the two together to work on a fund-raising benefit. A Connecticut Yankee confirmed Hart's preeminence as a lyricist. As the Depression began to ease, Rodgers and Hart returned to Broadway to write the songs for Billy Rose's Jumbo (1935), including 'The Most Beautiful Girl in the World', 'Little Girl Blue', and 'My Romance'. The first musical-comedy lyricist to receive equal billing with the composer, Hart was among a small group of early musical-comedy writers who led the way in combining diverse theatrical traditions of romance, spectacle, satire, and musical revue into a distinctly American art form.
