Oct 16, 2025
3 min read
The Lorenz Hart film contains references to Oklahoma!, Sardi's, Stephen Sondheim and many more.
Hollywood loves biopics - that's nothing new.Everyone from Elvis Presley to Malcolm X, Truman Capote and Ray Charles got the treatment.But I bet you've heard of all these people and probably have a pretty good idea of what they've done with their lives.
But in recent years, Hollywood has turned to Broadway for its latest forays into the world of biopics, like last year's Maestro with Leonard Bernstein.The latest Broadway legend to get the feature film treatment: lyricist Lorenz Hart, in the new film Blue Moon, in theaters October 24.
As a reader, you probably know Hart.The same cannot be said about the general public, who deny the marketability of burning interest from the very name itself.But if non-theatre nerds may not be familiar with Larry Hart, it's highly likely that they've at least heard of his work.Richard Rodgers, Hart's main collaborator, is best known today for his musicals he wrote with Oscar Hammerstein II, such as Oklahoma!, South Pacific and Carousel.But the Rodgers and Hart songbook includes many true American standards: "Blue Moon," "My Funny Valentine," "Isn't It Romantic?", "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered," and "My Romance," to name a few.
Link "The music was with me. The "novel" Novenius Pits Protobert Katinov changed into a feature film in 2008 L. Blue Moon began to show the capal sent to Link Belter. Linkbay remembers, "it is absolutely necessary.
To most people, Hart is a lesser-known name these days, including to some musical theater fans, largely because their musicals aren't heard much anymore, with few exceptions.They come from a school of musical theater that was very much associated with the worlds of vaudeville and variety entertainment, with much less emphasis on stories and dramaturgy than on pretty girls, funny jokes and hit songs.For better and worse, it made Rodgers and Hart's catalog much stronger today as just that - a collection of songs.
And indeed, that's why Hart proved a worthy subject for this biopic.O'Brien, who said of the image on the screen.
If you know the history of musical theater, you probably know why O'Brien was so enthusiastic about the idea.Opening night of Oklahoma!It must have been a fascinating time for Hart.The show was the first time Rodgers (played on screen by Fleabag's Andrew Scott) collaborated with another writer after his and Hart's long string of hits, and it was quite different from what he wrote with Hart.Rodgers and Hammerstein replaced Hart's wit and polite cynicism with something more serious and full of corn.But it was also a defining moment in the history of musical theater.Oklahoma!was revolutionary in many ways, and became the first musical to successfully merge the worlds of theater, opera and dance;All its elements came together for the development of the plot, a new concept for the world of musical theater when it premiered in 1943.
Oklahoma!It was less about girls and sequins than the heroine's existential crisis and inner turmoil, down to the elephant's eye in the corn.It would become one of Broadway's biggest hits, among the first real long-running juggernauts.And Roger did it with Hammerstein, not Hart."I remember Jack [O'Brien] talking about why it had to be that night."All Night, in the middle of the war, which is when musical theater is changing, and Hammerstein wants to know what that transition means," recalls Hawke. "He was like, 'This is a picture of death.'
The Farmers wanted to write songs that would be Oklahoma!I have Hart, but he didn't know anything.Strangely enough, Hart is the one who encourages Hammerstein to enter, never dreaming of his partner's death.It didn't help that Hart was an alcoholic and was said to be very difficult.and CGI), and sexual character.
All of Oklahoma!Hart's demons have been brought to the fore, and thankfully so.I have to say how I feel.
It's also worth noting that O'Brien's calling it a portrait of death is only partially metaphorical.Hart would die eight months later after Oklahoma!Opened in 1943, a case of pneumonia from exposure from spending too much time outside drinking on a cold, snowy Manhattan night.Jazz singer Mabel Mercer famously described Hart as "the saddest man I know," a quote that Linklater wisely chose to open Blue Moon, before finding sadness for his tragic end.
Hart actually opened in Oklahoma!, by the way, and his mother is from the border of the blue moon.'dreams,' because it is very common the reality of the truth.
And, spoiler in vain: the film also gained a wide following through other shelter eggs.
Kaplow and LinkLater decided to show Hammerltein escorting a young Stephen Sondheim (played by Cillian Sullivan) to a party late at night.Although Sondheim is actually a part of Hammerstein's musical theater, it's unlikely he'll be at the opening night in Oklahoma!But it was very convincing to portray the late Sweeney Todd and Woods author as a 13-year-old boy.
The connection is a bit meta too.He's in his mid-twenties to inspire Sondheim's version of Tondheim with a tendency towards one that keeps actors their age for many decades.
"I was waiting to tell him, to make sure the movie would get made," he says.“I was looking forward to this moment, but I was a year or two away.I think he would find it very funny."
But Blue Moon shouldn't worry too much about broken checks.The film is a character study as historical entertainment.For this, Linklater and Hawke sit, "Ella Fitzgerald sings Rodgers & Hart Songs."If I had to pick apart, it would be 'Bewitched, Haunted and Taken' from Heat.a great novel."
"This longing and longing, left, other people have a happy, normal life, the idea of being outside the glass" adds the line "the idea of being outside the glass."All this said, that sadness is. But there is beauty. It always moves. They never feel pity for themselves. They carry the weight of the world. "
