Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were one of the greatest teams on Broadway. As Gary Marmorstein (Hollywood Rhapsody) notes in A Ship Without a Sail, in 25 years of working together the duo wrote more than 800 songs, including "Blue Moon" and "My Funny Valentine." While Hart's lyrics always came after the music and only with greater effort, together they created masterpieces.
Marmorstein seamlessly weaves a vast amount of material to fashion his portrait of the man Wilfred Sheed called a "forlorn dwarf." Hart, then 23, met the 16-year-old Rodgers in 1919. They began to work together soon afterward, turning out their first collaboration, The Garrick Gaieties, in 1925, followed by A Connecticut Yankee two years later. Their relationship was one of opposites: Rodgers the consummate professional, a details and deadline man, while Hart was amiable but unreliable and moody. To go along with Rodger's glorious melodies, Hart is credited with overhauling the American lyric, bringing a new, profound yet simple poetry to the words. (The book's title comes from a song in the 1929 musical Heads Up!)
Rodgers described his partner as a "source of permanent irritation." He lived with his mother and was tortured emotionally throughout his life, keeping his homosexuality a secret. He drank morning, noon and night, and his alcoholism exacerbated many of his problems and led to his early death in 1943. Marmorstein perfectly captures this complex man in a beautifully written and poignant biography.--Tom Lavoie, former publisher