Jonathan Schwartz: Are you talking about plays or musicals?
Michael Kantor: We’re only talking about musicals.
Jonathan Schwartz: Well, the evidence sits before us, entertainment. Most of the shows, certainly at least half of them, were reviews, which was a form put out of business by Ed Sullivan, whose program was, after all, a review in the early 1950s. But in the 1930s, if the shows weren’t reviews, they were shows that presented almost entirely frivolous little stories. On which songs of great merit and integrity were hung. But if you look at those depressing and depression years, you’ll find that the marrow of the Broadway musical was basically made of the desire to entertain. That inhabited Broadway musicals for many years.
Michael Kantor: The thing about Rogers and Hart, the issue of writing for real characters and real stories. That’s not really the point at this time. What are they most concerned with?
Jonathan Schwartz: Well, there’s an interesting contradiction. I’m glad you brought this up. Rodgers basically could not write unless he was writing to some sort of character. Rodgers and Hart’s one song, as we all know, written just for the sake of writing a song, was Blue Moon. It was their biggest hit, ironically. He had to write for characters. Steve Sondheim is almost exactly the same way. Oh, no, I’ve mentioned Sondheim. My god, what are we to do? The contradiction is that Rogers insisted and through the years proved the point that he was a theater writer. He wrote to story. He wrote the plot. And yet, think of the Rogers and Hart shows of the 20s and 30s. The plot was made of marmalade, basically, and jello, and tap dancing. And so these were the plots for which Dick Rogers was writing his astounding music and proclaiming that he could only write to these plots. Basically, it was like writing to comic books, to Archie and Veronica and Betty, I think was the blonde’s name. And Rogers insisted through those years and later on. That he could only write for Veronica and Betty and Archie and Jughead. And yet he was writing where or when and I didn’t know what time it was and my heart stood still and you took advantage of me and where’s that rainbow and Manhattan and mountain greenery for Veronica and Archie and Betty.
Michael Kantor: What do you think made their, what was their formula of success or what made them such a good team, Rogers and Hart, that is?
Jonathan Schwartz: You’re talking personally or the results of their endeavors? Well, their songs were thrilling. No one had ever heard anything like it, where the lyrics were articulate, witty, personal, intimate, heart-wrenching. And the music was all of those things, too. There wasn’t a wrong choice made by Rogers. There may have been one or two little wrong choices made by the lyricist along the way. But who’s to quibble? Rogers, I don’t know of a wrong note, and I know the work. A wrong note that made me go now, ooh, that cheapens that infinitesimally. There’s no such note. Now, when you consider the fact that these gentlemen wrote through the 20s and the 30s, Show after relentless show. Archie, Veronica, and Betty after Archie. Veronica, Betty, and Jughead. And the very, the very vapidness of all of that, theoretically encouraging wrong notes because the notes were being applied to these ridiculous little stories. You would think that Roger would have dropped his guard, so to speak. I’ll just take this E flat because it’s easier for me today. Nothing like that ever happened. You know, he stayed right at it. Until the F sharp made its appearance in his mind.
Michael Kantor: What about as, when we think of the 30s, we think of the sort of the Glamor, tuxedo elegance, that sort of thing. How do you think that glamor functioned in the depression?
Jonathan Schwartz: My mother was the Barbara Cook of her time. In one year alone, she was in an Irving Berlin show and a Jerome Kern show. Face the Music was the Kern, the Berlin show, in which her character sang, let’s have another cup of coffee. And in Music in the Air, the big hit of the song that emerged from that show was the song is you, she sang I’ve Told Every Little Star. Her name was Catherine Carrington. My father, who had written not only a standard song but an iconic song, Dancing in the Dark, and a big hit show for Fred Astaire, The Bandwagon, fancied himself in some way British in a quietly subtle British glamorization of whatever it was Arthur Schwartz felt he would like to present to the public. Now this is a Jewish guy from Brooklyn, whose father was named Solomon Sampson Schwartz, who arrived at the age of 32, at the beginning of the Depression, with a British accent. Where did that come from? I don’t know, but it was Arthur’s idea of glamor, articulateness, and of course he was phenomenally well-educated. He was one of those fellows who shut open college at the ages of 15 and two months, sitting amongst the 18-year-olds. And he then opened a law practice, and you might find this not relevant. I think it is, because my father’s carriage was very much a glamorization of self. And there was a way of carriage that the men in the theater comported themselves. They may not have been wearing $100,000. Overcoats, although some of them were, it was the implication that they were involved on a higher level and they were supplying the art, which indeed they were, the lyrics and the music, for a desperate population. It seems we stood and talked like this before. But we looked at each other in the same way then. But I can’t remember where or when, is something that happily was able to infect the American population with a melancholy that was empathic with their situation. This coming from on high, the glamorous figures of the theater. And I think, particularly, the dichotomy between the theater and real life in America in the 1930s itself glamorized the notion of theater people more so then than perhaps at any time. Well, there’s the early 30s and the late 30s, there is the Burt Lahr Theater, there is the Ethel Merman Theater.
Michael Kantor: That’s who I always think.
Jonathan Schwartz: And I would have to say that that delicious noise that she emitted would stand for the ruckus of Gershwin shows and Berlin shows and Porter shows, of course. I would say she was the central figure. I mean, there were other wonderful folks. Clifton Webb was quite a debonair fellow. But also the songwriters, and I want to go back to that point because they were quite famous figures. People like Vincent Youmans and Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern and Richard Rogers and Larry Hart and Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz. These were theatrical figures that were… In number and in intelligence, as perceived by the outsider, far removed from accessibility except for their work. And they congregated together and held parties, dazzling parties, at which Ethel Merman would make that noise. And my mother would sing, I’ve told every little star, and Clifton Webb would sing A Rainy Day. What I had in mind was the immense presence throughout all of it of one figure, George Gershwin. Throughout the 20s and throughout much of the 30s, George Gershwin loomed above the crowd like an enormous spotlight. Melodies leaked from his fingertips. He, his voice on the page of music was so singular, astonishing. Innovative, beautiful, rhythmic. I mean, da-da-da da-dum, da da-de-da, da, da de-da de-de, de-dun, de, de de-du-dudun. Please now, come on now. This fellow was writing concertos for F. I always looked upon F as a kind of instrument as the concerto was written for it. That’s my favorite of the Gershwin pieces. He was writing rhapsodies for men in, in women in Paris to combine the two and even overtures for Cuba and preludes and film music and the songs, these cascades of songs. These other fellows, including Rogers, roamed around in the streets of Schubert Alley with The constant. Lovely annoyance of the fact that they were in second place. Now they might not have thought that about themselves. I think if you talk to Irving Berlin’s daughter, she’ll have nothing to do with what I’m saying. But the reality is that it’s true until George died on July the 11th, 1937. Mary Rogers tells us the story that evokes a mental picture that I could just never forget. That George had come over to Rogers’ house on 72nd Street to play some new music that he had written. It was, in fact, music for Porgy. And Dorothy Rogers, Mrs. Richard Rogers, was indeed pregnant and was upstairs in the duplex house. And was brought downstairs by two men, George Gershwin and Richard Rogers, and placed on a couch to listen to George’s new music. I’m one of the few people who are alive who can say that his father was a good friend of George’s. And my father was unafraid to play his music. He played the piano fearlessly and his own music happily in front of George. But as it was often said at that time, an evening with Gershwin was a Gershun evening. And no wonder, it was a spectacular ongoing event. It was a light show. He was the first light show, and this is a statistic. You could trace the whole idea of light shows that emerged in the 60s back to the presence of George Gers hun because he was the fist existing light show The whole idea came from his existence. And however brilliant Kern and Rogers and the others were, this unbelievable light show and the energy, and George was everywhere. He was a concert pianist. Rogers was a businessman in a suit at the piano. Irving Berlin could hardly manipulate the instrument. But Gershwin was a concept pianist, And I would have to say… That his presence from the 20s through the Depression in the 1930s is as vital and as crucial a fact of American life and as important in the world of art as the fact that Churchill and FDR lived together at the same time in the 40s. The idea of Dorothy Rogers being placed on a couch by these two f- figures of music, to me, I can’t even conceive of the idea that Rogers and George together, there are some pictures of, there’s a picture of Kern and Gershwin together, but it’s too much for me. It’s just so wonderful. It’s just, it’s just so dear.
Michael Kantor: The Gershwins in a number of the shows, Up the Ice Sing, and Strike Up the Band, and Let Him Eat Cake, really were sort of pushing the musical form toward political satire, and then off into poor geek.
Jonathan Schwartz: Weren’t they, though, with the help of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, and the librettists with whom they were writing, and three cheers for them.
Michael Kantor: Compare that to what Rogers and Hart were doing with Herb Fields or what have you. It’s a different, they’re just not really interested in that sort of social awareness or…
Jonathan Schwartz: Herb Fields makes me think of Archie and Veronica with all due respect to everyone in the world named Fields, one of whom was a part of the group, Dorothy Fields, the great lyricist who had to call herself, she didn’t know she had to, she just instincted it, quote, one of the boys in order to exist in the man’s community. And she was the only one, period. She was joined, of course, later by Betty Comden. And Carolyn Lee, and by some individual women who wrote songs. Willow Weep for Me was written by a woman named Anne Rannell. How High the Moon was written by a women named Nancy Hamilton. It Happened in Monterey was written by a a woman name Mabel Wayne. I’ll Never Smile Again was written by a man named Ruth Lowe. But Dorothy Fields wrote with Sigmund Rahnberg, Arthur Schwartz, Jimmy McHugh, Jerome Kern. Harold Arlen and Cy Coleman, among others.
Michael Kantor: For what Rodgers and Hart contributed to the Broadway musical in the third.
Jonathan Schwartz: Well, as we look back now, it’s clear to me that their contribution is in the songs, in the great beauty of them. In the irony of them, in the way that Larry Hart and his lyrics was trying. More deeply into the human experience. For example, look at yourself if you had a sense of humor, you would laugh to beat the band. Look at yourself. Do you still believe the rumor that romance is simply grand? Since you took it right on the chin, you have lost that bright toothpaste grin. My mental state is all a jumble. I sit around and sadly mumble, fools rush in, but here I am, very glad to be unhappy. I can’t win, and here I am, oh so glad to be unhappy. Unrequited love’s a bore, and I got it pretty bad. But for someone you adore, it’s a pleasure to be sad. That is a subject, the delicious pain somehow in our nuttiness of being humans that accompanies obsession for a woman. And Larry Hart was able to deal with it for the very first time that I know about in a song. The whole feeling of deja vu that where or when embraces was another human phenomenon unexplored. And of his own personal esthetic failings, at least in Larry’s head, you can’t do better than where’s that rainbow. Uh, and, uh… He is just a remarkable lyric writer, and Rodgers was there to accommodate him. With the melodies that italicized, didn’t hamper, but italicize the words. That’s what we’ll remember Rogers and Hart for, not for the Archie and Veronica of it. The Gershwins were prodding us towards Sondheim. We really started with Kern and Hammerstein and Showboat, where somebody wrote something about something, and of course, the form my father was most attracted to was the review, which was very urban, sophisticated with skits by amusing and witty people, with songs attached to transient characters in a skit, a woman named Maude and a man named Claude. And then you’d never hear from them again in the next skit because the next get Burt Lahr was in so that And of course, as I mentioned, that form was demoralized and then it evaporated because of the advent of the Ed Sullivan Show and television, which was nothing if not a review when it first started, a review meeting when it first started in the 50s, the Milton Berle Show, Martin& Lewis, and especially Ed Sullivan. And even the Late Show, as spectacular as it was, the Tonight Show with Steve Allen. That what’s significant about my funny valentine is rogers decision to open in a minor key Barbara Carroll pointed this out on a television show long ago. I had had that thought and had spoken about it on the radio any number of times. Bum, bum, bum bum bum, ba da da da, now listen, da da dum, da, then da da. It is an absolutely miraculous choice to make and it intensifies the melody. It intimizes the melody and draws the listener to it as if a friend.
Michael Kantor: But compare, if you would, Cole Porter, who’s sort of looking at the world from real, I mean, not… Rose-colored glasses. Your father and others who are pretending to be British, he came with nine million dollars in cash attached to Rogers and Hart. Take just a little bit of Cole Porter and then compare Rogers and Harts to…
Jonathan Schwartz: Well, he actually didn’t come from Great Britain. He came from Peru, Indiana. He was a Midwestern dandy who had this gift that a handful of men have had, which is the ability to write lyrics on a level with the music and vice versa when you think of just the song Night and Day. Let alone lesser known songs like After You, Who, and Looking At You, and Dreamdancing, and the other great hits that we all know, Just One Of Those Things, and I Get A Kick Out Of You, Just one of those things, interestingly, died with a show called Jubilee and disappeared. No one knew of Just One of Those Things. There was no sonata, just one of the things, none of that existed, the song went away. It was picked out later, many years later. That same thing happened to us, Time Goes By, which was a song written by one guy, one shot, Herman Hupfield is his name, and Lucky Herman. In the 40s, someone said, you know, I remember, that’s as time goes by.
Michael Kantor: Put us in that world of, wasn’t the depression era, you know, the time when the greatest songwriters we had composed the greatest songs, that now, whether we know the lyrics or just remember a melody or remember a lyric, it’s the fabric, help people who
Jonathan Schwartz: Well, I would have to say that that was the period of which you speak was a spasm, slightly longer duration, from the mid-twenties to the mid fifties. And in that spasm, and this is, I’m speaking generally now. A group of men and one woman, Dorothy Fields, numbering approximately 50, created the Great American Songbook and subsequently distributed the songs to a group of man and woman, approximately 50, singers, messengers, interpretive singers, who took the songs like Paul Revere across the country, and across the world, and across the planet. And distributed them accordingly. I would have to say, generally speaking, that approximately 100 people did the deed in the midsection of the 20th century that happened to include the Depression. The phenomenon began in the early 20s. I mean, as Rogers himself said, Manhattan made Rogers and Hart the song. But that was an early 1920s song. Before them, the very young Kern and, of course, the European influence from Romberg and Frimmel and Victor Herbert. Victor Herbert was responsible for ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. And then the, so to speak, I was going to, and will, use the title of a famous movie, which is the Americanization of Emily. It has nothing to do with Emily, which turned out to be a beautiful standard song written many years later by Johnny Mercer and Johnny Mandel. But the Americanization of the song, 32 bar element, the 32 bar means of communication. Began in earnest in the hands of Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter and the other men who drifted out to Hollywood as did Rodgers& Hart. They wrote a film called Mississippi and later on, of course, Rodgers&Hammerstead. Oh! Oh! But my point is that this, and I think it’s a good point, that these people, approximately 100, did the deed, the creators and the interpreters, approximately 100 of them. That’s interesting. We were standing in the lobby of the Colonial Theater. Dwyer Herewaltz was on the road. And I knew him pretty well. He liked me. And I loved him. I was a kid. But in 1965, I was 26, 27, not a kid now, but a grown-up, who knew precisely with whom he was dealing, this Rogers guy. Before, he was just Dick, who shared my birthday, June 28. And I had always asked him about his songs, what his favorite might be, and his platitudinous response. Was, oh, I like so many songs for so many different reasons. That day, and we were standing doing nothing. We were just standing. I was going in with him, to sit with him during a performance of Do I Hear a Waltz? And I said, Dick, you know, your songs, favorites, whatever it is I did. And he began again platitudinously. So many songs, so familiar. With a song in my heart. I said, really, with a song in my heart? He said, yes, that’s my favorite, with the song in my heart. Now, he might have said that just to shut me up, but the suddenness of it and the repeating of it, I gave him an opportunity to change his mind, led me to believe that he’d finally let loose with a personal secret. I think Steve was brave enough to be honest. Talented enough to not be glib and musical enough to be theater altering. He is an immensely complicated man. Heart-breakingly sad. I love him dearly. I wouldn’t want to spend any time with him than I have because he’s dangerous. He’s a psychological terrorist.
