A Ship Without A Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart

The New York Times

Readers will be grateful that Gary Marmorstein, who writes about film, theater and popular music, has resuscitated Hart, also known as Larry, in riveting detail in his A Ship Without a Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart.
— Sam Roberts

New York Times Book Review

Smart and sympathetic. . . . Marmorstein brings to life the Manhattan of Hart's youth.
— Brad Leithauser

The New York Times

“Readers will be grateful that Gary Marmorstein, who writes about film, theater and popular music, has resuscitated Hart, also known as Larry, in riveting detail in his A Ship Without a Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart."

New York Times Book Review

"Smart and sympathetic. . . . Marmorstein brings to life the Manhattan of Hart's youth."

From the Publisher

"A fine new biography of Lorenz Hart by Gary Marmorstein, A Ship Without a Sail, makes clear that Hart, over the years since his early death at age 48 in 1943, has been taken up the very society he set out, in his lyrics, to unsettle."

—David Hadju, The New Republic

"Hart has his shining hour in a new biography. . . . It's the absorbing story of a sparkling but tormented artist and a rich slice of show business history. . . . A Ship Without a Sail quotes liberally from Hart's lyrics, and Marmorstein's analysis is always interesting and often revelatory."

—John Fleming, Tampa Bay Tribune

"Marmorstein bolsters the story of Hart's rocketlike career with a wealth of factual detail. . . . [Marmorstein's] biographer's sense, his dogged researches, and his fair-mindedness constantly lead him in good directions. His account of Rodgers's controversial involvement in Hart's business affairs at his death is the best-balanced I've encountered."

—Michael Feingold, the Village Voice

Publishers Weekly

The lyricist who, with composer Richard Rodgers, penned “Blue Moon,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” and other standards is a figure worthy of his own bittersweet songs in this graceful biography. A squat gay man who lived with his mother and had the kind of “laughable... unphotographable” looks he toasted in “My Funny Valentine,” Hart is a jaunty, cigar-chomping bon vivant with a secretly wounded soul, an extraordinary poetic facility—his greatest verses seem to have been dashed off on half an hour’s deadline—and a ruinous thirst for booze. Journalist Marmorstein (Hollywood Rhapsody) resists the temptation to psychoanalyze and instead explores Hart’s personality mainly through shrewd readings of his lyrics as they veer between “enthralling new romance and a lonely, unforgiving desolation.” He holds to a middle-distance perspective, organizing the narrative around lively accounts of Rodgers and Hart’s Broadway and Hollywood musical projects, with Hart’s self-destructive excesses surfacing in matter-of-fact vignettes amid the showbiz swirl. Along the way, he paints a vivid panorama of pre-WWII musical theater and the efflorescence of Jewish-American tune- and word-smithing that created it. Marmorstein’s take on his subject’s life feels like a Rodgers and Hart show, nicely balanced between exhilarating spectacle and pithy revelations of character. Agent, Dan Conaway, Writers House. (July 3)

Library Journal

Marmorstein (Hollywood Rhapsody: The Story of Movie Music, 1900–1975) tells the story of Lorenz Hart (1895–1943), one of the most famous lyricists connected to the great American songbook. Together with Richard Rodgers, Hart wrote 30 Broadway musicals (including Babes in Arms and Pal Joey), dozens of Hollywood songs, and well-known standards such as "Where or When," "My Funny Valentine," and "The Lady Is a Tramp." In this readable and thorough book, Marmorstein explores Hart's ultimately destructive lifestyle as well as his complex relationship with Rodgers. The author examines a large slice of American popular culture of the period, especially theater, including material on George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin, Florenz Ziegfeld, Ed Wynn, and George Balanchine, among many others. VERDICT Though not a complete replacement of Frederick Nolan's 1994 Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway, which is based on extensive oral interviews, Marmorstein's book has the advantage of copyright permission to reprint many Hart lyrics (which was denied to Nolan). This book is a worthy addition to the literature on the great American songbook. Recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 1/21/12.]—Bruce R. Schueneman, Texas A&M Univ. Lib., Kingsville

Kirkus Reviews

The author of The Label: The Story of Columbia Records (2007) returns with a deeply sympathetic biography of Lorenz Hart (1895–1943), the talented, troubled lyricist of film and Broadway fame. Marmorstein, who has published often about the popular arts, has done an enormous service for fans of stage and movie musicals of the early decades of the 20th century. Here, the author details Hart's short life, explores his most productive professional partnership with composer Richard Rodgers, chronicles his descent into the alcoholism that killed him, speculates about his sexuality (his colleagues knew he was gay; the public did not), and provides numerous examples of Hart's witty, sometimes risqué lyrics (risqué, of course, by 1940s standards). Hart, whose adult height perhaps touched 5 feet and who seemed always to have a cigar, wrote some 800 songs with Rodgers, many of which are Broadway classics, among them "Manhattan," "My Funny Valentine" and "Where or When." But Hart was a psychological mess. Perhaps due to his height (a constant joke about him in the press, and even from Rodgers' mouth) or his sexuality (frequently he would disappear in the evenings) or the enormous pressure to write on quick deadlines, Hart became so increasingly unreliable that Rodgers approached Oscar Hammerstein II to write the lyrics for the show that would become Oklahoma! Hart subsequently wrote only a handful of songs. Marmorstein often summarizes the shows of Rodgers and Hart (routinely referring to them as "the boys"), sometimes too thoroughly, and there are so many interesting characters on his stage--like Cole Porter and George Abbott--that occasionally he loses track of Hart, who, sadly, left few intimate documents, excepting, of course, those wondrous words. "Ev'rything I've got belongs to you," goes one Hart lyric that now, thanks to the author's thorough, affectionate research, holds another, profoundly poignant meaning.