May 2: Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered

Lorenz Hart, the lyricist in the great Broadway songwriting team of Rodgers and Hart, was born in Harlem, New York on this date in 1895. Hart’s enduring songs, many of which became jazz standards, include “Blue Moon,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” “Falling in Love with Love,” “I Could Write a Book,”“With a Song in My Heart,” “It Never Entered My Mind,” and “Isn’t It Romantic?” Rodgers and Hart had a twenty-year partnership that ended only because of Hart’s premature death in 1943. They created songs for 26 Broadway musicals, including Babes in Arms and Pal Joey. Hart was a closeted gay man and an alcoholic, under five feet tall, whose fundamental loneliness and self-loathing infused his songs, conveying a “heart-stopping sadness,” in the words of Stephen Holden. To see the great Barbra Streisand singing “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” in 1963, look below.

“Blue moon, you saw me standing alone, without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own.” —Lorenz Hart