· · ·
turning to page one
turning to page one
BLUE MOON · written by Robert Kaplow · 2025
Scene 11 of 26 · ≈ 3 min on screen · Act two
On the opening night of Oklahoma!, lyricist Lorenz Hart drinks through Sardi's while chasing one last renewal with Richard Rodgers and the young woman he adores, but both are already moving beyond him.
Hart leaves the show that displaced him for his Sardi's habitat, where wit and remembered greatness keep fear at bay.
Hart needs Elizabeth to choose him and Rodgers to need him, while drink offers the quicker form of consolation.
Elizabeth arrives, exchanges her small flowers for Rodgers' grand bouquet, tells Hart her encounter with Cooper almost became sex, and rushes upstairs.
Hart drinks, romanticizes Elizabeth's youth, prepares a fake psychic card trick, and notices E. B. White eavesdropping nearby.
Hart recognizes E. B. White and recruits the writer as the ideal witness to his claim that Elizabeth is ineffable.
This scene
HART (CONT'D)
I cannot tell you how much I enjoy your essays. Nothing has given me more pleasure; I am in love with your language.
ANDY WHITE
Thank you.
HART
I'm in love with your punctuation. You can't move a single comma. Am I right? I mean, you're a musician, White.
White holds up hands in protest.
ANDY WHITE
You're the musician.
HART
You know, you, above all people, will appreciate this story. This girl. Elizabeth. I can't do my act for her.... You know what I mean? She wouldn't be interested. And it isn't so much indifference, I think, as much as we both recognize that she's legitimately more interesting than I am. And I genuinely mean that. Did you guys see her hair? That's what I first noticed when she walked into the theater last July. It was as if she were breathing different air than I was.
ANDY WHITE
I like that.
HART
I'm telling you, White, she would make a great musical! And not one Goddamn corn stalk in the whole show! And, fellas, just for the record: "The corn is as high as an elephant's eye" is the stupidest lyric in the history of American songwriting. Yes, it makes perfect sense; and, yes, it scans, but the image of an Oklahoma cornfield with a fucking elephant standing in the middle of it?
EDDIE
I like elephants.
HART
Yeah, we all like elephants, Eddie. Look, Andy, I need you to see this. I'm listening to her talk. But I couldn't tell you a single word she said 'cause all I'm really thinking is:
(sings)
"Wait till you feel the warmth of her glance/Pensive and sweet and wise." I was writing about her when I wrote that lyric. Three perfect words, in the perfect order. And, you tell me, what other lyricist could've gotten away with pensive?
ANDY WHITE
What song was that?
HART
Just telling you, when I'm good, I'm really good. Just the sound of it! That's what a writer does? We wear our vulnerability like a cloak for all the world to witness.
ANDY WHITE
I like the word cloak.
HART
That's 'cause it's an antique. Like us. Can I get you another drink?
ANDY WHITE
Sure. Why not?
HART
I can think of a thousand reasons why not. But they don't compete with the reasons why.
Indicating to Eddie to bring over the alcohol.
HART (CONT'D)
Eddie, pass the Lord and praise the house-physician! Another round. Just a little. You know what I loved in that essay you wrote about Florida? That line: "The sea answers all questions, and always the same way...'So soon?'" Jesus. To take a sound, and transform it into...what?...a sigh of eternity.
ANDY WHITE
My diminutive gift.
Toasting White.
HART
To the poetry that pours down on us from a thousand unexpected sources.
White toasts him back.
ANDY WHITE
To your poetry.
HART
Look, she's twenty; I'm 47. Let's discuss this like two sensible alcoholics. It was, in the beginning everything was exactly as it seemed: I was...
(grandly)
...her mentor. And I suppose I was, you know? The "grand old man" of the theatre. In her eyes. I'm over at the Shubert rehearsing By Jupiter – the show is a holy mess. And I'm having this debate with Johnny Green about the lyrics to "Give My Regards to Broadway." I remember as a kid falling in love with that song.
(talk-sings the last two lines of the song)
"Give my regards to old Broad-way, And say that I'll be there 'ere long." I knew instantly, even as a kid, that what gave that line its speed, its inevitability, was the inner rhyme. And not just the "there/'ere." But the other one. The "way/say." The line should logically be give my regards to old Broadway and tell them that I'll be there, but to change the verb to SAY made all the difference...
(to Morty)
Knuckles, you know any Cohan?