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BLUE MOON · written by Robert Kaplow · 2025
Scene 14 of 26 · ≈ 2 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.
Hart recognizes E. B. White and gains a fellow writer whose talk of language, mortality, and unattainable perfection carries the theme.
Over drinks, Hart and White talk language, mortality, and the twenty-year-old muse Hart insists transformed mentorship into enchantment.
Morty's wartime songs lead Hart and White from mass death to artistic immortality before Hart reveals that he and Elizabeth shared one passionate weekend.
As Oklahoma!'s celebrants enter, Hart recounts touching Elizabeth at the Vermont cabin and convinces himself that tonight may be the 'another day' she promised.
This scene
Hart moves off to adjust his appearance in the bar mirror.
EDDIE
Hey, so did he fuck her or not?
ANDY WHITE
...He thinks tonight might be the
night.
EDDIE
(sympathetically frustrated)
Awwwwwww... Larry, Larry, Larry...
ANDY WHITE
(quietly, compassionately)
What do you think she sees in him?
EDDIE
I think she sees a rich and famous
guy who can help her career.
ANDY WHITE
...I think she recognizes she's
being adored by one of the great
appreciators of beauty.
EDDIE
You know what else I think?
ANDY WHITE
Yeah?
EDDIE
I think she is wearing a grape-
colored brassiere.
WEEGEE
All right, Rodgers. Gentlemen,
please let's get one. Beautiful.
Come on. All right, big smile!
Beautiful.
HART
(walking back into scene)
Dick! Dick! My God!
RICHARD RODGERS, youngish-looking 40, enters. With him are OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN, 48, and a 12 year-old boy, STEVIE. Hart hugs Rodgers warmly, immediately.
HART (CONT'D)
The show is going to run twenty
than Abie's Irish Rose!
RODGERS
We'll see.
HART
And much more goyish, so it can
tour.
RODGERS
Well, thanks for coming, Larry.
HART
Oh, Oscar!
OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II
(shaking hands)
Larry.
HART
You get taller every time I see
you. What can I say: the lyrics
are brilliant. Poetic when they
need to be poetic; funny when they
need to be funny. Not a rhyme out
of place, easy on the ear. "I'm
just a fool when lights are low."
Perfect. Did you hear me
applauding?
OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II
I think you were the loudest person
in the entire theater!
HART
That's because I loved it more than
anyone else in the entire theater!
Elizabeth is walking breathlessly through the scene, carrying some trays upstairs.
She's gone.
Rodgers is shaking a surrounding circle of congratulatory hands.
HART (CONT'D)
Let me get you boys a drink.
He grabs two drinks from passing waiter and offers them.
RODGERS
Oh, no thank you.
Larry realizes Elizabeth is passing by with a waiter.
RODGERS (CONT'D)
Hey, Larry, you got a few minutes?
Give us a minute. Excuse us,
Oscar.