PROLOGUE I''m a Sentimental Sap, That''s All ON THE morning of November 29, 1943, one week after the death of Lorenz Hart at age forty-eight, several people gathered at the Guaranty Trust Company, on the southwest corner of Forty-Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, to open the decedent''s safe-deposit box. Hart was considered by many to be the greatest of all American lyricists. Hart''s attorney Abraham M. Wattenberg arrived with his young associate Leonard Klein, bearing an order, duly made by Surrogate James A. Foley, to open the box with the express purpose of removing Hart''s will. A representative of the state tax commission agreed to be there at 11:45 A.M. to oversee the task.

Already present were the two executors named in the will: William Kron, who had been Hart''s accountant for the past five years; and Richard Rodgers, the composer with whom, over the course of twenty-five years, Hart had written more than eight hundred songs, including "My Funny Valentine," "Isn''t It Romantic?," "My Heart Stood Still," "Blue Moon," "My Romance," "With a Song in My Heart," "The Lady Is a Tramp," "Thou Swell," "I Didn''t Know What Time It Was," "Mountain Greenery," "Manhattan," "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," "I Could Write a Book," and "Where or When." Expected at the bank were Hart''s younger brother, Theodore, an actor known personally and professionally as Teddy, and Teddy''s wife, Dorothy. Teddy had lived with Lorenz-or Larry, as he was called-and their mother until January 1938, when he married Dorothy Lubow and the couple moved to an apartment in the West Fifties. Never living far from Larry, the Harts often looked after him-and few intelligent, able-bodied men have needed such looking after-especially in the six months following the death of the boys'' mother, Frieda, in April 1943. When they arrived at Guaranty Trust, they did not know what was in the will. The others did.1 The state tax commission representative was delayed. Teddy Hart, who had always played up his lack of book knowledge in clowning contrast to the erudition of his brother, now asked Abe Wattenberg if he had a copy of the will.

Wattenberg, in fact, was carrying two copies, and he gave one to Teddy and one to Dorothy. Sitting side by side in the funereal hush of the bank, the Harts read through Larry''s will, dated June 17 of that year. The high-ceilinged space had not always felt so sepulchral; decades earlier it had been occupied by the opulent restaurant Sherry''s, where Charles Pierre, who later built the Hotel Pierre, was captain, and diners were serenaded by live music and the clatter of silverware and crystal.2 "Do either of you have any questions?" asked Wattenberg. Dorothy Hart finally looked up from her copy. "Does this mean that if I have any children, they''re cut off?" Yes, said Wattenberg, that''s what it meant. "That''s hardly fair," Dorothy said. She pointed out that Larry''s estate ought to remain in the family; given the way the will was worded, if she were to have children, they would have no share in his legacy.

By then Teddy and Dorothy had been married for nearly six years; to Abe Wattenberg, a Hart child seemed an improbability. Nevertheless, Wattenberg assured her that the Harts would be ably supported by the $100,000 life insurance policy that Larry had left to Teddy-more than enough to take care of the Harts and any children they might have. "In any case," Wattenberg went on, "I followed your brother''s instructions to the letter. This is what he wanted." Wattenberg, a music publishing insider who over the years had represented John Philip Sousa, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Vincent Youmans, had been Larry Hart''s attorney since 1925 and, as he reminded Teddy and Dorothy, every legal action he''d taken had been in his client''s best interests. Wattenberg produced a waiver of citation that, if signed by Teddy, would enable probate to go through within three or four days. Anxious about holding up the proceedings, Teddy signed. The state tax man appeared.

The safe-deposit box was extracted from the vault and taken to a conference room. The will inside it was compared with the copies read by the Harts, and everyone agreed the copies matched the original document. Wattenberg gave the original to a bank representative, who would forward it to the Surrogate''s Court. At this point Richard Rodgers, having no reason to remain, left the bank. Wattenberg led the Harts, both groping for purchase in a fog of legalese, up to the second floor to get Teddy Hart''s signature notarized. Wattenberg then handed the notarized waiver and the petition to probate to his associate, who took the documents away to file with the court. The Harts remained in the conference room with Wattenberg, who did his best to placate the befuddled couple, and with Larry Hart''s financial manager, William Kron, whose position in the decedent''s will was its most perplexing aspect. A full 30 percent of the Lorenz Hart estate was to go to Kron; when he died, that same 30 percent would pass on to his children, and then to his children''s children, and so on, presumably until the family stopped reproducing.

Although the will bequeathed Teddy Hart 70 percent, with his share going to his wife when she was widowed, no provision was made for their issue; the Harts'' participation in Lorenz Hart''s future royalties, which were sure to be considerable, would end with Dorothy''s death. Then the 70 percent share would be payable, in perpetuity, to the Federation of Jewish Philanthropic Societies (later known as the United Jewish Appeal). This was curious, because Larry Hart-although he''d been bar mitzvahed at Mt. Zion synagogue in Harlem and been generous to several Jewish organizations, notably the Jewish Theatrical Guild-was not known to have been devoted to Jewish causes. If the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies maintained a strong link with anyone even remotely involved in the proceedings, it was with Rodgers''s wife, Dorothy. Felix Warburg, a close friend of Dorothy Rodgers''s family, had been first president of the Federation, and Dorothy Rodgers''s mother, May Adelson, was a founder of the Federation''s thrift shops. If Dorothy Rodgers had a lifelong cause, it was the battle against anti-Semitism and raising funds to help in that battle. Larry was sympathetic, but the cause wasn''t his.

William Kron was said to be an ardent supporter of the Federation. It was just as likely, however, that the Federation''s inclusion in the will had been engineered by Rodgers to acknowledge his wife''s profound interest in the organization. As they left the bank that day, the Harts were drifting into shock. Dorothy knew at least one thing that Wattenberg and the others did not. One week earlier-on the day her brother-in-law died, in fact-she had gone to her doctor, concerned about abdominal discomfort that she thought was an ulcer, only to learn she was pregnant. Larry Hart''s will, dated June 17, 1943, was filed in New York City''s Surrogate''s Court on November 30. The will named Rodgers and Kron as coexecutors and trustees and instructed them to form two trusts out of the residuary estate-the Teddy Hart share and the William Kron share. Before there was a residuary estate, however, bequests had to be made.

Teddy Hart was bequeathed $5,000 outright, with another $2,500 going to Dorothy. The other legatees were Hart''s cousin Sidney Hertz (the family surname before Hart''s father changed it); his friend Irving Eisenman; Mary Campbell, known to the Hart family as "Big Mary" and in their employ as housekeeper for twenty years; and Dr. Milton ("Doc") Bender, a dentist turned talent agent who had been as close to Hart as anyone for more than twenty years. These legatees received $2,500 each. Hart''s aunts Emma Kahn and Rose Elkan were to receive $2,000 each, as was his uncle William Herman, but Elkan predeceased Hart by six weeks, and the bequest did not pass through to her two children.3 Herman, too, died before probate, his share going back to the residuary estate. Bequests of $2,000 also went to Irene Gallagher, who had spent years with Chappell & Company, one of the more powerful music publishers, and to Rodgers''s two daughters, Mary and Linda. As executors, Kron and Rodgers legally seized control of the Rodgers & Hart copyrights and could direct payouts from various income sources, particularly the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, better known as ASCAP.

What made Kron''s position as a primary beneficiary so baffling, however, was that he had been imposed as accountant on Hart by Rodgers only a few years earlier. Hart was known to be a big spender; so, although he was never poor after 1925, when Rodgers and Hart''s Revolutionary War-era musical, Dearest Enemy, became a hit, he was frequently broke. In Rodgers''s eyes, Kron, who had handled the financial affairs of playwright Edna Ferber and composer Jerome Kern, was the antidote to Larry''s devil-may-care attitude about money. The Rodgerses saw Kron as saving not only Larry''s money but saving Hart from himself. Dorothy Rodgers said, "Willy Kron, Larry''s good friend and financial advisor, went away with him for short trips and played endless card games to keep him from drinking."4 In 1929, Rodgers and his father, William, a prominent obstetrician known as Will, had opened a savings account for Hart at a bank at Eighty-Sixth and Broadway; Hart''s royalty checks, according to Rodgers, went directly into that account. This was something of a hedge against not only Larry''s profligate ways but also his generosity-supporting his mother and brother for many years, routinely picking up checks for people he barely knew, and being widely known as th.