“I said, ‘Benny, you’ll admit that’s a pretty melody,’ and he said yes, he admitted it. So I said: ‘Well, how many of the dumbbells that goes to our shows has ever heard Linda di Chamounix or ever will hear it? When I put this melody in our troupe I’m doing a million people a favor; I’m giving them a chance to hear a beautiful piece of music that they wouldn’t never hear otherwise. Not only that, but they’ll hear it at its best because I’ve improved it.’ So Benny said, ‘The first four bars is exactly the same and that’s where people will notice.’
“So then I said: ‘Now listen here, Benny—up to the present you haven’t never criticized my music and I haven’t criticized your lyrics. But now you say I’m a tune thief. I don’t deny it, but if I wasn’t, you’d of had a sweet time making a living for yourself, let alone get married. However, laying that to one side, I was over to my sister’s house the other night and she had a soprano singer there and she sung a song something about “I love you, I love you; ’tis all my heart can say.” It was a mighty pretty song and it come out about twenty or thirty years ago.’
“So then Benny said, ‘What of it?’ So I said, ‘Just this: I can recall four or five lyrics of yours where “I love you” comes in and I bet you’ve used the words “heart” and “say” and “all” at least twice apiece during your remarkable career as a song writer. Well, did you make those words up or did you hear them somewhere?’ That’s what I said to him and of course he was stopped. But his ethics was ravaged just the same and it was understood we’d split up right after Eulalie. And as I say, his words wasn’t no help to my Donizetti number; they’d of slayed it if it could of been slayed.”
“Well?” said Sam.
“Well,” said Harry, “Conrad Green wired me yesterday to come and see him, so I was up there today. He’s so dumb that he thinks I’m better than Friml. And he’s got a book by Jack Prendergast that he wanted Kane and I to work on. So I told him I wouldn’t work with Kane and he said to get who I wanted. So that’s why I gave you a ring.”
“It sounds good to me,” said Sam. “How is the book?”
“I only skimmed it through, but I guess it’s all right. It’s based on ‘Cinderella,’ so what with that idear combined with your lyrics and my tunes, it looks like we ought to give the public a novelty at least.”
“Have you got any new tunes?”
“New?” Hart laughed. “I’m dirty with them.” He sat down at the piano. “Get this rhythm number. If it ain’t a smash, I’m Gatti-Casazza!”
He played it, beautifully, first in F sharp—a catchy refrain that seemed to be waltz time in the right hand and two-four in the left.
“It’s pretty down here, too,” he said, and played it again, just as surely, in B natural, a key whose mere mention is henbane to the average pianist.
“A wow!” enthused Sam Rose. “What is it?”
“Don’t you know?”
“The Volga boat song.”
“No,” said Hart. “It’s part of Aida’s number when she finds out the fella is going to war. And nobody that comes to our shows will spot it except maybe Deems Taylor and Alma Gluck.”
“It’s so pretty,” said Sam, “that it’s a wonder it never goes popular.”
“The answer is that Verdi didn’t know rhythm!” said Hart.
Or go back and observe our hero at the Bucks’ house on Long Island. Several of the boys and girls were there and thrilled to hear that Harry Hart was coming. He hardly had time to taste his first cocktail before they were after him to play something.
“Something of your own!” pleaded the enraptured Helen Morse.
“If you mean something I made up,” he replied with engaging frankness, “why, that’s impossible; not exactly impossible, but it would be the homeliest tune you ever listened to. However, my name is signed to some mighty pretty things and I’ll play you one or two of those.”
Thus, without the conventional show of reluctance, Harry played the two “rhythm numbers” and the love-song that were making Conrad Green’s Upsy Daisy the hit of the season. And he was starting in on another, a thing his informal audience did not recognize, when he overheard his hostess introducing somebody to Mr. Rudolph Friml.
“Good night!” exclaimed Hart. “Let somebody play that can play!” And he resigned his seat at the piano to the newcomer and moved to a far corner of the room.
“I hope Friml didn’t hear me,” he confided to a Miss Silloh. “I was playing a thing he wrote himself and letting you people believe it was mine.”
Or catch him in the old days at a football game with Rita Marlowe of Goldwyn. One of the college bands was playing “Yes, Sir! That’s My Baby!”
“Walter Donaldson. There’s the boy that can write the hits!” said Hart.
“Just as if you couldn’t!” said his companion.
“I don’t class with him,” replied her modest escort.
Later on, Rita remarked that he must have been recognized by people in the crowd. Many had stared.
“Let’s not kid ourselves, girlie,” he said. “They’re staring at you, not me.”
Still later, on the way home from the game, he told her he had saved over $25,000 and expected to average at least $40,000 a year income while his vogue
