by Michael Klein
In 1939, when my mother was seven years old, the
lyricist Lorenz Hart gave her a photograph of himself on
which he had inscribed in midnight blue ink: For Kathryn Jacqueline,
from Lorenz Hart, whose name will probably be forgotten by the time she
is able to read this. Hart had been a friend of my grandfather’s. My
grandfather, a
vaudevillian. I remember reading Hart’s inscription for
the first time and thinking it was an extraordinary thing
for someone to say to a child—as if childhood had the
same kind of unpredictability and loneliness that fame
did. I inherited the photograph after my mother’s death
and sold it to an autograph dealer on 18th Street for
drinking money. In the museum of saddest things I’ve
ever done, that could have been the saddest. It felt like I
was making fun of beauty.
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