A lovable nature's tragic arc ...

... Rodgers and Hart's Dysfunctional Partnership - Robert Gottlieb - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

While Hart’s career was inching forward, Rodgers was growing up. By the time he was nine he was composing melodies at the family piano—they just poured out of him. As a teenager, Dick was good-looking, athletic, sociable, interested in girls, and as conventional as the rest of his family. He provided tunes for a few amateur shows—fund-raisers for The Sun Tobacco Fund and the Infants Relief Society—and people were knocked out by his gifts. But he badly needed a writing partner, and in the spring of 1919 a friend had an inspiration: Larry Hart! He led Dick to the Hart ménage, and after a few awkward moments, Dick started to play some of his melodies, at which point, as Marmorstein (unfortunately) puts it, “Larry’s ears pricked up like a startled deer’s.”