“Doc” Bender was a Columbia grad, where he got to know Larry Hart, Richard Rodgers, and Arthur Schwartz. He was theatre-obsessed, and while in dentistry school, he helped Rodgers put on a number of amateur shows, writing sketches and lyrics and directing some.
He didn’t have much passion for dentistry, but became an agent, and also produced and directed a short-lived Broadway revue in 1927 called THE NEW YORKERS. Not the Cole Porter show, but this did have songs by Schwartz.
Bender is best known as being Larry Hart’s drinking and carousing partner through the twenties and thirties.
Laura in LA, who used Bender as a minor character in her novel |
