The songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart always had a touch of self-deprecation in their humour and in Hart's witty lyrics. I savour the gag appearance that they made on-screen in 'Hallelujah, I'm a Tramp', a film musical for which they wrote the songs: Rodgers and Hart appear briefly as two bank clerks, attempting to cash a cheque for $10. (Both men were earning millions at the time.) In hindsight, we know that things weren't so happy. Hart was a deeply neurotic man with a strong self-loathing and a severe drinking problem. Rodgers's alcoholism was less obtrusive than Hart's (it didn't affect his work as much), but he suffered from lifelong bouts of depression and phobias.Here, they star in a musical short which manages to suggest that the songwriting life is not all peaches and cream. We see Dick and Larry at a piano, in a cluttered area which is allegedly backstage at a Broadway theatre, but which looks suspiciously like a dressed set at Paramount's studio in Astoria, Queens. An actor pretending to be a stage manager arrives, escorting an actress in a cloche hat and stole, whom he introduces as 'Miss Merrill', a reporter for 'United Syndicate'. She's writing an article about the songsters, and wants to get some background. Rodgers nervously entreats her not to ask them 'Which comes first, the words or the music.' (About 30 years later, when Rodgers was teamed with Oscar Hammerstein, he served a stint of jury duty ... and the judge asked him precisely this qu