Thanks again to Dan Moore for rescuing me once again from the thought that I might actually take up Infinite Jest again, and maybe finish it. He got me started on Act One, the autobiographical book by Moss hart of his effort to rise from oppressive poverty in the Bronx to having a Broadway hit. The hit play was Once in a Lifetime, and it went up at the Music Box in 1930, running for 406 performances.

The portrait of Hart’s collaborator, George S. Kaufman, is indelible. Kaufman, of course, was already famous and an idol of the young Hart’s when they met at the instigation of producer and Music Box owner Sam Harris. Hart annoys Kaufman by smoking cigars endlessly. Kaufman amuses Kaufman with his quirks and twitches; he picks up lint, he makes odd gestures and noises, and is generally full of neurotic tics. All of this can be seen in this rare TV appearance, MUCH later than 1929, certainly. But here Hart’s characterization is borne out here as being fairly accurate. (As a bonus, in Part 2, one of the guests is a very young Larry Storch!)

The result of the collaboration can be seen here in Carl Laemmle’s film adaption, made on the heels of the Broadway success of Once In a Lifetime.

I had forgotten how much fun can be had reading plays. For one thing, and perhaps mainly, it takes MUCH less time to read a play than to watch one. But still, one can get swept up in the action and forget oneself in the page turning bliss. The book I got, dirt cheap on Amazon, was a collection of three plays by Kaufman and Hart: the aforementioned first collaboration and hit, then You Can’t Take it With You, which (astonishingly) won a Pulitzer in 193, followed, finally, by The Man Who Came to Dinner. There are movies of all of these, and remakes and amateur productions aplenty, some viewable online, or rentable. It was with the last one, The Man Who Came to Dinner, that I finally got my play-reading mojo, or the sense of humor had caught up to my mid-century sensibility, and I read the last two acts straight through, lying in bed forgoing TV for a late night entertainment.

My thoughts/feelings about this further investigation of these artists and personalities — for it’s certainly not the first time I’ve read about these folks — is best offered in the sequence in which the research got undertaken. I started with Dan’s recommendation, the autobiography, Act One by Moss Hart. Of the three, this man was least familiar to me. In fact, he was curiously not averse to collaboration and staying in Kaufman’s shadow. As noted, Kaufman was already Hart’s idol, already famous, and already swimming in the pool that Hart wanted to take the deep dive into. In building up his tale, however, it emerges that Moss was bound and determined to succeed. The spurs of poverty and ambition have been noted by most other commentators on this material. Moss loathes his poverty, and his given station in squalor. he describes it as such, and perhaps the most memorable scene in the story is played after his Broadway success is freshly apparent, he moves his parents and brother out of their Brooklyn hovel in a rush in a pouring rain. His last act, as the curtain falls on the scene, is to throw open the windows to the elements to give the shoddy premises a soaking. It is an act of vandalism, but it is also a way of slamming the door, of closing off any going back, and of shaking the fist at a hated “way of life.”

My impression, though, centers much more on the ambition than the poverty. I can’t really relate to poverty, though I’ve certainly been the “starving artist” for a stretch. Who makes art and has not? Only a handful of lucky bastards. The ambition, on the other hand, is the element apart for ‘talent,’ that is essential. Hart would also cite ‘luck,’ or ‘fate,’ or ‘destiny.’ But he wastes no opportunity. He recognizes opportunity when it presents itself, and he makes something out of a bunch of nothing, time and again. “Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains,” wrote Jane Ellice Hopkins in Work Amongst Working Men, in 1870. Edison also hopped on this notion with his crack in a 1931 newspaper interview about the proportion of inspiration to perspiration being 1% to 99%. The story of how Once In a Lifetime ultimately became a hit after disappointing out of town tryouts is the most salient part of Act One. Hart exhausted even Kaufman more than once. The effort to solve the problems of the play and its production are lovingly told. The effort reached into most aspects of the theatrical enterprise. In addition, obviously, to the text, also sets, which then, of course, had to be re-lit. The problem centered on finding a workable third act. A stray remark during a drunken ramble by producer Harris provided Hart the opportunity which his genius seized upon and ran with: the original play was ‘too noisy.’ Out went the elaborate third act sets along with the busy-ness. Hart writes that Sam Harris did not blanch at discarding thousands of dollars worth of scenery. All of these ‘enormous changes at the last minute,’ to quote Grace Paley’s great title, took place with the deadline of the Broadway premier looming. Anyone who has worked in theater will blink at the amount of work involved, all of which, ultimately, fell upon the beleaguered performers who had to make it happen before an audience, without much rehearsal. One of the performers was Kaufman, who premiered the role of Vale, the playwright adrift at sea in the nascent era of talking picture Hollywood.

Also noted by Hart was his evolution through dreams and distancing from poverty as a clothes horse. This clip of Hart in the company of Kitty Carlisle gives one a taste of that.

Having read the autobiography, I had a notion to read the play. I was able to snag a copy of three plays by Kaufman and Hart at Amazon, used, for under five bucks.

Let’s talk about Woollcott for a moment. Earlier in life I had read Smart Alec by Howard Teichmann. I was not unfamiliar with the outlines of the biography and associations. The Man Who Came to Dinner is a caricature. It had a fair amount of biting truth in it, as Woollcott was well known as an abrasive aesthete with a heart of gold. In the play, the heart of gold is well-submerged, and character is more of a scoundrel than Woollcott was. I found the satire more engaging than in either Once In a Lifetime or You Can’t Take It With You. From what I’ve read, I get the impression that Woollcott loved the caricature. He was keen to play the part he inspired, but could not get freed up to do NYC/Broadway. He did perform it in the Los Angeles production. This is covered in Smart Alec. In any event, if one was to come up with a Kübler-Ross style scale for personal advancement, the ability to not take oneself so damned seriously would be in there somewhere. Woollcott did much writing. He wrote for the New Yorker in its heyday, creating the column Shouts and Murmurs. His copy was reportedly in need of much massaging. He wrote novels, plays, and many essays. He was a well-known, syndicated critic. Apparently, he longed for recognition as a creative artist, and admired (in his teasing way) those who excelled. He surely admired, therefore, Kaufman and Hart. They skewered him memorably and handily. And by 1939, they had perfected their form to the point where the movies and revivals are still funny. Proof: the movie made of Once In a Lifetime is on youtube for free with an unkown cast, all washed out and badly in need of restoration. To watch The Man Who Came To Dinner, 1942, with Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, and Monty Woolley, and (!!!) Jimmy Durante as Banjo, the Harpo Marx knock off, is viewable on Amazon Prime… for $3.99. I’m sure it’s not a dilapidated mess!