gsk and hart

George S. Kaufman

Playwright, Screenwriter, God

GSK and Moss Hart

"George S. Kaufman ranks without peer as the wit of the American twentieth century. George's comment, George's cool-off, George's swiftness to pick up the answer was breath-taking.... He was taciturn. He didn't say much, but what he did say was stringent, always to the point, cutting, acid, true or true enough. Which was his great trick. His trick of wit and his trick of criticism wasn't that he found what was true, but he would find what was true enough.
-- Garson Kanin

At a dinner party in Hollywood, an British author was shredding the reputation of a Broadway actress, capping it with, "She's her own worst enemy." To which Kaufman quietly added, "Not while you're alive."

For three years, writer and former collaborator Marc Connelly told Kaufman about the alleged progress in writing his latest play. When Charles Dickens' Life of Our Lord was published posthumously, Kaufman said, "Charles Dickens, dead, writes more than Marc Connelly alive."

A telegram to William Gaxton, star of Kaufman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Of Thee I Sing, after a particularly uninspired performance later in the run: "WATCHING YOUR PERFORMANCE FROM THE LAST ROW. WISH YOU WERE HERE."

Kaufman wrote The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, and A Night At the Opera for the Marx Brothers, but hated their improvisations. Once during an Animal Crackers rehearsal, he walked up onstage and said, "Excuse me for interrupting, but I thought for a minute I actually heard a line I wrote."

If Kaufman hated anything more than improvising actors, he hated Hollywood. In 1935, when the Marx Brothers told MGM creative head Irving Thalberg that they needed Kaufman to steady their floundering film careers, Thalberg had to promise him $100,000 to come out from New York. Kaufman eventually agreed and headed west. When they finally met, Thalberg demanded to know when he could see an outline for the film. "I don't know," replied Kaufman.
"Monday?" Thalberg asked.
"I told you. I don't know," replied Kaufman.
"Wednesday?" Thalberg shot back.
Kaufman pinched his earlobe several times before answering, saying, "Mr. Thalberg, do you want it Wednesday or good?"
(Kaufman went on to write A Night at the Opera and the two men became close friends, even playing bridge together in a hospital room Thalberg rented while his wife gave birth next door.)

One of Kaufman's third act lines in A Night at the Opera was so funny that it had to be removed so preview audiences could hear the rest of the movie.

Kaufman in a speech at Yale in 1939: "(Collaborator) Morrie Ryskind and I once learned a great lesson in the writing of stage comedy. We learned it from the Marx Brothers. We wrote two shows for them, which, by the way, is two more than anybody should be asked to write. Looking back, it seems incredible that this was something we had not known before, but we hadn't. We learned that when an audience does not laugh at a line at which they're supposed to laugh, then the thing to do was to take out that line and get a funnier line. So help me, we didn't know that before. I always thought it was the audience's fault, or when the show got to New York they'd laugh."

Paramount Pictures head Adolph Zukor once offered thirty thousand dollars for the movie rights to a Kaufman play. Kaufman sent back a telegram offering Zukor forty thousand for his studio.

A scene from the stage version of "The Cocoanuts"

During his forty years in the theater, George S. Kaufman was responsible for forty-five plays, twenty six hits, sixteen collaborators, two Pulitzer Prizes, two wives, one daughter, an unknown number of mistresses, twenty orgasms for Mary Astor (according to her diary), and three Marx Brothers movies. James Thurber called him "the man who was comedy." Groucho Marx called him his God. One of Kaufman's third act lines in A Night at the Opera was so funny that it had to be removed so preview audiences could hear the rest of the movie.

In 1941, the Bucks County Playhouse produced a version of George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart's "The Man Who Came To Dinner" in which Kaufman himself played Sheridan Whiteside (the Alexander Woollcott character), Moss Hart played Beverly Carlton (the Noel Coward character) and Harpo Marx played Banjo (the Harpo Marx character). The first photo is from the play itself (and is signed by Harpo with a little self-doodle). The second was taken at Moss Hart's Bucks County estate. And yes -- Harpo spoke all of Banjo's lines.

Pictured above: Signed copy of "Dulcy," Kaufman's first play with Marc Connelly, based on the comic heroine made popular in Frank Pierce Adams' newspaper column. Publisher: The Knickerbocker Press, G. P. Putnam's Sons New York, 1921. First Edition. Inscribed by George S. Kaufman to his in-laws, Julius J Bakrow (1862-1936) and Sarah Adler Bakrow (1864-1943), parents of Beatrice Bakrow Kaufman, on 2nd front end page; signed by Sarah Bakrow on the inside cover. Binding: Hardcover. (Collection of the author.)

Pictured above: Signed copy of "You Can't Take it With You," a play in three acts by Kaufman and Moss Hart. The original production premiered on Broadway in 1936, and played for 838 performances, winning the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Publisher: Farrar & Rinehart, New York. Year: 1937. First Edition as identified by Colophon containing the two letters, (FR) on bottom of copyright page. No ISBN #. Inscribed by George S. Kaufman to his sister-in-law, Edith Strausburger Bakrow (1897-1960), wife of Beatrice Kaufman's brother, Leonard Adler Bakrow (1897-1985), on 2nd front end page. Lay ins: 1) Typed five line note describing the book and the signed presentation 2) Original folded auction sale red identification bookmark stating that Christie's sold this book, lot 218. at sale 1631, on June 29th, 2005. Binding: Hardcover, placed in unique custom-designed folding box. (Collection of the author.)

Go back to
The Pantheon