“If it is true that no more eager disciple ever sat at the feet of a teacher, it is equally true that no disciple was ever treated with more infinite patience and understanding.”
Moss Hart on his early collaboration with George S. Kaufman
I forget who said “All disappointment comes from unmet expectations”—but that would sum up one unusual less than 48-hour period in the life of Moss Hart when he was on the verge of becoming the well-known playwright Moss Hart.
After six year of writing plays with little success, Hart was in his mid-20s when a play of his was given to the established playwright George S. Kaufman. Moss was excited that Kaufman could be interested in re-working Hart’s play and thought this could be his breakthrough moment.
In today’s terms this would be like a young writer getting a chance to work with Aaron Sorkin. Hart was given Kaufman’s home phone number and encouraged to call him. That phone call resulted in Kaufman hanging up on him.
DOWNBEAT #1
That night Kaufman did read Hart’s script and wanted to meet with Hart the next day at the Music Box Theatre. It turns out that Kaufman did want to work on the play with Hart and a deal was struck on the spot and Hart was even given a $500 advance on royalties. (Keep in mind this was in the 1920s and this was the equivalent to six months pay for Hart.) When Hart went into a sincere (semi-prepared) thank you speech to Kaufman, Kaufman walked out on him. Hart was told that Kaufman had no use for sentimentality.
DOWNBEAT #2
Hart went home that night to tell his family the good news and share his victory with them.
“[M]y family’s reception of the news, when I stood in the doorway and announced in ringing tones that I had sold a play, in no way matched my own triumphant glow. They received the news with an air of amazed disbelief and infuriating calm. Even the [$500] check, which I unfolded carefully and placed in the center of the dining-room table to be admired by them and by myself all over again, was viewed with an irritating detachment and a quiet distrust.
“‘I suppose you know what you’re doing, taking all that money,’ said my mother warily, ‘but I wouldn’t touch it until you’ve worked with Mr. Kaufman for a while—in case he asks you to give it back.’”
Moss Hart
DOWNBEAT #3
The next day Hart went to Kaufman’s home at 158 East 63rd Street and was unimpressed with the modest brownstone. He was “a little disappointed” in the exterior of a home of the famous playwright. And he was even less impressed when he arrived in the room where Kaufman wrote.
“It was a small, rather dark room, furnished sparsely with a studio couch, a quite ugly typewriter desk and one easy chair. It was hard for me to believe that a stream of brilliant plays had come from this monk-like interior. I am not certain what I expected the atelier of Kaufman and [Marc] Connelly would be like, but it most certainly was the opposite of this. There was no hint of any kind that this room was in any way connected with the theatre. Not a framed photograph or program hung on the walls, and except for an excellent etching of Mark Twain, it might have been, I thought regretfully, the bedroom and workroom of a certified public accountant. My initial disappointment was to deepen into an active loathing of that room. . . .”
Moss Hart
The play they were working on together was Once in a Lifetime that would go on to become a hit on Broadway. But long before that, this is how Kaufman began their collaboration on day one:
“The trouble begins in the third scene of the first act. It’s messy and unclear and goes off in the wrong direction. Suppose we start with that.”
DOWNBEAT #4
Hart did not take Kaufman’s direct analysis well.
“I nodded, trying to look agreeable and knowing at the same time; but this like my disappointment with the workshop of the master, was my second blow of the morning.”
Moss Hart
These days every time an artist sneezes it’s called a master class. Every Q&A is a master class. But the truth is many of these master classes are just successful people giving interesting anecdotes on their careers. “Master class” has just become additional marketing buzz words. But what Hart got from Kaufman was even more than a master class—it was the opportunity to work side by side with a master surgeon of the theatre.
RISING CRESCENDO
“If it is possible for a book of this sort to have a hero, then that hero is George S. Kaufman. In the months that followed that first day’s work, however, my waking nightmare was of a glittering steel pencil suspended over my head that sometimes turned into a scalpel, or a baleful stare over the rims of a huge pair of disembodied tortoise-shell glasses. I do not think it far-fetched to say that such success as I have had in the theatre is due in large part to George Kaufman. I cannot pretend that I was without talent, but such gifts as I possessed were raw and undisciplined. It is one thing to have a flair for play-writing or even a ready wit with dialogue. It is quite another to apply these gifts in the strict and demanding terms of a fully articulated play so that they emerge with explicitness, precision and form. All of this and a great deal more I learned from George Kaufman.”
Moss Hart
Act One, pages 281-282
CLIMAX
In 1936, the Kaufman and Hart play You Can’t Take It with You premiered on Broadway and played for 838 performances. The following year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the movie version (screenplay by Robert Riskin) won the Best Picture Oscar. And this week, it’s probably playing at a high school or college near you. (For the past 80 years that play is consistently one of the top plays produced by amateur groups.)
P.S. So while there is a sense that Hart did teach himself how to write plays (as my post yesterday implied), Kaufman taught him how to do it well.