(Lorenz Hart and Moss Hart were not related.) Throughout the 1930s, Hart also worked, with and without Kaufman, on several musicals and revues, including Face the Music (1932), As Thousands Cheer (1933), with songs by Irving Berlin, Jubilee (musical) (1935), with songs by Cole Porter and I'd Rather Be Right (1937), with songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Other characters in the play are based on Noel Coward, Harpo Marx and Gertrude Lawrence.Īfter George Washington Slept Here (1940), Kaufman and Hart called it quits. The character was based on Kaufman and Hart's friend, critic Alexander Woollcott. The Man Who Came To Dinner is about the caustic Sheridan Whiteside who, after injuring himself slipping on ice, must stay in a Midwestern family's house. When director Frank Capra and writer Robert Riskin adapted it for the screen in 1938, the film won the Best Picture Oscar and Capra won for Best Director. You Can't Take It With You, the story of an eccentric family and how they live during the Depression, won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for drama. Though Kaufman had hits with others, Hart is generally conceded to be his most important collaborator. (Kaufman also performed in the play's original Broadway cast in the role of a frustrated playwright hired by Hollywood.) During the next decade, Kaufman and Hart teamed on a string of successes, including You Can't Take It With You (1936) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939). Kaufman, who regularly wrote with others, notably Marc Connelly and Edna Ferber. The play was written in collaboration with Broadway veteran George S. He understood that the theater made possible "the art of being somebody else… not a scrawny boy with bad teeth, a funny name… and a mother who was a distant drudge." (Bach 13).Īfter working several years as a director of amateur theatrical groups and an entertainment director at summer resorts, he scored his first Broadway hit with Once In A Lifetime (1930), a farce about the arrival of the sound era in Hollywood.
But his relationship with Kate was life-forming. Later, Kate became quite eccentric, vandalizing Hart's home, writing threatening letters and setting fires backstage during rehearsals for Jubilee. He writes that she died while he was working on out-of-town tryouts for The Beloved Bandit. Hart even went so far as to create an "alternate ending" to her life in his book Act One. She got him interested in the theater and took him to see performances often. Early on he had a strong relationship with his Aunt Kate, whom he later lost contact with because of a falling out between her and his parents, and her weakening mental state.
Hart grew up at 74 East 105th Street in Manhattan, "a neighborhood not of carriages and hansom cabs, but of dray wagons, pushcarts, and immigrants" (Bach 1). Hart recalled his youth, early career and rise to fame in his autobiography, Act One, adapted to film in 1963, with George Hamilton portraying Hart. Moss Hart was an American playwright and director of plays and musical theater.
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