- Born
- Died
- Birth nameGeorge Simon Kaufman
- American playwright of acerbic wit. Twice won the Pulitzer Prize, and
is best known for his collaborative authorship of "Once in a Lifetime,"
with Moss Hart (1930); "Of Thee I Sing," with Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin (1931);
"Dinner at Eight," with Edna Ferber (1932); "You Can't Take It with You"
and "The Man Who Came to Dinner," again with Hart (1936 and 1939,
respectively) and "The Solid Gold Cadillac," with Howard Teichmann (1953).
(George Gershwin supplied the music for "Of Thee I Sing.")- IMDb Mini Biography By: Bill Takacs <kinephile@aol.com> - George S. Kaufman, one of the most famous and successful American
playwrights of the 20th century, was born on November 16, 1889 in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. With the possible exception of
Neil Simon, no other comic playwright enjoyed
more popular success or exerted more influence over the American stage
and cinema than did Kaufman.
Kaufman started out as a newspaper reporter and a drama critic,
eventually becoming the drama editor at "The New York Times." He began
writing for the stage, and made his Broadway debut with "Some One in
the House" in 1918, written in collaboration with Larry Evans and W. C.
Percival. Every year from the appearance of his second play "Dulcy"
(co-written with Marc Connelly) in 1921
through 1958, when the Kaufman-directed
Peter Ustinov play "Romanoff and Juliet"
closed, a Kaufman-written or -directed play usually was on the boards
on Broadway. (From 1966 to 2003, there have been 12 revivals of
Kaufman's plays on Broadway.)
Kaufman nearly always wrote in collaboration with another writer. Of
the full-length plays, only "The Butter and Egg Man" (1925) and the
musical "Hollwyood Pinafore" (1945) were solo efforts. "The Butter and
Egg Man" was a hit, running for 245 performances, but the latter -- a
burlesque of Gilbert and Sullivan, with music by
Arthur Sullivan and a libretto
by Kaufman -- flopped.
In the golden age of the Broadway theater, Kaufman proved himself to be
a master craftsman, particularly adept at comedy and satire. (Of the
later, Kaufman famously observed "Satire is what closes on Saturday.")
He frequently was brought in by Broadway producers to serve as a script
doctor of a promising play, turning it into a hit.
In collaboration with Marc Connelly, he wrote the plays as "Merton of
the Movies" (1922), his first classic, which ran for 248 performances,
and "Beggar on Horseback" (1924). His "backstage" hit play "The Royal
Family" (1927), which was co-written with
Edna Ferber, was a spoof of the Barrymore
family and ran for 345 performances. "June Moon" (1929), written in
collaboration with Ring Lardner, is a spoof of Tin Pan Alley, while he
satirized Hollywood in "Once in a Lifetime" (1930), collaborating with
Moss Hart.
For the Marx Brothers, Kaufman wrote the stage revues "The Cocoanuts"
(1925), which featured lyrics by
Irving Berlin, and "Animal
Crackers" (1928), which he wrote in collaboration with
Morrie Ryskind. Kaufman hated it when the
Marx Brothers improvised and, once during an "Animal Crackers"
rehearsal, he walked up on-stage and told them, "Excuse me for
interrupting, but I thought for a minute I actually heard a line I
wrote".
Kaufman traveled to Hollywood, which he hated, in 1935 at the request
of the Marx Brothers, who inveigled MGM production supervisor
Irving Thalberg to hire him. Thalberg
guaranteed Kaufman $100,000 to leave New York for Culver City. When
Kaufman arrived at the studio, Thalberg demanded to know when he could
see an outline for the script that would become
A Night at the Opera (1935).
"I don't know," replied Kaufman.
"Monday?" Thalberg asked.
"I told you. I don't know," replied Kaufman.
"Wednesday?" Thalberg shot back.
Kaufman tugged at his earlobe before answering: "Mr. Thalberg, do you
want it Wednesday or good?"
In a 1939 speech he gave at Yale, Kaufman said, "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."
George S. Kaufman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, along with
Morrie Ryskind and
Ira Gershwin, for "Of Thee I Sing" (1931),
a political satire with music supplied by
George Gershwin. He won his second
Pulitzer for "You Can't Take It with You" (1936), co-written with
Moss Hart). Collaborating again with
Edna Ferber, they turned out "Dinner at
Eight" (1932) and "Stage Door" (1936), while back in harness with
Moss Hart, he turned out "The Man Who Came to
Dinner" (1939), a burlesque of the American cult of celebrity.
In collaboration with the lyricist
Howard Dietz, he wrote the book for the
musical revue "The Band Wagon" (1931), which featured
Fred Astaire and
Adele Astaire. Among his later works are
"The Late George Apley" (1944), co-written with
John P. Marquand and "The Solid Gold
Cadillac" (1953), co-written with
Howard Teichmann, 1954. Kaufman was
also a theatrical director, directing many successful plays, including
"The Front Page (1928), "Of Mice and Men" (1939), "My Sister Eileen"
(1940), and "Guys and Dolls" (1950).
He was a member of the celebrated Algonquin Round Table, a circle of
witty writers and show business types that met for lunch on a daily
basis at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, New York. The group coalesced
around Dorothy Parker, who was living in
the Algonquin Hotel at the time, and included
Alexander Woollcott,
Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman,
Edna Ferber,
Franklin P. Adams and
Harpo Marx.
His wit was famous. When actress-playwright
Ruth Gordon described a new play to
him, she said, "There's no scenery at all. In the first scene, I'm on
the left side of the stage and the audience has to imagine I'm in a
crowded restaurant. In Scene Two, I run over to the right side of the
stage and the audience has to imagine I'm home in my own drawing room".
"And the second night", Kaufman fore casted, "you'll have to imagine
there's an audience out front".
Gordon's husband, the playwright
Garson Kanin said, "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".
In addition to his two Pulitzer Prizes, he won the 1951 Tony Award for
Best Director for "Guys and Dolls."
George S. Kaufman died on June 2, 1961.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
- SpousesLeueen MacGrath(May 26, 1949 - 1957) (divorced)Beatrice Bakrow(March 15, 1917 - October 6, 1945) (her death, 1 child)
- Had a torrid affair with Mary Astor, which was revealed in court during
Astor's 1936 divorce trial when she was fighting her husband for
custody of their daughter. Her personal diary, which detailed the
physical pleasures Kaufman had given her during their affair, was
introduced by her husband's lawyers to besmirch her reputation. The
resulting scandal only seemed to make her more popular with the public,
and likely led to her being cast in her most famous role as the vamp in
The Maltese Falcon (1941). Being publicly known as a stud did nothing to hurt Kaufman's
reputation, either. - 1951: Won Broadway's Tony Award as Best Director for "Guys and Dolls.".
- He was only the second playwright to win two Pulitzer Prizes, the first
being Eugene O'Neill. - 2000: His play, "Merrily We Roll Along", became a Stephen Sondheim musical and was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best New Musical in
2001. - Inducted into the United States Croquet Hall of Fame in 1979.
- When a community theater group was caught performing one of Kaufman's
plays without permission or payment of royalties, Kaufman threatened to
send them to jail for theft. The theater director thought they didn't
need to pay royalties because, as he put it, "It's just a small,
insignificant, little theater in a small, insignificant, little town."
Kaufman's reply: "Then we'll send you all to a small, insignificant,
little jail." - I like terra firma -- the more firma, the less terra.
- (Upon seeing so many billboard ads with an alluring Jane Russell in The Outlaw (1943)) They ought to call it "A Sale of Two Titties".
- [on writing for the Marx Brothers who were given to ad-libbing their dialogue] I may be wrong. But I think I just heard one of the original lines.
- [advice to a writer who had a spelling problem] I'm not very good at it myself, but the first rule about spelling is that there is only one 'z' in 'is'.
- A Night at the Opera (1935) - $100,000
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