George Washington Slept Here – George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, 1940 ½★

When the Well Runs Dry

Country life became a popular subject for Americans in the 1940s, with movies like Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, comic strips like “Li’l Abner,” even paintings like Andrew Wyeth “Christina’s World.” Why not screwball comedy, too?

George Kaufman & Moss Hart had enjoyed ample enough success from collaborative playwriting to afford new homes in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. So they agreed on a play centered on country life. George Washington Slept Here was the result.

This time it seems I’m not the only person in the world who didn’t like it.

The Man Who Came To Dinner – George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, 1939 ★★½

Rudeness is Its own Reward

Let no one claim the class system was confined to other parts of the world: The Man Who Came To Dinner shows it in full effect here in America. A media celebrity takes over the house of an Ohio family, throwing them into chaos. But never mind them; the celebrity and his friends are all that matters.

A successful screwball comedy by the team of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, The Man Who Came To Dinner was a long-running hit on Broadway and a popular movie starring Monty Woolley and Bette Davis. Unlike Kaufman and Hart’s even bigger earlier comedy, You Can’t Take It With You, this offers an inventive plot, some wicked one-liners, and a lead character right out of Falstaff.

But as the play rolls along, it plays up the patrician sensibilities of its authors in a smug, hard-to-take way. Kaufman and Hart seem to think if they enjoy rubbing elbows with the like of Noel Coward and Harpo Marx, so should you. Meanwhile, if you are like me, you may find a little of Sheridan Whiteside winds up more than enough.

The American Way – George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, 1939 ★

Letting Freedom Ring...a Bit Tinnily

Sometimes a work of art tries too hard to say all the right things, only to make its points to the point of banality. Such is the fate of this drama meant to prepare the country for the start of World War II.

A historically significant but dramatically leaden presentation of the national experience over 43 years, “The American Way” is a departure for playwrights George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart in its deadly earnestness. Almost bereft of humor, it pivots from flag-waver to tragedy without giving an audience a chance to catch their breaths.

You Can’t Take It With You – George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, 1936 ★½

Taking it Easy...Too Easy

Screwball comedies of the 1930s are hard to judge. They live within their own unique construct where people spout earnest nonsense all at once. Roles are overturned, conventions twisted, love springs from the oddest of places. Lessons are not learned; rather they are flouted.

A first-rate screwball comedy freezes time as brilliantly as a Grecian urn. Check out Bringing Up Baby, My Man Godfrey, and The Lady Eve, all of which spoof familiar romantic tropes, spit dialogue like rappers on Ritalin, and retain the power of laughter nearly a century on.

Then there is You Can’t Take It With You, a rare comedy that won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Even before that happened, it was a Broadway comeback hit for playwrights George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Here is a screwball comedy where time has not been so kind.

Merrily We Roll Along – George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, 1934 ★½

The Backwards Journey of a Heel

The mechanics of stagecraft are fairly basic. Performers recreate moments of life heightened and condensed for dramatic/comic purposes. Events play out as if in real time, without cuts, on a raised platform where another place and time is brought to life for an audience.

But what if one of the critical elements of standard dramaturgy was altered? What if a play moved backwards? What if you start at the ending, and then rewind it all to the beginning?

That is the concept behind Merrily We Roll Along, a serious play by two comedic writers, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Instead of introducing characters, then bringing them to some conflict or crisis, we first see the conflicts play out, then learn about the characters.

Once In A Lifetime – George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, 1930 ★★★

Then Along Came Jolson

Hollywood didn’t fall in a day. It actually took just over a year, from the debut of the first feature-length picture with sound, Don Juan in August 1926, to that of a much more famous “talkie,” The Jazz Singer in October 1927. Very quickly, everything in moviedom changed forever.

Suddenly, as Norma Desmond would put it, actors needed more than faces. They needed voices, too. This had seeds of both tragedy and comedy. An early example of the latter marked the debut of one of American theater’s most successful writing partnerships, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.

As the powerful, short-sighted studio head Herman Glogauer puts it: “What did they have to go and make pictures talk for? Things were going along fine. You couldn’t stop making money – even if you turned out a good picture you made money.”