YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU

Background Notes

by Soulpepper Associate Artist Paula Wing

George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart had a profound effect on American theatre. Both wrote and directed, both collaborated with luminaries like Kurt Weill, the Gershwins, and Irving Berlin, and for a brief time both even tried their hand at running a theatre in New York. Each man's work encompassed dramas, classic comedies, and major musicals (Hart won a Tony Award for his direction of My Fair Lady, and Kaufman won a Tony for his direction of Guys and Dolls). Both also wrote for film: among Kaufman's credits are several Marx Brothers movies, on Hart's resumé is the screenplay for A Star is Born, which starred Judy Garland.

Kaufman was more famous than Hart when they got together: a bespectacled, gloomy-looking sort of fellow who rarely smiled but was known for his way with women and his way with a wisecrack. To wit: "When I invite a woman to dinner, I expect her to look at my face. That's the price she has to pay."

Hart was more outwardly buoyant but he quietly suffered from bouts of depression. As a young man he worked in the Catskills and wrote big sprawling ambitious dramas, inspired by his idol, Eugene O'Neill. After a pile of rejections, Hart decided to give producers the comedy they kept asking for, teaming with Broadway veteran Kaufman. In 1930 their first collaboration, Once in a Lifetime, was an instant hit. You Can't Take it with You, their most popular play, followed in 1936. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1937 and the film adaptation starring Jimmy Stewart garnered two Academy Awards, one for director Frank Capra and the other for Best Picture.

There are many signature Kaufman/Hart touches here: numerous characters, chaotic activity (fireworks in the basement! ballet in the living room! tax audit in the dining room!) and sharp, witty dialogue. It's a light-hearted comedy but the underlying dramatic structure is rock-solid, the characters are tenderly and deftly drawn and the writers are in masterful control of all the mayhem.

This 75 year old comedy is still being produced for many reasons, not least because at its heart it's about family: how it shapes and embarrasses, grounds and defines us. The Sycamores may be a little more eccentric than average but who can't relate to poor Alice's dilemma of loving her family but not being sure anybody else will? Who can't identify with these reckless yet recognizable characters whose passions and problems are all connected to a search for happiness and meaning in their lives?

In You Can't Take it With You, and other plays, Kaufman and Hart defined a new kind of American comedy: fast and furious, zinging with one-liners, anchored by real feeling. Generations of American playwrights and television sit-com writers were influenced by their madcap style, but few achieved the delicate, almost swashbuckling fusion of heart and humour on offer here. This is the source.

Playwright Biographies

1889 - On November 16th George Simon Kaufman is born in Pittsburgh to a business family descended from German-born Jewish immigrants.

1904 - On October 24th Moss Hart is born in New York City, to a family of English-born Jewish immigrants. Several years later, his father, a cigar maker, loses his business when the mechanical cigar roller is invented.

1917 - Kaufman is named drama critic for the New York Times, a powerful post he will hold until 1930.

1920s - Moss Hart directs amateur theatricals and serves as a resort entertainment director in the Catskills, dreaming of a professional career. Kaufman meanwhile is a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a literary circle of famed wits like Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Tallulah Bankhead.

1925 - Kaufman collaborates with Irving Berlin and Morrie Ryskind on The Cocoanuts, a Broadway musical for the Marx Brothers (and their great female foil, Margaret Dumont). He proves to be particularly adept at writing for the exacting Groucho - who will later refer to Kaufman as his "god". The play is adapted into a film.

1928 - The Marx Brothers turn to the wisecracking Kaufman once more (along with Harry Ruby, Bert Kalmar and Morrie Ryskind) for their new Broadway musical, Animal Crackers. It too becomes a film.

1930 - Kaufman and Hart team up and score a Broadway hit right out of the gate with Once in a Lifetime, a play about the advent of talking movies. Mr. Kaufman plays the role of the frustrated playwright - is there any other kind? - in the original production. At 26, Moss Hart's professional career is established: he's rich and famous and he will go on to work with some of the greatest artists of his day including Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart (no relation) and Kurt Weill.

1931 - Kaufman wins his first Pulitzer Prize for the musical Of Thee I Sing (which he also directs), co-written with Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin. It is the first musical ever to receive this prestigious award.

1935 - A Night at the Opera (a Kaufman screenplay) is a huge hit for the Marx Brothers (minus Zeppo). It also features Margaret Dumont and a young actress called Kitty Carlisle.

1936 - Moss Hart marries Kitty Carlisle and they go on to have two children, though rumours swirl about Hart's sexual orientation. Meanwhile he and Kaufman team again to write You Can't Take it With You, which opens on December 14th at the Booth Theatre in New York and runs for 837 performances.

1937-38 - You Can't Take it With You wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. They sell the film rights for a record-breaking sum and the film version wins a Best Picture Oscar as well as a Best Director Academy Award for Frank Capra. Kaufman and Hart begin work on a new comedy, The Man Who Came to Dinner, which premières the following year.

1940 - Kaufman and Hart, along with Max Gordon, buy and operate the Lyceum Theatre in New York. They continue this venture until 1946, though 1940 marks their final theatrical collaboration: George Washington Slept Here, a play that is later made into a film starring Jack Benny and Hattie McDaniel.

1947 - Widower George S. Kaufman (his first wife - and sometime collaborator - Beatrice died in 1945) marries actress-writer Leueen MacGrath. Hart is known more as a director but he is nominated this year for an Academy Award for his screenplay of Gentleman's Agreement, a film about anti-semitism starring Gregory Peck.

1950s - Hart directs the original production of Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, picking up a Tony Award in the process. The show runs for 7 years. He writes the screenplay for A Star is Born. Kaufman receives a Best Director Tony Award for his work on the great musical, Guys and Dolls. Kaufman divorces MacGrath in 1957. Hart produces a very well regarded autobiography of his life in the theatre called Act One in 1959. It is still in print decades later.

1960 - Hart directs the first production of Lerner and Loewe's Camelot, suffering a heart attack during the out-of-town tryouts. He recovers sufficiently to re-work the show after its Broadway opening, and it goes on to be a huge hit.

1961 - On December 21st, Moss Hart dies of a heart attack. His wife, Kitty Carlisle Hart outlives him by 46 years.

1971 - On June 2nd, George S. Kaufman dies in his beloved New York City.

Tidbits

• Hart's invariable opening night ritual involved eating copious amounts of bad food - usually hot dogs from street vendors - and then, once the show started, pacing at the back of the theatre until he was forced to flee the auditorium to throw up.
• After he became successful, Hart bought a huge estate in rural New York. Kaufman came to visit and got the grand tour. As they strolled the grounds, Hart asked his friend what he thought of the place. Kaufman didn't miss a beat. "It's what God would've done if He'd had money."
• On their twentieth wedding anniversary, Hart paid tribute to his wife, television personality Kitty Carlisle. He lifted his glass and toasted her with: "Well Kitty, you stuck with me through thick."
• Kaufman was a passionate bridge player. His articles on the game often appeared in The New Yorker.
• A small selection of Kaufman witticisms:

  Epitaph for a waiter. God finally caught his eye. - I understand your new play is full of single entendres. - In rehearsal, the only author that's better than an absent one is a dead one.

• This production marks the Soulpepper debut of Tim Ziegler, son of Soulpepper founding members (director) Joseph Ziegler and (actress) Nancy Palk, and brother of Henry Ziegler, last seen in A Christmas Carol.

Background Notes

by Soulpepper Associate Artist Toby Malone

The collaboration between American playwrights Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman was nothing short of prolific. The two combined to pen comic classics including Once in a Lifetime, Merrily We Roll Along, The Man Who Came to Dinner, and Abraham Lincoln Slept Here, yet You Can't Take It With You remains the pair's most enduring product, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1937. Frank Capra's motion picture adaptation, starring Jean Arthur, James Stewart, and Lionel Barrymore, won the 1938 Oscar for Best film. The chaos which resounds in the eccentric but thoroughly loving Sycamore home is an extreme glimpse into a familiar reality for young people dreading the moment of revealing their family's foibles to a prospective partner. Kaufman and Hart wrote their sprawling comedy in an America still racked by the Great Depression, as malcontent simmered in Europe. The era of uncertainty and make-do is evocatively imprinted on the mood of the Sycamore household in its cluttered order; disparate figures flit in and out, no longer able to enjoy the privileges of past lives, and, particularly in the case of the Russian white émigrés, embracing the normalcy of hard work.

As the only so-called normal member of the Sycamore family, Alice is burdened with the impossible task of integrating her family's eccentricities - led by the laissez-faire convocation-auditing Grandpa, the free-spirited, many-faceted Penny, and the fireworks-building Paul - with her fiancé's family conservatism. Yet it is by weathering the storm that Alice learns that eccentricity is as vital as common sense. As America looked for a way out of a crisis of its own creation, the sight of a group embracing its differences and finding common ground became a testing ground of sorts for a wary nation. Kaufman and Hart embrace the chaos yet never stoop to judgement, resulting in a timeless classic.