Kaufman and Co.: Broadway Comedies (Library of America) (Hardcover)

by George S. Kaufman (Author), Laurence Maslon (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post
Like many uncommonly funny people, George S. Kaufman could be difficult, headstrong, irascible, arrogant and overbearing, yet he was the ultimate team player. If Ronald Reagan was the Great Communicator, Kaufman was the Great Collaborator. Over a show-business career that spanned more than four decades, he teamed up with various gifted writers to produce hugely popular Broadway plays and musicals, many of which were turned into hugely popular Hollywood movies -- "Of Thee I Sing," "Dinner at Eight," "Stage Door," "You Can't Take It With You," "The Man Who Came to Dinner" -- and he directed many of them as well, which is to say that he presided over collaborative undertakings involving scores, even hundreds, of people.

When word arrived that Kaufman was to be honored with his own volume in the Library of America, I was delighted. As an adolescent in the 1950s and a young man in the 1960s, I was a passionate Kaufmanite. My worn copy of the Modern Library's Six Plays by Kaufman & Hart was my bedside companion and my vade mecum, accompanying me from one place to another, providing endless laughter and delight. Precisely when and why I stopped reading Kaufman's plays I cannot say, but they remained fixed in memory among the great pleasures of youth.

Of the six plays in that volume, plays upon which Kaufman collaborated with Moss Hart, only three make it into the Library of America collection: "Once in a Lifetime," "You Can't Take It With You" and "The Man Who Came to Dinner." The ones missing are "Merrily We Roll Along," "The American Way" and "George Washington Slept Here." Instead we are given three plays that Kaufman wrote with Edna Ferber ("The Royal Family," "Dinner at Eight" and "Stage Door"), two he wrote with Morrie Ryskind ("Animal Crackers" and "Of Thee I Sing"), and one he wrote with Ring Lardner ("June Moon"). This doubtless is more representative of Kaufman's busy and varied career, but it has an unfortunate and presumably unintended side effect: It leaves no doubt that when Kaufman wasn't collaborating with Hart, the quality of his work went way, way down.

With the exception of "Of Thee I Sing," the plays Kaufman wrote with Ferber, Ryskind and Lardner -- plays produced over nine years, beginning with "The Royal Family" in December 1927 -- are period pieces now, and even "Of Thee I Sing" barely makes the cut; its dialogue is snappy but dated, rescued from oblivion by Ira Gershwin's lyrics (included here) and George Gershwin's music (you'll have to get the album). Thirty pages of small-type notes are required at the end of the volume, mostly to identify the celebrities of the 1920s and 1930s whose names were immediately recognized by audiences of the day but are almost entirely unknown now: Father Divine, Polly Adler, Philo Vance, Grover Whalen, William E. Borah, Hattie Carnegie, Milt Gross, Kay Francis, John L. Sullivan, Peter Arno, Primo Carnera, Clara Bow. Sic transit gloria mundi, and sic transit yesterday's laughs.

Of the non-Hart collaborations, only "Animal Crackers" is genuinely funny, and one senses that Kaufman and Ryskind had relatively little to do with its laughs. These almost certainly were contributed (mostly ad lib) by Harpo, Zeppo and, most especially, Groucho Marx, who starred in the original 1928 production. One of the many anecdotes reported elsewhere about Kaufman takes place during a rehearsal of "Animal Crackers." Kaufman listened to the Marx Brothers have their way with his script before finally complaining: "Excuse me for interrupting, but I thought for a minute I actually heard a line I wrote." The following bit of patter is Marx to the core. It begins with Mrs. Rittenhouse, the hostess, meeting a musician named Emanuel Ravelli. "You are one of the musicians? But you were not due until tomorrow," she says. Ravelli and Captain Spaulding, the explorer played by Groucho, then get rolling:

"RAVELLI: We couldn't come tomorrow. It was too quick.

"SPAULDING: Say, you're lucky they didn't come yesterday.

"RAVELLI: We were busy yesterday, but we charge you just the same.

"SPAULDING: This is better than exploring. What do you fellows get an hour?

"RAVELLI: For playing we get ten dollars an hour.

"SPAULDING: I see. What do you get for not playing?

"RAVELLI: Twelve dollars an hour.

"SPAULDING: Well, cut me off a piece of that, will you?

"RAVELLI: Now, for rehearsing we make a special rate, fifteen dollars an hour.

"SPAULDING: That's for rehearsing? What do you get for not rehearsing?

"RAVELLI: You couldn't afford it. You see if we don't rehearse we don't play, and if we don't play that runs into money.

"SPAULDING: How much do you want to run into an open man-hole?

"RAVELLI: Just the cover charge.

"SPAULDING: Well, if you're ever in the neighborhood, drop in."

Et cetera. Funny stuff, but a whole lot funnier if your mind's eye can see Groucho, with his cigar and his glasses and his moustache, and your mind's ear can hear his lightning-fast voice. Unfortunately there aren't that many people under 60 who remember Groucho that clearly, which leaves one to wonder how much staying power "Animal Crackers" really has, since it is Groucho to the core, as another quotable quote makes irresistibly plain:

"The principal animals inhabiting the African jungle are Moose, Elks, and Knights of Pythias. Of course you all know what a moose is. That's big game. The first day I shot two bucks. That was the biggest game we had. Of course, you all know what a moose is. A moose runs around the floor, eats cheese, and is chased by the cat. The Elks, however, stay up in the hills, most of the year. But in the spring they come down for their annual convention. It is very interesting to watch them come down to the water hole, and you should see them when they find it is only a water hole. What those Elks are looking for is an Elka-hole.

"One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I don't know."

Lovely stuff, but it's Marx, not Kaufman. For all his irreverence and his speed with a riposte, Kaufman didn't do the wild, off-the-wall rimshots that were Groucho's stock in trade. Paired with Hart he could be hugely witty and amusing, but his roots were in the conventional Broadway theater rather than in vaudeville, where the Marx Brothers got their education. As the collaborations with Ferber illustrate, he was capable of writing sentimental melodrama as well as comedy (there are more gulps than guffaws in those three plays) and even paired with Lardner -- a match that would seem to have been made in heaven -- he played it pretty much down the middle. Lardner had longed all his life for a Broadway success, and "June Moon" gave him one, but his most imaginative and durable plays are those strange, beguiling one-act exercises in inspired absurdism: "Cora, or Fun at a Spa," "I Gaspiri," "The Tridget of Greva."

So we are left with the Hart collaborations. Dated references are problems in all three of those included here, especially "The Man Who Came to Dinner," but all of them are regularly revived by theatrical groups both professional and amateur, and presumably the references are brought up-to-date: Julia Roberts substitutes for ZaSu Pitts, Tony Blair for Anthony Eden, et cetera. I'd love to have seen the 2000 New York revival of "The Man Who Came to Dinner," with Nathan Lane playing the immortal Sheridan Whiteside, or the 1984 revival of "You Can't Take It With You," with Jason Robards as Grandpa Vanderhof. No doubt both revivals underscored a central aspect of Kaufman & Hart plays: They may be dated in some ways, but they're tightly constructed and move at a brisk pace, their characters are eccentric but deeply human, and their humor transcends the limitations of period.

So what Kaufman & Co. tells me is that I was right to love Six Plays by Kaufman & Hart as much as I did, but that when he hitched up with someone else, he couldn't take it with him.

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Review
...Kaufman was to comic writing what Groucho was to comic acting... -- Robert Brustein, The New Republic, October 11, 2004

...produced some of the heartiest laughs of the 20th century, and the laughter still echoes loudly in the 21st... -- Chicago Sun-Times, October 17, 2004

...the more I learned about comedy writing, the more I appreciated...Kaufman-the single funniest human of my lifetime. -- Woody Allen, Th New York Times Book Review, October 24, 2004

There is a sensual pleasure in encountering such a shamelessly well-published volume. -- Musicals101.com, Autumn 2004

Product Details

• Hardcover: 911 pages
• Publisher: Library of America; 1st Printing edition (September 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931082677
• ISBN-13: 978-1931082679
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #639,604 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Best of George Kaufman's Broadway Comedies, October 24, 2004

By	C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The Library of America has done another outstanding effort in pulling together nine of George Kaufman's comedy collabrations from Broadway's Golden Era. Excluding "Once In A Lifetime", all of his plays were made into movies by Hollywood (with "You Can't Take It With You" winning the Oscar for Best Picture in 1938).

Since Mr. Kaufman's humor is firmly rooted in the era of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression for these plays, a little historical knowledge of that period goes a long way in enjoying them. The explanatory notes at the conclusion of this collection clarifies the numerous topical references within each play.

This volume is best read one play at a time (usually less than a 100 pages per play) and then the reader can enjoy the film production of the play. The quality of his writing can be seen by the actors/actresses drawn to portray his characters in the movies: James Stewart, Jean Harlow, Kate Hepburn, Frederic March, Betty Davis, Lionel Barrymore and so many more. Mr. Kaufman's comedies are no more dated than the plays by William Shakespeare.

4.0 out of 5 stars A most fascinating anthology, April 1, 2008

By	Gene DeSantis (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First off, whatever the Library of America says, these aren't all "comedies"; three are smelly mellerdrammers. More on them later. But first to the comedies, and the most mirthful of the bunch is clearly "Animal Crackers." Just whose laughs are Kaufman's and Ryskind's and whose are Groucho's we will never know; and alas, we will never know just how much the incalculable ad-libs added, not least from the speechless Harpo. What survives is funny-bone-tickling enough. Captain Spaulding's seduction of Mrs. Rittenhouse and Mrs. Whitehead is one of the greatest in literature (yes I mean that).

Next down the line is "The Man who Came to Dinner", and while it exaggerates it to say you need a Cliffs Notes to understand all the topical references, it helps; but if you do know what Sheridan Whiteside's talking about it's still pretty rollicking stuff. Further down is "You Can't Take It With You", celebrated not so much for its humor as for being a true ensemble piece, as more than one writer has said, the sitcom of sitcoms, and one must see the production and its myriad interactions onstage to behold its true warmth. Then comes "Once in a Lifetime", whose considerable wit is vastly overshadowed by its surrealistic and preposterous ending, which only someone who took himself very seriously in film like Sergei Eisenstein could have mistaken for real life.

Dismissing "Of Thee I Sing", rank after 76 years (and even sooner), and "June Moon," which vanishes on the printed page (and ignoring one of the mellerdrammers, "The Royal Family", which is regally dull), we turn to a play magnetic and fusty, "Dinner at Eight." It's clear what attracted MGM to it; it's a chance for prima-donnas of the highest order to parade their peacock feathers; indeed the potential star power vastly outshines the words (although of the original stage cast the only names known today are Cesar Romero and Sam Levene, he of "Guys and Dolls"). It becomes patently obvious after a few readings that every character has a carefully crafted fault, though not so faulty as Kaufman and Ferber. Is the whole point to prove what passes for society is a bunch of phonies? Point taken -- and taken and taken. Not the only point taken; in III.ii, where the once mighty screen star Larry Renault "humiliates" himself into losing a small part in some Broadway hackery, our authors shed whatever humor they had so they could make a scene; a producer who could laugh would see the potential for self-mockery, even parody, in Renault, supposedly based on the man who played him on film, John Barrymore. But no, the writers had to have their grand exit. By the way, did the Hotel Versailles stay in business?

And then there is "Stage Door". Aside from being played at a constant high pitch and having a producer type in Kingsley who is too saintly for show-biz (or anything else) this work centers on a laughable and even outrageous notion: that not only is the thea-TAH inherently noble, but that anyone who'd work in films is a. a sell-out or b. untalented. We will not dare to guess how many cinematic hack works Mr. Kaufman and his collaborators inspired. We do know the budding ingenue Jean is untalented because everyone says so; but if she's so untalented how did she make it into "Stage Door"? At times we're not watching a drama but hearing a lecture, and we're at the butt-end of it.

If Kaufman's collaborations don't provide the inspiriting experience of, say, the two volumes of Lincoln's collected writings they nevertheless combine into a respectable diversion, and a reminder of what the Great White Way was like before it became Branson East.

5.0 out of 5 stars Broadway's Best, July 12, 2007

By	R. McHaffey "Bobmch" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A collection of Kaufman's zingiest plays, written with, among others, Moss Hart, Edna Ferber, Morrie Ryskind, including the first musical book to win a Pulitzer Prize, Of Thee I Sing, and the Marx Brothers hit, Animal Crackers. The only significant omission is the lack of character breakdowns for the plays included, but that's more than made up for by an excellent compendium of biographical and production chronology included at the end of the book. Recommended highly.