Autorenbild.

George S. Kaufman (1889–1961)

Autor von You Can't Take It With You

59+ Werke 1,859 Mitglieder 33 Rezensionen Lieblingsautor von 3 Lesern

Über den Autor

Kaufman, was born in Pittsburgh, attended law school for two years, failed as a business person, and became a humorist for Franklin P. Adams's column before joining the New York Times, whose drama editor he became in the 1920s. Kaufman was sole author of one long play and two one-act plays, mehr anzeigen including the popular The Butter and Egg Man (1926), but he collaborated on more than 25 plays, most importantly with Moss Hart, but also with Marc Connelly, Edna Ferber, and others, including Ring Lardner and John P. Marquand. These plays range from the hilarious madness of Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1928), two Marx Brothers shows that Kaufman worked on, to the comic pathos of Stage Door (1936) (with Edna Ferber). Commenting on why he did not write true satire, Kaufman said, "Satire is what closes Saturday night." Kaufman, Morris Ryskind, and Ira Gershwin won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for Of Thee I Sing (1932) and Kaufman and Hart for You Can't Take It with You (1937). (Bowker Author Biography) weniger anzeigen
Bildnachweis: Courtesy of the NYPL Digital Gallery (image use requires permission from the New York Public Library)

Werke von George S. Kaufman

You Can't Take It With You (1936) 495 Exemplare
Kaufman & Co.: Broadway Comedies (2004) 251 Exemplare
The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939) 234 Exemplare
Stage Door (1936) 84 Exemplare
Six Plays by Kaufman and Hart (1942) 83 Exemplare
A Day at the Races [1937 film] (1937) — Screenplay — 66 Exemplare
Once in a Lifetime (1930) 53 Exemplare
The Royal Family (1927) 50 Exemplare
George Washington Slept Here. (1940) 43 Exemplare
Of Thee I Sing (1931) 43 Exemplare
By George: A Kaufman Collection (1979) 25 Exemplare
Three Comedies (2000) 20 Exemplare
Merton of the Movies (1949) 18 Exemplare
Merrily We Roll Along: A Play (1934) 15 Exemplare
Animal Crackers [libretto] (1928) 14 Exemplare
Dulcy (1921) 11 Exemplare
The American Way (1939) 9 Exemplare
Amicable Parting (1957) 8 Exemplare
Beggar on Horseback (1924) 7 Exemplare
Hollywood Pinafore (1998) 5 Exemplare
Minick (1924) 5 Exemplare
A Night At the Opera / Go West (1982) 5 Exemplare
Old Man Minick (1924) 4 Exemplare
Bravo! Play in Three Acts (1949) 4 Exemplare
The Fabulous Invalid (1938) 4 Exemplare
Of Thee I Sing 1 Exemplar
Once In A Lifetime 1 Exemplar
Let 'em Eat Cake (1933) 1 Exemplar

Zugehörige Werke

The Best of Modern Humor (1983) — Mitwirkender — 291 Exemplare
24 Favorite One Act Plays (1958) — Mitwirkender — 283 Exemplare
Six Modern American Plays (1951) — Mitwirkender — 272 Exemplare
Sixteen Famous American Plays (1777) — Playwright — 182 Exemplare
Three Comedies of American Family Life (1961) — Mitwirkender — 122 Exemplare
Thirty Famous One-Act Plays (1943) — Mitwirkender — 110 Exemplare
A Night at the Opera [1935 film] (1935) — Screenwriter — 102 Exemplare
Ten Great Musicals of the American Theatre (1973) — Mitwirkender — 82 Exemplare
Best Plays of the Modern American Theatre: Second Series (1947) — Mitwirkender — 81 Exemplare
Twenty Best Plays of the Modern American Theatre (1939) — Mitwirkender — 74 Exemplare
Nothing Sacred [1937 film] (1937) — Writer — 46 Exemplare
Best American Plays: Fourth Series, 1951-1957 (1958) — Mitwirkender — 42 Exemplare
Silk Stockings [1957 film] (1957) — Original play — 41 Exemplare
Comedy tonight!: Broadway picks its favorite plays (1977) — Mitwirkender — 38 Exemplare
The Cocoanuts [1929 film] (1929) 33 Exemplare
50 Best Plays of the American Theatre [4-volume set] (1969) — Mitwirkender — 33 Exemplare
Contemporary Drama: European, English and Irish, American Plays (1941) — Mitwirkender — 17 Exemplare
Drama I (1962) — Mitwirkender — 7 Exemplare
The Fireside Treasury of Modern Humor (1963) — Mitwirkender — 5 Exemplare
50 Best Plays of the American Theatre, Volume 2 (1969) — Mitwirkender — 3 Exemplare

Getagged

Wissenswertes

Mitglieder

Rezensionen

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/three-plays-by-george-s-kaufman-and-moss-hart/
rel="nofollow" target="_top">https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/you-cant-take-it-with-you-1938-and-play-by-moss-...

I got this collection of 1930s plays five years ago, in the early stages of my Oscar-watching project, because the middle one of the three was the basis of a very successful film starring Lionel Barrymore. In fact all three of these plays were successfully adapted for the screen.

The scripts are prefaced by a short piece from each of the two authors, gently poking fun at each other and giving a sense of the relationship between two Broadway creators. They certainly seem to have got on with each other better than Gilbert and Sullivan.

The first play, Once in a Lifetime, is about a vaudeville trio, down on their luck because of the invention of talking movies which sucks the audience out of theatre, who go to Hollywood and try to make it big there. The dumb guy of the three ascends to huge cinematic power, and the punchline of the play is that the bad decisions he makes turn out to be very successful.

I thought it was really funny. I don’t always find it easy to read scripts, but here I had no difficulty differentiating the characters with their different voices. I noted that George Kaufman, one of the authors, also played the frustrated playwright Laurence Vail in the first Broadway cast.

The key character is Mary Daniels, the woman in the vaudeville trio, who gets the best lines and serves as the audience viewpoint character on what is happening in Hollywood. In the original Broadway production she was played by Jean Dixon.

The drunk actress Gay Wellington (and another comic turn, the Grand Duchess Olga) were among the cuts made by Riskin as he adapted You Can't Take It With You for the screen. Kirby’s background is much less developed in the play – the whole subplot involving property transactions, and the character of Mr Poppins, are inserted by Riskin into the film. The Vanderhofs have pet snakes rather than a raven. (Though I’m glad to say that the kitten is original.)

The guts of it are all the same, and one can see why the play won a Pulitzer as an uplifting tonic in depressing times. It’s a bit more misogynistic (as I said, two extra female characters who are only there as figures of fun, and Mrs Kirby gets a harder time) and more racist (Donald gets treated worse). There is a hilarious sequence during the Kirbys’ disastrous visit to the Vanderhof household, where Penny gets the Kirbys to play a word association game.

The third play, The Man Who Came to Dinner, is even more overtly a character study than the other two. A famous New York theatre critic slips on an icy patch while visiting Ohio and is immobilised in the home of his reluctant hosts for several weeks. There’s a bit of a comedy of middle-class manners here, but mainly it’s about the monstrous protagonist who is unaware of his own monstrosity.

I Imagine that this is simple to stage, in that the entire play takes place in the Ohio front room. It’s more of a one-joke story than the other two. The play was written for actor and critic Alexander Woolcott, who had behaved with abominable rudeness while visiting Hart’s family home; for some strange reason he bowed out of actually performing as the character based on himself, and it fell to Monty Woolley to do it on both stage and screen, giving his career an immense boost. The film stars him and Bette Davis.… (mehr)
½
 
Gekennzeichnet
nwhyte | Feb 24, 2024 |
In this LOA edition, 9 comedic plays are introduced here. Some in conjunction with Edna Ferber & some in conjunction with Moss Hart. Some are well known like Animal Crackers while others are lesser known like Stage Door. All of these were presented on Broadway. This volume includes George Kaufman's chronology, notes on the texts & index.
 
Gekennzeichnet
walterhistory | 2 weitere Rezensionen | Dec 22, 2023 |
Lesser comedy-drama by the team of George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, who would have much greater successes with STAGE DOOR, THE ROYAL FAMILY, and DINNER AT EIGHT. The plot, based on Ferber's short story "Old Man Minick," is about an older fellow who comes to live with his son and daughter-in-law and proves to be a terrible disruption in their lives. There are funny scenes and poignant ones, but the play waffles between making the old guy the protagonist or the antagonist, and no one comes off as terribly pleasant. It is amusing at best.… (mehr)
 
Gekennzeichnet
jumblejim | Aug 26, 2023 |
The title is very informative. New York's Broadway from the nineteen thirties to the forties had at least one of these plays drawing crowds at any given moment. they are:1934 Merrily We Roll Along (Kaufman and Hart)
1936 You Can't Take It with You (Kaufman and Hart; Pulitzer Prize winner)
1937 I'd Rather Be Right (Kaufman and Hart)
1938 The Fabulous Invalid (Kaufman and Hart)
1939 The American Way (Kaufman and Hart)
1939 The Man Who Came to Dinner (Kaufman and Hart)

This was a Modern Library Anthology, and is a very buy should you find a copy. The only missing play from their collaborations is 1940's George Washington Slept Here.… (mehr)
½
 
Gekennzeichnet
DinadansFriend | Mar 9, 2022 |

Listen

Auszeichnungen

Dir gefällt vielleicht auch

Nahestehende Autoren

Statistikseite

Werke
59
Auch von
27
Mitglieder
1,859
Beliebtheit
#13,847
Bewertung
½ 3.7
Rezensionen
33
ISBNs
53
Sprachen
1
Favoriten
3

Diagramme & Grafiken