George S. Kaufman: The Gloomy Dean
of American Comedy
By Laurence Maslon
What would an essay about George S. Kaufman be without a George S. Kaufman anecdote? A few years after the commercial failure of the 1927 Strike Up the Band, one of the show's unfortunate investors encountered Kaufman in a theatre lobby. He ushered his wife over to Kaufman and said, "My dear, here is the man that you have been wanting to meet all these years - George Gershwin!" "Then, before I could even give him an argument," Kaufman related years later, "he plunged on. 'Tell me,' he said, 'tell me one thing: With all the magnificent music that you have written, all the money that your shows have made, why is it that I had to invest in the only one that was a failure? Why wasn't Strike Up the Band a big success?' I have always flattered myself that I gave the only possible answer. I said, 'Kaufman gave me a lousy book.’ "
Anything remotely "lousy" by Kaufman was a rare event. If Eugene O'Neill can be said to represent the tragic mask of American drama, Kaufman can surely lay claim to representing its comic counterpart. Although the pretensions of tragedy seem to get more critical copy space, Kaufman's achievements are remarkable by any reckoning. He was the most popular dramatic writer in this country between the two world wars – already a golden period in American drama. In thirty-seven years, he had forty-five Broadway productions; twenty-seven were hits. The lanky, laconic playwright had easily earned the sobriquet "The Gloomy Dean of American Comedy."
Such grandiose claims might well have surprised Kaufman – he certainly wouldn't have been impressed by them. He was born on November 16, 1889 in Pittsburgh of a middle-class Jewish family who, according to him, "managed to get in on every business as it was finishing and made a total of $4 among them," (He did once claim to have an ancestry that stretched back to the Crusades: "Sir Roderick Kaufman - he was a spy, of course.") After a half-hearted attempt at law school, he edged into journalism, supplying humorous poems and pieces to Franklin Pierce Adams' widely-read column in the New York Evening Mail. Adams' influence got him several other jobs, including one as a humorist for the Washington Times, and in 1917, as the dramatic editor of The New York Times.
This not only gave Kaufman a reliable financial base, but also placed him at the epicenter of the burgeoning New York theatrical world. When the First World War ended, the way was clear for Kaufman co make his mark. He was first known as a wit and raconteur at the legendary Round Table in the Algonquin Hotel. New York's smartest literati traded luncheon entrees and verbal sorties right up until the stock market crash. The ringleader of this three-drink circus was critic and Kaufman-collaborator Alexander Woollcott and the main acts included Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Franklin P Adams, Robert E. Sherwood, Harpo Marx, and Irving Berlin. Another Algonquin tradition was the series of inattentive waiters whose indolence forever bedeviled Kaufman. For one of them, he composed the epitaph: "God finally caught his eye."
The twenties also launched Kaufman on his playwriting career. Having done some minor play doctoring in the teens (this talent would make him much in demand throughout his lifetime), he began the various partnerships that earned him the reputation of "The Great Collaborator." A voracious bridge player, Kaufman knew the importance of good partners. (However, once in an actual game, he had a terrible partner who asked to be excused so that he could go to the men's room. "Gladly!" replied G.S.K., "For the first time today I'll know what you have in your hand.") Kaufman's sardonic wit, his sharpshooter skill at puncturing pretensions, and his unique gift for craftsmanship all found their proper expression in the company of others; only three of his plays were solo efforts.
More often than not, his plays took on the characteristics of his collaborators. With Marc Connelly, he wrote his first hit, Dulcy (1921), followed quickly by Merton of the Movies (1922) and Beggar on Horseback (1924), tales of down-to-earth losers who make good against sophisticated society. With novelist Edna Ferber, he glamorized sophisticated society while showing its foibles in The Royal Family (1927), Dinner at Eight (1932), and Stage Door (1936). Ring Lardner's acidulous wit brought out his penchant for wry wisecracks in, sadly, their only play, the Tin Pan Alley spoof, June Moon (1929). Given Kaufman's proven reputation, it only made sense that when producer Sam H. Harris wanted to craft the first legitimate stage vehicle for the Marx Brothers, he turned to Kaufman. Called The Cocoanuts, the show, with songs by Irving Berlin, opened in 1925 and began Kaufman's influence in shaping the enduring characteristics of the inimitable comedy team.
It was during rehearsals for The Cocoanuts that Kaufman ran into Morrie Ryskind on the street. Ryskind, born on October 20, 1895, had also been a contributor to F.P.A’s humor column and had just made a name for himself as a sketch writer for the 1925 Garrick Gaieties. Kaufman asked him to make some uncredited contributions to the Marx musical. This suited the struggling Ryskind to a T and the pair continued to tailor material for the brothers in the film of The Cocoanuts (1929), the stage and film versions of Animal Crackers (1928 and 1930), and the screenplay for A Night at the Opera (1935).
Kaufman's immersion in this brand of vaudeville entertainment during the mid-Twenties may help explain the keen satiric edge of Strike Up the Band. The book to the musical represented a real departure for Kaufman. It was expansive, eccentric, irreverent, and broke through the boundaries of naturalism. It was as if the Marxes had unleashed this new torrent of absurdity in him. Indeed, it would take very little revision to turn the musical into a suitable showcase for the Marx Brothers. Picture it: Groucho as Horace J. Fletcher, Harpo and Chico divvying up and expanding the role of George Spelvin, Zeppo as Jim Townsend, and, of course, Margaret Dumont as Mrs. Draper. Ryskind would have been the perfect candidate for such a revision – in fact, he performed a similar service in 1930 when producer Edgar Selwyn turned to him to reshape Strike Up the Band for the burlesque team of Clark and McCullough. "What I had to do, in a sense," Ryskind said, "was to rewrite War and Peace for the Three Stooges."
Kaufman, essentially a commercially minded fellow, fully understood the nature of Ryskind's revisions and bore him no ill feelings. In fact, standing at the back of the house together at the smash 1930 opening of Strike Up the Band, the two writers promised each other they would write their next opus just for themselves. The result, the 1931 Of Thee I Sing, also with songs by the Gershwins, was their most perfect expression of political satire. It won its authors the Pulitzer Prize and a new measure of fame. The team, including the Gershwins, followed up their success with a sequel, Let 'Em Eat Cake (1933). But this show was to be a succes d’estime, which Kaufman once described as, "a success that runs out of steam." Still, taken all in all, the three musicals with the Gershwins represent an unprecedented and unmatched attempt at portraying the absurdity and anarchy of the American system in comedy and song. Kaufman supplied the absurdity and Ryskind the anarchy, and their partnership was a friendly running battle in which quality would get the upper hand.
The Thirties brought Kaufman a new collaborator, Moss Hart, who not only provided him with greater equanimity, but also great success. Following their first hit Once in a Lifetime (1930), they created a family classic with You Can't Take It With You (Pulitzer Prize, 1936), skewered F.D.R. in I'd Rather Be Right (1937), and roasted their pal Alexander Woollcott in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939). As the country moved to war, Kaufman and Hart moved to other, separate projects. Kaufman's career as a director grew (he had done most of his shows, plus such varied classics as The Front Page, Of Mice and Men, and Guys and Dolls), but as a playwright he was slowing down. The vast number of revivals of his work following his death in 1961 would have astonished him. He would never have considered himself an American original, let alone an American classic.
But, of course, he was. Besides his commercial successes and enduring witticisms, he gave a new art form to the American stage – the political satire and he raised it to an extremely high level. Kaufman was not overly political; his humor was directly influenced by his admiration for Mark Twain, his appreciation of Gilbert and Sullivan, and his love of American history. There is a timelessness to Kaufman's satire; perhaps his tenure as a Washington reporter gave him insight into the peculiarities of our democracy. Yet as his daughter Anne Kaufman Schneider has said, "He wasn't writing for posterity but for himself and for the moment." One thing is for certain: Kaufman fearlessly lampooned the presidency in a way it had never been lampooned before. Starting with his off-stage fictional president in Strike up the Band, through to his fictional on-stage presidents in Of Thee I Sing and Let 'Em Eat Cake, and culminating in a singing and dancing Franklin Roosevelt for I'd Rather Be Right, Kaufman made the stage safe for debunking the nation's highest office.
When Strike Up the Band opened in Philadelphia, one local paper gave a reason for its failure: "Satirical musical shows have never been a success in America. Nor do Americans like to be laughed at on stage." Kaufman said the same thing more succinctly: "Satire is what closes on Saturday night." But, along with his comment about his "lousy book," Kaufman was uncharacteristically wrong about this, too. Since 1925, there hasn't been a Saturday night when a George S. Kaufman satire wasn't playing somewhere in America.
Laurence Maslon is the literary manager/dramaturg at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., where he organized Kaufmania, a celebration of Kaufman's centennial. 