by Moss Hart
His ear for a comedic line was faultless and his zeal for the precise effect he wanted boundless. No moment, however small, seemed unimportant enough to escape his almost fierce attention, and his grasp of the play’s latent values was immediate and complete. My eyes and ears were opened anew each day to the thousand-and-one endless details that go to make up the subtle and infinitely fragile clockwork of a play’s interior mechanism, and to the slow cultivation of its subsoil that gradually makes it blossom into something vital and alive. I watched and listened with the consecration of a yogi, and yet in awe of him though I was, it never occurred to me not to disagree when I thought he was wrong, whether on the reshaping of a scene or even on a newly coined line which he liked and I did not. This was not a special bravery on my part or some noble effort at keeping my own identity intact—it had simply never entered my mind to be timorous with him or to be in any way discomforted by his manner.
I was all the more amazed to discover later on that this gentle man with whom I had been at once thoroughly at ease and completely comfortable, this same kindly and understanding man at whose side I worked each day, could instantly succeed in disquieting the most formidable men in the theatre or out of it and, by his mere presence in a room, frighten the daylights out of half the people there. There could be no doubt about the effect his presence created. Head waiters cowered and the wits of the town watched their tongues as he loomed up in a doorway, the eyes over those tortoise-shell rims seeming to examine the room for a sign of the inept, the fake or the pompous.
Famous raconteurs seemed to wither and dwindle under that penetrating glance, for he could puncture pretense or bombast with an acid verbal thrust that would be repeated with malicious glee in every corner of the so-called charmed circle before the sun set. Even such rugged specimens as New York taxi drivers or talkative barbers quailed at his stare and were silent until he was safely deposited out of the cab or the chair, and so fearsome a practitioner of the art of discomfiture as Alexander Woollcott admitted that George Kaufman was the one person who could always make him uncomfortable and ill at ease.
This side of him at first bewildered and astonished me. I never ceased being surprised at the startling and sometimes numbing effect he created among even the most seemingly secure and self-assured people, for unquestionably he did indeed intimidate even his close friends. But the result, though trying on the more timid of them, was not without its compensations. People took pains to be at their best with him, and just as a mediocre tennis player will sometimes play above his game when he is matched with a superior opponent, people were generally stimulated into their level best when he was about. It is my own guess that his somewhat terrifying manner, far from being any sort of pose, stemmed from the fact that he more than most men simply refused to resort to the banalities of what usually passes for polite conversation; faced with some of the cant and nonsense that a good deal of theatre talk consists of, he allowed himself the luxury of saying exactly what came into his mind as the only proper answer to the extravagant claptrap and twaddle he was often forced to listen to. It is not difficult to acquire a reputation for asperity and irascibility, particularly if one has the courage to indulge this luxury as a matter of principle and it is accompanied by a tart and ready wit.
These he had and the audacity to use them, for unlike most of us, he was not driven by a savage necessity to be liked. He cared little for the good opinion or the admiration of the special world he moved in and was a celebrated part of. He adhered strictly to his own standards and judgments, and they were stern ones. The most striking characteristic of the personality he presented to the world at large was an almost studied aloofness and indifference, and it struck me as remarkable how the world at large continually tried to break through this wall and win his approval on any terms he chose to make. Indifference can be a wonderful weapon—whether it is used as ammunition in a warfare between lovers or as a mask for timidity and shyness, for behind that mask of disdain and unconcern lay the diffident and modest man whom it never entered my mind to be afraid of.
Perhaps better than most I came to know that this seeming indifference was the protective coloring of a temperament whose secret and inmost recesses held a deep reservoir of emotion; that it was the superficial exterior of a man who chose to reveal himself only to a very few, but whose emotions could be fervent and profound. I knew how quickly he could be seized and touched emotionally and how susceptible he was to the dark doubts that licked at other men’s souls. Somehow or other, I do not know why, or quite understand how, I seemed to have managed from the very beginning to by-pass both the façade and the legend and immediately to fall into a warm-hearted and gay relationship in which he bore no resemblance to the tales I heard or to the scenes I witnessed of his cantankerous behavior with other people.
He was not, of course, without his own mischievous and annoying qualities, even for me. He could be willfully stubborn on small things with a dogged and inflexible obstinacy, and perversely fair and just on large issues to the point of exasperating saintliness; and he had an abundant share of inconsistent and crotchety prejudices that extended over a wide area and included, most particularly and actively, waiters who never seemed to be able to take down his order correctly, people who tried to tell him jokes, and any fellow passenger he happened to find himself next to when he was in an elevator or on a train and who had the misfortune to recognize him and attempt to engage him in conversation. If I was with him at one of these awful moments, his churlishness would make me cringe and I would move away and pretend we were not together, but to my unfailing amazement it was always him they apologized to and me they glared at. Like “the man who came to dinner,” whom he resembled in a muted way more than he ever suspected, he suffered daily from the gross inadequacies of the human race; but these failings, however infuriating, were seldom sufficient—after a small but satisfactory explosion of irritation—to keep him from walking toward the typewriter with alacrity. Nothing in the world, as far as I could tell, ever stopped him from doing that—and as he walked toward the desk I would marshal my wits and try to think of a bright line to begin the day’s work.
* * *
By the end of the first month of our working together, however, I was in a state of constant weariness. I attributed a great deal of my brain fag to simple malnutrition, but actually what I was suffering from was insufficient sleep. Our working hours were from eleven o’clock in the morning until five thirty or six in the evening, at which time I would eat a walloping dinner and rush off to Newark or Brooklyn for my little-theatre rehearsals, which began at seven thirty and usually continued until midnight and sometimes past. By the time I reached home again, after the obligatory socializing with the cast over coffee and cake, it was usually three or four in the morning. Since I had to be up shortly after eight o’clock in order to allow enough time for the long subway ride, which would get me to 158 East 63rd Street at five minutes of eleven, by the end of the month I was desperately trying, in those archaic days before Benzedrine and Dexamyl, not to let Mr. Kaufman notice that my brilliance seemed to diminish with startling abruptness at about two o’clock in the afternoon.
I did not dare, however, give up my little-theatre work. Apart from the necessary weekly income that it provided, the basket I carried most of my eggs in was too precariously balanced to shake, even with a Broadway production in the offing. I knew well enough that failure is the norm of the theatre, not success.
It was fortunate for me that Mr. Kaufman was the most incurious of men. The state of my health or the vagaries of my personal life held little interest for him, nor did he seem to connect my afternoon lassitude with either one or the other. It did not seem to surprise him that I grasped the smallest opportunities to take quick cat naps, sometimes even while he was washing his hands in the bathroom or taking a telephone call, and though he was vaguely aware that I was engaged in some sort of amateur theatricals in the evenings, it never seemed to occur to him to ask exactly what it was
that I did. How he imagined I earned a living I do not know; but it was just as well that he was without curiosity on that score, for I had dropped Shaw and O’Neill from my repertoire and was now enthusiastically rehearsing the pirated works of Kaufman and Connelly.
I had switched to Kaufman and Connelly shortly after seeing June Moon and before I had the faintest idea that I myself would be working with one-half of the famous team. Now that I miraculously was, there was no way of changing back even if I wanted to. I breathed a sigh of relief, nevertheless, as each day passed and Mr. Kaufman’s lack of interest in my personal life remained untouched, for it was the practice in those days for directors of little-theatre groups to escape, by any means they could devise, the payment of royalties to authors, for the good enough reason that no royalties to an author meant more money to the director, and I had long since hit upon the simple expedient of taking whatever play I wanted to do and giving it a new title of my own. Thus, Beggar on Horseback, Dulcy and To the Ladies, all three of which I was busily rehearsing each evening after I finished the day’s work with Mr. Kaufman, were being presented as: Dreams for Sale, Mrs. Fixit and The Superior Sex, by James L. Baker and Michael Crane.
I had never dared face what I would say if he ever questioned me about my evening activities; only once, when I asked if we might stop work early that particular afternoon because I had a dress rehearsal in Newark, was Mr. Kaufman’s interest sufficiently aroused to inquire, “What play are you doing?” I was able to gulp an answer, “Dreams for Sale,” and as I saw his eyebrows arch questioningly at the title of a play he had never heard of, and as my heart began to race with the lie I was about to tell him—at that same moment his eye, luckily, spied a new piece of lint on the carpet and his interest in my personal life vanished.
As best I could and as much as I dared, I tried to end my nightly rehearsals earlier, but my weariness persisted. I had about reached the decision that I would have to borrow money enough to live on from Joe Hyman until Once in a Lifetime was produced, when the weariness disappeared as if by magic, never to return in quite the same degree. The magic was accomplished by two events that took place one after the other on the same day, and they instantly banished not only weariness, but also any idea I may have been cherishing of how hard my lot was. In quick succession, I met Beatrice Kaufman and I took a headlong plunge into the off-stage private world of the theatre that I had read about and mooned over for so long and of which I longed to be a part. Even the brief glimpse that I had of it was sufficient to keep me awake for quite a while afterward, for it came at just the right moment.
One morning, as I reached the fourth-floor landing at eleven o’clock as usual, I was surprised to see Mr. Kaufman in conversation with a handsome woman whose luxuriant hair, brushed straight back from her forehead in a high pompadour, was tinted a bluish-gray. I was aware, of course, that other people occupied and moved about in the rooms below us, but I had no idea who they might be. Mr. Kaufman had never spoken of a wife or child, and he did not, to me at least, appear to be a married man—but then it was hard for me to conceive of Mr. Kaufman as a man who had ever had a mother or a father, much less a wife! He seemed like a being who sprang full-grown out of the typewriter each morning and went back into it at the end of each day. I had as little knowledge of his personal life as he had of mine. Once the door closed behind us at eleven o’clock, no person other than the maid who brought up tea ever appeared and I had never glimpsed anyone other than the same maid as I walked down the stairs in the evening and let myself out the door.
I must have stared at them both in open-mouthed surprise, for their conversation ceased as I appeared on the landing and they both turned toward me. Mr. Kaufman lifted the usual one finger in greeting, and then seeming to summon up all the social graces he possessed for the effort, he said, “Moss Hart—Beatrice Kaufman.” We smiled at each other and I stood uneasily on the landing, uncertain as to whether I should go into the room. I am a little loath to record that I at once took it for granted that Beatrice Kaufman was Mr. Kaufman’s sister, but that, indeed, is what I did assume. For one thing, I had never heard anyone introduced in that fashion before. In the Bronx or Brooklyn, introductions always took the form of, “This is my wife, Mrs. So-and-So,” or even more simply, just, “My wife.” For another thing, in Brooklyn or the Bronx, a man and wife always occupied the same bedroom, and I knew Mr. Kaufman did not share his room with anyone else. Incredibly simpleminded though it seems, I did not discover that Beatrice Kaufman was Mrs. George Kaufman until a good deal later on, so that the mildly confused look that came into Mr. Kaufman’s eyes when I politely inquired now and then how his sister was, is easily accounted for.
They picked up the threads of their interrupted conversation after that somewhat less than revealing introduction, and I stood watching Beatrice Kaufman admiringly. She was not in the conventional sense a beautiful woman, but she had uncommon distinction, an individual style, and a unique and singular quality of her own that lent to everything she said and did a special radiance. She had the gift of imbuing even the smallest of daily undertakings with an enkindling gaiety and an intoxicating flavor. It was a gift which was peculiarly hers and hers alone. I had never listened to or looked at, at such close quarters, anyone quite like her. I eavesdropped shamelessly. To ears used to listening to the female chatter of the Bronx and Brooklyn, her talk seemed to come straight out of Somerset Maugham, and though I could make little of what she was saying in terms of the people she was talking about, I knew she was recounting some tale of the world I had read about for so long in F.P.A.’s column. I marveled at the grace and ease with which she sent Mr. Kaufman into willing and ready laughter—no small feat in itself—and I was fascinated and charmed by the vibrancy and force of the woman herself.
This is the kind of woman I will get to know, I thought, when I become a part of that world myself. It was worth any sort of weariness a thousand times over.
I stared at them enviously and thought, How wonderful to have a sister like that—and as I watched and listened, hoping she would not finish the conversation too soon, to my surprise she suddenly turned to me and said, “I’ve left strict orders with George, and I’m depending upon you to see that they’re carried out. He’s to stop work early today and come down to tea. You’re to come with him to make sure he gets there.” She gave me a quick conspiratorial smile and then she was gone. I looked after her and then at Mr. Kaufman, who was already making his way toward the typewriter.
“Beatrice is having people for tea,” he said grumpily as he removed the cover. “And of course the world is supposed to come to a full stop.” Not, “My wife is giving a tea this afternoon,” mind you—just, “Beatrice is having people for tea.” I took it for granted anew that his sister was having a cousin or an elderly aunt, whom he was reluctant to see, in for a family tea—but that she was arranging it, nevertheless, in a devoted, sisterly fashion.
The sparkling flood of light her presence seemed to create remained in the room like an afterglow long after she had gone. It took me a while to settle down to work after the door closed behind her, and then I was brighter for having caught even that fleeting glimpse of her than I had been in days. The creative impulse is a mysterious one. It ignites and flourishes under the strangest of stimuli. I do not know precisely why the sight of Beatrice Kaufman should have unlocked my creative mechanism and set it wildly in motion, except that she seemed to be so striking a symbol of the world which lay just behind success in the theatre that she made the goal itself seem tantalizingly nearer and the drudgery and the weariness worth while. Both drudgery and weariness seemed to have vanished now. I could have worked right through the night.
It came as something of a shock when Mr. Kaufman glanced at his watch and said, “It’s quarter of five.” The day had sped by without my usual battle to keep awake or of my even being aware that no battle had taken place. He walked to the door and opened it. A babble of voices came up the stairway from the rooms below. “They’
re here,” he sighed. “We’d better go down.” He ran a comb through his hair, adjusted his tie, and motioned me to follow him. I was mystified by the number of voices that came more clearly now as we walked down the stairs. It did not sound at all like a family tea party. With some little alarm I realized I was not dressed for anything more than that—indeed, I was hardly dressed suitably for even that. I was wearing my ordinary working and rehearsal clothes, an old sport coat with brass buttons, and a pair of faded, unpressed brown flannel trousers. It was too late to think about the way I looked, however, for we were on the second-floor landing now and I was following Mr. Kaufman toward the drawing room. I drew back at the threshold and stopped dead. The room was alive with people and I recognized every single one of them. It seemed to my dumfounded eyes as if one of those double-page murals of the great figures of the theatre and literary world that Vanity Fair was always running had suddenly come to life.
Everyone I had ever read about or hero-worshipped from afar seemed to be contained within my awestruck gaze, from Ethel Barrymore and Harpo Marx to Heywood Broun and Edna Ferber, from Helen Hayes and George Gershwin to F.P.A. and Alexander Woollcott—as though some guardian angel of the stage-struck had waved a wand and assembled a galaxy luminous enough to make the most insatiable hero-worshipper’s hair stand on end. I had the feeling that mine was doing exactly that, for I was seized with a kind of stage fright that made my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, and I was horribly conscious of my clothes. Only a stare from over those tortoise-shell rims made me move forward into the room.
“Alfred Lunt—Moss Hart,” said Mr. Kaufman. Alfred Lunt held out his hand and I managed to shake it. “Leslie Howard—Moss Hart,” and again I smiled and shook hands, not yet daring to trust my tongue to come unstuck. “Get yourself a drink and bring Miss Parker one, will you?” said Mr. Kaufman. “Dorothy Parker—Moss Hart.” I presented Miss Parker with the same glazed smile and stood grinning crazily at her, unable to get my upper lip down over my teeth. Neysa McNein—it was unmistakably she—called to Mr. Kaufman, and he turned away, mercifully releasing me from any more introductions.