Analysis
As a practical man of the theater, George S. Kaufman concerned himself with the meticulous details of whatever project he was working on and gave little consideration to his place in the literary world or posterity. If he was writing, he would badger his collaborators to write better exit lines, to add more humor, to refine every sentence. When directing, he acidly chastised the slightest carelessness of an actor. As a literary figure, though, he was peculiarly unconcerned with plays or productions he had done in the past, eschewing the role of an author of drama, ignoring the possibility that what he had written with his collaborators had literary merit. Only once was he active in the revival of one of his plays, Of Thee I Sing. Indeed, his own attitude toward his art has contributed to the critical neglect of his work.
Primary among Kaufman’s talents was his wit. The only weapon of a slim, shy boy and honed by his association with Adams, Woollcott, Dorothy Parker, Groucho Marx, and others of the Algonquin Round Table, “wisecracks” became characteristic of a Kaufman play and are obvious in every play on which he worked, from Dulcy, his first success, to The Solid Gold Cadillac. After three failures on Broadway, the success of Dulcy, with Lynn Fontanne in the title role, surprised Kaufman as much as anyone else (he always seemed to see his success as undeserved and always expected a disaster). As Malcolm Goldstein observes, Dulcy was basically a rehash of materials used by dozens of writers; what made it different from other plays was its flow of wit.
Although Kaufman would use any form of humor or stage technique to achieve his desired effect—in his plays there are many examples of slapstick, parody, nonsense, and various levels of verbal humor—satire is a recurring element. Ironically, one of the most famous quotations of Kaufman is “Satire is what closes Saturday night,” as if he wished to ignore his own use of it. His wit could be quite vicious, particularly toward those who he felt had crossed him in some way. Even Dorothy Parker, the master of the acid quip, was severely wounded by Kaufman’s barbs on more than one occasion. Earl Wilson once commented that Kaufman had been “blasting away at somebody or something all his life.” It was only natural that such wit would be turned to satiric purpose against the pompous, the pretentious, the rich, and the powerful.
Little in society escaped his satire. Beggar on Horseback (written with Marc Connelly), the only commercially successful American expressionist play, satirized the American obsession with success, as if Kaufman were trying to exorcise the ghosts of failure from his own childhood. Merton of the Movies (also with Connelly) and Once in a Lifetime (with Moss Hart) mocked Hollywood. June Moon (with Ring Lardner) satirized Tin Pan Alley. I’d Rather Be Right (with Moss Hart) satirized Franklin D. Roosevelt, while Of Thee I Sing (with Ryskind) took on the presidential election process and vice presidency. The Solid Gold Cadillac (with Teichmann) poked fun at big business. One of his more curious satiric vehicles is The Man Who Came to Dinner (with Moss Hart), in which the major character was based on Kaufman’s pompous friend Alexander Woollcott, who even good-humoredly agreed to play the title role in one production. It was perhaps convenient, even wise, for Kaufman to deny that he had satiric intent, particularly when he was more concerned with giving an audience a pleasant evening, but the moral outrage, sarcasm, and derision that is characteristic of...
(This entire section contains 1568 words.)
See This Study Guide Now
Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this study guide. You'll also get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts.
Already a member? Log in here.
satire is present to an extraordinary degree in his work.
Yet another element that can be observed in many of Kaufman’s plays is the struggle and eventual triumph of the “little man” against the forces that oppress him, particularly big government and big business. In play after play, regardless of his collaborators, people in low social positions turn the tables on their social superiors. In his early plays, there is usually a relatively innocent young man who is ambitious but not intelligent enough to carry out his plans for advancement without the help of a more intelligent, maternal young woman in love with him. In Kaufman’s play The Solid Gold Cadillac, an old woman triumphs over the executives of General Motors. It is a pattern observed in many of the plays and films of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Such plays, particularly in the Depression, seemed to draw much of their appeal from the general feeling that the titans of business and their governmental allies had let down or betrayed the common person.
Of Thee I Sing
Despite the popularity of Kaufman’s plays and their nearly predictable success, only two of his works were taken seriously enough to win the Pulitzer Prize . The first play to win was Of Thee I Sing, written with Morrie Ryskind, with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin. Although Kaufman had been forced to soften the satire of Strike Up the Band only a few years previously, he believed that the country was weary of the Depression and the Republican platitudes of prosperity being “just around the corner,” and might just be serious-minded enough to accept a play that satirized American politics, especially presidential elections. He invited Ryskind to join him on the project. Ryskind, who never believed such a scathing play would ever be produced, thought it might be fun to write. They began with the working title “Tweedledee” to refer to two virtually indistinguishable parties, and the plot of a presidential election hinging on the selection of a national anthem (“The Star-Spangled Banner” was not made the official national anthem until March 3, 1931). The Gershwins, who were attracted by the musical possibilities, were immediately interested and quickly began composing.
Ryskind and Kaufman soon realized the abstractness of their plot and decided to put a romantic interest into it, even though Kaufman maintained an absolute abhorrence of romantic scenes and generally refused to write them, leaving them to his collaborators. In the play, presidential candidate John P. Wintergreen uses the notion of marriage to a “typical American girl” as a device to win votes: He agrees to marry the winner of an Atlantic City beauty contest arranged by his managers. Once elected, however, he rejects the winner, marries his secretary, and causes international turmoil (she is of French descent). Facing impeachment, he is finally saved by his wife’s delivery of twins and by a curious interpretation of the Constitution that forces the vice president to marry the contest winner.
In August, 1931, over a period of seventeen days, the collaborators completed the book, turning the harmless fluff of their plot into withering satire. It opened to rave reviews in Boston and became an extraordinary hit on its opening in New York, when George Gershwin conducted the orchestra and the audience was filled with such luminaries as Mayor Jimmy Walker, former presidential candidate Al Smith, Florenz Ziegfeld, Beatrice Lillie, Ethel Barrymore, Condé Nast, and Samuel Goldwyn. The play was praised in every way possible, although critic Robert Benchley dissented. It was compared to Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe: Or, The Peer and the Peri (pr., pb. 1882) and called a new departure from the musical comedy style. The songs were considered so well integrated that some critics went to the extreme of calling Of Thee I Sing more an “operetta” than a “musical,” particularly ironic praise because Kaufman would later do an unsuccessful updating of H.M.S. Pinafore called Hollywood Pinafore (pr. 1945). He was not much interested in music and often resented the intrusions of songs into his comic plots. In 1932, when the Pulitzer Prize committee astounded the theater world by awarding the prize to a musical for the first time in its history, it caused much controversy, because such plays as Mourning Becomes Electra (pr., pb. 1931) by Eugene O’Neill and Robert E. Sherwood’s Reunion in Vienna (pr. 1931) were passed over. The critic of Commonweal defended the decision, however, when he wrote that “Of Thee I Sing . . . is much closer to Aristophanes than O’Neill ever came to Euripides.”
The remark was particularly well-founded. A. Cleveland Harrison has commented extensively on what he perceives as the revival of Aristophanic Old Comedy in the Kaufman-Ryskind play, noting how the episodes of the plot are linked less by a cause-effect relationship than by the development of aspects of the central topic. Extreme characters and situations are used to put ideals into conflict. The ideal of democracy, for example, is in conflict with the reality of it, where politicians use side issues to get themselves elected. The stereotyped characters themselves are less important than the allegorical concepts they represent. Furthermore, a wide range of societal types is represented, from Irish and Jewish power brokers, to newspapermen and Southern pork-barrel senators, each using their particular slang, with many of society’s institutions, such as the beauty contest and the vice presidency, subjected to ridicule. The satire was sufficiently irreverent to lead Victor Moore, who played Vice President Throttlebottom, to wonder if he would be arrested on opening night. Today, however, Of Thee I Sing, like many of Kaufman’s works, seems somewhat dated. The Aristophanic nature of most of his comedies may indeed contribute to the general current impression of them as extremely amusing, cleverly written, brilliantly constructed period pieces.