George S. Kaufman (1889- ) and Marcus Cook Connelly (1890- ), both born in Western Pennsylvania and both newspaper men, first attracted attention by their clever comedy Dulcy (1921). It was natural that they should dramatize the material of the newspaper and they selected a character created by Franklin P. Adams, then a columnist for the New York Tribune. Dulcy celebrated the stupid, well-meaning married woman, who almost wrecks her husband's prospects by her plans and revelations during the week-end party which has been given to secure them. The two playwrights recognized that dullness can be made entertaining, if it is constantly contrasted with cleverness, so they provided one of the best character parts in her young brother, and they aroused, in an inimitable scene, a responsive chord in all who have suffered from the recital of the plot of a moving picture.

To the Ladies (1922) is an improvement upon Dulcy because the types are less eccentric and the characters of Leonard and Elsie Beebe achieve reality. Elsie is the opposite of Dulcy; she is the guiding spirit of the household, saving her husband from the consequences of his stupidity or conceit and not only preserving his own self-respect, but also fighting hard for her own belief in him. Kaufman and Connelly recognized the truth that the most precious asset in our lives consists in our illusions, and Elsie Beebe won the hearts of her audiences and kept them. Her brave little speech at the end of the first Act when she talks to Mr. Kincaid, Leonard's employer, through Mrs. Kincaid, because she sees that Leonard has lost his chance to be invited to the great annual banquet of the Kincaid Piano Company, is her first high moment. Kincaid, who is a delightful picture of the self-important business man, has been deeply hurt by discovering that Leonard had borrowed money on his Kincaid Piano. He is about to leave, remarking that there is no reason why Elsie should explain the matter to him when she cries:

Oh, but there is! If I—if I could only make you understand! But, of course, you've never been poor—either of you—I mean—really poor—so that a few dollars actually mattered, and you had to be awful careful what you did with them. So that you had to plan weeks ahead … so much for each little thing, and if something came up that you hadn't counted on, and that just had to be paid, why, it meant doing without something that you—almost had to have to live. But you see—we've—done that—ever since we're married. And then, when it looks as though you've almost helped each other out of it—and the chance comes—oh, if I could only make you understand …

The play was praised highly for its satiric portrayal of the “public banquet,” and it was amusing, but the climax was one in which character is wrought out of situation. Leonard has copied his speech out of a manual of speech making and is horrified to hear his rival, who is called just ahead of him, make the very same speech. He is paralyzed with stage fright and then Elsie rises—tells the table that he has suddenly been taken with laryngitis but that he has given her his notes and she will try to make his speech. He plays up to her and she gives them a human talk, skilfully touching Kincaid's weakness for approval, and makes the success of the evening. But what swept the audience was not only Helen Hayes' remarkable performance as Elsie; it was the quick response to the appeal of the young wife whose love had given her the inspiration that was to save them both. The light touch in To the Ladies concealed from many the really profound observation of life which gave birth to her, and the imagination that made her live. She has discovered that the wife who never lets her husband be discounted by the world achieves a glory for herself that is one of the actualities, and this study of young married life, treated with understanding, with sympathy and with reticence is worth many a bitter analysis of exceptional unhappiness. The authors placed in Elsie's mouth as many bright sayings as they had put stupid ones in Dulcy. Her words to Kincaid in the last Act—“Nearly every man that ever got any place, Mr. Kincaid, has been married, and that couldn't be just a coincidence”—are a contribution to philosophy.

Merton of the Movies (1922) is a dramatization of the story by Harry Leon Wilson and it would be difficult to assign the relative shares to the credit of the novelist, the playwrights and the actor, Glenn Hunter, in the delightful presentation on the stage. The figure of the movie-struck clerk whose sole value turns out to be his unconscious burlesque of the part he is trying to play sincerely, was certainly made to live. It was a popular success, but The Deep Tangled Wildwood (1923), a clever satire “upon the Winchell-Smith type of play” was a failure.

The capacity of the co-authors for satire was revealed, however, in a delightful dream play, Beggar on Horseback (1924). The idea of a play in which satire upon existing conditions is expressed in terms of dreams is not new, of course, but the immediate suggestion was made by Winthrop Ames, who derived the idea from reading Hans Sonnenstössers Höllenfahrt by Paul Apel. In order that the flavor of the satire should be native, the playwrights did not read the original German play¹ so any discussion of its effect is unnecessary. Indeed, one familiar with the work of Kaufman and Connelly hardly needs to be assured of their originality, for through all the vision of the musician, Neil McRae, who sees his future if he marries into the rich family of the Cadys, their unmistakable blend of humor steadily shines. In this dream, Mr. Cady, who manufactures “widgets,” takes Neil into the business and Neil is tossed from one stenographer to another in the vain search for a pencil, in the clutches of the modern efficiency system that makes more impediments to progress by separating the individual from his job than the old decentralized business ever conceived. Even better is the scene of the four prison cells in which are working the greatest living novelist, poet, painter, and composer, the last being Neil himself. When the novelist stops a moment in his dictation the stenographer goes right on for he is dictating from his own last book! Neil is condemned to composing music for lines like

You've broken my heart like you broke my heart
                    So why should you break it again?

Then comes the most memorable line in the play. Neil in desperation tugs at his cell door and finds that it opens easily.

“Why,” he exclaims, “it was never locked!”

The dream is remarkably like a real dream; it has the peculiar assertion of varity, combined with the uncanny revelation of self-scrutiny and of the observation of others that is the experience of competent dreamers. The play is a fine expression of the resentment of the artist, the man who can do things that no one else can do, for the attitude of the Cadys and their like, whose ambition is to do everything just like other people and who are contemptuous of those who show originality. The title is a clever use of the phrase recorded by Robert Greene in his Card of Fancie in 1588: “Set a beggar on horseback, they say, and he will never alight.”

Beggar on Horseback is the last collaboration, so far, of Kaufman and Connelly. There was no difference, but it was felt by both that it would be well for them to write separately for a time. The result has hardly been fortunate for the drama. Kaufman has written since then one original play, The Butter and Egg Man (1925). This is a clever farce, dealing with theatrical life, but while it was a financial success, it is hardly significant. It is in fact, a backward step, for it is a farce made up of hard caricature types, and depends entirely upon its situations. Minick (1924), which he wrote in collaboration with Edna Ferber, is a dramatization of the latter's short story, Old Man Minick. The collaborators have published in one volume the short story and the play, together with an amusing account of the way in which the dramatization was made. Minick, however, is not important. It is the product of careful observation of life, which runs, however, to caricature, and there is little charm in it, however much amusement it provided on the stage. The Good Fellow (1926) was also a collaboration and was a failure.

Connelly has written one original play alone, The Wisdom Tooth (1926). It is a charming comedy, with a note of fantasy. Bemis is just the average senior clerk. He has had ambitions when he was a boy, but they have been submerged by the hard knocks of the city and an inferiority complex. In his boarding house, Sally Field sees the spark in him and tries to bring it out. He sees also in a dream the boy he used to be and he is visited by his grand-parents, a delightfully conceived pair. Under their influence he braves his employer, to protest against injustice, and the way in which the boy of his visions goes with him concretely is very appealing. Of course even this interview turns out to be a dream and when he does call up his employer, he is promptly discharged. But he has Sally's appreciation and the consciousness of his own self-respect.

The Wisdom Tooth is of great interest, for it seems to settle the question as to which member of the original partnership contributed the imaginative quality that lifted To the Ladies and Beggar on Horseback into permanent value. There is hardly a spark of it in Kaufman's work done alone or in collaboration with others. And yet of the three other elements which made the success of the plays written together, he certainly contributed his share to the compact structure, the brilliant dialogue and the keen satire. Neither has written alone as fine a play as To the Ladies and it is to be hoped that they will once more bring together the nimble wit and the vivid fancy that made the union an unusual one in American play writing. …

George Kaufman has continued to shape the material, usually in collaboration, of satiric comedy. His own contribution is not easy to evaluate, for in addition to a wit which has individual quality, he possesses a remarkable sense of the dramatic as well as of the theatrical. This knowledge of the stage shone in The Royal Family (1927) written with Edna Ferber. It is a glowing reproduction of the lure which the theater has for the members of the Cavendish family, which results in a temperamental life, furious at times in its inconsequence. It was a delightful evening in the theater, especially noteworthy through the performance of Haidee Wright as Fanny Cavendish, the trouper of the old days. June Moon (1929) was amusing but not important, and Once in a Lifetime (1930), a blistering satire upon the absurdities of Hollywood, written with Moss Hart before either of the authors had been there, did not reach quite to the level of the succeeding plays. In Of Thee I Sing (1932) Kaufman approached the standard of W. S. Gilbert in the use of political material for satire, without offence, but with penetration and a shrewd estimate of the stupidity, banality and falsity of much of our party manipulation. There is much more plot than is usual in a musical comedy, and it is coherent. Writers of this vein of satire will have to go far before they can equal the spectacle of the Vice-President presiding over the Senate during the impeachment of the President. The widely different fortunes of Of Thee I Sing and its sequel Let 'Em Eat Cake (1933) illustrate a dramatic law. The satire of the first of these bit deeply into the Toryism and lack of a constructive policy of the years preceding 1932, and came just at the right time. The sequel satirized an imaginary political revolution which bore no relation to the actual situation. Dramatic satire must have reality as a basis and above all it must be concrete.

Between these musical plays, Kaufman collaborated with Edna Ferber in a powerful social satire, Dinner at Eight (1932). It deals with the fortunes of various people who have been invited to dine with a social climber to meet two members of the British nobility, culminating in the death of one guest, the fatal disease of her husband and her daughter's danger, all of which seem to her of no moment compared to the calm breaking of the engagement by Lady Ferncliff. The Dark Tower (1933) with Alexander Woollcott was too reminiscent of Trilby to seem important. But in Merrily We Roll Along (1934) George Kaufman and Moss Hart progressed from the amusing burlesque of Hollywood to the searching drama of a playwright's spiritual disintegration. The trouble with most satires of modern life is that they are too abstract and general, but here we are never allowed to forget the three central characters. Niles, the playwright, is caught by the lure of success and by the clutch of a woman unworthy of him and writes plays that bring him merely money but no satisfaction. Crale, the painter, keeps his own standards. Julia, the novelist, cannot fight it out, because of her love for Niles, and drinks herself to disgrace. This friendship between two men and one woman is as real as life itself. The retrogressive method of the play, by which the scenes begin in 1934 and go back to 1916, was eminently successful. It is, of course, not new, the closest parallel being Zoë Akins' Varying Shore, but it is carried out in a much more telling way, without sentimentality. Every young playwright should see or read the scene between Niles and Crale in which the latter begs his friend to go back to his earlier high standard. The last scene, laid in the college chapel where Niles is giving his valedictory, full of ideals, is terrific in its irony, for the audience has seen the crash of these lofty aspirations. This play illustrates a principle which is often forgotten, that theatrical rules may easily be broken, while dramatic laws remain constant. It has been a theatrical rule that plays must proceed chronologically, but Merrily We Roll Along disproves this assertion. At the same time the dramatic law of which it is an evidence still holds good. An audience loves to know something that the characters do not know. The audiences of Merrily We Roll Along are in possession of the future, and it adds tremendously to their appreciation of the past. If the play proceeded chronologically, they would know only as much as the characters know. It is the same dramatic law as that which O'Neill made use of in Strange Interlude, though the theatrical device is quite different.

In First Lady (1935), written with Katharine Dayton, Kaufman returned to political satire. Around the leading character, supposed to be drawn from Mrs. Longworth, revolve the interrelations of social and political life in Washington. The ambitions of Lucy Wayne who wants her husband, the Secretary of State, to become President, were drawn skilfully and while most of the characters were types, as a group they presented a fine illusion of veracity.

Note

1. Statement to the writer by Mr. Connelly.