[In the following obituary, Freedley reviews Kaufman's career from his early days as a newspaperman through his collaborations with Moss Hart.]

This little essay will only be concerned with the earlier section of George Kaufman's long career as a playwright and director in one of the most exciting periods of our theater when American drama came of age in the period between the World Wars, roughly 1918-1939. All of Kaufman's serio-comic genius came to flower in that period. There is nothing of real significance after that if you disregard the dramatic recrudescence of John P. Marquand's brilliant novel of Boston society, The Late George Apley (1944) and the delightful spoof of big business provided by The Solid Gold Cadillac, written in collaboration with Howard Teichmann (1953).

Kaufman was the born collaborator. He wrote only one play alone and one adaptation from the French early in his career before he found success. He was a shrewd and demanding collaborator as has been evidenced by such distinguished writers as Edna Ferber and Moss Hart, in their memoirs, and by lesser commentators in newspaper columns. He had tremendous inventiveness and many original ideas, but he worked best in tandem. He soared in proportion to the abilities of his co-writers, but this does not mean that he could not and did not rise above them—as in moments of honesty they were willing to admit.

The fact that he liked to work on his feet, acting out and demonstrating ideas, scenes, and lines suggests the possibility that he may have been a frustrated actor unconsciously. Although he occasionally appeared in skits intended for his professional confreres, not the public, he did act for the public at the Buchs County Playhouse at New Hope, Pennsylvania, in a summer stock presentation of The Man Who Came to Dinner, which he wrote with Moss Hart. Possibly because of his memories of his own days on the Borscht Circuit prior to his success as a writer, he undertook the same role for an overseas tour for G.I.'s in Alaska and the Pacific. As the dramatic critic of the Morning Telegraph I was invited along with other drama reviewers in New York City to journey out to what used to be called Camp Yaphank in Irving Berlin's day as a soldier in World War I. With no intended disrespect to the late Moss Hart, he was wise to become a writer and leave acting to others. Aside from exceptions such as David Garrick, Colley Cibber, Noel Coward, and Sacha Guitry, few playwrights have been gifted actors.

Kaufman's playwriting began with the worthless Someone in the House (1918) written with Larry Evans and Walter Percival just about the time he was leaving the New York Tribune for the Times. He was a brilliant drama reporter and his Sunday news piece was widely read even when his newspaper did not have the preeminent position it now enjoys. He is credited with creating a character named Tecumseh, who scouted for theatrical news, as well as naming the Times Square area the Rialto, a term which still sticks. Lewis Funke is now the Sunday Tecumseh, but he doesn't use the title.

Kaufman really came into his own when he teamed up with another Algonquin wit (for which see Margaret Case Harriman's The Vicious Circle and her father Frank Case's books about the famous hostelry he created) Marc Connelly. Connelly was a former newspaper man, and they spoke the same language. From his own work we can surmise that Connelly supplied the whimsy and the light touch while Kaufman provided the structure and the more barbed lines which are now termed “wisecracks.” The collaborators began with Dulcy (1921), a play about a beautiful dimwit which brought Lynn Fontanne to stardom under Howard Lindsay's crisp direction. Kaufman had not yet become a stage director. Then came To the Ladies (1922) in which Helen Hayes shone, and this play was followed by an entertaining spoof of the silent days of the films, Merton of the Movies, which brought stardom to Glenn Hunter. The playwrights' collaboration continued with Helen of Troy, New York (1923) and The Deep Tangled Wildwood (1923). It reached its high point in Beggar on Horseback (1924), which was the only commercially successful Expressionist play of American authorship. This drama satirized American worship of success and probably was based on a German original although it was denied at the time.

Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind amused themselves and the rest of us by writing the book for a musical romp for the Marx Brothers, Animal Crackers (1928). In 1929 in combination with Ring Lardner he wrote a spoof of Tin Pan Alley in June Moon. He had assisted Edna Ferber in dramatizing one of her short stories, a character comedy entitled Minick in 1924. In 1927 this duo returned with a satire on the Barrymores in a nostalgic but genuinely funny comedy, The Royal Family. This title could not be used in England where it was called Theatre Royal (1934) because the Angry Young Men had not yet demolished the reigning house and the title was considered an offense to them. Dame Marie Tempest under Noel Coward's direction played Sarah, matriach of the acting tribe, and a very young Lawrence Olivier acted the role of Tony, the madcap youngest son patterned on John Barrymore. This warm, rich play appealed greatly to English audiences just as it did to Americans although we were more conscious of the characters' likeness to the Drew-Barrymores than our British cousins. This writing team had fun with the Park Avenue social set and its theatrical confines in Dinner at Eight (1932) in which Constance Collier played a recognizable portrait of Maxine Elliott, famous American actress and financier soon to be the subject of a biography by her youngest niece, Diana Forbes-Robertson (Mrs. Vincent Sheean). Miss Ferber and Kaufman paid their last joint tribute to the legitimate theater in Stage Door in 1936. They chose the famous Rehearsal Club, a non-profit theatrical boarding house for young actresses.

Kaufman had a bout with Washington social politics in First Lady with Katherine Dayton which starred Jane Cowl during the Dolly Gann-Alice Longworth feud. Kaufman was the sole author of The Butter and Egg Man (1924) a comedy about American business men. Not altogether brilliant it had its measure of success although hardly a play to revive. He collaborated twice with Alexander Woollcott, the bristling, rotund drama critic who became a bellweather for the Lambs on radio. Kaufman knew him from his days on the New York Times and as frequent jouster at the Algonquin round table. Woollcott had a depressant effect on Kaufman's wit and inventiveness. The first play was The Channel Road (1929) and the final was The Dark Tower (1933), a macabre drama which was hardly Kaufman's dish of tea. It was poor enough on Broadway, but I shall never forget a production I saw in Prague the following year. The Park Avenue apartment boasted a circular table, peasant shawl draped over it, with oil lamp and shade. The dowager wore a babuschka. Mitteleuropa had definitely moved in on Kaufman and Woollcott. Probably that was when he thought he might get even with Alec some time, but it was six years later that the idea flowered in The Man Who Came to Dinner.

After Connelly, Kaufman's happiest collaboration was with Moss Hart who came into prominence with him in Once in a Lifetime (1930) which is still the best comedy about Hollywood madness that exists. The play stands up in reading and even in summer or community theater production, a real test. Hart has recorded the agonies of collaboration in his autobiography, Act One, a brilliant autobiography, the continuation of which was prevented by his death in 1961. They renewed their writing combination which resulted in the superbly fantastic Pulitzer Prize comedy, You Can't Take It with You (1935). This play is as funny today as it was when first staged and curiously enough brings a certain nostalgia for those Depression days now happily behind us. The K. and H. combination decided to have some fun with the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration in I'd Rather Be Right (1937) which boasted the services of George M. Cohan as President. Kaufman's deep love for the theater of yesteryear reappeared in 1938 with The Fabulous Invalid which unfortunately had a short life despite its lavish production. During Hitler's persecution of German Jewry, the collaborators came up with a flag waving demonstration in The American Way (1939) which out-starred and out-striped Mr. Cohan who perhaps inspired this overflowing stage presentation which burst the seams of the gigantic Center Theatre in Radio City with an enormous cast headed by the Fredric Marches.

The culmination of the Kaufman and Hart collaboration came really to an end with The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939) although they continued through the slight but amusing comedy, George Washington Slept Here (1940), an account of restoring an old house in the country in which both writers had actually participated. The brilliant comedy about a lecturer who slipped and suffered a broken bone while staying in the house of his hostess, the local chairman of a women's club in a Middle Western city, surely stemmed from Alexander Woollcott's triumphant lecture tours across America. Perhaps remembering his encounters with that intellectual porcupine, Kaufman conceived his revenge. Not only did Woollcott not sue or combat the play, he actually headed a touring company of this minor classic. Merely playing himself, he never rose to the acting heights which elevated the late well bearded Monty Woolley to stardom. In this comedy Kaufman had fun with the theater, and American social customs as well as avenging himself at the expense of the porcupine. The irony lies in the fact that he shrugged it off without his usual shower of barbed quills.

George S. Kaufman is one of the best representatives of the highly competent craftsman in playwriting in America.