George S. Kaufman's The American Way (1939) is his thirty-second play written in collaboration. Though critics may argue as to the ultimate value of his plays in the history of American drama, they almost unanimously agree that he is the most successful collaborator working in our theater. His associates have included Irving Pichel, Larry Evans, Marc Connelly, Edna Ferber, Katherine Dayton, Alexander Woollcott, Moss Hart, Ring Lardner and Morrie Ryskind. The only play he wrote alone was The Butter and Egg Man (1925). Superlatives of various kinds have been used with Kaufman. He is generally recognized as the most successful master of stage technique in our contemporary theater. He is acknowledged as our outstanding satirist, one of our best directors, one of the best writers of dramatic dialogue, and as our most capable “play-doctor.”

The surprising thing about his wizardry on the stage is that he had already been credited with it in 1927 when he wrote The Royal Family with Edna Ferber. Since that time, when critics thought that he reached his peak, he has developed in the versatility of his technique, in the depth of his social consciousness, in the sparkle and wit of his satire, and in his understanding of human nature. Basing his plays on the occurrences in his immediate environment, he has been compelled to change his technique, his subject-matter, and his point of view with each new production. Consequently he has become unpredictable. His many admirers have come to expect a good and even exceptional evening in the theater, but their expectations are never as delightful as their experiences with the realities. Kaufman's play, I'd Rather Be Right, marked his twentieth anniversary as a dramatist, and his two decades of labor merit a new evaluation.

Kaufman's personal development has run parallel to that of the American drama in general. Twenty years ago, we had plays which were either diluted imitations of Continental and British successes or feeble attempts at portraying the American scene. Louis Anspacher's The Unchastened Woman (1915) was considered a significant study of the modern woman and Eugene Walter's The Easiest Way (1909) was a bold venture in the study of morals. It is doubtful whether either play could endure a successful revival.

Today our drama is watched by alert playgoers everywhere. Eugene O'Neill, Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, George S. Kaufman, Elmer Rice, John Wexley, Clifford Odets and dozens of other American playwrights have seen their plays produced on the stages from Stockholm to Vienna. Maxwell Anderson's Elizabeth the Queen won over the critical audience of Vienna, Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude was acclaimed in Stockholm, John Wexley's Steel was successful in Moscow, and Elmer Rice's Judgment Day was a hit in several countries.

Even though Kaufman's You Can't Take It with You was a failure in London, the circumstance was the occasion of lengthy comment by critics here and abroad. Kaufman's success has been so remarkable in New York that his failure in London seemed inexplicable. All sorts of explanations were made. Charles Morgan, the critic and novelist, writing from London, the novelist J. B. Priestley, writing in New York, and Brooks Atkinson, drama critic of the New York Times, covered almost the entire front page of the Sunday drama section of one issue of the New York Times in discussing the London debacle.

The career of Kaufman is similar to that of many dramatists of today: journalist, columnist, dramatic critic, dramatist. Such has been the experience of George Ade, Ring Lardner, and S. N. Behrman, all of whom came to the stage after a career in journalism.

Kaufman was born in Pittsburgh in 1889. After graduating from the public high school, he studied law for a few months and finally gave it up because he found it too difficult. His occupations were numerous and various and brought him into contact with all sorts of human beings who undoubtedly enriched his understanding of human nature. He worked as a chainman and a transit man on a surveying corps, a window clerk in the Allegheny County tax office, a stenographer, and a traveling salesman.

In 1908 he came to New York and began his literary career as a volunteer contributor to Franklin P. Adams' column in the Evening Mail. Through Adams' help he secured the position as columnist on Frank Munsey's Washington Times (1912-1913). Although Kaufman thought the column humorous, his employer seems to have disagreed with him. A year later Kaufman succeeded to Adams' column when his mentor joined the staff of the Herald.

From writing for a humorous column to reporting on the new plays was an easy step. Kaufman eventually became dramatic editor of the New York Times. Every dramatic critic, as some disappointed playwright has said, is either an unsuccessful or an expectant dramatist. Kaufman's interest in the practical side of the theater was not long in developing.

About this time, Henry R. Stern of the Joseph W. Stern Music Company formed an organization for the encouragement of young playwrights. Kaufman, who was recommended for his promising talent, submitted a check-raising farce called Going Up. The play was never produced, but among those who read it and admired its snappy dialogue and comic situations was John Peter Toohey, at that time an associate of George C. Tyler, the producer. Toohey suggested Kaufman's possibilities to Tyler, and Kaufman was soon working on Dulcy. It seems inevitable that John Peter Toohey is the press representative of Kaufman's new plays, for he is the dramaturgic godfather to Kaufman.

Before writing Dulcy (1921) Kaufman had collaborated with Irving Pichel on The Failure, which never reached production. With the late Larry Evans he wrote Someone in the House (1918), which was unsuccessful. The writing of Dulcy deserves detailed treatment, because it is one of those plays whose genesis is well known and is an illuminating insight to dramatic creation.

George C. Tyler needed a comedy for Lynn Fontanne, Ellen Terry's brilliant protégée. Kaufman and Marc Connelly were invited to write a play using material which had appeared in Franklin P. Adams' column in the Herald in 1914. Kaufman has described its composition thus: “We had a great break of luck with it—the various parts fell into place all in one Sunday afternoon.” It was fairly successful in New York, which was in a receptive frame of mind in the early twenties to plays deriding low I.Q.'s. Only a year later Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt appeared. Outside of New York the audiences were colder. Sophistication had barely reached the peripheries of the large cities. Not until another decade could satire and social criticism in plays succeed in such preliminary testing-grounds as Boston and Baltimore. Now Kaufman prefers to have his latest plays open out of town. I'd Rather Be Right put the Bostonians in quite a turmoil and then Kaufman knew he had nothing to fear. When Bring on the Girls appeared to be sending them homewards in Baltimore and in Washington, the play folded up and never reached Broadway.

Babbitt is perhaps the most enduring of the literary works of the early twenties which ridiculed rotarianism, hypocritical woman-worship, and frequent banqueting. For students of human nature who wish to compare the characters in a play written during the depression of 1921 with those of the Great Depression of 1929—the following two bits of dialogue are illuminating. They reveal that Kaufman often says the same clever things in different plays.

Gordon (in Dulcy) is a pompous business man, greeting Bill, who is more flippant and serves as the mouthpiece of the author:

GORDON:
I say, how's business?
BILL:
Haven't you heard?
GORDON:
(a bit cheery) Oh, I don't know. I have an idea it may pick up presently.
BILL:
You've been reading Mr. Schwab. “Steel Man Sees Era of Profits.”
GORDON:
Well—I think he's right at that.
BILL:
Yes … Rockefeller expects to break even this year, too.
GORDON:
Just the same I look for improvement. (Earnestly) Bill, if it could just be arranged that all the outstanding accounts could be absorbed by the banks, and then these accounts into payable—
BILL:
I know. You mean—things would be better if we weren't all broke.(1)

In 1933 in what was known as the depth of the depression Kaufman again discussed business, this time with Morrie Ryskind, collaborator in Of Thee I Sing. For those students of contemporary drama who are curious to distinguish the contributions of Kaufman from those of his associates, the following Socratic dialogue is helpful:

Socratic Dialogue
By George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind
(The scene is Mr. Ryskind's favorite speakeasy—the one where Mr. Kaufman signs the checks.)
MR. K.:
Another glass of beer, Mr. Ryskind?
MR. R.:
Don't care if I do. And thank you very much.
MR. K.:
Don't thank me. Thank Mr. Roosevelt.
MR. R.:
Say, that's right. If it wasn't for the President we'd still be drinking that 6 per cent stuff, instead of this 3.2.
MR. K.:
What's the matter with 3.2? That's not a bad percentage. Those Harriman depositors would settle for that in a minute.
MR. R.:
Yes, but will Harriman?
MR. K.:
Well, he hasn't decided yet. As I understand it, Harriman is going to get together with France, and they'll make us a combined offer.
MR. R.:
That means Harriman won't pay unless Germany disarms?
MR. K.:
No, it just means Harriman won't pay.
MR. R.:
There's just one sure way to keep the banks open. Pass a law against them, the way they did with the speakeasies.
MR. K.:
That wouldn't do. You'd have too many banks in one block.
MR. R.:
I guess you're right. With as many banks as that, the prisons would get too overcrowded.
MR. K.:
Tell me—with all the bankers going to jail, what do you think will happen?
MR. R.:
Well, the first thing they'll do is float a series of Mutual Welfare Gold Debentures, guaranteed by Singer and Marcus and S. W. Straus and Company, and payable in 1962, with time off for good behavior.
MR. K.:
That's all right for 1962. But what happens in 1934, when the bonds drop to three and a sixteenth asked, and one-sixteenth offered?
MR. R.:
What do you think'll happen? They'll close the jails.
MR. K.:
Then what? You mean we have prison reform?
MR. R.:
Sure. A bill is rushed through Congress giving the President dictatorial powers over the jails. So he opens the good jails and the rest of them stay closed. Maybe some of the Detroit jails will never open.
MR. K.:
But what about the Reconstruction Finance Corporation? Aren't they supposed to help out?
MR. R.:
Oh, sure. They keep right on lending money—good jails and bad. No matter what happens.
MR. K.:
Let me get this straight. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation just keeps on lending money?
MR. R.:
That's right. On condition that there's no security.
MR. K.:
Well, whose money is it? Whose money are they lending?
MR. R.:
It's very simple. You see, they take the money that the depositors put into the good banks.
MR. K.:
And lend it to the bad banks.
MR. R.:
Now you've got it!
MR. K.:
But if they're going to do that, why don't they let Harriman keep it in the first place?
MR. R.:
Don't worry—he's going to. Waiter! Two beers!
MR. K.:
Make mine the same!
MR. R.:
Two times 3.2—that's 6.4, isn't it? That's not bad beer, Mr. K.
MR. K.:
That's what it isn't. But tell me—have you tried any of this 3.2 wine?
MR. R.:
No, I haven't. Tell me about that.
MR. K.:
I've been making some at home. You take two parts of hydrogen and one part oxygen, and mix them together. That gives you H20, or 3.2 wine.
MR. R.:
H20? That's water isn't it?
MR. K.:
Well, what do you think 3.2 wine is? Wine?
MR. R.:
That depends on the Supreme Court. If they say it's wine, it's wine—with Brandeis dissenting.
MR. K:
Just the same, Mr. Roosevelt is doing a pretty good job. He's got the whole country behind him, and we Democrats have got a right to be proud.
MR. R.:
We Democrats? I thought you voted for Thomas?
MR. K.:
I did. But that was in New York City, and it wasn't counted.
MR. R.:
Then I'm a Democrat, too?
MR. K.:
Sure you are. If you voted for Thomas.
MR. R.:
Well, I'll be darned! We've got to celebrate that! Waiter! Four beers!
MR. K.:
Make mine the same!
MR. R.:
Yes, sir, he's doing a great job—Roosevelt. A great job. Tell me—is Roosevelt married?
MR. K.:
Sure he's married. Been married for years.
MR. R.:
Funny. You never read anything about his wife.
MR. K.:
Waiter! One rotogravure section!(2)

Comparing the two dialogues written twelve years apart, one notices certain elements which might well characterize the dramatist. There is a contemporaneity, first of all, which ties the play closely to its environment and which may work to its disadvantage in the final reckoning of the playwright's contributions. Ibsen's A Doll's House could be revived in 1937 as a moving, provoking drama, because of its timelessness. There is no need to summon the platitudes concerning Shakespeare's revivability. The season of 1937 saw the Mercury's Julius Caesar, Talullah Bankhead's Antony and Cleopatra, the Surrey Players' As You Like It, and Charles Hopkins' Coriolanus. In 1938-1939 Maurice Evans produced Hamlet and Henry IV.

Since Kaufman's wit is essentially the kind which takes one by surprise because of its appropriateness and its felicity of phrase, will the same wit amuse an audience the second time? Nothing is so boring as a wise-crack endlessly repeated. Kaufman is perfectly aware of the immediacy of appeal of his plays as his well-known remark about his opinion of satire indicates. When questioned why he did not write satire more consistently instead of his popular plays with a touch of satire, he is said to have answered: “Satire is what closes Saturday night.”

There is no doubt of his popular success. After his happy experience with Marc Connelly in 1921, he lost no time in writing To the Ladies and Merton of the Movies in 1922. The following year they wrote in collaboration The Deep Tangled Wildwood, an exposé of New York's sophistication, which was a failure. Ten years later, with Edna Ferber, Kaufman tried again with the same theme in Dinner at Eight, a mordant criticism of Park Avenue society folk. In 1923 Kaufman wrote his first book for a musical comedy, Helen of Troy, New York. (1923) Be Yourself (1924), The Cocoanuts (1925), Strike Up the Band (1927), Animal Crackers (1928), The Band Wagon (1931), Of Thee I Sing (1931), Let 'em Eat Cake (1933), and I'd Rather Be Right (1937) are other musical comedies for which he has fashioned the plots.

A dramatist deserves more than passing mention when his works achieve not merely a success of the moment but also enrich the art-form, remove its limitations, and open new fields in which it may flourish. Has Kaufman been more than a wizard of stage-technique? Are his many popular successes readable and revivable? The two Pulitzer prizes for Of Thee I Sing (1932) and You Can't Take It with You (1937) indicate at least a certain committee's testimony to his merit. To the historian of the drama, perhaps his two outstanding achievements have been Of Thee I Sing and I'd Rather Be Right.

Of the first it might truly be said that it was a pioneer effort. Critics thought that they had touched the zenith of adulation when they spoke of it as the nearest American counterpart to the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Yet Of Thee I Sing was even superior to the immortal Savoy operettas in certain respects. There is about such productions as Pinafore, Iolanthe and Ruddigore a feeling of gayety, yes, but also a childish kind of gayety. To make sophisticates laugh, to have tickled the mind, not the ribs, that was Kaufman's feat. To wring a laugh out of the war debt tangle, to have made a Presidential campaign exciting before the 1932 and 1936 battles; to have dared to present the Nine Old Men on the stage in an attitude more prejudicial than judicial; to have taken the dullness out of politics and to have substituted laughter—that was something new in American drama.

Although John Corbin in an article in the May, 1933, Scribner's was displeased with the influence which dramatists like Kaufman exercised in American drama, he admitted that Kaufman's spirit of satire was not wholly worthless. Kaufman found so much in American life to ridicule, because there are so many foibles and follies that deserve only ridicule. Tin Pan Alley was the subject for his satire in June Moon (1929); the stupidities of the moguls of Hollywood were ridiculed in Once in a Lifetime (1930); joiners were told some unpleasant things in The Good Fellow; and the Republicans surely were satisfied with the criticism of the New Deal in I'd Rather Be Right.

As a satirist of the more obvious inanities and crudities of American life, Kaufman is easily the master. His training as a columnist twenty-five years ago has made him a kind of dramatic column-writer, writing ironically about things that have amused him. No one expects a unique philosophy of life from such a writer, any more than one expects gossip columnists to be included in a revision of Will Durant's Story of Philosophy. Yet no man of intelligence, living in such times as these, can have failed to adopt certain definite ideas about artistic, economic and social problems.

Kaufman's artistic philosophy is perhaps most clearly stated in Merrily We Roll Along, written with Moss Hart in 1934. The dramatic device of beginning a play with the present and then retreating into the past was effective, to be sure, but after all, only a dramaturgic trick. To many observers this story of the commercialization of the ideals of a young playwright seemed something in the nature of a confession on Kaufman's part. Certainly no American dramatist would understand better the emotions of a successful dramatist whose millions do not satisfy his artistic cravings. The conquest of dollars over idealism has often been treated by our dramatists, but seldom with the poignancy and irony which Kaufman gave to his play. The times may have influenced the dramatist, for a few years later he was back to character comedy. His excursion into the field of literary art and its difficulties is one of the truly revealing contributions to this difficult subject.

What is Kaufman's general philosophy of life? Will he eventually join the immortals or is he just another successful dramatist, another Kotzebue, a Scribe, a Boucicault? Mere technical proficiency never produced an enduring playwright. Is Kaufman satisfied with his financial returns and content to leave dramatic art to his younger contemporaries?

In the opinion of Joseph Wood Krutch, drama critic of the Nation, Kaufman has not a consistent point of view. “He has said a hundred witty things; he is certainly on the side of good sense; yet it would be very difficult after reading his twenty-odd plays to say that they tend in any direction.”³ Since this statement was made in 1933, certain plays have appeared in which ideas play an important part. These are Merrily We Roll Along (1934), First Lady (1935), Stage Door (1936), You Can't Take It with You (1936), I'd Rather Be Right (1937), The Fabulous Invalid (1938), and The American Way (1939). Sometimes Kaufman's point of view is one of good common sense, such as expressed by Grandpa Vanderhof in You Can't Take It with You. Briefly, his philosophy of life is one of enjoying it while one can. Perhaps Kaufman, who knows what audiences want, gave them their own land of heart's desire. In our nerve-wracking civilization we all crave a Shangri-La, a haven of refuge.

Kaufman's philosophy of life may not be consistent, not even positive, but it is quite evident and animates his plays. In all his satires and comedies with satirical flavors he shows his refusal to be fooled by the things which befuddle most people. His superiority to other writers like Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken, who likewise have capitalized on their clarity of vision, lies in his ability to preserve that attitude when the others have succumbed to illusions.

Kaufman has shown Americans how ridiculous some of their most cherished institutions are: their Rotary clubs, their hypocritical adoration of women, their thirst for the dollar, their worship of material success. To have become successful by condemning the pet notions of one's audiences is an unusual accomplishment. It was said of a certain performance of You Can't Take It with You that one of the spectators laughed so heartily that he fell off a balcony and yet was unharmed. There is something symbolic in that. Kaufman has turned some of America's most sacred prejudices upside down, but their possessors have survived the experience. Perhaps it does us much good to see the world sometimes standing on our head. Kaufman may be able to stand on his feet and see what a crazy, silly, yet happy world this is. Our age demands more people with eyes that cannot be fooled by superficialities, with minds which can sum up the absurdities of a situation in an epigram, with courage to laugh at the weaknesses of men, be they movie moguls or Presidents.

Notes

1. Reprinted by permission of Mr. George S. Kaufman.

2. Reprinted by permission of Mr. George S. Kaufman and The Nation.

3. “The Random Satire of George S. Kaufman,” The Nation, August 9, 1933, pp. 156-8.