American stage comedies generally aim for laughter rather than enlightenment, and this is particularly true of the best of the Kaufman-Hart comedies of the 1930’s. Still, such plays as Once in a Lifetime (1930), You Can’t Take It with You, and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939) do contain some elements of social satire and commentary, although these elements are often muted by the presence of a romanic sentimentalism that insists on a happy ending in which all vestiges of conflict are reconciled. In the case of You Can’t Take It with You, Kaufman and Hart devised a plot especially dear to the hearts of American audiences: One essentially good-hearted, stubborn individual is pitted against the “system.” Grandpa Vanderhof emerges both as a splendid comic character in his own right and as an exemplar of purely American individualism, ingenuity, and plain common sense. By turning his back on the traditional pursuits of wealth, power, and social standing, Grandpa manages to flout—in his wise and gentle way—most of the social conventions that govern the day-to-day lives of men and women.

Comedy nearly always flirts with social anarchy, and most of the great comic characters—from William Shakespeare’s Falstaff to the Three Stooges—have generated laughter and delight by gleefully violating those very rules of everyday conduct by which the rest of the world is forced to live. In addition to providing riotous entertainment, the result can be both cathartic and reassuring: Comic chaos subverts the established norms, often revealing the many cracks in the social façade, but in the end the prevailing human values of love and family win out and order is reestablished. This is exactly what happens in You Can’t Take It with You, although with a novel twist provided by Kaufman and Hart. Instead of introducing a set of comic characters into a seemingly normal situation (as Kaufman did in the three Marx Brothers films for which he wrote screenplays during the 1930’s), they arrange for several “normal” characters to visit the topsy-turvy world of the Sycamores, thereby bringing into collision two radically opposed sets of values. Since any audience is likely to respond to the characters inhabiting the Sycamore home with affection and sympathy, the Kirbys, ironically (but not accidentally), come off rather badly, and what the Kirbys represent—money, prestige, the sacrifice of personal happiness for worldly success—is held up to criticism.

Although one may then wonder whether it is therefore possible to see You Can’t Take It with You as a satiric indictment of the American Dream, this is not really the case. There has never been a healthy and sustained tradition of satire on the American stage, and Kaufman in particular, although famous for his acerbic wit, had severe doubts about the money-making potential of even first-rate theatrical satire. In addition, both Kaufman and Hart had risen to lives of sophisticated opulence in the New York theater world from very modest beginnings—Hart, in fact, from virtual impoverishment—and one never senses that they wish to question too deeply the traditional American ethic of hard work guaranteeing success, even though other Depression-era dramatists were doing exactly that. One can probably better account for the undeniable comic power of You Can’t Take It with You by focusing on its humorous and upbeat appeal to two very American characteristics: the instinctive American distrust of wealth, power, and the institutions that create and sustain wealth and power (such as Wall Street), and the sympathy that most Americans instinctively feel for the underdog. These factors seem much more likely explanations for the play’s effectiveness and continuing popularity.