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[[2 pages]] [[page 1]] [[2 columns]] [[column 1]] KAUFMAN ON THEATRE EDITOR'S NOTE: George S. Kaufman (1887-1961), journalist, critic, playwright, director, producer, was one of the theatre's most prolific playwrights and acerbic wits. He won two Pulitzer Prizes (for Of Thee I Sing, written with Morrie Ryskind, George and Ira Gershwin, and You Can't Take It With You, written with his most famous collaborator, Moss Hart). Some of his most celebrated, satiric magazine pieces and revue sketches have been compiled and edited by writer/composer Donald Oliver in a new book called By George - The Collected Kaufman by George S. Kaufman (St. Martin's Press). Here are some gems from the volume. ON OPENING NIGHTS Noel Coward, on his opening nights, togs himself out in white tie and tails and plants himself prominently in a stage box, where he joins happily in the applause and the laughter. Jerome Kern, in his pre-Hollywood days, used to sit fifth row on the aisle at his own openings, and enjoyed himself vastly. Herbert and Dorothy Fields, at the premieres of their musical shows, always sit second row on the aisle, and have a whale of a time. But they are the great exceptions - most playwrights of my acquaintance run screaming from the theatre as soon as the curtain goes up and bury themselves in a double feature somewhere on Forty-second Street. Me, I stay there and suffer, nor can all my advance resolutions stay me from those appointed rounds. As each opening night approaches I swear a solemn oath that I will spend the evening seeing a movie or playing bridge, but eight o'clock always finds me pacing the rear of the auditorium, cursing the audience for its failure to arrive half an hour ahead of time.... Be the play good or bad, it never goes well enough to please the author. It is an evening of acute agony, from beginning to end. Some day, perhaps I will really [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] [[image: Black and white photo of a bespeckled George S. Kaufman]] summon up a little strength of character and not go near the theatre, and that will be the evening that the audience laughs its head off, unreservedly. So maybe I'd better not take a chance. I'll be there. In the matter of reviews I have grown a little calmer. Time was when I always sat up for the morning papers. I would even sit up for Time and Newsweek, and once, I think, I sat up for Burns Mantle's "Year Book." But nowadays I go home and go to bed. You can be panned just as well in the morning. ON BEING IN TROUBLE ON THE ROAD Moss Hart and I...have planned out a marvelous old age for ourselves. Using a little group of spies who will hang around rehearsals, we will be equipped with advance information as to which shows are in the most trouble. Probably we will confine ourselves to large and expensive musical comedies since these always have a good chance of going wrong. Then, on opening night, there we will be in Hartford, having that bad dinner at the hotel before opening. At the next table will be the authors and the composer, along with their wives, all being treated to a large dinner by the producer, who will charge it to production. The jokes will be popping back and forth, and the happy authors will have barely a moment in which to toss us an offhand greeting. [[/column 2]] by George S. Kaufman 70 [[end page]] [[start page]] [[2 columns]] [[column 1]] But we will have our revenge. There will be, third row on the aisle, watching every unfortunate moments as it unfolds on the stage. The big comedy scene that runs ten minutes without a laugh in it; the long ballet that you know will come out entirely; the confused plot about the corset manufacturer and the burlesque girl. Finally at ten minutes to one the curtain will fall. Meanwhile a good percentage of the audience has already left, so it is not hard to get up the aisle. We walk jauntily, Moss and I, and there are those same authors standing in the back of the theatre. They are not quite so jolly as they were during dinner. As we pass them we each wave a gay hand in their direction and together we give voice to an immemorial dictum: "Well, boys, it needs work." ... Then we go out and get drunk. If this seems cruel, you must remember that the playwright puts up with a lot. (I suppose the actor does too, and so does the audience from time to time, but I am frankly writing from a specialized viewpoint.) There is no one in the world who cannot tell an author how to fix his play, and the poor guy has to stand there and listen courteously. And at the end he must say, "Thank you very much. You are absolutely right," instead of what he wants to say, which is. "What the hell do you know about it?" Having listened for many years to the dramatic opinions of all kinds of persons, I would like to suggest a basic change in the manner of printing the telephone directory, so that this generally secondary profession may receive recognition. "Baldwin, Walter J.," I would have it say, "furs and dramatic critic." "Stuffnagel, Rugus W., garbage collector and dramatic critic." And so on. I once knew a playwright who had a sweet moment of revenge, although it was not strictly along the lines I have indicated. He had written a musical comedy and was out on the road with it, prior to coming to New York. It is a rule of the theatre that the producer must pay the author's hotel bill during this period, and the producer, a careful fellow, decided after three or four days that he would save money by sending the author home. The playwright, however, was a conscientious chap who thought he could still improve the show, so he stayed on at his own expense. 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