Moss Hart

Moss Hart (1904-1961), American playwright and stage director, born in New York. His first successful play, Once in a Lifetime, was produced in 1930 after he had rewritten it in collaboration with George S. Kaufman. Through 1940 Kaufman and Hart together produced a series of comedies notable for witty dialogue and well-drawn, somewhat exaggerated characters. Among them are You Can't Take It with You (1936; Pulitzer Prize, 1937), which celebrates a family of amiable eccentrics, and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939), a caricature of the writer and raconteur Alexander Woollcott. Hart was the sole author of the libretto for the musical comedy Lady in the Dark (1941), which he also directed, and his serious drama Christopher Blake (1946) won critical acclaim. He wrote the screenplay for the film Gentleman's Agreement (1947). Act One, an account of Hart's early years in the theatre, appeared in 1959.