George S. Kaufman was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on November 16, 1889. During his lifetime he achieved fame in the theater as a playwright and director. He did not first seek his career on the stage, however; after graduation from high school he studied law for a short while, then became a journalist, writing for New York and Washington newspapers. He served as drama critic for the New York Times and was credited with “bringing the Sunday theatrical page up to its present standard of liveliness, variety, and readability....”
Meanwhile, Kaufman also tried his hand at writing for the theater as well as about it. His unproduced farce, Going Up, brought him to the attention of producer George C. Tyler. In 1918 Tyler commissioned the new playwright to work on a play, and the result was Some One in the House, a collaboration with Larry Evans and Walter Percival. Though the play was not a success, the association with Tyler was a fruitful one, and in 1921 Kaufman was commissioned to collaborate with Marc Connelly on Dulcy. The play, which starred Lynn Fontanne, ran for 246 performances.
Kaufman worked well with collaborators, perhaps because he had a sharp wit and could develop characters skillfully, though he was less adept at creating plots. Of all his plays only The Cocoanuts (1925), The Butter and Egg Man (1925) and Hollywood Pinafore (1945) were solo efforts. Among his collaborators were leading playwrights of the American theater--Marc Connelly, Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, Morrie Ryskind, Howard Teichmann, and others--and together they brought many successful plays to the stage. More than fifteen of Kaufman's plays passed the 200-performance mark. Talented as a director as well as a writer, Kaufman staged many of his own plays and such memorable theatrical events as The Front Page (1928), Of Mice and Men (1937) and Guys and Dolls (1950).
A list of Kaufman's work is a chronicle of almost four decades of American theater history: Dulcy (1921), To the Ladies (1922), Merton of the Movies (1922), Beggar on Horseback (1924), The Cocoanuts (1925), The Butter and Egg Man (1925), The Royal Family (1927), Animal Crackers (1928), The Channel Road (1929), Once in a Lifetime (1930), Of Thee I Sing (1931), The Band Wagon (1931), Dinner at Eight (1932), The Dark Tower (1933), Let 'Em Eat Cake (1933), 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), The American Way (1939), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939), George Washington Slept Here (1940), The Land Is Bright (1941), The Late George Apley (1944), Hollywood Pinafore (1945), The Solid Gold Cadillac (1953) and Silk Stockings (1955). Of Thee I Sing and You Can't Take It with You both received the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
In the midst of his prolific theatrical activity, Kaufman also found time to work in Hollywood. He received credit for nineteen screenplays, many of them adaptations of his own work.
The playwright died in 1961.
