Act Two

Tonight at New York’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre, a new play, Act One, opens.  It is the adaptation of playright Moss Hart’s famous show business autobiography and it stars Tony Shaloub.

Act One has often been called “The Bible of Broadway.”  It’s a well-deserved encomium. No other book to date has ever charted the ups and down of show business as well as its author- half the 1930’s/1940’s comedy hit-making machine of Kaufman and Hart.

The play (and book upon which it was based) chronicles the personal odyssey of Hart as he went from a stagestruck poor Brooklyn kid living “in squalor” as he put it, to the toast of the Great White Way.

I’m looking at my first edition copy of the book as I write this.  It was published by Random House in 1959 and it’s a treasured hand-me-down in my collection.

The book originally belonged to my father, and it is his delight as he recounted two anecdotes that got me interested in Moss Hart in the first place.  My dad loved this book so much that I just had to read it for myself.

Thus I found myself- aged ten- plunged into the heady world of the New York theater and hanging out with the “Vicious Circle” at the Algonquin Round Table.

This was the golden era of Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, the aforementioned George S. Kaufman, F.P.A., Marc Connelly, Jed Harris, Sam Harris, Harpo Marx and last but never least, Alexander Woollcott.

Rather strange companions for a ten year old North Shore girl.  But two things kept me entertained and fascinated.

First, my father’s palpable delight as he re-told me the two great set pieces of the book- the tea party at Beatrice and George Kaufman’s townhouse and the leave-taking of the shabby apartment after Hart struck it rich with his play Once In A Lifetime.

And second, it was the uber-talented Mr. Hart’s golden pen that kept me riveted from word one in Act One.

True, he had a classic rags-to-riches story to tell.  But Horatio Alger never dreamed up his Aunt Kate.  Hart’s mother’s older sister could only have come from Tennessee William’s imagination- an old maid tragic figure.

But it was she, with all her foibles and odd failings, that brought the magic of the theater into young Moss’s life- and mine.

(She’s played by gifted Andrea Martin and I know she’ll do a brilliant job tonight.)

Moss Hart also knew about the part that luck and coincidence play in every human endeavor.  He knew that being gifted was not enough to succeed in that most mercurial word- the Broadway stage. He also wrote of the power in “believing in people.” All those “unknowns” whose time would come- if only people believed in their talent.

Two people Hart himself “believed in” were an out-of-work actor, Archie Leach, and a yet-to-have-a-hit fledgling theater producer, Oscar Serlin.

Archie Leach moved to Hollywood, changed his name to Cary Grant, and we all know how that worked out.

Oscar Serlin went on to produce the Broadway smash Life With Father.  That play opened in 1939 and became the longest-running show of all time at that time.  (It still holds the record for the longest running non-musical.)

Well, by the kind of lucky coincidence that Moss Hart writes about, my sister-in-law, Mary Lu Roffe, is Oscar Serlin’s great niece.

She is also a three-time Tony Award-winning producer in her own right.  And she also currently has a play, The Realistic Joneses starring Tracy Letts, Toni Collette, Marisa Tomei and Michael C. Hall on Broadway right now

The Joneses opened on April 6 at the Lyceum Theater to rave reviews.

The New York Times’ critic Charles Isherwood wrote, “Plays as funny and moving, as wonderful and weird as “The Realistic Joneses,” by Will Eno, do not appear often on Broadway…Mr. Eno’s voice may be the most singular of his generation…”The Realistic Joneses” brought me a pleasurable rush virtually unmatched by anything I’ve seen this season.”

Pretty great, right?  Mary Lu is continuing the family tradition of bringing entertainment excellence to town

Moss Hart clearly meant for Act One to be the opening act in a three-ring autobiography. Tragically, in 1961, a heart attack at fifty-seven killed him before he could ever write Act Two.

Maybe it’s up to people like Mary Lu and her producing partners to carry the torch and continue his legacy. Armed with a great big dream, a whole lot of talent, and some help from luck from Thespis, I know she’ll continue to do wondrous Broadway things.

Oscar and Moss would be proud that she followed in their illustrious theatrical footsteps.

Me, too.

Now as I was just saying to Thurber…