Word: kaufmans
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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George Washington Slept Here (by George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, produced by Sam H. Harris). One of the high comic themes of American life concerns the nervous city people who want to get back to the soil-but not so far back as to avoid rural electrification. To this thesis Kaufman & Hart now devote their practiced wits. Ernest Truex plays the part of a little man who buys a Pennsylvania farm where Washington supposedly bedded (actually it turns out to have been Benedict Arnold). The acid Jean Dixon is his wife, forced among other pastoral ordeals to watch a well...
...stuffy uncle, and there are effective minor players, especially Bobby Readick as a malevolent small boy who is referred to by Mr. Truex as "Huckleberry Capone." But despite the excellent cast, the playwrights' wit fails to explode, merely intermittently sputters. Even Shakespeare came his croppers; presumably Kaufman & Hart are entitled to theirs...
...They have hairy legs and fat fannies and shouldn't be allowed in the yard." This outspoken comment on the social problems of Brattle Street came from Miss Toni Sorel, 1940 contender for the title of number one Oomph Girl of the Nation, and currently appearing in the new Kaufman and Hart comedy "George Washington Slept Here...
...immensely difficult to pick out things to criticize or correct in this show. It lacks that in-definable something, pace, that something which Alfred Hitchcock can give to a movie and which Kaufman and Hart are usually capable of imparting to their brain children. In two weeks it may be entirely different; Mr. Kaufman's opening night notes may give him the clue to the necessary revision and by the time it nits Broadway it may be fast enough to please Winchell...
...hoped that there is in the Hart family no prototype of Raymond, the Fuller's young nephew of about 12. This is indeed a poisonous character played to the "t" by Robert Readick and is probably the most amusing person in the play. To judge by the record, Messrs. Kaufman and Hart had better keep writing about their friends--of whom they have a copious number, for when they talk about themselves their pen loses its point...