Word: played
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Teamwork. Probably this lack of passionate convictions has helped make Kaufman the ideal collaborator. His adaptable, accommodating mind is geared to avoid collisions. It is also geared to let the other fellow's personality, rather than Kaufman's, permeate the play. What colors Beggar on Horseback, for example, is the pleasantly housebroken imaginativeness of Marc Connelly; what colors The Royal Family is the romantic bustle of Edna Ferber. The plays Kaufman has written with Moss Hart are better fused because, as comic playwrights, the two men are cut to much the same pattern...
Kaufman's own reason for constantly collaborating is simply that he needs collaborators, that he doesn't think his plays would be very good if he worked alone. Every collaboration is an evenly shared two-man job, with long preliminary stretches for working out every detail of plot, until suddenly "a bell rings" and the collaborators start their "star-chamber sessions" of writing. Every line of dialogue is written together. From start to finish, a play takes anything from five weeks (You Can't Take It With You) to seven months (The Royal Family), depending...
...perfectionism which also turned Kaufman into a director. He used to be driven half-crazy seeing other directors maul his lines, twist their meanings, spot a laugh where there was none. He first took over direction in 1925, on the only play he has written by himself, The Butter and Egg Man. He lacked confidence to finish the job, or even his next two or three, but since then he has directed almost all his own shows...
...belittles it as "a lot of over-rated goings-on." His ability to keep things moving and get every last chuckle out of a funny line is based on pounding away tirelessly at details, and on an infallible ear for the rhythm of conversation. He will rehearse a play for 15 minutes without looking at the stage, only listening to the dialogue. Suddenly he will call a halt, take out one word which interrupts the flow. No actor has ever managed to ad-lib even a syllable into his lines without Kaufman's spotting...
Broadway is a gold mine for Kaufman, but he never rests on his ores. He is just as apt to start thinking up a new play when he has a smash hit as when he has a flop. A friend has said that if Kaufman isn't a millionaire, he'll do until one comes along; but Kaufman may not be altogether fooling when he insists that constant work is something of a financial necessity. A generous man, he has never worshipped at the shrine of Compound Interest. "All I know," he once said, "is that I have...