Act One

[Doe Be Doe]

Do you ever dread going to some sort of event - just knowing it's going to be boring and dull? Then, when you go you end up having a wonderful time? That was my experience with Act One last night. It's showing at the Lincoln Center Vivian Beaumont Theatre. It was a wonderfully pleasant surprise. The acting was excellent; the book funny; the knowledge of theatre history interesting. I highly recommend it.

[Frankly Rich]

Thanks for sharing, Doe Be Doe. I was also not interested in this show, but if more guys report in like you did, I would change my mind. I've had the experience of liking a show that I didn't expect to, so I know how good it feels.

[actor61]

Do you ever dread going to some sort of event - just knowing it's going to be boring and dull? Then, when you go you end up having a wonderful time? That was my experience with Act One last night. It's showing at the Lincoln Center Vivian Beaumont Theatre. It was a wonderfully pleasant surprise. The acting was excellent; the book funny; the knowledge of theatre history interesting. I highly recommend it.

 

When I was in drama school, all my teachers said that "Act One" by Moss Hart was a must read, the best book ever written about Broadway and that immediately put me off. Whenever anybody hypes something that much, it's usually a dud, so I avoided reading it. A few years later, I had an 11 hour flight to Europe and I took the paperback of "Act One" that somebody had given me and had been sitting on my bookshelf ever since and put it in my carry on bag thinking that if there were no good movies on the plane, I'd give it a shot. 11 hours later, I wanted to ask the pilot if we could go around one more time so I could finish the book. It IS the best book ever written about B'way and I'm delighted to hear that the play does it justice. I hope it's still running when I get to New York in the fall.

[Frankly Rich]

Did it take 11 hours to read the book? Just kidding! I know that it's 463 pages, but I have yet to read it. You got me moving in that direction, actor61.

[Doe Be Doe]

Santino Fontana plays Moss Hart and is easy on the eye. If anyone knows I wouldn't mind an introduction!

[MrMiniver]

You can't be interested in the theater and not have read ACT ONE. It's really not possible. I saw the play, liked it very much, even if the lead actor didn't look a thing like Moss Hart and I'm old enough to remember what he looked like.

[Doe Be Doe]

Interesting, MrMiniver. That's what my friend with whom I saw the play said. She met Moss Hart a few times and knew his daughter. She said none of the actors looked like him. She also said that George S Kaufman was rather large and more than a bit "sloppy" so Tony Shalhoub cleaned him up a bit.

[MrMiniver]

Interesting, MrMiniver. That's what my friend with whom I saw the play said. She met Moss Hart a few times and knew his daughter. She said none of the actors looked like him. She also said that George S Kaufman was rather large and more than a bit "sloppy" so Tony Shalhoub cleaned him up a bit.

 

Yes, Tony Shaloub as George S. Kaufmann was rather ridiculous. I guess these people today figure there's no one alive who remembers what they look like. It reminds me of Warren Beatty's BUGSY in which he cast a very short and very fat actor as the great baritone Lawrence Tibbett. In real life, Tibbett was tall, handsome, and very fit .... I guess they figured no one remembered. Shame.

[+ WilliamM]

I read "Act One" so long ago I can not remember much about it. But, I did look at the photos of Moss Hart in Kitty Carlisle's Hart's autobiography this afterday. It's called "Kitty." Glad I took a look. She is certainly not writing a tell-all book about their marriage, Mrs. Hart does have good instincts about what Moss Hart was all about, especially on his talents as a director, his intense relationship with his shrink (whom she disliked greatly) and lavish lifestyle. It's sad that Moss Hart died so young.

[MrMiniver]

Santino Fontana plays Moss Hart and is easy on the eye. If anyone knows I wouldn't mind an introduction!

 

I agree with that. He was the Prince in the recent Cinderella. Very handsome young man. Moss Hart? Not in a million years.

[Doe Be Doe]

I wonder in how many biographical plays, films, etc. the actor portraying the subject has actually looked like the subject? Act One is still a great play.

[Frankly Rich]

You can't be interested in the theater and not have read ACT ONE. It's really not possible. I saw the play, liked it very much, even if the lead actor didn't look a thing like Moss Hart and I'm old enough to remember what he looked like.

 

MrMiniver would make an excellent writer of humor. He tends to the grand, broad statement where the exaggeration makes the remark funny. Some folks just couldn't do this. Maybe Daddy can give him a column?

[+ WilliamM]

Frank Rich, a close relative of star poster Frankly Rich, recent wrote about "Act One" for New York Magazine. The title of the piece is "The Greatest Showbiz Book Ever Written," but Rich used five pages to really give value to the title. He also writes about the reason why Kitty Cartlisle Hart was so protective of Hart's personal papers (with good reason, it turns out).

 

Rich's piece is far more interesting to me than "Act One," which I read a year or two after it was published. I thought Hart's plays were outdated even in 1961 when I read the book. Moss also wrote the screenplay for the 1954 film, "A Star is Born,"

which is pure soap opera, but gets by because of all the wonderful songs by Howard Arlen and Ira Gershwin sung by Judy Garland.

 

Hart was a great director ("My Fair Lady") and one of the greatest larger-than-life personality ever to hit Broadway.

 

Rich's piece: http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/act-one-moss-hart-2014-3/

[Frankly Rich]

Thanks for the link, WiliamM. Uncle Frank didn't send me that one! But I will read it.

[actor61]

I read "Act One" so long ago I can not remember much about it. But, I did look at the photos of Moss Hart in Kitty Carlisle's Hart's autobiography this afterday. It's called "Kitty." Glad I took a look. She is certainly not writing a tell-all book about their marriage, Mrs. Hart does have good instincts about what Moss Hart was all about, especially on his talents as a director, his intense relationship with his shrink (whom she disliked greatly) and lavish lifestyle. It's sad that Moss Hart died so young.

 

Probably about 25 years ago (if not more - can't remember) I saw Julie Andrews in concert in Miami. It was at the time that Zev Buffman was presenting legends in 1 person shows - Lena Horne, Shirley Maclaine and Julie Andrews among others. My favorite part of the evening was when she told the story of how awful she was in early rehearsals for "My Fair Lady" to the point that she thought they'd fire her. Moss Hart, who was directing, spent an entire weekend sequestered with her somewhere working on the role, and when rehearsals resumed with the rest of the company, her performance as Eliza was headed into the legend that it became. She told the story charmingly and said that she really owed her performance to Kitty Carlisle Hart who permitted Moss to spend the weekend alone with her.

[actor61]

Did it take 11 hours to read the book? Just kidding! I know that it's 463 pages, but I have yet to read it. You got me moving in that direction, actor61.

 

I didn't spend the ENTIRE flight reading. There was dinner, a couple of bathroom breaks because I drank a lot of wine, and as I remember, I watched a little bit of some dreadful Burt Reynolds comedy (a remake of The Front Page, I think). I was in Business Class on the upper deck of a 747 but it was in the days before lie flat beds and VOD. A few hours after meal service, the lady next to me was reclined all the way back with her footrest up and had her little t.v. that you pulled out of the armrest in front of her, and it was very difficult to get out, so that's when I got most of my reading done. Returning to the States, I got an aisle seat and finished the book. This is entirely off the subject but I'm in a typing mood, so here goes: I kind of preferred the old Business Class to the coffin like seating that now exists. You had a wide, comfy armchair that reclined pretty far back, a really nice foot rest that came up and supported your feet and legs, the food was pretty good, the service was wonderful and I really liked it. On my trip to London last December, I was on a British Airways A380 in their Club class and felt completely pinned in once I had settled into my window seat. I flew backwards and when the screen between me and the aisle passenger was down, we were starting straight into each others' faces. He was a nice man and I was as pleasant as I could be, but it's very disconcerting. After we hit cruising altitude, we were allowed to put up the separating screen and that was better, but you really are encased in a kind of plastic shell and it gets rather claustrophobic. I love being able to lie flat on long flights, though, so that's the compensation for the formerly wider seats and ampler elbow room.

[Frankly Rich]

Gosh, I think I'd take Premium Economy over a coffin-like Business Class seat! And I'm claustrophobic!

[Frankly Rich]

WilliamM, I have finished reading Frank Rich's article on Moss Hart. It is quite informative, and, along with the information from the biography of Hart called dazzler, gives a good picture of the man. had I seen Act One without reading this, I might have thought it was all true!

[+ beethoven]

I'm seeing "Act One" at the end of this week, so I can't comment on it yet. I read it many years ago, and I remember it as one of the best books I ever read -- about the theater, or anything else.

I'll tell you a Moss Hart story, which was related by Jim Brochu in recent off-Broadway one-man show. One of the actors who befriended Mr Brochu in his early days was Cyril Ritchard, who related this anecdote to Mr Brochu:

 

Ritchard, Rex Harrison, and Moss Hart (who directed "My Fair Lady") were dining in Sardi's after a performance. A woman came to their table and gushed, "Oh, Mr Harrison, you were wonderful, you're my favorite actor, it took me a year to get tickets to "My Fair Lady," etc, etc, etc. endlessly. Then she asked Harrison to sign her playbill. He glared at her, and said, "Madam, I don't care how long you waited, nor if you liked the show. You are interrupting me, and will you PLEASE LEAVE NOW!!!" The woman was so angry at his attitude, that she hit him over the head with her rolled-up playbill. Moss Hart turned to Cyril Ritchard and said, "Well, that's the first time I've seen the fan hit the shit."

[Frankly Rich]

beethoven, that's a funny story on Rex Harrison. I looked up more about him, and found a different take on that. In a London Daily mail article in April, 2008, the story is told this way:

Nobody escaped his vile temper or his scathing tongue - not even his fans.

 

"One night, after a stage performance of My Fair Lady, an elderly woman was standing alone in the rain outside the stage door and asked for his autograph.

 

Rex told her to "sod off", which so enraged the old woman she promptly rolled up her programme and hit him with it.

 

Fellow actor Stanley Holloway, who witnessed the scene, remarked that it was the first time "the fan has hit the s***!".

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-557332/He-watched-lover-die-help-drove-women-suicide-meet-Rex-rotter-Harrison.html#ixzz32B6Yg7PI

 

Variations on the story: https://www.google.com/search?q=rex+harrison+rude+to+fan&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb#channel=sb&q=rex+harrison+shit+hits+fan&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

[MrMiniver]

beethoven, that's a funny story on Rex Harrison. I looked up more about him, and found a different take on that. In a London Daily mail article in April, 2008, the story is told this way:

Nobody escaped his vile temper or his scathing tongue - not even his fans.

 

"One night, after a stage performance of My Fair Lady, an elderly woman was standing alone in the rain outside the stage door and asked for his autograph.

 

Rex told her to "sod off", which so enraged the old woman she promptly rolled up her programme and hit him with it.

 

Fellow actor Stanley Holloway, who witnessed the scene, remarked that it was the first time "the fan has hit the s***!".

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-557332/He-watched-lover-die-help-drove-women-suicide-meet-Rex-rotter-Harrison.html#ixzz32B6Yg7PI

 

Variations on the story: https://www.google.com/search?q=rex+harrison+rude+to+fan&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb#channel=sb&q=rex+harrison+shit+hits+fan&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

 

And like so many of the Goldwynisms, it's probably totally untrue but also totally in character with Harrison: supremely talented and a big jerk.

 

Kitty Carlisle Hart was a fascinating woman. I knew her. She was the epitome of the WASP culture holding forth at the Colony Club even though she was Jewish. But she wouldn't even consider Moss Hart's homosexuality. It's like it didn't exist. I made a rather innocent remark once (when she was already in her late 80s) in her presence and that big, full generous smile just withered and shot me a look. I guess she would have had to question her life and her marriage if she had even considered such a thing ... so she didn't.

[skynyc]

"I made a rather innocent remark once (when she was already in her late 80s) in her presence and that big, full generous smile just withered and shot me a look."

 

Based on many of your comments here, I'm sure we can all imagine how "innocent" your comment was.

[MrMiniver]

"I made a rather innocent remark once (when she was already in her late 80s) in her presence and that big, full generous smile just withered and shot me a look."

 

Based on many of your comments here, I'm sure we can all imagine how "innocent" your comment was.

 

Get stuffed.

[+ WilliamM]

Moss Hart and Kitty Carlisle seemed to have a good marriage. In her book, "Kitty, she sometimes makes you wonder by writing, "Whatever reclame I'd had as Kitty Carlisle was as nothing compared to being Mrs. Moss Hart." But, she was widow for a very long time and did everything possible to make people remember Moss Hart, his plays and "Act One."

[Frankly Rich]

"I made a rather innocent remark once (when she was already in her late 80s) in her presence and that big, full generous smile just withered and shot me a look."

 

Based on many of your comments here, I'm sure we can all imagine how "innocent" your comment was.

 

+1