Moss Hart

Moss Hart born 24 October 1904 (d. 1961)

Moss Hart was an American playwright and director of plays and musical theatre.

After working several years as a director of amateur theatrical groups and an entertainment director at summer resorts, he scored his first Broadway hit with Once In A Lifetime (1930), a farce about the arrival of the sound era in Hollywood. The play was written in collaboration with Broadway veteran George S. Kaufman. During the next decade, Kaufman and Hart teamed on a string of successes, including You Can't Take It With You (1936) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939). Though Kaufman had hits with others, Hart is generally conceded to be his most important collaborator.

In 1940 Kaufman and Hart called it quits. Hart had decided it was time to move on.

Throughout the 1930s, Hart also worked, with and without Kaufman, on several musicals and revues, including As Thousands Cheer (1933), with songs by Irving Berlin, Jubilee (1935), with songs by Cole Porter and I'd Rather Be Right (1937), with songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

Hart continued to write plays after parting with Kaufman however, he became best known during this period as a director.

By far his biggest hit was the musical My Fair Lady (1956) with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The show ran over seven years and won a Tony Award for Best Musical. Hart picked up the Tony for Best Director.

Occasionally, Hart wrote screenplays, including Gentleman's Agreement (1947) — for which he received an Oscar nomination — Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and A Star Is Born (1954).

The last show Hart directed was the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot (1960). During a troubled out-of-town tryout, Hart had a heart attack. The show opened before he fully recovered, but he and Lerner reworked it after the opening.

Hart died of heart failure on December 20, 1961. He was 57.

Moody, irritable, and often depressed, Hart was married to Kitty Carlisle, but the well-dressed and longtime bachelor was regarded as homosexual by many of his friends and reportedly spent much time in therapy regarding his attraction to men. (Carlisle did ask him if he was gay before they married and he responded that he was not.) Among his reported affairs was the actor turned writer Gordon Merrick.

In his screenplay for the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen, Hart wrote the following lines for bisexual actor Danny Kaye as the title character: 'You'd be surprised how many kings are only a queen with a moustache.'