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George S. Kaufman |
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The theatre world affectionately dubbed George S. Kaufman "The Great Collaborator," and that epithet pinpoints his particular genius. Only one of his full-length plays was not a collaboration or adaptation. His other famous activities in addition to his writing--as a director and as one of the wittiest members of the Algonquin Round Table group--also involved collaboration of a sort. He excelled at producing humorous dialogue and at shaping material so that it played well, but he had little interest in (and perhaps little talent for) creating original dramatic plots or complex characters. But despite differences among the works he produced with a Moss Hart or a Marc Connelly or an Edna Ferber, recognizably Kaufmanesque elements run throughout his best plays: the naive, not-too-bright young man out to make his fortune; the wise-cracking independent young woman who comes to his aid; the traumas involved in preparing to entertain company; and a satirical eye cast in the direction of big business, politics, American bourgeois mores, and, especially, show business.
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