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Three Plays: Once in a Lifetime / You Can't Take It With You / The Man Who Came to Dinner
Three American theater classics by two popular playwrights.
"Once in a Lifetime" is a satire about three small-time vaudevillians who set out for Hollywood as films move from silents into sound.
The 1936 Pulitzer Prize winner "You Can’t Take It With You" is about a zany family of hobby-horse enthusiasts. For thirty-five years Grandpa has done nothing but hunt snakes, throw darts, and avoid income-tax payments; his son-in-law makes fireworks in the basement, and other assorted family members write plays, operate amateur printing presses, and play the xylophone. They live in playful eccentricity until daughter Alice brings home her Wall Street boyfriend.
"The Man Who Came to Dinner" (1939) became a long-running hit. It portrays an eminent lecturer (based on Alec Woollcott) who accepts a dinner invite in a small Ohio town, slips on the ice outside his hosts’ home, and is forced to their sickbed. Convalescing he turns the house into bedlam with his wacky friends and diabolic pranks.
Also included in this volume are “Men at Work” and “Forked Lightning,” two essays Kaufman and Hart wrote about each other.
"Once in a Lifetime" is a satire about three small-time vaudevillians who set out for Hollywood as films move from silents into sound.
The 1936 Pulitzer Prize winner "You Can’t Take It With You" is about a zany family of hobby-horse enthusiasts. For thirty-five years Grandpa has done nothing but hunt snakes, throw darts, and avoid income-tax payments; his son-in-law makes fireworks in the basement, and other assorted family members write plays, operate amateur printing presses, and play the xylophone. They live in playful eccentricity until daughter Alice brings home her Wall Street boyfriend.
"The Man Who Came to Dinner" (1939) became a long-running hit. It portrays an eminent lecturer (based on Alec Woollcott) who accepts a dinner invite in a small Ohio town, slips on the ice outside his hosts’ home, and is forced to their sickbed. Convalescing he turns the house into bedlam with his wacky friends and diabolic pranks.
Also included in this volume are “Men at Work” and “Forked Lightning,” two essays Kaufman and Hart wrote about each other.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
About the author
George S. Kaufman
85 books33 followersPeople note American playwright George Simon Kaufman for many collaborations, including
Dinner at Eight
(1932) with Edna Ferber and
You Can't Take It with You
(1936) with Moss Hart.
This theatre director, theatre producer, humorist, and drama critic, known as "the great collaborator," wrote very few plays alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_...
This theatre director, theatre producer, humorist, and drama critic, known as "the great collaborator," wrote very few plays alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_...
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
October 28, 2013
Polly Wolly Doodle. It took 2 to write these plays ? Having written for the Marx Bros, Kaufman brings a sense of joyous anarchy to these now mothballers (but swell for high schools and amateur theatre groups). You take a tin plot, with a pinch of romance, and crowd the stage with characters in-out, all doing "madcap"/kick in yer pants nonsense. O my gott, "madcap."
"Dinner" springs from a visit the blabbermawth Alec Woollcott paid to Hart's lavish spread in Bucks County, PA. Hart told Kauf that he feared what would happen if Alec hurt himself there and couldn't leave. Zut ! The play ! ~~ Pandemonium rules w good scenes for actors playing versions of Noel Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Harpo Marx. It's boy scout camp.
There is not a "funny" line herein, but rather Whiteside issues insult after insult to others (usually women): "I may vomit," "Miss Bedpan," and so on. ~~ "You Can't" -- well, no, you can't, as a pert ingénue introduces her beau to her "madcap" family. Maybe you like "heart warming." Efficient sitcom, now drip-dry.
I could not finish "Lifetime." These plays illustrate another time and place and country that no one has ever seen or experienced.
"Dinner" springs from a visit the blabbermawth Alec Woollcott paid to Hart's lavish spread in Bucks County, PA. Hart told Kauf that he feared what would happen if Alec hurt himself there and couldn't leave. Zut ! The play ! ~~ Pandemonium rules w good scenes for actors playing versions of Noel Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Harpo Marx. It's boy scout camp.
There is not a "funny" line herein, but rather Whiteside issues insult after insult to others (usually women): "I may vomit," "Miss Bedpan," and so on. ~~ "You Can't" -- well, no, you can't, as a pert ingénue introduces her beau to her "madcap" family. Maybe you like "heart warming." Efficient sitcom, now drip-dry.
I could not finish "Lifetime." These plays illustrate another time and place and country that no one has ever seen or experienced.
August 15, 2022
________________________________
“After one month with you, Mr. Whiteside,
I am going to work in a munitions factory.
From now on, anything I can do to help
exterminate the human race will
fill me with the greatest of pleasure.”
________________________________
This book includes two of my favorite comic plays of all time--"The Man Who Came to Dinner" and "You Can't Take It With You."
I am especially fond of "The Man Who Came to Dinner." I loved the movie, several times. When I saw the play performed live in a sold out Chicago theater, I had to sit on a rickety fold-up chair while looking out the window of a tiny costume warehousing area, squeezed in with 8 other lucky last minute ticket buyers, and next to one of the stagehands working spotlight. And I didn't regret it one bit and would do it again if the opportunity arose. Don't go through life without seeing this hilarious play.
“After one month with you, Mr. Whiteside,
I am going to work in a munitions factory.
From now on, anything I can do to help
exterminate the human race will
fill me with the greatest of pleasure.”
________________________________
This book includes two of my favorite comic plays of all time--"The Man Who Came to Dinner" and "You Can't Take It With You."
I am especially fond of "The Man Who Came to Dinner." I loved the movie, several times. When I saw the play performed live in a sold out Chicago theater, I had to sit on a rickety fold-up chair while looking out the window of a tiny costume warehousing area, squeezed in with 8 other lucky last minute ticket buyers, and next to one of the stagehands working spotlight. And I didn't regret it one bit and would do it again if the opportunity arose. Don't go through life without seeing this hilarious play.
October 21, 2026
I love to read and see plays, primarily because I absolutely swoon at the power of good dialogue. The way it can envelope you into a story and the dynamics between people. And good dialogue is very difficult to pull off! Unfortunately, I don’t read and see plays as often as I like. Nonetheless, I was at Half Price Books and came across a collection of three plays by George Kaufman and Moss Hart appropriately titled, Three Plays. It features their collaborative plays, 1930’s “Once in a Lifetime,”; 1936’s “You Can’t Take It with You,” and 1939’s, “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” The second one won a Pulitzer Prize, and the third became one of the longest running hits in the history of Broadway. The collection also opens with essays Hart and Kaufman wrote each other, respectively titled, “Men at Work,” and “Forked Lightning.” Even though these plays were written nearly 100 years ago, their themes of human hubris, the poignancy of frivolity, and the humorous interplay therein still resonate and leap right off the page. I laughed-out-loud often.
The Personal Essays
First, with the essays Hart and Kaufman wrote each other, I found it amusing how they depicted the other. Hart saw Kaufman almost otherworldly, as this godlike figure in the world of playwrighting, who was indefatigable, working all hours of the day, meticulously sculpting each sentence again and again, bolstering that adage about how playwriting is really about rewriting. Indeed, Hart writes that Kaufman “frightened me to death originally.” As for Kaufman, his essay belies this depiction, given his more loose, playful writing about Hart, sharing an anecdote about Hart’s abnormally long visits with the dentist, so much so that he couldn’t maintain a dinner engagement because he’d still be with the dentist. “There are times, I think, when he is not completely sure whether the curtain is up or down,” Kaufman says of Hart. That’s what makes him a good playwright, though, in his estimation! What a “marriage” as Hart describes it.
“Once in a Lifetime”
Hilarious. I was constantly laughing-out-loud at the antics between friends, George (a dope), May (the ringleader), and Jerry (the dependable one), a vaudevillian act in NYC, who cross the United States to try to make it big in Hollywood. Their scheme? Talkies are the new thing after 1927’s The Jazz Singer, so naturally, they’re going to open an elocution school and teach Hollywood actors how to talk and breathe correctly. On the Pullman train West, they meet a famed gossip columnist who buys into their scheme (that they have a renowned school in England already), and will connect them once arriving in Hollywood. The trio also meets Susan Walker, who dreams of being a movie star. She’s a dope like George, so naturally, they hit it off. Once in Hollywood, their scheme works, initially, within the Glogauer studio run by Herman Glogauer, who is inundated by a cadre of assistants, secretaries, pages, a coat check girl, and even a cigarette girl (exactly what it sounds like: she comes around with a silver tray of fine cigarettes). The rub? Every single one of them pines instead to be in one of his pictures, so they are liable to break out into dance or song to prove their talent. The hilarious conceit of the play is that even when everything seems to be going wrong for the trio, and Glogauer is giving them the riot act and then firing them, everything ultimately turns out okay, thanks to the genius of George! Or at least, people ascribing genius to George. For example, George somehow gets tasked with producing the movie starring Susan, but he uses the wrong script and makes the wrong movie. Critics love it! Glogauer’s studio is saved. Critics even love “choices” George made, like dark lighting (because he forgot to turn on the lights) or the knocking noise heard during scenes (him obnoxiously chomping away on his favorite Indian nuts). It is so damn funny and ridiculous, Kaufman’s and Hart’s lampooning of Hollywood and the sycophants that make up that oddball circus. Or the playwrights, too! One playwright, Lawrence Vail, is summoned to Glogauer’s studio to write, as are half-a-dozen others, only to be given nothing to do, and not even an audience with Glogauer, for months. When he tries to get an audience with Glogauer, the secretary keeps forgetting who he is minute-to-minute. He finally has a nervous breakdown and goes to a sanatorium opened by another playwright for playwrights experiencing similar nervous breakdowns. I loved this play, and would happily read more adventures with this trio.
“You Can’t Take It with You”
I did not want to leave the quirky, absurd, but earnest and lovely Sycamore family. There’s the patriarch, Grandpa Vanderhof, who hasn’t worked in 35 years because he hated the work he was doing, so now he prefers to attend commencement addresses and play with his snakes. He’s also being accosted by the IRS because he owes 23 years of income taxes, which he’s not too concerned about because, he argues with the IRS man who arrives at the house, what does he get out of giving his money to the government? Flustered and then scared by the snakes, the IRS man leaves. Grandpa’s daughter, Penny, randomly took up the typewriter and wants to be a playwright. That’s what she does, writing rather salacious pieces. One of her daughters, Essie, dreams of being a ballerina, despite being terrible, while also making candy known as Love Dreams, so she’s constantly prancing around, especially whenever her husband, Ed, starts playing his xylophone or her boisterous Russian music teacher, Kolenkhov, comes around. Ed also has a printing press that he likes printing random things on and including them in the boxes with the Love Dreams. Penny’s husband, Paul, is tinkering away in the basement with Mr. De Pinna, an ice salesman who came eight years ago and never left, to build fireworks to sell. Rheba and Donald, the Black servants, try to manage the chaos as best they can. Finally, there’s Alice, Penny’s other daughter, the more “normal” one of the family, who works in an office and pines after Tony, the VP, the son of a well-to-do family, of course. The unabashed zaniness of the family is incredible to witness leap off the page, like Essie in one of her awful attempts at a pirouette. Upon Alice and Tony’s engagement, they invite his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kirby, to dinner — on the wrong night before Alice can give the house a “normal” makeover! — and chaos ensues, naturally. First, there’s nothing prepared food-wise, but Donald is sent off to fetch beer and canned salmon. Secondly, Gay Wellington, who was to act out one of Penny’s plays and is described as a nymphomaniac, is instead drunk; she is hidden away upstairs when Mr. and Mrs. Kirby arrive, but then she stumbles downstairs and flirts with Mr. Kirby. Then, they play a hilarious game at the dinner table, initiated by Penny, where they are given a word, like “sex,” and have to write down the first word they think of, which Penny then reads aloud. When she gets to Mrs. Kirby’s, Mrs. Kirby associates “sex” with “Wall Street” because the implication is that Mr. Kirby is always thinking about Wall Street, even during sex with her. And Kolenkhov also tries to wrestle Mr. Kirby and instead hurts Mr. Kirby’s back. I’m dying. And the climax of this fiasco of a dinner is the FBI raiding the house because of Ed’s printed pamphlets that say random things like, “Dynamite the Capitol,” and “God is the State; the State is God.” Lmao. Meanwhile, De Pinna is worried about his pipe left downstairs after the government goons accosted him and brought him upstairs. Before he can retrieve it, the fireworks explode. Everyone is arrested, including Mr. and Mrs. Kirby, who suffer the indignity of a strip search, a night in jail, and newspaper coverage thereafter. Alice, of course, is aghast, and not only breaks off the engagement, but seeks to go live in the Adirondacks for a bit. That is until Grandpa and a pleading Tony convinces her to stay. Tony says he contrived for his parents to come on that night to show them what a real family looks like, and for Mr. Kirby to remember the dreams he used to have before becoming a Wall Street man. The moral of the story is that Mr. Kirby can’t take all his wealth and prestige with him, so you might as well enjoy life while you can, as Grandpa and his zany family are. This is further established when Kolenkhov brings the Grand Duchess Olga Katrina, now a waitress, to dinner in Act Three, showing how even former Russian royalty has been reduced to menial jobs in America. Oh, and Grandpa evaded the pesky IRS since they had named the milkman who came to visit, never left, and then died, by Grandpa’s name. So, they think the dead man is the man who owed those back taxes. Ope.
“The Man Who Came to Dinner”
Famed outlandish radio critic, Sheridan “Sherry” Whiteside, for whatever reason was in Mesalia, Ohio, visiting the home of Ernest and Daisy Stanley in the weeks before Christmas, when he tripped on ice, injuring his hip. While convalescing in their home, his arrogant, curmudgeon ways take over. He domineers everyone, from his secretary Maggie to his nurse Miss Preen and Dr. Bradley (who wants Sherry to look over his book, something like, 40 Years as a Physician in Ohio) to even Mr. and Mrs. Stanley. Not only does he threaten them with a six-figure lawsuit, but he orders them to not use the telephones and to not interrupt his space. He also tries to influence their children, Richard (by telling him to leave his job and become a photographer) and June (by telling her to elope with a union organizer Mr. Stanley disapproves of). Meanwhile, Sherry is also ahead of his time as someone fascinated by true crime, so much so that he invites convicted killers into the Stanleys’ home. I think I’d take the convicted murderers over Professor Metz’s gift to Sherry: a glass-encased cockroach colony. Ew. A newspaperman and aspiring playwright, Bert Jefferson, also stops by to do a profile on Sherry, which results in Maggie falling madly in love with him, so much so that she intends to marry him and leave Sherry behind. Sherry, ever the conniving figure, cannot allow this to happen. So, he conspires to bring famed starlet, Lorraine Sheldon, to Ohio, to woo Jefferson. Meanwhile, Dr. Bradley said he misdiagnosed Sherry, and he’s good to go. He can leave. But again, the conniving Sherry is enjoying himself too much, so he milks his injury and confinement to a wheelchair just a bit longer. Maggie is wise to Sherry’s conspiracy with Lorraine and tries to use the help of the British actor, Beverly Carlton, who has also arrived at the home, to trick Lorraine into leaving. Beverly can do a great impression of Lord Bottomley, an Englishman Lorraine wants to marry. Lorraine buys the impression, where “Lord Bottomley” asks her to marry him, and so, she tells her maid to let everyone know she’s heading to London to marry him. The tit-for-tat continues, as Sherry gets Lorraine to realize the ruse, only further pushing Lorraine into seducing Bert more. Maggie can’t take it anymore and decides to quit. Now, it’s Sherry who wants to get Lorraine out of Mesalia to cajole Maggie back to him. Enter his visiting comedian friend, Banjo, who tricks Lorraine into stepping into an Egyptian mummy case (a Christmas gift for Sherry, naturally). All this is happening as a deadline looms: Mr. Stanley is trying to take back his house and has given Sherry 15 minutes before he’s evicted. Then, ever the one-upper, Sherry realizes that Mr. Stanley’s eccentric sister, Harriet Stanley, is an axe murderer, so he blackmails Mr. Stanley into helping them ship the mummy case on Banjo’s plane. Lmao. Clever. Then, Sherry gives up the ruse, stands, and says Maggie is “free” to marry Bert and he’s ready to return to New York. Instead, as he walks out of the home, he slips on ice again, injuring himself and is carried back in the house screaming all the while. Lmao again. I don’t think this one has a strong moral to convey like the previous one, rather, it’s having fun with the lampooning and satirizing of bigwig NYC radiomen, especially in contrast to small-town Ohio. Admittedly, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the previous two — the former being the funniest and the second just so lovely and endearing — but Kaufman and Hart sure can write a house of chaos filled with eccentric, unforgettable characters.
If you’re looking to switch up your reading journey, you can’t go wrong with these three dynamic, hilarious, and still-relevant plays from the powerhouse duo of Kaufman and Hart.
The Personal Essays
First, with the essays Hart and Kaufman wrote each other, I found it amusing how they depicted the other. Hart saw Kaufman almost otherworldly, as this godlike figure in the world of playwrighting, who was indefatigable, working all hours of the day, meticulously sculpting each sentence again and again, bolstering that adage about how playwriting is really about rewriting. Indeed, Hart writes that Kaufman “frightened me to death originally.” As for Kaufman, his essay belies this depiction, given his more loose, playful writing about Hart, sharing an anecdote about Hart’s abnormally long visits with the dentist, so much so that he couldn’t maintain a dinner engagement because he’d still be with the dentist. “There are times, I think, when he is not completely sure whether the curtain is up or down,” Kaufman says of Hart. That’s what makes him a good playwright, though, in his estimation! What a “marriage” as Hart describes it.
“Once in a Lifetime”
Hilarious. I was constantly laughing-out-loud at the antics between friends, George (a dope), May (the ringleader), and Jerry (the dependable one), a vaudevillian act in NYC, who cross the United States to try to make it big in Hollywood. Their scheme? Talkies are the new thing after 1927’s The Jazz Singer, so naturally, they’re going to open an elocution school and teach Hollywood actors how to talk and breathe correctly. On the Pullman train West, they meet a famed gossip columnist who buys into their scheme (that they have a renowned school in England already), and will connect them once arriving in Hollywood. The trio also meets Susan Walker, who dreams of being a movie star. She’s a dope like George, so naturally, they hit it off. Once in Hollywood, their scheme works, initially, within the Glogauer studio run by Herman Glogauer, who is inundated by a cadre of assistants, secretaries, pages, a coat check girl, and even a cigarette girl (exactly what it sounds like: she comes around with a silver tray of fine cigarettes). The rub? Every single one of them pines instead to be in one of his pictures, so they are liable to break out into dance or song to prove their talent. The hilarious conceit of the play is that even when everything seems to be going wrong for the trio, and Glogauer is giving them the riot act and then firing them, everything ultimately turns out okay, thanks to the genius of George! Or at least, people ascribing genius to George. For example, George somehow gets tasked with producing the movie starring Susan, but he uses the wrong script and makes the wrong movie. Critics love it! Glogauer’s studio is saved. Critics even love “choices” George made, like dark lighting (because he forgot to turn on the lights) or the knocking noise heard during scenes (him obnoxiously chomping away on his favorite Indian nuts). It is so damn funny and ridiculous, Kaufman’s and Hart’s lampooning of Hollywood and the sycophants that make up that oddball circus. Or the playwrights, too! One playwright, Lawrence Vail, is summoned to Glogauer’s studio to write, as are half-a-dozen others, only to be given nothing to do, and not even an audience with Glogauer, for months. When he tries to get an audience with Glogauer, the secretary keeps forgetting who he is minute-to-minute. He finally has a nervous breakdown and goes to a sanatorium opened by another playwright for playwrights experiencing similar nervous breakdowns. I loved this play, and would happily read more adventures with this trio.
“You Can’t Take It with You”
I did not want to leave the quirky, absurd, but earnest and lovely Sycamore family. There’s the patriarch, Grandpa Vanderhof, who hasn’t worked in 35 years because he hated the work he was doing, so now he prefers to attend commencement addresses and play with his snakes. He’s also being accosted by the IRS because he owes 23 years of income taxes, which he’s not too concerned about because, he argues with the IRS man who arrives at the house, what does he get out of giving his money to the government? Flustered and then scared by the snakes, the IRS man leaves. Grandpa’s daughter, Penny, randomly took up the typewriter and wants to be a playwright. That’s what she does, writing rather salacious pieces. One of her daughters, Essie, dreams of being a ballerina, despite being terrible, while also making candy known as Love Dreams, so she’s constantly prancing around, especially whenever her husband, Ed, starts playing his xylophone or her boisterous Russian music teacher, Kolenkhov, comes around. Ed also has a printing press that he likes printing random things on and including them in the boxes with the Love Dreams. Penny’s husband, Paul, is tinkering away in the basement with Mr. De Pinna, an ice salesman who came eight years ago and never left, to build fireworks to sell. Rheba and Donald, the Black servants, try to manage the chaos as best they can. Finally, there’s Alice, Penny’s other daughter, the more “normal” one of the family, who works in an office and pines after Tony, the VP, the son of a well-to-do family, of course. The unabashed zaniness of the family is incredible to witness leap off the page, like Essie in one of her awful attempts at a pirouette. Upon Alice and Tony’s engagement, they invite his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kirby, to dinner — on the wrong night before Alice can give the house a “normal” makeover! — and chaos ensues, naturally. First, there’s nothing prepared food-wise, but Donald is sent off to fetch beer and canned salmon. Secondly, Gay Wellington, who was to act out one of Penny’s plays and is described as a nymphomaniac, is instead drunk; she is hidden away upstairs when Mr. and Mrs. Kirby arrive, but then she stumbles downstairs and flirts with Mr. Kirby. Then, they play a hilarious game at the dinner table, initiated by Penny, where they are given a word, like “sex,” and have to write down the first word they think of, which Penny then reads aloud. When she gets to Mrs. Kirby’s, Mrs. Kirby associates “sex” with “Wall Street” because the implication is that Mr. Kirby is always thinking about Wall Street, even during sex with her. And Kolenkhov also tries to wrestle Mr. Kirby and instead hurts Mr. Kirby’s back. I’m dying. And the climax of this fiasco of a dinner is the FBI raiding the house because of Ed’s printed pamphlets that say random things like, “Dynamite the Capitol,” and “God is the State; the State is God.” Lmao. Meanwhile, De Pinna is worried about his pipe left downstairs after the government goons accosted him and brought him upstairs. Before he can retrieve it, the fireworks explode. Everyone is arrested, including Mr. and Mrs. Kirby, who suffer the indignity of a strip search, a night in jail, and newspaper coverage thereafter. Alice, of course, is aghast, and not only breaks off the engagement, but seeks to go live in the Adirondacks for a bit. That is until Grandpa and a pleading Tony convinces her to stay. Tony says he contrived for his parents to come on that night to show them what a real family looks like, and for Mr. Kirby to remember the dreams he used to have before becoming a Wall Street man. The moral of the story is that Mr. Kirby can’t take all his wealth and prestige with him, so you might as well enjoy life while you can, as Grandpa and his zany family are. This is further established when Kolenkhov brings the Grand Duchess Olga Katrina, now a waitress, to dinner in Act Three, showing how even former Russian royalty has been reduced to menial jobs in America. Oh, and Grandpa evaded the pesky IRS since they had named the milkman who came to visit, never left, and then died, by Grandpa’s name. So, they think the dead man is the man who owed those back taxes. Ope.
“The Man Who Came to Dinner”
Famed outlandish radio critic, Sheridan “Sherry” Whiteside, for whatever reason was in Mesalia, Ohio, visiting the home of Ernest and Daisy Stanley in the weeks before Christmas, when he tripped on ice, injuring his hip. While convalescing in their home, his arrogant, curmudgeon ways take over. He domineers everyone, from his secretary Maggie to his nurse Miss Preen and Dr. Bradley (who wants Sherry to look over his book, something like, 40 Years as a Physician in Ohio) to even Mr. and Mrs. Stanley. Not only does he threaten them with a six-figure lawsuit, but he orders them to not use the telephones and to not interrupt his space. He also tries to influence their children, Richard (by telling him to leave his job and become a photographer) and June (by telling her to elope with a union organizer Mr. Stanley disapproves of). Meanwhile, Sherry is also ahead of his time as someone fascinated by true crime, so much so that he invites convicted killers into the Stanleys’ home. I think I’d take the convicted murderers over Professor Metz’s gift to Sherry: a glass-encased cockroach colony. Ew. A newspaperman and aspiring playwright, Bert Jefferson, also stops by to do a profile on Sherry, which results in Maggie falling madly in love with him, so much so that she intends to marry him and leave Sherry behind. Sherry, ever the conniving figure, cannot allow this to happen. So, he conspires to bring famed starlet, Lorraine Sheldon, to Ohio, to woo Jefferson. Meanwhile, Dr. Bradley said he misdiagnosed Sherry, and he’s good to go. He can leave. But again, the conniving Sherry is enjoying himself too much, so he milks his injury and confinement to a wheelchair just a bit longer. Maggie is wise to Sherry’s conspiracy with Lorraine and tries to use the help of the British actor, Beverly Carlton, who has also arrived at the home, to trick Lorraine into leaving. Beverly can do a great impression of Lord Bottomley, an Englishman Lorraine wants to marry. Lorraine buys the impression, where “Lord Bottomley” asks her to marry him, and so, she tells her maid to let everyone know she’s heading to London to marry him. The tit-for-tat continues, as Sherry gets Lorraine to realize the ruse, only further pushing Lorraine into seducing Bert more. Maggie can’t take it anymore and decides to quit. Now, it’s Sherry who wants to get Lorraine out of Mesalia to cajole Maggie back to him. Enter his visiting comedian friend, Banjo, who tricks Lorraine into stepping into an Egyptian mummy case (a Christmas gift for Sherry, naturally). All this is happening as a deadline looms: Mr. Stanley is trying to take back his house and has given Sherry 15 minutes before he’s evicted. Then, ever the one-upper, Sherry realizes that Mr. Stanley’s eccentric sister, Harriet Stanley, is an axe murderer, so he blackmails Mr. Stanley into helping them ship the mummy case on Banjo’s plane. Lmao. Clever. Then, Sherry gives up the ruse, stands, and says Maggie is “free” to marry Bert and he’s ready to return to New York. Instead, as he walks out of the home, he slips on ice again, injuring himself and is carried back in the house screaming all the while. Lmao again. I don’t think this one has a strong moral to convey like the previous one, rather, it’s having fun with the lampooning and satirizing of bigwig NYC radiomen, especially in contrast to small-town Ohio. Admittedly, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the previous two — the former being the funniest and the second just so lovely and endearing — but Kaufman and Hart sure can write a house of chaos filled with eccentric, unforgettable characters.
If you’re looking to switch up your reading journey, you can’t go wrong with these three dynamic, hilarious, and still-relevant plays from the powerhouse duo of Kaufman and Hart.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 2, 2020
“Once in a Lifetime” - didn’t care for it. Maybe it reads better on stage.
“You Can’t Take It With You” - one of my faves. I want to do this show sometime before I die.
“The Man Who Came to Dinner” - very funny. Saw the version with Nathan Lane
“You Can’t Take It With You” - one of my faves. I want to do this show sometime before I die.
“The Man Who Came to Dinner” - very funny. Saw the version with Nathan Lane
June 26, 2017
This is three plays in one. Once in a Lifetime is about three schemers who go to vaudeville to take advantage of the booming industry when "talkies" start being produced. This one was probably my favorite of the three. You Can't Take it With You is about a fairly normal young woman who comes from a family of eccentrics, whom she loves dearly and is fiercely protective of. Things come to a head when their quirks start to affect her life outside of the home. The Man Who Came to Dinner is about a celebrity who falls and injures himself at someone's home and can't be moved until he has recovered. He takes over the house completely and there are various consequences. I really enjoyed reading the writings of Kaufman and Hart and look forward to more.
March 8, 2022
It's been a while since I took the time to read a play. Of the three Kaufman & Hart plays in this volume, "The Man Who Came to Dinner" is my favorite, in part because of the 1942 movie of the same name that starred Monty Woolley as Sheridan Whiteside and Bette Davis as Maggie Cutler.
Definitely 5-star material!
Definitely 5-star material!
May 1, 2024
Our online play group read _The Man Who Came to Dinner_ and it's delightfully funny. I'm the only one of the four of us who has seen it performed (I was in stitches) but apparently there's a video with Nathan Lane in the the "Sherry" role on YT. I expect we'll do another play (maybe two!) from this collection, later in the year.
October 2, 2017
All three plays are simply brilliant and hilarious. Superb!
Read
February 8, 2021Great fun. The 1930s in Broadway form. Very little is seriously exaggerated!
August 2, 2026
Have never seen the play, but reading it was so enjoyable. Didn’t know they were cooking with such wit and eccentric-ness back then!
September 7, 2014
After reading the Moss Hart biography I wanted to see a sample of his collaboration of his work with George S. Kaufman so I got my hands on this collection. Now, there is about as much point to read a screenplay to get a feel of the movie as there is to read a play script to get a feel for the play. Although reading a play script is a little more accessible than a movie script. But regardless, I still wanted to get an idea of what all the fuss was about. I choose to read “The Man Who Came For Dinner” since reviews said it held up the best. It is about a famous radio personality and critic (Whiteside) who was visiting a family for dinner (we never find out why he was visiting THIS family, since he seems to have hundreds of famous friends and this family certainly isn’t a) famous or b) very close to him) and ended up slipping on ice on their front porch and having to stay there. We pick up the action with him having been there many weeks, while recovering, and he is taking over the house and the household staff and threatening the family with suing them.
I can see this play being a huge hit. A great example of a farce, populated with great characters for the actors to play off of. There are times the humour goes too far (penguins??) but mostly it is witty and there are great bits of timing and running jokes. The one oddity to me is the ending. The last minute rescue was a good idea, I just wished it felt more organic and less forced.
Overall, I have to say I can see why this play was a hit and the wit and speed of the play works. It is a little busy, filled with a lot of characters, but the authors managed to handle the characters well. Some get short changed in later acts (E.g. Bert is fleshed out well in act one and barely heard from afterward same with Mrs. Stanley) but to keep the play moving it is understandable.
Three stars because - let's be honest - reading a play is never close to SEEING a play. So while it is fun to read them at one level - it is still not fulfilling on a different level.
I can see this play being a huge hit. A great example of a farce, populated with great characters for the actors to play off of. There are times the humour goes too far (penguins??) but mostly it is witty and there are great bits of timing and running jokes. The one oddity to me is the ending. The last minute rescue was a good idea, I just wished it felt more organic and less forced.
Overall, I have to say I can see why this play was a hit and the wit and speed of the play works. It is a little busy, filled with a lot of characters, but the authors managed to handle the characters well. Some get short changed in later acts (E.g. Bert is fleshed out well in act one and barely heard from afterward same with Mrs. Stanley) but to keep the play moving it is understandable.
Three stars because - let's be honest - reading a play is never close to SEEING a play. So while it is fun to read them at one level - it is still not fulfilling on a different level.
December 14, 2011
The thing that stuck out to me about this play was that it was actually funny. The main reason I thought it was funny was because we actually watched the play in class. I never really gave plays a chance before, because it is different reading it that actually seeing it. When you can actually see it there is more room for humor like the way people say the lines or their facial expressions.
The worst thing about the play to me was that it wasn’t good till I actually saw the play. Some plays are funny on paper but some aren’t. One play that I liked on paper was rumors, the play we read in class.
I don’t plan on reading anymore of Kaufman and Hart’s plays. I know I said that last time but, this time I mean it because this is the last paper about a play I will have to do in this class anyway. The reason I chose them again this time was because it was a familiar author and I figured it wasn’t that bad last time so it won’t be that bad this time. I got really lucky though since we watched the play in class.
The book didn’t really make me feel much. I guess it made me laugh, but laughter isn’t really a feeling. It made me feel relieved when I was done because I could start on this and it made me happy when I found out we were going to be watching it in class.
If I were to rate the book I would give it 4 out of 5. I gave it a 4 because it was surprisingly good but not good enough to make me want to read plays all the time.
The worst thing about the play to me was that it wasn’t good till I actually saw the play. Some plays are funny on paper but some aren’t. One play that I liked on paper was rumors, the play we read in class.
I don’t plan on reading anymore of Kaufman and Hart’s plays. I know I said that last time but, this time I mean it because this is the last paper about a play I will have to do in this class anyway. The reason I chose them again this time was because it was a familiar author and I figured it wasn’t that bad last time so it won’t be that bad this time. I got really lucky though since we watched the play in class.
The book didn’t really make me feel much. I guess it made me laugh, but laughter isn’t really a feeling. It made me feel relieved when I was done because I could start on this and it made me happy when I found out we were going to be watching it in class.
If I were to rate the book I would give it 4 out of 5. I gave it a 4 because it was surprisingly good but not good enough to make me want to read plays all the time.
May 17, 2012
Kaufman and Hart comedies are still a staple of regional theater, and reading these three plays (in some cases re-reading, in others enjoying them for the first time), it's easy to see why they don't go away. The screwball sensibilities of these plays are still fresh after all these years, in many ways fresher than the work of more recent playwrights like Neil Simon. There are references that contemporary audiences mostly wouldn't get, but the humor in the relationships between the characters more than compensates for that. I think the reason that this work holds up so well is that Kaufman and Hart's characters were iconoclasts even in their day, and they remain free spirits even now, so time hasn't made them old fashioned. My only regret is that there aren't more of these plays to enjoy.
April 7, 2008
I never thought I would be reading a play that a where I don’t have to read it for school. this play is a very funny plan about a family. where the writer George Kaufman just makes them very good and real. each character I can feel that I am watching the play in person so that something that kept me reading. I also like all the storylines around the main problems which kept me always thinking and that’s what I like not just in a play but in a book. so overall this play was very good and I hope I get some more George Kaufman plays because this one really got me hooked in.
December 19, 2014
Once in a Lifetime can read a bit implausible to our modern world. In fact, I'm still confused about the aeroplane fiasco. But Hart brilliantly portrays the craziness and lure of the bygone Hollywood scene with a backdrop of interrelated characters. (Hart's first big hit.) You Can't Take It With You has hilarious quirky characters & ends perfectly with it's prophetic title's message. (My favorite out of the 3.)The Man Who Came to Dinner is a clever farce with an unlovable but humorous lead. All of which should remind us: Laugh and the world laughs with you; cry and you cry alone.
March 13, 2007
I loved the play "You Can't Take It With You" when I was a kid. The family in the play is a precursor of sorts to the nutty family you see in Little Miss Sunshine.
January 29, 2008
I read the last two plays in this book. I found them both entertaining and funny. They have a definited period feel to them.
November 2, 2013
I read all three for te first time, though I have heard of them. My favorite was You Can't Take It With You -- I bet it would be great to see it live. Thanks, Umber, for this suggestion!
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