MOSS HART

Pedestrian biography utterly lacking the wit and charm that made the writer/director one of mid-20th-century Broadway’s most beloved figures.

The only justification for this lackluster effort by Brown (Alan J. Pakula, 2005, etc.) is the cooperation of his subject’s widow, Kitty Carlisle, which was not extended to Steven Bach, author of the far superior Dazzler (2001). Carlisle permitted Brown to read and quote from her husband’s diary, which vividly reveals the simmering anger and bouts of depression that dogged Moss Hart (1904–61), from the smashing success of his first collaboration with George S. Kaufman, Once in a Lifetime, through the grueling rehearsals of Camelot that hastened his fatal heart attack. But Hart kept the diary for a single year, 1954, and this material comes too late to redeem a text marred by dull prose, shallow judgments and hands-off treatment of Hart’s bisexuality—a topic that Bach also tiptoed around but nonetheless made a palpable element of this talented, tormented man’s complex personality. Brown very occasionally refers to “rumors” about Hart’s sexuality, but never explores any conflicts that might have compromised his genuine love for his wife and two children. As for Hart’s career, Brown adds nothing new to the familiar story: an impoverished childhood in New York City; apprenticeship in the amateur theaters of the Catskills vacation camps; the hugely popular shows with Kaufman, including The Man Who Came to Dinner; more ambitious, less successful solo efforts that ultimately led to his work as a Broadway director taking center stage, most notably with My Fair Lady and Camelot, turned into a hit after a disastrous opening by Hart’s savvy cuts and reshaping. The sole area in which Brown improves on Bach’s harder-edged approach is in evoking the warm affection Hart prompted; the description of the outpouring of grief that followed his premature death is sad and moving.

Anyone seeking real insight into Hart’s life and work would be better advised to pick up Dazzler or his delightful 1959 memoir, Act One.