The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-05-06
In New. York
BY GEORGE ROSS

New York, May G. When You Can't Take It With You" took the Pulitzer drama prize, Authors George s. Kaufman and Moss Hart were luxuriating at the Garden of Allah Gan apartment house) in Hol- lywood.
 "What!" they say MT. Kaufman. an old veteran at Pulitzer and other prizes, remarked, Another onei" For they had just received, by airmail, another medal desig- mating their You Can't Take It With You" as the laughingest play of the season.
 Knowing Hart. he did not take the hapy news so casually. This happens to be his initiation into the Inner Circle of Pulitzer Prize holders and though all the coun- try knows Kaufman, Hart is new to ranking among the 1mmortals.
 Yet Hart already has establish ed himself as one of the major playwrights. of America; also, as one of the most debonair drama tists ever to turn dialogue to pa- per. Since he meteorically rose to fame with "Once in 6 Life time," the legend grew up around him until as Edna Ferber, his dear friend, summed 1t up:
 "To that casual group loosely termed the World he is the Clam or Boy you see at New York First Nights, done up in London tails and a King Edward carnation; the one who Is always circling the globe with Cole Porter, or sum- ming himself at the edge of Irving Berlin's swimming pool, or look ing out at you from the Palm Springs page of Harper's Bazaar, or sitting at that coveted corner table at Twenty -One,, or spending six months in Hollywood at three thousand 8 week, or who can't be reached by telephone because he's writing play with George Kaufman.
 "He is said," Mrs. Ferber went on exposing him, ito have thirty six dressing gowns, seven dogs and monogrammed shaving pa- pers. He is monogrammed in the most improbable places. Just as he stands, he is worth his weight in gold bullion; gold gallus-buc. kles, gold belt buckle, gold gar ters, gold-and-seal billfold, gold pencil, gold pen, gold and plati- nus cigarett case, gold bottle shoppers. They say he buys his toothbrushes at Carriers"
 70
 Bitten by Poverty
 Mir. Hart wasn't always that way Not by a long shot. There was Q time in his life, not too long ago when his penury prevented him from paying for small and urgent gold filling. That was eight years ago when he suddenly announced tc his family, then dwelling on the wrong end of Fifth Avenue, that he was moving the entire menage out to Brooklyn, because he was about to write play.
 So the Harts moved across the river and there in the quietude of the Flatbush flatlands, young Moss sat down and wrote Once in a Lifetime" the funniest satire of of Hollywood ever presented. He sent it around to Broadway produc- CTS and 1t fell, luckily, into the hands of George 8. Kaufman, who wanted to go to work on 1t. Thus began the collaborative firm of Kaufman & Hart.
 But Hart,s desire to sit down and write a play wasn't merely a sudden impluse as one gets desire to go out and guzzle a double chocolate sundae. He had been leading up to 1t for years be- fore then.
 For seven summers, he earned his bread and butter on what is popularly known as the "Borscht Circuit which consists of those innumerable adult camps in the Catskills and AdirondackS. He was, as the official title goes, the Social Director, and his duties kept him awake from six o'clock in the morning until 3 o'clock the next morning, staging plays and musical comedies, arranging mas querade parties and athletit contests, lecturing on the contem- porary drama, dancing his weary legs off with tireless wallflowers
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