New Legacy Website Announced for Playwright George S. Kaufman

Press release

October 22, 2024 - The life and works of legendary comic playwright George S. Kaufman and his collaborators are being celebrated in an updated and revised legacy website: georgeskaufman.com that was launched officially this week.

Produced by Laurence Maslon, Trustee of The George S. Kaufman Literary Trust and musical theater historian (who runs the Trust for Kaufman’s daughter, Anne, along with actor David Pittu), the site explores each of Kaufman’s forty-plus plays and musicals with synopses, analysis, cast breakdowns, graphics, photographs, and critical articles available for download about selected shows.

A wide range of new projects and initiatives will launch with the site, based on plays and musicals by Kaufman and his collaborators including Moss Hart, the Gershwins, Edna Ferber, the Marx Brothers, Irving Berlin and many more. Their collected works include such beloved and successful classics for the stage and screen as You Can’t Take It with You, Of Thee I Sing, The Royal Family, Animal Crackers, The Man Who Came to Dinner, A Night at the Opera, and Merrily We Roll Along.

“George S. Kaufman was the 20th century’s most influential and successful comic playwright,” said Maslon. “Our new website provides interested users with the full range of Kaufman’s dramatic skills and opens many opportunities for theater artists to be inspired by him anew and produce his plays on their stages. As we barrel through the 21st century, we are clearly seeing how pertinent and powerful Kaufman’s satirical edge and brilliant craftsmanship continue to be—witness the huge success of the 1981 Sondheim/Furth musical Merrily We Roll Along, based on Kaufman and Hart’s epic 1934 play as well as numerous revivals of the Kaufman/Gershwin political musicals this election season.”

2024 has been a year of several high-profile Kaufman projects taking center-stage. The first Broadway revival of Merrily We Roll Along broke box office records and won five Tony Awards, including Best Revival. In mid-October, Odyssey Opera in Boston produced both Of Thee I Sing and Let ‘Em Eat Cake, the two presidential Kaufman/Gershwin musicals. This October 29, MasterVoices will present a concert version adaptation of the Kaufman/Gershwin/Ryskind musical, Strike Up the Band at Carnegie Hall. The concert will feature a new book by Maslon and MasterVoices artistic director/conductor Ted Sperling, with a cast including Victoria Clark, John Ellison Conlee, David Pittu, and Christopher Fitzgerald. On November 3, the Gershwin Initiative at the University of Michigan will premiere their archival score of Of Thee I Sing in concert hosted by NPR’s Anastasia Tsiouclas.

The Literary Trust has been working with licensors at Dramatists Play Service and Concord Theatricals to make Kaufman’s comedies more accessible and more readily available for both professional and amateur productions. Kaufman’s comedies have been licensed and performed thousands of times by hundreds of theatre companies in venues all over the world. Among the new projects available for license are:

· An alternate version of Kaufman and Hart’s classic Pulitzer-Prize-winner, You Can’t Take It With You, which provides greater latitude for diverse casting, available for stock and amateur rights. There is also a new authorized 40-minute reduction of You Can’t Take It With You for school competitions. (Dramatists Play Service)

· A reduced version of Kaufman and Ferber’s 1936 Stage Door, a beloved backstage drama with a large female cast, that allows the play to be done with limited resources and a smaller cast (17 women, 4 men) (Dramatists Play Service). Stage Door has also been optioned for an upcoming Broadway musical.

· The acquisition of three acclaimed political musicals (Strike Up the Band, Of Thee I Sing, and Let ‘Em Eat Cake) by Concord Theatricals for professional and amateur performances, along with complete authorized scores.

“What brings the Kaufman Literary Trust the most joy is to see George’s plays and musicals done on stage—that’s what counts the most,” said Maslon. “Working directly and robustly with our licensors, the Literary Trust has been crafting and retrofitting versions of the classic texts—along, of course, with the classic texts themselves—to make these comedies accessible and attractive to the next and new generations of practitioners and their audiences. Expect several more ‘user-friendly’ adaptations and editions in the months to come. We very much want George S. Kaufman’s influence to continue for many, many years on many, many stages.”