New Legacy Website Announced For Legendary Comic Playwright George S. Kaufman

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.” 

The George S. Kaufman legacy website was designed by Luis Rivera and his team at Avante Logic: https://avantelogic.com/en 

ABOUT George S. Kaufman: 

George S. Kaufman was the pre-eminent comic dramatist of the first part of the 20th Century. Being an  avid bridge player, Kaufman knew the importance of a good partner; almost all of his forty-plus plays, musicals,  and sketches were written with collaborators. His first, among many, was Marc Connelly, with whom he wrote  Merton of the Movies and Beggar on Horseback. With Edna Ferber, he wrote The Royal Family (1927), Dinner  at Eight (1931) and Stage Door (1937). He also wrote the books for two Marx Brothers musicals, The  Cocoanuts (1925) with Irving Berlin, and Animal Crackers (1928), where he teamed up with Morrie Ryskind.  Kaufman and Ryskind continued with the Gershwins on Of Thee I Sing and its sequel Let' Em Eat Cake as well  as the screenplay for the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera. This was also the period of Kaufman's seminal  collaboration with Moss Hart, which yielded such plays as Once in a Lifetime, Merrily We Roll Along, You Can't  Take It With You (Pulitzer Prize, 1937), and The Man Who Came to Dinner. Kaufman's long career as a  director had its biggest success with his production of Guys and Dolls (1950). Kaufman died in 1961. For more  information, log on to www.georgeskaufman.com.