Moss Hart (October 24, 1904 – December 20, 1961) was an American playwright, librettist, and theater director.
Hart was born in New York City, the son of Lillian (Solomon) and Barnett Hart, a cigar maker. He had a younger brother, Bernard. He grew up in relative poverty in the Bronx with his English-born Jewish immigrant parents.
In his youth, he had a formative relationship with his Aunt Kate, who piqued his interest in the theater, often taking him to see performances. Hart even went so far as to create an "alternate ending" to her life in his book Act One. He learned that the theater made possible "the art of being somebody else ... not a scrawny boy with bad teeth, a funny name ... and a mother who was a distant drudge."
Hart's first glimpse of Broadway came in 1918 when he was 14 years old. He later recounted exiting the subway at Times Square and standing agog at the urban tableau before him: "A swirling mob of shouting happy people ... confetti and paper streamers ... soldiers and sailors climbed happily onto the tops of taxis, grabbing girls up to dance with them. My first thought was 'Of course, that's just the way I thought it would be.'" Unbeknownst to Hart, his arrival had coincided with the signing of the armistice that ended World War One.
After working several years as a director of amateur theatrical groups and an entertainment director at summer resorts, he scored his first Broadway hit with Once in a Lifetime (1930), a farce about the arrival of the sound era in Hollywood. The play was written in collaboration with Broadway veteran George S. Kaufman (who regularly wrote with others, notably Marc Connelly and Edna Ferber), and produced by Sam Harris. Kaufman also performed in the play's original Broadway cast in the role of a frustrated playwright hired by Hollywood. Hart's agent at this time was Frieda Fishbein, who brought a lawsuit against Hart, contending she was entitled to a percentage of the royalties from plays produced by Harris. The matter was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.
During the next decade, Kaufman and Hart teamed on a string of successes, including You Can't Take It with You (1936) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939). Though Kaufman had hits with others, Hart is generally conceded to be his most important collaborator.
You Can't Take It With You, the story of an eccentric family and how they live during the Depression, won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for drama. It is Hart's most-revived play. When director Frank Capra and writer Robert Riskin adapted it for the screen in 1938, the film won the Best Picture Oscar and Capra won for Best Director.
The Man Who Came To Dinner is about the caustic Sheridan Whiteside who, after injuring himself slipping on ice, must stay in a Midwestern family's house. The character was based on Kaufman and Hart's friend, critic Alexander Woollcott. Other characters in the play are based on Noël Coward, Harpo Marx and Gertrude Lawrence.
Throughout the 1930s, Hart worked both with and without Kaufman on several musicals and revues, including Face the Music (1932); As Thousands Cheer (1933), with songs by Irving Berlin; Jubilee (1935), with songs by Cole Porter; and I'd Rather Be Right (1937), with songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (not related). After George Washington Slept Here (1940), Kaufman and Hart called it quits.
After parting with Kaufman, Hart continued to write plays, such as Christopher Blake (1946) and Light Up the Sky (1948), and wrote the book for the musical Lady In The Dark (1941), with songs by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin. However, he became best known during this period as a director. Among the Broadway hits he staged were Junior Miss (1941), Dear Ruth (1944) and Anniversary Waltz (1954).
By far his biggest hit was the musical My Fair Lady (1956), adapted from George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The show ran over six years and won a Tony Award for Best Musical. Hart picked up the Tony for Best Director.
In 1950 Hart was host of the game show Answer Yes or No on NBC television.
Hart also wrote some screenplays, including Gentleman's Agreement (1947) (for which he received an Oscar nomination), Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and A Star Is Born (1954). His memoir Act One: An Autobiography (1950) was adapted for film in 1963, with George Hamilton portraying Hart.
The last show Hart directed was the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot (1960). During a troubled out-of-town tryout, Hart had a heart attack. The show opened before he fully recovered, but he and Lerner reworked it after the opening. That, along with huge pre-sales and a cast performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, helped ensure the expensive production was a hit.
Hart was the tenth president of the Dramatists Guild of America, from 1947 until 1956, when Oscar Hammerstein II became his successor.
Hart married Kitty Carlisle on August 10, 1946; they had two children.
According to Nancy Olson in her memoir A Front Row Seat: An Intimate Look at Broadway, Hollywood, and the Age of Glamour, Hart had homosexual tendencies and underwent psychiatric sessions trying to change his sexual orientation:
She [Carlisle] told me a story that she said she had never shared with anyone. It’s true that Moss had a sexual-identity issue. Years before he met Kitty, it was rumored that he was gay. He didn’t want to be gay and spent most of his life visiting his psychiatrist, who assisted him in taking a different path. But it was Kitty’s need to be Mrs. Moss Hart that changed the situation. She seduced him in a manner that he couldn’t resist. He was eternally grateful, and they had two beautiful children, a son and a daughter to give him the most joy.