Act One (film)

Last updated
Act One
Act One poster.jpg
Directed by Dore Schary
Written byDore Schary
Based on Act One
by Moss Hart
Produced byDore Schary
Starring George Hamilton
Jason Robards
George Segal
Jack Klugman
Sam Levene
Ruth Ford
Eli Wallach
Cinematography Arthur J. Ornitz
Edited byMort Fallick
Music by Skitch Henderson
Production
company
Dore Schary Productions
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release date
  • December 26, 1963 (1963-12-26)(US)
Running time
110 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1 million [1]

Act One is a 1963 American film written and directed by Dore Schary, and starring George Hamilton. [2] It is the film version of the 1959 autobiographical book Act One by playwright Moss Hart. A play based on the book premiered on Broadway in 2014.

Contents

George Hamilton later complained that "Schary de-ethnicized the entire production and took out the brilliance for good measure". [3]

Plot

In 1929, 25-year-old Brooklynite Moss Hart lives with his parents and works hard in the summer so he has time to write plays in the winter. Hart is also encouraged by his friend, Joe Hyman, who occasionally lends him money as well as moral support.

Eventually, after four years and five attempts at serious drama, he takes the advice of agent Richard Maxwell and "discards the mantle of O'Neill and Ibsen and Shaw" to write a comedy, Once in a Lifetime. Inspired by the newspaper headline "Talkies sweep Hollywood", the play satirizes the Hollywood film industry's painful transition to sound. Hart's knowledge of the subject comes from immersing himself for months in "the pages of Variety, the fan magazines and Louella Parsons' column."

Producer Warren Stone (a fictional version of Jed Harris) keeps him waiting all day, then tells him to leave the manuscript and return. Eventually they meet, and Stone mesmerizes Hart with his talk of what it means to be a playwright. When months pass without any word, Hart's friends sneak a copy of the play to Sam Harris, who agrees to produce it if George Kaufman will collaborate and direct. Kaufman agrees, and so begins a partnership that will last until 1941.

The Atlantic City opening is a failure. Hart is distraught and Kaufman tells Hart that he has gone dry. Hart spends the day at the beach and comes to Kaufman with his new ideas for the second and third acts. Hart moves into Kaufman's house and they spend the summer reworking the play. It finally opens to rave reviews in New York City in September 1930. On opening night, Kaufman steps forward at the curtain call and says "80% of this play is Moss Hart."

Cast

Production background

Film rights were bought by Warner Bros, who assigned George Axelrod to write the script. [4] Eventually the project went to Dore Schary, who had known Hart for a number of years.

"I've tried to deal with Moss as I knew him", said Schary. "The film is more about character than the theatrical world. But I think his story represents more than just a guy trying to success in a tough, creative field, It's about his frustrations in trying to reach a dream, and then it isn't what he expected when he gets there. You might call it a typical American theme." [1]

Dore Schary was the basis for the character David Starr (played by Sam Groom). [5]

Anthony Perkins and Dean Jones were early contenders for role of Moss Hart.

George Hamilton was socially friendly with the family of Moss Hart, [3] and Hart reportedly wanted Hamilton for the role. [6]

Release

To promote the upcoming release of Act One, George Hamilton appeared on a September 1963 episode of I've Got a Secret , a prime-time game show in which a panel of celebrities attempted to discover the guest's "secret". Hamilton's secret? The actor identified as Hamilton and grilled by the panel (who failed to guess his secret) was that he was not actually Hamilton at all but instead a dark-haired handsome sort-of-look-alike pretending to be Hamilton. The real Hamilton showed up at the end of the spot and earned the admiration of panelist Henry Morgan who expressed astonishment that any performer of Hamilton's stature was secure enough to take part in a stunt which, in essence, pointed up the fact that he was unrecognizable to a quartet of supposedly in-the-know celebrities.

Reception

Kitty Carlisle, Hart's widow, was unhappy with the film. When Schary showed it to her she said diplomatically "Well, you did it", and later she said "we draw a veil" over the film. [7] In 1997, she "expressed her disapproval in the April 5 New York Times, saying that she attempted to buy the film 'to get it off the market.' " [8]

James Woolcott wrote about the film in Vanity Fair :

Act One has a very '50s feel, more of a boxy affinity with the Golden Age of TV than anything released in a film canister. It abbreviates the birth pangs and floor-pacing agonies of Once in a Lifetime 's gestation, the torturous rounds of re-writes and previews, sugarcoating everything about the romance of the theater that All About Eve had salted and pickled ... Hamilton isn't that bad, but playing an underdog of raging literal and metaphorical appetite, he purrs as a screen presence, his matinee-idol profile belying his character's self-doubt. Nothing needy thumps around inside him. (Had Act One been made a decade later, Richard Dreyfuss would have been perfect.) What makes this Act One work are the crafty scene-stealers cast against Hamilton's ingenuous Hart: Eli Wallach... Jack Klugman... and, most of all, Jason Robards as George S. Kaufman. With high-top hair, skeptical eyebrows that lift like Groucho Marx's, and a resigned posture suggesting a body that's a dried rind, Robards's Kaufman is an Al Hirschfeld caricature come to life. Wallach, Klugman, and Robards—each had a distinctive grain to his voice, a variable velocity in his delivery. The contrast between these shrewd operators and the freshman crew playing Hart's smart-aleck pals—among them future star George Segal as Hart's personal prophet of doom—gives the movie its rustling texture as a Hollywood artifact, nearly everybody in it destined for greater glories on-screen. [2] ,,

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George S. Kaufman</span> American playwright, theater director and producer (1889–1961)

George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theater director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals for the Marx Brothers and others. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the musical Of Thee I Sing in 1932, and won again in 1937 for the play You Can't Take It with You. He also won the Tony Award for Best Director in 1951 for the musical Guys and Dolls.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moss Hart</span> American playwright, librettist and theater director

Moss Hart was an American playwright, librettist, and theater director.

<i>Bad Day at Black Rock</i> 1955 film

Bad Day at Black Rock is a 1955 American neo-Western film directed by John Sturges with screenplay by Millard Kaufman. It stars Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan with support from Anne Francis, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, John Ericson, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. The film is a crime drama set in 1945 that contains elements of the revisionist Western genre. In the plot, a one-armed stranger (Tracy) comes to a small desert town and uncovers an evil secret that has corrupted the entire community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jason Robards</span> American actor (1922–2000)

Jason Nelson Robards Jr. was an American actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen, he gained a reputation as an interpreter of the works of playwright Eugene O'Neill. Robards received numerous accolades and is one of 24 performers to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting having earned competitive wins for two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, and a Emmy Award. He was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1979, and earned the National Medal of Arts in 1997, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Hamilton (actor)</span> American actor

George Stevens Hamilton is an American actor. For his debut performance in Crime and Punishment U.S.A. (1959), Hamilton won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for a BAFTA Award. He has received one additional BAFTA nomination and two Golden Globe nominations.

Isadore "Dore" Schary was an American playwright, director, and producer for the stage and a prolific screenwriter and producer of motion pictures. He directed one feature film, Act One, the film biography of his friend, playwright and theater director Moss Hart. He became head of production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and replaced Louis B. Mayer as president of the studio in 1951.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Segal</span> American actor (1934–2021)

George Segal Jr. was an American actor. He became popular in the 1960s and 1970s for playing both dramatic and comedic roles. After first rising to prominence with roles in acclaimed films such as Ship of Fools (1965) and King Rat (1965), he co-starred in the classic drama Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Klugman</span> American actor (1922–2012)

Jack Klugman was an American actor of stage, film, and television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bucks County Playhouse</span> Theater in New Hope, Pennsylvania

The Bucks County Playhouse is located in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

<i>The Man Who Came to Dinner</i> Comedy in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart

The Man Who Came to Dinner is a comedy play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It debuted on October 16, 1939, at the Music Box Theatre in New York City, where it ran until 1941, closing after 739 performances. It then enjoyed a number of New York and London revivals. The first London production was staged at The Savoy Theatre starring Robert Morley and Coral Browne. In 1990, Browne stated in a televised biographical interview, broadcast on UK Channel 4, that she bought the rights to the play, borrowing money from her dentist to do so. When she died, her will revealed that she had received royalties for all later productions and adaptations of the play.

<i>The Prodigal</i> 1955 film

The Prodigal is a 1955 Eastmancolor biblical epic CinemaScope film made by MGM starring Lana Turner and Edmund Purdom. It was based on the New Testament parable about a selfish son who leaves his family to pursue a life of pleasure. The film also features James Mitchell, Louis Calhern, Joseph Wiseman, Cecil Kellaway, Audrey Dalton, and Walter Hampden. Dancer Taina Elg made her film debut in The Prodigal.

Charles Schnee was an American screenwriter and film producer. He wrote the scripts for the Westerns Red River (1948) and The Furies (1950), the social melodrama They Live by Night (1949), and the cynical Hollywood saga The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), for which he won an Academy Award.

Goodyear Television Playhouse is an American anthology series that was telecast live on NBC from 1951 to 1957 during the first Golden Age of Television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Ober</span> American actor (1902–1982)

Philip Nott Ober was an American screen and stage actor who later retired from performing to be a foreign service diplomat.

<i>Once in a Lifetime</i> (play)

Once in a Lifetime is a play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, the first of eight on which they collaborated in the 1930s.

<i>The Yellow Canary</i> 1963 film by Buzz Kulik

The Yellow Canary is a 1963 American thriller film directed by Buzz Kulik and starring Pat Boone and Barbara Eden. It was adapted by Rod Serling from a novel by Whit Masterson, who also wrote the novel that was the basis for Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. The film was photographed by veteran Floyd Crosby and scored by jazz composer Kenyon Hopkins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam H. Harris</span> American theatre owner and producer

Sam H. Harris was a Broadway producer and theater owner.

Act One is a play written by James Lapine, based on Moss Hart's 1959 autobiography of the same title. The play premiered on Broadway in 2014.

The American Way is a play by American playwrights George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frieda Fishbein</span> American theatrical and literary agent (1886–1981)

Frieda Fishbein was a Romanian American theatrical, film, television and literary agent for writers including Elmer Rice, George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Anouilh, and Colleen McCullough.

References

  1. 1 2 Archer, Eugene (30 April 1963). "Cameras and Memories of '29 Fill Shubert Alley for Filming". The New York Times. p. 26.
  2. 1 2 James Wolcott (November 2012). "The Man Who Came to Broadway". Vanity Fair .
  3. 1 2 George Hamilton & William Stadiem, Don't Mind If I Do, Simon & Schuster 2008 p 183
  4. ↑ Scheuer, Philip K. (23 September 1960). "Warner Promises Renewed Activity: House Is Safe From Tigers, He Says, but Not From TV". Los Angeles Times. p. B7.
  5. ↑ "'Act One' On Film". The Christian Science Monitor. 9 July 1963. p. 6.
  6. ↑ Hopper, Hedda (7 July 1960). "Moss Hart Wants Hamilton for 'Act One'". Chicago Daily Tribune. p. i2.
  7. ↑ Gussow, Mel (5 Apr 1997). "Kitty Carlisle Hart's Little Something Extra: There was 'another string in my bow and I should use it.'". The New York Times. p. 13.
  8. ↑ "AFI|Catalog". catalog.afi.com. Retrieved 2020-01-28.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.