Whenever I teach a class for actors, I recommend Moss Hart's autobiography, ACT ONE. It is simply the finest book I know about the theatre and what it was like to work on Broadway in the 1920's thru the 1950's. It was a true tragedy that Hart died so young, robbing not only his family of husband and father, but the world of a great playwright and director and chronicler of his times.

This is a funny, perceptive, first-hand account of life in the fast lane of one of the best playwrights Broadway has ever produced. An obsessive worker (it was the stress of his constant work that ultimately killed him), a perfectionist, a brilliant upstart, Hart teamed with George S. Kaufman to write some of the best and funniest plays of the first half of the 20th century...and even today. Is there really a better play about a family coping through love during the Depression than "You Can't Take It With You?" (That was a rhetorical question). And as Nathan Lane proved only two years ago, "The Man Who Came To Dinner" is very much worth reviving in a first class production even if you have already seen it in your local community or dinner theatre. The autobiography doesn't so much end as it stops and it is obvious that Hart meant to write a second and, perhaps, a third volume that would include his other writing partners, his Hollywood career, his directing, etc.

Steven Bach has written a biography of Hart's entire life called DAZZLER, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MOSS HART that is a fine companion to Hart's own, unbeatable ACT ONE. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Act One is one of my favorite books. I have rearead it often since the first time I picked it up in my late teens. I love the anecdotes about the Broadway greats ans near greats and how Mr. Hart became famous, but my favorite parts of the book concern his memorable Aunt Kate, a woman whose fate in life was other than she deserved. She is very humanely portrayed, and so is the rest of Mr. Hart's family. I also enjoyed learning more about George Kaufman and his wife. This book's great!

Moss Hart is arguably one of the finest and most successful authors of the 20th century theater in this or any other country. Like many successful men in the theater, he came from a background of serious poverty and the true drama of Act One is his perseverence and victory in extremely trying circumstances. There are fascinating glimpses into the theater world of NYC in the 40s and 50s, excellent sketches of George Kaufmann, Beatrice Kaufmann and Max Siegel, and poignant views into the people and places that forged Moss Hart into the extremely urbane, charming and successful man he became, against the hardest possible odds. Superb book!

When I first read this play I absolutely loved it. When our school did the production I played the part of Edward Carmichael. It was one of the greatest experiences for me. I loved doing the show, it was soo much fun. To me the show was about a very loving family who has to overcome obstacles. I would love to do the show again.

Reading "You Can't Take It With You" brought back so many memories. This play is full of fireworks, plays, kittens, and everything that comes together to create entertaining chaos! This play can be enjoyed by all ages. High School theatre teachers will smile as their students take pride in portraying characters like Penny, Mr. De Pinna and Essie! This story will stay in your mind as a warm memory.

As an actor in high school, I played the character of Mr. DePinna, and it was the best theater experience I've ever had. The play has enough mature themes to be taken seriously (unlike many other family life plays of the period), but it is also humorous enough to let the cast enjoy acting in it.

I just saw a performance of "The Man Who Came to Dinner" and it is at the extreme of cultural literacy. The ideal audience for this work is someone proficient in the society of the time period. If you know who Admiral Byrd, Booth Tarkington, and Katharine Cornell are, you'll love catching all the names that Sheridan drops!

What could be said in this review? The brilliance of this magnificent drawing room comedy speaks for itself! Undoubtedly an American classic, "The Man Who Came To Dinner" has it all: Outrageous characters, a hysterical plot with many twists and turns, and enough solid one liners to keep a person laughing until next Christmas!If you don't love this play, you obviously don't love a good time.

Of all the magnificent works penned by the legendary writing team of Kauffman and Hart, "The Man Who Came To Dinner" stands alone as a true masterpiece of its genre. Arguably the greatest American drawing room comedy of all time, the show opened on Broadway in 1939 starring Monty Wooly as Sheridan Whiteside (a role he would later repeat on screen), and was an immediate success. Though over sixty years old, the work has stood the test of time as its multilayered plot, and bizare characters remain as funny today as they were when first performed. Though no experience can compare to viewing the play on stage, listening to Moss Hart read the script aloud is definitely a worthy and often fascinating substitute. To those who love comedy, and the grand theatre of a bygone era, I recommend this tape without reservation!

Hmmm...where to begin? I looked forward to reading Dazzler based on my love of history, the theatre, and New York in general. In those respects, the book doesn't disappoint. Steven Bach paints a terrific picture of early twentieth century Broadway that really brings it to life as he follows Moss Hart's life and career. It's very obvious that he's done his homework and he fills gaps in his narrative very nicely.

The problem lies in an area that can be very troublesome for biography and I'm afraid that Bach falls into the trap a bit much. First, the individual chapters, while well crafted, seem to lack a cohesiveness that would make the book flow well. It seemed difficult to read more than two or three chapters in a sitting. To give Bach the benefit of the doubt, I'll say that it's because there was so much information to digest.

Second, to echo some of the other reviews that have been posted, in the end Moss Hart is a big name that does not carry a corresponding talent. Yes, he was the co-author of some of the standards of twentieth century theater, but upon the closer scrutiny Mr. Bach provides he doesn't really seem to measure up to the level of greatness that Mr. Bach thinks he deserves (or wants him to deserve to merit this book). A quick sidebar, to label Moss Hart the Neil Simon of his day, as others have, is a disservice to Mr. Simon. Sitcoms may have made us more sensitive to fluff, but there is a distinct difference in the two men's careers.

Lastly, Mr. Bach goes to great lengths to bring Moss Hart's sexuality to light, providing anecdotes and evidence that, if not outright gay, he was at least bisexual. All well and good, except that in trying so hard to prove this particular thesis, Bach loses sight of one very important point, namely that an artist's sexuality (or for that matter their upbringing) does not automatically mean that every piece of work they do is colored by it. It may be true, but it isn't necessarily true. Bach interrupts too many interesting stories to go into this subject, which only applies toward making his point about one-third of the time.

Overall it helps to have some vague form of familiarity with the plays and, since some of them are such mainstays of high school and regional theaters across the country, it will provide some interesting insights. As Bach rightly points out, some of these plays have not held up well over the course of time but, taken for what they are, they are undeniable classics. To a lesser degree, so was Moss Hart.

Most early readers of this new Hart biography are readers who love "Act One." That brilliant book is central to every stage-struck person's devotion to theater, Broadway and glamor. But along comes Mr. Bach, and his portrait only makes us love Hart's version more. Yes, I believe Mr. Bach has researched and read and compiled facts that delineate the real life of a Broadway legend. But by comparison it is also insight into what a creation is "Act One" and the creative process of a playwright and man of the theatre. Hart wrote his own version with the eye of an artist; facts didn't interest him. A great story was in the telling. Facts interest Mr. Bach, and they are very well presented. If any reader is worried that Mr. Bach has been indiscreet, that his palette has too many warts and all, I assure you that he has been careful and admiring. His role as a biographer may have kept him at too much of a distance from the artist, but his book in combination with Hart's is a full-blown, 3-D treatment of a worthy subject. It takes this new book to make you fully appreciate the original, and then grateful for the contrasting study.

Bach has written a tight, sparkling biography of a man who lived and worked in a fascinating milieu, Broadway's Golden Age. I had a hard time putting the book down, and I am NOT even one of the people who became fascinated by Hart from his autobiography ACT ONE, which I have not read.

Yet at the end of the day, one has a hard time quite seeing just why so many people considered Hart such a "dazzler", and on the contrary, it would appear that overall, Moss Hart was not -- as much as I hate to say this -- a major creative figure.

The kind of "theatre" that Hart was so honored to be a part of was the equivalent to the space filled today by well-written sitcoms; we must remember that before the 1950s, one could not access light comedy of this kind every night in one's living room (old radio was only aural and was usually more jocular than witty). Thus people were still willing to pay top dollar to see such material acted out before them. As much as I love plays like YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU and THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER, I also have a hard time seeing any major difference in craft or depth between them and, for example, FRASIER, ALL IN THE FAMILY, CHEERS or FRIENDS.

This is the kind of material Hart excelled at, and it is indicative that when he strayed beyond it, he regularly failed. Hart was not up to writing plays of substance, and if he had lived longer, he would surely have come a cropper in the 1960s and 1970s trying to light the fires again with the kind of material that theatregoers swooned to in the 30s and 40s. Moreover, so very much of his best work was done in collaboration, which dilutes his achievement further.

Of course he also made his mark directing -- but let's face it, rendering trifles like JUNIOR MISS and THE ANNIVERSARY WALTZ is not exactly the kind of thing one goes down in history for, no matter how well you do it; it was the writing and performances that put these things over (who directed episodes of MARY TYLER MOORE?). Even his MY FAIR LADY triumph: okay, but then thousands of productions of this piece have gone over wonderfully since. Hart was not the "auteur" here in the same way as Hal Prince has been for so many of his shows.

I hardly mean to "diss" Hart here; he was clearly a solid craftsman. But that's really more or less it -- which means that one does not exactly come away from this book feeling that one has been in the presence of a "dazzler". Instead, one has been "dazzled" more by the times he lived in and the people he knew and worked with. As some print reviews have noted, for all we hear about what a cocktail wit Hart was, we get oddly few memorable bon mots or piquant anecdotes -- and Bach is a great researcher, providing quite a bit of this sort of thing re other people. Hart seems to largely have just "been there", apparently flamboyantly dressed.

One reason Hart winds up a bit of a cipher here is because a great deal of his more intense social experiences would appear to have been homosexual ones. Typically of his time, Hart apparently kept all of the specifics under wraps, and despite having unearthed some facts via interview, Bach is rather discrete about the matter, and much is surely lost to the ages. While we would hardly need a blow-by-blow chronicle of Hart's sex life, the fact remains that the resulting hole in the story leaves a question mark as to what is a central aspect of any human being's psychological terrain. We see a Hart spending his 20s rising in the show business firmament apparently beyond any kind of love life beyond "dating" the occasional woman briefly and now and then bemoaning his inability to love. Certainly there was more going on than that for our "Dazzler", and whatever it was would have meant a great deal to Hart, "love" or not. Who was his first affair? When did he start having sex? What was he like to be in a relationship with? We are not prurient to wonder about such things; to not have any idea of them is to have missed a central part of our subject.

That is not really Bach's fault, nor is it his fault that Hart was ultimately a kind of Golden Age Neil Simon. And the book is a real page-turner if you love the period. But Hart comes off more as a kind of toastmaster than as a driving force. Nevertheless, to truly understand a period, one must know the state of the art as well as one knows the geniuses.

The play centers around the crazy Sycmore family, particularly focusing on the younger daughter, Alice. Alice is engaged to Tony Kirby, but feels the gap between his straight-laced roots and her outlandish upbringing will be to strong. In an effort to dissuede her, Tony surprises her by bringing his parents to visit on the wrong night so they get an acurate idea of Alice's family. The night ends with the whole company being arrested for the illegal manufacture of fireworks. Alice plans to leave for the Adirondacks, but is stopped by Tony. His father comes for him, but Mr. Kirby is brought around to the other side by Grandpa, who points out a very important fact. Whatever possessions you have in life are of no consequence. You can't take it with you when you die.

I am tempted to buy this CD, but only if this is the same band that produced an album in the 80's or 70's called "Get Your Dog Off Me". I can't find the album available for sale anywhere. Is this the same band?

This is the one to start with!!! Beggars Opera began their career as an excellent heavy organ/guitar prog band that used a lot of classical motifs (even "borrowing" little segments of light classical music). On "Act One" they serve up an intense (mostly instrumental) over-the-top, vintage rock with frantic drumming, blistering guitar and powerful organ. This is their MOST organ-driven record. I love some of those "carnival" sounds achieved by Alan Park. Some of the long instrumental jams recall early Deep Purple, not least because Ricky Gardener achieves a plaintive sound like Ritchie Blackmore which works well over pulsing keyboards and "galloping" rhythm section. Singer Martin Griffiths is the mad ringmaster of this pomp carnival. His vocals would be given much more space on later albums. The album relies on intense instrumental blowouts rather than smooth production or studio effects. Its raw, "period" sound will appeal to lovers of organ-driven British prog. The Cd bonus tracks include "Sarabande", which was released as a 45 in Europe (where the band was much more popular). I've enjoyed this album from the time I first heard it and will always consider it to be THE definitive Beggars Opera. It's good all the way through, while the other albums just had a few "shining moments".

This is the first album for Beggars Opera and in many ways carries on from the Nice in musical terms. The music is definately progressive rock with heavy influences from classical music (their name is taken from an opera by John Gay).

If you like you music with pomp and circumstance aplomb you will love this album. Vinyl copies now change hands in England for £30 upwards.

Further albums did not neccessarily live up to Act One with the notable exception of the tongue in check "Get Your Dog Off Me" which surely is due for release on CD.