Pittsburgh-born George Simon Kaufman (November 16, 1889 – June 2, 1961) was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers. One play and one musical that he wrote won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama: You Can't Take It With You (1937, with Moss Hart), and Of Thee I Sing (1932, with Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin). He also won the Tony Award as a director, for the musical Guys and Dolls. (Click here for complete article)
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Am in the rear of the theater watching your performance. Wish you were here.
At dramatic rehearsals, the only author that's better than an absent one is a dead one.
Epitaph for a dead waiter- God finally caught his eye.
Everything I've ever said will be credited to Dorothy Parker.
I did not like it, but perhaps this judgment is unfair. I saw it under adverse conditions- the curtain was up.
I like terra firma; the more firma, the less terra.
I understand your new play is full of single entendres.
Madam, don't you have any unexpressed thoughts?
Odets, where is thy sting?
Over my dead body. (When asked to suggest the epitaph for his tombstone.)
Posterity is just around the corner.
Satire is what closes on Saturday night.
The kind of doctor I want is one who when he's not examining me is home studying medicine.
The trouble with Shakespeare is that you never get to sit down unless you're a king.
There was laughter at the back of the theatre, leading to the belief that someone was telling jokes back there.
They're not understudies, they're overstudies.
Things are so bad on Broadway today an actor is lucky to be miscast.
We learned that when an audience does not laugh at a line at which they're supposed to laugh, then the thing to do was to take out that line and get a funnier line. So help me, we didn't know that before. I always thought it was the audience's fault, or when the show got to New York they'd laugh.
When I invite a woman to dinner, I expect her to look at my face. That's the price she has to pay.
You're a birdbrain, and I mean that as an insult to birds.
Your eyes shine like the pants of a blue serge suit.
Categories: George S. Kaufman, Quotes of the day
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