Once in a Lifetime

Once in a Lifetime (1930), a comedy by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. [Music Box Theatre, 406 perf.] The fading of vaudeville and the coming of sound films create turmoil in the entertainment industry. The two‐a‐day team of Jerry Hyland ( Grant Mills), May Daniels ( Jean Dixon), and George Lewis ( Hugh O'Connell) find themselves out of work, so they head west to give elocution lessons to the terrified actors at the Glogauer film studio. Once in Hollywood they discover uniformed pages circulating with signs announcing Mr.Glogauer's whereabouts and roomfuls of dejected playwrights who have been brought to Hollywood en masse, and who now seem likely to have nervous breakdowns from underwork. The thickheaded George is made a film director. He shoots the wrong script, forgets to order the lights turned on, and audibly cracks nuts during the shooting. But the film is hailed as a masterpiece and George as a genius, so he is made Glogauer's second‐in‐command. In this first of the great Hart‐Kaufman collaborations, Kaufman himself assumed the role of a depressed, articulate playwright. Although Merton of the Movies had earlier used a similar story to spoof Hollywood, it was this play that initiated a rash of satires on the film industry. A successful 1979 revival at the Circle in the Square featured John Lithgow, Treat Williams, and Deborah May.