Hart, Moss

Hart, Moss (1904–61), American dramatist and director, who began his career as office boy to Augustus Pitou, a theatre impresario to whom he sold his first play The Beloved Bandit. His second, Once in a Lifetime (1930; London, 1933), was bought by Sam Harris, and successfully produced after extensive rewriting by George S. Kaufman, which led to a long collaboration between the two. Hart also wrote plays on his own, of which the most interesting were Winged Victory (1943), about the Air Force, Christopher Blake (1946), and Light up the Sky (1948). His last play was The Climate of Eden (1952) based on Edgar Mittelholzer's novel Shadows Move among Them and set on a missionary colony in British Guiana. His work for the musical stage included the sketches for the Irving Berlin revue As Thousands Cheer (1933), the libretto for the operetta The Great Waltz (1934), and the book for Kurt Weill's Lady in the Dark (1941). He directed a number of his own works, and, among those by others, the musicals My Fair Lady (1956; London, 1958) and Camelot (1960).