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Harpo
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 Garson Kanin said, "George S. Kaufman ranks without peer as the wit of the American twentieth century. George`s comment, George`s cool-off, George`s swiftness to pick up the answer was breath-taking.... He was taciturn. He didn`t say much, but what he did say was stringent, always to the point, cutting, acid, true or true enough. Which was his great trick. His trick of wit and his trick of criticism wasn`t that he found what was true, but he would find what was true enough". I like terra firma -- the more firma, the less terra.
When a community theater group was caught performing one of Kaufman`s plays without permission or payment of royalties, Kaufman threatened to send them to jail for theft. The theater director thought they didn`t need to pay royalties because, as he put it, "It`s just a small, insignificant, little theater in a small, insignificant, little town." Kaufman`s reply: "Then we`ll send you all to a small, insignificant, little jail."
Trivia
George S. Kaufman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, along with Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin, for "Of Thee I Sing" (1931), a political satire with music supplied by George Gershwin. He won his second Pulitzer for "You Can`t Take It with You" (1936), co-written with Moss Hart). Collaborating again with Edna Ferber, they turned out "Dinner at Eight" (1932) and "Stage Door" (1936), while back in harness with Moss Hart, he turned out "The Man Who Came to Dinner" (1939), a burlesque of the American cult of celebrity.
He was a member of the celebrated Algonquin Round Table, a circle of witty writers and show business types that met for lunch on a daily basis at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, New York. The group coalesced around Dorothy Parker, who was living in the Algonquin Hotel at the time, and included Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, Franklin P. Adams and Harpo Marx.
Kaufman traveled to Hollywood, which he hated, in 1935 at the request of the Marx Brothers, who inveigled MGM production supervisor Irving Thalberg to hire him. Thalberg guaranteed Kaufman $100,000 to leave New York for Culver City. When Kaufman arrived at the studio, Thalberg demanded to know when he could see an outline for the script that would become A Night at the Opera (1935).
2000: His play, "Merrily We Roll Along", became a Stephen Sondheim musical and was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best New Musical in 2001.
Had a torrid affair with Mary Astor, which was revealed in court during Astor`s 1936 divorce trial when she was fighting her husband for custody of their daughter. Her personal diary, which detailed the physical pleasures Kaufman had given her during their affair, was introduced by her husband`s lawyers to besmirch her reputation. The resulting scandal only seemed to make her more popular with the public, and likely led to her being cast in her most famous role as the vamp in The Maltese Falcon (1941). Being publicly known as a stud did nothing to hurt Kaufman`s reputation, either.
He was only the second playwright to win two Pulitzer Prizes, the first being Eugene O`Neill.
Is portrayed by David Thornton in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) and by Jason Robards in Act One (1963)
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