Type of bind: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 504
Printing Date: March 31, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 707763
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From the Algonquin Round Table to the Gershwins and the Hollywood moguls, Moss Hart knew and delighted everybody. Vanity Fair has called him 'one of American theater's greatest geniuses,' the man responsible for such indelible successes as A Star Is Born, Camelot, and My Fair Lady. His rags-to-riches autobiography, Act One, became one of the most successful and beloved books ever published about the lure of the theater. But it ended at the beginning—when Hart was only twenty-five. Now, at last, we have the whole and far richer story in this very first full-scale biography of 'the Prince of Broadway.' Here Steven Bach explores the private Moss Hart, revealing his struggles with self-doubt, depression, and sexual identity, and the public one, recounting his creativity and charisma, his wit and grace. With thorough research and graceful prose, Steven Bach takes us on a journey to another time and place, where one man created a dazzling world for himself and for all American theatergoers.
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Rated by buyers 
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I was greatly looking forward to reading this book, but, like another reviewer, found it rather slow going. Bach gives a very thorough chronicle of Hart's life, including details about every production, but somehow the essence of Hart didn't come through for me until the last few chapters. Despite Bach's repeated statements that Hart was charming, amusing, full of joie de vivre, etc., I didn't find much to illustrate that. I guess I was hoping for more examples from his work, more quotes from people who knew him personally, etc. I suspect that Kitty Carlisle Hart's refusal to cooperate meant that several of the people closest to the Harts also declined to be interviewed.
The book does pick up steam in the final quarter,when Bach discusses Hart's involvement with "My Fair Lady" and "Camelot." Even so, I thought that Alan Jay Lerner's 10-odd pages on Hart in his memoir ("The Street Where I Live")did more to really bring the man alive.
Rated by buyers 
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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.
Rated by buyers 
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Moss Hart was not only a brilliant talent who wrote and/or directed some of the finest plays and musicals of the twentieth century, he also wrote, to my mind, the finest non-fiction book written about life in the theatre: ACT ONE. Unfortunately, he died before he could write the second and third acts. Stephen Bach has taken up the task of writing that book for Hart and he does it wonderfully--if, perhaps, a little more openly and honestly than Hart might have liked.
A successful, leading playwright on Broadway when still in his twenties, Hart could never really reconcile himself to his humble origins nor to his family members, including his parents, who never quite "got" what their son needed or wanted or deserved and who never really found out how to live comfortably in his own skin with decades of huge successes.
Mood swings of manic depression plagued him his entire life as did his confusion over his own sexual identity. He was also a man who could quite easily and conveniently "forget" some of those friends who had helped him when he was struggling, professionally and personally. Bach does not write a gossipy tell-all, but lets his readers know that Hart's life was not as sublime as it must have seemed by outsiders.
The book is filled with myriad examples of what Broadway and Hollywood was like in the very first half of the last century: why plays like ONCE IN A LIFETIME were hits and why others like LIGHT UP THE SKY were not. Why Hart's sense of timing most always seemed to serve him well: i.e. YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU coming at just the right time for a celebration of the individuality and originality of the American spirit. Celebrity after celebrity worked with Hart: George S. Kaufman, of course, and Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Lerner & Loewe, Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison, George M. Cohan and Richard Rodgers, Judy Garland and Richard Burton. The list is endless.
Bach writes imaginatively and with such great wit and force and strength that the reader is swept up in Hart's life, living it as fast and furiously as he must have. It is un-put-downable.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, especially for anyone with an interest in legitimate theatre as an art.
Rated by buyers -
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 yesterday by well-written sitcoms; we must remember that before the 1950s, one could not acess 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 very 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.
Rated by buyers -
Dazzler: Life and Times of Moss Hart presents the very first full-scale biography of the playwright and director who made such an impact on Broadway's golden age, revealing his changing psychological state, his successes, and his struggles with sexual identity. The depth of examination will delight those who want more than a simple overview of his achievements.
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