Act One is a 1963 American film directed and screenwritten by Dore Schary and starring George Hamilton. It is the film version of the autobiographical book Act One by playwright Moss Hart. A play based on the book premiered on Broadway in 2014. George Hamilton later complained that "Schary de-ethnicized the entire production and took out the brilliance for good measure".
Plot
In 1929, 25-year-old Brooklynite Moss Hart lives with his parents and works hard in the summer so he has time to write plays in the winter. Hart is also encouraged by his friend, Joe Hyman, who occasionally lends him money as well as moral support. Eventually, after 4 years and 5 attempts at serious drama, he takes the advice of agent Richard Maxwell and “discards the mantle of O'Neill and Ibsen and Shaw” to write a comedy, Once in a Lifetime. Inspired by the newspaper headline “Talkies sweep Hollywood,” the play satirizes the Hollywood film industry's painful transition to sound. Hart's knowledge of the subject comes from immersing himself for months in “the pages of Variety, the fan magazines and Louella Parsons' column.” Producer Warren Stone, keeps him waiting all day, then tells him to leave the manuscript and return, Eventually they meet, and Stone mesmerizes Hart with his talk of what it means to be a playwright. When months pass without any word, Hart's friends sneak a copy of the play to Sam Harris, who agrees to produce it if George Kaufman will collaborate and direct. Kaufman agrees, and so begins a partnership that will last until 1941. The Atlantic City opening is a failure. Hart is distraught and Kaufman tells Hart that he has gone dry. Hart spends the day at the beach and comes to Kaufman with his new ideas for the second and third acts. Hart moves into Kaufman's house and they spend the summer reworking the play. It finally opens to rave reviews in New York Cityin September 1930. On opening night, Kaufman steps forward at the curtain call and says “80% of this play is Moss Hart.”
Film rights were bought by Warner Bros, who assigned George Axelrod to write the script. Eventually the project went to Dore Schary, who had known Hart for a number of years. "I've tried to deal with Moss as I knew him," said Schary. "The film is more about character than the theatrical world. But I think his story represents more than just a guy trying to success in a tough, creative field, It's about his frustrations in trying to reach a dream, and then it isn't what he expected when he gets there. You might call it a typical American theme." Dore Schary himself was the basis for the character "David Starr". Anthony Perkins and Dean Jones were early contenders for role of Moss Hart. George Hamilton was socially friendly with the family of Moss Hart, and Hart reportedly wanted Hamilton for the role.
Release
To promote the upcoming release of Act One, George Hamilton appeared on a September 1963 episode of I've Got a Secret, a prime-time game show in which a panel of celebrities attempted to discover the guest's "secret." Hamilton's secret? The actor identified as Hamilton and grilled by the panel was that he was not actually Hamilton at all but instead a dark-haired handsome sort-of-look-alike pretending to be Hamilton. The real Hamilton showed up at the end of the spot and earned the admiration of panelist Henry Morgan who expressed astonishment that any performer of Hamilton's stature was secure enough to take part in a stunt which, in essence, pointed up the fact that he was unrecognizable to a quartet of supposedly in-the-know celebrities.
Reception
, Hart's widow, was unhappy with the film. When Schary showed it to her she said diplomatically, "Well, you did it," and later said she "we draw a veil" over the film. In 1997, she “expressed her disapproval in the April 5 New York Times, saying that she attempted to buy the film ‘to get it off the market.' “ James Woolcott wrote about the film in Vanity Fair:
Act One has a very ‘50s feel, more of a boxy affinity with the Golden Age of TV than anything released in a film canister. It abbreviates the birth pangs and floor-pacing agonies of Once in a Lifetime’s gestation, the torturous rounds of re-writes and previews, sugarcoating everything about the romance of the theater that All About Eve had salted and pickled... Hamilton isn’t that bad, but playing an underdog of raging literal and metaphorical appetite, he purrs as a screen presence, his matinee-idol profile belying his character’s self-doubt. Nothing needy thumps around inside him. What makes this Act One work are the crafty scene-stealers cast against Hamilton’s ingenuous Hart: Eli Wallach... Jack Klugman... and, most of all, Jason Robards as George S. Kaufman. With high-top hair, skeptical eyebrows that lift like Groucho Marx’s, and a resigned posture suggesting a body that’s a dried rind, Robards’s Kaufman is an Al Hirschfeld caricature come to life. Wallach, Klugman, and Robards—each had a distinctive grain to his voice, a variable velocity in his delivery. The contrast between these shrewd operators and the freshman crew playing Hart’s smart-aleck pals—among them future star George Segal as Hart’s personal prophet of doom—gives the movie its rustling texture as a Hollywood artifact, nearly everybody in it destined for greater glories on-screen.,,
