SOURCE: Freedley, George. “George S. Kaufman, 1889-1962.” Modern Drama 6, no. 3 (December 1963): 241-44.

In the following obituary, Freedley reviews Kaufman's career from his early days as a newspaperman through his collaborations with Moss Hart.

This little essay will only be concerned with the earlier section of George Kaufman's long career as a playwright and director in one of the most exciting periods of our theater when American drama came of age in the period between the World Wars, roughly 1918-1939. All of Kaufman's serio-comic genius came to flower in that period. There is nothing of real significance after that if you disregard the dramatic recrudescence of John P. Marquand's brilliant novel of Boston society, The Late George Apley (1944) and the delightful spoof of big business provided by The Solid Gold Cadillac, written in collaboration with Howard Teichmann (1953).

Kaufman was the born collaborator. He wrote only one play alone and...