Act One

It's 1929. Moss Hart (George Hamilton) is a young struggling playwright in Brooklyn. He writes five serious plays but there is no taker. Joe Hyman (Jack Klugman) is his best friend and tireless supporter. He teaches a class where he befriends student Lester Sweyd (George Segal). Eventually, he comes up with a comedy about the transition into movie talkies. It attracts director George S. Kaufman (Jason Robards).

George Hamilton has a deliberate speaking style which gives the performance lesser intensity. He should be a desperate man but I only sense that in a couple of scenes. He's the opposite of the emotional acting of James Dean. There is a sense of staleness to the movie. The guys are doing some kind of Algonquin Round Table without the witty banter and sharp takedowns. It's an autobiography of Moss Hart but it could take some liberties if only to inject some drama into this dull production.

The movie, unlike the weighty memoir upon which it was based, is a typical showbiz-in-the-1920s yarn about a young man making it big on Broadway in spite of his own insecurity and the many setbacks in the production of his first play. It is satisfying as such, with memorable performances by Jason Robards as the grumpy genius George S. Kaufman, Bert Convy as the struggling Archie Leach, and Eli Wallach as a Jed Harris-like obnoxious producer, and many other cameos of well known actors playing legendary New Yorkers of the day.

George Hamilton was too suave, too dapper, and just too damn pretty to be all that convincing as Moss Hart, but he was at his peak here, and he does a pretty good acting turn.

The story is predictable, but the movie still works, depicting a legend in an industry that loves legends about itself. There is a show playing in New York now based on the same material, and it is a huge hit. Maybe it portrays more of the poverty and the agony from which the real Moss Hart sprang, I don't know; but this movie hardly attempts to do that. Instead it gives us another fantasy of a time and place we love to think about and a life we would love to live. If you're not interested in that, this movie is not for you.

Playwright Moss Hart delighted readers with his bestselling memoir of his early career. But when producer Dore Schary turned the book into a script after Hart's death, something got lost. This is a bland movie. While people interested in the literary scene of the 1920s will surely enjoy watching it, there's not much to enthrall the average viewer.

George Hamilton plays the young Hart, a talented guy with big dreams and little money. His close-knit Jewish family inspires him to push on with his writing career, but his equally penniless friends can sometimes be more discouraging than supportive.

After many disappointments trying to market his plays, Hart gets a foot in the door when the famed George S. Kaufman agrees to collaborate with him. But Hart soon finds that writing as part of a team can be harder than working alone. Jason Robards Jr., as the maddeningly eccentric Kaufman, is the best part of this movie.

"Act One" is about a man's struggle to come up with a good story to tell, but the story it tells is disappointingly weak. Especially in the early portion, it seems more like a series of anecdotes than a narrative. That may be because the film was adapted from a memoir, but a better writer than Schary might have been able to make it flow better.

Besides Kaufman, there are lots of real historical personages portrayed in the film, such as writers Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott and actor Archie Leach, who would later become film star Cary Grant. But they come and go so fast that the effect is often more like name dropping than characterization. Some of them don't even have any lines. (Bert Convy does have a few lines as Leach, but he speaks them without a trace of a British accent.)

Despite its flaws, this picture will appeal to viewers who are really interested in the people and events depicted. Otherwise it's hard to recommend as entertainment. Though it gets considerably better, more intense, toward the end, I suspect that many people won't stay with it that long.

Moss Hart wrote one of the great books on theater, Act One, and here it's turned into a film starring George Hamilton as Hart. The film also features Jason Robards as George S. Kaufman, Eli Wallach as a producer, George Segal as Hart's friend Lester, Sam Groom as a student, Ruth Ford as Mrs. Kaufman, Jack Klugman as a good friend to Moss, and Bert Convy as "Archie Leach," another friend, whom film fans know became Cary Grant.

The story goes from Hart's days as a young, serious playwright to the Broadway opening of Hart's first play, "Once in a Lifetime," co-written with George S. Kaufman. They became one of the finest Broadway writing teamsin theater history.

George Hamilton is a handsome man who has become a wonderful parody of himself and his tan in later years. He was never really much of an actor though he does an okay job here. Someone certainly thought a lot of his looks here - he is photographed in closeup with a special light in his eyes, the kind designed for Dirk Bogarde in the '50s.

I don't know if Dore Schary, the director, had a limited budget or what, but casting Bert Convy as Cary Grant was such an insult to probably the biggest male film star of all time. Convy was nice looking, but he made no attempt at an accent. The problem is, it was too small a part to cast someone like John Gavin. The rest of the performances were fine, but Jason Robards as Kaufman was a true standout. Wallach didn't have much to do.

The film has been criticized for being too sentimental. I didn't find it sentimental, I found it unexciting, when there's probably nothing more exciting than preparing a show for Broadway. It's possible that the book wasn't really adaptable as a movie. It's hard to make writing exciting on screen. Hart was a huge talent who wrote some fabulous plays. I just don't think that somehow, his story made for an impressive film.

... because I've actually seen "Once In a Lifetime" filmed by Universal in 1932 and thought it hilarious. Plus I just have an affinity for the early talkies. Since this film focuses on playwright Moss Hart's efforts to birth his first hit, the play by the same name about the birth of the talkies, I was quite interested in it.

I've also read the book "Act One", and it is going to be impossible to incorporate all of Hart's comic and insightful remarks about the creative process into one less than 120 minute film, so I managed my expectations.

George Hamilton works as the fresh faced Hart, still living in his cramped apartment with his impoverished family at age 25, with high expectations of writing a drama who has to pivot to comedy, thus "Once in a Lifetime". And watching somebody have to sit for days in an office to see an important producer when they actually have an appointment, only to have that meeting finally take place in the producer's bathroom was quite funny.

The second half is focused on his partnership with George S. Kaufmann, with a great performance by Jason Robards in that role. He got that less was more in this part. It really is a strange marriage, but the film avoids sentimentality by not trying to say that the two ever really bond in any kind of way. Instead, Kaufmann slowly grows to accept and respect Hart, even introducing him to his Algonquin roundtable friends.

Hart has his own kind of Algonquin roundtable, always meeting in restaurants. The most recognizable name will probably be Archie Leach, played by Bert Convy. You might also recognize Mr. Leach under his stage name - Cary Grant.

The struggling artist as a young man trope is well-trod ground, but some low-key performances make this a jovial enough time, so I'd recommend it.