15 Facts About Moss Hart

Moss Hart was an American playwright, librettist, and theater director.

Moss Hart grew up in relative poverty with his English-born Jewish immigrant parents in the Bronx and in Sea Gate, Brooklyn.

Moss Hart was the great-grandson of the Jewish bare-knuckle pugilist Barney Aaron.

Moss Hart piqued his interest in the theater, taking him to see performances often.

Moss Hart even went so far as to create an "alternate ending" to her life in his book Act One.

Moss Hart writes that she died while he was working on out-of-town tryouts for The Beloved Bandit.

In later life, Kate had become eccentric and then disturbed, vandalizing Moss Hart's home, writing threatening letters and setting fires backstage during rehearsals for Jubilee, yet his relationship with her had been formative.

Moss Hart continued to write plays after parting with Kaufman, such as Christopher Blake and Light Up the Sky, as well as the book for the musical Lady In The Dark, with songs by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin.

Moss Hart wrote a memoir, Act One: An Autobiography by Moss Hart, which was released in 1959.

The last show Moss Hart directed was the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot.

Moss Hart was the tenth president of the Dramatists Guild of America, from 1947 until 1956, when Oscar Hammerstein II became his successor.

Moss Hart married Kitty Carlisle on August 10,1946; they had two children.

Moss Hart died of a heart attack at the age of 57 on December 20,1961, at his winter home in Palm Springs, California.

Moss Hart was entombed in a crypt at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

In 1972,11 years after his death, Moss Hart was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame, one of 23 people to be selected into the Hall of Fame's first induction class that year.