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Once in a Lifetime (play)

Once in a Lifetime is a play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, the first of eight on which they collaborated in the 1930s.

Once in a Lifetime

September 24, 1930 (1930-09-24)

Music Box Theatre
New York City

English

Hollywood at the advent of talking pictures

Satirical comedy

A hotel room in New York City
A Pullman car en route to California
Herman Glogauer Studio, Hollywood

Plot[edit]

The satirical comedy focuses on the effect talking pictures have on the entertainment industry. When the New York City vaudevillean team of Jerry Hyland, May Daniels, and George Lewis find themselves in a faltering vaudeville act, they decide to head west and present themselves as elocution experts in the hope someone will hire them to train actors unaccustomed to speaking on screen. On the train they meet gossip columnist Helen Hobart, who introduces them to megalomaniac film mogul Herman Glogauer when they arrive in Hollywood.


The trio's misadventures include encounters with Lawrence Vail, a New York City playwright driven to distraction and eventually a sanatorium by studio bureaucracy and a lack of work to keep him busy; silent screen beauties Phyllis Fontaine and Florabel Leigh, whose voices sound like nails on a blackboard; two pages in 18th-century dress who periodically arrive carrying placards with announcements about Glogauer's latest doings; a ditzy receptionist who wears an evening gown to work; and aspiring actress (and proverbial dumb blonde) Susan Walker and her chaperoning stage mother.


Dimwitted George becomes a director who shoots the wrong script, forgets to turn on the soundstage lights, and audibly cracks nuts during filming, yet his movie is called a masterpiece and he's declared a genius by trend-conscious journalists who believe he's ahead of his time.

Adaptations[edit]

The play was sold to Hollywood. The film version was released by Universal Studios in 1932, starring Jack Oakie, Sidney Fox, Louise Fazenda, Aline MacMahon, and Zasu Pitts.

at the Internet Broadway Database

​Once in a Lifetime​

at IMDb

Once in a Lifetime (1932 film)