Eventually, after four years and five 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.

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 (a fictional version of Jed Harris) keeps him waiting all day, then tells him to leave the manuscript and return.

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.

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.

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.

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.