George Simon Kaufman (November 16, 1889 – June 2, 1961) was an American playwright, theater director and producer, humorist, and drama critic.

He grew disenchanted and took on a series of odd jobs,[3] selling silk[1] and working in wholesale ribbon sales.

[4] Kaufman began contributing humorous material to the column that Franklin P. Adams wrote for the New York Mail.

[8] The play opened on Broadway (running for only 32 performances) during that year's serious flu epidemic, when people were being advised to avoid crowds.

With "dour glee", Kaufman suggested that the best way to avoid crowds in New York City was to attend his play.

[11] Their work includes Once in a Lifetime (in which he also performed), Merrily We Roll Along, The Man Who Came to Dinner, and You Can't Take It with You, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937.

According to Charlotte Chandler, "By the time Animal Crackers opened ... the Marx Brothers were becoming famous enough to interest Hollywood.

While The Cocoanuts was being developed in Atlantic City, Irving Berlin was hugely enthusiastic about including the song "Always", which he had written as a wedding present for his bride.

According to Laurence Bergreen, "Kaufman's lack of enthusiasm caused Irving to lose confidence in the song, and 'Always' was deleted from the score of The Cocoanuts – though not from its creator's memory. ...

Kaufman, a confirmed misogynist, had had no use for the song in The Cocoanuts, but his disapproval did not deter Berlin from saving it for a more important occasion.

"[19] The Cocoanuts would remain Irving Berlin's only Broadway musical – until his last one, Mr. President – that did not include at least one eventual hit song.

In its place in The Cocoanuts was a song called 'A Little Bungalow,' which we never could reprise in Act Two because the actors couldn't remember it that long.

Kaufman also contributed to major New York revues, including The Band Wagon (which shared songs, but not plot with the 1953 film version) with Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz.

[22] Kaufman directed the original or revival stage productions of many plays and musicals, including The Front Page by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht (1928), Of Thee I Sing (1931 and 1952), Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1937), My Sister Eileen by Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov (1940), Hollywood Pinafore (1945), The Next Half Hour (1945), Park Avenue (1946, also co-wrote the book), Town House (1948), Bravo!

For a short time, from circa 1940 to 1946, Kaufman, with Moss Hart and Max Gordon, owned and operated the Lyceum Theatre.

The New Yorker published many of his humorous items about the card game; at least some have been reprinted more than once, including: His first wife Beatrice Bakrow Kaufman was also an avid bridge player, and an occasional poker player with Algonquin men, who wrote at least one New Yorker article on bridge herself, in 1928.

[32] In the 1920s, Kaufman was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a circle of writers and show business people.

[35] The diary was eventually destroyed by the court, unread, in 1952, but details of the supposed contents were published in Confidential magazine, Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger (both always have been considered unreliable sources)[36][37] and in various other questionable publications.

[44] In 1979, Donald Oliver compiled and edited a collection of Kaufman's humorous pieces, with a foreword by Dick Cavett.

The title character of the 1991 Coen brothers film Barton Fink, who is a playwright, bears a strong physical resemblance to Kaufman.