Queer Places:
29 W 46th St, New York, NY 10036
Ferncliff Cemetery, 280 Secor Rd, Hartsdale, NY 10530, Stati Uniti
Moss Hart (October 24, 1904 – December 20, 1961) was
Gordon Merrick's lover during his Broadway years. He was an American playwright and theatre director. In Steven Bach’s biography of
Moss Hart, Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart (2001), the author revealed that throughout his marriage Hart was a closeted bisexual.
He had a physical relationships with literary agent
Lester Sweyd, MGM screenwriter
Charles Lederer and many of the homosexuals mentioned in Hart’s autobiography. In a 1939 letter written by Hart to
Dore Schary (later president of MGM Studios), he wrote the words, “We shall once again lay in each other’s arms and taste the sweetness of sin – I love you very much.”
After his death his wife sealed Hart’s diaries and prevented access to materials that contained evidence of his sexuality. Nevertheless, Hart’s name cropped up on lists of bisexuals by Yamaguchi Fletcher, Adrien Saks and others.
Hart was born in New York City to Barnett Hart, a cigar maker, and Lillian
Solomon.[1][2]
He had a younger brother, Bernard.[3]
The family grew up in relative poverty with his English-born Jewish immigrant
parents in the Bronx and in Sea Gate, Brooklyn.[4]
Early on he had a strong relationship with his Aunt Kate, with whom he
later lost contact due to a falling out between her and his parents, and
Kate's weakening mental state. She piqued his interest in the theater and took
him to see performances often. Hart even went so far as to create an
"alternate ending" to her life in his book Act One. He writes that she
died while he was working on out-of-town tryouts for The Beloved Bandit.
Later, Kate became eccentric and then disturbed, vandalizing Hart's home,
writing threatening letters and setting fires backstage during rehearsals for
Jubilee. But his relationship with her was formative. He learned that
the theater made possible "the art of being somebody else… not a scrawny boy
with bad teeth, a funny name… and a mother who was a distant drudge."[5]
Gordon Merrick enrolled at Princeton University in 1936, studied French literature and
was active in campus theater. He quit in the middle of his junior year and
moved to New York City, where he became an actor. He landed the role of
Richard Stanley in George S. Kaufman and
Moss Hart's The Man Who
Came to Dinner. Although he became Hart's lover for a time,[1]
Merrick tired of the theater, with its endless nights playing the same role.[2]
In 1947, as a member of the Dramatists Guild of America Hart served as the
tenth elected Guild president. There he continued his work for advocacy as
president for almost 10 years, until 1956 when Oscar Hammerstein II became his
successor.
Hart married Kitty Carlisle on August 10, 1946; they had two children.[6]
She was with him when he died. She was still working as a TV game show
panelist and touring lecturer in 2001 and remained active until contracting
pneumonia in late 2006. She died at the age of 96 on April 17, 2007.
Moss Hart died of a heart attack at the age of 57 on December 20, 1961, at
his winter home in Palm Springs, California.[7]
He was entombed in a crypt at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.[8]
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