It’s funny the way Chicago anecdotes bloom in books about Broadway. Reading the biography George S. Kaufman: His Life, His Theater (Oxford University Press, 1979), I learned that the great Kaufman had an epic panic attack in Chicago.

The future co-author of the Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers and the Broadway hits You Can’t Take It With You and The Man Who Came to Dinner was in town in February 1921 for a tryout of his new comedy Dulcy.

Dulcy was playing at the Cort Theater in the Loop and starring future showbiz royalty, Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne. The show was primed to be a success, but Kaufman was terrified of opening nights.

His collaborator, Marc Connelly, was asked by the Chicago Tribune to write about the occasion. He let Kaufman write it in his voice:

I don’t know just what should be done with a collaborator on opening night. – I’m about half for chloroform and half for strangulation.

“Do you think they’re enjoying the play?” he asked.

“It’s hard to tell until the curtain goes up,” I answered.

At the end of the first act I felt sure the play was a hit… I went out on the sidewalk hunting for Kaufman. The living corpse was waiting for me.

“My God! Wasn’t it terrible?” he asked.

“What?” I inquired.

“The play,” he answered.

“This play?”

“If you could call it that,” he said.

“They seem to like it.”

“There’s a train at 10:30,” he said. “We can catch it.”

Happily, George S. Kaufman found his footing and won Pulitzers for two other collaborations (Of Thee Sing and You Can’t Take It With You), and a Tony Award as director of the original production of Guys and Dolls. If only crises of confidence always led to such successes!