Almost Famous

Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart, by Steven Bach (Knopf, 462 pp., $29.95)

BACK in the golden age of radio, there was a popular series called The First Nighter Program whose eponymous host, Mr. First Nighter, had fourth-row-center seats each week for the opening of a brand-new Broadway show at “the little theater off Times Square.” It was, of course, a ruse—the series was actually produced in Chicago, and the scripts were soppy, soapy romances—but listeners kept tuning in anyway, because the word “Broadway” meant something unimaginably glamorous to ordinary folks out in the hinterlands. Those were the days when hit shows spawned road companies that crisscrossed the country, when Katharine Cornell and the Lunts could occasionally be seen on the stage of your local theater, and when everybody in the world knew who George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart were.