Portrait of Moss Hart

Birthday profile

Moss Hart

Moss Hart, American director and playwright (died 1961)

Born
October 24, 1904
Died
December 20, 1961
Zodiac sign
Scorpio
Birth year
1904

About Moss Hart

Moss Hart was an American playwright, librettist, and theater director. My first thought was 'Of course, that's just the way I thought it would be.'" Unbeknownst to Hart, his arrival had coincided with the signing of the armistice that ended World War One. You Can't Take It With You, the story of an eccentric family and how they live during the Depression, won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for drama. When director Frank Capra and writer Robert Riskin adapted it for the screen in 1938, the film won the Best Picture Oscar and Capra won for Best Director. 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." Hart's first glimpse of Broadway came in 1918 when he was 14 years old.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Moss Hart timeline

  1. 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." Hart's first glimpse of Broadway came in 1918 when he was 14 years old.
  2. You Can't Take It With You, the story of an eccentric family and how they live during the Depression, won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for drama.
  3. When director Frank Capra and writer Robert Riskin adapted it for the screen in 1938, the film won the Best Picture Oscar and Capra won for Best Director.

The world when Moss Hart was born

Moss Hart was born in 1904. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1904

  • Best-selling book"The Crossing" – Winston Churchill

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Olympic Games in the Americas (St. Louis)
  • Top headlineRusso-Japanese War begins
  • Technology milestoneNew York subway opens
  • World population~1.64B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderTheodore Roosevelt
  • U.S. population81.8M

1904 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Moss Hart's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19042026
Population81.8M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.