Birdwatching, Manhattan style -- Pt. 27

I attended a screening of June Moon at Film Forum tonight. It's a 1931 adaptation of a play written by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner that hadn't been screened since its initial run more than seventy years ago.

To mark the occasion, Anne Kaufman Schneider, Kaufman's daughter, and James Lardner, Lardner's grandson, were on hand.

And so was Kaufman-Schneider's pal Kitty Carlisle-Hart, who turns 95 in September. She is, of course, the widow of former Kaufman collaborator Moss Hart.

I think the world of Hart -- she's one of my favorite New Yorkers, and, since she was seated directly behind me, I decided to turn around and tell her as much.

"Thank you, dear," she said when I told her it was an honor to be sitting in front of her. "I do hope you'll try to scrunch down in your seat so I can see the movie."

I promised to do my best.

A few minutes passed, and I felt a finger tapping on my shoulder. I turned around.

"May I have some of your popcorn," Ms. Carlisle-Hart asked, pointing at the nearly full bag of popcorn on the floor next to my seat (we were both seated on the aisle).

"By all means -- have just as much as you like."

And she did just that, reaching over and grabbing a handful of corn several times through the course of the picture.

I was thrilled. Someone who once starred opposite the Marx Brothers was sharing my popcorn! And impressed, too -- I hope, when I'm 95, I'm still up to bending over and snagging some popcorn from a bag on the ground.

I spent most of the movie contorted every which in order to keep my fat head from blocking Ms. Hart's view of the screen, and after the final credits, I turned around and asked her if my efforts had been successful.

"I didn't miss a thing," she said effusively. "Thank you so much!"

We chatted briefly for a moment or two more, and I screwed up enough courage to ask her if she would consent to my conducting an interview with her one day soon, if I could find a publication interested in running it, and she readily agreed, telling me how I could contact her if and when the time came.

Later, I spoke to Ms. Kaufman-Schneider, thanking her for the Q&A she participated in after the movie. She was great -- whip-smart, opinionated (she hated the movie, and wasn't afraid to say so), frank, and witty.

She asked me if I wasn't the young man whose popcorn Kitty had been filching; I admitted that I was.

"I don't know what to do with her," she said with a twinkle in her eye. "She said to me, 'I'm hungry, and this nice young man has some popcorn,' and I couldn't talk her out of it."

I'm glad she couldn't.

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