Early Years
Hart was born in New York City and grew up in the Bronx, and later Brooklyn. He was also raised, in relative poverty, by his English-born Jewish immigrant parents in the Bronx, New York, and in the Seagate area of Brooklyn, near Coney Island.
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 her 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."
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