Garson Kanin |
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| Born | (1912-11-24)November 24, 1912
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| Died | March 13, 1999(1999-03-13) (aged 86)
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| Spouse(s) | Ruth Gordon
(1942-1985)
Marian Seldes
(1990-1999) |
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Garson Kanin (November 24, 1912 – March 13, 1999) was a prolific American writer and director of plays and films.
Stage career
Garson Kanin began his show business career as a jazz musician, burlesque comedian, and actor. He graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City and made his Broadway debut in 1933's Little Ol' Boy (1933). In 1935, Kanin was cast in a George Abbott play and soon became Mr. Abbott's assistant. Kanin made his Broadway debut as a director in 1936, at the age of twenty-four, with Hitch Your Wagon.
In 1945, Kanin directed Spencer Tracy in Tracy's return to the stage for the first time in 15 years. He had been through a dark patch personally—culminating with a stay in hospital—and Hepburn felt that a play would help restore his focus.[1] Tracy told a journalist in April, "I'm coming back to Broadway to see if I can still act."[2] The play was The Rugged Path by Robert E. Sherwood. It first previewed in Providence on September 28, to a sold out crowd and tepid response.[3] It was a difficult production. Kanin later wrote: "In the ten days prior to the New York opening all the important relationships had deteriorated. Spencer was tense and unbending, could not, or would not, take direction".[4] Tracy considered leaving the show before it even opened on Broadway,[5] and lasted there just six weeks before announcing his intention to close the show.[6] It closed on January 19, 1946, after 81 performances.[7] Tracy later explained to a friend: "I couldn't say those goddamn lines over and over and over again every night ... At least every day is a new day for me in films ... But this thing—every day, every day, over and over again."[8]
Kanin's 1946 play Born Yesterday, which he also directed, ran for 1,642 performances. Kanin worked, uncredited, on the screenplay of the 1950 film adaptation.[9]
His other stage work includes directing The Diary of Anne Frank (1955), which ran for 717 performances, and the musical Funny Girl (1964), which ran for 1,348 performances.
Kanin wrote and directed his last play, Peccadillo, in 1985, the year he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.
Film career
His first film as a director was A Man to Remember (1938), which The New York Times considered one of the ten best films of 1938. Kanin was twenty-six at the time. Other directing credits include The Great Man Votes (1939), My Favorite Wife (1940), They Knew What They Wanted (1940) and Tom, Dick and Harry (1941).
Mr. Kanin's Hollywood career was interrupted by the draft. He served in the United States Army from 1941-1945. During this time Kanin, with Carol Reed, co-directed General Dwight D. Eisenhower's official record of the Allied Invasion, the Academy-award-winning documentary The True Glory (1945). During this time, he began writing what would become his greatest play Born Yesterday.
Kanin's best-remembered screenplays, however, were written in collaboration with his wife, actress Ruth Gordon, whom he married in 1942. Together, they wrote the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn film comedies Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952), as well as A Double Life (1947), starring Ronald Colman, all directed by George Cukor.
Television career
In the 1950s through the 1980s, Mr. Kanin adapted several of his stories and plays for television, most notably "Mr. Broadway" (1964), and "Moviola" (1980).
Kanin's best-selling novel "Smash", about the pre-Broadway tryout of a musical comedy, has recently been adapted into the successful television series Smash.
Personal life
Kanin was married to his frequent collaborator, Academy-award winning actress Ruth Gordon, from 1942 to her death in 1985.
In 1990, Kanin married the celebrated stage actress Marian Seldes, who survives him.
In 1999, Kanin died at age 86 in New York City of undisclosed causes.
Acquaintances and memorable sayings
He was a colleague of Thornton Wilder, who mentored him, and an admirer of the work of Frank Capra. Kanin said "I'd rather be Capra than God, if there is a Capra." Kanin and Katharine Hepburn were the only witnesses to Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh's wedding in California on August 31, 1940. In 1941, he and Katharine Hepburn worked with his brother Michael Kanin and Ring Lardner, Jr., on the early drafts of what would become Woman of the Year right before Garson enlisted in the army. He is also quoted as saying, "When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt."
His most famous quote, from his hit play "Born Yesterday," is on a New York City Public Library plaque on a 41st Street sidewalk: "I want everyone to be smart. As smart as they can be. A world of ignorant people is too dangerous to live in."
