Norman Krasna (November 7, 1909 – November 1, 1984) was an American screenwriter, playwright, producer, and film director. He is best known for penning screwball comedies which centered on a case of mistaken identity. Krasna also directed three films during a forty-year career in Hollywood. He garnered four Academy Award screenwriting nominations, winning once for 1943's Princess O'Rourke, a film he also directed.

Krasna was born in Queens, New York City. He attended Columbia University and St John's University School of Law, working at Macy's Department Store during the day.

He wanted to get into journalism and talked his way into a job as a copy boy for the Sunday feature department of the New York World in 1928. (He worked with Lewis Weitzenkorn who turned Krasna into a character in the play Five Star Final.^[1])

He quit law school, worked his way up to being a drama critic, at first for The World then the New York Evening Graphic and Exhibitors Herald World. He was offered a job with Hubert Voight in the publicity department of Warner Bros and moved to Hollywood.

He decided to become a playwright after seeing The Front Page. To learn the craft, he retyped the Ben Hecht–Charles MacArthur classic more than twenty times.^[2] Then while at Warners, at nights he wrote a play, Louder, Please, based on his job and heavily inspired by The Front Page^[3] with the lead character inspired by his boss, Hubert Voight.^[4] Krasna tried to sell the play to Warners who were not interested - indeed they fired him from his job as publicity agent^[5] - but it was picked up by George Abbott who produced it on Broadway.^[6]

The play had a short run, and Krasna was then offered a contract at Columbia Pictures as a junior staff writer.^[7]

In April 1932 he was assigned to his first film, Hollywood Speaks (1932), directed by Eddie Buzzell.^[8] In August he was working on That's My Boy (1932).^[9] In October 1932 he was appointed assistant to Harry Cohn.^[10]

Krasna wrote So This Is Africa (1933) Wheeler and Woolsey, who had come to Columbia for one movie. He also did Parole Girl (1933).^[11]

In June 1933 Eddie Buzzell arranged for Universal to borrow Krasna from MGM to work on the script for Love, Honor, and Oh Baby! (1933).^[12] While there he worked on a script Countess of Monte Cristo.^[13] In January 1934 Universal assigned him to write The Practical Joker for Chester Morris.^[14]

During the evening he wrote another play, Small Miracle, which was produced on Broadway in 1934. It had a reasonable run and earned good reviews.

Columbia loaned Krasna to MGM where he worked on worked on Meet the Baron (1933). He went to RKO where he wrote The Richest Girl in the World (1934), which earned him an Oscar. He stayed at that studio to do Romance in Manhattan (1935).

In November 1934 Krasna signed a two year contract at Paramount at $1,500 a week.^{[15] [16]} While there adapted Small Miracle into Four Hours to Kill! (1935) directed by Mitchell Leisen.^[17] He also wrote Hands Across the Table (1935).^[18]

Back at MGM, Krasna worked on Wife vs. Secretary (1936).

Around the time of Small Miracle he had an idea for a play about a lynching, Mob Rule but was persuaded against writing it as a play on the grounds it was non commercial. He told the idea to Joseph Mankiewicz who bought it as a film for MGM. It became Fury (1936), directed by Fritz Lang. ^[19] The film earned Krasna an Oscar nomination.^[20]

In August 1936 Paramount annouced that Krasna would make his directorial debut in a movie he wrote for George Raft, Wonderful, co-starring Helen Burgess.^[21] However the following month Raft objected and the project was suspended.^[22] (The film would be made two years later, as You and Me (1938) with Fritz Lang directing.)

At Warners he wrote The King and the Chorus Girl (1937) with good friend Groucho Marx.

In November 1936 he was reportedly working on a new version of Hotel Imperial.^[23] He moved to Universal to do As Good as Married (1937) for his old collaborator Eddie Buzzell^[24]

In early 1937 he went to MGM for Big City (1937) with Spencer Tract, which Krasna also produced.^[25] He also wrote and produced The First Hundred Years (1938), originally called Turnabout. In August 1938 MGM announced he would produce The Broadway Melody of 1939.^[26] He was also going to produce a James Stewart film about the ship CSS Patrick Henry.^[27] Krasna ended up making neither of the latter two.

In December 1938 Kransa joined RKO and was assigned to work for George Stevens.^[28] He wrote the script for Bachelor Mother (1939) which was a huge success.

In April 1939 his income for the previous year was $83,000.^[29]

In September 1939 he signed a contract with Universal to write a Deanna Durbin vehicle It's a Date (1940).^[30] He stayed at that studio to write the René Clair directed The Flame of New Orleans (1940).

For Carole Lombard he wrote Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) at RKO which he had sold them in 1939 for $60,000.^[31][32]

In April 1940 he signed an agreement with Jean Arthur and Arthur's husband Frank Ross to wrote and produce a film.^[33] That became The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), which he co-produced.

Also hugely popular was another Durbin vehicle, It Started with Eve (1941).

Krasna wrote The Man with Blond Hair (1941) for Broadway, which he later described as his "attempt to win the Nobel Peace Prize". It only ran seven performances and encouraged Krasna to focus on comedies for the rest of his career.

In February 1942 Krasna signed a contract to Warner Bros to write and direct.^[34] This resulted in Princess O'Rourke (1943), which earned him an Oscar for Best Screen play.

Moss Hart suggested Krasna write something like Junior Miss and Krasna responded with Dear Ruth. This was a massive hit on Broadway in 1944, running for 680 performances; the film rights were sold for over $450,000.^[35] (It was the basis of the 1947 film Dear Ruth 1947). He found time to write another movie for Leisen, Practically Yours (1944).

Also enormously popular on stage was the comedy John Loves Mary (1947); it too was made into a film, in 1949, although Krasna did not work on it.

Less successful was the play Time for Elizabeth (1947), co-written with Krasna's friend Groucho Marx, which ran for only eight performances, although film rights were sold for over $500,000. (The film was never made).

Krasna directed his second feature, The Big Hangover (1950) for MGM. It was not a success.

In 1950 he and Jerry Wald formed Wald-Krasna Productions which worked out of RKO Studios for the next few years, announcing a $50 million slate of pictures.^[36] They made a number of films, notably Behave Yourself! (1951), The Blue Veil (1951), Clash by Night (1952), and The Lusty Men (1952). However both Wald and Krasna became frustrated at the meddling of Howard Hughes, who ran RKO at the time. Wald bought Krasna out and he returned to writing.^[37][38]

He returned to Broadway, and the comedy play Kind Sir had a decent run in 1953. He co-wrote White Christmas (1954) for a fee of $100,000^[39]; the film proved to be a massive hit. He wrote, produced and directed The Ambassador's Daughter (1956). This starred actor John Forsythe who at one point was under personal contract to Krasna.^[40]

Krasna adapted Kind Sir as Indiscreet (1958). He followed this with another Broadway farce, Who Was That Lady I Saw You With? (1958). Krasna then adapted this play for the screen and produced what became Who Was That Lady? (1960). He did this again with Sunday in New York, which reached Broadway (with Robert Redford) in 1961 and was filmed from a Krasna script in 1963. Around this time he also wrote the script for Let's Make Love (1960), the penultimate movie for Marilyn Monroe. He wrote the screenplay as well for My Geisha (1962).

A comic play Love in E-Flat (1967) had a short run on Broadway. None of his other later plays were hits: Watch the Birdie! (1969), Bunny (1970), We Interrupt This Program... (1975) and Lady Harry (1978).

Krasna spent many years living in Switzerland, but returned to Los Angeles before his death in 1984.

From 1940 to 1950 Krasna was married to Ruth Frazee, with whom he had two children.^[41] He married Al Jolson's widow Erle in 1951,^[42] moving into the Palm Springs, California, home of Erle and Jolson.^[43] They remained married until Krasna's death in 1984. He had six children.

• Paging Napoleon (1931)^[48]

Louder, Please (1932)

• Small Miracle (1934)^[49][50][51]
• The Man with Blond Hair (1941) – also directed^[52]
• Dear Ruth (1944)
• John Loves Mary (1947)
• Time for Elizabeth (1949) – written with Groucho Marx, also directed
• Kind Sir (1954)
• Who Was That Lady I Saw You With? (1958)
• Sunday in New York (1962)
• Love in E-Flat (1967)^[53]
• Watch the Birdie! (1969) (originally written in 1961)
• Bunny (1970)
• We Interrupt This Program (1975)^[54]
• Off Broadway aka Full Moon (1976)^[55]
• Lady Harry (1978)^[56]

• Night Action (1940s) – film rights sold to Warner Bros as a vehicle for Helmut Dantine^[57]
• Stars on My Shoulders (1948) – musical with Irving Berlin^[58]
• French Street (circa 1962) based on Jacques Deval play Roman Saro about a priest and prostitute^[47]

• Best Original Screenplay (Princess O'Rourke, 1943)

• Best Original Story (The Richest Girl in the World, 1934)
• Best Original Story (Fury, 1936)
• Best Original Screenplay (The Devil and Miss Jones, 1941)

• McGilligan, Patrick, "Norman Krasna: The Woolworth's Touch", Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood's Golden Age, University of California Press,1986 p212-240

• Norman Krasna at IMDb
• Norman Krasna at the Internet Broadway Database
• Norman Krasna at Film Reference
• Norman Krasna at TCMDB

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