Garson Kanin

Biography: The Great Depression forced the entire Kanin family of Rochester New York to pitch in and help out financially. Garson Kanin and older brother Michael found they could bring in a few extra bucks as musicians and vaudeville entertainers. Deciding that he liked the showbiz grind, Garson enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Art. He went on to work as an actor and production assistant for producer George Abbott, laboring away on both sides of the footlights on such popular Broadway comedies of 1930s as Boy Meets Girl, Three Men and Horse, Room Service and Brother Rat. On his own, Kanin directed Hitch Your Wagon and Too Many Heroes. Tagged as a "boy wonder," the 25-year-old Kanin was invited to Hollywood, where he spent a year as a staff writer for independent producer Samuel Goldwyn. In 1938, he was signed by RKO, where he was permitted to direct. The positive critical and audience response to such Kanin-directed "B"s as A Man to Remember (1938) and The Great Man VotesThe Great Depression forced the entire Kanin family of Rochester New York to pitch in and help out financially. Garson Kanin and older brother Michael found they could bring in a few extra bucks as musicians and vaudeville entertainers. Deciding that he liked the showbiz grind, Garson enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Art. He went on to work as an actor and production assistant for producer George Abbott, laboring away on both sides of the footlights on such popular Broadway comedies of 1930s as Boy Meets Girl, Three Men and Horse, Room Service and Brother Rat. On his own, Kanin directed Hitch Your Wagon and Too Many Heroes. Tagged as a "boy wonder," the 25-year-old Kanin was invited to Hollywood, where he spent a year as a staff writer for independent producer Samuel Goldwyn. In 1938, he was signed by RKO, where he was permitted to direct. The positive critical and audience response to such Kanin-directed "B"s as A Man to Remember (1938) and The Great Man Votes (1939) led to more important properties being sent his way: Bachelor Mother (1939), They Knew What They Wanted (1940), My Favorite Wife (1940, subbing for ailing Leo McCarey) and Tom Dick and Harry (1941). Shortly after his 1942 marriage to actress Ruth Gordon, Kanin reported for World War II service with the Office of Emergency Management. While thus engaged, he and Carol Reed co-directed The True Glory (1945), an Oscar-winning docudrama about Operation Overlord. After the war, he returned not to Hollywood but to Broadway, as author/director of the hit comedy Born Yesterday (1946). Back in Tinseltown, he began fashioning screenplays in collaboration with his wife. The Kanin/Gordon team earned Academy Award nominations for A Double Life (1948), Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952), the latter two films starring their old friends Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn; they were also instrumental in bolstering the screen career of Judy Holliday with such efforts as The Marrying Kind (1952) and It Should Happen to You (1953). Even at the height of his Hollywood activity, Kanin made periodic returns to Broadway as both director and playwright; many of his more successful theatrical pieces, notably The Rat Race, were later transferred to the screen. After a long absence, he returned to films in 1969 with a brace of anachronistic comedies, Where It's At (1969) and Some Kind of a Nut (1969). He also turned out reams of magazine articles, essays, and books like Tracy and Hepburn (1971), Hollywood (1974) and Movieola (1979), entertaining (if historically suspect) chronicles of Tinseltown's Golden Years. For television, Kanin developed and co-wrote the short-lived dramatic series Mr. Broadway (1964), and in 1980 collaborated with Ruth Gordon for the last time on the TV movie Hardhat and Legs. In his long and multi-faceted career, Kanin has been honored with many industry and humanitarian awards--far too many, in fact, to list here. Several years after the death of his first wife, Garson Kanin married Broadway and TV actress Marian Seldes.… Expand