Garson Kanin

Garson Kanin (November 24, 1912 – March 13, 1999) was an American writer, director, actor, and musician born in Rochester, New York, whose family later moved to Detroit and then to New York City. He attended James Madison High School in Brooklyn before leaving to pursue a career in theater. During that period he trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts while simultaneously working as a professional saxophone player, leading a band called Garson Kanin and His Red Hot Peppers. He also worked as a burlesque comedian before graduating from the Academy and entering the professional theater world.

Kanin made his Broadway acting debut in Little Ol' Boy in 1933 and continued performing on Broadway through 1936, a period that also saw him cast in a George Abbott production, after which he became Abbott's assistant. His Broadway directorial debut came in 1936 with Hitch Your Wagon, a milestone he reached at the age of 24. His Broadway credits as a performer and book writer span productions including The Live Wire, Born Yesterday, Do Re Mi, Come on Strong, and A Gift of Time, among others.

Born Yesterday, which Kanin both wrote and directed, opened in 1946 and ran for 1,642 performances, becoming one of the landmark American plays of its era. When the credited screenwriter Albert Mannheimer's draft proved unusable, Kanin was brought in uncredited by producer Harry Cohn to write the screenplay for the 1950 film adaptation of the play. In 1945, prior to Born Yesterday's Broadway opening, Kanin directed Spencer Tracy in The Rugged Path, written by Robert E. Sherwood. The production was troubled from its out-of-town tryout in Providence, Rhode Island, and closed on January 19, 1946, after 81 performances on Broadway.

His other significant stage directing credits include The Diary of Anne Frank in 1955, which ran for 717 performances, and the musical Funny Girl in 1964, which ran for 1,348 performances. For his work on Do Re Mi, Kanin received both a Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Musical and a Tony Award nomination for Best Musical, both in 1961. He wrote and directed his final play, Peccadillo, in 1985, the same year he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Kanin's film career began with A Man to Remember in 1938, which The New York Times named one of the ten best films of that year. He was 26 at the time of its release. Additional pre-World War II directing credits include Bachelor Mother (1939), The Great Man Votes (1939), My Favorite Wife (1940), They Knew What They Wanted (1940), and Tom, Dick and Harry (1941). His Hollywood work was interrupted when he entered the United States Army in 1941, serving until 1945. During his service, he and Carol Reed co-directed The True Glory (1945), the official documentary record of the Allied invasion commissioned by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Following the war, Kanin collaborated extensively on screenplays with his wife, actress Ruth Gordon, whom he had married in 1942. Together they wrote numerous scripts, six of which were directed by George Cukor, including the Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn comedies Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952), as well as A Double Life (1947), starring Ronald Colman. Kanin received three Academy Award nominations over the course of his career. In 1941, before his enlistment, he worked alongside his brother Michael Kanin and Ring Lardner, Jr., and Katharine Hepburn on early drafts of what became the film Woman of the Year. Kanin and Hepburn were also the only witnesses to Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh's wedding in California on August 31, 1940.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, Kanin adapted several of his works for television, including Mr. Broadway (1964) and Moviola (1980). His 1980 novel Smash, which drew on his experience directing Funny Girl, served as the basis for the 2012 television series of the same name. In 1990, Kanin married stage actress Marian Seldes. He died on March 13, 1999, at the age of 86.