Fay Kanin
Fay Kanin | |
---|---|
Born | Fay Mitchell May 9, 1917 New York City, U.S. |
Died | March 27, 2013 Santa Monica, California, U.S. | (aged 95)
Occupation |
|
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Elmira College |
Spouse | |
Children | 2 |
Fay Kanin (née Mitchell; May 9, 1917 – March 27, 2013) was an American screenwriter, playwright and producer. Kanin was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1979 to 1983.
Biography
Born Fay Mitchell in New York City to David and Bessie (née Kaiser) Mitchell, she was raised in
In high school she wrote and produced a children's radio show; then on full scholarship, she attended the private, all-female Elmira College where she divided her studies between writing and acting as well as editing the yearbook. Fay's mother took her daughter to visit her grandmother in the Bronx, and it was there that she became devoted to the theater when she saw a matinée of Idiot's Delight starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.[3]
Hollywood
Kanin longed to move to
Michael Kanin
There was a small theater at the studio where contract players put on plays. While Kanin was acting in Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead, she came to the attention of Michael Kanin, who had just been hired as a writer in the B unit. Michael was trained as an artist and had turned to commercial art and painting scenery for burlesque houses to help support his parents during the Great Depression. They were introduced by a mutual friend, and Michael practically asked Kanin to marry him right then and there, but it took her a little while to come around to the idea.[3]
The Kanins rented a house in Malibu for their honeymoon, and after buying The New Yorker short story by A. J. Liebling about a boarding house for boxers, spent the next six months writing its 1942 adaptation, Sunday Punch. They knew they were on the track to a partnership when MGM bought the screenplay.
"We would make a story outline together with rather detailed descriptions of the scenes. Then we divided up the writing, each taking the scenes we felt strongly about. Then one or the other of us would put it all together into a single draft. We did find a common voice, though we had different strengths. As an artist, Michael brought a great visual sense to the process. I was a people person who loved the characters and the dialogue. Through the collaboration, we learned a lot from each other and about each other. But the time came when I felt as if we were together 48 hours a day. Writing with someone else always requires some degree of compromise, as does marriage. When it came down to the question of which would survive, the marriage or the writing partnership, it was a pretty easy decision. But I remember that it was a challenge convincing the powers that be that we had been successful writers individually and would be again. We were hyphenated in people's minds: Fay-and-Michael Kanin. To again become Fay Kanin and Michael Kanin took some doing."[3]
Michael took a job working with
During World War II, Kanin came up with an idea to promote women's participation in the war effort, and presented the idea for
Teacher's Pet
The Kanins wrote
Blacklist
It was while the couple were on holiday in Europe that the Kanins learned they had been blacklisted by the
"What they had against us was that I had taken classes at the
Actors Labin Hollywood where some of the teachers were from the Group Theater and therefore suspect, and we had been members of the Hollywood Writers Mobilization, an organization in support of World War II to which almost all of Hollywood's writers belonged. It was ridiculous, but it was very real, and there was nothing we could do about it. We took a larger mortgage on the house and started writing a play, but we didn't work in films for almost two years."
They were unable to find work again until director
Rashomon
In 1959 the couple adapted Akira Kurosawa's
Television
In the early 1970s, Kanin began solo writing in earnest with Heat of Anger, about a strong, older woman lawyer played by Susan Hayward and a younger male lawyer. At first, Kanin was put off by the lack of an immediate reaction from an audience, but once she realized that more people had seen it in one night than would have seen it in theaters if it played for a year, she was hooked and wrote five more films for television.[3]
The television movie
In 1978, Kanin and Lillian Gallo, the producer of Hustling, partnered to form a joint production company, becoming one of the early female production teams in Hollywood.[8] Their company produced Fun and Games for Valerie Harper, a tale of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the workplace.[9] For Norman Lear, Kanin wrote Heartsounds, which starred Mary Tyler Moore and James Garner as a couple coping with heart disease.
Grind
In 1975, Universal Studio producers asked Kanin for a screenplay about a bi-racial burlesque theater in 1933 Chicago. Nothing came of it, but in 1985 Kanin adapted her unproduced screenplay for the stage.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Kanin was elected president of the
Fay Kanin was the vice president of the Academy's 1999–2000 Board of Trustees, and a member of the steering committee of the Caucus for Producers, Writers and Directors, which formed in 1974, and of the National Film Preservation Board in Washington, D.C.[13] She served on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors from 2007–08.
National Student Film Institute
During the 1980s and 1990s Kanin served on the advisory board of the National Student Film Institute.[14][15]
Filmography
- Sunday Punch (1942, screenplay, story)
- Blondie for Victory (1942, story)
- her 1948 play)
- My Pal Gus (1952, original screenplay)
- Rhapsody(1954, screenplay)
- The Opposite Sex (1956, screenplay)
- Teacher's Pet (1958, screenplay)
- Rashomon (1959, adaptation)
- The Right Approach (1961, screenplay)
- Play of the Week: Rashomon (1961, teleplay adaptation)
- Congiura dei dieci, La (1962, screenplay)
- The Outrage (1964, adaptation)
- Heat of Anger (1972, teleplay)
- Tell Me Where It Hurts (1974, teleplay)
- Hustling (1975, teleplay, associate producer)
- Friendly Fire (1979, teleplay, co-producer)
- Fun and Games (1980, TV producer)
- Heartsounds (1984, teleplay, producer)
Stage productions
- Goodbye, My Fancy(1948)
- His and Hers (1954) with Michael Kanin
- Rashomon (1959) with Michael Kanin
- The Gay Life (1961) with Michael Kanin (later retitled as The High Life)
- Grind (1985)
Awards
Year | Group | Award | Result | Recipient |
---|---|---|---|---|
1959 | Academy Award | Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen | Nominated | Teacher's Pet with Michael Kanin |
1959 | WGA Award (Screen) | Best Written American Comedy | Nominated | Teacher's Pet with Michael Kanin |
1972 | American Bar Association | The Gavel Award for Best Movie of 1972 devoted to the Law | Heat of Anger | |
1974 | EMMY | Best Writing in Drama – Original Teleplay | Won | Tell Me Where It Hurts |
1974 | EMMY | Writer of the Year – Special | Won | Tell Me Where It Hurts |
1975 | Writers Guild of America | Valentine Davies Award | ||
1976 | Edgar Allan Poe Awards | Edgar Best Television Feature or Miniseries | Nominated | Hustling |
1976 | EMMY | Outstanding Writing in a Special Program – Drama or Comedy – Original Teleplay | Nominated | Hustling |
1978 | EMMY | Outstanding Writing in a Limited Series or a Special | Nominated | Friendly Fire |
1978 | EMMY | Outstanding Drama/Comedy Special | Won | Friendly Fire |
1979 | Humanitas Prize | 90 Minute Category | Nominated | Friendly Fire |
1980 | Writers Guild of America | Morgan Cox Award | ||
1980 | Women in Film Crystal Awards |
Crystal Award | Recipient | for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.[16] |
1985 | EMMY | Outstanding Drama/Comedy Special | Nominated | Heartsounds |
1985 | TONY | Book (Musical) | Nominated | Grind |
1993 | American Society of Cinematographers | Board of the Governors Award | ||
1993 | PGA Awards | PGA Hall of Fame – Television Programs | Won | Friendly Fire |
2003 | Humanitas Prize | Kieser Award | ||
2005 | Writers Guild of America | Edmund J. North Award |
References
- ^ Lefcourt. 2000.
- ^ "Fay Kanin".
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Beauchamp.2001.
- ^ a b c Acker. 1991.
- ^ Hobe (November 24, 1948). "Legitimate: Play on Broadway - Gooodbye My Fancy". Variety. 172 (12): 50.
- ISBN 1-55783-164-5.
- ^ Gregory 2001.
- ^ "Lillian Gallo, Pioneering TV Producer, Dies at 84". The Hollywood Reporter. 2012-06-18. Retrieved 2012-06-26.
- ^ Slide. 1991.
- ^ Jones. 2004.
- ^ Robinson. 1989.
- ^ Levy. 2003.
- ^ "Jewish Women's Archive".
- ^ National Student Film Institute/L.A: The Sixteenth Annual Los Angeles Student Film Festival. The Directors Guild Theatre. June 10, 1994. pp. 10–11.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Los Angeles Student Film Institute: 13th Annual Student Film Festival. The Directors Guild Theatre. June 7, 1991. p. 3.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ "Past Recipients". Archived from the original on June 30, 2011. Retrieved May 10, 2011.
Bibliography
- Acker, Ally (1991). Reel women: pioneers of the cinema 1896 to the present. London: Batsford. ISBN 0-7134-6960-9.
- Beauchamp, Cari (September 2001). "Woman of the Years: An interview with Fay Kanin". Written by (The Magazine of the Writers Guild West). Archived from the original on 2007-06-22. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
- Gregory, Mollie (2002). Women who run the show: how a brilliant and creative new generation of women stormed Hollywood. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-30182-0.
- Jones, John Philip (2004). Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theater. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. ISBN 0-87451-904-7.
- Lefcourt, Peter ed. (2000). The First Time I Got Paid For It : Writers' Tales From The Hollywood Trenches. New York: PublicAffairs. )
- Levy, Emanuel (2003). All about Oscar: the history and politics of the Academy Awards. London: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-1452-4.
- Robinson, Alice M.; Roberts, Vera Mowry (1989). Notable women in the American theatre: a biographical dictionary. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-27217-4.
- Slide, Anthony (1991). The Television industry: a historical dictionary. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-25634-9.
External links
- Fay Kanin at IMDb
- Fay Kanin at the Internet Broadway Database
- Fay Kanin at the Internet Off-Broadway Database