Biography for
Garson Kanin More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

24 November 1912, Rochester, New York, USA

Date of Death

13 March 1999, New York City, New York, USA (heart failure)

Mini Biography

Garson Kanin has worked as an actor on stage and as a director on Broadway and in Hollywood, but his best-known work is as a writer. During the Great Depression, he dropped out of high school to help support his family by working as a musician and later as a comedian. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts from 1932 to 1933. He briefly worked as an actor on Broadway following his studies but then worked as an assistant to the Broadway director George Abbot. In 1937, he joined Samuel Goldwyn's staff but left after a year because he had not been given any directing assignments. He was signed by RKO and there directed such films as The Great Man Votes (1939) and Tom Dick and Harry (1941), but he soon became frustrated by the lack of control he had over his films under the studio system. When he was drafted during World War II, he made documentary films for the War Information and Emergency Manpower offices. One of them, co-directed by Carol Reed, The True Glory (1945), won an Academy Award for Best Documentary. During the war years, Kanin began writing stories and plays as well. After the war, he directed his play "Born Yesterday" on Broadway, which he later adapted for the screen. He and his wife, Ruth Gordon, collaborated on four screenplays, including Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952). They stopped working on scripts together for the sake of their marriage after 1952, but in 1979 they co-wrote one more, the TV film Hardhat and Legs (1980) (TV). Kanin and Gordon were never under contract by any studio as writers. They wrote the scripts on their own and sold them to interested Hollywood studios.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Amy Harper

Spouse

Marian Seldes	(1990 - 13 March 1999) (his death)
Ruth Gordon	(2 December 1942 - 28 August 1985) (her death)

Trivia

1945 Sidney Howard Memorial Award (shared with Arthur Laurents).

Brother of Michael Kanin

Was nominated for Broadway's Tony Award three times: in 1956, as Best Director for "The Diary of Anne Frank," and in 1961, as Best Director (Musical) and author of the Book for Best Musical nominee "Do Re Mi."

Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 307-308. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

MGM announced it was going to produce an original Garson Kanin feature comedy called "Roses Are Blue" during it's 40th anniversary celebration. The project, along with numerous others, was quietly shelved, a casualty of studio cut backs in 1965.

In 1950, Harry Cohn, president of Columbia Pictures paid Garson the then-record sum of $1,000,000 for the movie rights to Garson's Broadway comedy "Born Yesterday.".

There is a 2009 biography of the lives and careers of the Kanin family (Garson, Ruth [Gordon], Michael and Fay): "A Family Affair - The Kanins in Hollywood and on Broadway" written by Josh Kanin (his nephew) and Wayne Lindholm.

Personal Quotes

So it can be seen that the trouble with the motion-picture art was (and is) that it is too much an industry; and the trouble with the motion picture industry is that it is too much an art. It is out of this basic contradiction that most of the ills of the form arise.

A movie star is a creation of the substance of which, like a painting or a statue or a symphony, does not age. People grow older but stars remain.

Great beauties are infrequently great actresses, simply because they do not need to be.

{on Katharine Hepburn] As the years go by she does not lose her old admirers, she goes on gaining new ones.

Amateurs hope. Professionals work.

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