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- 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). 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 <LookItUp1@aol.com>
- SpousesMarian Seldes(June 19, 1990 - March 13, 1999) (his death)Ruth Gordon(December 2, 1942 - August 28, 1985) (her death)
- In 1950, Harry Cohn, president of Columbia Pictures, paid Kanin the then-record sum of $1,000,000 for the movie rights to Garson's Broadway comedy "Born Yesterday.".
- Wrote a book about his friendship with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn ("Tracy and Hepburn: An Intimate Memoir", 1971, Plume). Hepburn saw this as a deep betrayal, and didn't speak with Kanin for many years.
- Kanin spent 5 1/2 years in the Army, after he was drafted. Because there were so few opportunities for directors, he turned to writing. One of his ideas for a film, for Ginger Rogers, eventually evolved into the play, "Born Yesterday".
- There is a 2009 biography of the lives and careers of the Kanin family (Garson, wife Ruth Gordon, brother Michael Kanin and sister-in-law Fay Kanin): "A Family Affair - The Kanins in Hollywood and on Broadway", written by Josh Kanin (his nephew) and Wayne Lindholm.
- His first wife, Ruth Gordon, was sixteen years his senior; his second wife, Marian Seldes, was sixteen years his junior.
- 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.
- Bachelor Mother (1939) - $400 per week
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