Kanin, Fay (1917—)

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Kanin, Fay (1917—)

American screenwriter, playwright, and actress who was the second woman to become president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Science. Born Fay Mitchell on May 9, 1917, in New York City; daughter of David Mitchell (a department store manager) and Bessie (Kaiser) Mitchell; attended Elmira College, Elmira, New York, 1933–36; University of Southern California, Los Angeles, B.A., 1937; married Michael Kanin (a screenwriter), in April 1940; children: Joel (deceased); Josh.

Screenplays—with Michael Kanin:

Sunday Punch (1947); My Pal Gus (1952); Rhapsody (1954); The Opposite Sex (1956); Teacher's Pet (1958); The Right Approach (1961); The Swordsman of Siena (1967).

Plays:

Good-bye, My Fancy (1948); (with Michael Kanin) His and Hers (1954); (with M. Kanin) Rashomon (1959); (with M. Kanin) The Gay Life (book only, 1961).

Television:

"Heat of Anger" (1972); "Tell Me Where It Hurts" (1974); "Hustling" (1975); "Friendly Fire" (1979); "Fun and Games" (1980).

Fay Kanin was born in New York City in 1917, the daughter of Bessie Kaiser Mitchell and David Mitchell, a department store manager. Fay wanted to write for movies from the age of 12. "No one ever told me I couldn't become anything I wanted to be," she recalled. She grew up in Elmira, New York, where she attended Elmira College, the first college in the country to offer women a degree equivalent to the one they awarded to men. After three years, however, Kanin wanted to finish college in Los Angeles where the movie industry was centered. In an overwhelming display of support, her parents decided to make the move with her. David went to California ahead of Bessie and Fay to see if he could find a job, and when he was successful, the family relocated. "It was the ultimate kind of approval," Kanin said. "Whatever self-confidence I mustered came from them."

After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1937, Kanin started making the rounds, beginning at Goldwyn Productions, where she was turned away because of her lack of experience. RKO's story editor, Robert Sparks, was more receptive and hired her as a writer, although three weeks later, when the head of the studio left and the personnel were shifted, she was demoted to script reader. Over the next two years, Kanin made it her business to learn everything she could about the movies. "I invaded cutting rooms, snooped in the music department, made friends in publicity, learned about shooting scripts and how they were turned into movies," she recalled. She also met Michael Kanin, a talented young screenwriter (and brother of Garson Kanin), who had recently arrived at RKO from New York. In 1940, a year after meeting, the two married and began a successful writing collaboration as well. During this period, Kanin also did a bit of acting, appearing in stock in Hollywood and in Petticoat Fever at the RKO Studios in 1948. She would later play the lead in a production of her own play Goodbye My Fancy at the Pasadena Playhouse.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Kanins wrote a number of hit movies together, including Rhapsody (1954), and Teacher's Pet (1958), starring Doris Day and Clark Gable, which won an Academy Award and a Writers Guild nomination. The Kanins also wrote two successful plays together, His and Hers (1954) and Rashomon (1959), based on stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and created the book for the musical The Gay Life (1961). There came a time, however, when the collaboration began to strain the marriage, and the two decided to pursue separate screenwriting careers.

Fay had already had a solo success with her play Goodbye My Fancy (1948), which ran for two years on Broadway, and she later found a creative outlet in television. Her first television movie, "Heat of Anger" (1971), won the Gavel Award from the American Bar Association as "the best movie of 1972 devoted to the law," and her second, "Tell Me Where it Hurts" (1974), garnered Emmy and Christopher Awards for its stars, Maureen Stapleton and Paul Sorvino. Kanin's script for the television movie "Hustling" (1975), which starred Lee Remick , received a Writers Guild Award and an Emmy nomination. In 1980, she teamed with Lillian Gallo to create the script for Fun and Games (1980), one of the first movies to address the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace. Kanin's most controversial script, however, was Friendly Fire (1979), which starred Carol Burnett , and dealt with the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

In addition to her outstanding career as a writer, Kanin served the film industry as the president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Science for four terms. She was only the second woman to serve in that post, the first being Bette Davis , who left after a month in office to do war work. Kanin also served a long stint as president of the Writers Guild of America and was a board member of the American Film Institute.