Biography
A celebrated screenwriter and playwright, Fay Kanin began working in Hollywood in the early 1940s in collaboration with her screenwriter husband, Michael Kanin, before branching out on her own in the late 1960s to become an Emmy-winning TV writer. After starting with "Sunday Punch" (1942), Kanin and her husband began to take off in the early 1950s with scripts for star vehicles like "My Pal Gus" (1952) starring Richard Widmark and "Rhapsody" (1953) for Elizabeth Taylor. They went on to write the romantic comedy "The Opposite Sex" (1956) and earned an Oscar nomination for "Teacher's Pet" (1958), starring Clark Gable and Doris Day. In between Hollywood scripts, they wrote Broadway plays like the 1959 stage adaptation of Akira Kurasawa's "Rashomon," which they adapted for the screen as "The Outrage" (1964). With Michael stepping back from his Hollywood career, Kanin moved over to the small screen and won Emmys for the television movies "Tell Me Where it Hurts" (CBS, 1974) and "Friendly Fire" (ABC, 1979). Also in 1979, Kanin became the second woman behind Bette Davis to be elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a post she served in until 1983. Though she stopped writing for the screen in 1984, Kanin remained heavily active in promoting film preservation and maintaining a strong influence inside the Academy.
