Fay Kanin

Born May 9, 1917, New Yorker Fay Mitchell—maiden name—was the only child of a clothing store owner and a retired vaudeville actress. She was such a persevering child that when she came second in a spelling bee, she spent twelve months studying vocabulary non-stop until in the next edition she won first prize. It was presented to her by Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was delighted with the 12-year-old girl, to the point that when Fay graduated from high school, having become president, he sent the girl a bouquet of roses from him. and the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.

After graduating from the University of Southern California, Fay Mitchell was hired by RKO, primarily as a script reader. She fell in love with a co-worker, Michael Kanin , who would later win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Woman of the Year , the first of nine Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn films . Mitchell married Kanin in 1940, they had two children, and remained together until his death in 1993.

The Kanins began working together writing the forgotten boxing film Sunday Punch . They also converted Shinobu Hashimoto ‘s story Rashomon , made into a film by Akira Kurosawa , for the theater . The Kanin version was in turn adapted into two telefilms and led to the film Four Confessions , by Martin Ritt , with Paul Newman and Laurence Harvey . The couple is also behind Rhapsody , the Charles Vidor film with Elizabeth Taylor and Vittorio Gassman , and earned an Oscar nomination for Teach Me to Love, where Clark Gable plays a newspaper editor who enrolls in journalism school because he has fallen in love with one of the teachers ( Doris Day ).

In 1979, Fay Kanin became the second woman named president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, more than thirty years after Bette Davis briefly held the position.