GARSON KANIN   (1912 - 1999)

Nationality:   USA    Email:   n/a   Website:   n/a

Literary Agent:  n/a

GARSON KANIN

Born Yesterday

1st Produced:

The Cleveland Play House

1946

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

Dramatists Play Service, NY,

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

-

doollee no

#18603

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Genre:

Comedy

Parts:

Male

12

Female

4

Parts other:

some of the male roles are bit parts

Notes:

-

Synopsis:

The vulgar, egotistic junkman Harry Brock has come to a swanky hotel in Washington to make crooked deals with government big-wigs. He has brought with him the charming but dumb ex-chorus girl Billie, whose lack of social graces embarrasses even Harry. Billie must be taught some of the amenities, and a few basic bits of information. The young, idealistic magazine reporter Paul Verrall, who has been investigating political skullduggery and is interested in Brock's activities, agrees for a salary, to educate Billie. He finds Billie has a natural honesty and a frank streak in her, and she begins to learn about history, politics, and what Harry really is and what he wants. At a dramatic moment she rebels against being merely a tool in Harry's crooked schemes and refuses to sign the documents which she has come to learn are part of an ambitious effort to defraud the public. This precipitates a crisis, as Billie readies to leave Harry for a new life of her own. Harry's reaction takes the only form he knows: physical violence. Billie now knows that she can no longer have anything to do with Brock, and realizes she and Paul have fallen genuinely in love. Just before she leaves Harry, she helps Paul get hold of incriminating documents of Harry's which will result in scandal and disaster. At the end, Paul and his promising pupil turn their backs on the anti-social and anti-democratic Brock and strike out on their own.

Further Reference:

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GARSON KANIN

Come On Strong

1st Produced:

Morosco Theatre, NYC

1962

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

Dramatists Play Service, NY, 1964

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

-

doollee no

#18604

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Genre:

Play/Drama

Parts:

Male

20

Female

10

Parts other:

doubling possible

Notes:

-

Synopsis:

Virginia Karger and Herbert Lundquist, two young acting hopefuls, share a flat on New York's West Side and a common ambition to get ahead in the Theatre. She is also interested in matrimony. But as Herb is unwilling to change their present casual arrangement for something more binding, Ginny accepts the proposal of an older admirer and departs for what proves to be a tragically abortive honeymoon in Atlantic City. Her husband dies of a heart attack and Ginny, numbed with shock, returns briefly to Herb before setting off for Hollywood with the burning determination to rebuild her life. When the two meet again several years later Herb has turned to capitalizing on his talent as a photographer while Ginny, her name changed to Vanessa Carr, is now a worldly and desperately expedient starlet willing to make any concession to further her career. Herb's success as a producer of documentary films has brought him to Hollywood, but he is unable to accept the shallow pretense of the movie center or the realization of what Ginny has become. This time he is the one who leaves, and when the two next encounter one another several more years have passed. Again the setting is New York, but in a sumptuous suite of the Plaza Hotel. Ginny, now Ginia Karr, a reigning movie queen, is to be photographed by Herb, the ace photographer for a leading news magazine. At first their meeting is marked by distrust and cutting repartee, but at last, in a fast-moving scene filled with both drama and comedy, the former lovers finally break through the wall of resentment and misunderstanding which had grown up between them and, coming to terms with themselves, acknowledge their love and the need for marriage to make it meaningful and lasting.

Further Reference:

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GARSON KANIN

Do Re Mi

1st Produced:

St James Theater, New York

1960

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page.

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

Original cast recoding: RCA 61994) 1960

doollee no

#18605

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Genre:

musical comedy Musical

Parts:

Male

-

Female

-

Parts other:

large cast

Notes:

by Garson Kanin; Music by Julie Styne; lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green

Synopsis:

Hubie Cram discovers a singing waitress and makes her a star

Further Reference:

-

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GARSON KANIN

Dreyfus In Rehearsal

1st Produced:

Ethel Barrymore Theatre, NYC

1974

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

Dramatists Play Service, NY, 1983

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

-

doollee no

#18606

To Buy This Play:

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Genre:

comedy/drama Adaptation

Parts:

Male

8

Female

2

Parts other:

-

Notes:

Original Playwright - Jean-Claude Grumberg

Synopsis:

The play is set in a Jewish ghetto in Vilna, Poland, in 1931. A group of amateur actors are rehearsing a new play, written by their ambitious young director, about Alfred Dreyfus, the French-Jewish military officer whose persecution was opposed by the eloquent Emile Zola. The performers in this play-within-a-play are all good, kindly people, but they have difficulty in accepting the relevance of the "Dreyfus Affair" to their own situation and, furthermore, are preoccupied with the concerns of their personal lives-which leads to a series of very funny and often ironic exchanges with their high-strung director. However their placid conviction that anti-Semitism could not exist in the Poland of their time is abruptly shattered when drunken hoodlums break into their rehearsal and attack them-after which the project is abandoned and the shaken cast members flee, one to the Soviet Union, others to England and Germany, but all now deeply disturbed and apprehensive-and nervously facing a future clouded by the menacing spectre of Nazi Germany.

Further Reference:

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GARSON KANIN

Fledermas

1st Produced:

Metropolitan Opera, NYC

- - -

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page.

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

-

doollee no

#44525

To Buy This Play:

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Genre:

n/a

Parts:

Male

-

Female

-

Parts other:

-

Notes:

with Howard Dietz

Synopsis:

n/a

Further Reference:

-

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GARSON KANIN

Gift Of Time, A

1st Produced:

Ethel Barrymore Theatre, NYC

1962

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

Random House, New York, 1962

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

-

doollee no

#18607

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Genre:

Adaptation

Parts:

Male

5

Female

5

Parts other:

-

Notes:

Based on the book "Death of a Man" by Lael Tucker Wertenbaker

Synopsis:

Further Reference:

-

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GARSON KANIN

Good Soup, The

1st Produced:

Plymouth Theatre, NYC

1960

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page.

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

-

doollee no

#18608

To Buy This Play:

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Genre:

Adaptation

Parts:

Male

-

Female

-

Parts other:

18 actors

Notes:

Original Playwright - Felicien Marceau. Based on the original Paris production by Andre Barsacq

Synopsis:

Further Reference:

-

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GARSON KANIN

Happy Ending

1st Produced:

Bristol, Pennsylvania

1989

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page.

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

-

doollee no

#18609

To Buy This Play:

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Genre:

n/a

Parts:

Male

-

Female

-

Parts other:

-

Notes:

-

Synopsis:

Further Reference:

-

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GARSON KANIN

Live Wire, The

1st Produced:

The Playhouse, NYC

1950

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

Dramatists Play Service, NY,

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

-

doollee no

#18610

To Buy This Play:

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Genre:

Comedy

Parts:

Male

13

Female

3

Parts other:

-

Notes:

-

Synopsis:

A group of young actors have pooled their resources and hopes and live together in a Quonset hut near the Broadway theater district. They manage to exist by a system of mutual interdependence until a heartless four-flusher joins them and nearly puts their experiment out of business. There is, however, enough inherent strength in the group members to enable them to recover their cohesion. The "Live Wire," who has done his best to disrupt them, now leaves on what seems to be the promise a brilliant future, but it is clear that he will ultimately be tossed aside. His former companions are at least left with the feeling that their life together, because it is shared, is worth holding on to.

Further Reference:

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GARSON KANIN

Peccadillo

1st Produced:

St Petersburg, Florida

1985

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

Samuel French, London, 1990

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

-

doollee no

#18611

To Buy This Play:

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Genre:

Comedy

Parts:

Male

4

Female

2

Parts other:

-

Notes:

-

Synopsis:

an egomaniacal conductor is having trouble fulfilling his contract to write his autobiography compounded by his wife's efforts to write her story "Mrs Maestro"

Further Reference:

-

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GARSON KANIN

Rat Race, The

1st Produced:

Ethel Barrymore Theatre, NYC

- - -

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

Dramatists Play Service, NY,

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

-

doollee no

#18612

To Buy This Play:

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Genre:

Comedy

Parts:

Male

11

Female

4

Parts other:

-

Notes:

-

Synopsis:

This "amiable. . .rooming-house idyll" is characterized by Atkinson (Times) as a "charming. . .free-hand sketch of a girl who has abandoned hope in New York and of a boy who is on tip-toe with hope and enthusiasm. Nothing is more actable than the principal characters and the neighborhood rag-tag and bobtail who move in and out of the performance. For the 'rat race,' substitute the squalid life of penniless people drifting around the lower depths of the city. The girl thinks she is through. She is bitter, disillusioned and broken. The boy has just come to New York from the Middle West to make his mark as a saxophone player."

Further Reference:

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GARSON KANIN

Remembering Mr Maugham

1st Produced:

Theresa Kaufman Concert Hall, NYC

1966

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

Samuel French, Inc - New York (2010) >>>

ISBN/ASIN:

978-0-573-69873-6

Music:

-

doollee no

#18613

To Buy This Play:

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Genre:

Biographical

Parts:

Male

2

Female

-

Parts other:

-

Notes:

-

Remember Mr. Maugham by Garson Kanin is a stage adaptation of his own memoir of the same name. This graceful memoir by Garson Kanin is a treasure trove of private conversations, amusing anecdotes, and candid recollections of his beloved friend and confidant W. Somerset Maugham. Through decades of personal notes and journal entries, Kanin and Maugham poignantly reminisce about life, art and the unconquerable human spirit.

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GARSON KANIN

Smile Of The World, The

1st Produced:

Lyceum Theatre, NYC

- - -

Company:

n/a

1st Published:

Dramatists Play Service, NY,

ISBN/ASIN:

-

Music:

-

doollee no

#18614

To Buy This Play:

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Genre:

Play/Drama

Parts:

Male

5

Female

4

Parts other:

-

Notes:

-

Synopsis:

A serious and deeply felt drama which is a moving love story and likewise a commentary on human relations

Further Reference:

-

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