This screenwriter and playwright began working in Hollywood in the early 1940s, usually in collaboration with her husband, Michael Kanin, and blossomed after his retirement as a writer and producer of some of the small screen's most distinguished TV-movies. Statuesque, articulate, with the air of a socialite, Fay Kanin became an industry leader through her presidency of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences from 1983-88.Born Fay Mitchell in NYC, she married Michael Kanin in 1940, a few years after he had abandoned a career as a commercial artist and begun writing. They moved to Hollywood, where, in 1942, he was to win an Academy Award for co-writing "Woman of the Year", the film that launched the Tracy-Hepburn screen collaboration. Kanin's career was slower to start. In 1942, she contributed the story to "Blondie for Victory", one of the low-budget second feature series based on the popular comic strip, and, with her husband and Allen Rivkin, co-wrote "Sunday Punch", a second feature for MGM about a chorine living in a boarding house with boxers. She even made an appearance as an actor in "A Double Life" (1947), co-written by her brother-in-law Garson Kanin and his wife Ruth Gordon.
Kanin went to Broadway in 1949 with "Goodbye My Fancy", about a female congressional representative renewing past loves, which her husband produced. (It was filmed by Vincent Sherman in 1951 with Joan Crawford and Robert Young co-starring.) The Kanins returned to Hollywood in the early 50s, where they developed into one of the more successful of many wife-husband writing teams (i.e., Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, Phoebe and Henry Ephron, Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon). They wrote "My Pal Gus" (1952), in which Richard Widmark becomes a good father and falls in love with Joanne Dru, "Rhapsody" (1953), an Elizabeth Taylor vehicle, "The Opposite Sex" (1956), a musical remake of "The Women", and earned an Oscar nomination for "Teacher's Pet" (1958), in which newspaper editor Clark Gable and journalism teacher Doris Day fall in love.
Michael Kanin's interest in writing waned in the late 60s, so Fay Kanin moved into writing solo, generally scripting TV-movies, beginning with "Heat of Anger"(CBS, 1972). In 1974, she wrote "Tell Me Where It Hurts", a CBS movie starring Maureen Stapleton as a woman who has raised her children, been a wife, and now wants something more. The script won Kanin an Emmy. The following year, she wrote and was associate producer of "Hustling" (ABC), which launched the career of Jill Clayburgh, who played a prostitute recounting her life to a reporter (Lee Remick). Kanin went on to write and co-produce "Friendly Fire" (ABC, 1979), a heralded TV-movie starring Carol Burnett as a mother who challenges the military to get to the bottom of how her son died in Vietnam. Kanin and Lillian Gallo, who had produced "Hustling", formed a production company in 1980, which yielded "Fun and Games" (ABC), starring Valerie Harper in a tale of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the workplace. Kanin then wrote "Heartsounds" (1984) for producer Norman Lear, the story of a woman (Mary Tyler Moore) and her travails as her husband (James Garner) copes with heart disease which consumes their lives.
Kanin made a brief return to Broadway in 1985 with the unsuccessful musical "Grind", adapted from an unproduced screenplay. Even after her tenure as president of the AMPAS ended in 1988, Kanin remained an articulate industry spokesperson on such matters as film preservation and a social leader--her short hair, tweed jackets and confident air a warm presence in the company town.