Norman Krasna

Krasna was born in Queens, New York City. He attended Columbia University and St. John's University School of Law, working at Macy's Department Store during the day. Krasna wanted to get into journalism and talked his way into a job as a copy boy for the Sunday feature department of the New York World in 1928. While at that newspaper, he worked with Lewis Weitzenkorn who turned Krasna into a character in the play Five Star Final. Krasna eventually quit law school, and worked his way up to being a drama critic, at first for The World then the New York Evening Graphic and Exhibitors Herald World. He was offered a job with Hubert Voight in the publicity department of Warner Bros. and moved to Hollywood. By May 1930 he was established in Los Angeles. Press agent and playwright Krasna decided to become a playwright after seeing The Front Page. To learn the craft, he retyped the Ben Hecht–Charles MacArthur classic more than twenty times. Then while working as a press agent at Warners, Krasna wrote a play at night. This was Louder, Please, based on his job and heavily inspired by The Front Page with the lead character inspired by his boss, Hubert Voight. Krasna tried to sell the play to Warners who were not interested – indeed they fired him from his job as publicity agent. However Louder, Please was picked up by George Abbott who produced it on Broadway. The play had a short run starting November 1931, and Krasna was then offered a contract at Columbia Pictures as a junior staff writer. Columbia In April 1932 Krasna was assigned to his first film to work on as a screenwriter, Hollywood Speaks (1932), directed by Eddie Buzzell with Jo Swerling also credited as a writer. Krasna would go on to write four pictures at Columbia, one in collaboration, the rest on his own. After that he was put in charge of the junior writers and no longer wrote on his own. In August Krasna was working on ''That's My Boy (1932). He also did Parole Girl'' (1933). In October 1932 he was appointed assistant to Harry Cohn. In March 1933 the studio exercised its option on his services for another year. Krasna wrote So This Is Africa (1933) for Wheeler and Woolsey, who had come to Columbia for one movie. Krasna later tried to get his name taken off the credits after censors refused to allow some of his dialogue. "You can’t tell me I had any aspirations toward great art there," he said later. In May 1933 Harry Cohn of Columbia loaned him to MGM for 11 months starting with Going Going Gone with Lee tracy. In June 1933 Eddie Buzzell arranged for Universal to borrow Krasna from MGM to work on the script for Love, Honor, and Oh Baby! (1933). He also worked on Meet the Baron (1933). While at MGM Krasna was assigned to Universal to work on a script Countess of Monte Cristo. In January 1934 Universal assigned him to write The Practical Joker for Chester Morris. During the evenings of his stint at Columbia, Krasna wrote another play, Small Miracle, which was produced on Broadway in 1934. It had a reasonable run and earned good reviews. " Best notices I ever got," he said. Krasna went to RKO where he wrote The Richest Girl in the World (1934), which earned him an Oscar. He stayed at that studio to do Romance in Manhattan (1935). In September 1934 Krasna was working on The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo at 20th. Paramount In November 1934 Krasna signed a two-year contract at Paramount at $1,500 a week for 42 weeks a year. Variety called this "the juiciest young writer contract in Hollywood." Part of this deal (negotiated by Krasna's agent Zeppo Marx) included adapting his own play Small Miracle which had been sold to the studio for $37,500. Small Miracle became Four Hours to Kill! (1935), directed by Mitchell Leisen. Krasna also wrote Hands Across the Table (1935). At MGM, Krasna worked on Wife vs. Secretary (1936). Around the time of Small Miracle he had an idea for a play about a lynching, Mob Rule, but was persuaded against writing it as a play on the grounds it was non commercial. He told the idea to Joseph Mankiewicz who bought it as a film for MGM. It became Fury (1936), directed by Fritz Lang. The film earned Krasna an Oscar nomination. In August 1936 Paramount announced that Krasna would make his directorial debut in a movie he wrote for George Raft, Wonderful, co-starring Helen Burgess. However the following month Raft objected and the project was suspended. (The film was made two years later, as You and Me (1938) with Fritz Lang directing.) At Warners he wrote The King and the Chorus Girl (1937) with good friend Groucho Marx. In November 1936 he was reportedly working on a new version of Hotel Imperial. He moved to Universal to do As Good as Married (1937) for his old collaborator Eddie Buzzell MGM In early 1937 he went to MGM for Big City (1937) with Spencer Tracy, which Krasna also produced. He also wrote and produced The First Hundred Years (1938), originally called Turnabout. In August 1938 MGM announced he would produce The Broadway Melody of 1939. He was also going to produce a James Stewart film about the ship . Krasna ended up making neither of the latter two. In September 1938 MGM announced it would not renew its contract with Krasna. RKO In December 1938 Kransa joined RKO and was assigned to work for George Stevens. He wrote the script for Bachelor Mother (1939), which was a huge success. In April 1939 Krasna's income for the previous year was $83,000. In September 1939 he signed a contract with Universal to write the Deanna Durbin vehicle ''It's a Date'' (1940). For Carole Lombard he wrote Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) at RKO, which he sold for $60,000 in 1939. In April 1940 he signed an agreement with Jean Arthur and Arthur's husband Frank Ross to write and produce a film. That became The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), which he co-produced. It was released by RKO. A second film was announced by the company, Googer Plays the Field, but was never made. Krasna later said Bachelor Mother and Devil in Miss Jones "are as much of a protest as I can make against the existing system, and it’s all in the framework of a comedy... I always get in my social comment—but limited according to what the subject needs." He did two films for Universal: the René Clair-directed The Flame of New Orleans (1940) and another Durbin vehicle for Joe Pasternak, It Started with Eve (1941). He was working on another Durbin film The Good Fair. In September 1941 Krasna was in New York working on a script, Fire Escape, produced by Ross. this became The Man with Blond Hair (1941), which he later described as his "attempt to win the Nobel Peace Prize". It only ran seven performances and encouraged Krasna to focus on comedies for the rest of his career. "I got burned" he said later. ==Turning director==