Strike Up the Band. Originally produced in 1927 but withdrawn after its tryout, this war satire with biting lyrics by Ira Gershwin had been deemed too offensive. Ryskind, who worked with Kaufman on Animal Crackers (1928), softened Kaufman's original book, and the play is remounted in 1930.
Died: Aug 24, 1985 in Washington, District Of Columbia
Occupation: Writer
Active: '30s-'40s
Major Genres: Comedy, Musical
Career Highlights: A Night at the Opera, Stage Door, Animal Crackers
First Major Screen Credit: The Cocoanuts (1929)
Biography
Morrie Ryskind was a major behind-the-scenes literary figure in American pop culture for at least four decades. He was never widely acknowledged as a longtime associate of George S. Kaufman, but he was a success both on Broadway and in Hollywood. He was associated with the Marx Brothersfor a duration of his career. He was also very visible in the political world at different times in his life, working for the two extremes -- the pacifist left in the '30s, and the far right in the '50s and '60s. Ryskind was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Russian immigrant family, and, in keeping with this background, he was drawn to socialist politics. He attended Columbia University's School of Journalism, but was dismissed because of his outspoken political views.
Politics played a significant role in Ryskind's work from the very beginning. In Garrick Gaieties (1925), Ryskind got strong reviews for a sketch that burlesqued the home life of then President Calvin Coolidge. (This august show was where Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart first achieved notice, and the show also featured a gifted young player named Sterling Holloway.) This gave the public its first taste of the wit that would later inform Of Thee I Sing, a much more topical and celebrated political work that had fun at Coolidge's expense. Ryskind began collaborating with George S. Kaufman in the mid-'20s. The two had a huge hit in 1925 with The Cocoanuts, a wildly paced play (inspired by the early '20s Florida land rush) starring the Marx Brothers. This was followed at the end of the decade with another hit, Animal Crackers, which introduced Groucho Marx's most famous characterization of Captain Spaulding, the African explorer, and his signature theme.
In 1929, during the period when the quartet was performing Animal Crackers on the Broadway stage, they took time out to go to Astoria Studios in Queens, New York, where they made the film The Cocoanuts, adapted from the play. Ryskind and Kaufman also did the screenplay for the film Animal Crackers, which was shot a couple years later and is widely considered to represent the peak of the Marx Brothers' early screen work (also, because of rights complications, a "lost" movie until the '70s).
The tendency among Marx fans is to attribute the cleverness of the their dialogue and repartee to the actors themselves, but they were always working from scripts (albeit usually written around their attributes), and Ryskind and Kaufman were the two authors most responsible for these scripts. Even on the films where they didn't do the writing, their work on The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers had established the actors' screen personae. Beyond writing for the Marxes in 1931, Ryskind and Kaufman co-authored Of Thee I Sing, a topical political satire that became the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The play also ran into a curious problem in 1933 -- due to its topicality with the death of former President Calvin Coolidge, several jocular references to the late president had to be altered in subsequent productions out of respect for the man. Ryskind also co-wrote the screenplay for Gregory La Cava's piercing Depression-era comedy My Man Godfrey (1936), which was laced with acid-tongued criticism of the idle rich that set the pattern for what became known as "screwball comedy." He earned Academy Award nominations for that script and also for his screenplay for La Cava's Stage Door (1937). Though he strayed far from the Marx Brothers' territory, he never seemed able to get too far from them for that long, much to their benefit. Ryskind was largely responsible for writing the screenplay for A Night at the Opera, the movie that revived the brothers' professional fortunes, and he was also heavily involved in the script's cleanup process, watching the team perform key sections of the work in front of live audiences, night after night, seeing which lines worked and which ones didn't. Ryskind was also responsible for rewriting the stage version of Room Service, the original of which didn't have the Marxes or anyone like them in it; he put their roles in and reworked the plot to make the movie suitable for the three distinctive performers. He also found time at the end of the '30s to participate heavily and publicly in Socialist Party-sponsored antiwar activities, signing his name to advertisements and performing sketches at events in support of this cause.
During the '40s, Ryskind separated himself from the Marx Brothers at last and wrote the scripts for such popular films as Penny Serenade and Claudia. He also worked on the stage musical Louisiana Purchase and supervised the production of The Lady Comes Across. In 1947, the writer appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he denounced the American left and renounced his former political activities. During the '50s, Ryskind joined the John Birch Society, an ultra right-wing organization who advocated the notion that President Dwight D. Eisenhower (former General of the Army) was secretly pursuing a pro-Communist agenda. Ryskind also lent money to William F. Buckley Jr. to start his rightist counter-establishment magazine The National Review. In 1960, he began an 11-year stint writing a right-wing opinion column for the Los Angeles Times. Ironically, even as he was railing against the direction of the United States government and American society in the '60s, a new generation of American students were discovering the Marx Brothers' movies and finding inspiration in their nihilist, anti-establishment ideals -- a good portion of which came from Ryskind. Ryskind's writing in the '60s didn't have nearly the impact and influence that it did in the '30s. When he died in 1985 at age 89, his last 35 years of politicking was largely overlooked, and his youthful triumphs remain his enduring legacy. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Morrie Ryskind (20 October 1895, New York City - 24 August 1985, Washington, D.C.) was an American dramatist, lyricist and director on theatrical productions and motion pictures.
Ryskind earned credits for script and lyric writing, and directing Broadway theatrical productions, and Hollywood motion pictures scripts from 1927 to 1945. He collaborated with George S. Kaufman on several Broadway hits. Ryskind wrote or co-wrote several Marx Brothers theatrical and motion picture screenplays including the script and lyrics for Broadway musical Animal Crackers (1929) and wrote the script for Cocoanuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), and A Night at the Opera (1935). He earned a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the Broadway production Of Thee I Sing in 1933, and was twice nominated for an Academy Award for his part in writing My Man Godfrey (1936) and Stage Door (1937).
Ryskind attended Columbia University but did not graduate. He was suspended shortly before he was due to graduate after he calling university president Nicholas Murray Butler "Czar Nick" in the pages of the humor magazine Jester in 1917. Ryskind was criticizing Butler for refusing to allow Count Nikolai Tolstoy, nephew of Leo Tolstoy, to speak on campus.
His politics moved to the right as he aged. For many years a member of the Socialist Party of America, he left with the party's "old guard" faction led by Louis Waldman. In 1940 he opposed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's pursuit of a third term. Ryskind abandoned the Democratic Party, and wrote the campaign song for that year's Republican Party presidential nominee Wendell Willkie'. Later, he appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities as a friendly witness. Ryskind never sold another script after that appearance. However, most friendly witnesses before HUAC found work in Hollywood, and there is no evidence of an organized or published blacklist against friendly H.U.A.C. witnesses like the blacklist against people considered to sympathize with the Communist Party, such as the list published in Red Currents.
George Kaufman et al., Kaufman & Co.: Broadway Comedies, Laurence Maslon, ed. (New York: The Library of America, 2004) ISBN 1-931082-67-7. Includes The Royal Family (1927, with Edna Ferber)
Animal Crackers (1928, with Morrie Ryskind)
June Moon (1929, with Ring Lardner)
Once in a Lifetime (1930, with Moss Hart)
Of Thee I Sing (1931, with Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin)
You Can't Take it With You (1936, with Moss Hart)
Dinner at Eight (1932, with Edna Ferber)
Stage Door (1936, with Edna Ferber)
The Man Who Came To Dinner (1939, with Moss Hart).
