Background
Norman Krasna was born on November 7, 1909, in New York City. He was the son of Benjamin and Beatrice (Mannison) Krasna.
Krasna attended New York University.
Krasna attended St. Johns School of Law.
Krasna attended Columbia University.
Norman Krasna was born on November 7, 1909, in New York City. He was the son of Benjamin and Beatrice (Mannison) Krasna.
Krasna was educated in New York City’s schools and colleges. A two-year stint in law school ended when he decided to take up journalism as a career. Krasna attended New York University, Columbia University, and the St. John's University law school before abandoning the idea of a law career and becoming a copy boy at the New York World.
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. He quit law school, 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.
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 at Warners, at nights he wrote a play, Louder, Please, based on his job and heavily inspired by The Front Page. He tried to sell it to Warners who were not interested but it was picked up by George Abbott who produced it on Broadway. The play had a short run, and Krasna was then offered a contract at Columbia Pictures as a junior staff writer.
During the 1930s Norman Krasna was a prototypical “boy wonder” of the Hollywood screen industry, receiving numerous credits while still in his twenties; he was also a successful Broadway playwright from the age of twenty-six. Although a specialist in a domestic comedy, he also ventured into drama, notably with the original story for the 1936 Fritz Lang classic Fury, in which Spencer Tracy plays a man unjustly sought by a lynch mob.
Krasna's early credits were on Hollywood Speaks (1932), That's My Boy (1932), So This Is Africa (1933) (with Wheeler and Woolsey), Parole Girl (1933), and Love, Honor, and Oh Baby! (1933).
During the evening Krasna wrote another play, Small Miracle, which was produced on Broadway in 1934. It had a reasonable run and earned good reviews. Film rights were bought by Paramount, who hired Krasna to write the script for what became Four Hours to Kill! (1935) directed by Mitchell Leisen.
For MGM, Krasna worked on Meet the Baron (1933). He 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) then did Hands Across the Table (1935) at Paramount.
Back at MGM, Krasna worked on Wife vs. Secretary (1936) and sold his original story Mob Rule which became Fury (1936), directed by Fritz Lang.
Norman Krasna wrote a film for George Raft, You and Me (1938), for Paramount, hoping to direct it, but Raft objected. (The film would be made two years later, Fritz Lang directing.)
At Warners Krasna wrote The King and the Chorus Girl (1937) with good friend Groucho Marx. He moved to Universal to do As Good as Married (1937) and was back to MGM for Big City (1937) and The First Hundred Years (1938).
Krasna had one of his biggest hits with Bachelor Mother (1939) at RKO. At Universal he wrote a Deanna Durbin vehicle It's a Date (1940) and the René Clair directed The Flame of New Orleans (1940).
For Hitchcock Norman wrote Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) at RKO. That studio also released Krasna's The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), which he co-produced. Also hugely popular was another Durbin vehicle, It Started with Eve (1941).
Krasna wrote The Man with Blond Hair (1941) for Broadway, 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.
Krasna turned director for Princess O'Rourke (1943), which earned him an Oscar for Best Screenplay.
Moss Hart suggested Krasna write something like Junior Miss and Krasna responded with Dear Ruth. This was a massive hit on Broadway in 1944, running for 680 performances; the film rights were sold for over $450,000. (It was the basis of the 1947 film Dear Ruth 1947). He found time to write another movie for Leisen, Practically Yours (1944).
Also enormously popular on stage was the comedy John Loves Mary (1947); it too was made into a film, in 1949, although Krasna did not work on it.
Less successful was the play Time for Elizabeth (1947), co-written with Krasna's friend Groucho Marx, which ran for only eight performances, although film rights were sold for over $500,000. (The film was never made). Krasna directed his second feature, The Big Hangover (1950) for MGM. It was not a success.
In 1950 Norman Krasna and Jerry Wald formed Wald-Krasna Productions which worked out of RKO Studios for the next few years, announcing a $50 million slate of pictures. They made a number of films, notably Behave Yourself! (1951), The Blue Veil (1951), Clash by Night (1952), and The Lusty Men (1952). However both Wald and Krasna became frustrated at the meddling of Howard Hughes, who ran RKO at the time. Wald bought Krasna out and he returned to writing. He returned to Broadway, and the comedy play Kind Sir had a decent run in 1953. He co-wrote White Christmas (1954) which was a massive hit. He wrote, produced and directed The Ambassador's Daughter (1956). This starred actor John Forsythe who at one point was under personal contract to Krasna.
Krasna adapted Kind Sir as Indiscreet (1958). He followed this with another Broadway farce, Who Was That Lady I Saw You With? (1958). Krasna then adapted this play for the screen and produced what became Who Was That Lady? (1960). He did this again with Sunday in New York, which reached Broadway (with Robert Redford) in 1961 and was filmed from a Krasna script in 1963. Around this time he also wrote the script for Let's Make Love (1960), the penultimate movie for Marilyn Monroe. He wrote the screenplay as well for My Geisha (1962).
A comic play Love in E-Flat (1967) had a short run on Broadway. None of his other later plays were hits: Watch the Birdie! (1969), Bunny (1970), We Interrupt This Program... (1975) and Lady Harry (1978).
Krasna spent many years living in Switzerland but returned to Los Angeles before his death in 1984. Krasna died of a heart attack, in a Los Angeles hospital, just a few days before his seventy-fifth birthday.
Physical Characteristics: Krasna had lost his hair at an early age and was somewhat touchy about his baldness. When he met someone with a full head of hair, he often contemptuously referred to "that unsightly growth on your head".
From 1940 to 1950 Krasna was married to Ruth Frazee, with whom he had two children. He married Al Jolson's widow Erle in 1951, moving into the Palm Springs, California, home of Erle and Jolson. They remained married until Krasna's death in 1984. He had six children.