Bella Spewack (1899–1990)
Author of My Favorite Wife [1940 film]
About the Author
Image credit: Courtesy of the NYPL Digital Gallery (image use requires permission from the New York Public Library)
Works by Bella Spewack
Kiss Me, Kate [sound recording] {2000 Mitchell/Mazzie Broadway revival cast} (1999) — Book — 15 copies
Kiss Me, Kate [sound recording] {1951 Drake/Morison original 1948 Broadway cast + Bonus tracks from 1951 original London production} — Book — 7 copies
Kiss Me, Kate [sound recording] {1959 Drake/Morison Capitol studio recording of the original cast} (1959) — Book — 4 copies
Brigadoon + Kiss Me, Kate [sound recording] — Book [Kiss Me, Kate] — 2 copies
Leave It to Me!: A Musical Comedy 2 copies
Kiss Me, Kate [sound recording] {1987 Royal Shakespeare Company London revival} (1987) — Book — 1 copy
Kiss Me, Kate [score] — Book — 1 copy
Clear all wires! 1 copy
Kiss Me, Kate [catch-all] — Book — 1 copy
Spring Song 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1899-03-25
- Date of death
- 1990-04-27
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- screenwriter
playwright
journalist
memoirist - Relationships
- Spewack, Samuel (husband)
Porter, Cole (collaborator) - Short biography
- Bella Spewack, née Cohen, was born in Transylvania, now Romania, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into a family of Hungarian Jews. Her parents divorced when she was a baby and she emigrated to the USA with her mother, settling in the tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Her mother remarried to a man who abandoned the family a few years later while she was pregnant with Bella's stepbrother. Bella graduated from Washington Irving High School and began working as a reporter for a string of newspapers and as a press agent. In 1922, she married Sam Spewack, a foreign correspondent for The New York World. The couple spent four years reporting from in Moscow and Europe. After returning to the USA, they started writing plays and screenplays together and separately, mostly comedies. In 1940, they received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Story for My Favorite Wife. They also wrote some of the most memorable lyrics in musical theater history. Kiss Me Kate (1948), a modern update on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, was one of their collaborations with Cole Porter and won them two Tony Awards; it was adapted into a popular film. The play My Three Angels (1953) was adapted as the film We're No Angels. Bella chronicled her early life in Streets: A Memoir of the Lower East Side, which was published posthumously in 1995.
- Nationality
- Romania
USA - Birthplace
- Transylvania, Romania
- Places of residence
- Bucharest, Romania
New York, New York, USA
New Hope, Pennsylvania, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- Romania
Members
Reviews
This fun film from producer Leo MacCarey and director Garson Kanin has unfairly been overshadowed by MacCarey’s masterpiece, “The Awful Truth,” starring the same wonderful duo of Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. It is a real shame as they are two entirely different films with much to recommend both. While it’s true that the sophisticated screwball farce of “The Awful Truth” is a hilarious moviegoing experience, the amusing comedy approach of “My Favorite Wife” is very enjoyable as show more well. It is silly, in fact, to knock a great film like this simply because it is filled with chuckles and smiles from the viewer rather than guffaws.
No studio made this type of marital comedy better than RKO. The editing of Robert Wise, the photography of Rudolph Mate, and gowns by Howard Green helped turn the script by Bella and Samuel Spewack into a fun time at the movies. Everything is all class in this one, right down to the embroidered linen opening credits.
Irene Dunne is fabulous as the supposedly dead wife of Cary Grant. Shipwrecked while on an anthropological expedition seven years earlier, the family dog greets her with joy upon her return. But her two children believe her to be dead and she cannot bring herself to tell them the truth. Dunne is all hamburgers and root beer here, holding back a tear for all the moments she missed with her children.
Grant, however, has moved on, having just remarried. When he gets a take on his first wife while he and new bride, Bianca (Gail Patrick), are on their honeymoon, his stunned reaction sets the tone for all the fun to follow. Nick (Grant) is confused as to what to do, to say the very least. He still loves Ellen (Dunne) but is a bit afraid of the snotty Bianca. His guilt when Ellen teases him that she can’t turn her back on him for a second turns to suspicion when he discovers that the freighter rescued not one, but two people from that deserted island!
There are some fun moments as Ellen tries to pass off a short, balding shoe clerk as her island companion to Nick, who’s already got a glimpse of the tall and athletic Steven (Randolph Scott) at the Pacific Club. When Ellen proclaims she can live without either of them, it turns out she’s all wet. Nick’s jealousy reveals itself in some hilarious one-liners aimed at Steven.
Donald MacBride has some funny moments as the hotel clerk watching Grant swap rooms like musical chairs, and Granville Bates is great as the judge trying to sort out this whole mess so that true love prevails. A warm ending in the mountains with the children caps this one off very nicely.
This truly underrated blend of sentiment and comedy starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant has stood too long in the shadows and it is time for it to take center stage for the warm and funny comedy it is. A real winner. show less
No studio made this type of marital comedy better than RKO. The editing of Robert Wise, the photography of Rudolph Mate, and gowns by Howard Green helped turn the script by Bella and Samuel Spewack into a fun time at the movies. Everything is all class in this one, right down to the embroidered linen opening credits.
Irene Dunne is fabulous as the supposedly dead wife of Cary Grant. Shipwrecked while on an anthropological expedition seven years earlier, the family dog greets her with joy upon her return. But her two children believe her to be dead and she cannot bring herself to tell them the truth. Dunne is all hamburgers and root beer here, holding back a tear for all the moments she missed with her children.
Grant, however, has moved on, having just remarried. When he gets a take on his first wife while he and new bride, Bianca (Gail Patrick), are on their honeymoon, his stunned reaction sets the tone for all the fun to follow. Nick (Grant) is confused as to what to do, to say the very least. He still loves Ellen (Dunne) but is a bit afraid of the snotty Bianca. His guilt when Ellen teases him that she can’t turn her back on him for a second turns to suspicion when he discovers that the freighter rescued not one, but two people from that deserted island!
There are some fun moments as Ellen tries to pass off a short, balding shoe clerk as her island companion to Nick, who’s already got a glimpse of the tall and athletic Steven (Randolph Scott) at the Pacific Club. When Ellen proclaims she can live without either of them, it turns out she’s all wet. Nick’s jealousy reveals itself in some hilarious one-liners aimed at Steven.
Donald MacBride has some funny moments as the hotel clerk watching Grant swap rooms like musical chairs, and Granville Bates is great as the judge trying to sort out this whole mess so that true love prevails. A warm ending in the mountains with the children caps this one off very nicely.
This truly underrated blend of sentiment and comedy starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant has stood too long in the shadows and it is time for it to take center stage for the warm and funny comedy it is. A real winner. show less
I always feel slightly traitorous when I watch this version of Kiss Me, Kate. I grew up listening to the Broadway recording with Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel. I sang along with alto Ann Miller on her songs. I loved the slightly naughty songs. When I watched a locally produced version, I could see it all so clearly. That version was the one I loved
Sadly, I was disappointed with the original movie released in 1953. When I finally got it on DVD, while the voices were wonderful, the songs had show more been bowdlerized and moved.
Then I saw this revival on TV. My faith was restored. Here were the songs I knew and loved. However, some part of me still yearned for Keel's voice.
This movie has all the naughtiness of the original stage version. It makes me laugh with all its silliness and wit. And Brent Barrett and Rachel York do admirable jobs with the songs. York, in particular, captured me with her portrayal of Kate.
If you like musicals or have ever seen the play on stage and want those songs, then this is the version for you. It is stellar. I watch it more often than the 1953 film because of the songs, staging, and York's performance. show less
Sadly, I was disappointed with the original movie released in 1953. When I finally got it on DVD, while the voices were wonderful, the songs had show more been bowdlerized and moved.
Then I saw this revival on TV. My faith was restored. Here were the songs I knew and loved. However, some part of me still yearned for Keel's voice.
This movie has all the naughtiness of the original stage version. It makes me laugh with all its silliness and wit. And Brent Barrett and Rachel York do admirable jobs with the songs. York, in particular, captured me with her portrayal of Kate.
If you like musicals or have ever seen the play on stage and want those songs, then this is the version for you. It is stellar. I watch it more often than the 1953 film because of the songs, staging, and York's performance. show less
When MGM decided to remake its own “Grand Hotel” it pulled out all the stops. Vicky Baum’s story of several people crossing paths is set at the lavish Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. MGM provided a glossy sheen and top stars like Ginger Rogers, Van Johnson and Lana Turner. The result is a more accessible movie than the original Garbo and Barrymore film, and Robert Z. Leonard takes the great cast through their paces quite nicely.
Ginger Rogers is the busy but lonely movie star Irene show more Malvern who, through a chain of circumstances believes war correspondent Chip Collier (Walter Pigeon) is her secretary’s boyfriend and has come to steal her jewels. When Collier can’t convince her otherwise, he plays along to have some fun. This creates an amusing circumstance in which they end up pretending to be married! There is charm and a lot of fun to their play-romance which slowly blossoms into a very real one. Both Rogers and Pigeon look like they're having great fun and work well together.
The second story involves a young and lovely Lana Turner as Bunny, the hotel stenographer who wants a penthouse kind of life. By chance she takes dictation from a doctor about an operation planned after the weekend on Captain James Hollis to remove shrapnel fragments from around his heart. Van Johnson had one of his best roles as the young Hollis, who may not survive without a reason to live. When he comes to Bunny to dictate his will, Johnson nearly breaks your heart, and Bunny's too. It causes her to suddenly falter in her determination to have Park Avenue.
The third connecting is story involves a big businessman named Edly (Edward Arnold) attempting a shady oil deal with Sheiks that may not be good for the country. Colliers' bumbling protege Oliver (Keenan Wynn) seeks his help to get the story. Edly, of course, has his eye on Bunny, and wants her to be his confidential secretary. All these stories crisscross and at the beautiful Waldorf Astoria.
This is a very enjoyable film that will have you smiling a lot and laughing quite a bit. The rest of the time it tugs at your heart. Xavier Cugat has a nice turn as the Waldorf’s bandleader, and becomes involved in Hollis’s story in a way I won't spoil for you. This MGM film has a luster that extends beyond what the eyes see and is a great film to add to your classic film viewing. show less
Ginger Rogers is the busy but lonely movie star Irene show more Malvern who, through a chain of circumstances believes war correspondent Chip Collier (Walter Pigeon) is her secretary’s boyfriend and has come to steal her jewels. When Collier can’t convince her otherwise, he plays along to have some fun. This creates an amusing circumstance in which they end up pretending to be married! There is charm and a lot of fun to their play-romance which slowly blossoms into a very real one. Both Rogers and Pigeon look like they're having great fun and work well together.
The second story involves a young and lovely Lana Turner as Bunny, the hotel stenographer who wants a penthouse kind of life. By chance she takes dictation from a doctor about an operation planned after the weekend on Captain James Hollis to remove shrapnel fragments from around his heart. Van Johnson had one of his best roles as the young Hollis, who may not survive without a reason to live. When he comes to Bunny to dictate his will, Johnson nearly breaks your heart, and Bunny's too. It causes her to suddenly falter in her determination to have Park Avenue.
The third connecting is story involves a big businessman named Edly (Edward Arnold) attempting a shady oil deal with Sheiks that may not be good for the country. Colliers' bumbling protege Oliver (Keenan Wynn) seeks his help to get the story. Edly, of course, has his eye on Bunny, and wants her to be his confidential secretary. All these stories crisscross and at the beautiful Waldorf Astoria.
This is a very enjoyable film that will have you smiling a lot and laughing quite a bit. The rest of the time it tugs at your heart. Xavier Cugat has a nice turn as the Waldorf’s bandleader, and becomes involved in Hollis’s story in a way I won't spoil for you. This MGM film has a luster that extends beyond what the eyes see and is a great film to add to your classic film viewing. show less
A widower remarries, then finds out his first wife isn't dead.
Funny. I don't usually like comedies with this sort of people-forced-to-lie-to-each-other premise, but this cast makes it work.
Concept: D
Story: C
Characters: B
Dialog: B
Pacing: B
Cinematography: C
Special effects/design: C
Acting: B
Music: C
Enjoyment: C plus
GPA: 2.3/4
Funny. I don't usually like comedies with this sort of people-forced-to-lie-to-each-other premise, but this cast makes it work.
Concept: D
Story: C
Characters: B
Dialog: B
Pacing: B
Cinematography: C
Special effects/design: C
Acting: B
Music: C
Enjoyment: C plus
GPA: 2.3/4
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 25
- Also by
- 6
- Members
- 366
- Popularity
- #65,729
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 10
- ISBNs
- 16