2005 Award Recipient

Industry veteran Fay Kanin will receive the Edmund H. North Award from the Writers Guild of America, west at the WGAw's second-annual Honorary Service Awards reception held November 16, 2004 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills.

"This is a rarely given award, but Fay Kanin is rarer still: she is one of the true greats of our industry," said WGAw president Daniel Petrie Jr. "Her remarkable career as an acclaimed, award-winning writer spans decades, genres, and mediums. She is pioneering and tireless advocate for women's issues, and she has an unmatched record of service to her fellow film artists. She brings to that service her progressive vision coupled with a strong sense of history, and for this and all she does for writers and the larger community, she is much respected and much loved."

Over her long career spanning screen, stage, and television, Kanin has left an indelible impression in a wide range of media. Kanin first made a splash in 1942 with the comedy Sunday Punch, co-written with her longtime writing partner and husband, the late Michael Kanin, and Allen Rivkin. Soon Kanin emerged as part of one of the most successful wife/husband screenwriting teams in Hollywood, penning a string of screenplays, including My Pal Gus (1952), Rhapsody (1953), and The Opposite of Sex (1956), a musical remake of The Women, and perhaps most memorably, the classic romantic comedy Teacher's Pet (1957).

Later Kanin blossomed into a topical writer/producer of some of the small screen's most distinguished projects that lent voice to the voiceless, including telefilms such as Tell Me Where It Hurts (1974), Hustling (1975), and Friendly Fire (1979), which she wrote and co-produced. In 1980, Kanin partnered with Lillian Gallo to form her own production company Kanin-Gallo, yielding TV movies Letting Go and Fun and Games, which received the National Commission of Working Women Broadcast Award. Later, Kanin penned and co-produced Heartsounds (1984), starring Mary Tyler Moore as a woman struggling to cope with her husband's heart disease.

Over the decades, her projects have earned top honors in all fields: an Academy Award nomination for Teacher's Pet (Best Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, 1958), as well as a WGA nomination for Best Written American Comedy; an Emmy Award for Tell Me Where It Hurts (Best Writing in Drama, Original Teleplay, 1974); a 1975 WGA Award for Best Anthology Adaptation for Hustling; a 1979 Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama or Comedy Special and Adapted Anthology WGA Award in 1980 for Friendly Fire (as well as an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing, Limited Series or Special, 1979), and Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for Heartsounds.

On the Academy board of governors since 1974, Kanin continues to chair its Writers Branch Executive Committee, having also chaired AMPAS' Finance, Foreign Language Film Award, Long Range Planning, Nicholl Fellowships, and Student Academy Awards committees. She is also a founding trustee and secretary of the Writers Guild Foundation, as well as a former executive vice president. A member of the board of trustees of the American Film Institute, she co-chairs its Center for Film and Video Presentation, as well as chairing the National Film Preservation Board in Washington D.C. mandated by Congress in 1989.

Lauded for her volunteer efforts on behalf of women, Kanin (whose films have always featured strong women characters at their center) has received accolades from the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, the American Women for International Understanding, and the Crystal Award of Women in Film. In 2003, Kanin chaired the AMPAS committee for the Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. She is also a trustee of the Humanitas Prize, having received their Kieser Award in 2003. With her trademark style and sharp wit, she has remained an articulate industry spokesperson on a variety of issues, such as film preservation.

The Edmund H. North Award is given to writers whose courageous leadership, strength of purpose, and continuing selfless activity in behalf of the guild through the years, as well as professional achievement of the highest order, have served to establish the Writers Guild of America as a pillar of strength and security for writers throughout the world. Past recipients include Mary McCall Jr., Daniel Taradash, John Furia Jr., Frank Pierson, and, most recently, Christopher Knopf, who received the rarely given North Award in 2002.