Norman Panama
- Birthday
- Apr 21, 1914
Bio: While attending the University of Chicago in the early 1930s, Norman Panama collaborated on a play with his classmate Melvin Frank. It was the beginning of a partnership that would span nearly thirty years. Panama and Frank went on to write sketches for the 1939 Shubert revue Keep Off the Grass, and to provide gags for such radio yockmeisters as Rudy Vallee,… More Bio: While attending the University of Chicago in the early 1930s, Norman Panama collaborated on a play with his classmate Melvin Frank. It was the beginning of a partnership that would span nearly thirty years. Panama and Frank went on to write sketches for the 1939 Shubert revue Keep Off the Grass, and to provide gags for such radio yockmeisters as Rudy Vallee, Groucho Marx, and especially Bob Hope. The team followed Hope to Hollywood, where they received their first screenwriting credit in the 1942 Hope vehicle My Favorite Blonde. This led to a long-term contract with Paramount Pictures, thence to Panama and Frank' s first producer-director assignment, MGM's The Reformer and the Redhead (1950). Alternating producing and directing responsibilities, they were responsible for such memorable 1950s comic efforts as Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1956) and the 1959 film version of their own 1956 Broadway musical, Li'l Abner. Occasionally, and effectively, the team would go "straight" with hard-hitting dramatic fare like 1952's Above and Beyond, a dramatization of the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima. The team dissolved amicably in 1966; on his own, Panama directed Bob Hope's How to Commit Marriage (1966), the Rowan and Martin vehicle The Maltese Bippy (1969), and the oddball Elliott Gould-Diane Keaton romantic comedy I Will, I Will...For Now. Norman Panama's last credit was the Australian TV movie Barnaby and Me. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Filmography
-
Not with My Wife, You Don't! (1996)
- Director, Producer
-
Barnaby and Me (1977)
- Director
-
I Will, I Will For Now (1976)
- Director
-
I Will, I Will...For Now (1976)
- Director
-
How to Commit Marriage (1969)
- Director
- See all 19 films
Norman Panama Videos
The Court Jester
1 minutes 1 seconds
Above And Beyond
30 seconds
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
1 minutes 31 seconds
I Will, I Will For Now
1 minutes 16 seconds
Road To Utopia
2 minutes 33 seconds
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