Arthur Sheekman

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Arthur Sheekman (February 5, 1901, Chicago – January 12, 1978), a graduate from the University of Minnesota, started his career as columnist and drama critic during the 1920s and the early 1930s for the Manhattan Newspaper. He then entered the film industry in 1931 when he became a scenarist for the Marx Brothers' movie Monkey Business where he befriended Groucho Marx. Groucho first found out about Arthur Sheekman while reading Sheekman's show business column on the Chicago Sunday Times and wrote a guest column replying to Sheekman saying that he liked his style and wanted him to help work on his productions in Hollywood. From then on it was known throughout the film production business during that time that Groucho detested the other writers and favored Arthur Sheekman over them. This was seen in the movie Monkey Business where Groucho rejected S. J. Perelman's script which he complained was too literary (legend also states that he replied to Perelman's script with only two words, "It Stinks"). Groucho also rejected Ned Tennant's script and instead chose to use Sheekman's script in the end (even though ironically much of Sheekman's script was based upon Perelman's original ideas).

Arthur Sheekman continued to work with the Marx Brothers on such projects as Duck Soup in 1933 and the Groucho-Chico radio series known as Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel (where he worked as script writer) as well as being the host for many of Groucho's books such as Beds and Many Happy Returns. Later on, while working for the Eddie Cantor musical Roman Scandals in 1933, Sheekman met his future bride actress Gloria Stuart (he would be Gloria's second husband after Blair Gordon Newell who divorced her in 1934). Later works he help to script write included Danny Kaye's Wonder Man (1945), Bing Crosby's Welcome Stranger (1947) and Mr.Music (1950), Joe E. Brown's The Gladiator (1938) as well as Daniel Mann's Ada in 1961.