1912–1999 · American screenwriter, director and memoirist
Garson Kanin (1912–1999) was an American writer, director and actor, married to the actress Ruth Gordon from 1942 until her death in 1985; the two frequently co-wrote screenplays directed by George Cukor and starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. He was also a copious note-taker, and his 1966 memoir Remembering Mr. Maugham — with a foreword by Noël Coward — reconstructs years of conversation at W. Somerset Maugham’s Villa Mauresque. That book contains the first known appearance of the turpentine remark, presented as something Picasso says; three years later Kanin told the story again with Jean Renoir as its source, which is why the line’s true origin is still unsettled.