Later, he wrote the screenplay for the film which revived the Marx Brothers' professional fortunes, A Night at the Opera (1935), and which was selected by the American Film Institute as among the top 100 comedy films ever made. Ryskind wrote or co-wrote several Marx Brothers theatrical and motion picture screenplays, including the script and lyrics for the Broadway musical Animal Crackers (1929), and he wrote the screenplays for the film versions of The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930).
In 1933, he earned the Pulitzer Prize (receiving the prize from the same Nicholas Murray Butler who had suspended him from Columbia University) for Drama for the Broadway production Of Thee I Sing, a musical written in collaboration with composer George Gershwin. Ryskind was criticizing Butler for refusing to allow Count Nikolai Tolstoy, nephew of Leo Tolstoy, to speak on campus.įrom 1927 to 1945, Ryskind was author of numerous scripts and musical lyrics for Broadway theatrical productions and Hollywood motion pictures, and, later, directed a number of such productions, as well.
He attended Columbia University but was suspended shortly before he was due to graduate after he called university president Nicholas Murray Butler "Czar Nicholas" in the pages of the humor magazine Jester in 1917. Ryskind was born in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Ida (Edelson) and Abraham Ryskind.
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