I, Herb Galewitz, edited this book for Dover Publications. Why do you have it listed as edited by Anna Samuel. Who she? My name is on the book cover.

Having already seen both movie versions and being cast in the play by the same name, I had to find a copy of the book and find out where all the delightful wit and humor had originated. I was also seeking to see if I could glean anything from the novel to use while acting in the play. I really enjoyed the movies and love the play. However, the book is more humorous than all three.

FATHER OF THE BRIDE is told from the vantage point of Stanley Banks, the title character but in an omniscient way. There are tons of witty, one-liners throughout the novel, and though there is some dated material, the Mr. Banks of the novel seems more real and down-to-Earth than any the films are theatre have produced. The book is full of observations on life; from women and men to children and business, but told in a humorous, yet enlightening way. The book isn't very long and makes for a very entertaining read. "How. . . How".

This humorous play is based on the novel and has been successfully made into two different movies. The movie starring Spencer Tracy is more similar to the play than the Steve Martin film. However, the Steve Martin movie has one very important character that the Spencer Tracy film does not, Massoula (played by Martin Short); who is the funniest character in the script. Anyway, the play is a charming comedy that examines the horrors of the rituals we call weddings from the perspective of the father of the bride.

Mr. Banks is a happily married man with three children who doesn't have any major problems in life. Then his daughter announces out of the blue that she is engaged to a man the family barely knows. Chaos begins and continues throughout the play until the last scene when we see the true character of the father of the bride.

A delightful play that's not only a blast to watch, but is a joy to read as well.

I read this book a couple of months ago. It's very funny and sad at the same time. i feel bad for the dad because he's going through a hard time. But it has a happy ending.

I love Benchley's work. I began reading "My Ten Years in a Quandary..." as a child at the cottage nearly forty years ago. I can still read that tattered book and enjoy it immensely. I am less thrilled by this compilation--can't always agree with Nathaniel Benchley's choices and miss some of Gluyas Williams sketches that have been dropped. Get one of the original collections--starting with, if you want, "My Ten Years..." and then, when you decide that you want everything the man ever wrote, you won't be buying stories you already have.

I only found out about Benchley from a short book on Algonquin Round table quotes but I'm very thankful for it--it's shameful that Benchley has basically been forgotten. Why on earth should such a gifted, briliant comic writer be so little known nowadays? There's simply no reason I can think of. He's just as good as Perelman or Thurber, and he deserves much wider reading. This anthology is a pretty good collection of his work, featuring most of his more popular and beloved pieces. What one notices about Benchley is that he really isn't quite so gentle and affectionate in his humor as those who remember him say--he was the original master of what he termed the "dementia praecox" (crazy written humor basically)and when he applies this to ordinary life or parodies bad writing he can be quite cutting. His style is just about perfect--simple but carefully constructed to wring every laugh it can out of subtleties of phrasing and syntax. His parodies of academic writing are among the greatest ever, effortlessly exposing the bad ideas, pretension and willful obfuscation that lurk beyond so many professors' works. His humor is that of a good natured man so bewildered with the modern world that he defends himself with humor, and depending upon the situation that humor can be quietly observant or fast and crazy, therefore reducing its target to nonsense as well. This book needs to be re-printed with a beter cover, and it wouldn't hurt to add more stories to make it a definitive overview of the man's work. Having done so, the book should be aggresively marketed so that it ends up in the humor section of every bookshop in the land. It's the least Benchley, one our greatest American comic writers, deserves.

"A great many people have come up to me and asked me how I manage to get so much work done while looking so dissipated. My answer is 'Don't you wish you knew?' and a pretty good answer it is, too, when you consider that nine times out of ten I didn't hear the original question." That's Benchley. Note the easy, flowing, understated prose (read: no disgusting postmodern Latinizing) that marked this extraordinary humorist's observations on life in America and abroad. Benchley wrote about everything, and everything he wrote showed the same magical mix of cynicism and whimsy.