Tony's for the book of the musical Kismet and a screenwriter whose films included The Hucksters, with Clark Gable, and Lady in a Cage with Olivia de Havilland, died on Tuesday in the Bronx. He was 91 and lived in Manhattan and West Palm Beach, Fla.
A busy author for the screen and the stage, Mr. Davis wrote 15 movies and dozens of scripts for television series, and he had a hand in five Broadway shows, including writing a 1945 play, Kiss Them for Me, about four sailors back from the war, and the book for Grand Hotel, the musical adaptation of Vicki Baum's novel, which was directed and choreographed by Tommy Tune and which ran for more than 1,000 performances from 1989 to 1992.
Kismet, which won the Tony for best musical, and which Mr. Davis wrote with Charles Lederer, was one of Broadway history's more peculiar entries, a crossbreed of high culture and low. The music, which included the songs “Stranger in Paradise" and “Baubles, Bangles and Beads," was adapted from the symphonic scores of Alexander Borodin, but the story, a florid fable set in Baghdad at the time of “The Arabian Nights," was replete with groan-worthy double entendres and staged with grand spectacle and lots of leggy harem girls.
