George Papashvily, a Co‐Author Of ‘Anything Can Happen,’
George Papashvily, an immigrant from Soviet Georgia who with his wife, Helen, was author of a humorous 1945 best-selling book about his madcap adventures in the, United States, died on Wednesday in Cambria, Calif., after a long illness. His exact birthdate is unknown, .but he was about 80 years old.
The Papashvilys wrote rive Dooxs, including a collection of Georgian folklore and a primer about how to co‐exist with dogs. But it was their first book, “Anything Can Happen,” that landed them on the best‐seller charts. The book sold 600,000 copies, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, was translated into 15 foreign languages including Urdu, and was made into a motion picture with Jose Ferrer and Kim Hunter. It is a book that bubbles with laughter and high spirits, that glows with gentlene4:. and affection, that sings with joy in life:itself,” wrote Orville Prescott in The New York Times. “George's spontaneouS zeal and radiant warmth of spirit seem as natural as rain and at the same time perfectly compatible with maturity and common sense.”
Found Humor: The words “joy,” “gentleness,” and “warmth” crop up repeatedly in writings about the man who was born in Kobiankari, a village in Caucasian Georgia. His mother reportedly was the only person in the village who could read and write. A gregarious, expansive storyteller, Mr. Papashvily found a nugget of humor in situations in which most of his contemporaaies found only base metal. Most of the contretemps and foibles he wrote about were of his own making. Perhaps no one was as surprised by his success as Mr. Papashvily himself, for he had scratched out little more than a bare ‘living at a variety of odd jobs in his adopted land before “Anything Can Happen.” It was almost as if it took a Russian immigrant, who had become an American citizen the previous year, to remind his fellow countrymen that laughter had not been rationed.
As a youth, Mr. Papashvily was trained to make ornamental riding crops and was apprenticed to a sword maker. He served in the Czar's army for six years, part of the time as a sharp shooter on tile Turkish front, and was in the Georgian national army during the Russian Revolution. Afterward, he drove a taxicab while in exile in Istanbul, then called Constantinople. Mr. Papashvily arrived at Ellis Island in the early 1920's, after traveling in the steerage of a Greek ship. He spoke four languages, but hardly a word of English. On his first day in New York, he found work as a dishwasher. His curiosity, wanderlust and unshakable belief that America was a land where “anything can happen” soon led him to Jobs in a glue factory in Pittsburgh, automobile factories in Detroit and a chicken farm in Virginia, and on to Hollywood, where he played Cossacks in several forgettable films.
Unspoiled by Success In 1930 he met Helen Waite, who was managing a bookstore in Berkeley, Calif. They married in New York in the mid‐1930's, she had already been writing for several years. It was she who polished her husband's limited English prose. Success did not spoil the Papashvilys. They bought a farm in Bucks’ County, Pennsylvania in 1939, and although they later spent winters in California, they returned to the farm each year. Mrs. Papashvily bought a bookstore in nearby Allentown, and Mr. Papashvily worked during the war as a sewing‐machine mechanic. In his spare time he carved animals in limestone, sandstone or wood, and had a particular penchant for carving otters. Many of his carvings are in private collections, as well as in public libraries in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Beverly Hills.
The couple's last book, “Home and Home Again,” was published in 1973. The memoir described Mr. Papashvily's return to his Georgian village after 40 years in America. "I didn't know how much the revolution had changed things, or if I should address someone as ‘comrade,’ he told an interviewer. But I found that even the revolution didn't change good manners.”
Mr. Papashvily is survived by his wife Helen Waite Papashvily.
- By EDWIN MCDOWELL MARCH 31, 1978
March 31, 1978, Page 2
The New York Times Archives
ADVERTISEMENT
BY
Looking for more information?
Amanda S. Stevenson 
