Irving Rapper
Encyclopedia : I : IR : IRV : Irving Rapper
Born on January 16, 1898 in London, the United Kingdom, Irving Rapper was a film director.
Born in London on January 16, 1898, he emigrated to the United States and became an actor and stage director on Broadway while studying at New York University. In the mid-1930s he journeyed westward to Hollywood, hired by Warner Bros. as an assistant director and dialog coach at Warner Bros., where he proved invaluable translating -- and mediating for -- non-native-English-speaking directors, By the early 1940s he had metamorphosed into the hottest director on the Warner Bros. lot.
Rapper was the man behind the camera for one of Hollywood's most memorable scenes, when leading man Paul Henreid simultaneously lit two cigarettes and handed one to Bette Davis in the 1942 romantic classic ``Now, Voyager.''
He died Dec. 20 at the Motion Picture and Television Fund home in suburban Los Angeles, where he had been a resident since 1995, a spokeswoman said.
Known as a director of romantic melodramas referred to as ''women's pictures,'' Rapper worked with such performers as Fredric March, Kirk Douglas, Eve Arden, Claude Rains, and Ronald Reagan, an actor he later said he regretted casting.
He developed a special affinity for Davis, an actress he described as possessing an ``inner electricity.''
``She's probably the most knowledgeable woman in the world. She's certainly the most objective actress,'' the filmmaker said in a 1970 interview for The Los Angeles Times. ``She doesn't give a damn what she looks like, only how well she performs.
``Only once in a lifetime do you meet an actress like her,'' he said. ``She could take the most insignificant line and make it sound dynamic.''
Indeed, ``Now, Voyager,'' in which Davis plays a sheltered, shy spinster who is transformed by her psychiatrist into an elegant, independent lady and then falls in love with a married man, was Rapper's most famous film. The famed dual cigarette scene became one of the most memorable of the silver screen.
He also directed Davis in ``The Corn is Green (1945), Deception'' (1946) and ``Another Man's Poison'' (1952). She died in 1989 at the age of 81.
Overall, the London-born filmmaker's most successful body of work is comprised of the nine films Rapper made while under contract with Warner Bros., where he started out in 1936 as a dialogue coach. He made his directing debut with the 1941 film Shining Victory, and gained popular and critical success with his next film the same year, ``One Foot in Heaven,'' which earned an Oscar nomination for best film.
The last movie he made for Warner Bros. was ``The Voice of the Turtle'' (1947), starring Eleanor Parker and a young Reagan, who Rapper later said wasn't right for the comedy.
Likewise, the 1945 biographical film ``Rhapsody in Blue'' is widely regarded as having suffered from the casting of Robert Alda -- father of ``M+A+S+H'' star Alan Alda -- as composer George Gershwin, a studio decision that purportedly led Rapper to leave Warner Bros.
Perhaps his best film after leaving Warner Bros. was ``The Brave One'' (1956), which earned then-blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo an Academy Award for his original screenplay about a Mexican boy and a bull. The Oscar was awarded under Trumbo's pseudonym, Robert Rich.
Other biopics directed by Rapper included ``The Adventures of Mark Twain'' (1944), ``Pontius Pilate'' (1962) -- one of two biblical films he directed in Italy during the 1960s -- and his very last film, the 1978 flop ``Born Again,'' about convicted Watergate conspirator and former Nixon aide Charles Colson.
His works include Now, Voyager, The Adventures of Mark Twain, the 1945 film version of The Corn is Green, Marjorie Morningstar, the 1950 film version of The Glass Menagerie, and Rhapsody in Blue (film), based on the life of George Gershwin.
Irving Rapper's goal late in life was to live in three separate centuries. He died on Dec. 20, 1999, aged 101, a little less than two weeks shy of fulfilling that wish. Rapper died on December 20, 1999, in California, at the age of 101.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.