January 29, 2008 (XVI:3) Mervyn LeRoy Gold Diggers of 1933 19 Irving Rapper, Now, Voyager 1942 (117 min.) 11((((117(117minmin.)minutes) Directed by Irving Rapper Based on the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty Screeenplay by Casey Robinson Produced by Hal B. Wallis Original Music by Max Steiner Cinematography by Sol Polito Costume Design by Orry-Kelly Makeup Department Perc Westmore Bette Davis...Charlotte Vale Paul Henreid...Jerry Durrance Claude Rains...Dr. Jaquith Gladys Cooper...Mrs. Henry Windle Vale Bonita Granville...June Vale John Loder...Elliot Livingston Ilka Chase...Lisa Vale Lee Patrick...'Deb' McIntyre Franklin Pangborn...Mr. Thompson Katharine Alexander...Miss Trask (as Katherine Alexander) James Rennie...Frank McIntyre Max Steiner (10 May 1888, Vienna, Austria-Hungary— Selected for the National Film Registry by National Film 28 December 1971, Hollywood, congestive heart failure) Preservation Board, 2007 is credited as musical director or for stock music on 259 films and as composer for 271, some of which are Irving Rapper (16 January 1898, London, England—20 Spencer's Mountain 1963, The Sins of Rachel Cade 1961, December 1999, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, The FBI Story 1959, A Summer Place 1959, Marjorie California) directed 22 films, some of which were Born Morningstar 1958, The Searchers 1956, Battle Cry 1955, Again (1978), The Miracle (1959), Marjorie Morningstar The Caine Mutiny 1954, The Jazz Singer 1952, I Was a (1958), The Brave One (1957), The Glass Menagerie Communist for the FBI 1951, White Heat 1949, The (1950), Anna Lucasta (1949), The Voice of the Turtle Fountainhead 1949, Flamingo Road 1949, Key Largo (1947), Rhapsody in Blue (1945), The Corn Is Green 1948, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948, Dark (1945), Now, Voyager (1942) and Shining Victory (1941). Passage 1947, Cloak and Dagger 1946, The Big Sleep 1946, Night and Day 1946, Mildred Pierce 1945, Arsenic and Old Lace 1944, Watch on the Rhine 1943, Sol Polito (1892, Palermo, Sicily, Italy—23 May 1960, Casablanca 1942, Now, Voyager 1942, They Died with Hollywood) was cinematographer on more than 160 films, Their Boots On 1941, Sergeant York 1941, Santa Fe Trail beginning with Rip Van Winkle 1914 and ending with The 1940, Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet 1940, The Letter 1940 Plunderers 1960. Some of his other films were Anna Lucasta Gone with the Wind 1939, The Dawn Patrol 1938, Angels 1949, Sorry, Wrong Number 1948, Cloak and Dagger 1946, A with Dirty Faces 1938, Jezebel 1938, The Informer 1935, Stolen Life 1946, Rhapsody in Blue 1945, Arsenic and Old Lace King Kong 1933, and The Bondman 1929. He was 1944, This Is the Army 1943, Now, Voyager 1942, Sergeant York nominated for 23 Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or 1941, The Sea Wolf 1941, Santa Fe Trail 1940, Virginia City 1940, Comedy Picture and won for Since You Went Away 1944, Angels with Dirty Faces 1938, The Charge of the Light Brigade Now, Voyager 1943 and The Informer 1936. 1936, The Petrified Forest 1936, The Woman in Red 1935, 'G' Men 1935, Gold Biggers of 1933 1933, 42nd Street 1933, I Am a Bette Davis (5 April 1908, Lowell, Massachusetts—6 Fugitive from a Chain Gang 1932, No, No, Nanette 1930, The October 1989, Neuilly, France, metastasized breast Girl of the Golden West 1923 and Fruits of Desire 1916. cancer) performed in 120 films and TV dramas , among Rapper—Now, Voyager—2 them Wicked Stepmother 1989, The Whales of August actor and not a very good one at that” before becoming Miller’s 1987, Death on the Nile 1978, The Nanny 1965, Hush... protegé” and a Broadway director. Hush, Sweet Charlotte 1964, The Virgin Queen 1955, A Meyer says that Rapper first went to Hollywood in 1929, Stolen Life 1946, Watch on the Rhine 1943, The Man assisting Robert Florey on Hole in the Wall for Paramount. He Who Came to Dinner 1942, 1941, The Private Lives of returned in 1933 “during a lull on Broadway called the Elizabeth and Essex 1939, Jezebel 1938, Satan Met a Depression,” when MGM hired him as dialogue director on Lady 1936, The Petrified Forest 1936, 20,000 Years in Robert Leonard’s Dancing Lady, with Joan Crawford. After that Sing Sing 1932, So Big! 1932, and The Bad Sister What Rapper returned to Broadway for a few more years, until the Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962, The Star 1952, All success of a stage thriller called Crime secured him a contract About Eve 1950, Mr. Skeffington 1944, Now, Voyager with Warner Brothers. Beginning in 1936, Rapper was dialogue 1942, The Little Foxes 1941, The Letter 1940, Dark director there for five years, coaching actors in the delivery of Victory 1939 and Of Human Bondage 1934. She won for their lines and often the execution of movement during both Jezebel 1938 and Dangerous 1935. rehearsals and filming. Dialogue directors were much in demand during the early years of sound, when filmmakers trained in the Paul Henreid (10 January 1905, Trieste, Austria- silents lacked experience of the spoken word. Hungary—29 March 1992, Santa Monica, California, As he told James Bawden, Rapper’s “guide and mentor” pneumonia) is best known as a film actor (he appeared in during those early years at Warners was Michael Curtiz: “By 56 films and tv dramas) but he also had a career as a tv working so closely with him I received a crash course in film director for such series as "Bracken's World" (4 directing.” Rapper served Curtiz as dialogue director on The episodes, 1969-1970), "The Big Valley" (9 episodes, Walking Dead (1936), Kid Galahad (1937), and The Private Lives 1965-1968), "The Third Man" (6 episodes, 1962-1964), of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), among other films. He also worked "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" (28 episodes, 1957-1962), with William Dieterle on The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) and and "Schlitz Playhouse of Stars" (5 episodes, several other Warner biopics, with Anatole Litvak (All This and 1957-1958). Some of his films are Exorcist II: The Heaven Too 1940), and Curtis Bernhardt. “Many of these Heretic (1977), The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), The pictures,” he says, “were made for the producer Henry Blanke, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962), Of Human most sympathetic, versatile and intelligent producer at Warners.” Bondage (1946), In Our Time (1944), Casablanca And these films “were made with such care that a dialogue (1942), Now, Voyager (1942), Night Train to Munich director really was a necessity so the actors could come on the (1940), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), Hohe Schule (1934 floor thoroughly prepared. They really need dialogue directors as Paul von Hernried) and Morgenrot (1933). today–it’s a poor economy not to have them.” By 1938 Warners had decided that Rapper was ready to Claude Rains (10 November 1889, London, England— direct films of his own. However, he was at first offered nothing 30 May 1967, Laconia, New Hampshire, intestinal but “really bad ‘B’ pictures,” and astonished his colleagues by hemorrhage) appeared in 76 films and tv series, among turning them down. “I just kept doing dialogue and waiting my them The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), "Dr. turn.” He saw his opportunity with Shining Victory (1941), a Kildare" (1964), "Rawhide" (1963), Lawrence of Arabia modest melodrama adapted from a play by A. J. Cronin. James (1962), "Wagon Train" (1962), "Alfred Hitchcock Stephenson plays an ambitious and sexist psychobiologist Presents" (5 episodes, 1956-1962), "Naked City" (1960), pursuing his researches in a Scottish sanatorium. Geraldine "Playhouse 90" (1959), "The Alcoa Hour" (1956), The Fitzgerald, as his unwelcome assistant, wins his reluctant Unsuspected (1947), Angel on My Shoulder (1946), admiration and his heart before sacrificing her life to save his Notorious (1946), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), Mr. research notes from a fire set by a jealous rival (Barbara O’Neil). Skeffington (1944), Passage to Marseille (1944), The solid cast also included Donald Crisp and Sig Ruman, and Phantom of the Opera (1943), Casablanca (1942), Now, Bette Davis, a friend of Rapper’s since Kid Galahad, made an Voyager (1942), Kings Row (1942), The Wolf Man uncredited walk-on appearance as a nurse. (1941), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Mr. Smith Goes Though he seems to have relinquished the practice later, to Washington (1939), They Made Me a Criminal (1939), Rapper says in The Celluloid Muse that he preplanned Shining They Won't Forget (1937), The Invisible Man (1933) and Victory and other early pictures: “I’d plot out the opening and Build Thy House (1920). closing of a sequence, and its highest dramatic point….I’d sometimes begin with fully detailed plans and sketches, but then IRVING RAPPER from World FIlm Directors, V. I. Ed. John Bette or someone would yell out, ‘Why did you do that?’ and I’d Wakeman. The H.W. Wilson Company, NY ,1987. throw them all away.I would improvise a good deal, but I always followed the scripts I was given to the letter. At Warners they American director born in 1898 in London. According to William would give you a finished script, and if you refused to do it, you R. Meyer in Warner Brothers Directors, he went to the United were out on suspension.” Rapper reportedly collected ten States after World War I to study law at New York University, suspensions in that way at Warners: “I would refuse, say, a crime though other sources claim that he was in America from the age of picture I wouldn’t even know how to begin, or some Nazi pictures eight. At any rate, it seems clear that he joined the Washington when I thought people were tired of them, or nonliterate scripts.” Square Players as a stage director while still at NYU, and then Shining Victory was moderately well received, though “got caught up in the flourish of theatrical activity in the some found it pedestrian, and Rapper had a critical and Manhattan of the 1920s.” Interviewed by James Bawden in commercial success with his second feature, a nostalgic piece of Classic Images (June 1982), he said that he was “a struggling Americana called One Foot in Heaven (1941), assigned to him when Anatole Litvak was taken off the film.