Irving Rapper (16 January 1898 – 20 December 1999) was a British-born American film director.[1]
Biography
Born to a Jewish family[2] in London, Rapper emigrated to the United States and became an actor and a stage director[1] on Broadway while studying at New York University. In 1936, he went to Hollywood, where he was hired by Warner Bros. as an assistant director and dialogue coach. He proved invaluable in translating and mediating for non-native English-speaking directors. He made his directing debut with the 1941 film Shining Victory, in which his friend Bette Davis appeared as a show of support for him. He would go on to direct her in four more films, Now, Voyager (1942) - selected, in 2007, for preservation in the United States National Film Registry - , The Corn Is Green (1945), Deception (1946), and Another Man's Poison (1952). In later years, Rapper admitted that he found Davis very difficult to work with and that she would, "...hold the whole set hostage, stopping production for a day, because of her mood."[citation needed]
Rapper died on December 20, 1999 at the age of 101 at the Motion Picture and Television Fund home in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles; he had been a resident at the home for four years.[4][5]
