Famous Centenarians Named Irving
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- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Irving Berlin was born Israel Isidor Baline on May 11, 1888 in Mogilev, Belarus, Russian Empire. Towering composer, songwriter, ("God Bless America", "Always", "Blue Skies", "White Christmas") author and publisher, he came to the United States at age 5 and was educated in New York's public schools. His earliest musical education was from his father, a cantor. He earned Honorary degrees from Bucknell University and Temple University. Beginning his career as a song-plugger for publisher Harry von Tilzer, Berlin worked as a singing waiter in Chinatown. In 1909, he was hired as a staff lyricist by the Ted Snyder Company, and became a partner to that firm four years later.
In 1910, he began doing vaudeville appearances in the United States and abroad, and also appeared with Snyder in the Broadway musical "Up and Down Broadway", that ran for 72 performances. He joined ASCAP as a charter member in 1914, and served on its first board of directors between 1914-1918. Berlin enlisted the United States Army infantry in World War I, and was a sergeant at Camp Upton, New York. After the war, he established his own public-relations firm, and in 1921, he built the 1025-seat Music Box Theatre (at 239 W. 45th Street, New York) with Sam H. Harris. After Harris' death in 1941, Berlin assumed full ownership and the theatre remains a Broadway institution to this day.
Among his many awards was the Medal for Merit for his 1942 all-soldier show "This Is the Army", which toured the United States, Europe and South Pacific battle zones; all proceeds were assigned to Army Emergency Relief and other service agencies. Berlin was also a member of the French Legion of Honor and held the Congressional Medal of Honor for "God Bless America", the proceeds from which went to the God Bless America Fund. His songs were sung by Fred Astaire, Al Jolson, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Dick Powell, Alice Faye and many others. Irving Berlin died at the age of 101 of natural causes on September 22, 1989 in New York City.- Additional Crew
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Irving Rapper was one of the last surviving directors from the "Golden Age of Hollywood," passing away on Dec. 20, 1999, at the age of 101, four weeks shy of his 102nd birthday. Rapper is best remembered for the films he made with Bette Davis, including the classics Now, Voyager (1942) and The Corn Is Green (1945). He also directed the first film adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie (1950), and the Rapper-helmed The Brave One (1956) won screenwriter Robert Rich an Oscar (Rich actually was blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, one of The Hollywood Ten, who did not receive his Oscar for almost 20 years). Rapper continued directing well into the 1970s.
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-'30s, he journeyed westward to Hollywood, hired 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.
Hired as a "dialog director" (a position created by the film studios in the late 1920s with the advent of sound) by Warners in 1935, he practiced that craft until 1941, when he was promoted to director. While the position of dialog director no longer exists, in the first decades of the talkies dialog directors worked with the actors on their line readings and interpretation of individual scenes. The position was particularly critical when the director was a foreigner who didn't understand English very well.
Rapper initially worked with Gernan émigré William Dieterle on The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and Juarez (1939). While Dieterle was focused on the technical aspects of filmmaking, such as the lighting of the sets and the camera angles, Rapper concentrated on the actors' performances. He also served as a dialog director for Hungarian émigré Michael Curtiz, for whom he translated (and who, according to Rapper, spoke English more poorly the longer he was in Hollywood) and French-born Anatole Litvak. In that position, Rapper forged strong bonds with certain actors, who came to depend on him.
Bette Davis and Rapper formed a bond that included the free solicitation of advice. He counseled Davis to ask to have William Keighley, who was originally assigned to direct her in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), replaced by Curtiz. Davis was to be in heavy makeup, and Rapper knew that Curtiz, a perfectionist, would be the right man to capture the visuals in the costume drama. Ironically, Rapper did not get to be the dialog director on the film, as he was assigned to a troubled picture helmed by Litvak. Without him on the set of "Elizabeth and Essex" to run interference, Davis and Curtiz--both strong-willed perfectionists---fought furiously.
Rapper resisted being assigned as a director of "B" films because he knew that once you were assigned to that unit you were stuck there and would never get a chance to graduate to "A" pictures. Rapper bided his time until he was offered a "programmer," Shining Victory (1941), by studio head Jack L. Warner. Shot without stars, the inspirational movie was a modest success and Warners assigned him to another "inspirational" picture, about a minister, One Foot in Heaven (1941). The minister was played by Oscar-winner Fredric March, then widely considered the best American actor since John Barrymore (who had by now turned into a parody of himself). March's talent was matched only by Paul Muni and the Great Profile's brother Lionel Barrymore. March was enthusiastic about the character and has long considered it one of his favorite roles. The film's success solidified Rapper's filmmaking career, which was further bolstered by his next picture The Gay Sisters (1942), starring the great Barbara Stanwyck, who lobbied for the role.
The next picture he directed was destined to become a classic. "Now, Voyager" (1942) was "the picture that made me," Rapper said in a 1981 interview. Politics played a role in his nabbing the choice assignment with only three directorial credits under his belt. Hal B. Wallis, a Warners producer with his own unit, intended to cast Irene Dunne in the picture, but Rapper leaked Wallis' plans to his close friend Bette Davis, who demanded the part from Jack L. Warner. The front office gave in to her demands, and she reciprocated Rapper's favor by asking for him as her director.
Rapper knew that casting Davis' co-stars was important if the picture was to work. He defied Wallis' choice of May Whitty as the mother of Davis' character, stumping for Gladys Cooper, whom Wallis claimed he had never heard of. Cooper received an Oscar nomination in the role. Paul Henreid got his first big break from Rapper, who tested him and then got approval to cast him (although the role made Henreid's career, he later humiliated Rapper at Davis' gala American Film Institute tribute in 1977, where he mocked the director and took credit for the famous scene where he lights two cigarettes at once and hands one to Davis. According to Rapper, Henreid had always wanted to be a successful director, and this engendered a personal enmity in him towards the director who "discovered him").
In addition to Davis and Henreid, Rapper attributed the film's success to lighting cameraman Sol Polito and versatile character actor Claude Rains, who played the psychoanalyst and thus the third side of the love triangle anchored by Davis and Henreid. Rapper felt that after the picture ends, Davis' character eventually will marry her psychoanalyst.
Rapper reteamed with Davis for the highly successful "The Corn Is Green" (1945), a story set in Wales but shot entirely--even the outdoor scenes--on Warners' sound stages. Rapper said that for her role as the Welsh schoolteacher, Davis tried very hard to not use the mannerisms that had made her famous. Rapper believes that John Dall, who played the schoolboy and whom he discovered, did not have a major career and became typecast as a villain because he was androgynous, and the public mood and cinema censorship of the time would not allow such an actor to be a star.
Rapper reportedly broke with Warners over Rhapsody in Blue (1945), a biography of George Gershwin. He felt that the script, which was approved by the Gershwin family which initially controlled the project, was wrong in that it made Gerswhin a character infatuated with two fictional women, while the real Gershwin was likely only really enthused about his music. Jack Warner, whose studio had never employed Gershwin and thus was an odd choice for the Gershwin family to entrust with his life story, fought the director over his choice of John Garfield to play the composer. Rapper believed that the casting of the film was all-important and its success ultimately was compromised by the casting of the bland Robert Alda at Warner's insistence. Jack Warner would not cast Garfield, as he was seeking leverage in the actor's upcoming contract negotiations. He also vetoed Rapper's second choice of Cary Grant on the grounds that no one would accept Grant as a composer (Warner subsequently took Rapper's insight to heart and cast Grant as Cole Porter in Night and Day (1946)). Although he looked like Gershwin, Alda "had a blah personality," Rapper told an interviewer in 1981. The film was showcased at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, but ultimately it was a failure. Some movie historians believe that Rapper's disenchantment over the failure of the film caused him to eventually break with Warner Bros.
He made Deception (1946) with Davis, which reunited her with "Now, Voyager" co-stars Rains and Henreid. Rapper claims that the movie was compromised when Davis--who was convinced that Rains' performance was stealing the picture from her--went behind Rapper's back and got Jack Warner to change the script so that she could shoot Rains' character in the finale. Rapper believed that the new ending weakened the picture. He also felt that his next picture The Voice of the Turtle (1947), an adaptation of the huge Broadway hit, was compromised by the casting of Ronald Reagan as the leading man. Despite Reagan's trying to beef his part up by inventing bits of business, Rapper believes that Eve Arden stole the film from him and his co-star, Eleanor Parker.
Rapper claimed in 1981 that he left Warners and became a freelancer due to the bad advice of his agent, who told him " . . . the movie business was booming and I could have my pick of assignments." Unfortunately, neither Rapper nor his agent forecast the downturn in the industry caused by the advent of television and the US Justice Department's order that the film studios divest themselves of their theater chains. The industry went into an economic tailspin, and Rapper's career suffered.
His first post-Warners gig was at Columbia Pictures, directing Anna Lucasta (1949). Originally a story of an African-American girl looking for acceptance from society, studio boss Harry Cohn had the girl and her family's ethnic identity changed to Polish, with narrative results that were, in Rapper's words, "pretty bizarre." Rapper wanted future Oscar-winner Susan Hayward for the girl, but Columbia cast Paulette Goddard in order to fulfill a one-picture commitment she had to the studio. Goddard got the role because she had threatened to sue Columbia if the studio didn't fulfill her contract. Rapper said that Goddard was "hopeless in drama. She couldn't match any bits of business and her reading of lines was wooden." Cast in the role of a teenager, Goddard "claimed she was 34 but the records showed it was more like 44." Thus are debacles made.
Rapper returned to Warner Bros. to helm The Glass Menagerie (1950), the first movie adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, because producer Charles Feldman requested him. Just off her Oscar win for Johnny Belinda (1948), the 36-year-old Jane Wyman was cast as the 20-something Laura to boost box-office returns. Tallulah Bankhead was hired to play Amanda Wingfield, but her drunkenness on the set on the second day of shooting led Jack Warner to fire her. Refusing to cast Miriam Hopkins "because of past differences," Warner "positively screamed when I mentioned Bette Davis." Ruth Chatterton was considered, and Ethel Barrymore, who wanted the part, was rejected as being too old. Finally, said Rapper, "that left Gertrude Lawrence, who had little camera experience and was so very jittery she'd cry every time a take was spoiled."
Commenting on the film three decades later, Rapper said, "I still like Kirk Douglas as the gentleman caller and Arthur Kennedy as Tom." The movie, considered one of the least successful adaptations of Williams' work, is barely remembered today and suffers from a bowdlerization of the original play. Williams hated the film as, against his wishes, the script implies a totally different, more upbeat ending than his play.
Of his later films, Rapper felt that they suffered, as he "missed the studio set-up." He claimed "The Brave One" (1956) as his best movie. Marjorie Morningstar (1958) was his last success at the box office, and his career tailed off in the 1960s, although he continued to direct until the end of the 1970s.
He attributed the failure of The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970) to "casting a beautiful boy [John Hansen] rather than a girl" to play Jorgensen, who rocketed to fame in the 1950s after a sex change. "That, after all, was Christine's story. She always believed she was a woman trapped inside a man's body." Born Again (1978), based on a memoir of a convicted Watergate co-conspirator who was on President Richard Nixon's staff, was a failure, as Rapper "was prevented from dramatizing the crimes of Charles Colson, only the redemption--and that made for boredom."
"Born Again" turned out to be Rapper's last film, as he reneged on his commitment to direct Sextette (1977), an exploitation film based on the joke of the elderly Mae West taking a (far younger) husband, her sixth. Rapper backed out, as he didn't have the heart for it: "Mae West was too frail-looking. She'd put her hands on her hips but there were no hips; she had faded away. However, I helped her with her line readings. So, you see, I was back to where I started--as a dialog director!"
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.- Music Department
- Writer
- Composer
Composer, songwriter ("Swanee", "Tea for Two", "Crazy Rhythm", "Just a Gigolo"), author and publisher, educated at Chautauqua Mountain Institute and City College of New York. He was a stenographer aboard the Henry Ford Peace Ship during World War I. He joined ASCAP in 1920 and was a director between 1920 and 1946, and again in 1949, and he was the co-founder and a past-president of AGAC. He collaborated musically with George Gershwin, Vincent Youmans, Victor Herbert, Sigmund Romberg, Rudolf Friml, Ray Henderson, Cliff Friend, Louis Hirsch, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Joseph Meyer, Oscar Levant and Gerald Marks. His Broadway stage scores include "Greenwich Village Follies " (four editions), "Betty Lee", "Sweetheart Time", "No, No, Nanette", "Yes, Yes, Yvette", "Here's Howe", "Americana", "Ripples", "Nina Rosa", "The Wonder Bar", "Melody" and "White Horse Inn". His popular song compositions also include "Imagination", "There Ought to Be a Law Against That", "Lady Play Your Mandolin", "You Are the Song", "What, No Mickey Mouse", "Give Me a Roll on the Drum", "If I Forget You", "Hold My Hand", "My Dog Loves Your Dog", "Oh, You Nasty Man", "Oh, Susannah, Dust Off that Old Pianna", "That's What I Want for Christmas", "Animal Crackers in My Soup", "Blue Eyes", "I Canno Live Without Your Love", "Is It True What They Say About Dixie?", "Love Is Such a Cheat", "Umbriago", "I Was So Young (You Were So Beautiful), "Sixty Seconds Every Minute", "Chansonette", "What Do You Do Sunday, Mary?", "Nashville Nightingale", "I Want to Be Happy", "Too Many Rings Around Rosie", "You Can Dance With Any Girl At All", "Sometimes I'm Happy", "Gigolette", "I'm a Little Fonder of You", and "Your US Mail Gets Through" (official song, National Association of Postmasters of the U.S.).- Music Department
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Composer, songwriter ("Managua, Nicaragua"), pianist, arranger, conductor and publisher, educated at the Eastman School of Music and the Masters Institute. He led his own trio on television and in hotels and nightclubs, and made many records. He appeared in concerts at Carnegie Hall and at Boston's Symphony Hall, and wrote the nightclub scores for the Latin Quarter in New York. Joining ASCAP in 1946, his chief musical collaborator was Henry Tobias, and his other popular-song and instrumental compositions include "Miami Beach Rhumba", "Chantez Chantez" and "Take Her to Jamaica".- Actor
- Soundtrack
Irving Benson was born on 31 January 1914 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Scanty Panties (1961), The Milton Berle Show (1948) and Here's Lucy (1968). He was married to Lillian Benson. He died on 19 May 2016 in Port Jefferson, New York, USA.- Producer
- Additional Crew
Born in Brooklyn, New York on June 21, 1911, Irving Ashley Fein was found to be an excellent student and skipped several elementary school grades. His interest in acting and writing was developed during the summer months between college terms at various summer camps. After working in the publicity department of Warner Brothers, Irving jumped ship for MGM. His major fame was from working for decades as publicity agent for both Jack Benny and George Burns. He is still with us approaching the age of 100 just as his last client George Burns did. (2008)