Irving Rapper, director, 101

["Deathwatch Central" <cdw@slick.org>]

Wednesday December 29 4:09 PM ET

Famed Hollywood Director Irving Rapper Dead at 101

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Irving Rapper, who directed Hollywood legend Bette
Davis in four of the nearly two dozen films he made during a career spanning
four decades, has died at the age of 101, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles
retirement home where he was living said on Wednesday.

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 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.


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