Norman Reilly Raine

Norman Reilly Raine
Norman Reilly Raine (left) and Michael Curtiz (right) on the set of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
Born	(1894-06-23)June 23, 1894 Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Died	July 19, 1971(1971-07-19) (aged 77) Woodland Hills, California
Years active	1933–1955
Spouse(s)	Joyce Roberta Pett (divorced) Elizabeth Prudhomme (1958–1971, his death)

Norman Reilly Raine (23 June 1894 – 19 July 1971) was the creator of "Tugboat Annie" and a prolific screenwriter who won an Oscar for the screenplay of The Life of Emile Zola (1937).

Raine was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He began writing in 1912, when he was 17, with a job as a reporter on The Buffalo Morning Express. He stayed two years and left for service with the Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I. He was discharged as a captain in the Royal Air Force. After the war he joined MacLean's Magazine in Toronto and became assistant editor. In 1924, in one of his articles, he commented at about rum-running, saying "It is openly asserted by the rum runners that Canadian banks finance or help to carry, by credit and other methods, some of the larger deals put over by the trade" to which the The Montreal Gazette called an "outstanding statement". He died in Woodland Hills, California.

Raine tried the Broadway stage in 1933. With Frank Butler as collaborator, he wrote Hangman's Whip, a jungle melodrama in which two well-known Hollywood actors, Montagu Love and Barton MacLane, played leading roles. It later became the 1933 film White Woman with Carole Lombard and Charles Laughton.

Raine wrote a series of Tugboat Annie stories for the Saturday Evening Post. In a 1940 news article, it was said he based Tugboat Annie on a female tugboat owner he knew and wanted to write a story about her; however the woman was gentle and Tugboat Annie was not. He also based Tugboat Annie on Marie Dressler after he watched Anna Christie. In 1933 he wrote the screenplay for the film, in which Marie Dressler played Annie and Wallace Beery portrayed Terry, her hard-drinking husband, with whom she traded choice insults.