Samson Raphaelson
| Samson Raphaelson | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Samson Raphaelson March 30, 1894 New York City, United States |
| Died | July 16, 1983 (aged 89) New York City, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Playwright, Novelist, Screen Writer, Reporter |
| Years active | 1925–65 |
Samson Raphaelson (1894–1983) was a leading American playwright, screenwriter and fiction writer.
While working as an advertising executive in New York, he wrote a short story based on the early life of Al Jolson, called The Day of Atonement, which he then converted into a play, The Jazz Singer. This would become the first talking picture, with Jolson as its star. He then worked as a screenwriter with Ernst Lubitsch on sophisticated comedies like Trouble in Paradise, The Shop Around the Corner, and Heaven Can Wait, and with Alfred Hitchcock on Suspicion. His short stories appeared in The Saturday Evening Post and other leading magazines, and he taught creative writing at the University of Illinois.
Raphaelson was born in New York. After graduating from the University of Illinois, he lived for varying periods in Chicago, San Francisco, and New York, working as a journalist and an advertising writer, while trying to establish himself as writer of short stories. He had become a successful advertising executive in New York when his secretary encouraged him to convert his short story “The Day of Atonement” into a play. Showing him the manuscript of a play, she pointed out how few words were on each page, adding that he had dictated more than that in two hours the previous afternoon. She volunteered to take dictation over the weekend. The result, by Sunday evening, was a complete draft of The Jazz Singer.
Raphaelson’s second play, Young Love, was banned in Boston when authorities found it too racy. It starred Dorothy Gish, one of the leading actresses of the day.
Three of his subsequent six plays produced on Broadway were chosen for publication in the annual Ten Best Plays of the Season, compiled by Burns Mantle, the widely read critic of the New York Daily News, at the time the largest circulation daily in the U.S. They were Accent On Youth (1934), Skylark (1939) and Jason (1941).
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