Samson Raphaelson

Samson Raphaelson (March 30, 1894 – July 16, 1983) was an American screenwriter and playwright.

Born in New York City, he worked on nine films with Ernst Lubitsch, including Trouble in Paradise (1932), The Shop Around the Corner (1939), Heaven Can Wait (1943), and That Lady in Ermine (1948). He also collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941). He is the author of the play Day of Atonement, which was made into The Jazz Singer (1927), the first talking picture, produced by Warner Brothers in the Vitaphone sound-on-disc process. Samson Raphaelson was also Ernst Lubitsch's favorite screenwriter.

Samson Raphaelson considered Suspicion to be "in many ways my best screenplay." Raphaelson also cowrote Lubitsch's only drama Broken Lullaby (The Man I Killed, 1932). This film turned out to be a box office flop. When playwright Robert E. Sherwood saw this film, he praised like this "The best talking picture that has yet been seen and heard." Aside from his more popular work, Raphaelson also wrote the college fight song for the University of Illinois in 1921. Titled, "Fight, Illini!: The Stadium Song" the music was composed by Rose J. Oltusky.

In 1977, the Writers Guild of America Awards granted him the "Laurel" for lifetime achievement. He taught playwriting at Columbia University until the last years of his life. His wife Dorshka (Dorothy Wegman) (1904-2005) was the author of 'Morning Song' and, until her death in 2005, was the second oldest surviving Ziegfeld Follies dancer. His nephew is filmmaker Bob Rafelson, and his grandson is photographer Paul Raphaelson.

External links

• Samson Raphaelson at the Internet Movie Database

Plays

A production of his play "Accent on Youth" (written in 1935) opens on Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman (formerly Biltmore) Theatre, NY, April 2009. Cast includes: David Hyde Pierce, Rosie Benton; directed by Tony Award Winner Daniel Sullivan.