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- Actor
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- Soundtrack
William Claude Rains, born in the Clapham area of London, was the son of the British stage actor Frederick Rains. The younger Rains followed, making his stage debut at the age of eleven in "Nell of Old Drury." Growing up in the world of theater, he saw not only acting up close but the down-to-earth business end as well, progressing from a page boy to a stage manager during his well-rounded learning experience. Rains decided to come to America in 1913 and the New York theater, but with the outbreak of World War I the next year, he returned to serve with a Scottish regiment in Europe. He remained in England, honing his acting talents, bolstered with instruction patronized by the founder of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Herbert Beerbohm Tree. It was not long before his talent garnered him acknowledgment as one of the leading stage actors on the London scene. His one and only silent film venture was British with a small part for him, the forgettable -- Build Thy House (1920).
In the meantime, Rains was in demand as acting teacher as well, and he taught at the Royal Academy. Young and eager Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud were perhaps his best known students. Rains did return to New York in 1927 to begin what would be nearly 20 Broadway roles. While working for the Theater Guild, he was offered a screen test with Universal Pictures in 1932. Rains had a unique and solid British voice-deep, slightly rasping -- but richly dynamic. And as a man of small stature, the combination was immediately intriguing. Universal was embarking on its new-found role as horror film factory, and they were looking for someone unique for their next outing, The Invisible Man (1933). Rains was the very man. He took the role by the ears, churning up a rasping malice and volume in his voice to achieve a bone chilling persona of the disembodied mad doctor. He could also throw out a high-pitched maniac laugh that would make you leave the lights on before going to bed. True to Universal's formula mentality, it cast him in similar roles through 1934 with some respite in more diverse film roles -- and further relieved by Broadway roles (1933, 1934) for the remainder of his contract. By 1936, he was at Warner Bros. with its ambitious laundry list of literary epics in full swing. His acting was superb, and his eyes could say as much as his voice. And his mouth could take on both a forbidding scowl and the warmest of smiles in an instant. His malicious, gouty Don Luis in Anthony Adverse (1936) was inspired. After a shear lucky opportunity to dispatch his young wife's lover, Louis Hayward, in a duel, he triumphs over her in a scene with derisive, bulging eyes and that high pitched laugh -- with appropriate shadow and light backdrop -- that is unforgettable.
He was kept very busy through the remainder of the 1930s with a mix of benign and devious historical, literary, and contemporary characters always adapting a different nuance -- from murmur to growl -- of that voice to become the person. He culminated the decade with his complex, ethics-tortured Senator "Joe" Paine in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). That year he became an American citizen. Into the 1940s, Rains had risen to perhaps unique stature: a supporting actor who had achieved A-list stardom -- almost in a category by himself. His some 40 films during that period ranged from subtle comedy to psychological drama with a bit of horror revisited; many would be golden era classics. He was the firm but thoroughly sympathetic Dr. Jaquith in Now, Voyager (1942) and the smoothly sardonic but engaging Capt. Louis Renault -- perhaps his best known role -- in Casablanca (1942). He was the surreptitiously nervous and malignant Alexander Sebastian in Notorious (1946) and the egotistical and domineering conductor Alexander Hollenius in Deception (1946). He was the disfigured Phantom of the Opera (1943) as well. He played opposite the challenging Bette Davis in three movies through the decade and came out her equal in acting virtuosity. He was nominated four times for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar -- but incredibly never won. With the 1950s the few movies left to an older Rains were countered by venturing into new acting territory -- television. His haunted, suicidal writer Paul DeLambre in the mountaineering adventure The White Tower (1950), though a modest part, was perhaps the most vigorously memorable film role of his last years. He made a triumphant Broadway return in 1951's "Darkness at Noon."
Rains embraced the innovative TV playhouse circuit with nearly 20 roles. As a favored 'Alfred Hitchcock' alumnus, he starred in five Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) suspense dramas into the 1960s. And he did not shy away from episodic TV either with some memorable roles that still reflected the power of Claude Rains as consummate actor -- for many, first among peers with that hallowed title.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Pamela Gidley was born on July 11, 1965, in Methuen, Massachusetts, and raised in Nashua, New Hampshire. Pamela was the only girl among four older brothers. After high school, she moved to New York and was discovered by a modeling agent while walking down a Manhattan street and soon afterward she won the Wilhemina Modeling Agency's "Most Beautiful Girl In The World" contest on March 12, 1985 in Sydney, Australia.
As her modeling career took off, she studied acting at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts under Stella Adler and eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.- Born in Brooklyn, Bergere began his career in 1936 as understudy to Danny Kaye in the Broadway production of "Lady in the Dark", with Gertrude Lawrence. His television debut was with James Dean in the live production of "Thunder on Sycamore Street". A World War II veteran, he was in charge of entertainment services for soldiers serving in North Africa. Best known for his role as majordomo "Joseph Anders" in the 1980s television series Dynasty (1981), he also briefly appeared in the rival soap opera Falcon Crest (1981) as "Justin Nash". He appeared in more than 200 television shows, including an original Star Trek (1966) episode in which he played Abraham Lincoln He died at the age of 88 in New Hampshire where he lived for over a decade.
- Howard Petrie was born on 22 November 1906 in Beverly, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Bend of the River (1952) and Walk Softly, Stranger (1950). He was married to Alice Laurie Wood. He died on 24 March 1968 in Keene, New Hampshire, USA.
- Mrs. Tyrone Power was born on 1 March 1882 in Indiana, USA. She was an actress, known for Where Are My Children? (1916), A Texas Steer (1915) and The Planter (1917). She was married to Tyrone Power Sr.. She died on 29 September 1959 in Canterbury, New Hampshire, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Bramwell Fletcher was born on 20 February 1904 in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Mummy (1932), Raffles (1930) and Daughter of the Dragon (1931). He was married to Lael Wertenbaker, Susan Agathe Robinson, Diana Barrymore and Helen Chandler. He died on 22 June 1988 in Westmoreland, New Hampshire, USA.- Stan Sandler was born on 5 April 1935 in New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Eight Crazy Nights (2002) and Nicotine Bees (2010). He was married to Judith Sandler. He died on 9 September 2003 in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA.
- Writer
- Producer
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, John Michael Hayes began his writing career as a newspaper reporter. Following service with the US Army during WWII, he moved to California where he wrote for such radio dramas as Sam Spade and Inner Sanctum. Moving to film in 1952, he has amassed credits which span over 40 years and include such enduring titles as Rear Window (1954) and Peyton Place (1957). For the last several years, Mr. Hayes has taught film writing to a new generation of artists at Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, but has now (2000) retired.- Writer
- Additional Crew
U.S. writer whose novel "The Catcher in the Rye" (1951) won critical acclaim and devoted admirers, especially among the post-World War II generation of college students. His entire corpus of published works consists of that one novel and 13 short stories, all originally written in the period 1948-59. Salinger was the son of a Jewish father and a mother who adopted Judaism, and, like Holden Caulfield, the hero of "The Catcher in the Rye", he grew up in New York City, attending public schools and a military academy. After brief periods at New York and Columbia universities, he devoted himself entirely to writing, and his stories began to appear in periodicals in 1940. After his return from service in the U.S. Army (1942-46), Salinger's name and writing style became increasingly associated with "The New Yorker" magazine, which published almost all of his later stories. Some of the best of these made use of his wartime experiences: "For Esmé - With Love and Squalor" (1950) describes a U.S. soldier's poignant encounter with two British children; "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (1948) concerns the suicide of the sensitive, despairing veteran Seymour Glass. Major critical and popular recognition came with the publication of "The Catcher in the Rye", whose central character, a sensitive, rebellious adolescent, relates in authentic teenage idiom his flight from the "phony" adult world, his search for innocence and truth, and his final collapse on a psychiatrist's couch. The humor and colorful language of "The Catcher in the Rye" place it in the tradition of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and the stories of Ring Lardner, but its hero, like most of Salinger's child characters, views his life with an added dimension of precocious self-consciousness. "Nine Stories" (1953), a selection of Salinger's best work, added to his reputation. The reclusive habits of Salinger,an obsessively private man especially over the last half-century of his life, made his personal life a matter of speculation among devotees, while his small literary output was a subject of controversy among critics. "Franny and Zooey" (1961) brought together two earlier New Yorker stories; both deal with the Glass family, as do the two stories in "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters"; and "Seymour: An Introduction" (1963).- Carolyn Lee was born on 5 June 1934 in Columbus, Ohio, USA. She was an actress, known for Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1942), Virginia (1941) and Honeymoon in Bali (1939). She died on 1 September 2010 in Nottingham, New Hampshire, USA.
- Marvelous Marvin Hagler (born Marvin Nathaniel Hagler; May 23, 1954 - March 13, 2021) was an American professional boxer and film actor. He competed in boxing from 1973 to 1987 and reigned as the undisputed champion of the middleweight division from 1980 to 1987, making twelve successful title defenses, all but one by knockout. Hagler also holds the highest knockout percentage of all undisputed middleweight champions at 78 percent. His undisputed middleweight championship reign of six years and seven months is the second-longest active reign of the last century. He holds the record for the sixth longest reign as champion in middleweight history. Nicknamed "Marvelous" and annoyed that network announcers often did not refer to him as such, Hagler legally changed his name to "Marvelous Marvin Hagler" in 1982.
- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Kay Linaker was educated at a private school in Connecticut and later attended New York University. While living in New York, she became interested in the stage and began attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Her work in several small Broadway roles brought her to the attention of screen scouts and she was signed for movie work. She appeared in many films of the 1930s and '40s (including a quintet of Charlie Chans and James Whale's final two films) before meeting and marrying singer-turned-writer Howard Phillips. She relocated to the East and, now calling herself Kate Phillips, began writing for television (her husband became an NBC-TV executive). In more recent years, Phillips taught at universities in Canada and New Hampshire.- Barney Hill was born on 20 July 1922 in Newport News, Virginia, USA. He was married to Betty Hill and Ruby Horne. He died on 25 February 1969 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA.
- Ann Power was born on 5 April 1928 in Paris, France. She was married to Oskar Werner. She died on 25 December 2011 in North Hampton, New Hampshire, USA.
- F.D. Reeve was born on 18 September 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for The J2 Project (2002). He was married to Laura Caroline Stevenson, Ellen Swift, Helen Schmidinger and Barbara Pitney Lamb. He died on 28 June 2013 in Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA.
- Calder Willingham was born on 23 December 1922 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He was a writer, known for The Graduate (1967), Paths of Glory (1957) and Little Big Man (1970). He died on 21 February 1995 in Laconia, New Hampshire, USA.
- Valérie Cormier was born on 24 December 1980 in Methuen, Massachusetts, USA. She died on 3 April 2019 in Seabrook, New Hampshire, USA.
- Vernon Rich was born on 6 January 1906 in Rockingham, Vermont, USA. He was an actor, known for The War of the Worlds (1953), One Step Beyond (1959) and Outside the Law (1956). He died on 7 February 1978 in Peterborough, New Hampshire, USA.
- Virginia Ann Ford was first discovered in a talent search done by Columbia Pictures throughout Texas. She learned to horseback ride at her parents' ranch on the outskirts of Dallas, and once was a professional equestrienne. Virginia Ann majored in History at Southern Methodist University, before becoming an actress. She's the great-granddaughter of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, also an American Civil War trivia buff.
- Greg Smart was born on 4 September 1965 in Nashua, New Hampshire, USA. He was married to Pamela Smart. He died on 1 May 1990 in Derry, New Hampshire, USA.
- Producer
- Director
- Writer
George Butler was a director and producer, who created acclaimed documentary features as well as giant screen films including Pumping Iron, The Endurance, Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry and Roving Mars. Butler's films screened at over 30 international film festivals and won honors ranging from National Board of Review Best Documentary of the Year (2001, The Endurance), IDA Best Documentary finalist (1990, In the Blood), the Whitney Biennial (2006, Going Upriver), to National Academy of Science Best Science Film of the Year (2008, Roving Mars). His IMAX® film Roving Mars was produced by Frank Marshall and distributed by Disney around the world. The New York Times called it "the best IMAX movie ever made."- Buff Cobb was born on 19 October 1927 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy. She was an actress, known for The Sam Levenson Show (1951), All Around the Town (1951) and Masquerade Party (1952). She was married to Herbert Spencer Martin, Mike Wallace, William Eythe and Greg Bautzer. She died on 12 July 2010 in Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA.
- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
P.J. O'Rourke attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he graduated in 1969, and received an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University where he was a Woodrow Wilson fellow. After college, he discovered that he had no job prospects, so he decided to become a writer. He was editor-in-chief of the National Lampoon from 1978 to 1981, where he was responsible for the infamous "Yearbook" parody. He was the international affairs correspondent for Rolling Stone magazine from 1986 to 2001. He was the author of sixteen books, including Parliament of Whores, Give War a Chance, All the Trouble in the World, and Eat the Rich, several of which were NYT bestsellers. He had three children with his second wife, Tina.- Actress
- Soundtrack
After moving from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Hollywood she signed a movie contract with Universal. In the 1930s, she appeared in a few films while at that studio and launched her stage career by 1938. Her Broadway debut was as Calpurnia in an Orson Welles' production of "Julius Caesar." She maintained a busy career onstage in the USA as well as in England. Some performances include acting in "Time Out For Ginger," "Richard III," "No Strings" and as the imperious Vera Charles in "Auntie Mame" in New York City. Her TV roles included parts in "The Defenders" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."- Writer
- Additional Crew
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that town. Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, and graduated in 1825. He published his first work in 1828, the novel Fanshawe; he later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not equal to the standard of his later work. He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. The following year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment as consul took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to Concord in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, and was survived by his wife and their three children. Much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral metaphors with an anti-Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States.- Ron Kurz was born on 27 November 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was a writer, known for Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), Friday the 13th: Part 3 (1982) and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984). He died on 7 May 2020 in Hancock, New Hampshire, USA.
- Actor
- Composer
- Soundtrack
In 1995 Brad Delp and John Muzzy formed the Beatles Cover band, BeatleJuice. They played throughout New England until his death in 2007. BeatleJuice was what he referred to as his "hobby" and they performed for many charity events, school functions, parties and small scale venues. There are some fantastic videos on YouTube under Brad Delp BeatleJuice, New Hampshire video. Members: Brad Delp on Vocals, guitar and tambourine John "Muzzy" Muzz on drums Steve Baker on keyboard, guitar, vocals and audio production Joe Holaday on drums Bob Squires on Guitar and vocals
BeatleJuice faithfully reproduced the sound of the Beatles note for note but never attempted to copy their appearance.
BeatleJuice still performs. Current members: John "Muzz" Muzzy (drums) Steve Baker (keyboard, guitar) Joe Holaday (bass) Dave Mitchell (guitar) Jimmy Rogers (Vocals) Buddy Bernard (Vocals) Mike Girard (Vocals) Bob Jennings (Vocals) Evan Gianoulis (Percussion) Rich Bartlett (Acoustic Guitar)- Jared Nathan was born on 10 August 1985 in Nashua, New Hampshire, USA. He was an actor, known for Zoom (1997) and Sesame Street: Fiesta! (1997). He died on 28 December 2006 in Hollis, New Hampshire, USA.
- Actor
- Composer
- Music Department
Tommy Makem was born on 4 November 1932 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, UK. He was an actor and composer, known for The Guard (2011), The Finest Hours (2016) and American Masters (1985). He was married to Mary Shanahan Makem. He died on 1 August 2007 in Dover, New Hampshire, USA.- Edna Bennett was born on 17 June 1899 in Keene, New Hampshire, USA. She was an actress, known for The Big Fight (1930), Ladies of the Big House (1931) and Cowboy Commandos (1943). She was married to Royal Beal. She died on 9 June 1976 in Keene, New Hampshire, USA.
- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Barbara Rose was born on 11 June 1936 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. She was a writer and producer, known for North Star: Mark di Suvero (1978), The New York School (1972) and American Art in the 1960s (1972). She was married to Richard Du Boff, Frank Stella and Jerry Leiber. She died on 25 December 2020 in Concord, New Hampshire, USA.- C. Everett Koop was born on 14 October 1916 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Exorcist III (1990), C. Everett Koop, M.D. (1991) and New York Street Games (2010). He was married to Cora L. Hogue and Elizabeth Flanagan. He died on 25 February 2013 in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA.
- Writer
- Editorial Department
- Producer
Andy Lewis was born on 5 August 1925 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Klute (1971), Lancer (1968) and The Americans (1961). He died on 28 February 2018 in Walpole, New Hampshire, USA.- Richard McDonald was born on 16 February 1909 in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA. He was married to Dorothy Jones. He died on 14 July 1998 in Bedford, New Hampshire, USA.
- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Louis de Rochemont, the maverick filmmaker and documentarian whose "The Fighting Lady" (1944) won an Oscar, was born in Chelsea. Massachusetts in 1899. He filmed his first newsreel when he was 12 years old and established his reputation making March of Time newsreels in the 1930s. His pre-World War II documentaries elucidating the dangers posed by Adolf Hitler caused some to label him a red. His documentary productions won two Academy Awards.
The de Rochemont-produced newsreel "Inside Nazi Germany," the January 1938 entry in the March of Time series, was called "the first commercially released anti-Nazi American motion picture." Although the newsreel begins with film actually shot inside Nazi Germany, the footage was bland and disappointing, so de Rochemont had the newsreel was spiced up with staged re-enactments using anti-Nazi German-Americans. German-American Bund-leader Fritz Kuhn, he German-born fascist personally detailed by Hitler to lead the American fascist effort, was cajoled into allowing the documentary-makers to stage some scenes at the Bund office. When upon viewing the finished product, Kuhn discovered he had been tricked, Walter Winchell reported that he was recorded screaming "I will be ruint. Ruint!" at a screening in the March of Time building.
De Rochemont and his wife, screen-writer Virginia Shaler, lived in Newington, New Hampshire on the Piscataqua River at the Seacoast. Though a continent away from Hollywood, De Rochemont produced motion pictures based on true stories in actual locations, often with local people in the cast. Aside from three spy films, his movies films typically dealt with controversial subjects, including labor relations and racism. These pioneering efforts gave him the sobriquet "father of the docu-drama."
De Rochemont was a pioneer in the production of wide-screen films, and he shot films in Cinerama, Todd-AO and other wide-screen processes. He died in New Hampshire in 1978 survived by his wife, a daughter and a son. Virginia Shaler lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire until her death.
In 1993, his "Inside Nazi Germany," was named to the Library of Congress' National Film Preservation Board's National Film Registry.- Alan Blanchard was born on 18 July 1948 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Spawn of the Slithis (1978) and Foes (1977). He was married to Jean Marie. He died on 11 January 2024 in Nashua, New Hampshire, USA.
- Kenneth Countie was born on 18 July 1981 in Malden, Massachusetts, USA. He died on 21 March 2006 in Epping, New Hampshire, USA.
- Writer
- Actor
Tad Mosel was born on 1 May 1922 in Steubenville, Ohio, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Up the Down Staircase (1967), The Adams Chronicles (1976) and Dear Heart (1964). He died on 24 August 2008 in Concord, New Hampshire, USA.- Deceased American professional wrestler best known for his time teaming with Perry Saturn as The Eliminators. They were trained by Walter 'Killer' Kowalski and debuted in 1989. Caiazzo was originally billed as "The Eliminator." They took the names "Kronus" and "Saturn" from the Greek and Roman gods of the harvest. They first teamed in the United States Wrestling Association in Memphis, Tennessee. They wanted to call their team The Harvesters of Sorrow, but Jerry Lawler told them that people wouldn't get the mythological reference. They were 1x USWA World Tag Team Champions, defeating Eddie Gilbert and Brian Christopher (Brian Lawler) for the belts on May 2, 1994, and lost them to PG-13 (J.C. Ice (Jamie Dundee) and Wolfie D. (Kelly Wolfe)) on June 13, 1994. They debuted in ECW at ECW Gangstas Paradise (1995), September 16, 1995, teaming with Jason (Jason Knight) in a win over Taz (Peter Senerchia) and The Steiner Brothers (Rick Steiner and Scott Steiner). They would hold the ECW World Tag Team Titles three times. They defeated Cactus Jack (Mick Foley) and Mikey Whipwreck for the belts at "Big Apple Blizzard Blast" on February 3, 1996 and lost them to The Gangstas (New Jack (Jerome Young) and Mustafa (Jamal Mustafa)) at ECW the Doctor Is In (1996) on August 3rd. They regained the belts on the February 1, 1997 (taped December 20, 1996) "ECW Hardcore TV", and lost them to The Dudley Boys (Buh Buh Ray (Mark LoMonaco) and D-Von (Devon Hughes)) at "ECW Hostile City Showdown" on March 15, 1997. They regained the belts from the Dudley Boys at ECW Barely Legal (1997). Saturn left after "ECW Wrestlepalooza 1997" on June 6th to follow Raven (Scott Levy) into WCW. Kronus defended the belts in handicap matches until he lost them to The Dudley Boys on the June 26 (taped June 20th), 1997 "ECW Hardcore TV." Kronus and New Jack defeated The Dudley Boys for the belts at ECW as Good as It Gets (1997), September 20, 1997, and lost them to the FBI (Full-Blooded Italians) ("The Main Man" Tracy Smothers and "The Extreme Stud" Little Guido Maritato (James Maritato)) on the November 1, 1997 (taped October 18th) "ECW Hardcore TV." Kronus was pushed down the cards from that point, culminating in him getting squashed by the debuting Sid (Sid Eudy) at ECW Guilty as Charged 1999 (1999), January 10, 1999. He also wrestled for Combat Zone Wrestling, Assault Championship Wrestling, Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling, Xtreme Pro Wrestling, IWA Japan, NWA 2000, NWA Championship Wrestling America and other promotions.
One of the reasons why Saturn left ECW was that he was sick of teaming with Kronus, at one point describing him as a "lazy addict."
His finishing move outside of The Eliminators was a 450 Splash.
His son Gage was born in 1998.
He died July 18, 2007. - Additional Crew
Betty Hill was born on 28 June 1919 in Newton, New Hampshire, USA. She is known for Where Are All the UFO's? (1996), UFOs Are Here! (1977) and Nova (1974). She was married to Barney Hill and Robert Stewart. She died on 17 October 2004 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA.- Additional Crew
- Writer
- Editor
Amy Stechler was born on 23 June 1955 in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. She was a writer and editor, known for The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo (2005), The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God (1984) and Brooklyn Bridge (1981). She was married to Ken Burns and Rod Thibeault,. She died on 26 August 2022 in Walpole, New Hampshire, USA.- Herbert A. Philbrick was born on 11 May 1915. He was a writer and actor, known for I Led 3 Lives (1953), What Is Communism (1963) and Your Lucky Clue (1952). He was married to Eva Luscombe. He died on 16 August 1993 in North Hampton, New Hampshire, USA.
- Talent Agent
John Paradise was a 1979 graduate of Goffstown High School, where he was Senior Class President, an accomplishment he was very proud of. After high school, he went on to graduate from Northeastern University in 1984 with a Bachelor's degree in Marketing. A thirst for knowledge led him to pursue another degree, this time in Broadcast Communications, again from Northeastern University. John had a very successful career with New York Air, something that gave him the opportunity to travel to many wonderful places and make friends from every corner of the globe. This inspired John to pack his bags and move to Hollywood, where he started The Paradise Group Talent Agency, specializing in the representation of on-camera talent for television and live events. Along with his partner, Jason Record, he formed Paradise Record Group, a consulting firm that provides expertise in the fields of Entertainment and Real Estate. John was always a perfectionist and a leader. He was the type of person who would always lend a hand to help others, but never without a touch of endearing sarcasm. One of his proudest accomplishments was becoming an Eagle Scout and a member of the Order of the Arrow, a society that honors scouts who best exemplify the Scout Oath and Law.- Rene A. Gagnon was born on 7 March 1925 in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA. He was an actor, known for Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), I've Got a Secret (1952) and To the Shores of Iwo Jima (1945). He was married to Pauline Harnois. He died on 12 October 1979 in Hooksett, New Hampshire, USA.
- Music Department
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Dave Guard was born on 19 October 1934 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. He was an actor, known for Dave's Place (1965), How the West Was Won (1962) and The Swindlers (1959). He was married to Gretchen Walling Ballard. He died on 22 March 1991 in Rollinsford, New Hampshire, USA.- Deborah Steinberg Solomon was born on 5 September 1940 in Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for All My Children (1970) and As the World Turns (1956). She was married to Gavin Reid. She died on 2 December 2011 in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA.
- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Michael Fisher wrote and produced more than 500 hours of prime-time television and theatrical motion pictures, including "Spenser For Hire, "Starsky & Hutch," Fantasy Island," and "Mission Impossible." In 1991 he published his first novel Cries from the Darkness which was soon followed with a sequel, The Nightmare Man. In 1997 he produced a made for TV movie in Fiji based on his novels. He was the son of Steve Fisher, a prolific pulp fiction, film and TV writer whose original story for the 1943 Cary Grant movie "Destination Tokyo" earned him an Academy Award nomination in 1944. Michael Fisher was born May 1 1940, in New York City, to Steve Fisher and Edythe (Seimes) Fisher. He grew up in Beverly Hills and Van Nuys, California. At 17 he enlisted in the Navy and was stationed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, from 1957 to 1963. September 1969 he married Helen Mary Brennan. Together they raised their family in Woodlands Hill, California; Sydney, New South Wales and Paradise Point, Queensland in Australia; and Rye, New York. He moved to Peterborough, New Hampshire in 2005.- Mara Clark was born on 29 March 1930 in Middlefield, Massachusetts, USA. She was an actress, known for Pet Sematary (1989), The Crucible (1996) and Clue VCR Mystery Game (1985). She died on 30 March 2022 in Concord, New Hampshire, USA.
- Timothy Gordon was born on 3 January 1922 in Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Dark Shadows (1966). He died on 28 September 1993 in Suncook, New Hampshire, USA.
- Writer
- Director
Maurice Rapf, the Hollywood screenwriter who became one of the pioneers of cinema studies, was born on May 19, 1914, in New York City to producer Harry Rapf and his wife, Tina Uhfelder Rapf. Harry Rapf was one of the founders of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer and an Oscar-winner for producing MGM's first musical, The Broadway Melody (1929), an early talkie smash and the winner of the studio's first of many Academy Awards for Best Picture. Unlike his father, Maurice never won an Oscar; his most significant achievement as a screenwriter arguably was Song of the South (1946) for Disney, which he disowned, while his most significant "achievement" as an activist, arguably, was to be blacklisted that same year for his Communist sympathies. But he left a lasting legacy through his union activities and as a film professor.
Harry Rapf was Hollywood royalty, having worked his way up from minstrel shows and vaudeville to become an independent movie producer in 1916, when son "Maury" was but two years old. At the tender age of three, Maury was enlisted as a child actor to play "war orphans, street urchins and assorted brats," according to a 1990 memoir published in Dartmouth's Alumni Magazine. Maury Rapf's career as an actor soon ended, cut short by the exigencies of schooling.
Rapf pere was hired by indie producer Lewis J. Selznick in 1919, and then moved on to Warner Bros. in 1921, where as a producer he and young screenwriter Darryl F. Zanuck turned World War I veteran Rin Tin Tin, a German Shepherd saved from the trenches of the Western Front, into an international superstar. When MGM was created from the 1924 merger of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions, Harry was brought onboard to share central producing duties with Louis B. Mayer and his protégé Irving Thalberg. The career change necessitated a permanent shift of the Rapf family from New York to southern California. Rapf was given the job of overseeing the production of the "programmers" that were the bread-and-butter of the studio, pictures starring such box office heavyweights as Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery. With a keen eye for talent, Harry Rapf earned the credit for discovering Joan Crawford (I)' in the chorus line of Broadway's "The Passing Show of 1924." Rapf was invited by Mayer to be one of the 36 founders of his brainchild, a company union called the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences that was intended to fight off unionization by the crafts.
Maury, as the son of Harry, grew up in Los Angeles, trolling the studios, sets, offices and streets of the Culver City production facilities, one of the privileged "Hollywood Princes," like his good friend Budd Schulberg, son of Paramount boss B.P. Schulberg. Maury used to bully Loews theater owners to get into the movies for free, citing his father's status at Loew's MGM subsidiary. His first screen credit was for writing the story of the Jackie Cooper vehicle Divorce in the Family (1932), which was produced by his father. He was 18 years old.
Like Budd, Maury went to Dartmouth College, and like Budd, he went to the USSR and flirted with communism. Again, like his good friend, he eventually joined the Communist Party. Rapf and Schulberg reportedly were the inspirations for F. Scott Fitzgerald's Hollywood Princess Cecilia Brady, the daughter of the villainous studio boss Pat Brady, in his unfinished last novel "The Last Tycoon."
While matriculating at Dartmouth in bucolic small-town Hanover, New Hampshire, Rapf was an exchange student at the Anglo-American Institute in the USSR. Muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens, a Communist, had proclaimed, "I have been over into the future and it works" after a trip to the Soviet Union. Steffens' enthusiasm inspired thousands of other progressives to visit the future themselves, and those visitors included Schulberg and Maurice Rapf. The Soviets gave foreign visitors tours of fake "Potemkin" villages. Schulberg had been impressed by what he saw, as had Rapf, whose own tour had been sponsored by the National Student League and had included future double-Oscar winning screenwriter and Hollywood Ten alumnus Ring Lardner Jr., who would serve nine months in jail for daring to have unpopular beliefs a decade-and-a-half after that visit.
After attending the Institute, Rapf made a trip to Germany in 1934, at a time when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party were consolidating their power over all aspects of German life after terminating democracy with extreme prejudice the year before. It was a bold move for someone of the Jewish faith, especially one only 20 years old. His personal experience of Nazi Germany convinced him that Communism was the best bulwark against Naziism. He joined the U.S. Communist Party (CPUSA) and was an active member throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. He remained a committed member, where others such as Elia Kazan dropped out due to disillusionment with the Party after the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany, that set up the two totalitarian tyrannies' invasion and partition of Poland.
"The thing that most impressed me and probably made me a communist was that anti-Semitism was illegal in the Soviet Union," Rapf would later claim, "and that the Soviets were very anti-fascist, which the US was not."
"Making movies was the family business, and with parental help, it became mine as well," Rapf said in his 1990 memoir. As a college boy returned to his family's studio, he co-wrote We Went to College (1936), They Gave Him a Gun (1937) and The Bad Man of Brimstone (1937) for his father's production unit, which had been one of several set up by Mayer as a "college of cardinals" to replace the ailing central producer Thalberg, and also to dilute his power. Harry Rapf's power at MGM had been on the wane since he suffered a bad heart attack in 1933, which is likely why his son eventually sought employment at other studios.
Along with Budd Schulberg, Maurice was one of the founding members of the Screen Writers Guild (since renamed the Writers Guild of America), the screenwriters trade union, which is ironic in his light of the ongoing attempts of his father's generation to put a stop to unionization of the movie industry. With the Guild duly accredited as the screenwriters' bargaining representative with the studios, a formal system of pay and credit was instituted to protect the rights of writers. Rapf became a secretary of the SWG, while his friend Schulberg served on the Guild council.
Rapf became a busy and serious screenwriter, working on many movies, typically in the action genre. He helped develop the story for the political thriller Sharpshooters (1938) for 20th Century-Fox--where production was headed by the progressive Zanuck, his father's old Rin Tin Tin collaborator--and then bounced over to Columbia for North of Shanghai (1939). Rapf (Dartmouth, '35) received credit for indie producer Walter Wanger's Dartmouth-based college love story Winter Carnival (1939), on which he replaced F. Scott Fitzgerald (Princeton, '16) as the collaborator with fellow Dartmouth alumnus Budd Schulberg, after the great writer of "The Great Gatsby" went off on one of his Brobdingnagian boozing binges. By the time that film was released, he was working as a staff screenwriter for Warner Bros.
According to a memoir published by screenwriter Malvin Wald, when he was first employed by Warner Bros. Rapf was made his collaborator after another collaborator changed an original story of his beyond all recognition. When Warners screenwriter-in-chief John Huston invited Rapf to join the Writers Table, Rapf's collaborator was invited as well. Wald found Rapf to be a "considerate and patient teacher," who was concerned with his young protégé's professional well-being. Eventually, the writing team lost one producer, and then their replacement producer was fired, and their contracts were terminated by studio chief Jack L. Warner. Wald couldn't complain, as under Rapf's tutelage he had learned the business and even had qualified for membership in Rapf's Screen Writers Guild.
In the early 1940s Rapf bounced between Paramount, Budd Schulberg's father's old studio, and 20th Century-Fox, which was headed by 'Joseph Schenck', the brother of Loew's Inc. President Nicholas Schenck, the "capo di tutti capi" of MGM. Rapf even made a house call as a script doctor at Poverty Row for Republic Pictures' Call of the Canyon (1942). He eventually wound up at Walt Disney & Co., which would prove to be his final home studio. It seems ironic that his longest stint in a studio, even longer than the professional association he had with his father's, was at Walt Disney, as the eponymous owner had the reputation as being perhaps the most vociferous anti-Communist in Hollywood.
In 1944 Walt Disney offered Maurice a chance to rewrite a script based on Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus stories. Rapf was worried that writing for an animated film would hurt his career, as it was considered a kind of ghetto in Hollywood, and he also expressed his anxiety over the racism in the stories. Disney assured him that the film would be a live-action feature, and that he was being hired to expressly cut the racism out of the script, although what he likely was looking for in hiring Rapf was political cover from the left. Rapf accepted the job and did the rewrite while waiting for a commission from the U.S. Navy.
After working on the "Uncle Remus" screenplay, he and fellow communist (and fellow companion on the 1934 trip to Russia) Ring Lardner Jr., helped co-write the animated short Brotherhood of Man (1945), which was co-produced by the United Auto Workers labor union and United Productions of America (best known for its postwar "Mr. Magoo" cartoons) and released by the U.S. Navy. When the "Uncle Remus" movie eventually was released after the war, Rapf expressed his dismay that the film, now entitled "Song of the South," failed to rid itself of its residual racism. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People denounced "Song of the South" for perpetrating racial stereotypes.
At Disney Rapf wrote an early draft for an animated feature film based on the fairy tale "Cinderella," for which he would receive no credit. The last film he worked on at Disney was the slice-of-Americana So Dear to My Heart (1948). He left Disney under a cloud of suspicion, as the movie moguls had agreed at the Waldorf Conference--a film industry summit meeting called after the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had the Hollywood Ten indicted for contempt of Congress--to fire any suspected Communists they had in their employ. Rapf was subpoenaed to testify before the HUAC, but was excused because he was ill with the mumps.
Ironically, the communist Rapf got along well with the right-wing Republican Walt Disney, whom he categorized as a personally modest perfectionist, and both enjoyed arguing politics. Disney told Rapf that he became a Republican when, as a boy, a gang of young Democrats pulled down his pants and coated his testicles with hot tar. Contrary to the now-accepted caricature of Disney as a racist reactionary, Rapf wrote in his 1999 autobiography "Back Lot" that Disney was neither a Red-baiter nor an anti-Semite.
"I never knew anyone in the Party - in all the years I was associated with it, which was a long, long time - who was seeking anything but humanistic goals. Certainly there was never any attempt on the part of the people I knew to overthrow the government of the United States . . . We did believe in class struggle. I still believe in class struggle," Maurice Rapf was quoted in the book "Tender Comrades."
Marx described class struggle as the conflict between capital (the bourgeoisie) and labor (the proletariat). While capital and labor do have common interests, as the proletariat must sell its labor for wages and the bourgeoisie must expend capital to obtain labor, one class' individual interests inevitably lead to conflict with the other class, as capital seeks to enhance its surplus by commiserating labor. Marx theorized that class struggle and its attendant conflict would last for as long as capitalism survived, and would only be overcome when the extreme polarization of the classes into the very rich and the very poor eventually triggered an revolution that would destroy the capitalist system. In an organic historical process Marx considered `scientific,' capitalism would be replaced by a socialist system in which the proletariat controlled the state via the "the dictatorship of the proletariat," which meant a workers' democracy, not Soviet-style totalitarianism. The struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat would respond to the laws of entropy, and the classes themselves would atrophy, as well as the state, as the raison d'etre of the state was to serve as a bulwark for the ruling class' power. Thus, a classless, stateless society known as communism would be ushered in.
The metaphor of two entities that paradoxically share a common interest, but whose individual interests put them into conflict with each other, fits the conflict between studio bosses and the Hollywood "creative" community quite well. The history of Hollywood from the mid-1920s and up through the mid-1930s, and again after World War II, was a "class struggle" between the studios and the various crafts over wages, working conditions, and ultimately unionization when the company union that was the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences could not or would not protect the interests of the crafts. This paradox also was a metaphor for Sigmund Freud's Oedipal conflict (itself a metaphor), that set privileged "Princes of Hollywood" like Budd Schulberg and Maurice Rapf against the interests of their fathers, all self-made men who rose to the top through a combination of cunning and ruthlessness, who once established, tried to buy respectability through the ostentatious consumption of goods and people, be they respected writers like Fitzgerald, James Hilton or William Faulkner, or stars and starlets alike, like Clara Kimball Young, Norma Talmadge and Marilyn Monroe.
B.P. Schulberg and Harry Rapf were doers, while their more artistically inclined sons Budd and Maury were observers, but observers who had carried the gene for action. After observing that something was rotten in the state of Hollywood, they were determined, like Hamlet, to do something about it. Indeed, Schulberg's Oedipus-like blow against the Hollywood system that nurtured him, "What Makes Sammy Run?", his excoriating exegesis of studio executive Sammy Glick, was credited by Schulberg himself with terminating his father's career in Hollywood. Schulberg makes no bones about it in "Sammy": the old type of Hollywood-hustler/immigrant-Jew who made the motion picture industry and believed in assimilation with society at large while indulging their gross individual appetites embarrassed him. The Party went so far to censure him publicly for anti-Semitism after the novel was published in 1941. Schulberg dated his own disillusionment with the Party to the time he refused the order of the CPUSA dramaturge, future Hollywood Ten member John Howard Lawson, to submit to Party discipline with his novel.
As history developed in fact, not theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat proved to be a legal justification by which tyrants imposed a totalitarianism over their subject peoples. Democracy for the post-War communist activist often meant ensuring a unanimity of interests in which one interest, that of the Party, could veto and thus gain control over all other competing interests. In the 1930s and 1940s Joseph Stalin and his NKVD spent almost as much time eliminating fellow socialists, leftists and fellow travelers as it did in fighting fascism, and indeed, had been fascist Germany's ally in the opening days of World War II.
Cold War documentation now indicates that the Hollywood Ten's legal defense of aggressive non-cooperation (rather than just taking the Fifth Amendment) was dictated from the Soviet Union via CPUSA, which Moscow partly financed, and that screenwriter and Hollywood Ten blacklistee Lawson was the CPUSA point man in Hollywood, reading members' work and demanding emendations (that none of the Hollywood Ten sang in 1947 was considered a brave act, but now seems to be an expression of party discipline). Of course, how effective this party discipline was for getting out communist propaganda can be called into question, as so many movie industry writers of every political stripe were used by the studios to write, rewrite and then rewrite a rewritten script. Indeed, one scoffs at the exaggeration of many charges of certain Hollywood professionals being "red" or "pink" or a "fellow-traveler," such as those leveled against outspoken progressive Burt Lancaster, whose swashbuckling movies of the early 1950s contained the thematic element of the oppressed rising up against their oppressor. Yet Lancaster's business partner, former CPUSA member Harold Hecht, in friendly testimony before HUAC told of how, when he was employed by the Works Progress Administration's National Theater Project, he was commanded by CPUSA to fire Party critics and retain Party members when the organization's budget was cut and layoffs were immanent. To his credit, Hecht did admit that CPUSA did not have inordinate influence in the National Theater Project, as had been claimed by anti-Communist zealots in Congress before the war, so there was no real interference with Party members, as Elia Kazan noted in his justification of his own friendly testimony before HUAC; it just seems like it never was very effective in actually creating communist propaganda (the sole exception is often cited as Warners' 1943 release Mission to Moscow (1943), which was in fact made at the request of the U.S. government, a pro-Russian potboiler written by future blacklisted screenwriter Howard Koch that put forth the Soviet dictator's show trials of the late 1930s as having been undertaken to rid the USSR of real and potential spies for Nazi Germany. The "leader" of this Nazi Fifth Column, the chief culprit behind all this skulduggery was, of course, Stalin's nemesis Lev Trotskiy, who had been murdered in Mexico in 1940 by an NKVD assassin on Stalin's orders. Many progressives, including educator John Dewey, who ran an inquiry, were fully aware at the time of the purges that the show trials were staged productions whose victims confessed to improbable if not downright impossible crimes. Stalin was imposing a cruel and implacable dictatorship on the Soviet Union, in effect consolidating his grip on the USSR through the judicial murder of his old Bolshevik and Menshevik allies to eliminate potential rivals and any possible challenge to his monopoly on power, real or imagined.
The Red-baiting and McCarthyite witch-hunt must be understood in the context of the intense backlash against the New Deal from the political right wing that gained strength when Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency, and which gained more momentum when Truman unexpectedly won the 1948 presidential election, thus keeping the Republicans out of power for four more years. The GOP was taken over by reactionary isolationists and anti-interventionists, who wanted to isolate America from the rest of the world and its "harmful" influences. It was an ancient theme, as old as the Republic itself, when George Washington in his farewell address cautioned his new country against becoming entangled in foreign alliances. Like Metternich at the Congress of Vienna, who wanted to turn post-Napoleonic Europe back to the status quo antebellum of monarchies that could suppress the spreading liberalism that threatened to upset the old social equilibrium that Napoleon had knocked off kilter, many Republicans and conservative Democrats wanted to return the United States to its inward-looking self, and Washington, DC, back to the swampy, sleepy Southern town it had been before the war. It's always impossible to turn back the clock, though, and Truman was determined to contain Soviet communism while at the same time avoiding World War III.
Many pre-war proto-fascists of the old Nazi-financed German-American Bund and the Roosevelt-hating America First isolationists were quick to launch a crusade against the USSR and especially its American supporters after World War II's end made the necessity for an anti-Axis alliance a moot point. They were joined by many others, including some converts whom had once been enthusiastic New Dealers, such as newspaper columnist and radio personality Walter Winchell, who had grown older, wealthier and more conservative, and turned into a Red-baiter. In addition to providing "legitimacy" to anti-Semitic outbursts by the old prewar proto-fascists who were how hopping onto the anti-Red bandwagon of the radical right, the anti-Communist witch-hunt of the late 1940s and early 1950s can be seen as a "payback" by conservatives, both the dyed-in-the-wool variety like studio boss Walt Disney and the Johnny-come-latelies like Winchell, against liberals who were enjoying a 20-year run in power through the Roosevelt-Truman administrations. The country that most Americans had known and grown up with had changed dramatically, and there was a great deal of anxiety in the country that could be, and was, exploited by ruthless power-seekers. Attacked by the hard left via the Progressive Party, dedicated New & Fair Dealer Truman was forced to shift right himself, as did many liberals desiring to survive the onset of the political winter for progressive politics in Hollywood and the country at large. The studio bosses, themselves ruthless power-seekers, made common cause with the inquisitors for the sake of their bottom lines, already being ravaged by a postwar recession and soon to fall victim to an even more insidious "foreign menace"--television.
Anthropology holds that social phenomenon such as witch-trials are a type of homeostatic device to regulate the stress building up in a community by discharging excess pressure to eliminate the strain that could wreck the community. By directing the community's anxieties against a scapegoat that is then destroyed, the community purges itself of the dangerous buildup of psychic stress. Many people were sincerely concerned about the future welfare of the United States and the direction the country was headed in, while certain others were not but used the social distress as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement. There was an element of the show-trial in the HUAC hearings of 1947 and the early 1950s, in which conservatives sought to destroy the left and its leaders grasped for recognition and power.
Through a wide network of informers put together by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the American Legion and the California Assembly's own Un-American Activities Committee, HUAC believed it had a good idea who was or had been a member of CPUSA. It had been said that by the early 1950s, when almost all of the Communist networks that had been active in the US during World War II had been broken up by the FBI or terminated by Moscow soon after the war (afraid its operatives might get caught), there were more FBI agents in the CPUSA than there were authentic, card-carrying Communists. The Alien Registration Act of 1940, a.k.a. the Smith Act, had been used to destroy CPUSA by banning the knowing or willful advocating, abetting, advising, or teaching the necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing the government of the U.S. or any of its subdivisions by force or violence, or by assassination of its officials. It also outlawed the printing, publishing, editing and distribution of materials advocating violent revolution, and made it a crime to organize, help or make attempts to organize any group advocating the same.
By outlawing "advocacy," a class of speech seemingly protected by the First Amendment, Congress had deliberately cast a wide net in which it caught many writers and performers with progressive tendencies, including lifelong Republican Henry Fonda and old liberal warhorse Edward G. Robinson, both of whom effectively were "graylisted" out of films for almost a decade and were forced to make their living in the theater, in which no blacklist existed. Interestingly, despite the theater being a form of communication and the new medium of television rapidly evolving as the most potent form of mass communication ever, many members of the gray- and blacklist (those who refused to testify before HUAC) could find employment. Those two media did not have the labor troubles that Hollywood did, nor the likely level of organized-crime affiliation that had been exposed during the extortion trial of International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees President George 'Calypso' Browne (also a vice president of the American Federation of Labor) and his right-hand man, Chicago mobster Willie Morris Bioff, shortly before the war that had led to the imprisonment of industry bagman Joseph Schenck of 20th Century-Fox (interestingly, the studios' initial payoff to the mob was done in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel where, a decade later, the movie moguls would agree to impose the blacklist). The movie magnates and Hollywood craft unions, whose members were dunned 2% of their wages for a "strike fund" that was channeled back to Bioff's "Outfit" (the old Al Capone mob) in Chicago, paid the mob as much as $15 million to ensure labor peace, in a symbiotic relationship the skirted the fine line between bribery and extortion. The federal government eventually broke up the Hollywood racket, in no small part because Screen Actor's Guild president Robert Montgomery had initiated an investigation of the situation. A Chicago tax court tackling the case ruled that the studio bosses "knowingly and willingly paid over the funds and in a sense lent encouragement and participated with full knowledge of the facts in the activities of Browne and Bioff." The moral rot of Hollywood was all pervasive. Sammy Glick was every bit as rotten as Budd Schulberg had warned.
Event though he was excused from testifying and did not defy the Committee, Maurice Rapf, after being called by HUAC (thus indicating industry knowledge of his connection to CPUSA) was subsequently blacklisted in accordance with the movie magnates Waldorf Statement. Rapf was done in partly due to his association with fellow unapologetic Stalinists like Lillian Hellman, a HUAC unfriendly witness, but more likely due to his militant support of labor unions during a time when Hollywood was besieged with labor troubles and the studios liked to tar union activists as "Red" in order to deliver Hollywood into the hands of more amenable (and bribe-able) mob-controlled unions. Disney was known to be an implacable foe of unionization, and although the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organization (separate entities until 1955) fought Communists and had been purging them from their member unions for years, the charge of being a secret Red remained a potent weapon in the studios' anti-labor arsenal for years to come.
Now blacklisted and thus technically unemployable as a screenwriter, Maurice Rapf left Hollywood and began a new life across the border from Hanover, New Hampshire, in Norwich, Vermont. He was one of the founders of The Dartmouth Film Society in 1949, the first college film society in the US. Like many blacklisted screenwriters who chose to remain in the country and pursue their craft, Rapf had to use various fronts to market his work. He also worked in the production of industrial films and television commercials in New York City, functioning as a writer, director and producer. In addition to these labors, Rapf was a movie critic for the mass-circulation periodicals `Life' and `Family Circle.'
It was in these years that his old friend and fellow Hollywood Prince Budd Schulberg forever tarnished his crown when he appeared as a friendly witness before HUAC on May 23, 1951, and named names. One of the 15 names he named was Maurice Rapf. Schulberg told HUAC that CPUSA tried to dictate changes to "What Makes Sammy Run?" so that it conformed to the Party line. He was ordered to talk to John Howard Lawson, their generalissimo of the arts in Hollywood, who asked him to submit an outline so that Lawson could vet his novel, a request Schulberg ignored. At a meeting with V.J. Jerome, the CPUSA theoretician whom former "Daily Worker" managing editor and blacklistee Howard Fast termed the Party "cultural czar", Schulberg was told "my entire attitude was wrong; that I was wrong about writing; wrong about this book; wrong about the Party . . . I remember it more as a kind of harangue. When I came away I felt maybe, almost for the first time, that this was to me the real face of the Party." Schulberg, once again playing Oedipus, proved determined to slay another patriarch.
In 1966 Maurice Rapf was hired by Dartmouth College as an adjunct professor to teach about the cinema. In 1976 he was promoted to full professor with the portfolio of establishing Dartmouth's new film studies program. As a professor, he was prized for his honesty; many of his students, after having established themselves in the business, would return to him for critiques and advice on their film projects. In 2000, he published "All About the Movies: A Textbook for the Movie-Loving Layman," based on his 30 years of teaching at Dartmouth. That book was published a year after his 1999 memoir, "Back Lot: Growing up with the Movies," an insider's look at the movie business.
An autobiography, the special strength of "Back Lot" is that Rapf's experiences are gained from first hand experience. He experienced the evolution of the American film industry from silence to sound, from the amalgamation of studio control to the overthrow of the studios by the independent contractor with his or her own production company. Rapf gives special attention to the film community's awakening from an apolitical apathy, focused on assimilation rather than confrontation, towards a community increasingly aware of its social responsibility due to the Great Depression and the war against the fascist Axis powers.
Variety, the bible of show business, reported in its July 31, 1998 issue that the Writers Guild of America, the union that Rapf had helped found, had voted to give screen credits to 13 blacklisted screenwriters, including Rapf, for their unaccredited contributions to 21 movies produced during the period of 1950-69. The WGA's Blacklist Credits Committee had conducted an investigation into the production history of each movie with questionable credits, a process hampered by the blacklisted screenwriters' use of fronts and the pseudonyms. Although Dalton Trumbo of Hollywood Ten fame broke the blacklist in 1960 with credits for Spartacus (1960) (at the insistence of producer/star Kirk Douglas) and Exodus (1960) (because of the efforts of director/producer Otto Preminger), some screenwriters had continued to write under pseudonyms until the 1970s.
In addition to Rapf, who was given credit on The Detective (1954), the blacklisted writers included the late Paul Jarrico, one of the more famous of blacklisted screenwriters, who posthumously picked up four credits. Jarrico had refused to be given credit by the committee until after it had investigated all other blacklisted screen writers. CPUSA stalwart and Hollywood Ten member John Howard Lawson picked up one credit, while Carl Foreman, one of the first benefactors of credit restoration when he and Michael Wilson were given credit (and posthumous Academy Award statuettes) for the Oscar-winning screenplay for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), picked up another credit, for the Oscar-nominated screenplay of A Hatful of Rain (1957), which lost to their "Kwai" screenplay (originally credited to Pierre Boulle, a Frenchman who did not write in English).
Screenwriters who were awarded multiple new credits were Henry Blankfort, with three, and Daniel James and Robert L. Richards, with two each. Screenwriters receiving a single new credit were Leonardo Bercovici, Jerome Chodorov, Howard Dimsdale, Howard Koch, Jean Rouverol and Donald Ogden Stewart. WGA West president 'Daniel Petrie Jr., at the announcement of the new credits, said, "It is with pride and sadness that we announce these changes."
In a speech at the University of Oklahoma, Rapf said that Walt Disney & Co. had contacted him about a re-release of "Song of the South" on DVD. The studio wanted to create disclaimers about the film's "racial insensitivity" and asked Rapf to write them. Ever the committed progressive, he declined, thus able to expiate a sin from the past, as he had come to believe that the film was inherently racist and should never have been made. No one ever claimed that Maurice Rapf was not a man of his word, or a man of courage who stood up for what he believed in. In his belief in himself and his ideals, this idealistic man who was accused of being "anti-American" elucidated the best of the American character.
Maurice Rapf died on April 15, 2003, at the age of 88. He had been married to his wife, the former movie actress Louise Siedel, for 56 years before her death. His daughter, Joanna E. Rapf, is a Professor of English and Film & Video Studies at the University of Oklahoma, but regularly teaches as a Visiting Professor of Film & Television Studies at her father's alma mater.
Upon his death, Dartmouth President James Wright eulogized the man responsible for the success for the college's film department. "Because of Maurice Rapf's commitment, love and encouragement, the Dartmouth Film Society is a highly-regarded Dartmouth institution and Film Studies is a strong and thriving department on campus. Dartmouth is forever enriched by his commitment. We will greatly miss our friend and colleague."
The college bestows the Maurice Rapf Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film at Dartmouth in his honor.