Samson Raphaelson
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 1925 play, The Jazz Singer.He then worked as a screenwriter with Ernst Lubitsch on sophisticated comedies such as Trouble in Paradise, The Shop Around the Corner, and Heaven Can Wait and with Alfred Hitchcock on Suspicion.Accent On Youth was a critical and popular success both on Broadway and in London's West End, where the young Greer Garson played the leading role.One called it “the best play of the season” and added that it contained “some of the finest writing to grace a stage in several years.” Another, commenting on one main character inspired by the colorful writer William Saroyan, wrote: “Many authors have tried to put into their plays characters that possess the picturesque qualities attributed to Saroyan, but Mr. Raphaelson is the first to do the thing successfully.” In 1948, Raphaelson taught a master class in “creative writing with an emphasis on the drama” at the University of Illinois.All directed by Lubitsch, the three were Trouble in Paradise, Heaven Can Wait, and Raphaelson's favorite, The Shop Around the Corner; this last had starred James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, and Pauline Kael, the eminent film critic of The New Yorker, called it “as close to perfection as a movie made by mortals is ever likely to be; it couldn’t be the airy wonder it was without the structure Raphaelson built into it.” (The story was remade in 1998 as You've Got Mail, with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.)[4]Three Screen Comedies also included a reprint of Freundschaft, Raphaelson's wry and affectionate reflection on his working relationship with Lubitsch that had originally appeared in The New Yorker in 1982.Dorshka Raphaelson published two novels: Glorified, an account of her life in the Follies, and Morning Song, a highly praised story about growing up in New York's Washington Heights.Joel edited The Unpublished David Ogilvy: His Secrets of Management, Creativity, and Success - from Private Papers and Public Fulminations, prized reading for advertising professionals.