ALVIN RAKOFF

 

(6 February 1927 - 12 October 2024)

Alvin Rakoff, the Canadian film, stage and television director, who has died aged 97, had a career that established him as a force to be reckoned. His work spanned over fifty years and in between times he engaged his talents writing for TV, films and books. He was born in Toronto where his parents had met. His mother was from Ukraine, his father from Russia and together they ran a shop in the city market. Early on Alvin became a TV journalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation who sent him to Britain to gather experience for the new CBC channel. It didn't take him long to sell a script to the BBC and by the age of 26 he was a producer-director for BBC Drama. In his time he directed or produced over a hundred plays or series for television and cinema. The British media owe him and his co-patriot Sydney Newman (1917-87) an immense debt of gratitude because without them British TV drama might have been much less interesting. Both Rakoff and Newman certainly made a difference as  exponents of television as a popular art form. 

Rakoff gave Sean Connery a boost by casting him in Rod Serling's boxing drama Requiem for a Heavyweight in which Michael Caine also appeared. He gave Alan Rickman his first professional job as Romeo and managed to lure the cream of the British acting profession to TV, including Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Judi Dench, Michael Crawford, Simon Russell Beale, Edward Fox and Jeremy Irons. In films he cast Henry Fonda, Ava Gardner, Rex Harrison, Rod Steiger and Shelley Winters et al. Rakoff took famous plays or books and adapted them for television such as Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, John Mortimer's A Voyage Round My Father with Olivier and Alan Bates, and Mortimer's Paradise Postponed (both were Bafta nominated), Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Simon Gray's Stage Struck, O'Casey's Shadow of a Gunman, Graham Greene's stories for Shades of Greene (another Bafta nomination) and The Adventures of Don Quixote with Rex Harrison and Frank Finlay — altogether a range of projects that Rakoff found appealing and yet it's just a small part of his workload of over a hundred plays and films. One project gave him his biggest audience ever when, in 1957, the BBC commissioned him to produce and direct for The Largest Theatre in the World series, a new play by Terence Rattigan called Heart to Heart, with Ralph Richardson and Kenneth More, which was broadcast across Europe. Guest actors included Wendy Craig, Megs Jenkins, Jean Marsh, Peter Sallis, Alan Howard, Jean Alexander etc in the British cast, while other countries did their own productions simultaneously. His last TV work was 1997's A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell's scathing novels on upper class England.

Among the films that Rakoff directed were World in My Pocket, a thriller with Rod Steiger; The Comedy Man with Kenneth More, that had a limited release coupled with Peter Brook's Lord of the Flies; Crossplot, an international crime drama with Roger Moore; and Hoffman, with Peter Sellers as a man who blackmails a young woman (Sinead Cusack) into staying with him for a week. Jean Simmons and Leonard Whiting played strangers who meet on a train and end up in bed in Say Hello to Yesterday; City on Fire had Henry Fonda, Ava Gardner and Shelley Winters in a disaster movie set in an oil refinery; while King Soloman's Treasure was a new look at the stories of H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quartermain. Death Ship found George Kennedy and Richard Crenna in a horror film set in Quebec. Rakoff's last feature was Dirty Tricks, a comedy with Elliott Gould, so that in his time Rakoff covered most popular film genres. He should have directed The Anniversary but the star, a miscast Bette Davis, had him fired. It could have been a much better film with Rakoff and Mona Washbourne, who did the Davis role on stage.

Alvin Rakoff was first married to actress Jacqueline Hill, of Doctor Who fame, who died in 1993. They had a son John and a daughter Sasha. In 2013 he married Sally Hughes, managing director of The Mill at Sonning, for whom Rakoff staged a musical show on the life of Doris Day. He published several books including autobiographies, I'm Just the Guy Who Says Action and I Need Another Take, Darling.

MICHAEL DARVELL

 
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