Samson Raphaelson
Born	(1894-03-30)March 30, 1894 New York City, U.S.
Died	July 16, 1983(1983-07-16) (aged 89) New York City, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Occupations	Playwright novelist screenwriter reporter
Years active	1925–1965
Spouse	Dorothy Wegman Raphaelson ​ ​ (m. 1927)​
Children	2
Relatives	Bob Rafelson (nephew) Paul Raphaelson (grandson)

Samson Raphaelson (March 30, 1894 – July 16, 1983) was an 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 ofAl Jolson, calledThe Day of Atonement, which he then converted into a 1925 play,The Jazz Singer. In 1927 this would becomethe first talking picture, with Jolson its star. He then worked as a screenwriter withErnst Lubitsch on sophisticated comedies such asTrouble in Paradise,The Shop Around the Corner, andHeaven Can Wait and with Alfred Hitchcock onSuspicion. His short stories appeared inThe Saturday Evening Post and other leading magazines, and he taught creative writing at theUniversity of Illinois.

Raphaelson was born to a Jewish family in New York, the son of Anna (Marks) and Ralph Raphaelson.^[1][2] After graduating from theUniversity of Illinois, he lived for varying periods inChicago,San Francisco, andNew 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 ofThe Jazz Singer.

Raphaelson's second play,Young Love, was banned inBoston when authorities found it too racy. It starredDorothy Gish, one of the leading actresses of the day.

Three of his subsequent six plays produced on Broadway were chosen for publication in the annualTen Best Plays of the Season, compiled byBurns Mantle, the widely read critic of theNew York Daily News, at the time the largest circulation daily in the U.S. They wereAccent On Youth (1934),Skylark (1939) andJason (1941).

Accent On Youth was a critical and popular success both on Broadway and in London's West End, where the youngGreer Garson played the leading role.Skylark, another substantial hit, starredGertrude Lawrence.Jason was less successful commercially but won high praise from the New York critics. 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 writerWilliam 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 theUniversity of Illinois. He recorded the experience in a book,The Human Nature of Playwriting. The introduction expresses Raphaelson's deep regard for language so visible in his writing:

This course does not aim directly to teach writing. Whether you write or not after you finish school means nothing to me as a teacher. In fact, I don’t think it is important from any viewpoint. But whether you live or not is important; and how you live. You may become businessmen or women, office workers, farmers, or wives, and as such you will be, whether you know it or not, deeply related to the culture of your age. That culture is largely expressed by creative writers through the written word. And if from this course you get a notion of how that written word comes into being, of the connection between a writer and his own life and between his life and all lives, then this course will be successful indeed.^[3]

In the 1940s many Raphaelson short stories appeared inLadies Home Journal,Good Housekeeping, andThe Saturday Evening Post, in that period the nation's highest-paying publishers of short fiction.

In later years, as a result of Raphaelson's newly found passion for photography, he wrote a variety of articles for the leading photographic magazines. Some of his thousands of photos ran in the magazines, both as accompaniments to his articles and independent of them.

In 1983, theUniversity of Wisconsin Press publishedThree Screen Comedies by Samson Raphaelson with an introduction byPauline Kael. All directed by Lubitsch, the three wereTrouble in Paradise,Heaven Can Wait, and Raphaelson's favorite,The Shop Around the Corner; this last had starredJames Stewart andMargaret Sullavan, andPauline Kael, the eminent film critic ofThe 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 asYou've Got Mail, withTom Hanks andMeg Ryan.) Of his screenplays in general, Kael declared:

Raphaelson took the giddiest inspirations and then polished his dialogue until it had the gleam of appliquéd butterfly wings on aZiegfeld girl’s toque, but the skeletal strength of his screenplays was what made it possible for the ideas and the words to take flight.^[4]

Three Screen Comedies also included a reprint ofFreundschaft, Raphaelson's wry and affectionate reflection on his working relationship with Lubitsch that had originally appeared inThe New Yorker in 1982.

In 1977, Raphaelson received the Laurel Award for lifetime achievement in screenwriting from theWriters Guild of America.

In an interview series entitled "Creativity with Bill Moyers," an episode that aired in 1982 profiled Raphaelson's career and included an extended interview with him by Moyers. This program is among the extras included on the Criterion Collection DVD of "Heaven Can Wait."

In his seventies and early eighties Raphaelson became an adjunct professor atColumbia University in New York, where he taught a course in screenwriting. In 1976 Columbia awarded him an honorary degree.

Raphaelson died on July 16, 1983, at the age of eighty-nine.

His first wife was Rayna Simon from Chicago, who also studied at the University of Illinois. She became a legendary figure,Rayna Prohme, thanks toVincent Sheean's bestselling bookPersonal History in the 1930s.^{[citation needed]}

Raphaelson was married for 56 years toDorothy Wegman, known to friends and family as Dorshka. The name was given to her by her friend Marion Benda, a fellow dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies in the early 1920s. Dorshka Raphaelson published two novels:Glorified, an account of her life in the Follies, andMorning Song, a highly praised story about growing up in New York's Washington Heights.^{[citation needed]}

Raphaelson's son, Joel (1928-2021), became a senior ad executive and close associate of advertising legendDavid Ogilvy. Joel editedThe Unpublished David Ogilvy: His Secrets of Management, Creativity, and Success - from Private Papers and Public Fulminations, prized reading for advertising professionals. Joel also co-wrote (with Kenneth Roman)Writing that Works. PhotographerPaul Raphaelson is Joel's son.^{[citation needed]}

Samson's daughter, Naomi (1930–2009), was a newspaper reporter and columnist inLancaster, Pennsylvania. Samson's much-younger first cousin, once removed,^[5]Bob Rafelson, sometimes jokingly referred to by him as his nephew, directed several films from the 1960s through the 2000s, includingFive Easy Pieces.^{[citation needed]}

Samson Raphaelson died in July 1983, at the age of 89. Dorshka Raphaelson died in November 2005, just 22 days short of her 101st birthday. At her deathThe New York Times reported that she had been one of the last two living Ziegfeld girls.^{[citation needed]}

• The Jazz Singer (1925)
• Young Love
• The Wooden Slipper
• Accent on Youth (1934)
• Skylark (1939)
• Jason (1941)
• The Perfect Marriage (1944)
• Hilda Crane (1950)
• Bannerline (1951)

Wikimedia Commons has media related toSamson Raphaelson.

• Samson Raphaelson atIMDb
• http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/david-hyde-pierce-of-accent-on-youth-a-modern-man-for-a-1930s-comedy/
• "For the first time in decades, the best book ever written about writing is back in print", by Emily VanDerWerff,Vox (December 2, 2015).
• Finding aid to Samson Raphaelson papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

• American male screenwriters
• Writers Guild of America Award winners
• Hugo Award–winning writers
• 1894 births
• 1983 deaths
• American male dramatists and playwrights
• 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
• 20th-century American male writers
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni
• 20th-century American screenwriters

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