Irving RapperFilmography

Born:: London, England, UK
Occupation:: Director
Biography:: London-born Irving Rapper originally came to the stage as a director while studying at New York University, and made appearances as both an actor and director on Broadway before going to Hollywood, initially as an assistant director and dialogue coach at Warner Bros., where much of his job...Read More

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Sextette

Crew: Director

Actors: Mae West, Timothy Dalton, Dom DeLuise, Tony Curtis, Ringo Starr

Synopsis: Mae West (1892-1980) was perhaps the original comic sex goddess of American cinema. Originally a vaudeville performer, she became a national sensation following her 1926 Broadway show Sex, which she wrote, produced, directed and starred in. She continued to outrage the sensibilities of her time on Read More

1978
Born Again

Crew: Director

Actors: Dean Jones, Anne Francis, Jay Robinson, Dana Andrews, Raymond St. Jacques

Synopsis: President Richard Nixon's legal counsellor Charles Colson was tried for several criminal charges relating to the Watergate cover-up, eventually spending some time in prison. This film explores Colson's personal crisis, and the religious convictions which, crossing party boundaries, worked to bring Read More

1978
The Christine Jorgensen Story

Crew: Director

Actors: John Hansen, Joan Tompkins, Quinn K. Redeker, John Himes, Ellen Clark

Synopsis: Taken from the autobiography of the world's first transsexual, George Jorgensen (John Hansen) is a woman trapped in a man's body who opts for surgery and hormone treatments to make him a woman. Events of his childhood are covered, showing young George preferring dolls over contact sports. Inducted Read More

1970
Pontius Pilate

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This Italian drama tells the story of Christ's crucifixion from the viewpoint of the Roman emperor's procurator in Israel who must try to quell a Jewish revolt. In a bizarre twist, John Drew Barrymore plays both Jesus and Judas in the film. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

2/15/62
The Story of Joseph and His Brethren

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this biblical epic, the rise of the humble Joseph from hapless slave to prophet and advisor to the Pharoah is chronicled. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1962
Joseph and His Brethren

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Irving Rapper's film is a dramatization of the Old Testament tale of Joseph, who ascends from slavery to the position of minister in the court of the pharaoh. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

1960
The Miracle

Crew: Director

Actors: Carroll Baker, Roger Moore, Walter Slezak, Vittorio Gassman, Katina Paxinou

Synopsis: Whatever the "miracle" is in this story, set back in the 19th century, it tends to be buried underneath the multiple romances of the heroine Teresa (Carroll Baker), a woman who leaves the convent to find one specific man. Teresa falls in love with Michael (Roger Moore) a dashing Englishman in the Read More

1959
Marjorie Morningstar

Crew: Director

Actors: Gene Kelly, Natalie Wood, Claire Trevor, Everett Sloane, Martin Milner

Synopsis: Marjorie Morgenstern (Natalie Wood) is an 18-year-old, middle-class, Jewish girl from New York who wants nothing more than to be an actress, despite the hopes and wishes of her parents (Everett Sloane and Claire Trevor) that she graduate from college, marry, and settle down to have a family. At Read More

1958
The Brave One

Crew: Director

Actors: Michael Ray, Rodolfo Hoyos, Elsa Cardenas, Carlos Navarro, Joi Lansing

Synopsis: The Brave One is a bull named Gitano (or Gypsy). Mexican lad Michael Ray "adopts" Gitano after saving the animal's life during a storm. The friendship between bull and boy is threatened when Gitano's legal owners claim the animal and ship it off to the bullring. Moved by the boy's plight, the Read More

1956
Strange Intruder

Crew: Director

Actors: Edmund Purdom, Ida Lupino, Ann Harding, Jacques Bergerac, Gloria Talbott

Synopsis: In one of his last appearances in a Hollywood production, Edmund Purdom plays Korean war veteran Paul Quentin. Keeping his promise to his dead war buddy Adrian (Donald Murphy), Quentin arrives at the doorstep of his Adrian's widow Alice (Ida Lupino). Alice and her children welcome Quentin with Read More

1956
Bad for Each Other

Crew: Director

Actors: Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Dianne Foster, Mildred Dunnock, Arthur Franz

Synopsis: The film Bad For Each Other, together with stars Charlton Heston and Lizabeth Scott and director Irving Rapper, were originally assembled into a package by producer Hal Wallis for Paramount. Shortly thereafter, however, Wallis found it expedient to sell the whole package to Columbia, though the Read More

1954
Forever Female

Crew: Director

Actors: Ginger Rogers, William Holden, Paul Douglas, James Gleason, Jesse White

Synopsis: Sir James Barrie's whimsical play Rosalind was updated and urbanized as the 1953 film Forever Female. Ginger Rogers plays a veteran Broadway star who has optioned a play written by William Holden. Though on the less sunny side of 40, Rogers expects to play the leading role, that of a 19 year old Read More

1953
Another Man's Poison

Crew: Director

Actors: Bette Davis, Gary Merrill, Emlyn Williams, Anthony Steel, Barbara Murray

Synopsis: Bette Davis co-stars with her then-new husband Gary Merrill in the British melodrama Another Man's Poison. Adapted from Leslie Sands' novel Deadlock, the story concerns one Janet Frobisher (Davis), a successful writer of suspense novels. Janet's life is thrown into turmoil when her disreputable Read More

1951
The Glass Menagerie

Crew: Director

Actors: Jane Wyman, Kirk Douglas, Gertrude Lawrence, Arthur Kennedy, Ralph Sanford

Synopsis: Adapted from the play by Tennessee Williams, Glass Menagerie centers around four unhappy people living in a rundown section of St. Louis. Tom, the story's narrator (Arthur Kennedy) is a poetic idealist trapped in a dead-end job, drowning his sorrows in booze. Tom lives with his mother Amanda (Gertrude Lawrence Read More

1950
Anna Lucasta

Crew: Director

Actors: Paulette Goddard, William Bishop, Oscar Homolka, John Ireland, Broderick Crawford

Synopsis: Philip Yordan's stage hit Anna Lucasta posed two problems to Hollywood in 1949. For one thing, the story concerned a prostitute who is exploited by her greedy family. For another, the characters were black, thereby cutting the box-office potential in half in those racially divisive times. In Read More

1949
The Voice of the Turtle

Crew: Director

Actors: Ronald Reagan, Eleanor Parker, Eve Arden, Wayne Morris, Kent Smith

Synopsis: John Van Druten's Broadway hit The Voice of the Turtle was purchased by Warner Bros. as a vehicle for...well, in all likelihood, stars Eleanor Parker and Ronald Reagan were both second choices. Reagan is a returning GI who falls in love with Parker, an ingenuous young actress. Circumstances Read More

1947
Deception

Crew: Director

Actors: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, John Abbott, Benson Fong

Synopsis: Deception is an operatic rehash of the 1929 film Jealousy. Music teacher Bette Davis--who evidently has a large student pool, judging by the size of her penthouse apartment--is reunited with her cellist lover Paul Henreid, whom she believed to have been killed in the war. Henreid wants to marry Read More

1946
Rhapsody in Blue

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Alda, Joan Leslie, Alexis Smith, Charles Coburn, Julie Bishop, Oscar Levant

Synopsis: There's slightly more fancy than fact in this lavish film biography of legendary American composer George Gershwin, but oh! That music! Director Irving Rapper had wanted Tyrone Power to play Gershwin, but Power was still serving in the Marines, so Rapper had to settle for Robert Alda--who isn't Read More

1945
The Corn Is Green

Crew: Director

Actors: Bette Davis, Nigel Bruce, John Dall, Joan Lorring, Rhys Williams, Mildred Dunnock, Rosalind Ivan

Synopsis: In this 1945 filmization of Emlyn Williams' semi-autobiographical 1938 play The Corn is Green, Bette Davis steps into the role originated on Broadway by Ethel Barrymore. Davis plays Miss Moffat, a turn-of-the-century schoolteacher in a Welsh mining town. She has opened her own school in hopes of Read More

1945
The Adventures of Mark Twain

Crew: Director

Actors: Fredric March, Alexis Smith, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: Dismissed by critics as corny and obvious in 1944, this overlong but sincere biopic looks pretty good when seen today, cliches notwithstanding. Fredric March, 47 at the time, convincingly plays American author Sam Clemens, aka Mark Twain, from his early 20s to his death at 75. In typical Read More

1944
The Gay Sisters

Crew: Director

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Donald Crisp, Nancy Coleman

Synopsis: In this grim melodrama, Barbara Stanwyck plays the eldest of three wealthy sisters who become orphans when their father dies in France. Threatened with the danger of losing the opulent family home, Big Sister makes a grand sacrifice and secretly marries a real estate developer so she can inherit Read More

1942
Now, Voyager

Crew: Director

Actors: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Bonita Granville, Gladys Cooper, Ilka Chase

Synopsis: Olive Higgins Prouty's popular novel was transformed into nearly two hours of high-grade soap opera by several masters of the trade: Warner Bros., Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, director Irving Rapper, and screenwriter Casey Robinson. Davis plays repressed Charlotte Vale, dying on the vine thanks to Read More

1942
One Foot in Heaven

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Fredric March, Martha Scott, Beulah Bondi, Gene Lockhart, Elisabeth Fraser

Synopsis: Author Hartzell Spence's popular biography of his preacher father was the source for One Foot in Heaven. Fredric March stars as Methodist cleric William Spence, whose calling requires him to move his family from parish to parish on a near-monthly basis. The children resent the fact that they're Read More

1941
Shining Victory

Crew: Director

Actors: James Stephenson, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Donald Crisp, Barbara O'Neil, Montagu Love

Synopsis: In this melodrama, a loyal research psychologist escapes from Budapest after the nature of his work is discovered. He resettles in Scotland and soon resumes his work. His benefactors provide him a female assistant, and at first the stubborn scientist is not pleased. Eventually the two fall in Read More

1941
The Life of Emile Zola

Crew: Director

Actors: Paul Muni, Gloria Holden, Gale Sondergaard, Joseph Schildkraut, Robert Warwick, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: The second of Paul Muni's biographical films for Warner Bros., the Oscar-winning The Life of Emile Zola is by far the best, even allowing for the dramatic license taken with the material. When first we meet French novelist and essayist Zola, he is starving in a Parisian garret with his painter Read More

1937