Alvin Rakoff, prolific director and producer of scores of film and TV productions including Requiem for a Heavyweight, Passport to Shame and A Dance to the Music of Time, has died aged 97. His family announced his death in a statement, saying Rakoff “passed away … surrounded by his loving family in the same, beautiful old house in Chiswick he had bought back in 1971”.
Born in Toronto in 1927, Rakoff came from a family of east European Jewish immigrants to Canada, but came to the UK in 1952 after turning his back on the family shop and committing to a career in show business. Having worked as a writer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Rakoff was quickly accepted on the BBC’s directors’ training course and moved swiftly on to make a string of successful TV dramas.
Rakoff soon made his mark: his 1954 drama Waiting for Gillian won a National Television award and in 1957 he cast a then unknown Sean Connery in the lead role in the British version of the successful American TV play Requiem for a Heavyweight. A year later he made his feature film directing debut with the Diana Dors thriller Passport to Shame.
Rakoff specialised in TV plays and dramas, nearly all of them made in the UK which had become his permanent home. The Terence Rattigan-scripted Heart to Heart was part of the Europe-wide broadcast The Largest Theatre in the World in 1962, and Call Me Daddy, starring Donald Pleasence and Judy Cornwell, won an Emmy in 1967. (Rakoff remade it as a feature film in 1970 with Peter Sellers as the businessman who blackmails his secretary, played by Sinéad Cusack.)
In the 1970s and 80s Rakoff embarked on large-scale, starry projects: The Adventures of Don Quixote in 1973 featured Rex Harrison and Frank Finlay; John Mortimer’s A Voyage Round My Father starred Laurence Olivier in 1982; and Mortimer’s Paradise Postponed was aired over 11 episodes in 1986. In 1997 he was one of two directors on the mammoth A Dance to the Music of Time, adapted from Anthony Powell’s novel series.
In a statement, Stephen Fry said: “Alvin Rakoff was a giant of film, theatre and TV. His Midas touch with spotting and fostering talent introduced the world to some of the last century’s greatest stars.” Dame Judi Dench said: “I have such wonderful memories of Alvin … A very endearing person.”
Wendy Craig, who starred in Heart to Heart opposite Kenneth More and Ralph Richardson said: “He was inspiring to work with, as well as patient and kind and totally dedicated to writing and directing drama … he will be much missed by all who knew him and had the pleasure of working with him.”
Rakoff published two volumes of memoirs, I’m Just the Guy Who Says Action and I Need Another Take, Darling in 2021 and 2022. He was married twice, to actor Jacqueline Hill from 1958 to her death in 1993, and to Sally Hughes in 2013, who survives him.
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