Norman Reilly Raine was the creator of Tugboat Annie and a prolific screenwriter who won an Oscar for the screenplay of The Life of Emile Zola

The Life of Emile Zola

The Life of Emile Zola is a 1937 American biographical film about French author Émile Zola. Set in the mid through late 19th century, it depicts his friendship with noted painter Paul Cézanne, and his rise to fame through his prolific writing, with particular focus on his involvement in the Dreyfus...

(1937).

Early years

Raine was born at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He began writing in 1912, when he was 17, with a job as a reporter on The Buffalo Morning Express. He stayed two years and left for service with the Canadian Expeditionary Force

Canadian Expeditionary Force

The Canadian Expeditionary Force was the designation of the field force created by Canada for service overseas in the First World War. Units of the C.E.F. were divided into field formation in France, where they were organized first into separate divisions and later joined together into a single...

 during World War I. He was discharged as a captain in the Royal Air Force. After the war he joined MacLean's Magazine in Toronto and became assistant editor. He died in Woodland Hills, California.

Broadway

Raine tried the Broadway stage in 1933. With Frank Butler as collaborator, he wrote Hangman's Whip, a jungle melodrama in which two well-known Hollywood actors, Montagu Love

Montagu Love

Montagu Love , also known as Montague Love, was an English screen, stage and vaudeville actor.Born Harry Montague Love in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, and educated in Great Britain, Love began his career as an artist and military correspondent. His first important job was as a London newspaper...

 and Barton MacLane

Barton MacLane

Barton MacLane was an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter. Although he has appeared in many classic films from the 1930s through the 1960s, he was known for his role as Gen...

, played leading roles.

Hollywood

Raine wrote a series of Tugboat Annie stories for the Saturday Evening Post. In 1933 he wrote the screenplay for the film

Tugboat Annie

For the 1957 syndicated television series, see The Adventures of Tugboat Annie.Tugboat Annie is a 1933 movie starring Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery as a comically quarrelsome middle-aged couple who operate a tugboat...

, in which Marie Dressler

Marie Dressler

Marie Dressler was a Canadian-American actress and Depression-era film star. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1930-31 in Min and Bill.-Early life and stage career:...

 played Annie and Wallace Beery

Wallace Beery

Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...

 portrayed Terry, her hard-drinking husband, with whom she traded choice insults. Subsequently, Raine wrote many other screenplays, among them The Perfect Specimen, God's Country and the Woman, The Adventures of Robin Hood

The Adventures of Robin Hood (film)

The Adventures of Robin Hood is a 1938 American swashbuckler film directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley. Filmed in Technicolor, the picture stars Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains.-Plot:...

, Each Dawn I Die

Each Dawn I Die

Each Dawn I Die is a 1939 gangster film featuring James Cagney and George Raft in their only movie together as leads, although Raft had made an unbilled appearance in a 1932 Cagney vehicle called Taxi! in which he won a dance contest against Cagney, after which he and Cagney brawl...

, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex is a 1939 historical romantic drama film. It is based on the relationship between Queen Elizabeth I, portrayed by Bette Davis, and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, played by Errol Flynn...

, The Fighting 69th, Eagle Squadron, Ladies Courageous, We've Never Been Licked

We've Never Been Licked

We've Never Been Licked is a World War II propaganda film produced by Walter Wanger and released by United Artists. Parts of the movie were shot on location at the Texas A&M University campus...

, Nob Hill

Nob Hill (1945 film)

Nob Hill is a 1945 technicolor film about a Barbary Coast saloon keeper starring George Raft and Joan Bennett. Part musical and part drama, the movie was directed by Henry Hathaway.-Cast:*George Raft as Tony Angelo*Joan Bennett as Harriet Carruthers...

, A Bell for Adano

A Bell for Adano

A Bell for Adano is a film directed by Henry King starring John Hodiak and Gene Tierney. The film was adapted from the novel A Bell for Adano by John Hersey, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. In his 1945 review of the film, Bosley Crowther wrote, "... this easily vulnerable picture, which came...

, Captain Kidd

Captain Kidd (1945 film)

Captain Kidd is a film starring Charles Laughton, Randolph Scott, Barbara Britton, and John Carradine, directed by Rowland V. Lee, produced by Benedict Bogeaus and James Nasser, music conduced by Werner Janssen, and released by United Artists. The film has entered the public domain since the...

and Captains of the Clouds

Captains of the Clouds

Captains of the Clouds is a 1942 Warner Bros. war film in Technicolor, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring James Cagney. It was produced by William Cagney , with Hal B. Wallis as executive producer. The screenplay was written by Arthur T. Horman, Richard Macaulay and Norman Reilly Raine,...

.

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