Veteran Canadian filmmaker Alvin Rakoff passes away at 97
Veteran Canadian filmmaker Alvin Rakoff passes away at 97
Veteran Canadian filmmaker well-acclaimed for directing Laurence Olivier in ‘A Voyage Round My Father’, haspassed away at 97.
As per his agent, cause of death was old age. He was surrounded by his family amidst his last days.
He has been in the entertainment industry over a career spanning more than four decades. This was when television was available only in black-and-white.
Rakoff was involved in over 100 television, film and stage productions as well as writing novels. According to his representatives, he was still working into his ’90s.
Rakoff was the third of seven children born to Sam and Pearl Rakoff in Toronto in 1927. His parents owned a dry goods shop but the director grew up in poverty after the great depression hit in 1929. He would later recount the experience in his novel “Baldwin Street.”
After watching his first film in a theatre at the age of 6, his love for film and television ignited. He graduated in psychology from the University of Toronto before turning a journalist. But it was watching Marlon Brando in a stage production of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” that transformed the course of his life. After leaving the play, Rakoff desired to make a career in show-business.
When he was 25 he worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) as a writer, which sent him to the U.K.
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