Irving Dover Ravetch (November 14, 1920 – September 19, 2010) was an American screenwriter and film producer who frequently collaborated with his wife Harriet Frank, Jr.

Life and career 

Ravetch was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Sylvia (Shapiro) and I. Shalom Ravetch, a rabbi. Ravetch was an aspiring playwright when he enrolled at University of California, Los Angeles. Following graduation, he joined the young writer's training program at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he met Frank, whom he married in 1946. The following year he gained his first screen credit with Living in a Big Way.

For the next decade, Ravetch worked mostly on Western films such as Vengeance Valley. In 1958, he and Frank approached producer Jerry Waldand proposed they adapt the 1940 William Faulkner novel The Hamlet for the screen. The result was The Long, Hot Summer, which primarily was an original story with one of Faulkner's characters at its center. When Wald greenlighted the film and asked Ravetch to choose a director, he suggestedMartin Ritt, whom he knew from the Group Theatre and the Actors Studio in New York City. The Long, Hot Summer proved to be the first of eight projects - including The Sound and the Fury, Hud, Norma Rae, Murphy's Romance, and Stanley & Iris - written by Ravetch and Frank and directed by Ritt. Additional screenwriting credits include Home from the Hill, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, The Reivers, The Spikes Gang, and The Cowboys.

Ravetch and Frank were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and won both the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Hud. He is a recipient of the Bronze Wrangler for The Cowboys and additional Oscar, WGA, and Golden Globe nominations. Ravetch died from pneumonia on September 19, 2010.

Source: Wikipedia