Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Rasky, Harry, 1928-.
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
Harry Rasky (1928-9 April 2007), author and film maker, was born and educated in Toronto, receiving his BA from the University of Toronto (1949). Following a start in the news business (print and radio), Rasky was a co-founder of the News-Documentary Department of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (1952-1955), later working for "Saturday Night". However, it was the development of Harry Rasky Productions Inc. in 1967 that gave Rasky his reputation as one of the major documentary directors of the late twentieth century. His documentaries on Marc Chagall, Edgare Degas, Tennessee Williams, George Bernard Shaw and others have won international acclaim and he has received some of the highest awards in the fields of film and television including, Venice Film Festival, 1970 ("Upon this rock"), an Emmy, the Peabody Award, an award from the Freedom Foundation -- over two hundred awards in all. He has directed some of the major actors of the film world (Welles, Richardson, James Mason, Dirk Bogarde) and his work has been shown in film festivals, on the CBC and the major American networks (ABC, CBS and NBC), as well as overseas.
Rasky has also taught at the University of Iowa, the New School for Social Research, and Columbia University. He is the author of "Lower than the Angels," "Tennessee Williams: A Portrait in Laughter and Lamentation," and "Nobody Swings on a Sunday" (a memoir). His film titles include "Modigliani : Body and Soul (2005), "The William Hutt Story" (1996), "Prophecy" (1994), "The War Against the Indians" (1992), "The Magic Season of Robertson Davies" (1990), "Degas" (1988), "The Mystery of Henry Moore" (1985), "The Spies Who Never Were" (1981), "The Man Who Hid Anne Frank" (1980), "Arthur Miller on Home Ground (1979), "Baryshnikov" (1974), "Biography of a Disaster" (1964), "CBC Newsmagazine" (1954), among others.