Irving Ravetch

Irving Ravetch (November 14, 1920 – September 19, 2010) was an American screenwriter known for his enduring collaboration with his wife Harriet Frank Jr., with whom he co-wrote acclaimed screenplays for films including The Long, Hot Summer, Hud, and Norma Rae. Their partnership produced influential adaptations of literary works and real-life events, often in close association with director Martin Ritt across eight films, earning Academy Award nominations for Best Screenplay on Hud (1963) and Norma Rae (1979).

Born on November 14, 1920, in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish immigrant parents—his father a Russian pharmacist who later became a rabbi and his mother a Hebrew teacher from what is now Israel—Ravetch endured childhood asthma that led him to live with an aunt in Los Angeles for several years. He attended Long Beach City College before graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied literature and participated in theater. After brief Army service, he began his Hollywood career in the 1940s with freelance screenwriting credits, including his first in 1947 on Living in a Big Way, and initially aspired to playwrighting.

Ravetch met Harriet Frank Jr. in 1945 at MGM's young writers program and married her the following year, launching their joint screenwriting career in the late 1950s with The Long, Hot Summer (1958), an adaptation of William Faulkner's work. Their scripts frequently reshaped source material to address social themes, as seen in Hud (adapted from Larry McMurtry), Hombre, Conrack, Murphy's Romance, and Stanley and Iris. Ravetch died on September 19, 2010, in Los Angeles at age 89 from pneumonia, survived by his wife and siblings.