Jake Liebowitz: A Life in Film

1st Broadcast 10th August 2013 on BBC Radio 4

Director

Dirk Maggs

Producer

Jo Wheeler

Written by

Frederic Raphael

Production

A Perfectly Normal production for BBC Radio 4

Synopsis

A new play by Oscar-winning writer Frederic Raphael about successful American film director Jake Liebowitz, charting the auteur's long career, and drawing on Raphael's own experience of writing for the cinema.

With Eleanor Bron as Alexandra Crawley and William Hope and Jake Liebowitz.

Jake Liebowitz disappears unexpectedly from his home in France, presumed dead by drowning. His friend Alexandra Crawley, a film critic who has followed the ups and downs of his career, presents a look back at his movies. But will she find the truth about his death in the films?

From his days as a kid with a movie camera in Brooklyn, on to Chicago, and finally to Hollywood, where he catches the end of the Golden Age, the play explores five decades of American film-making, through Jake's fast-talking, often shocking lens.