In Remembrance: Max Raab

     Max Raab, the clothing merchant who would become a producer on Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, has passed away on February 21, 2008 in Philadelphia. He was 82.

     Born in the Tioga section of Philadelphia on June 9, 1925, Raab began working in his father’s clothing business after serving in World War II. While making sales calls in 1949, he noticed teenaged girls buying men’s dress shirts for themselves at Brook Brothers. He quickly created a line of women’s-size man-tailored shirts, which proved popular enough that Raab and his brother Norman quickly evolved them into the shirtdress. It was o the strength of these design ideas that Raab founded Villager clothing company. Marketing such fashions as wraparound skirts and Madras shirts, Raab was soon dubbed the dean of preppy fashion.

     Raab’s interest in motion pictures was sparked in 1962 when the film David And Lisa was being shot in Philadelphia. The production had approached Raab and Villager to supply the wardrobe for Janet Margolin’s bookish character. Intrigued by the production process, Raab began befriending a number of raising directors, producing his first film, All The Right Noises, in 1969. Raab would go on to produce a handful of other independent films, most notably Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout (1970). Among the raising filmmakers Raab befriended was Robert Downey Sr. The two would later collaborate on two films- the 1975 comedy Moment To Moment and the 2005 documentary Rittenhouse Square.

     Following reading Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange, Raab bought the film rights, but was unable to interest a Hollywood studio in making the picture. Finally, he sold the rights to director Stanley Kubrick for a percentage of any film’s eventual gross. Kubrick, in turn, would take the book and turn it into a film that has been hailed as one of the masterpieces of cinema.

     Although he withdrew from the film industry in the late 1970s, he would re-emerge to produce and direct the documentary Strut! which looked at the Philadelphia’s unique Mummer’s Parade in 2001.