Biografia
Milton Michael Raison was a prolific screenwriter, author and poet who emigrated to the U.S. at age three with his parents Lazarus ("Louis") and Rachel Kagan in 1906. The last name changed at some point to Raisen, then Raison when they settled in New York City. His sister Beatrice (Borkum) was born in 1909.
He graduated with some honors from public school, but in his second year at Stuyvesant High School he was rebellious and was eventually expelled. His early love of Jack London, Joseph Conrad and William McFee shaped his desire to write and to go to sea, and he signed on for several years after stretching his age to find a job as a mess boy and to follow his dream to sail. At the voyages' conclusion he arrived in New York and accepted a position as a press agent for chorus girls.
He published an anthology of four poems titled "Sea Moods and Sea Men" at nineteen. In-between sailing he would look for newspaper work and write book reviews and seagoing articles. His poetry was published in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Post, Vanity Fair, Scribner's, Harpers, Bookman, and in The Saturday Review of Literature. His Century Magazine poems co-featured etched illustrations by John Sloan.
At the American Merchant Marine Library Association he placed books aboard ships for the crews.
With John Farrar's encouragement, he worked on his sea diary "Spindrift", published in 1922 with illustrations by John Sloan. By the late 1920s he became publicity writer/agent for a number of Broadway producers and their shows, and co-produced "Shoot The Works" with Heywood Broun in 1931. Those were very lean years for authors, and he was one of a number of writers to be invited by Metro Goldwyn Mayer to develop screenplays.
He served in the US Marine Corps between 1942 and 1944, became a staff sergeant and wrote fifteen-minute radio and film scripts to boost morale.
His radio and film scripts included themes of mystery, action, drama, romance, Westerns and thrillers, and for television he became a staff writer and story consultant on multiple series.
He briefly was married to Ruth W. in 1922, but she charged her nineteen-year-old poet husband of indiscretion at the Hotel Claridge. He married Dorothy Krampff in 1943, possibly while on military leave, and they divorced in 1949. In the early 1940s he may have fathered two daughters, one with Dorothy and one the year before with a secretary.
His successful novels in the Tony Woolrich series included "Nobody Loves a Dead Man" (1945) which received good reviews in the US and in the UK. Others included "No Weeds for The Widow" (1946), "Murder In a Lighter Vein" (1947) (also published in Italy) and "The Gay Mortician". "Phantom of 42nd Street" was co-authored with Jack Harvey and became a film. "Tunnel 13" (1948) was one of his last novels.
In 1950, he married Geraldine Audinet and had a son, Jonathan (1950-1993) and stepson, Patrick (b. 1942). This was a productive era for Mike Raison's television series scripts with the successful "The Millionaire", "Stories of the Century", "The Roy Rogers Show" and "The Adventures of Kit Carson", plus numerous episodes in other series.
He lived in the San Fernando Valley until the pressures of his life lead to health problems and alcohol use, and was divorced in 1955. During this period he won an Emmy for an episode in "Stories of the Century." He was with the Reece Halsey Agency for many years and remained good friends with Dorris after Reece's death. Both men donated their volumes of work to the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
Mike Raison continued writing television scripts through the 1960s but also developed movie concepts, including one in 1956 with Luigi Barzini titled "The Forgotten Front", but it was not optioned by MGM.
He moved to North Hollywood, married Johanna Rabus in 1956, and lived there until his death.
Mike Raison is remembered for his prolific television scripts and his love of a good story. He was a man with a poet's soul and an artist's ear, and he was a good cook and a soft-spoken storyteller.
