Robert Riskin
Robert Riskin (March 30, 1897 – September 20, 1955) was an American Academy Award-winning screenwriter and playwright, best known for his collaborations with director-producer Frank Capra.
Early life
Robert Riskin was born on New York City's Lower East side to Jewish parents, Bessie and Jakob, who had emigrated from Czarist Russia to escape conscription. He and his two brothers and two sisters grew up speaking Yiddish. An enthusiast of the vaudeville stage, the teen-age Riskin took every opportunity to sneak into the theatre and catch the shows. He was a particular fan of the comedians who performed there and he habitually transcribed their jokes into a notebook he carried with him. While still a teen-ager, Riskin took a job with a shirt-manufacturing firm, Heidenheim and Levy. The partners of this firm had a sideline business, investing in the new film industry. They sent the seventeen-year-old Riskin to Florida to run a production company for them. Riskin turned out one- and two-reel films until his enlistment in the Army during World War I.