one of the coolest guys to come out philly died the other day

i already posed this on the willow house blog but i would like to put it here also. a salute to a man who i owe my partial tennis scholarship look.

when i was a sophomore in high school and we studied 'a clockwork orange' by anthony burgess my class went on an extra curricular trip to the roxy screening rooms to see stanley kubrick's 'a clockwork orange'. i can never forget being blown away that the dude that owned the theater produced the movie and made the j.g. hook thrift store ties i dug.


Posted on Sat, Feb. 23, 2008


Max Raab, 1926- 2008
Designer of fabric and films

By Carrie Rickey

Inquirer Movie Critic
Max Raab, 82, the Rittenhouse Square habitué and maker of trend-defying clothes and trend-setting films, died here Thursday morning after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease.

Over his colorful and peripatetic careers in the rag and movie trades, Mr. Raab invented the shirtdress; owned Villager clothes; purveyed Rooster ties; produced Walkabout, A Clockwork Orange, and the Mummers documentary Strut!, and owned Center City's Roxy Screening Rooms.

He is likely to be the only businessman to have negotiated with Sidney Kimmel and the Beatles. In the 1950s, Kimmel headed Villager's knitwear division; in the '60s, the Fab Four wanted to star in A Clockwork Orange, but failed to finalize the deal.

"Max was an original, a true visionary long before Ralph Lauren came on the scene," Kimmel, the philanthropist and founder of Jones Apparel Group, said of his "dear friend" yesterday. "He was a man who could embrace both classical music and jazz." Not only in music, but in culture and clothes, Mr. Raab appreciated both the traditional and the funky.

The son of a shirt manufacturer, Mr. Raab was born in the Tioga section of the city in 1925. His mother died when he was 12. When he returned home from service in the U.S. Army of Occupation in Japan, Mr. Raab had the first of what would be many intuitions.

"I saw America becoming an increasingly teen-dominated society and an upwardly mobile one," he told The Inquirer in 2005. In the developing suburbs, he saw middle-class shoppers affecting the kind of clothes the gentry wore, not the low-end shirts and blouses that his father made and sold for $1.98.

Mr. Raab hated his father's merchandise. He thought it lacked quality and style. But a job was a job, and at least his sales rounds got him out of the factory.

When, in 1949, he noticed coeds buying men's shirts for themselves at Brooks Bros., Mr. Raab went back to the factory and made a batch of women's-size man-tailored shirts. They flew off the racks. Then he and his older brother, Norman, elongated that shirt and created the shirtdress, a must-have for the station-wagon set. Thus Villager was born. As Mr. Raab told it, "Villager made clothes that didn't upstage the woman."

For 20 years, Villager defined what young American women wore. Wraparound skirts. Ribbon-bound Shetland cardigans. Madras shirts. Seventh Avenue dubbed Mr. Raab the dean of preppy fashion. He pioneered store-within-a-store retailing, setting up plank-walled Villager boutiques within top department stores.

In 1962, David and Lisa was being shot in Philadelphia and its producers wanted Villager clothes for the bookish teen played by Janet Margolin. While observing the shoot, Mr. Raab noticed how films were put together piece by piece, like shirts.

There was a film revolution going on, and Mr. Raab was a revolutionary, befriending emerging filmmakers such as Robert Downey Sr. (who would direct the 2005 documentary Rittenhouse Square for Mr. Raab) and Mel Brooks. Mr. Raab produced several indie films, most notably Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout (1970). An avid reader, Mr. Raab bought the rights to Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange and tried to sell it to the studios. In the end, he sold the rights - for 2½ points - to Stanley Kubrick and it became a monster hit.

As Raab's filmmaking career gained traction, Villager lost ground. He sold the company, valued at its height at $140 million, in 1969. He founded JG Hook, initially a menswear line, in 1974, expanding it to a $100 million company that included designs for women in the workplace.

"Like Max, Villager and JG Hook was preppy with a twist, and that's had a lasting effect on fashion," Ann Gitter, owner of the Knit Boutiques, said yesterday. "Look no further than Brooks Bros., J. Crew and Banana Republic."

Over his last decade, Mr. Raab produced and codirected Strut!, a documentary celebration of the Mummers, and Rittenhouse Square, a musical rhapsody.

Mr. Raab had four significant relationships. With his wife Anita Charkow, there were children Claudia and Andy. With his second wife, Mary Jones, the baby was Villager. He had two sons, Adam Gould and Paul English, with a companion, Nancy English. Since 1980, he had kept company with Merle Levin, whom he married in 1999.

In addition to his wife and children Claudia, Adam and Paul, he is survived by two granddaughters.

A jazz afternoon celebrating his life is being planned. Memorial contributions may be made to the Parkinson Council Inc., 111 Presidential Blvd., Bala Cynwyd, Pa. 19004.