Little Fugitive

Raymond Abrashkin was an American writer best known for writing, co-producing, and co-directing the acclaimed movie, The Little Fugitive, and for co-creating and co-authoring the highly successful Danny Dunn series of science fiction books for children with Jay Williams. Raymond's parents were... Harry Abrashkin, born in what is now Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, and Bertha Kornfeld, born in England. Raymond was born in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from the City College of New York and taught in New York City public schools. His writing career began as the education editor of PM Newspaper. He became the principal writer for Young People's Records. He wrote the syndicated comic strip Timmy, drawn by Howard Sparber. Around 1935, he married Evelyn Kurinski. They had two children, John Michael Abrashkin, an artist , and William Henry Abrashkin, a Trial Court Judge in Massachusetts . There are two grandchildren, Karen Anna Abrashkin and John Raymond Abrashkin . During World War II Abrashkin served in the United States Maritime Service on supply ships in the Atlantic.
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Ruth Orkin was an American photographer and filmmaker. Orkin grew up in Hollywood where her mother was a silent-film actress. She grew up photographing and in 1939, she studied photojournalism at the Los Angeles City College. In 1943, she served in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps during World War... II. Orkin moved to New York City in 1943 and began working as a nightclub photographer. She later became a successful freelance photographer, traveling all over the world and contributing to Life, Look, Ladies' Home Journal and other periodicals. She attended Photo League events but didn't officially join as a member after they were blacklisted in 1947. In 1952, Orkin married photographer, filmmaker and fellow Photo League member Morris Engel. Orkin worked with Engel as an editor and co-director on several independent feature films. Orkin is perhaps best known for her photograph, American Girl in Italy, taken in 1951. The subject of the now-iconic photograph was the 23-year-old Ninalee Craig . The photograph was conceived inadvertently when Orkin noticed the men ogling Allen as she walked down the street.
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Morris Engel was an influential American photographer, cinematographer and filmmaker best known for directing the 1953 film The Little Fugitive in collaboration with his wife, photographer Ruth Orkin, and their friend, writer Raymond Abrashkin. Engel completed two more features during the 1950s,... Lovers and Lollipops and Weddings and Babies . Engel was a pioneer in the use of hand-held cameras and nonprofessional actors in his films, using cameras that he helped design, and his naturalistic films influenced future prominent independent and French New Wave filmmakers. A lifelong New Yorker, Morris Engel was born in Brooklyn in 1918. After joining the Photo League in 1936, Engel had his first exhibition in 1939, at the New School for Social Research. He worked briefly as a photographer for the Leftist newspaper PM before joining the United States Navy as a combat photographer from 1941-1946 in World War II. After the war, he returned to New York where he again was an active Photo League member, teaching workshop classes and serving as co-chair of a project group focusing on postwar labor issues.
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Morris Engel was a cinematographer, writer, film director and film producer.