Great Lives from History
Jewish Americans A - EST
I pages
1-344
SALEM PRESS
Great Lives from History
Great Lives from History
Great Lives from History
Volume 1 Senda Berenson Abbott – Susan Estrich
Editor
Dr. Rafael Medoff The David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Washington, D.C.
Salem Press Pasadena, California
Hackensack, New Jersey
Editor in Chief: Dawn P. Dawson Editorial Director: Christina J. Moose Photo Editor: Cynthia Breslin Beres Development Editor: Tracy Irons-Georges Research Supervisor: Jeffry Jensen Manuscript Editor: Constance Pollock Production Editor: Joyce I. Buchea Acquisitions Manager: Mark Rehn Graphics and Design: James Hutson Administrative Assistant: Paul Tifford, Jr. Layout: Mary Overell
Cover photos (pictured left to right, from top left): Henry Kissinger (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images); Paul Newman (©CinemaPhoto/CORBIS); Lauren Bacall (©Sunset Boulevard/CORBIS); Woody Allen (CBS/Getty Images); Sammy Davis, Jr. (Redferns/Getty Images); Sandy Koufax (Getty Images)
Copyright © 2011, by Salem Press, a Division of EBSCO Publishing, Inc. All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews or in the copying of images deemed to be freely licensed or in the public domain. For information address the publisher, Salem Press, at
[email protected]. ∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-1992 (R1997).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Great lives from history Jewish Americans / Rafael Medoff, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58765-741-2 (set : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-742-9 (vol. 1 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-743-6 (vol. 2 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-744-3 (vol. 3 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-745-0 (vol. 4 : alk. paper) 1. Jews—United States—Biography. 2. Jews—Canada—Biography. 3. Jews—United States— History. 4. Jews—Canada—History. I. Medoff, Rafael, 1959E184.37.A137 2011 973′.04924—dc22 2011003492
printed in canada
Contents Publisher’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Editor’s Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Key to Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
Steve Ballmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Theda Bara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Salo Baron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Roseanne Barr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Bernard Baruch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Abraham Beame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 S. N. Behrman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Daniel Bell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Saul Bellow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Judah Benjamin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Jack Benny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Seymour Benzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Moe Berg. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Paul Berg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 David Berkowitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Henry Berkowitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Milton Berle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Irving Berlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Ben Bernanke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Carl Bernstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Elmer Bernstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Leonard Bernstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Hans Albrecht Bethe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Bruno Bettelheim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Theodore Bikel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Jack Black . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Wolf Blitzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Allan Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Harold Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Sol Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Michael Bloomberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Judy Blume. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Franz Boas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Peter Bogdanovich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Ivan Boesky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Jeremy Michael Boorda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Daniel J. Boorstin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Victor Borge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Margaret Bourke-White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Jane Bowles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Barbara Boxer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Louis D. Brandeis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Marcel Breuer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Stephen G. Breyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Fanny Brice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Sergey Brin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Senda Berenson Abbott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 J. J. Abrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 M. H. Abrams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Bella Abzug. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Dankmar Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Felix Adler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Julius Ochs Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Samuel H. Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Stella Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Gregory Ain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 George Akerlof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Sholom Aleichem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Madame Alexander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Nelson Algren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Saul Alinsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Mel Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Woody Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Gloria Allred . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Herb Alpert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Lyle Alzado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Walter Annenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Mary Antin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Judd Apatow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Diane Arbus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Hannah Arendt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Alan Arkin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Harold Arlen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Kenneth Arrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Bea Arthur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Sholem Asch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Isaac Asimov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Ed Asner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Red Auerbach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Paul Auster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Richard Avedon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Richard Axel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Lauren Bacall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Burt Bacharach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Max Baer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 v
Jewish Americans Matthew Broderick. Joseph Brodsky . . Adrien Brody. . . . Albert Brooks . . . Mel Brooks. . . . . Joyce Brothers . . . Larry Brown . . . . Michael S. Brown . Susan Brownmiller . Lenny Bruce . . . . Jerry Bruckheimer . Jerome Bruner . . . Louis Buchalter . . Art Buchwald . . . Arthur Burns . . . . George Burns. . . . Carl Byoir . . . . .
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170 172 174 175 177 180 182 183 185 187 189 191 193 195 197 199 201
James Caan. . . . . . Sid Caesar . . . . . . Abraham Cahan . . . Sammy Cahn . . . . . Hortense Calisher . . Eddie Cantor . . . . . Robert Capa . . . . . Al Capp . . . . . . . Benjamin N. Cardozo Emanuel Celler . . . . Michael Chabon . . . Paddy Chayefsky . . . Judy Chicago . . . . . Noam Chomsky . . . Joel and Ethan Coen . Leonard Cohen . . . . Mickey Cohen . . . . Paul Joseph Cohen . . Stanley Cohen . . . . William S. Cohen . . Mildred Cohn . . . . Roy Cohn. . . . . . . Kenneth Cole. . . . . Betty Comden . . . . Aaron Copland . . . . David Copperfield . . Howard Cosell . . . . Billy Crystal . . . . .
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203 204 207 208 210 211 213 214 216 219 220 222 224 226 228 230 232 234 235 237 238 240 242 244 246 248 250 253
Mark Cuban . . George Cukor . Jamie Lee Curtis Tony Curtis . . .
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255 257 259 262
Rodney Dangerfield Larry David . . . . Clive Davis . . . . . Sammy Davis, Jr.. . Daniel De Leon . . Michael Dell . . . . Cecil B. DeMille . . Alan M. Dershowitz Neil Diamond . . . Misha Dichter . . . Samuel Dickstein. . Barry Diller . . . . Jim Dine . . . . . . Carl Djerassi . . . . E. L. Doctorow . . . Stanley Donen . . . Kirk Douglas . . . . Fran Drescher . . . Richard Dreyfuss. . Matt Drudge . . . . Andrea Dworkin . . Bob Dylan . . . . .
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265 267 269 271 273 275 277 280 282 284 286 287 289 291 293 295 297 300 302 305 307 309
Gerald M. Edelman . . . Morris Michael Edelstein Albert Einstein . . . . . . Edwin Einstein . . . . . . Alfred Eisenstaedt . . . . Michael Eisner . . . . . . Danny Elfman . . . . . . Gertrude Belle Elion . . . Stanley Elkin . . . . . . . Albert Ellis . . . . . . . . Harlan Ellison . . . . . . Larry Ellison . . . . . . . Rahm Emanuel . . . . . . Nora Ephron . . . . . . . Theo Epstein . . . . . . . Susan Estrich . . . . . . .
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Category Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III
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Publisher’s Note Great Lives from History: Jewish Americans features profiles of 653 prominent individuals of Jewish heritage who achieved success in a wide variety of fields. Many are immigrants or the children of immigrants, mostly from Europe and in many cases fleeing Nazi persecution. Some have inspiring stories of facing anti-Semitism or the challenges associated with arrival in a new country. Others struggled with finding the balance between assimilation and identity, success and community. All made a lasting impact on society or are continuing to make their mark. In surveying these lives from colonial times through the present, this four-volume set offers a fascinating perspective on Jewish history, both cultural and religious, in the United States.
The advantages are clear:
• Complimentary with print purchase • Fully supported • Unlimited users at your library • Full access from home or dorm rooms • Immediate access via online registration • A simple, intuitive interface • User profile areas for students and patrons • Sophisticated search functionality • Complete content, including appendixes • Integrated searches with any other Salem Press product you already have on the Salem History platform.
E-books are also available. Great Lives from History Series Jewish Americans joins Salem’s acclaimed Great Lives from History series, which provides in-depth critical essays on important men and women in all areas of achievement, from around the world and throughout history. The series was initiated in 2004 with The Ancient World, Prehistory-476 C.E. (2 vols.) and followed in 2005 by The Middle Ages, 477-1453 (2 vols.) and The Renaissance, 1454-1600 (2 vols.); in 2006 by The 17th Century, 1601-1700 (2 vols.) and The 18th Century, 1701-1800 (2 vols.); in 2007 by The 19th Century, 18011900 (4 vols.) and Notorious Lives (3 vols.); in 2008 by The 20th Century (10 vols.); in 2010 by Inventors & Inventions (4 vols.); and in 2011 by The Incredibly Wealthy (3 vols.). With this installment, the entire series extends to 38 volumes, covering 5,984 lives. Jewish Americans is the first in a series of Great Lives titles grouped by heritage that will include African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Scope of Coverage Great Lives from History: Jewish Americans features 646 essays covering 653 people (including 124 women) from the eighteenth century to the present. The majority of the individuals included in this set have never been covered in this series before. Many individuals are household names, famous for such high-profile professions as entertainment, politics, and business, while others have received less attention but made important contributions to civil rights and science or helped pave the way for others in their community in areas such as education and sports. Each essay was specially written for this set. The subjects are Jewish Americans who undertook a wide range of endeavors from colonial times into the twenty-first century—coverage that is essential in any liberal arts curriculum. With an understanding that no survey of this type can be comprehensive, the editor’s criteria for including individuals in this publication took into account their historical significance, their representation from a wide range of fields and periods, their relevance to class curricula, and their interest to students and general readers. For purposes of this set, the term “Jewish American” is defined to include men and women who were born in or permanently immigrated to the United States and are of Jewish religious or cultural heritage from one or both parents—whether or not they themselves practiced Judaism. Some of these individuals fled persecution in Europe and elsewhere, either as children with their families
Online Access Salem provides access to its award-winning content both in traditional, printed form and online. Any school or library that purchases this four-volume set is entitled to free, complimentary access to Salem’s online version of the content through our Salem History database. Access is available through a code printed on the inside cover of this first volume, and that access is unlimited and immediate. Our online customer service representatives, at (800) 221-1592, are happy to help with any questions. vii
Jewish Americans or as adults, and many faced anti-Semitism and other barriers as a result of this background at some point in their lives. Some embraced and celebrated their heritage, even becoming active in Jewish affairs or causes, while others were reluctant or uninterested in doing so. All (except a few notorious figures) served as inspirations to their community.
•
Essay Format Each essay is 1,000 or 1,500 words in length (approximately 2 to 3 pages) and displays standard ready-reference top matter offering easy access to following biographical information:
• • • •
• •
•
The name of the individual as best known The individual’s occupation, including former nationality for immigrants (e.g., “Rabbi and theologian” or “Russian-born physicist”) A synopsis highlighting the individual’s historical or social importance Born and Died lines that list the most complete dates of birth and death available, followed by the most precise locations available, as well as an indication of when these data are unknown, only probable, or only approximate. Both contemporary and modern place-names (where different) are listed; a question mark (?) is appended to a date or place if the information is considered likely to be the precise date or place but remains in question; a “c.” denotes circa and indicates that historians have only enough information to place the date of birth or death near the year listed. Also known as, a listing of other versions of the individual’s name, including full names, birth names, alternative spellings, pseudonyms, and nicknames The individual’s Area(s) of achievement (activism; architecture and design; art; business; crime; economics; education; entertainment; fashion; government and politics; journalism; law; literature; mathematics; medicine; military; music; philanthropy; philosophy; photography; psychology; religion and theology; scholarship; science and technology; social issues; sociology; sports; theater; war; women’s rights)
was reared, including his or her connection to Jewish religion and/or culture. This section also provides the pronunciation of the profiled subject’s full name upon first mention. Where little is known about the person’s early life, historical context is provided. Life’s Work, the heart of the essay, consists of a straightforward, generally chronological account of how the individual gained recognition in his or her chosen field, emphasizing the most significant achievements in the figure’s life and career. Significance provides an overview of the longrange importance of the individual’s accomplishments, emphasizing the impact on history, business, architecture, culture, and other areas of endeavor. This section explains why it is important to study this individual.
The end matter of each essay includes a bibliography of sources to provide a starting point for further research and a list of cross-references to other individuals profiled in the set who may be of interest to the reader. In addition, the majority of essays feature a boxed sidebar that describes one of the individual’s notable achievements— from career highlights to important causes. Photographs of the subjects illustrate many of the entries. All essays include a byline. Special Features The “Complete List of Contents,” an alphabetical list of contents for the entire set, appears in all four volumes, as does the “Key to Pronunciation,” a guide to the phonetic name pronunciation provided upon first mention in the “Early Life” section for all profiled figures. The back matter to Volume 4 includes several useful appendixes that aid the reader in finding people of interest and provide context about the Jewish American experience:
• Chronological List of Entries, a listing of the 653 • •
The body of each essay, which also includes a byline for the contributing writer-scholar, is divided into the following three parts.
•
• Early Life provides facts about the individual’s upbringing and the environment in which he or she
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persons covered, arranged by birth year (from 1735 to 1986)—useful as a time line of coverage Bibliography, a comprehensive list of nonfiction books about Jewish Americans Mediagraphy, an annotated list of television (series, miniseries, and movies) and feature films—including documentaries—exploring the Jewish American experience Literary Works, an annotated list of fictional works, arranged by author, addressing Jewish American issues
Publisher’s Note
• Web Site Directory, a guide to additional informa• •
ume 4, as is the Subject Index, a comprehensive index including personages, professions, concepts, terms, and other topics of discussion.
tion online Research Centers and Libraries, an annotated list of institutions, with full contact information Organizations and Societies, an annotated list of groups, with full contact information
Acknowledgments We wish to thank our consulting editor, Dr. Rafael Medoff, founding director of the David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, D.C., for his help in shaping the table of contents; his illuminating “Editor’s Introduction” follows. We also acknowledge the valued contributions of the many scholars who prepared entries for this set; their names and academic affiliations appear after the “Editor’s Introduction.”
Finally, the set contains four useful indexes. The Category Index at the end of all four volumes lists profiled figures by area of achievement. The Geographical Index at the end of Volume 4 lists all profiled figures who are immigrants; it is arranged by country prior to their arrival in the United States. The Personages Index, a separate listing of all indexed people, is found at the end of Vol-
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Editor’s Introduction sive waves of immigrants faced a new set of challenges after a rising tide of anti-Semitism and antiforeigner sentiment led to the imposition of quotas that choked off all but a trickle of immigration in the early 1920’s. The children of the immigrants became the stewards of interwar American Jewry as they came of age and entered the professional worlds of medicine, law, and business. While these entries chronicle the lives of numerous Jews who rose to the top levels in these fields, readers will also find profiles of many of the Jews prominently represented in literature, entertainment, social activism, and areas that are no longer commonly associated with Jewish Americans, such as sports. It is all the more remarkable that this interwar American Jewish success story was achieved in the face of substantial popular anti-Semitism, quotas for Jews in some universities, and Sunday closing laws that forced Jewish shopkeepers to choose between the need for Saturday business and the religious prohibition against working on the Sabbath. Such economic pressures contributed to the tendency of East European Jewish immigrants and their children to move away from traditional religious practices, although usually not as quickly or as dramatically as their German Jewish predecessors. This Americanization of U.S. Jews continued in the post-World War II era, facilitated by the growing openness of American society. Suburbanization, the postHolocaust retreat of anti-Semitism, and the gradual abolition of college quotas and Sunday laws opened up a new horizon of social and economic opportunities. Postwar American Jews grappled with the question of how much Jewish identity and practice to retain, while the postwar American public grew increasingly comfortable with the Jewish role in American life. In his landmark 1955 study Protestant-Catholic-Jew, sociologist Will Herberg posited that Judaism had come to be accepted as one of the three major religions in contemporary America. The phenomenon Herberg identified has become even more pronounced in recent years, despite the fact that the relative percentage of Jews in the American populace has decreased. Many grade schools and universities now cancel classes on major Jewish holidays. Holocaust education has become mandatory in public schools in thirty-five states. Even the White House hosts an annual Hanukkah party and Passover seder. American Jews have never felt more a part of America than they do in our time. This welcoming environment
The American Jewish experience is, in many respects, a familiar tale of ethnic immigrants making their way in the New World while struggling to retain fragments of the life they left behind. A handful of European Jewish traders began settling on the American continent in the early colonial period, but the first significant wave of immigration comprised some 250,000 German and other Central European Jews who arrived in the mid- and late 1800’s. Fleeing economic discrimination rather than pogroms, these industrious newcomers blossomed in the land of opportunity. Peddlers and small-time entrepreneurs, some of whom are profiled in these pages, worked their way up to become the founders of many of America’s best-known department stores. The legacy of these individuals continues to be felt by American consumers more than a century later. Anti-Semitism was not a serious obstacle for these nineteenth century American Jews, although social exclusion was not uncommon. A significant drift away from traditional religious practice and ethnic separatism was already evident among Jews in Germany during this period, and most of those who immigrated to the United States quickly embraced a largely secular, Americanized lifestyle. This facilitated their ascent on the socioeconomic ladder even as it called into question the future of the Jewish community. The next, and much larger, influx changed the face of American Jewry. During the 1890’s and early 1900’s, an estimated 1.5 million Jews from Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe fled to the United States ahead of czarist pogroms. They settled in what the historian Gerald Sorin called the “nurturing neighborhood,” densely packed urban enclaves, such as the lower East Side of Manhattan, where the preponderance of Jewish immigrants ensured the first generation would be surrounded by the Yiddish language, Jewish cultural folkways, and some degree of religious observance. Among these not-very-Americanized immigrants, one could find few department store owners but many of the sweatshop laborers who made the garments that would be sold in those stores. As many as two-thirds of the lower East Side’s working men and women were employed in the apparel industry, historians estimate. Perhaps not surprisingly, Jewish immigrants played a major role in the labor movement, as this volume’s entries on Samuel Gompers, Sidney Hillman, and others illustrate. A community that was created and defined by succesxi
Jewish Americans has made it possible for Jews to participate in, and contribute to, American society to an unprecedented degree. In the lives of the men and women that Great Lives from History: Jewish Americans describes, readers will note the continuing prominence of Jews in everything from comedy to cuisine. It is difficult to imagine having an informed conversation today about American humor without referring to Jerry Seinfeld, American cinema without speaking about Steven Spielberg, contemporary politics without discussing Rahm Emanuel, or breakfast menus without mentioning bagels. America’s ways, in turn, have left their indelible imprint on the practice of Judaism and the evolution of Jewish culture: not only in obvious ways, such as the inflation of Hanukkah into a Christmas-like gift-giving bonanza, but in unexpected trends, such as married Orthodox women styling their wigs—worn to fulfill a religious requirement to cover their hair—to resemble Sarah Palin’s hairdo. The history of Jews in the United States also holds more than its share of surprises, as this volume demonstrates. Orthodox Judaism has blossomed in suburban enclaves where sociologists expected assimilation. Some younger Reform Jews have embraced traditional practices that their movement’s ideology long ago discarded. Jewish voting patterns have remained overwhelmingly liberal despite economic and social pressures that have pushed other ethnic groups to become more conservative. The reader will notice significant religious and cultural diversity among the individuals profiled in this vol-
ume. Some of them were, or are, deeply involved in Jewish communal life. They include rabbis, teachers, leaders of Jewish organizations, and writers for Jewish publications. These men and women celebrate Jewish holidays, attend synagogue services, participate in Jewish advocacy, and support Jewish philanthropic causes. Others among our entries, however, may have only the most superficial connection to Jewish religious practices or just a fleeting association with the organized Jewish community. An individual’s impact on American society, not his or her level of personal Jewish commitment, was the factor in determining who should be included. Moreover, their achievements and contributions to the world around them may or may not have been related to their Jewish identity. A Jewish scientist whose discovery had a significant effect on American life, but no discernible connections to Jewish matters, appears in these pages alongside a Jewish political figure whose work brought him into frequent contact with issues of Jewish concern and a rabbi who has devoted his entire life to studying and teaching Judaism. Their common denominator is that they consider themselves Jews and fulfill the commonly accepted criteria to be regarded as Jews by their coreligionists. This is a chronicle of achievements and impact by Jews, regardless of the extent to which Jewish values or beliefs influenced their motives. —Dr. Rafael Medoff Founding Director of the David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Washington, D.C.
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Contributors Michael Adams CUNY Graduate Center Patrick Adcock Henderson State University Richard Adler University of Michigan, Dearborn Emily Alward College of Southern Nevada
Nicholas Birns Eugene Lang College, The New School Kay J. Blalock St. Louis Community College, Meramec Kyle Bluth Farmingdale, New York
Jamie Patrick Chandler CUNY, Hunter College Frederick B. Chary Indiana University Northwest Allan Chavkin Texas State University, San Marcos
Pegge Bochynski Beverly, Massachusetts
Nancy Feyl Chavkin Texas State University, San Marcos
Ellen Bosman New Mexico State University Library
Dennis W. Cheek Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
C. Breault Publication Services, Inc.
Karen K. Clark Western Oregon University
Amanda J. Bahr-Evola Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
Howard Bromberg University of Michigan
Philip Cohen American Hebrew Academy
Jane L. Ball Yellow Springs, Ohio
Michael A. Buratovich Spring Arbor University
Amy H. Crain California State Office of Historic Preservation
David Barratt Montreat College
William E. Burns George Washington University
Keith J. Bell The Citadel
Susan Butterworth Salem State College
Raymond D. Benge, Jr. Tarrant County College, Northeast Campus
Jennifer L. Campbell Lycoming College
Carolyn Anderson University of Massachusetts Amherst Dale Anderson Newtown, Pennsylvania
Alvin K. Benson Utah Valley University
Russell N. Carney Missouri State University
Sarah Cristal San Diego State University Robert L. Cullers Kansas State University Anita Price Davis Converse College Jacob Davis Publication Services, Inc.
Milton Berman University of Rochester
Keith Carson Atlantic Cape Community College
Frank Day Clemson University
Margaret Boe Birns New York University
Michael J. Caulfield Gannon University
Caprice Nelson de Lorm Lake Forest, California
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Jewish Americans James I. Deutsch Smithsonian Institution
Dale L. Flesher University of Mississippi
Joseph Dewey University of Pittsburgh
George J. Flynn SUNY-Plattsburgh
Jonathan E. Dinneen Bridgewater, Massachusetts
Timothy C. Frazer Concord, New Hampshire
Marcia B. Dinneen Bridgewater State University
Jeanette Friedman The Wordsmithy
Jill E. Disis Publication Services, Inc.
Joan S. Friedman College of Wooster
James J. Heiney Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania
Cecilia Donohue Madonna University
Leslie Joan Friedman The Lively Foundation, Inc.
Joyce E. Henry Ursinus College
Natalie M. Dorfeld Thiel College
Bill Gahan Rockford College
Laura E. Hester Lander University
Thomas Drucker University of Wisconsin, Whitewater
Michael Gaiuranos Publication Services, Inc.
John R. Holmes Franciscan University of Steubenville
Thomas Du Bose Louisiana State University, Shreveport Robert P. Ellis Northborough Historical Society Jack Ewing Boise, Idaho Nettie Farris University of Louisville Brian Faucette Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute Thomas R. Feller Nashville, Tennessee Susan M. Filler Chicago, Illinois Keith M. Finley Southeastern Louisiana University
Karen S. Garvin American Military University Sheldon Goldfarb University of British Columbia Ronald Gray Ohio University Scot M. Guenter San Jose State University
Randall Hannum New York City College of Technology, CUNY C. Alton Hassell Baylor University Bernadette Zbicki Heiney Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania
Ski Hunter University of Texas, Arlington Mary Hurd East Tennessee State University Raymond Pierre Hylton Virginia Union University Earl G. Ingersoll SUNY College at Brockport
Michael Haas California Polytechnic University, Pomona
Robert Jacobs Central Washington University
Amy Harwath Publication Services, Inc.
Jae Jerkins Florida State University
Irwin Halfond McKendree University
Bruce E. Johansen University of Nebraska at Omaha
Michael R. Hall Armstrong Atlantic State University
Sheila Golburgh Johnson Santa Barbara, California
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Contributors Yvonne J. Johnson St. Louis Community College, Meramec David M. Jones University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh Mark S. Joy Jamestown College George B. Kauffman California State University, Fresno Steven G. Kellman University of Texas, San Antonio Paul M. Klenowski Clarion University of Pennsylvania
Leon Lewis Appalachian State University
Martin J. Manning U.S. Department of State
Norma Lewis Byron Center, Michigan
Lisa Marcus Pacific Lutheran University
Thomas Tandy Lewis St. Cloud Technical and Community College
Mary E. Markland Argosy University
Roy Liebman California State University, Los Angeles Ralph W. Lindeman Kent State University, Geauga Campus Victor Lindsey East Central University
Laurence W. Mazzeno Alvernia College Rafael Medoff The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies Scott A. Merriman Troy University Julia M. Meyers Duquesne University
Kevin J. Knox University of Maryland
Bernadette Flynn Low Community College of Baltimore County, Dundalk
Marylane Wade Koch University of Memphis, Loewenberg School of Nursing
Eric v. d. Luft SUNY Upstate Medical University
Grove Koger Boise State University
Christine Lutz Fort Valley State University
Beth Kraig Pacific Lutheran University
R. C. Lutz CII Group
Kathryn Kulpa University of Rhode Island
Clyde S. McConnell University of Calgary
Rebecca Kuzins Pasadena, California
Roxanne McDonald Wilmot, New Hampshire
Leslie Neilan Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Timothy Lane Louisville, Kentucky
William P. McDonald Tennessee Wesleyan College
Caryn E. Neumann Miami University of Ohio
Eugene Larson Los Angeles Pierce College
Thomas McGeary Champaign, Illinois
Ann Glazer Niren Indiana University Southeast
Kate Leifheit Publication Services, Inc.
Andrew P. Maloney Publication Services, Inc.
Norma C. Noonan Augsburg College
Michael R. Meyers Pfeiffer University Randall L. Milstein Oregon State University B. Keith Murphy Fort Valley State University Alice Myers Bard College at Simon’s Rock
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John E. Myers Bard College at Simon’s Rock
Jewish Americans Justin Nordstrom Penn State, Hazleton
Stephen F. Rohde Rohde & Victoroff
Brad C. Southard Appalachian State University
Monica Osborne University of California, Los Angeles
Carl Rollyson Baruch College, CUNY
James Stanlaw Illinois State University
Joseph Rosenblum Greensboro, North Carolina
Jan Statman Longview, Texas
Sandra Rothenberg Framingham State University
David R. Stefancic Saint Mary’s College
Michael W. Rubinoff Arizona State University
Barry L. Stiefel College of Charleston
Joseph R. Rudolph, Jr. Towson University
Theresa L. Stowell Adrian College
Richard Sax Lake Erie College
Charles R. Sullivan University of Dallas
Liana Scalettar Queens College, CUNY
Cynthia J. W. Svoboda Bridgewater State College
Jean Owens Schaefer University of Wyoming
Cassandra Lee Tellier Capital University
Elizabeth D. Schafer Loachapoka, Alabama
Britt P. Tevis University of Wisconsin, Madison
R. Baird Shuman University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Rebecca Tolley-Stokes East Tennessee State University
Lisa Paddock Cape May Court House, New Jersey Robert J. Paradowski Rochester Institute of Technology Erin Elizabeth Parrish Minnesota Women’s Consortium David Peck Laguna Beach, California Barbara Bennett Peterson University of Hawaii Michael Polley Columbia College of Missouri Deborah Lee Prescott Palm Beach Atlantic University Steven Pressman Monmouth University Victoria Price Lamar University Maureen J. Puffer-Rothenberg Valdosta State University Steven J. Ramold Eastern Michigan University
Emilie Fitzhugh Sizemore California State University, Northridge
Anh Tran Wichita State University Richard Tuerk Texas A&M University, Commerce
Douglas D. Skinner Texas State University, San Marcos
Charles L. Vigue University of New Haven
David Smailes Westfield State College
Emily R. Vivyan SUNY, College at Oneonta
Betty Richardson Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
Sarah Small Publication Services, Inc.
Mary C. Ware SUNY, College at Cortland
Robert B. Ridinger Northern Illinois University
Gerald Sorin SUNY, New Paltz
Shawncey Webb Taylor University
Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman Charleston Southern University
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Contributors Sonja P. Wentling Concordia College
Maureen Moffitt Wilt University of Central Missouri
Lisa A. Wroble Edison State College
Rosemary Whelan University of New Haven
Scott Wright University of St. Thomas
Robert Zaller Drexel University
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Key to Pronunciation Many of the names of personages covered in Great Lives from History: Jewish Americans may be unfamiliar to students and general readers. For all names, guidelines to pronunciation have been provided upon first mention of the name in each essay. These guidelines do not purport to achieve the subtleties of the languages in question but will offer readers a rough equivalent of how English speakers may approximate the proper pronunciation.
Vowel Sounds Symbol Spelled (Pronounced) a answer (AN-suhr), laugh (laf), sample (SAM-puhl), that (that) ah father (FAH-thur), hospital (HAHS-pih-tuhl) aw awful (AW-fuhl), caught (kawt) ay blaze (blayz), fade (fayd), waiter (WAYT-ur), weigh (way) eh bed (behd), head (hehd), said (sehd) ee believe (bee-LEEV), cedar (SEE-dur), leader (LEED-ur), liter (LEE-tur) ew boot (bewt), lose (lewz) i buy (bi), height (hit), lie (li), surprise (sur-PRIZ) ih bitter (BIH-tur), pill (pihl) o cotton (KO-tuhn), hot (hot) oh below (bee-LOH), coat (koht), note (noht), wholesome (HOHL-suhm) oo good (good), look (look) ow couch (kowch), how (how) oy boy (boy), coin (koyn) uh about (uh-BOWT), butter (BUH-tuhr), enough (ee-NUHF), other (UH-thur)
Consonant Sounds Symbol Spelled (Pronounced) ch beach (beech), chimp (chihmp) g beg (behg), disguise (dihs-GIZ), get (geht) j digit (DIH-juht), edge (ehj), jet (jeht) k cat (kat), kitten (KIH-tuhn), hex (hehks) s cellar (SEHL-ur), save (sayv), scent (sehnt) sh champagne (sham-PAYN), issue (IH-shew), shop (shop) ur birth (burth), disturb (dihs-TURB), earth (urth), letter (LEH-tur) y useful (YEWS-fuhl), young (yuhng) z business (BIHZ-nehs), zest (zehst) zh vision (VIH-zhuhn)
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Complete List of Contents Volume 1 Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Publisher’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Editor’s Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Key to Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Lauren Bacall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Burt Bacharach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Max Baer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Steve Ballmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Theda Bara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Salo Baron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Roseanne Barr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Bernard Baruch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Abraham Beame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 S. N. Behrman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Daniel Bell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Saul Bellow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Judah Benjamin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Jack Benny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Seymour Benzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Moe Berg. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Paul Berg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 David Berkowitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Henry Berkowitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Milton Berle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Irving Berlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Ben Bernanke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Carl Bernstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Elmer Bernstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Leonard Bernstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Hans Albrecht Bethe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Bruno Bettelheim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Theodore Bikel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Jack Black . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Wolf Blitzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Allan Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Harold Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Sol Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Michael Bloomberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Judy Blume. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Franz Boas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Peter Bogdanovich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Ivan Boesky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Jeremy Michael Boorda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Daniel J. Boorstin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Victor Borge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Margaret Bourke-White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Jane Bowles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Senda Berenson Abbott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 J. J. Abrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 M. H. Abrams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Bella Abzug. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Dankmar Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Felix Adler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Julius Ochs Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Samuel H. Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Stella Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Gregory Ain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 George Akerlof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Sholom Aleichem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Madame Alexander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Nelson Algren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Saul Alinsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Mel Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Woody Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Gloria Allred . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Herb Alpert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Lyle Alzado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Walter Annenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Mary Antin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Judd Apatow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Diane Arbus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Hannah Arendt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Alan Arkin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Harold Arlen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Kenneth Arrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Bea Arthur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Sholem Asch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Isaac Asimov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Ed Asner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Red Auerbach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Paul Auster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Richard Avedon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Richard Axel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 xxi
Jewish Americans Barbara Boxer . . . Louis D. Brandeis . Marcel Breuer . . . Stephen G. Breyer . Fanny Brice . . . . Sergey Brin. . . . . Matthew Broderick. Joseph Brodsky . . Adrien Brody. . . . Albert Brooks . . . Mel Brooks. . . . . Joyce Brothers . . . Larry Brown . . . . Michael S. Brown . Susan Brownmiller . Lenny Bruce . . . . Jerry Bruckheimer . Jerome Bruner . . . Louis Buchalter . . Art Buchwald . . . Arthur Burns . . . . George Burns. . . . Carl Byoir . . . . .
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James Caan. . . . . . Sid Caesar . . . . . . Abraham Cahan . . . Sammy Cahn . . . . . Hortense Calisher . . Eddie Cantor . . . . . Robert Capa . . . . . Al Capp . . . . . . . Benjamin N. Cardozo Emanuel Celler . . . . Michael Chabon . . . Paddy Chayefsky . . . Judy Chicago . . . . . Noam Chomsky . . . Joel and Ethan Coen . Leonard Cohen . . . . Mickey Cohen . . . . Paul Joseph Cohen . . Stanley Cohen . . . . William S. Cohen . . Mildred Cohn . . . . Roy Cohn. . . . . . . Kenneth Cole. . . . . Betty Comden . . . . Aaron Copland . . . .
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David Copperfield Howard Cosell . . Billy Crystal . . . Mark Cuban . . . George Cukor . . Jamie Lee Curtis . Tony Curtis . . . .
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Rodney Dangerfield Larry David . . . . Clive Davis . . . . . Sammy Davis, Jr.. . Daniel De Leon . . Michael Dell . . . . Cecil B. DeMille . . Alan M. Dershowitz Neil Diamond . . . Misha Dichter . . . Samuel Dickstein. . Barry Diller . . . . Jim Dine . . . . . . Carl Djerassi . . . . E. L. Doctorow . . . Stanley Donen . . . Kirk Douglas . . . . Fran Drescher . . . Richard Dreyfuss. . Matt Drudge . . . . Andrea Dworkin . . Bob Dylan . . . . .
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265 267 269 271 273 275 277 280 282 284 286 287 289 291 293 295 297 300 302 305 307 309
Gerald M. Edelman . . . Morris Michael Edelstein Albert Einstein . . . . . . Edwin Einstein . . . . . . Alfred Eisenstaedt . . . . Michael Eisner . . . . . . Danny Elfman . . . . . . Gertrude Belle Elion . . . Stanley Elkin . . . . . . . Albert Ellis . . . . . . . . Harlan Ellison . . . . . . Larry Ellison . . . . . . . Rahm Emanuel . . . . . . Nora Ephron . . . . . . . Theo Epstein . . . . . . . Susan Estrich . . . . . . .
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312 314 315 317 319 321 323 325 327 329 331 333 336 338 340 342
Category Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III xxii
Complete List of Contents
Volume 2 Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxv Key to Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxvii Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxix Max Factor . . . . . . Lillian Faderman . . . Peter Falk. . . . . . . Susan Faludi . . . . . Howard Fast . . . . . Jules Feiffer . . . . . Russ Feingold . . . . Dianne Feinstein . . . Moshe Feinstein . . . Eliot Feld . . . . . . . Edna Ferber . . . . . Richard P. Feynman . Irving Fine . . . . . . Fyvush Finkel . . . . Louis Finkelstein . . . Shulamith Firestone . Stanley Fish . . . . . Carrie Fisher . . . . . Eddie Fisher . . . . . Abraham Flexner. . . Jonathan Safran Foer . Robert William Fogel Abe Fortas . . . . . . Lukas Foss . . . . . . Barney Frank . . . . . Leo Frank . . . . . . Robert Frank . . . . . Al Franken . . . . . . Helen Frankenthaler . Felix Frankfurter . . . Arthur Freed . . . . . Betty Friedan . . . . . Benny Friedman . . . Bruce Jay Friedman . Kinky Friedman . . . Milton Friedman . . . Dorothy Fuldheim . .
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345 346 348 350 353 354 356 358 360 361 363 365 367 368 370 372 374 376 378 380 381 383 384 387 389 391 393 394 396 398 400 402 404 406 407 409 411
Larry Gelbart . . . . . George Gershwin. . . Ira Gershwin . . . . . Allen Ginsberg . . . . Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Donald A. Glaser. . . Milton Glaser. . . . . Paul Michael Glaser . Sheldon L. Glashow . Philip Glass . . . . . Nathan Glazer . . . . Louise Glück . . . . . Arthur J. Goldberg . . Rube Goldberg . . . . Jeff Goldblum . . . . Maurice Goldhaber. . Daniel S. Goldin . . . Nan Goldin . . . . . . Emma Goldman . . . Marcus Goldman . . . Boris Goldovsky . . . Barry Goldwater . . . Samuel Goldwyn . . . Samuel Gompers . . . Benny Goodman . . . Mark Goodson . . . . Robert Gordis . . . . Adolph Gottlieb . . . Elliott Gould . . . . . Stephen Jay Gould . . Rebecca Gratz . . . . Adolph Green . . . . Hank Greenberg . . . Irving Greenberg . . . Paul Greengard . . . . Alan Greenspan . . . Charles Grodin . . . . David Gross . . . . . Meyer Guggenheim . Peggy Guggenheim . Philip Guston. . . . .
Art Garfunkel Peter Gay . . . David Geffen . Frank Gehry .
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413 414 416 418
David Halberstam Monty Hall . . . . Marvin Hamlisch. Oscar Handlin . .
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xxiii
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421 423 426 428 431 433 434 436 437 439 442 444 446 447 450 452 454 455 457 459 461 463 465 468 470 473 475 476 477 480 482 484 486 488 489 491 493 495 496 498 501
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503 505 507 510
Jewish Americans Yip Harburg . . . . . . . Lorenz Hart . . . . . . . Moss Hart . . . . . . . . Herbert A. Hauptman . . Goldie Hawn . . . . . . . Ben Hecht . . . . . . . . Jascha Heifetz . . . . . . Joseph Heller . . . . . . . Lillian Hellman. . . . . . Leona Helmsley . . . . . Mark Helprin . . . . . . . Nat Hentoff. . . . . . . . Will Herberg . . . . . . . Jerry Herman . . . . . . . Bernard Herrmann . . . . Seymour M. Hersh . . . . Abraham Joshua Heschel Eva Hesse . . . . . . . . Sidney Hillman. . . . . . Judd Hirsch. . . . . . . . Al Hirschfeld . . . . . . . Abbie Hoffman. . . . . . Dustin Hoffman . . . . . Roald Hoffmann . . . . . Nat Holman . . . . . . . H. Robert Horvitz . . . . Harry Houdini . . . . . . Irving Howe . . . . . . . Sarah Hughes. . . . . . .
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511 513 515 517 519 521 523 524 527 529 531 533 534 536 538 540 542 544 545 547 549 551 553 555 557 558 560 562 564
Jerome Karle . . . . . Mel Karmazin . . . . Leopold Karpeles . . Alex Katz. . . . . . . Jeffrey Katzenberg . . Andy Kaufman . . . . George S. Kaufman . Danny Kaye . . . . . Alfred Kazin . . . . . Harvey Keitel. . . . . Jerome Kern . . . . . Alan King . . . . . . Carole King . . . . . Larry King . . . . . . Jack Kirby . . . . . . Henry Kissinger . . . Robert Klein . . . . . Alfred A. Knopf . . . Ed Koch . . . . . . . Syd Koff . . . . . . . Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. . Walter Kohn . . . . . Ted Koppel . . . . . . Sandy Koufax . . . . Larry Kramer. . . . . Stanley Kramer. . . . Lee Krasner . . . . . Lenny Kravitz . . . . William Kristol. . . . Barbara Kruger . . . . Paul Krugman . . . . Stanley Kubrick . . . Maxine Kumin . . . . Stanley Kunitz . . . . William Kunstler . . . Ray Kurzweil. . . . . Harold S. Kushner . . Tony Kushner . . . .
Carl Icahn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567 Amy Irving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569 Jacob K. Javits Ricky Jay . . . Billy Joel . . . Al Jolson . . . Erica Jong . .
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571 573 574 577 579
Pauline Kael . . . Louis I. Kahn. . . Marvin Kalb . . . Horace Kallen . . Justin Kaplan . . . Mordecai Kaplan . Donna Karan . . .
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582 584 586 588 589 591 592
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594 596 597 599 600 602 605 607 610 612 614 617 619 621 624 625 628 630 632 635 636 638 639 642 644 646 649 651 653 655 656 657 660 662 665 666 668 670
Shia LaBeouf. . . . . . . . Carl Laemmle . . . . . . . Fiorello Henry La Guardia . Ricki Lake . . . . . . . . . Hedy Lamarr . . . . . . . .
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673 674 677 679 680
Category Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIII
xxiv
Complete List of Contents
Volume 3 Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . liii Key to Pronunciation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lv Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . lvii Norman Lamm . . . Edwin Herbert Land Aaron Lansky . . . Meyer Lansky . . . Ibram Lassaw . . . Paul László . . . . . Estée Lauder . . . . Ralph Lauren . . . . Emma Lazarus . . . Norman Lear . . . . Fran Lebowitz . . . Leon M. Lederman . Isaac Leeser . . . . Herbert Lehman . . Tom Lehrer . . . . . Annie Leibovitz . . Alan Jay Lerner . . Gerda Lerner . . . . Jonathan Lethem . . Philip Levine . . . . Barry Levinson . . . Uriah P. Levy. . . . Jerry Lewis . . . . . Richard Lewis . . . Sol LeWitt . . . . . Jason Lezak . . . . Lewis Libby . . . . Daniel Libeskind . . Roy Lichtenstein . . Joe Lieberman . . . Walter Lippmann . . Seth Lipsky. . . . . Marcus Loew. . . . Frederick Loewe . . Peter Lorre . . . . . Ernst Lubitsch . . . Sid Luckman . . . . Sidney Lumet . . .
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683 684 686 688 690 692 693 696 698 700 702 704 705 707 709 711 713 716 718 719 721 723 725 728 729 731 732 735 737 739 742 744 746 747 750 752 754 756
Lorin Maazel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 759 Judah Leon Magnes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 760 Norman Mailer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 762 xxv
Bernard Malamud . . . David Mamet. . . . . . Man Ray . . . . . . . . Barry Manilow . . . . . Joseph L. Mankiewicz . Michael Mann . . . . . Mickey Marcus. . . . . Rudolph A. Marcus . . Harry Markowitz . . . . Groucho Marx . . . . . Eric Maskin . . . . . . Matisyahu . . . . . . . Marlee Matlin . . . . . Walter Matthau . . . . . Elaine May . . . . . . . Louis B. Mayer. . . . . Richard Meier . . . . . Golda Meir . . . . . . . Henry Pereira Mendes . Ruth Messinger . . . . Howard Metzenbaum . Al Michaels . . . . . . Bette Midler . . . . . . Harvey Milk . . . . . . Michael Milken . . . . Arthur Miller . . . . . . Henry Morgenthau, Jr. . Henry Morgenthau, Sr. . Arthur D. Morse . . . . Robert Moses. . . . . . Paul Muni . . . . . . . Bess Myerson . . . . .
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765 767 769 772 774 777 779 780 782 784 787 788 790 792 794 797 799 801 804 805 807 809 811 813 815 817 819 822 824 825 827 829
Maud Nathan . . . . Howard Nemerov . Jacob Neusner . . . Richard Neutra . . . Louise Nevelson . . Barnett Newman . . Paul Newman . . . Randy Newman . . Mike Nichols . . . . Leonard Nimoy . . Mordecai M. Noah . Emmy Noether . . .
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831 832 835 836 839 841 842 845 847 849 852 854
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Jewish Americans Phil Ochs . . . . . . . . Clifford Odets . . . . . Tillie Olsen . . . . . . . J. Robert Oppenheimer. Suze Orman . . . . . . Cynthia Ozick . . . . .
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857 858 861 863 865 868
Larry Page . . . . . Grace Paley. . . . . William S. Paley . . Dorothy Parker . . . Sarah Jessica Parker Mandy Patinkin . . Daniel Pearl . . . . Arthur Penn . . . . Irving Penn . . . . . S. J. Perelman . . . Itzhak Perlman . . . Molly Picon . . . . Norman Podhoretz . Sydney Pollack . . . Natalie Portman . . Chaim Potok . . . . Otto Preminger . . . Jackie Presser . . . André Previn . . . . Sally J. Priesand . . Jay A. Pritzker . . . Stanley B. Prusiner .
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871 872 875 877 880 882 885 886 889 890 892 894 896 897 900 902 904 907 908 911 913 914
Isidor Isaac Rabi . . . Gilda Radner . . . . . Harold Ramis. . . . . Shulamit Ran . . . . . Ayn Rand. . . . . . . Sumner Redstone. . . Lou Reed . . . . . . . Robert B. Reich . . . Steve Reich. . . . . . Carl Reiner . . . . . . Rob Reiner . . . . . . Frederick Reines . . . Abraham Reles . . . . Ed Rendell . . . . . . Judith Resnik . . . . . Abraham A. Ribicoff . Adrienne Rich . . . .
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916 917 920 922 923 925 928 930 933 935 937 939 941 942 944 945 947
Renée Richards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 949 Don Rickles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 951 Hyman G. Rickover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 954 Moses Rischin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 956 Herb Ritts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 958 Joan Rivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 960 Larry Rivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 962 Jerome Robbins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 964 Abraham Robinson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 966 Richard Rodgers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 968 Sigmund Romberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 970 Ernestine Rose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 972 Irwin Rose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 974 Maurice Rose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 975 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . 977 Samuel I. Rosenman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 979 Julius Rosenwald. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 981 Barney Ross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 982 David Lee Roth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 984 Philip Roth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 985 Mark Rothko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 988 Arnold Rothstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990 Jerry Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 992 Robert Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 994 Ruth Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 996 Tibor Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 997 Helena Rubinstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 999 Muriel Rukeyser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1001 Winona Ryder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1003 Albert Sabin. . . . . Jeffrey D. Sachs. . . Morley Safer . . . . William Safire. . . . Carl Sagan . . . . . Mort Sahl . . . . . . J. D. Salinger . . . . Jonas Salk. . . . . . Edward S. Salomon . Haym Salomon . . . Paul Samuelson . . . Adam Sandler. . . . David Sarnoff . . . . Dore Schary. . . . . Solomon Schechter .
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1006 1008 1010 1013 1015 1018 1020 1022 1025 1026 1028 1030 1033 1035 1037
Category Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXIII
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Complete List of Contents
Volume 4 Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lxxi Key to Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lxxiii Complete List of Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . lxxv Béla Schick . . . . . . . Dorothy Schiff . . . . . Rudolph Schindler . . . Arnold Schoenberg . . . Daniel Schorr . . . . . . Dutch Schultz . . . . . . Charles Schumer . . . . Delmore Schwartz . . . Sholom Secunda . . . . Jerry Seinfeld . . . . . . Gershom Mendes Seixas Bud Selig . . . . . . . . Maurice Sendak. . . . . Rod Serling . . . . . . . Ben Shahn . . . . . . . William Shatner. . . . . Artie Shaw . . . . . . . Mordecai Sheftall . . . . Judy Sheindlin . . . . . Sidney Sheldon . . . . . Cindy Sherman . . . . . Dinah Shore. . . . . . . Elaine C. Showalter . . . Shubert brothers . . . . Bugsy Siegel . . . . . . Beverly Sills . . . . . . Abba Hillel Silver. . . . Sarah Silverman . . . . Sime Silverman . . . . . Alicia Silverstone . . . . Gene Simmons . . . . . Carly Simon. . . . . . . Herbert Simon . . . . . Neil Simon . . . . . . . Paul Simon . . . . . . . Isaac Bashevis Singer . . Anna Sokolow . . . . . Stephen J. Solarz . . . . Hannah Solomon . . . . Joseph B. Soloveitchik . Stephen Sondheim . . . Susan Sontag . . . . . .
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Aaron Sorkin . . . . . . George Soros . . . . . . Arlen Specter . . . . . . Aaron Spelling . . . . . Art Spiegelman . . . . . Steven Spielberg . . . . Joel Spingarn . . . . . . Mark Spitz . . . . . . . Eliot Spitzer. . . . . . . Gertrude Stein . . . . . Herbert Stein . . . . . . Leo Stein . . . . . . . . Gloria Steinem . . . . . Howard Stern . . . . . . Isaac Stern . . . . . . . Jon Stewart . . . . . . . Alfred Stieglitz . . . . . Joseph E. Stiglitz . . . . Ben Stiller. . . . . . . . I. F. Stone . . . . . . . . Mark Strand. . . . . . . Lee Strasberg . . . . . . Isidor Straus. . . . . . . Levi Strauss . . . . . . . Barbra Streisand . . . . Kerri Strug . . . . . . . Jule Styne . . . . . . . . Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Henrietta Szold . . . . . Arthur Szyk . . . . . . .
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1123 1125 1127 1130 1132 1134 1137 1138 1141 1143 1145 1147 1148 1150 1152 1154 1156 1159 1162 1164 1165 1167 1169 1171 1174 1176 1178 1180 1182 1183
Marc H. Tanenbaum Edward Teller . . . . Studs Terkel. . . . . Irving Thalberg . . . Mel Tormé . . . . . Dara Torres . . . . . Laurence Tribe . . . Pauline Trigère . . . Lionel Trilling . . . Barbara W. Tuchman Sophie Tucker. . . .
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1186 1187 1190 1192 1195 1197 1200 1202 1203 1206 1208
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Jewish Americans Abigail Van Buren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1215 Harold E. Varmus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1218 Lillian D. Wald . . . . Mike Wallace . . . . . Immanuel Wallerstein. Barbara Walters . . . . Sam Wanamaker . . . Felix M. Warburg . . . Warner brothers . . . . Lew Wasserman. . . . Wendy Wasserstein . . Henry Waxman . . . . Weegee . . . . . . . . Kurt Weill . . . . . . . Steven Weinberg . . . Matthew Weiner . . . Paul Wellstone . . . . Nathanael West . . . . Harry Dexter White . . Elie Wiesel . . . . . . Cornel Wilde . . . . . Billy Wilder . . . . . . Gene Wilder . . . . . Walter Winchell. . . . Debra Winger . . . . . Henry Winkler . . . . Garry Winogrand . . . Louis Wirth . . . . . . Isaac Mayer Wise . . . Stephen Samuel Wise .
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Frederick Wiseman . Paul Wittgenstein . . Naomi Wolf . . . . . Paul Wolfowitz . . . Herman Wouk . . . William Wyler . . .
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Louis Zukofsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1303 Adolph Zukor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1304 Abner Zwillman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1307 Appendixes Chronological List of Entries . . Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . Web Site Directory . . . . . . . Mediagraphy . . . . . . . . . . Literary Works . . . . . . . . . Libraries and Research Centers . Organizations and Societies . . Indexes Category Index. . . Geographical Index Personages Index. . Subject Index . . .
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XXXIII . . XLI . XLIII . XLIX
Great Lives from History
A Senda Berenson Abbott Russian-born educator and athlete Abbott promoted exercise to enhance people’s health, emotionally and physically. She designed athletic activities specifically for females, emphasizing sportsmanship, teamwork, and personal development more than competition. Abbott defended physical education’s benefits for girls and women to counter criticism alleging sports are unfeminine and might be harmful to females.
the Boston Conservatory of Music. Back problems prevented her from sitting for long-duration practices. In 1890, Abbott reluctantly enrolled in the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics to strengthen her body with Swedish gymnastic exercises. She also took anatomy and other science courses Harvard professors taught to supplement exercise, transforming Abbott’s attitudes regarding exercise and professional aspirations.
Born: March 19, 1868; Butrimonys, near Vilna, Lithuania, Russian Empire (now in Biturmansk, Lithuania) Died: February 16, 1954; Santa Barbara, California Also known as: Senda Berenson; Senda Valvrojenski (birth name) Areas of achievement: Sports; education
Life’s Work Abbott accepted a position in 1892 teaching physical training at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She stressed the necessity for people to exercise for fun, health, and social interactions. Abbott read an article by James Naismith in the January, 1892, issue of The Triangle; it described basketball, a game he had created for his students in Springfield, Massachusetts, south of Northampton. Because she perceived Naismith’s game to be too vigorous and aggressive for females to play safely, Abbott outlined basketball rules regulating how players could pass a basketball among three zones. Players learning to cooperate was more important to Abbott than competing to win. Basketball appealed to Abbott’s students, who were accustomed to individual, not team, sports. Abbott arranged a game pitting Smith freshmen against Smith sophomores in March, 1893. News of this initial basketball match involving female players circulated. Soon after the Smith game, other U.S. women’s schools formed teams and played basketball games, deviating from Abbott’s rules to meet their local conditions. Some schools scheduled matches with other teams. Abbott promoted basketball for intramural play within Smith, not intercollegiate competition. Stressing that physical training that strengthened bodies complemented intellectual exercises that stimulated minds, Abbott asserted that her department was as valuable as academic programs. She encountered criticism from family, colleagues, and community, saying that women playing basketball was inappropriate. Wanting to empower females, Abbott insisted that her innovative concepts reinforced women’s stamina, confidence, and character. Abbott wrote the article “Basket Ball for Women,”
Early life Senda Berenson Abbott (SEHN-dah BEHR-ihn-suhn AB-uht) was born on March 19, 1868, in Vilna, Russia, according to information she provided on her 1909 U.S. passport application. Her parents, Albert Valvrojenski and Julia Michaeles, lived in Butrimonys, forty miles from Vilna. As political boundaries changed, these places alternated between being located in Russia and in Poland. In U.S. federal census and naturalization records, the members of Abbott’s family identified themselves as Russian Jews and as natives of Poland. Abbott’s father worked for the family’s timber business. After a fire destroyed the family’s house, they lived with Abbott’s maternal grandparents. Seeking better educational opportunities for his children, in 1872 Abbott’s father immigrated, settling in the West End of Boston, Massachusetts, where he adopted the surname Berenson and earned money as a peddler. Abbott, her mother, and two brothers arrived in Boston in 1875. Two sisters were later born in Boston. Secular ideas appealed to Abbott’s father, who demanded his family, fluent in Yiddish and other languages, converse solely in English, stop studying Hebrew, and stop attending synagogue. When the father became a U.S. citizen in 1880, the entire family was naturalized. Abbott attended the Boston Girls’ Latin School and took piano classes at
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Abrams, J. J. printed in the September, 1894, issue of Physical Education, and several books featuring the sport. Because of variations in rules for women’s basketball, Abbott attended the Conference of Physical Training, held in Springfield, Massachusetts, in June, 1899, to standardize rules. She chaired the women’s rules committee for twelve years. The American Sports Publishing Company hired Abbott to edit Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide for Women, a job she held for sixteen years. Despite her successes, Abbott, who frequently corresponded with her art historian brother Bernard Berenson, revealed that she experienced anti-Semitism on campus and sometimes felt excluded. On June 15, 1911, she wed Herbert Vaughan Abbott, a Smith literature professor. She stopped teaching at Smith and directed physical education instruction at Mary A. Burnham School until 1921. Five years after her husband’s death in 1929, Abbott moved west, sharing her sister Elizabeth’s home in Santa Barbara, California. Abbott suffered a stroke and died on February 16, 1954. Significance Abbott’s contributions provided a foundation for women’s basketball to evolve. Among the first women inducted in the Basketball Hall of Fame, Abbott was also honored for her athletic accomplishments by the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Teams representing all levels, from elementary schools through professional leagues, incorporated aspects of Abbott’s vision. Basketball not only enriched players’ health but also provided academic opportunities with athletic scholarships. By 1976, the Olympic Games included women’s basketball. Women’s basketball thrived in the early twenty-first century, when approximately eighty million females participated in the sport internationally. —Elizabeth D. Schafer
Jewish Americans Further Reading Berenson, Senda. “The Significance of Basket Ball for Women.” In Women and Sports in the United States: A Documentary Reader, edited by Jean O’Reilly and Susan K. Cahn. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2007. Excerpt from Abbott’s writing discusses public perceptions of female athleticism and why she endorsed basketball as the best exercise for females. Borish, Linda J. “‘An Interest in Physical Well-Being Among the Feminine Membership’: Sporting Activities for Women at Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Associations.” American Jewish History 87, no. 1 (March, 1999): 61-93. Notes Abbott’s role in the introduction and acceptance of basketball by Jewish females and facility directors, who embraced her noncompetitive, team-oriented philosophy. Melnick, Ralph. Senda Berenson: The Unlikely Founder of Women’s Basketball. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007. Comprehensive biography based on archival records, especially letters between Abbott and her siblings, addresses her experiences as a Jew at Smith College. Spears, Betty. “Senda Berenson Abbott: New Woman, New Sport.” In A Century of Women’s Basketball: From Frailty to Final Four, edited by Joan S. Hult and Marianna Trekell. Reston, Va.: National Association for Girls and Women in Sport, 1991. Examines Abbott’s pioneering physical education leadership and achievements in context with Progressive Era women reformers. See also: Red Auerbach; Emma Goldman; Nat Holman; Maud Nathan.
J. J. Abrams Screenwriter, producer, and director Abrams is a talented producer, director, creator, composer, and screenwriter, who has the rare skill to be successful in films and in television. Born: June 27, 1966; New York, New York Also known as: Jeffrey Jacob Abrams (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment
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Early Life J. J. Abrams (AY-bruhmz) was born on June 27, 1966, in New York, New York. His parents were Gerald, a television producer, and Carol, an executive producer. Even though his parents were not religious, Abrams considers himself to be Jewish and is proud of his heritage. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was five. He had an interest in films from an early age and knew for certain
Jewish Americans that he wanted to work in film after a visit to Universal Studios at age eight. His father worked at Paramount Pictures, so Abrams had an opportunity to see many shows in production. He was writing scripts by age nine and filming them, using his family’s video camera. He had a keen interest in special effects and by age thirteen was entering his films in children’s film festivals. One of his films won an award. He also met Matt Reeves, who would later collaborate with Abrams on the television show Felicity, at one of these festivals. Abrams went to Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. The college encourages writing across all aspects of its curriculum, and this was beneficial to Abrams. He wrote screenplays in his spare time and honed his craft to the point where he was able to cowrite a feature film, Taking Care of Business, in 1988, his senior year. The film premiered in 1990 and starred Charles Grodin and James Belushi. Abrams went on to write and coproduce Regarding Henry (1991), which starred Harrison Ford, and Abrams wrote and produced Forever Young (1992), which starred Mel Gibson. Although none of Abrams’s screenplays up to that point pleased all the critics, they were good enough to give him a reputation as a capable writer and producer in Hollywood. In 1996, Abrams produced The Pallbearer and wrote the script for the film Gone Fishin’ in 1997. In 1998, Abrams helped to write the screenplay for Armageddon, which was his first work on a blockbuster film. Abrams was also working with his friend Reeves on what he thought was a film script about a shy young woman who begins her freshman year at a college in New York City. When he submitted his script to Touchstone Pictures, however, Abrams found himself pushed into the television industry. Life’s Work Touchstone Pictures believed that Abrams’s script was better suited for television, and Felicity became Abrams’s first series. The show starred Keri Russell and attracted a following quickly. It also received positive attention from the critics. Abrams made his directing debut on Felicity and brought his musical talents to bear by creating the theme music. The series ran from 1998 to 2002 and was so well received that it helped the newly founded WB Network, a joint venture of Warner Bros. and Tribune Broadcasting, achieve popular notice. Abrams discovered that the premise of Felicity was limiting, and he joked that the show would be more interesting if the main character was a spy. During the run of Felicity, Abrams wrote and produced the film Joy Ride (2001), a well-
Abrams, J. J.
J. J. Abrams. (Getty Images)
received thriller about a truck driver taking revenge on two brothers who played a prank on him. Taking a cue from his joke about Felicity, Abrams created the series Alias (2001-2006). The lead was played by Jennifer Garner, who believed she was working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but she was actually working for a rogue intelligence agency. She had to reconcile her exotic life with her personal relationships and her work as a graduate student. Abrams described it as a comic book come to life and integrated the actiondriven scenes with human elements. He was the series’ executive producer and director, and he composed the theme music. Alias was a success with both critics and fans, ranking as the second-highest-rated new drama at the time. The series won the People’s Choice Award for favorite new drama and won multiple Emmy Awards over its five seasons. While he was working on Alias, Abrams took an idea from the former chairman of the American Broadcasting 3
Abrams, J. J.
Jewish Americans
Creating LOST J. J. Abrams’s Lost became one of the most iconic television series of its time. The show, about the survivors of a plane crash who land on a mysterious island, combined elements of action, horror, adventure, mystery, and conspiracy and amassed a huge following by the end of its first season. Such was the success of the series that it was one of a handful of shows that kept the faltering American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network from falling into obscurity. Lost was one of the most expensive shows ever filmed because of its location on Oahu, Hawaii, and because of the size of its ensemble cast, but it was popular enough to last six seasons. Lost gathered a loyal following of fifteen million viewers in its first season and maintained high viewership throughout its run. Although the show was occasionally criticized for raising more questions than it answered, the fan speculation and theories about the show elevated it to cult status. Lost incorporated elements of science fiction and the supernatural, which led to the development of its own mythology, which included a monster that roamed the island. ABC supported the show in other media, including Web sites, novelizations, and an official magazine. The show was nominated for hundreds of awards from various entertainment organizations and won more than fifty, including nine Emmy Awards.
Company (ABC), Lloyd Braun, and created Lost with Jeffrey Leiber and Damon Lindelof. Abrams was the executive producer, he wrote for the show, and he directed episodes. The show, about the survivors of a plane that crash-lands on a mysterious island, combines elements of adventure, horror, mystery, fantasy, and conspiracy theory. With its large ensemble cast, the show was nominated for hundreds of awards and won more than fifty. In 2006, Abrams was the executive producer of Lost, Six Degrees, and What About Brian. During this period, Tom Cruise selected Abrams to write and direct Mission: Impossible III (2006). The film was Abrams’s first as a director. The reviews were generally positive, and the film did well at the box office, cementing Abrams’s reputation as a quality director. Abrams was in such high demand that he signed multiyear contracts with both Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. for about fifty million dollars in 2006. In 2008, Abrams coproduced the horror film Clover4
field, which was directed by his friend Reeves and written by Drew Goddard, who worked on Alias and Lost. The film was well received and was noted for its ability to create suspense. Fringe, a television series that Abrams cocreated, also debuted in 2008. The show explores the boundaries of science and mixes in horror and conspiracy theories. Abrams produced and directed Star Trek in 2009, which was the eleventh film in the franchise and turned out to be the highest grossing of the series. The film received four Academy Award nominations and won one, which made it the only Star Trek film to win an Oscar. Significance Abrams is a multitalented individual in the entertainment industry. He is a top-notch screenwriter, winning Emmy Awards for his writing in two different series. He is also a successful producer and director, and he has won an Emmy Award for outstanding directing for Lost. He has created memorable musical themes for his television shows and has acted in small roles in a handful of films. Abrams is one of the few people to be equally successful in television and in film. Few have the ability to adapt to the different media well enough to excel. Abrams’s body of work is critically acclaimed, and he has created iconic television series and motion pictures, making himself one of the most sought-after directors, producers, and creators in television and films. — James J. Heiney Further Reading McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007. An exploration of the meaning of quality television. Includes interviews with television producers and many references to Abrams. Oromaner, Marc. The Myth of Lost: Solving the Mysteries and Understanding the Wisdom. New York: iUniverse, 2008. Reflections on the characters and the setting of Lost and how the series relates to myth and the reality of life. Vaz, Mark Cotta. Alias Declassified: The Official Companion. New York: Bantam Books, 2002. A behindthe-scenes look at Abrams’s hit Alias. Anecdotes from writers, cast, and Abrams, and an episode guide. See also: Judd Apatow; Charles Grodin; Jerry Seinfeld; Rod Serling; William Shatner; Aaron Sorkin.
Jewish Americans
Abrams, M. H.
M. H. Abrams Scholar and literary critic Abrams is a leading scholar and theorist in English literature, noted for his work on the Romantic poets. As editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, he shaped the literary canon for generations of students. Born: July 23, 1912; Long Branch, New Jersey Also known as: Meyer Howard Abrams (full name); Mike Abrams; M. Howard Abrams Areas of achievement: Literature; scholarship; education Early Life M. H. Abrams (AY-bruhmz) was born to Joseph and Sarah Abrams, a blue-collar Jewish couple. He was the first in his family to receive a college education. In fact, he won a scholarship to Harvard University, which was a turning point in his life. He graduated as an English major in 1934. His thesis, on the effects of opium on the works of four nineteenth century poets, was published by Harvard as part of a series of outstanding undergraduate research papers. Abrams won a fellowship that enabled him to spend a year at Cambridge University, under the tutorship of the leading British literary critic I. A. Richards. He met Ludwig Wittgenstein, the renowned linguistic philosopher, who deeply influenced Abrams’s work. Returning to the United States, Abrams earned his M.A. in 1937 and his Ph.D. in 1940, both at Harvard. In 1937, he married Ruth Claire Gaynes, with whom he had two daughters. He was drafted for war service, which he fulfilled at Harvard in its Psycho-Acoustics Laboratory. After demobilization in 1945, Abrams was appointed assistant professor at Cornell University, where he spent the rest of his academic life. He was promoted to associate professor in 1947 and to full professor in 1953, despite having published only two articles. However, he had received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation for 1946-1947 and from the Ford Foundation for 1953; in 1954, he became a Fulbright scholar at the Royal University of Malta and went back to Cambridge University. Life’s Work Abrams’s first major academic work, which established his reputation as a first-rate scholar, was The Mirror and the Lamp: Theory and Critical Tradition, which
was published in 1953 by the Oxford University Press. It was a reworking of his Ph.D. thesis. At one level, it is a definitive reinterpretation of Romantic poetry, with a focus on the works of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and on predominant metaphors to be found in Romanticism. Its theme is that, through the eighteenth century, poetry, like a mirror, reflected social reality; from the Romantics onward, poetry became a source of illumination, like a lamp. At a second level, Abrams was exploring the history of ideas, as applied to literature. At a third level, he was establishing a new theoretical understanding of Romantic literature. The book made an immediate impact, winning the Christian Gauss Prize of 1954, and it became a standard reference for all Romantic scholars. Abrams’s second great work on Romanticism did not appear until 1971. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature was a major extension of The Mirror and the Lamp, including a study of German Romanticism and philosophy, though still emphasizing Wordsworth and Coleridge. Again, Abrams used a “history of metaphor” approach, concentrating on how the Romantics sought to take over traditional religious values and vocabulary in the secular setting of post-Enlightenment European thinking. A central comparison, for example, is between Wordsworth’s Prelude (1850) and St. Augustine’s Confessiones (397-401; Confessions, 1620). Again, the book was acclaimed, receiving the James Russell Lowell Prize of 1972. In between the publication of these two books, Abrams received more fellowships and lectured at Indiana University and the University of Toronto. He also edited other important works, including an edition of Alexander Pope’s poetry, essays on English Romanticism, essays on Wordsworth, and a glossary of literary terms. Best known, however, was his general editorship of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, in its one- and two-volume editions. Conceived by Abrams, this anthology influenced generations of undergraduate students. The work reflects Abrams’s breadth of scholarship and his liberality of spirit. The first edition appeared in 1962, and subsequent revisions followed every few years, all led by Abrams. His teaching ability was widely recognized. Harold Bloom and Thomas Pynchon are just two of many distinguished students Abrams taught. In April, 1978, the So5
Abzug, Bella ciety for the Humanities honored Abrams with a two-day conference at Cornell University, and the papers were published in 1981. By this time, poststructuralism and deconstruction were at the height of literary fashion; Abrams interfaced with these postmodern schools of criticism, although he was opposed to them. He held firmly to the study of author, audience, and objective meaning, though allowing for many interpretations. In 1960, he was made Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English Literature. In 1973, he became Class of 1916 Professor of English Literature until his retirement. He continued to give significant lecture tours. In 1984, he received the Award in Humanistic Studies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honor rarely bestowed. He also founded the A. D. White Center for the Humanities at Cornell. Significance Abrams represents the best of traditional humanistic American scholars, who combine breadth of scholarship with teaching skills and who demonstrate an ability to engage with changing philosophical fashions. He was widely respected within his field, and his work as an editor deeply influenced undergraduates throughout the second part of the twentieth century. His understanding
Jewish Americans of Romanticism, though challenged, is the bedrock of later criticism and scholarship. —David Barratt Further Reading Grace-Cobas, Linda. “Honored Literary Scholar M. H. Abrams Continues His Labors (of Love).” Cornell Chronicle, June 10, 1999. Concentrates on Abrams’s Norton editorship. Lipking, Lawrence, ed. High Romantic Argument: Essays for M. H. Abrams. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981. Papers given at a two-day conference in honor of Abrams, with his response to the mainly poststructuralist offerings. Ulmer, William A. “M. H. Abrams.” In Modern American Critics Since 1955, edited by Gregory S. Joy. Detroit: Bruccoli Clarke, 1988. This reference gives a good account of Abrams’s two main critical texts. Williams, Jeffrey J. “M. H. Abrams: A Life in Criticism.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 18, 2008. A good overview of Abrams’s achievements. See also: Harold Bloom; Stanley Fish; Irving Howe; Alfred Kazin; Elaine Showalter; Lionel Trilling; Louis Untermeyer.
Bella Abzug Activist, politician, and lawyer A member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Abzug gained national and international recognition as a vocal and staunch spokesperson for women’s rights, racial tolerance, and economic and gender equality. Born: July 24, 1920; New York, New York Died: March 31, 1998; New York, New York Also known as: Bella Savitzky Abzug (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; women’s rights; activism Early Life Born in New York City to Emanuel and Esther Tanklefsky Savitzky, Bella Abzug (BEHL-uh AB-zewg) grew up in a Russian Jewish household in East Bronx. The household included an older sister, Helene, as well as a maternal grandfather, Wolf Tanklefsky, who took Abzug to synagogue and taught her Hebrew. As a teenager, Abzug joined the Zionist youth move6
ment, and she gained experience early on as a vocal activist and fund-raiser. With her father’s death, Abzug challenged the prevailing custom of excluding females from the main area of the temple and especially from saying Kaddish, the memorial ritual usually performed by a man’s son. For the required year, Abzug went to synagogue every morning and said Kaddish for her father, and no one stopped her. Abzug learned early that getting a job done might mean ignoring, or at least bending, rules and expectations. After graduating from Walton High School, Abzug attended Hunter College. At Hunter, she gained experience in an official capacity as her college’s class president and eventually as representative for the entire student body. By the time she graduated, she was known as an activist and as a woman who would not follow custom. She attended Columbia Law School on scholarship, graduated, passed the New York bar examination, and began working for a law firm soon afterward. By then she
Jewish Americans had met her future husband, Martin Abzug; they married June 4, 1945, her last year at Columbia.
Abzug, Bella seat in the House or the mayoral office in New York City. Being without an official political position, however, did not seem to slow her down when it came to her activism for human rights and political parity. During the 1980’s and 1990’s, Abzug continued to write, speak, and travel, giving her presence, her knowledge, her organizational skills, and her time to human rights, women’s issues, and the environment. With longtime friend and associate Mim Kelber, Abzug cofounded the Women USA Fund, dedicated to publishing educational materials on pollution and poverty. In addition, the two established the Women’s Environment and Development Organization in 1990. In the mid-nineties, Abzug served on the New York City Commission on the
Life’s Work By the end of the 1940’s, Abzug was perceived as an oddity; she had a family, advocated for community causes, and practiced law in her own firm. It was during her years in court that she took to wearing what would become her trademark—flamboyant hats—to separate herself as a professional from the secretaries and other female workers. Although she gained some notoriety working on the appeals case for Willie McGee, a black man convicted of raping a white woman, it was her election to the U.S. House of Representatives that catapulted her into a forum for civil liberties and the national spotlight. Abzug was already known in New York for her political activism when her involvement in the peace movement brought her to Washington, D.C., and the realization of the possibilities of working the system from the inside. She served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1971 to 1977. On the day of her swearing-in ceremony, she immediately did the unexpected for a first-term congressional freshman: She introduced a resolution to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam by July 4, 1971. This, of course, placed her at odds with the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, and most members of Congress. She followed this audacity by pressuring people for an appointment to the Armed Services Committee, an unexpected position for any freshman, male or female. Active in many causes, Abzug supported an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by testifying in committee hearings; sat in the first meeting of the National Women’s Political Caucus; appeared on the cover of Life; coauthored material that led to the Freedom of Information Act; authored the Equal Credit Opportunity Act; supported legislation to place gay rights as an addendum to the 1964 Civil Rights Act; graced the covers of Ms. and Rolling Stone; and organized the federally funded National Women’s Conference (1977). By the end of her third term, she had decided to try for a Senate seat; she was not successful, nor was she successful in regaining a Bella Abzug. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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Abzug, Bella Status of Women and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. By the late 1990’s, the time and effort she had dedicated to so many causes caught up with her. She suffered with heart problems, and then she contracted breast cancer. She died at the age of seventyseven after complications from heart surgery.
Jewish Americans
A Woman in the House (of Representatives) With a seemingly tireless drive to change the status quo for the benefit of the majority rather than the minority, Bella Abzug proved that working within the system instead of against it often produces the desired and best results. An activist from her teenage years until her death at the age of seventy-seven, Abzug fought for the underdog. She devoted herself to the causes of civil rights (for racial minorities, women, those attacked during the McCarthy years—supposed Communists or subversives—and laborers), of peace, and of environmental issues. As a lawyer and a congresswoman she gained not only national but international recognition, and even those who disagreed with her came to respect her. Running on the slogan “This woman’s place is in the House—the House of Representatives,” she won the seat she sought against a longtime incumbent. In 1971 she began her three-term service in which she tried to make Congress answerable to the people who put them in office. Her vocal and visible presence made her President Jimmy Carter’s choice to chair the National Commission on the Observation of International Women’s Year. She and thousands of state-elected female delegates met in Houston, Texas, in 1977, where they drafted and approved resolutions on women’s rights for congressional consideration.
Significance Abzug defied society’s expectations for a woman, and, in doing so, she redefined what a woman could and should do as an American citizen. The success and recognition she achieved in doing it her way led other women to realize that they, too, could dream big and realize those dreams. By refusing to give up when confronted with criticism, when made to look ridiculous, when attacked for her personal and professional choices, Abzug created an image of a true feminist whose goal was to ensure equality and justice for all humanity, not just women. By dedicating her life to human rights in all its guises, as a working mother, a lawyer, a member of the U.S. Congress, and a citizen, Abzug was a role model for young girls and women and, some might argue, for men as well. —Kay J. Blalock
Further Reading Abzug, Bella. Bella! Ms. Abzug Goes to Washington. Edited by Mel Ziegler. New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972. This work, styled as a diary, is Abzug’s account of her first year in the U.S. House of Representatives. Abzug describes the daily challenges, successes, and setbacks she faced as a freshman member of Congress. _______. Gender Gap: Bella Abzug’s Guide to Political Power for American Women. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. Abzug describes the gender gap that exists between men and women electorally. In addition, Abzug offers suggestions on how women can and
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should use their vote to change the direction and future of their country as well as their electoral power to secure leadership positions. Faber, Doris. Bella Abzug. New York: Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard, 1976.Written for young adults, this work offers a simplistic highlight of Abzug’s early life through her first year in Congress. Levine, Suzanne Braun, and Mary Thom. Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the Rights of Women and Workers, Rallied Against the War and for the Planet, and Shook up Politics Along the Way. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008. Divided into chapters that highlight different parts of Abzug’s life, this book contains recollections of more than one hundred of her friends, coworkers, relatives, and acquaintances. Includes a brief chronology of the subject’s life. See also: Barbara Boxer; Susan Brownmiller; Dianne Feinstein; Betty Friedan; Gloria Steinem.
Jewish Americans
Adler, Dankmar
Dankmar Adler German-born architect and engineer Adler was a successful architect who created his most renowned work with partner Louis Sullivan and developed the Chicago style of architecture. Adler is remembered for the Chicago Stock Exchange Building, the Auditorium Building, Sinai Temple, and Temple Isaiah. Born: July 3, 1844; Stadtlengsfeld, Prussia (now in Germany) Died: April 16, 1900; Chicago, Illinois Area of achievement: Architecture and design Early Life Dankmar Adler (DANK-mahr AD-lur) was born July 3, 1844. His father, Liebman Adler, worked as a teacher and cantor in the synagogue, and the family immigrated to the United States in 1854, settling in Detroit. It was here that the father became rabbi at Beth El, a Jewish congregation on the verge of becoming Reform. During these years, Adler attended public school in Detroit but failed the entrance exam to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Instead of attending university he became an apprentice to Detroit architect John Schaefer and then E. Willard Smith. In 1861, the Adler family moved to Chicago, where the father obtained a pulpit position at Kehilath Anshe Ma’ariv Synagogue. After this relocation, Adler found employment for a brief period with the architectural offices of Augustus Bauer, but in 1862, with the outbreak of the Civil War, Adler joined the First Illinois Light Artillery. During the Civil War, Adler’s skills as an architect were applied toward engineering, and he served as a draftsman in the Topographical Engineer’s Office of the Military Division of Tennessee. Following the Civil War, Adler returned to Chicago, where he found a position with the offices of O. S. Kinney, who died shortly after Adler’s employment. Nevertheless, the son, Ashley Kinney, and Adler formed a partnership, Kinney and Adler. In 1871, Adler created a partnership with Edward Burling, an important step in Adler’s early career. Projects of Burling and Adler included the First National Bank and Sinai Temple. When this partnership ended in 1879, Adler labored on his own for two years as D. Adler and Company, working on such projects as the Central Music Hall. With this quick success, he met, hired, and promoted as junior partner the architect who would become Adler’s most significant partner, Louis Sullivan.
Life’s Work Adler’s architectural career achieved its apex during his collaboration with Sullivan between 1883 and 1896, when Sullivan was Adler’s junior partner. The partnership first specialized in theaters and auditoriums before expanding into high-rise and commercial buildings, with most of them located in Chicago. Their most significant projects included the Chicago Stock Exchange Building, the Auditorium Building, the Schiller Building, the Transportation Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition, and Kehilath Anshe Ma’ariv Synagogue. Other noteworthy buildings were the Union Trust and Wainwright Buildings in St. Louis, Missouri; the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, New York; and the Opera House in Pueblo, Colorado. Generally, Adler managed the business side of the firm and oversaw the engineering design aspects of the projects; Sullivan was primarily involved with the architectural design of the buildings. Although Adler’s father was the rabbi at the Kehilath Anshe Ma’ariv Synagogue, Adler was not known for being a devout member of the congregation. Following the onset of the Panic of 1893, Adler and Sullivan fell on financial hard times, and the two decided to dissolve their business partnership. Adler created a second D. Adler and Company with his sons, Abraham and Sidney, but it did not achieve the success he had known. The second D. Adler and Company produced only four buildings, the noteworthy one being the Isaiah Temple. However, Adler conducted a significant amount of consulting work in Chicago as well as in New York, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. Besides his work as an architect and engineer, Adler was a member of several professional organizations, including the Illinois Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, president of the Western Association of Architects, chairman of the Illinois State Board of Examiners of Architects, and a member of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition Board of Architects. Adler died on April 16, 1900, at his home in Chicago. Significance Adler and his partner Sullivan revolutionized the way Americans conceptualized cities and their skylines. They built skyscrapers that were aesthetically pleasing, in a style that later became known as Chicago. Adler and Sullivan, along with Daniel Burnham, William Holabird, William LeBaron Jenney, Martin Roche, John Root, and 9
Adler, Felix Solon S. Beman, formed the Chicago school of architects. Nonetheless, Adler and Sullivan were a dynamic pair, with Adler providing the engineering expertise to build taller and larger buildings, and Sullivan giving the artistic know-how to make the buildings architecturally beautiful. Adler and Sullivan’s combination of practical engineering and architectural aesthetics left a significant impression on the next generation of architects, and specifically on their apprentice and draftsman Frank Lloyd Wright. —Barry L. Stiefel Further Reading Cahan, Richard, and Michael Williams. Richard Nickel’s Chicago: Photographs of a Lost City. Chicago: Cityfiles Press, 2008. Book of photographs by Richard Nickel of architectural masterpieces in Chicago, many of which have already been destroyed. Several works by Adler and Sullivan are depicted. Elstein, Rochelle S. “The Architecture of Dankmar Adler.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 26,
Jewish Americans no. 4 (December, 1967): 242-249. Although Adler admitted in his writings that his contribution to his partnership with Sullivan was engineering skills, this article examines the often-overlooked artistic contributions made by Adler. Gregersen, Charles E., Joan W. Saltzstein, and Susan Wolfson. Dankmar Adler: His Theatres and Auditoriums. Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, Ohio University Press, 1990. This is one of the few books ever published exclusively on Adler, and it covers in depth certain aspects of his designs. Siry, Joseph M. The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan’s Architecture and the City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. A detailed account of the architectural, historical, and social impact of Adler and Sullivan’s work on the city of Chicago. See also: Marcel Breuer; Frank Gehry; Louis I. Kahn; Paul László.
Felix Adler German-born social reformer and intellectual As the founder of Society for Ethical Culture, Adler was an internationally recognized public intellectual, who articulated a philosophy based on universal religious teachings. He served as a social reformer, establishing a network of schools, working with labor leaders, and improving New York City housing. Born: August 13, 1851; Alzey, Hesse-Darmstadt (now in Germany) Died: April 24, 1933; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Religion and theology; education; social reform Early Life Felix Adler (FEE-lihks AD-lur) was born on August 13, 1851, to Henrietta and Samuel Adler. The family moved to New York City in 1857 when Samuel, a distinguished rabbi, accepted a post at Temple Emanu-El. In New York, Felix Adler attended Columbia Grammar School; he received formal Jewish instruction from his parents and supplemental classes. In 1866, Adler enrolled at Columbia College. He graduated on June 29, 1870, with an associate bachelor’s degree. Immediately 10
afterward, he traveled to Paris and shortly thereafter to Germany. In Berlin, Adler studied with Abraham Greiger, the founder of Reform Judaism. In 1873, he transferred to the University of Heidelberg, completing a doctoral degree in Semitics in October of that year. While in Germany, Adler studied the ideas of Immanuel Kant and adopted a universalistic understanding of religion, which ultimately guided his professional endeavors. Upon returning to America, expected to fill his father’s post, Adler delivered a sermon during which he neglected to mention God. Consequently, he was not offered the job and instead began work at Cornell University in the spring of 1874. Despite his academic post, Adler desired a platform outside the university to comment on religion and social issues. Accordingly, on May 15, 1876, Adler and a handful of associates founded the Society for Ethical Culture, for which Adler served as the head until he died. In 1880, he married Helen (Nellie) Godmark. Together they had five children: Waldo, Eleanor, Lawrence, Margaret, and Ruth. (Helen’s sister was the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.)
Jewish Americans Life’s Work Adler initially used the Society for Ethical Culture as a forum to articulate his ideas about religion and current events, especially economic and social ills, which he discussed in weekly lectures delivered on Sunday mornings. Although not a socialist, he recognized the inequitable distribution of wealth as problematic. Instead of promoting specifically Jewish religious values, he advanced what he identified as basic principles shared by all religions. Adler advocated that religious practices be aimed at furthering the well-being of society as a collective. Promoting his understanding of such universal ideals, Adler served as the president of the Free Religious Association from 1878 to 1882. In an effort to remedy social ills, Adler also used the society as a vehicle to implement his ideas; two of his first initiatives included sending nurses to the homes of sick people and establishing New York City’s first free kindergarten. The success of Adler’s kindergarten programs enabled him to establish schools that served students through high school. Adopting the name Ethical Culture Schools in 1895, these institutions were unique because they reflected Adler’s personal belief in the importance of both intellectual development and manual training. He aimed to prepare students to succeed in an industrialized economy and to inculcate in them curiosity and reasoning skills. Adler placed history at the center of his curriculum, underlining his belief in human agency. By the end of the century, Ethical Culture societies had spread throughout the United States and abroad. Branches opened in Chicago (1882), Philadelphia (1885), and St. Louis (1886) as well as in London (1886), Cambridge (1888), and Vienna (1894), among other places. Although each branch operated independently, all promoted similar ideas. In many respects, Adler’s educational views complemented those of philosopher and educational specialist John Dewey. The two became colleagues when Adler joined the faculty of Columbia, in 1902, as the professor of political and social ethics, a position he held until 1921. Adler also held various positions abroad, for example, serving as the Theodore Roosevelt Exchange Professor at the University of Berlin in 1908 and earning appointment as the Hibbert Lecturer at Oxford University in 1924. In 1904, Adler helped to establish and to lead the National Child Labor Commission. Further, he participated in reformation of city housing problems, serving on the New York State Tenement House Commission, and his ideas helped shape the city’s efforts at prison reform. He also wrote numerous texts, which de-
Adler, Felix
Felix Adler. (Library of Congress)
tailed his philosophy and ideas about how to solve various problems. Such works include Creed and Deed (1880), Life and Destiny (1903), The Religion of Duty (1905), Marriage and Divorce (1905), The Moral Instruction of Children (1908), and An Ethical Philosophy of Life (1918), among others. In addition to expressing opinions about domestic developments, Adler held a range of positions about American foreign policy. His life paralleled the rise of American presence abroad, a development that, for the most part, Adler denounced. Although he initially supported the participation of the United States in the SpanishAmerican War, he came to criticize American action before the war’s end, reflecting his general anti-imperialist stance. However, exhibiting American messianic fervor, Adler also believed that Americans—as humans, not as patriots—had a certain responsibility to help people in “uncivilized” societies. After a brief unidentified illness, Adler died on April 24, 1933, at the age of eighty-two, at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. The institution he founded survived his death and continued in operation. 11
Adler, Julius Ochs Significance Adler’s significance flows from his role as a public intellectual and social reformer. Adler’s career, in which he established schools, reformed various social institutions, and founded the Society of Ethical Culture—an institution that provided a forum for various thinkers to express themselves and collaborate with others—reflected his basic belief in the fundamental value of every individual. Although he rejected Jewish theology as his primary philosophical guide, his life’s work reflected many of the Jewish values instilled in him as a child. As a Jewish thinker, his work and theological transformation represent one way in which Jews responded to the demands of life in America. — Britt P. Tevis Further Reading Freiss, Horace L. Felix Adler and Ethical Culture: Memories and Studies. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Through personal recollections and historical research, Freiss provides an intellectual biography of Adler, which identifies the geographic and institutional locales in which he developed his religious and educational philosophies.
Jewish Americans Kraut, Benny. From Reform Judaism to Ethical Culture: The Religious Evolution of Felix Adler. Cincinnati, Ohio: Hebrew Union College Press, 1979. This work discusses Adler’s theological evolution in historical context. This book looks at Adler primarily as a Jewish thinker. Muzzey, David Saville. Ethics as a Religion. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1951. As one of the leading intellectuals at the Society of Ethical Culture and a disciple of Adler, Muzzey, a historian by training, articulates the foundational tenets of Ethical Culture. Although Adler is secondary in Muzzey’s work, Adler’s life is briefly reviewed in the book’s final chapter. Radest, Howard B. Toward Common Ground: The Story of the Ethical Societies in the United States. New York: Frederick, 1969. This work focuses on the life of Adler, emphasizing the development of the Ethical Culture movement and its institutional history. See also: Mary Antin; Emma Goldman; Samuel Gompers; Maud Nathan; Ernestine Rose; Henrietta Szold; Frederick Wiseman.
Julius Ochs Adler Journalist, military leader, and business executive A war veteran, Adler utilized his journalistic resources to voice his opinions regarding defense issues and compulsory military service. He emphasized the need for the United States to be prepared militarily with sufficient troops adequately trained to fight. Born: December 3, 1892; Chattanooga, Tennessee Died: October 3, 1955; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Journalism; military; war Early life Julius Ochs Adler (JEWL-ee-uhs oks AD-lur) was born on December 3, 1892, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Henry Clay Adler and Ada Ochs. His mother’s brother, Adolph S. Ochs, who owned The Chattanooga Times, designated Adler’s father head of that newspaper’s printing plant. Adler frequently played with his first cousin, Iphigene Ochs. Their families did not encounter antiSemitism in Chattanooga, worshipping at the local synagogue, called the Julius and Bertha Ochs Memorial Tem12
ple, named for Adler’s maternal grandparents to honor his grandfather’s service as a lay rabbi. After Adolph Ochs secured control of The New York Times in 1896, Adler often visited his uncle’s family in New York and accompanied them on trips, including a summer, 1904, excursion in Ochs’s Mercedes from Manhattan to Halifax, Nova Scotia. At the Bretton Woods Hotel in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, Adler experienced anti-Semitism when the Ochs family realized that the resort had a policy forbidding Jewish clientele. During summers in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Adler and Iphigene explored the boardwalk. A student at Baylor University School in Chattanooga, Adler completed coursework in 1908. Two years later, he graduated as class valedictorian from Lawrenceville School, a New Jersey boarding institution that readied boys to attend Princeton College. While at Princeton, Adler participated in debate competitions, was class president, and continued visiting the Ochses’ residence. Adler received his bachelor of arts degree in 1914. He
Jewish Americans
Adler, Julius Ochs
moved to New York to start employment at The New York Times. Life’s Work Adler traveled to Europe in summer, 1914, returning to the United States on the Lusitania when World War I (1914-1919) began on August 1. After German forces sank that ship in May, 1915, Adler attended the Business and Professional Men’s Training Camp, a civilian defense facility in Plattsburgh, New York, during two summers. In April, 1917, Adler secured a U.S. Army commission as a second lieutenant. One year later, he deployed to France as a field commander in the 306th Infantry, 77th Division. His heroic battle actions on the Western Front included approaching a group of 150 Germans at St. Juvin, France, on October 14, 1918, demanding that they surrender. In later combat, Adler was poisoned with gas. Discharged in 1919, Adler resumed civilian employment as The New York Times vice president and treasurer and edited the Seventy-seventh Division’s history. On August 27, 1922, Adler wed Barbara Stettheimer; they had one son and two daughters. Adler was executive editor of the History of the 306th Infantry (1935). After the death of Ochs in 1935, Adler became the general manager and president of The New York Times and the publisher of The Chattanooga Times. During the late 1930’s, he provided money, signed affidavits, and assisted in securing visas for relatives to escape Germany as antiSemitism there intensified. Adler promoted interwar defense efforts, contributing articles describing European military developments to The New York Times. In October, 1940, Adler resumed active duty. Promoted to brigadier general in 1941, Adler served in Hawaii, then as a Sixth Infantry Division commander in Australia and New Guinea until June, 1944, when gallbladder surgery ended his service. In spring, 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower asked Adler to view liberated concentration camps, including Dachau and Buchenwald. Adler wrote articles printed in The New York Times and spoke to groups, discussing what he had witnessed. He stated the camps had been more brutal than battles and that all Germans should be held accountable. Adler worshipped at Temple Emanu-El in New York City. He chaired the National Jewish Welfare Board’s Armed Services Committee, was a trustee of New York’s Hebrew Orphans Asylum and Denver’s National Jewish Hospital, and was a member of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. He helped plan Temple Emanu-El’s 1945
Julius Ochs Adler. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
centennial. Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Adler died at New York Hospital on October 3, 1955. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery Significance Adler’s commitment to military service reinforced national defense efforts during both peace and wartime. His power and connections as a New York Times executive aided him in expressing his concerns and achieving his goals regarding civilian military training and the development of reserve forces. His words, printed and spoken, convinced many Americans to support the maintenance of civilian military forces, inspiring numerous men to register for training camps, and contributed to passage of the Selective Training and Service Act. The news coverage of World War II (1939-1945), atrocities in Europe and Adler’s executive leadership advanced The New York Times’s reputation as a major international daily newspaper. —Elizabeth D. Schafer Further Reading Clifford, John G. “Grenville Clark and the Origins of Selective Service.” The Review of Politics 35, no. 1 (Jan13
Adler, Samuel H. uary, 1973): 17-40. Focuses on civilian military training camps, which Adler promoted, and his efforts to secure federal legislation to build sufficient reserve forces for national security. Dryfoos, Susan W., ed. Iphigene: My Life and the New York Times: The Memoirs of Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger as Written by Susan W. Dryfoos. Foreword by Barbara W. Tuchman. Introduction to new edition by Harrison E. Salisbury. New York: Times Books, 1987. His cousin remarks about Adler as a child, a journalist, and a soldier and includes anecdotes about his experiences with concentration-camp victims. Leff, Laurel. Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Criti-
Jewish Americans cizes The New York Times’s coverage of Jews in World War II (1939-1945), stating that Adler’s articles were superficial. Discusses Adler’s efforts to help relatives flee Nazi Germany. Photograph shows Adler at Buchenwald. Tiftt, Susan E., and Alex S. Jones. The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times. Boston: Little, Brown, 2000. Examines Adler in context of several Ochs generations and Adler’s journalistic aspirations. Notes anti-Semitism that Adler encountered. Genealogical chart. See also: Walter Annenberg; Dorothy Schiff; Arthur Hays Sulzberger.
Samuel H. Adler German-born composer
Born: March 4, 1928; Mannheim, Germany Also known as: Samuel Hans Adler (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; education
1950. He also studied conducting with Serge Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood in 1949 and 1950. While Adler served in the United States Army from 1950 to 1952, he founded and was conductor of the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra had such significant influence on the European cultural scene that he was awarded the Army’s Medal of Honor in 1953.
Early Life Samuel H. Adler (AHD-lur) was born in Mannheim, Germany, on March 4, 1928, the son of composer Hugo Chaim Adler, cantor of the Haupt-Synagogue in Mannheim, and of amateur pianist Selma Adler. The family fled Germany, where the Nazi crimes against Jews were becoming prevalent, and arrived in the United States in 1939, when Adler was eleven years old. His father became cantor of Temple Emanu-El, a Reform congregation in Worcester, Massachusetts. Adler’s musical talent was recognized early, and there was no question that he would follow in his father’s musical footsteps. As a child, Adler studied violin with Albert Levy. He later studied with Herbert Fromm, one of the most prolific and widely published composers of synagogue and of other serious Jewish music. In 1948, Adler earned his bachelor’s degree in music from Boston University, where he studied musicology with Karl Geiringer and composition with Hugo Norden. Later, Adler studied with Aaron Copland, Paul Hindemith, Walter Piston, and Randall Thompson at Harvard University and earned his master’s degree in
Life’s Work Following military service, Adler accepted the position of music director at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas, where he formed an adult choir that became a popular part of weekly religious services. He served as professor of composition at the University of North Texas, instructor of fine arts at the Hockaday School, and music director of both the Dallas Lyric Theater and the Dallas Chorale. In 1966, he joined the faculty of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he taught until retiring as professor emeritus. He taught at Ithaca College, University of Cincinnati, and Indiana University and served on the faculty of the Juilliard School in New York. He holds the title of visiting professor, giving master classes and workshops at universities worldwide. He has taught at major music festivals in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and South America. He composed more than four hundred published works, including operas, symphonies, concerti, string quartets, oratorios, chamber music, choral works, and songs, which
Adler is a conductor, music educator, and awardwinning composer of more than four hundred works, many based on Jewish liturgical themes.
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Jewish Americans have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the orchestras of Kansas City, San Antonio, Fort Worth, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Los Angeles. He has appeared as guest conductor with numerous symphony orchestras. He was awarded honorary doctorates from the St. Louis Conservatory, Southern Methodist University, and Wake Forest University. His many honors include the Charles Ives Award, the Lillian Fairchild Award, the Deems Taylor Award, Boston University’s Distinguished Alumni Award, Eastman School’s Eisenhart Award, American Guild of Organists Composer of the Year, Special Citation from the American Foundation of Music Clubs, and Guggenheim and MacDowell Fellowships. In 2001, he was granted membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was appointed Honorary Professorial Fellow of the University College in Cardiff, Wales. He was elected to the Akademie der Künste in Mannheim and the Chilean Academy of Fine Arts. In May, 2003, he was awarded the Aaron Copland Award by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) for lifetime achievement in composition and teaching. He is the author of several books, and he has contributed articles to major magazines and books published in the United States and abroad. Significance Adler is an influential force in the development of contemporary classical music. During his long tenure as professor of composition and chairman of the music department at the Eastman School and at the Juilliard School, he contributed to the training of many prominent American composers. He is a prolific composer as well as an influential teacher. His well-crafted compositions include religious, ecumenical, and popular themes, and
Adler, Samuel H. much of his work references Jewish liturgical music. His works have been recorded on RCA Vanguard, Lyrichord, Mark, Turnabout, Gasparo, and Golden Crest Records. —Jan Statman Further Reading Adler, Samuel H. Sightsinging, Pitch, Interval, Rhythm. 2d ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Includes practical and useful information, provides voice exercises, and teaches students to perform Western music of any style or harmonic organization. _______. The Study of Orchestration. 3d ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. Adler sets the standard for orchestration texts, providing a concise, comprehensive treatment of both orchestration and instrumentation. Adler, Samuel H., James E. Jordan, and Craig Timberlake. American Sacred Choral Music: An Overview and a Handbook. Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete Press, 2001. A collection of essays on the history of sacred choral music in America, including practical information for teaching. The book discusses various aspects of performing and studying the sacred music of different American faiths. Includes foreword by Elizabeth Patterson and introduction by Daniel Pinkham. Cristol, Gerry. A Light in the Prairie: Temple Emanu-El of Dallas, 1872-1997. Fort Worth, Tex.: TCU Press, 1998. History of Temple Emanu-El of Dallas includes information about Adler’s contributions as music director. Lyman, Darryl. Great Jews in Music. New York: Jonathan David, 1986. This guide to Jewish involvement in the world of music has one hundred biographies of important musicians, including Adler. See also: Leonard Bernstein; Misha Dichter; Lukas Foss; Jascha Heifetz; Itzhak Perlman; André Previn; Isaac Stern.
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Adler, Stella
Jewish Americans
Stella Adler Actor and teacher In a legendary acting career that spanned fifty years, Adler, in addition to her exemplary work on stage and in film, exerted profound influence on the shape and direction of contemporary American acting through her work for more than three decades as one of New York’s most respected and controversial acting teachers. Born: February 10, 1901; New York, New York Died: December 21, 1992; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Stella Ardler; Lola Ardler Area of achievement: Entertainment
the Moscow Art Theater toured New York and lectured eager young actors (among them Adler) on his theories of how the best actors methodically invested the performance of a character with emotions that drew from their own experiences, Adler enthusiastically embraced his philosophy. He provided a way to give two-dimensional scripted characters the necessary depth to come across as authentic. Adler joined the experimental Laboratory Theatre School in 1925, a small avant-garde acting company shaped by Stanislavsky’s theory of method acting. Life’s Work In 1931, Adler was invited to help start a new theater company. Along with director Harold Clurman, veteran stage actor Lee Strasberg, and producer Cheryl Crawford,
Early Life Stella Adler (STEH-lah AD-lur) was born to the theater. She was the youngest daughter of Sara and Jacob P. Adler, both legends in New York’s storied late nineteenth century Yiddish theater (eventually five of her siblings would work in the theater). Adler appeared on the stage by the age of four and spent most of her adolescence performing progressively more demanding roles, most of them in Yiddish; she had more than one hundred different roles before she was eighteen. Because she had time for little else, the theater became a refuge, a source of potent imaginative energy, and a place of extravagant freedom. She attended public school irregularly, given her time-consuming commitment to the theater. Nevertheless, she loved learning and maintained good grades through diligent independent study (she would complete high school and graduate from New York University). At eighteen, she made her debut in London with her father’s touring company, and two years later she made her first English-language Broadway appearance. Her career launched, Adler was restless with the acting methods of her colleagues. To her, their actions on the stage seemed contrived and forced, too geared toward soliciting audience reaction, too exaggerated, too absorbed with makeup and costuming, and too little involved in the emotionally demanding work of creating a convincing psychology for a character. To Adler, the acting was soulless. When the renowned Russian theater icon Konstantin Stanislavsky of Stella Adler. (Archive Photos/Getty Images) 16
Jewish Americans
Adler, Stella
Adler founded the Group Theater, a tightly Stella Adler Studio of Acting knit company of twenty-eight actors dedicated to redefining American theater, bringFor Stella Adler, a theater audience had to be convinced of the realing to the New York stage new plays and ity of the stage, able to see the figures on the stage not as actors but as gritty and realistic productions (as opposed people and thereby able to become emotionally involved with what is basically an artificial forum. When she broke with the Group Theater, to the frothy entertainments and melodraAdler famously dismissed so-called method acting as reducing acting mas of the day) with powerful contemporary to voyeurism and misdirected therapy that insulated the actors. Her social and political messages. Over the next acting studio would become the epicenter for a revolution in American decade, the theater ensemble staged twentyacting. Acting, she taught in emotionally charged workshops, should six productions to tremendous critical praise. come from the imagination, not the mind or the heart. An actor, far Adler’s most memorable success came as from withdrawing into individual emotional experiences, should dive the heroic beleaguered mother in Clifford into the character, analyze the text, read a script carefully, and even beOdets’s Awake and Sing! (1935), centered tween the lines, to shape a convincing and coherent reading of the on the tribulations of an impoverished Bronx character. Then, drawing on the vibrant energy of the community of family struggling to hold on to hope for their actors on stage (she pioneered the importance of improvisation), the future. actors collectively should shape a convincing theater production. Adler conducted what would become legendary workshops with The direction of the theater group was inpassion and intelligence, mitigating her often autocratic presence with creasingly guided by the vision of Strasberg, a keen, caustic wit. During her long tenure at her studio, classes were who considerably expanded Stanislavsky’s developed in speech, voice projection, rehearsal practices, makeup, theory and who demanded that the young acstage blocking, arm and hand manipulation, script analysis, thematic tors draw from their most potent (and often reading, explication of textual symbols, and investigating the historic painful) personal experiences to generate context of the playwright and the play, all new areas in the education of stage emotions or recall specific sensory an actor. So successful was Adler’s studio that in 1969 it became part experiences to create verisimilitude with of the New York University’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts, that their characters. Adler became uncomfortuniversity’s first acting school. able with the premise. She argued that actors Few theater historians dispute that Adler essentially created postshould explore the text, think through the war American dramatic acting; indeed, naming only her most prominent students testifies to the range and depth of her influence: Marlon character, rather than their own emotional Brando, Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro, Candace Bergen, Martin life, and invest the play with their imaginaSheen, Harvey Keitel, Roy Scheider, and Benicio del Toro. tive energy. The turning point came in 1934 when, on a trip to Paris (she took a leave of absence from the theater company), Adler met Stanislavsky and worked under him for Boy (1937). It was then she discovered what would bemore than a month. In that time, they had lengthy convercome her passion, teaching acting, initially at New York sations about method acting. Adler was encouraged to University’s New School for Social Research and in find that the great man had altered considerably his theo1949 in her own school for acting, the Stella Adler Conretical approach and agreed with Adler that the actor’s servatory for Acting (later the Stella Adler Studio of imagination and creativity, rather than the actor’s memActing). ory, should inform a character. Over the next three decades, Adler maintained her When Adler returned to New York, she attempted uncommitment to teaching, not only at her own studio but successfully to sway Strasberg to moderate his method also at Yale University. Her classes became legendary. acting program. In 1937, unable to tolerate what she conUnder her direction, her studio steadily expanded. Once ceived to be monstrous misdirection—acting based on she retired from performing in 1961, she devoted her the vulgar exploitation of an actor’s emotional trauconsiderable energies to her teaching and to publishing mas—she left New York for Hollywood. She enjoyed her theories on acting in a series of well-received (and moderate success in a string of B-films (most under successful) books. She reluctantly stopped teaching in the name Stella Ardler). When she returned to Broadher eighties. When she died of heart failure at the age of way after the war, she found few strong parts for an actor ninety-one in 1992, she was hailed as the most influential approaching fifty. However, she took several turns as a force in twentieth century American dramatic theater. director, notably for a 1952 revival of Odets’s Golden 17
Ain, Gregory Significance In bringing together Stanislavsky’s acting theory, which positioned the actor (rather than the playwright or the director) as the central energy in the theater, and her long background in Yiddish theater (with its emphasis on ensemble acting, sympathetic characters, and enthralling story lines), Adler gave a new direction to postwar American acting. Actors would draw the richness of their characters from the careful analysis of the play itself, using the resources of their imagination and the dynamic of fellow actors to essentially create that character in ways that neither the director nor the playwright may have conceived. Adler believed theater to be a community effort, a cooperative of talent that embraced the creative integrity of the actor’s input. — Joseph Dewey Further Reading Adler, Stella. Stella Adler: The Art of Acting. New York: Applause, 2000. Fascinating collection of Adler’s most controversial theories on developing character through imaginative engagement with the script. Caustic review of what she argued was the misinterpretation of
Jewish Americans Stanislavsky that led to her departure from the Group Theater. _______. The Technique of Acting. New York: Bantam Books, 1988. Essential reading. Transcripts of Adler’s studio workshops with copious illustrations. Introduction stresses the impressive range of Adler’s influence in both serious theater and film. Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the Thirties. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1983. Still considered the best account of the experimental theater company where Adler started. Written by legendary Broadway director and longtime theater critic (and Adler’s second husband). Explains the rift between Adler and Strasberg. Rotte, Joanna. Acting with Adler. New York: Limelight, 2001. Helpful recounting of Adler’s evolution as the dominant presence in American stage acting. Important perspective provides a sense of the impact of Adler’s theories on successive generations of American actors. See also: Tony Curtis; Dustin Hoffman; Paul Newman; Clifford Odets; Lee Strasberg.
Gregory Ain Architect Active in Los Angeles in the 1930’s and 1940’s, Ain expressed his social and political beliefs through architecture. He considered design a means to improve the lives of individuals and their communities, and he worked to change the social landscape. Born: March 28, 1908; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Died: January 9, 1988; Los Angeles, California Area of achievement: Architecture and design Early Life Gregory Ain (ayn) was born to Baer and Chiah Ain soon after their immigration to the United States. Baer, the son of a rabbi, came from a rural community in Poland annexed by czarist Russia. As a young man he joined the Menshevist Marxists, and after the 1905 revolution he was arrested and sent to Siberia to teach peasants to read. Chiah’s father arranged Baer’s escape to the United States with his wife and infant daughter, sending them to his brother in Pittsburgh, where Gregory Ain was born and named for a Menshevist hero, Gregory 18
Gershuny. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1911, where Ain grew up among other Russian and Polish Jews near the immigrant neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Baer moved the family to a cooperative farming colony in the desert in 1914; they returned to Los Angeles eighteen months later. When he was seventeen, Ain met Richard Neutra and, three years later, Rudolph Schindler, both prominent Jewish architects in the modern style. Ain left formal study at the University of Southern California School of Architecture to apprentice with Neutra and then Schindler. Their body of work became known as the Los Angeles School, with Ain and his peers considered the second generation. The social values of his childhood strongly influenced Ain’s professional life and so did his mentors. The left-wing politics of the Schindlers influenced Ain’s acceptance of modern architecture as a social-change agent. Ain felt a strong sense of obligation to his clients and worked with contractors who shared his values. The resulting projects were innovative, carefully designed to meet the needs of the client and the site, and well constructed.
Jewish Americans Life’s Work One of Ain’s early and best-known independent projects remained his favorite, for it proved to him that he was an architect by skill and not just by chance: the 1937 Dunsmuir Flats, four two-story apartments on a narrow hillside lot, each with its own entrance and rear private garden. The economic restraints of the 1930’s fit well with Ain’s commitment to social responsibility and affordable homes. In 1940, this earned him a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to study low-income housing, sponsored in part by renowned architects Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. During World War II (1939-1945), Ain turned to engineering, working with Charles Eames and others on the development of an autoclave, for the processing of plywood. After the war Ain returned to designing affordable housing in planned neighborhoods. Challenged by midcentury bureaucracies and prejudices, Ain persevered in his Mar Vista housing project to incorporate flexibility into a socially and environmentally responsible design and to balance private and public space. The 52-unit development, scaled back from Ain’s original 102-unit design by the Federal Housing Administration, remains one of his great successes, one of the properties for which he is best known, and still a desired place to live in Los Angeles. Between 1945 and 1971 Ain and his associates designed fifty-one singlefamily residences, of which twenty-four were built. He taught for a number of years at the University of Southern California and was remembered as an inspiring and engaging teacher. One of his students was Frank Gehry. In the mid-1960’s Ain served as dean of the School of Architecture at Pennsylvania State University. In the school’s collection are his published papers, relating to architecture, education, and architectural theory, including architecture’s connection with society’s ethical values. He returned to Los Angeles in 1967. Because of extended illness, he did not actively teach or practice architecture again. After his death in 1988, architectural critics revisited Ain’s style and philosophy, recognizing the continued social and economic value of his practical solutions, the use of natural light, and the integration of indoor and outdoor, public and private spaces. Significance Ain was a socially responsible architect whose designs reflected practical solutions to a series of chal-
Ain, Gregory lenges, including the economics of the 1930’s; asymmetric, frequently vertical lots in Southern California; and the need for affordable housing as Los Angeles expanded pre- and post-World War II (1939-1945). He was willing to adapt style to satisfy the client and reluctant to conform to government-imposed restrictive covenants or to compromise his social and ethical ideals. Italian architecture critic Bruno Zevi and American architect Stanley Tigerman have suggested Jewish architecture is about openness and creativity. If Jewish identity can be conveyed through architecture, then Ain’s architecture promotes a sense of community and social equality. —Amy H. Crain Further Reading Denzer, Anthony. Gregory Ain: The Modern Home as Social Commentary. New York: Rizzoli, 2008. A fulllength study of Ain’s life and work, by an architect and historian who brings together modern architecture, housing, and politics. Gebhard, David, and Harriette Von Breton. Los Angeles in the Thirties: 1931-1941. 2d ed. Los Angeles, California: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1989. Provides context for the architectural profession, the Southern California location, and the social and economic aspects of the time. Gebhard, David, Harriette Von Breton, and Lauren Weiss. The Architecture of Gregory Ain: The Play Between the Rational and High Art. Santa Monica, Calif.: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1997. Originally published with input from the architect in conjunction with an exhibition organized for the University of California, Santa Barbara, Art Museum. Gebhard, David, and Robert Winter. Architecture in Los Angeles: A Compleat Guide. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1985. Detailed explanation with photographs of key identifying features of architect and architecture. McCoy, Esther. The Second Generation. Salt Lake City, Utah: Gibbs M. Smith, 1984. One of the most complete sources of information on the lives and work of four 1930’s architects of the Los Angeles School. See also: Dankmar Adler; Marcel Breuer; Richard Neutra; Rudolph Schindler.
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Akerlof, George
Jewish Americans
George Akerlof Economist and educator Akerlof is a Nobel Prize-winning economist noted for his 1970 paper on uncertainty in markets driven by assymetrical relationships, in which one party in a transaction has more information than the other. His study challenged the traditional views of economists, who believed markets were ultimately efficient. Born: June 17, 1940; New Haven, Connecticut Also known as: George Arthur Akerlof (full name) Areas of achievement: Economics; education Early Life George Akerlof (A-kur-lawf) was born June 17, 1940, to immigrant parents. His Swedish father was a professor of chemistry at Yale University; his German Jewish mother was a housewife who had met her future husband while studying chemistry in graduate school at Yale. Akerlof had one brother, Carl. Akerlof’s father was extremely serious about his work as a scientist, and he believed that his sons should follow his example and become chemists. The father’s career required him to work at and move among several academic institutions, however, and the family moved first from New Haven, Connecticut, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, then to Princeton, New Jersey. In his Nobel autobiography, Akerlof recalled having his first economic insight at age twelve, when he realized that if his father lost his job, the Akerlof family would spend less, thus causing someone else’s father to lose his job. Akerlof noted that he had roughly intuited the principles of the economics of John Maynard Keynes that would guide him later in his career. Following in his brother’s footsteps, Akerlof enrolled at Yale, where he was active as a reporter on The Yale Daily News. He was denied a position on the paper’s news board and quit reporting, a decision Akerlof remembers as setting him on his career as an economist. He graduated in 1962 with a background in economics and mathematics. He enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was introduced to many mathematical principles and approaches that would guide his later work. He graduated with a Ph.D. in economics in 1966. Life’s Work In 1970, Akerlof published his best-known paper, “The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism,” in the Quarterly Journal of Economics while working as an assistant professor at the 20
University of California, Berkeley. It has since become one of the most commonly cited papers in the economic literature. The paper’s subject is information asymmetry, which occurs most commonly in transactions where a seller has more knowledge about a product’s quality than potential buyers do. Akerlof used the used-car market to demonstrate the difficulties of such transactions. Potential buyers do not know for certain if a used car is in good shape mechanically (a “cherry”) or if it has hidden flaws (a “lemon”); without this information, buyers assume that every car is in average condition. This means the sellers of good cars would receive less money than their car is worth, which leads many owners of good cars to avoid putting them on the market at all. A downward spiral begins, as the quality and price of used cars continues to decrease, and even owners of cars in average shape lose their incentive to sell. The paper was the subject of criticism from economists who believed that if Akerlof’s claims were true, the number of goods available in asymmetrical markets would dwindle into nothing. Others claimed that knowledgeable sellers would accurately price goods in order to protect their own credibility. Akerlof’s work has endured these criticisms, and in 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for the “lemons” paper, sharing it with fellow economists Joseph Stiglitz and A. Michael Spence, who had contributed work on asymmetrical information. Akerlof was given tenure as a lecturer on economics at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1969, but he was not made a full professor. In 1973, he married Kay Leong, but the couple divorced in 1977. In 1978, Akerlof took a position as professor at the London School of Economics (LSE). He met his second wife, Janet Yellen, while working on the Federal Reserve Board; she also began to lecture at LSE. In 1980, Akerlof and Yellen returned to the United States to teach at University of California, Berkeley. In 1996, Akerlof published “An Analysis on Out-ofWedlock Childbearing in the United States” in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Akerlof and his cowriters (Yellen and Lawrence Katz) argued that the widespread use of modern birth-control methods had increased the number of children born out of wedlock. The paper claimed that men felt less responsible for a child’s upbringing because the child’s mother had chosen to bring the baby to term. Akerlof has spoken of his lifelong fascination with the
Jewish Americans problem of unemployment, beginning with his childhood musings about his father’s job. Over the years he has turned increasingly to sociological theories to try to develop a theory for unemployment. His efforts involve a theory that sticky prices and wages, which companies were slow to alter as the market shifted, could create a rational system. Significance Along with his fellow recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Akerlof believes that the market is not selfcorrecting and that government intervention is often necessary to right it. His paper “The Market for Lemons” added to the growing body of literature on asymmetric information, demonstrating that unchecked markets could develop serious flaws. Akerlof has played an active role in attempting to prevent these problems, working on the board of the Council of Economic Advisors and influencing the policies of the Federal Reserve. — C. Breault
Aleichem, Sholom Further Reading Akerlof, George, and Rachel E. Kranton. Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010. Written in a nontechnical style, this book explains how personal identity influences economic behavior. Clarke, Conor. “An Interview with George Akerlof.” The Atlantic, February 19, 2009. In this wide-ranging interview, Akerlof discusses the relationship between the economy and human nature. Uchitelle, Louis. “Americans Awarded Nobel for Economics.” The New York Times, October 11, 2001. A news article briefly detailing the work and its significance of the three professors who shared the award in 2001. See also: Kenneth Arrow; Milton Friedman; Herbert Stein; Joseph Stiglitz.
Sholom Aleichem Ukrainian-born writer One of the first writers to explore the literary possibilities of Yiddish, Aleichem transformed a language in common use to mirror the joys and the terrors of being Jewish in tales that presented the humanity of Jews to a global audience. Born: March 2, 1859; Pereyaslav, Russia (now Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky, Ukraine) Died: May 13, 1916; Bronx, New York Also known as: Sholom Naumovich Rabinovitz (birth name) Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Sholom Aleichem (SHOH-lehm ah-LAY-kehm) was born into a family of Ukrainian Jews in the town of Pereyaslav during the reign of Czar Alexander II. In 1877, following the completion of his education at age eighteen, Aleichem took a position near Kiev as a private tutor to the daughter of Elimelech Loyeff; Aleichem remained two years and developed a romantic relationship with his pupil. Sent away by her father in 1879, he traveled to Kiev in an unsuccessful attempt to meet other Jewish intellectuals, and he was elected to the post of cer-
tified rabbi (a liaison position in the czarist bureaucracy) in Lubin. He held this for two and a half years, continuing to write for the Hebrew press. It was through his pieces published in the journal Ha-Melitz that Loyeff’s daughter regained contact with him. They eloped in May, 1883, and married without her father’s consent. Aleichem served his wealthy father-in-law as a secretary and a manager of the estate, but he had ample time to devote to writing. Life’s Work Aleichem wrote initially in Hebrew, but when HaMelitz began to issue a supplement in Yiddish, the first such publication in Russia, he enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to write for a much larger popular audience. His decision to adopt and to utilize Yiddish as the vehicle for his creativity was somewhat radical. In the late nineteenth century, Yiddish, while widely used in Jewish communities across the world, was not considered proper for formal intellectual works of lasting value and merit; such works were written in Hebrew. In response to this, he chose as his pen name the phrase “sholom aleichem,” a Hebrew greeting meaning “peace unto you,” which was in widespread use, so that his 21
Aleichem, Sholom friends and family would not know that he was writing in Yiddish. The range of his literary creation would come to fill some forty volumes and would include short stories, poetry, novels, essays, and a significant number of plays and other stage productions; he explored nearly every literary form available to him. He also attempted to found an ongoing literary annual for the promotion of Yiddish writing, Di Yidishe Folks—Bibliotek (the Yiddish folk library). The contents of the two editions he succeeded in producing before his financial troubles in 1890 reflect his ability to enlist recognized Hebrew writers of the time and those writers already producing work in Yiddish. After leaving Russia because of the pogrom of 1905 in Kiev, Aleichem lived for a time in Galicia, where he was well received by the local Jewish communities, and he embarked on a tour giving public readings of his works, with engagements in early 1906 in Romania, France, England, and Switzerland. In October, 1906, he first visited the United States with his wife and youngest son, and Jews in New York arranged a gala reception at which he was introduced to Mark Twain. The contrast between the diverse and active Jewish world of the United States and the limited life permitted Jews in Russia inspired Aleichem to write a statement of gratitude for the warm American hospitality he received. In this
Giving Voice to a Fading World One of the gifts Sholom Aleichem possessed was an ability to identify with his characters, whom he claimed were drawn from the diverse array of people he had met in the course of his life and its changing social contexts. Through his tales of the mythical village of Kasrilevka, Aleichem portrayed the distinctive culture of the Jews of rural Ukraine and their ability to preserve their identity with dignity in the face of oppression. It was a world nearly invisible outside Russia, largely unknown except to the Jews, forged in and preserved by centuries of tradition but under assault by the forces of anti-Semitism and revolution, a way of life that was in the process of disappearing into modernity even as Aleichem described it. His stories also wove a common thread of memory and of identity within and among scattered Jewish immigrant communities across the world. By translating the essential humanity of both village and urban Jewish life in prerevolutionary Russia into the voices of vivid and memorable characters, he made them citizens of the world entitled to equal treatment. The shattering of Ukrainian and East European Jewry that would come with two world wars and the Soviet state made the documentation of this lost way of life invaluable.
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Jewish Americans text, he debunked the stereotyped images of America widely heard in Europe and wrote about the bright promise of what American Jewry could achieve. His initial visit to New York ended in June, 1907, when he returned to his family in Geneva. Another reading tour in Poland and Russia in 1908 was cut short when he fell ill in Baranovichi and was diagnosed with acute pulmonary tuberculosis. After seven weeks, he was well enough to travel to Nervi, Italy, near Genoa, beginning a period of recuperation in healthy climates that would last for five years. News of his illness and dire financial situation (because of the fact that his publishers had bought the rights to his stories and novels and paid him little or nothing in royalties) was made known through a letter written by family friend Moshe Weizmann to one of the Yiddish newspapers, and it was quickly reprinted by the Jewish press worldwide. The response was a massive outpouring of financial and moral support, centering on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Aleichem’s first printed work. An article by poet Simeon Frug, castigating the Jewish community for its treatment of one of their leading intellectuals, was translated and appeared widely outside Russia. The matter was settled in the spring of 1909 when Aleichem’s wife and the anniversary committee in Warsaw confronted his publishers and threatened to expose the full extent of their abuse. One publisher was authorized to issue new editions of his works (for which there was increased demand) and to supply advances against yearly royalties, and the others relinquished all rights. The translation of his writing into Russian opened up another source of income, access to new literary journals, and praise from leading critics and authors alike. The beginning of war between Germany and Russia resulted in the family’s flight to Copenhagen and four months later to New York, A passionate focus of Aleichem’s creative work was the stage, and as early as 1887 he composed a one-act play, A Doktor (1887; She Must Marry a Doctor, 1916), although there was no Yiddish theater in Russia at that time and the ban on private theaters just had been lifted. In writing for the theater (which he continued to do at every level of complexity, from skits to fully developed plays, up to 1914), he expressed both his skill at drawing vivid characters and his need to establish and to maintain close contact with the Jewish community. Following the successful reception of a translation of one of his plays in Warsaw, he determined to try his fortune in New York City, which pos-
Jewish Americans sessed three major Yiddish theaters. Two of his plays, the drama Stempenyu (1907), an adaptation of Aleichem’s first novel, and the satirical four-act Samuel Pasternak (1907), were optioned by Boris Thomashefsky and Jacob Adler respectively. The works premiered in 1907 to solid critical acclaim from the city’s Yiddish press and to great popularity with audiences, although neither ran for more than two weeks. Aleichem died in 1916 in the Bronx, surrounded by those who appreciated the contributions he made to preserving the poignant aspects of their lives. Significance Aleichem was one of the first writers to see the literary potential in Yiddish at a time when all serious literature was written exclusively in Hebrew for a select audience able to read that language. His tales preserved the values and the culture of the vanishing world of Jewish life in the shtetl for Jews everywhere in the world and introduced the non-Jewish population to this dynamic segment of world history. The intricate humanity of his characters made his stories accessible to a broad readership, best exemplified by his story “Tevye the Milkman,” which was brought to the stage as the phenomenally successful musical (and, later, film) Fiddler on the Roof (1964). He was also the first to write in Yiddish for children, and his stage works were adopted as standard parts of the repertory of the Yiddish Art Theatre in New York. His stature in the Jewish community may be seen in its
Alexander, Madame response to his death, when a crowd of some 100,000 people stood along the route of his funeral procession through New York to pay their respects. His plays would become part of the core repertory of the Yiddish Art Theatre in New York and in Moscow several years after his death. — Robert B. Ridinger Further Reading Roskies, David G. “An-Sky, Sholem Aleichem, and the Master Narrative of Russian Jewry.” In The Worlds of S. An-Sky: A Russian Intellectual at the Turn of the Century, edited by Gariella Safran and Steven J. Zipperstein. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006. A comparative study of Aleichem’s output with that of another writer active at the same period in Russia. Samuel, Maurice. The World of Sholom Aleichem. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. A thoughtful presentation of the ideas found in Aleichem’s work, using numerous examples drawn from the text. Waife-Goldberg, Marie. My Father, Sholom Aleichem. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968. A highly readable account of the writer’s life and the social environments he lived in, as seen by his daughter. See also: Sholem Asch; Bernard Malamud; Bette Midler; J. D. Salinger; Isaac Bashevis Singer; Herman Wouk.
Madame Alexander Entrepreneur and artist Madame Alexander founded a company that became a foremost American toy manufacturer. Her dolls were known for their high artistic quality, and she launched the tie-in of toys to films and the first dolls based on licensed characters. Born: March 9, 1895; Brooklyn, New York Died: October 3, 1990; Palm Beach, Florida Also known as: Beatrice Alexander Behrman (full name); Bertha Alexander (birth name) Area of achievement: Business Early Life Hannah Pepper, the mother of Bertha Alexander (BUR-tha al-ehk-ZAN-dur), was born in Austria and came to the United States through Russia. Pepper and her
family had been victims of pogroms. The father of Madame Alexander is unknown; he either died in a pogrom or died in America when she was a baby. Later, Pepper married Maurice Alexander in New York, and her daughter formed a close relationship with her stepfather. Born in Odessa, Russia, Madame Alexander’s stepfather first moved to Germany, where he learned to repair watches and porcelain dolls. In New York, he opened the first doll hospital in the United States. Pepper and her husband added three daughters—Rose, Florence, and Jean—to the family, and they lived above the doll shop. Madame Alexander loved to read poetry and the works of Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott. She was influenced by the wealthy ladies who brought dolls to the hospital to be fixed. In 1912, she graduated from 23
Alexander, Madame Washington Irving High School as valedictorian. She won a scholarship in 1911 to study sculpting in Paris. A bank failure depleted her parents’ savings, and she could not go to France. Madame Alexander made dolls for her father to sell. Her sisters copied her samples while she supervised. In 1912, she married Philip Berhman. The embargo on German goods during World War I (1914-1919) hurt the Alexanders’ business. Madame Alexander created a doll that was neither porcelain nor bisque to sell at her parents’ shop. Her muslin Red Cross nurse doll was a success. Her daughter Mildred was born in 1915. Life’s Work Madame Alexander began her company in 1923. Her parents were successful in selling her cloth nurse and baby dolls. With her sisters and neighbors working for her, she made enough to rent a studio in Manhattan. She created ideas, sewed bodies and costumes, and developed accounts. She found a new way to make doll faces using wet buckram molded over a bowl, giving the face dimension and character. In the late 1920’s, she bought doll bodies made of composition material: resin, papier-mâché, and sawdust. In 1923, FAO Schwarz bought Madame Alexander’s doll patterned after her daughter. This and an article in Toys and Novelties magazine launched her. In 1925, she convinced her husband to quit his job and work with her to develop a doll company. He handled the company’s management all his life. Madame Alexander got a trademark for her Alice in Wonderland doll in 1930, and the doll was reissued in 1933. The doll appeared simultaneously with a film based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). This was the first toy company and film tiein. Among her film tie-ins were the Three Little Pigs (1933), Little Women (1933), and Gone with the Wind (1939). Scarlett O’Hara (the heroine of Gone with the Wind) and Little Women dolls remain in the company catalog. Madame Alexander’s biggest breakthrough in popular culture came when Canadian trustees gave the Alexander Doll Company a license to manufacture dolls with the likeness of the Dionne quintuplets, five identical girl babies born in 1934 in Ontario, Canada, who caused a media sensation. Through the 1940’s Madame Alexander made dolls of famous people and of men and women soldiers. Her dolls from her high-fashion Portrait series, featuring opera, ballet, and literary characters, made from 1946 to 1955, sold for seventy-five dollars each at a time when 24
Jewish Americans sixty dollars was a respectable weekly income. Her husband developed hard plastic dolls in 1947. The Margaret O’Brien doll, based on a famous child film star, made in 1948, was the first. Moisture would not crack it, and it could be molded precisely with dies. Madame Alexander, her husband, and their son-in-law, Richard Birnbaum, ran the company. The focus on quality continued in the Godey series, 1950, with dolls based on illustrations from Godey’s Lady’s Book, a fashion publication from the 1830’s. Madame Alexander did the research. In 1953, she created a doll dramatization of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. Displayed in the Abraham and Straus department store in Brooklyn, it drew a crowd of seven thousand people on its first day. Madame Alexander worked with the British Museum of Costume for her research. The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) used the dolls to act out the ceremony for television. Madame Alexander’s innovations included Jeannie Walker, an early walking doll, 1942; Cissy, the first fullfigured doll, 1955 (wearing adult clothes and high heels, she predates Barbie); and the International (1961) and First Ladies (1976) series dolls. From 1960 to 1966, she made high-quality children’s clothes. Madame Alexander’s popularity was great and her honors were many. The Fashion Academy awarded her its Gold Medal in 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, and other years; her International series was unveiled at the United Nations; the Smithsonian Institution collected her dolls; in 1983, Disney World received thirty-one hundred calls in fifteen minutes for tickets to a dinner with Madame Alexander. In 1986, Doll Reader gave her its Lifetime Achievement Award. FAO Schwarz named her First Lady of Dolls. When her husband died in 1966, Madame Alexander ran the company with her son-in-law and grandson. She sold the company in 1988. Madame Alexander died in her sleep in October, 1990. Significance Madame Alexander’s company succeeded on every level: the quality of its product, its financial success, and the public’s enthusiasm for its dolls. The dolls were treasured by many young people, especially from the 1940’s through the 1970’s. Madame Alexander achieved her childhood dreams by creating work that allowed her artistic expression, by using only the finest materials, and by becoming as fine a lady as those she saw and imagined in her reading. Through hard work and inventiveness, she enriched many lives. She was known for generosity to her employees. She made significant charitable gifts,
Jewish Americans especially to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brandeis University, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the Women’s League of Israel. — Leslie Joan Friedman Further Reading Crowsey, Linda. Collector’s Encyclopedia of Madame Alexander Dolls, 1948-1965: Identification and Values. Paducah, Ky.: Collector Books, 2006. Covers the “golden era” during which many of the most valuable Madame Alexander dolls were produced. Illustrated. Finnegan, Stephanie, and Lia Sargent. Madame Alexan-
Algren, Nelson der Dolls: An American Legend. New York: Portfolio Press, 1999. Authoritative source for information on Madame Alexander’s life, dolls, and company. Includes photographs, doll chronology, and bibliography. Goodnough, Abby. “For Alexander Dolls, More than Just Pretty Faces.” The New York Times, October 2, 1994. Fascinating article about the making of Madame Alexander dolls. See also: Walter Annenberg; Max Factor; Leona Helmsley; Estée Lauder.
Nelson Algren Writer In a series of moving novels about life on the Chicago streets, Algren created first-rate fiction in the tradition of literary naturalism made famous by such earlier Chicago novelists as Theodore Dreiser and James T. Farrell. Born: March 28, 1909; Detroit, Michigan Died: May 9, 1981; Sag Harbor, New York Also known as: Nelson Ahlgren Abraham (birth name) Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Although later his name would become synonymous with the city of Chicago, Nelson Algren (AWL-grehn) was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father’s father was a Swede who converted to Judaism and married a Jewish American woman. In an entertaining interview with H. E. F. Donohue, Algren related the story of his grandfather’s Zionism and how on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem his father, then two years old, woke up one morning to find himself surrounded by Arabs on camels. Interfaith relations were complicated in the Algren family. When his mother’s sister, Aunt Frances, died, she was buried in a Jewish chapel with a service in Hebrew, but since she was a member of the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the American Legion, three members of the auxiliary turned up with a flag and a New Testament and read gospel passages. After an early education in the Chicago public schools, Algren entered the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign and received a bachelor of science in journalism in 1931. Degree in hand, he toured the South, for a
brief time selling bogus beauty parlor finger waves to naïve housewives in New Orleans. He and two fellow con men migrated to the Rio Grande Valley with eleven dollars in quarters and set up housekeeping in an abandoned Sinclair gasoline station. At about this time Algren worked in a carnival, participating in a scam until he double-crossed the scam master and scampered out of town with twelve dollars in change. Following a brief jail sentence for vagrancy in El Paso, Texas, Algren started using the typewriters in an empty classroom at Alpine Teachers College. When he stole an old Royal typewriter, planning on sending it back to Chicago, he was arrested and spent five months in jail. After hitchhiking home to Chicago, he met Murray Gitlin, the helpful director of the Writers’ Circle, and wrote a story called “So Help Me” on Gitlin’s typewriter. It was based on his picaresque ramblings in Texas, and Story magazine published it in 1933. Consequently, Algren got a form letter from Vanguard Press inquiring if he was working on a novel. He then hitchhiked to New York City and wangled an advance of one hundred dollars from Vanguard to support himself while he wrote Somebody in Boots, which was published in 1935. He married Amanda Kontowicz in 1936, but his marriage and his novel were both unsuccessful. He was divorced in 1939, and he did not publish another novel till 1942, when he completed Never Come Morning. Life’s Work Sometime in the 1930’s, while editing manuscripts for the Illinois Writers’ Project, a part of the Works Progress Administration, Algren became involved with left25
Algren, Nelson wing political movements. He reported in the Donohue interviews that “I had done leg work for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade around Chicago,” a communist organization that recruited people to fight in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and that his name appeared in all the antifascist literature. Years later he became the honorary chairman of the Chicago Committee to Save the Rosenbergs (Julius and Ethel), who were accused of being spies, a political act that cost him his passport. These activities earned him a file with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Algren spent three years in the Army during World War II (1939-1945), seeing action as a medic in Germany and in France. He entered the Army as a private and was discharged as one. He told Donohue that the only wound he ever received came when he was hit in the back of the head with a shoe in Marseilles. He admitted he was never in any danger from enemy fire but worried about the Army military police when he was out late scrounging
Nelson Algren. (Library of Congress)
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Jewish Americans around to find wine. He loved Marseilles, where he was billeted waiting to go home, and called it “a kind of Wild West town” that accommodated his black market dealings. After his Army discharge in 1945, Algren took a ten-dollar-a-month room in Chicago and wrote The Neon Wilderness, and in 1949 he published his masterpiece, The Man with the Golden Arm, made by Otto Preminger into a film starring Frank Sinatra. In 1947, the French writer Simone de Beauvoir, JeanPaul Sartre’s lifetime intellectual mate, traveled across America on a lecture tour. When she read about Algren’s ragged lifestyle and was introduced to him, Beauvoir immediately began an affair with Algren that took them on a Latin America tour and later to Mediterranean sites. Their relationship ultimately collapsed, but Beauvoir was buried in 1986 wearing his ring. In 1956, Algren drew on Somebody in Boots to publish A Walk on the Wild Side (1956), a comic best seller set in the French Quarter. His protagonist is a drifter like
Jewish Americans the Algren of that Great Depression era, and his adventures among pimps and prostitutes afford considerable black humor. The film rights earned Algren twenty-five thousand dollars. His marriage to Betty Ann Jones in 1965 lasted only two years, a period of heavy drinking and gambling. In 1974, he moved to Paterson, New Jersey, to write The Devil’s Stocking (1983), a posthumously published novel about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who was imprisoned for murder but freed in 1985, five years after Algren died of a heart attack. Significance Algren’s significance as a writer was recognized when he received the first National Book Award for fiction in 1950 for his novel The Man with the Golden Arm, the story of Frankie Majcinek (“Frankie Machine”), a wise guy who could deal seven-card stud or push a cue stick. Five of the stories in The Neon Wilderness (1947) either won an O. Henry Memorial Prize or were selected for an anthology of the best American short stories. Critics and fellow writers praised him as an influence on other creative artists, such as singer Bob Dylan; Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22 (1961); and Ken Kesey, who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962). In 1998, Chicago honored Algren posthumously with a fountain dedicated to him in the city’s area called the Polish Triangle, where he had set much of his fiction. —Frank Day Further Reading Algren, Nelson. The Man with the Golden Arm. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999. Fiftieth anniversary edition, enlarged with one hundred pages of recollections by John Clellon Holmes, Mike Royko, and other writers, and several critical pieces. Donohue, H. E. F., and Nelson Algren. Conversations with Nelson Algren. Chicago: University of Chicago
Algren, Nelson
Depicting the Lives of Chicago’s Street People The cover of Art Shay’s great book of photographs Chicago’s Nelson Algren shows Nelson Algren bantering with a lady of the streets while around the corner pedestrians patrol the cold, rainy avenue and a young man hunches up against the wall with his hands in his overcoat pockets and his discarded cigarette butts piled up behind him. These streets are Algren’s answer to William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha and Thomas Hardy’s Wessex. The Chicago saga began with Never Come Morning (1942), the sad story of Bruno “Lefty” Bicek, a Polish youth with dreams of becoming an athlete but who goes astray and gets the electric chair. A book of short stories, The Neon Wilderness (1947), enlarges the urban panorama. Algren’s masterpiece, The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), follows the decline of Frankie Machine, whose poker-dealing arm absorbs the morphine that indirectly kills him. The nonfiction work Chicago, City on the Make (1951) angered the city fathers but swelled the urban myth. Even though Algren published other books, these are the works that constitute the heart and soul of his oeuvre.
Press, 1963. Frank and often very funny conversations between Donohue and Algren. It contains an excellent section on writers and writing. Drew, Bettina. A Life on the Wild Side. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1989. An absorbing biography that traces Algren from the Great Depression era, when he lived meagerly in Texas, through his feud with Otto Preminger and his affair with Beauvoir. An excellent account of an original life. Horvath, Brooke. Understanding Nelson Algren. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005. A good introduction to Algren’s life and work. Shay, Art. Chicago’s Nelson Algren. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007. Literary naturalism at its best in gritty photographs that bring to life the settings of Algren’s novels. See also: Bob Dylan; Joseph Heller; Studs Terkel.
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Alinsky, Saul
Jewish Americans
Saul Alinsky Community activist From the 1930’s to the 1960’s, Alinsky became well known as a community organizer for the poor and for radical-left social issues. He has been described as a modern-day version of Thomas Paine. Born: January 30, 1909; Chicago, Illinois Died: June 12, 1972; Carmel, California Also known as: Saul David Alinsky (full name) Areas of achievement: Activism; literature Early Life Saul Alinsky (sawl ah-LIHN-skee) was born in Chicago on January 30, 1909, to Russian Jewish immigrants Benjamin Alinsky and his second wife Sarah Tannenbaum. Saul Alinsky’s parents were strict Orthodox Jews who did not take part in the socialist politics that became a part of their son’s life. From the Orthodox style of life, Alinsky said that he learned the value of study. Alinsky said that anti-Semitism was so much a fact of daily life in Chicago during his early years that it barely merited comment. He considered himself a devout Orthodox Jew until age twelve, at which time he heard of his parents’ plans to educate him as a rabbi. While he rebelled against that commitment, Alinsky maintained a Jewish identity all of his life. Alinsky majored in archaeology at the University of Chicago as a working student. He was fascinated by the subject and planned to become a professional in the field. He graduated shortly after the onset of the Great Depression, so funding for that kind of work was scarce. Instead, Alinsky attended graduate school for two years, then left it for a job as a state of Illinois criminologist. He also worked on the side as an organizer for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), his first entry into what would become his life’s work. By the end of the 1930’s, he was becoming intensely involved in general community organizing. Life’s Work Alinsky devoted his life to improving day-to-day living conditions for people in poor communities in urban and rural areas of North America. He began with his hometown, Chicago. During the 1930’s, Alinsky set out to organize political power in the city’s poor neighborhoods, organizing the Back of the Yards neighborhood, behind the stockyards, that had been described in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906). Adlai Stevenson, then gov28
ernor of Illinois, became an admirer of Alinsky’s methods as a community organizer, saying that they faithfully reflected American ideals of the dignity of the individual, brotherhood, tolerance, and charity. Alinsky’s organizing efforts in Chicago soon became a national model. In 1950, however, Alinsky’s work in Chicago’s black ghettos was criticized by Mayor Richard J. Daley as destructive of the city’s image. Later, Daley recanted that point of view. News that Alinsky was coming to town drove established politicians in some cities to panic, however. The city council in Oakland, California, tried unsuccessfully to ban him from its jurisdiction after he was invited by the Bay Area Presbyterian Church to help organize in the city’s black community. Alinsky described his methods and philosophy in two books, Reveille for Radicals (1945), published early in his career, and Rules for Radicals (1971), which reached print one year before he died. While Niccolò Machiavelli had written Il principe (1532; The Prince, 1640) to teach the “haves” how to maintain their power, Alinsky said that he wrote Rules for Radicals to help the “have-nots” take that power away. While Alinsky was noted as an organizer, he never joined organizations, not even the ones that he organized. He stayed out of the Communist Party during the 1930’s, when membership was popular among many people whose politics were similar to his. He implicitly distrusted ideology or dogma of any kind, whether it was from politics or from organized religion. He spurned what he called the doctrinaire, the humorless, and the intellectually constipated. Absolute truth was a mirage, he insisted, and an incubator of deadly fanaticism, from Communist purges to Nazi death camps. Just before his death, Alinsky said that the greatest need for organizing existed in America’s white middle class, the Silent Majority who supported President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. Without attention from progressives, he feared that the white middle class would fall prey to fear and to nostalgic appeals from the right wing. Alinsky died of a heart attack at age sixty-three, on June 12, 1972, in Carmel, California. Significance Alinsky was a major influence on many social and political movements, notably that of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta for the United Farm Workers. Alinsky’s ideas were adapted by many activists, including college
Jewish Americans students. Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, wrote her senior honors thesis at Wellesley College on him. National leaders who have acknowledged the influence of Alinsky include President Barack Obama, who also was a community organizer in Chicago. Alinsky’s methods also earned praise from some unlikely quarters. Conservative author William F. Buckley once called Alinsky nearly an organizational genius. Some Tea Party activists, protesting the liberal direction of the U.S. government, cited him when they disrupted congressional town halls in the summer of 2009. Time magazine said that Alinsky’s organizing skills had changed the practice of democracy in the United States. —Bruce E. Johansen Further Reading Alinsky, Saul. Reveille for Radicals. Reprint. New York: Vintage Books, 1969. Alinsky’s original organizing manual, which became a textbook for social change during the 1960’s.
Allen, Mel _______. Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. New York: Random House, 1971. An updated version of Reveille for Radicals, which was published after a lifetime of activism by Alinsky. Finks, P. David. The Radical Vision of Saul Alinsky. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1984. Alinsky’s personal philosophy, including his reluctance to join organizations and his stress on examination of one’s motives. Horwitt, Sanford D. Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky, His Life and Legacy. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1989. A wide-ranging biography that focuses on Alinsky’s politics. Sanders. Marion K. The Professional Radical: Conversations with Saul Alinsky. New York: Harper and Row, 1970. Alinsky’s life in an interview format, published two years before he died. See also: Mary Antin; Betty Friedan; Abbie Hoffman; Jerry Rubin.
Mel Allen Journalist and entertainer During a radio and television broadcasting career that spanned more than a half century, Allen hosted game, news, and variety shows, and he handled play-by-play announcing for a variety of sports. He was identified closely as a commentator for the New York Yankees baseball team from the late 1930’s until the mid1960’s. Born: February 14, 1913; Birmingham, Alabama Died: June 16, 1996; Greenwich, Connecticut Also known as: Melvin Allen Israel (birth name); Melvin Avrom Israel; “The Voice of the New York Yankees” Areas of achievement: Sports; journalism; entertainment Early Life Mel Allen was the first of three children born to Julius and Anna Israel, Russian Jewish immigrants whose families had fled to America to escape czarist pogroms. Allen’s father operated various businesses, including a shoe store and a dry goods emporium, in several small Alabama communities. Prejudice against Jews drove the Israel family to Greensboro, North Carolina, then to Detroit,
Michigan, before they returned to settle in Birmingham, Alabama, where Allen was born and attended high school. Allen, a precocious child, began speaking prior to his first birthday, and began reading before he was two years old. After his grandfather, Avrom, died, Allen honored his late relative by adopting Avrom’s name. Allen graduated from high school at age fifteen and immediately enrolled at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, majoring in law with a view to becoming an attorney. An avid sports fan from an early age—though too small and spindly to play sports—with an encyclopedic memory for statistics, he began writing a sports column for the university newspaper and handled public address announcement duties at Alabama football games. Between 1933 and 1936, while he worked to complete the requirements for undergraduate and law degrees, he was hired as a play-by-play announcer for University of Alabama and Auburn University football. After earning his degree and passing the bar in 1937, Allen vacationed in New York City, where he auditioned for a job as a staff radio announcer at the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Hired at a salary of less than ten dollars per day, he was asked to drop his surname in favor of his middle name, to sound “less Jewish,” a 29
Allen, Mel
Jewish Americans
After his 1946 discharge, Allen returned to New York, where he announced baseball exclusively for the Yankees, both at home From his opening salvo (“Hello, everybody, this is Mel Allen”) to and on the road. During his tenure, he behis characteristic exclamation following an outstanding on-field play came linked inextricably with the team in its (“How about that!”), Mel Allen brought unique character to the microphone. One of baseball’s original pitchmen, he was among the first to heyday as world champions, and performed incorporate sponsors’ names into his play-by-play broadcasts, inventplay-by-play duties in eighteen straight ing such terms as the “Ballantine blast” or the “White Owl wallop” to World Series. In great demand because of his describe home runs hit by New York Yankees players. He was also the folksy manner, easily recognizable voice, originator of the traditional way to call a drive leaving the yard: “Goand colorful, evocative descriptions of oning, going, gone!” While not the first to give players nicknames, Allen field action, he was also a popular choice to created two of the most enduring: “Joltin’ Joe” (Joe DiMaggio) and announce other sporting events on both ra“Scooter” (Phil Rizzuto). dio and television. During his career, Allen Though never as comfortable on television as on radio—he had a gave play-by-plays of twenty-four All-Star tendency to over-narrate what was apparent on screen—Allen made baseball games, fourteen Rose Bowl games, two suggestions that have since become commonplace on baseball and several Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl telecasts. First, he promoted the idea of setting up another television camera in centerfield (rather than just one camera providing the usual match-ups. For many years beginning in the overhead view of the field), so viewers could better witness what unearly 1950’s, his was the voice on sports refolded on every pitch. Second, his desire to view film of an outstandports in Fox Movietone newsreels at theaters ing catch led eventually to instant and slow-motion replays that are across the country. He also announced Washpart of every televised game. ington Redskins (1952-1953) and New York Giants (1960) football games, did a season announcing Jackpot Bowling (1959), and hosted the Saturday-morning Monitor pronot-uncommon practice among entertainers in an era gram on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). when Nathan Birnbaum became George Burns and BenIn 1964, the most famous voice in radio became a pajamin Kubelsky became Jack Benny to appeal to broader riah. The Yankees summarily fired him and brought in audiences. For the first several years, Allen performed a Joe Garagiola as his replacement. With no official explawide variety of assignments for CBS. His distinctive nation from the front office, speculation as to the cause of voice—warm, mellifluous, and nasal, underscored by his dismissal ran rampant. Some thought his usual spona homespun southern twang—was heard introducing sors—including economically stressed Ballantine Beer— big bands, narrating radio dramas, hosting game shows objected to his high salary. Others opined that Allen, a (such as Truth or Consequences), covering breaking lifelong bachelor, might be gay, despite the fact he was news (such as the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, when a Geroften seen squiring beautiful young women around town. man passenger airship burned in the skies above New Still others felt Allen’s talkative style had become outJersey), and announcing scores of sporting events, from moded and unnecessary in the television age. The most boxing matches to yacht races and from polo to golf. common rumor (reinforced by his occasional on-air lapses) was that Allen had a drug problem: His jamLife’s Work packed schedule may have forced him into a vicious cyDespite the variety of sports he covered, Allen’s first cle of stimulants to aid performance and depressants to love was baseball. He got a big break by serving as a help him sleep between jobs. color commentator for the 1938 World Series. This led to Whatever the reason, Allen almost vanished from a brief stint in 1939 as the primary announcer for the the airwaves for a time. NBC no longer wanted him. Washington Senators baseball games. Midseason, he was Movietone let him go. He was relegated to doing tempohired as lead announcer for both the New York Yankees rary work: color commentary for the Milwaukee Braves and the New York Giants home baseball games. He mean(1965), radio play-by-play for the Miami Dolphins (1966) while continued to perform at several other broadcast and for University of Miami football games (1967), and venues until 1943—the year he legally changed his last television announcing for the Cleveland Indians (1968). name to Allen—when he was drafted into the U.S. Army After a decade out of the limelight, the Yankees let and served as an announcer for Armed Forces Radio. Allen perform at special occasions. From the mid-1970’s
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Jewish Americans until the mid-1980’s, he hosted previews and postgame commentary on cable telecasts for the team. Equally significant, from 1977 until his death, he hosted the popular syndicated program This Week in Baseball. In his final years, he made cameo appearances in several films (including 1993’s Needful Things) and used his remarkable voice on a few computerized baseball games. Allen died at age eighty-three following a long illness and was interred at Temple Beth El Cemetery in Stamford, Connecticut. Significance With one of the most recognizable voices on radio, Allen was identified closely with the New York Yankees for four decades, and he set the standard for early broadcast play-by-play announcers. In recognition of his many contributions to the art form of announcing between the 1930’s and the 1990’s, he was inducted into the National Sportscaster and Sportswriter Association Hall of Fame in 1972. He and fellow announcer Red Barber in 1978 were the first recipients of the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting from the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was enshrined in the Radio Hall of Fame in 1988. Many of his stylistic mannerisms and catchphrases became part of sportscasters’ repertoire. — Jack Ewing
Allen, Woody Further Reading Appel, Marty. Now Pitching for the Yankees: Spinning the News for Mickey, Billy, and George. Kingston, N.Y.: Total Sports, 2001. Written by a member of the Yankees’ public relations staff, this book details team events and personalities during the 1960’s and 1970’s, touching upon Allen’s influence. Borelli, Stephen. How About That! The Life of Mel Allen. Champaign, Ill.: Sports 2005. A well-researched biography of the announcer, which chronicles his rise, fall, and resurrection. Patterson, Ted. The Golden Voices of Baseball. Champaign, Ill.: Sports, 2002. A compendium, complete with photographs of the subjects and compact discs containing snippets of their patter, of the most outstanding examples of baseball play-by-play announcers since the 1930’s. Smith, Curt. The Voice: Mel Allen’s Untold Story. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2007. Another biography; this one deals in depth with Allen’s dismissal from the Yankees, its probable causes, and its definite effects. See also: Howard Cosell; Al Michaels.
Woody Allen Film director, writer, and comedian In his comedy performances, short stories, plays, and films, Allen presents himself and his characters as literate, sophisticated, neurotic, and temperamental. Born: December 1, 1935; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Allen Stewart Konigsberg (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; literature Early Life The parents of Woody Allen were Orthodox Jews. Martin Konigsberg held many jobs, including jewelry engraver and bartender, while Nettie Cherry was bookkeeper for a florist. Allen grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, playing baseball, rooting for the New York Giants, reading comic books, listening to the radio, practicing magic tricks, and hating school. His older cousin, Rita Wishnick, accompanied the boy to films and taught him to appreciate actors. As a teenager,
he indulged his passion for jazz by learning to play the clarinet, playing along to recordings by such New Orleans artists as Sidney Bechet and George Lewis. Allen wrote humorous stories in composition notebooks, and at fifteen he began sending one-line jokes to gossip columnists Earl Wilson and Walter Winchell, who published some of his efforts. He was soon earning twenty-five dollars a week writing jokes for a press agent’s clients. At seventeen he performed his first stand-up routine at a Young Israel social club and legally changed his name to Heywood Allen. In 1953, he married seventeen-year-old Harlene Rosen. Allen attended New York University and the City College of New York briefly before becoming a writer for such television variety programs as The Colgate Comedy Hour and Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows. Another of Caesar’s writers, Danny Simon, brother of Neil Simon, became Allen’s mentor, helping him refine his comic technique. 31
Allen, Woody Life’s Work In 1961, Allen left The Garry Moore Show and a seventeen-hundred-dollar weekly salary to become a standup comedian. Borrowing techniques from Bob Hope, Mort Sahl, Groucho Marx, Robert Benchley, and S. J. Perelman, Allen delivered self-deprecating monologues about his neuroses and his bad luck with women. He and Rosen divorced in 1962, and she later sued him for ridiculing her in his act. After producer Charles K. Feldman saw him, Allen was hired to write What’s New, Pussycat? (1965), in which he also appears. His frustrations over lack of control of his screenplay drove him to become a director. Allen prepared for these duties by making What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), in which he took a Japanese spy film and dubbed it into English with dialogue at odds with what appeared to be happening. One of the voices was provided by actor Louise Lasser, whom Allen married in
Woody Allen. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans 1966 and divorced in 1969. During this time, he began writing short stories for The New Yorker and became a playwright, creating Don’t Drink the Water (1966) and Play It Again, Sam (1969). He acted in the latter with Diane Keaton, with whom he became romantically involved and who appears in many of his films. Allen’s early films were farcical comedies. Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex but Were Afraid to Ask (1972), and Sleeper (1973) combined spoofs of film genres with satirical looks at American sex and consumerism. Allen had fun with Russian literature and one of his major obsessions, death, in Love and Death (1975). Finally, with Annie Hall (1977), a bittersweet look at love, he made his first truly mature film. Allen surprised many by following with Interiors (1978), a straight drama in which he does not appear. Deeply influenced by his favorite filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman, Interiors was the first of several Allen dramas, which have not been as well received as his comedies. He ended the decade with another masterpiece, Manhattan (1979), a lush black-and-white ode to the city he loves. Allen’s best films of the 1980’s are Zelig (1983), a mock documentary about a chameleon-like man who mingles with historical figures; The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), in which a character from a 1930’s film leaves the screen to court a real woman; Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), about the domestic problems of three sisters; and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), which merges comic and serious looks at adultery. All four starred Mia Farrow, mother of Allen’s son, born in 1987. The most controversial aspect of Allen’s life is the breakup of his relationship with Farrow after her discovery in 1992 of his affair with her adopted daughter, SoonYi Previn. Allen and Previn married in 1997. Critics and his fans noticed a significant decline in the quality of his films in the 1990’s. However, he made a successful comeback with Match Point (2005), an unlikely murder tale partly inspired by Fyodor Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment (1867). Significance Allen has been one of the most productive filmmakers of his time, turning out almost a film a year throughout his career.
Jewish Americans Like the European directors, such as Bergman, Federico Fellini, and François Truffaut, who have influenced him, Allen has been one of the most autobiographical of directors, drawing upon all aspects of his life for his films. Never hesitant to present himself as fallible and his view of the world as flawed, Allen is exceptionally self-analytical, clearly trying to work out his demons in his films. Even if Allen had been satisfied to remain only a performer, he would have made a distinctive mark. Though he has acknowledged the influence of Hope, Allen has a delivery all his own, combining tics, odd pauses, and unusual stresses. Allen is also an outstanding director of actors. The Academy Award-winning performances in his films include Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest in Hannah and Her Sisters, Wiest again in Bullets over Broadway (1994), Mira Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite (1995), and Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). Allen won Academy Awards for writing and directing Annie Hall and writing Hannah and Her Sisters. While most of Allen’s films are set in his beloved New York City, many of his twenty-first century films take place in Europe, as with the London-set Match Point. Regardless of location, his characters are always obsessed with love, sex, death, and the disappointments of life. —Michael Adams Further Reading Fox, Julian. Woody: Movies from Manhattan. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook, 1996. Discusses the influences of Buster Keaton, the Marx brothers, Anton Chekhov, Ingmar Bergman, and others. Girgus, Sam B. The Films of Woody Allen. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Detailed look at the themes of Allen’s films, including his portrayal of women. Lax, Eric. Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking. New York: Knopf, 2007. In interviews with his biographer, Allen explains how he writes, casts, and shoots his films. _______. Woody Allen: A Biography. 2d ed. Cambridge,
Allen, Woody
Autobiographical ANNIE HALL While some consider Manhattan (1979) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) Woody Allen’s best films, Annie Hall (1977) is generally considered his masterpiece. Also his most popular film, Annie Hall is the autobiographical story of the relationships of comedian Alvy Singer (Allen) with women, including two wives and several girlfriends, primarily the title character (Diane Keaton), an aspiring singer. The Alvy-Annie affair is tumultuous because of their different expectations. On a split screen Allen presents sessions with their psychoanalysts. When asked how often they have sex, he replies, “Hardly ever. Three or four times a week,” and she says, “All the time. Three or four times a week.” Allen had wanted to call the film Anhedonia after the psychological term for the inability to enjoy life. It becomes clear that Alvy’s seriousness is suffocating Annie. The strong Jewish element in Annie Hall includes Alvy’s imagining everyone he encounters calling him “Jew” and a trip to Annie’s Midwestern home, where he is seen as an exotic outsider. Allen pokes fun at his death obsession by having Annie’s brother (Christopher Walken) tell Alvy of his suicidal desire to die in a traffic accident and then drive Alvy and Annie to the airport. Annie Hall represents a great leap in cinematic style through its narrative structure, which constantly jumps about in time, and through such devices as the split screen and a scene in which the characters’thoughts, in contrast to the dialogue, appear as subtitles. Annie Hall greatly influenced subsequent romantic comedies, including Groundhog Day (1993), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Lost in Translation (2003), and (500) Days of Summer (2009).
Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2000. First published in 1991 and written with Allen’s cooperation, this is generally considered the standard biography. Schickel, Richard. Woody Allen: A Life in Film. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002. A noted film critic talks with the director about his films and influences and places his work in context. Skoble, Aeon J., and Mark T. Conrad, eds. Woody Allen and Philosophy: You Mean My Whole Fallacy Is Wrong? Chicago: Open Court, 2004. Fifteen essays about the hedonism and nihilism in Allen’s work and the influence of philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer. See also: Peter Bogdanovich; Albert Brooks; George Cukor; Larry David; Barry Levinson; Jerry Seinfeld.
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Allred, Gloria
Jewish Americans
Gloria Allred Lawyer the difficulties of single parenthood. The divorce was not amicable, and she knew she would have to raise her daughter with no financial help. She gave the child her maiden name. She passed on her Jewish values to her daughter, and both remain active in numerous Jewish causes and charities. Knowing she needed more education to build a good life for herself and her daughter, Allred moved back to her parents’home so she could continue going to school. She Born: July 3, 1941; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania completed her bachelor’s degree in English from the UniAlso known as: Gloria Rachel Bloom Allred (full versity of Pennsylvania, then followed up with a master’s name); Gloria Rachel Bloom (birth name) degree in education from New York University. Though Areas of achievement: Law; activism; women’s she would become famous as an attorney, Allred was first rights a teacher. While teaching in the crime-ridden Watts section of Los Angeles, she made the decision to go back to Early Life school to become a lawyer. She received her juris doctor Gloria Allred (AWL-rehd) was born in Philadelphia cum laude from Loyola Law School, at Loyola Maryon July 3, 1941, the only child of a door-to-door salesmount University in Los Angeles, in 1974, and set out on man, Morris Bloom, and his homemaker wife, Stella the path that would make her a legal powerhouse. Davidson. Allred grew up in a row house, and, although The move to Los Angeles led to her marriage to Rayher family had little money, she had lots of parental love mond Allred. That marriage lasted nineteen years before and support. After graduating from high school, she atending in divorce in 1987. The pressure to maintain a detended the University of Pennsylvania, where she met manding law career and a satisfying personal life had beher husband, Peyton Bray, the father of her only child, come too much. Lisa Bloom, born in 1961. When the brief marriage A contributing factor in her decision to focus her career ended in divorce, Allred gained firsthand knowledge of on the issues of vulnerable women was the brutal rape Allred suffered at gunpoint in 1966. She was twenty-five years old, and the rapist was a Helping Those Who Need It Most Mexican physician she met for dinner in Acapulco. When the rape resulted in pregnancy, she Gloria Allred has devoted her life to women’s issues because had an illegal abortion. However, the procedure she feels her destiny is to help the disenfranchised. After suffering was botched, and she nearly died during sura brutal rape at gunpoint, she knows firsthand the feeling of powerlessness. She speaks for those who have no voice, helping them to gery after the abortion. Accordingly, reproducrise above their troubled circumstances and to prevail over those tive rights is one of her ongoing passions. Allred is a leading attorney who specializes in women’s rights. Her clients include Amber Frey, a key prosecution witness in the Scott Peterson murder trial, and the “other women” in high-profile sex scandals. Allred is heavily involved in pro-bono work that brings justice to victims of rape and other crimes against women.
who would keep them downtrodden. Never one to shy away from controversy, she was involved in one of the earliest sexual abuse cases against the Catholic Church. Allred has handled other abuse cases as well, sometimes involving celebrities. One of her most memorable cases involved a young girl who had been abused by her grandfather. When she first met her client, the girl was withdrawn and suicidal. After standing up to him in court, and seeing him jailed for what he had done to her, she blossomed into a confident young woman. Cases like this one make up the bulk of her work, and she often handles them pro bono. “I wasn’t put on this planet just to take up space,” she says. Empowering women to stand up for themselves and be all that they can be is what Allred does best.
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Life’s Work In 1976, Allred became a founding partner of the Los Angeles law firm Allred, Maroko, and Goldberg. Her partners, Michael Maroko and Nathan Goldberg, are former classmates, and the firm, which has thirteen lawyers, is highly respected in the legal community. It is noted for its specialties of civil rights, workplace discrimination, murder, rape, and sexual abuse of children. The partners have received numerous awards and widespread recognition for their efforts in these core areas.
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In 1986, President Ronald Reagan presented Allred with the President’s Action Award for her work in enforcing child support payments for the children of deadbeat dads. This was part of California’s successful child support amnesty program. The same year she received the Public Service Award given by the National Association of Federal Investigators. In 1998, she was recognized by the Los Angeles Business Journal as one of the Fifty Most Powerful Women in Los Angeles Law. Allred founded the Women’s Equal Rights Legal Defense and Education Fund and served as its president. Her legal casework has included a Gloria Allred. (Getty Images) suit against the Boy Scouts of America for excluding an eleven-year-old girl; being Lisa Bloom’s mother. That pride is justified. Bloom some found this ludicrous because the Girl Scouts exhas been a trial lawyer, a television anchor on Court TV, cludes boys. She filed a complaint against the Sav-On and an analyst for the Columbia Broadcasting System pharmacy chain for having separate toy sections for boys (CBS) and Cable News Network (CNN). In addition, and girls. She has represented the family of Nicole Allred works for charitable organizations, including the Brown Simpson, O. J. Simpson’s murdered ex-wife, and New York Jewish Home for the Aged. Paula Jones in her sexual harassment charge against President Bill Clinton. Allred challenged the long-standing Significance male-only membership rule of the Friars Club and beAllred’s law career has been about guaranteeing the came its first female member. civil rights of women, minorities, and the downtrodden. Along with running her ever-growing law practice, Formerly abused children have written to thank her for Allred has been a talk-radio host, an Emmy Award-nomgiving them back their self-esteem. Adult victims have inated legal commentator on television, a lecturer at the learned that when the criminal justice system fails them, University of Southern California, and a popular speaker they can still file civil suits. Though some would say that with the All American Speakers Bureau. She continues the fight is over, that there are enough laws already on the to write articles for law journals. books to protect everyone’s rights, Allred sees it differDespite her distinguished career and the many awards ently. If that were true, she reasons, she would not have a she has garnered over the years, not everyone sings her continuous stream of discrimination victims clamoring praises. Some people maintain that the hefty cash settlefor her services. ments Allred has received for her clients who are the As long as Allred has strength, she will fight the fight “other women” in high-profile sex scandals border on with the crusader’s zeal that has made her both revered extortion. Those clients are women who have had affairs and feared. She considers it her duty to fight child abuswith married men, and because Allred sees them as havers, rapists, murderers, child support deadbeats, and ing been taken advantage of by the celebrities in quesother perpetrators of crimes against the unempowered. tion, she has been accused of hating men. Undaunted by —Norma Lewis the criticism, she continues to fight for those she believes are oppressed. Further Reading Allred’s private persona differs greatly from the striAllred, Gloria, with Deborah Caulfield Rybak. Fight dent, flamboyant courtroom figure the public has come Back and Win: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Injusto know. Honors and fame in the public eye notwithtice—and How You Can Win Your Own Battle. New standing, Allred dotes on her daughter and grandchildren, York: Regan Books, 2006. A collection of more than Sarah and Sam, and claims her greatest pride comes from 35
Alpert, Herb forty of Allred’s most memorable cases in the area of civil rights, with spot-on advice on how the reader can avoid being similarly victimized. CosmoGirl Editors. Cosmogirl! Secrets of Success: Thirty-Eight Leaders Tell You How to Achieve Your Dreams. New York: Hearst Books, 2007. Successful women, including Allred, advise young adult women on strategies for success. Hirsch, Stephanie, with Hannah Seligson. Mother Nurture: Life’s Lessons from the Mothers of America’s
Jewish Americans Best and Brightest. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Profiles of parenting styles of famous mother-daughter (including Allred and Bloom) and mother-son duos and how the maternal influence shaped the life of the child. See also: Susan Brownmiller; Alan M. Dershowitz; Betty Friedan; Judy Sheindlin; Gloria Steinem; Naomi Wolf.
Herb Alpert Musician, composer, and artist Alpert developed the Ameriachi sound: a combination of mariachi, Dixieland, and rock. His first song, “The Lonely Bull,” which he wrote, arranged, and paid to press, was a top-ten hit. Born: March 31, 1935; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Herbert Alpert (full name); Dore Alpert Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music; art; philanthropy Early Life Born to Louis Alpert and Tillie Goldberg in Los Angeles on March 31, 1935, Herb Alpert (hurb AL-purt) began taking trumpet lessons when he was eight years old. By the time he was a teenager, he was already playing at dances. Alpert obtained a wire recorder while he was studying in Fairfax High School and began experimenting with music and this equipment. In 1952, after his high school graduation, Alpert joined the U.S. Army. He performed frequently in military ceremonies. After his military discharge, Alpert tried a career in acting but eventually focused on music. While he was a student on the G.I. Bill at the University of Southern California (USC), he was a member of the USC Trojan Marching Band. Herb married Sharon Mae Lubin in 1956. They had two children—Dore and Eden— before their 1971 divorce. Alpert began writing and cowriting songs in 1957. A number of these songs became Top Twenty hits, and they included “Wonderful World” (with Lou Adler and Sam Cooke) and “Alley-Oop” (with Adler). Alpert began a vocal recording career with Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in 1960; he used the name of Dore Alpert initially. 36
On a trip to Tijuana, Mexico, Alpert heard a mariachi band at a bullfight. To reproduce the crowd’s response and the fanfare of the brass musicians, he adapted his playing style and overdubbed his trumpet to achieve the results he wanted. Alpert’s innovative style—called the Ameriachi sound—was a combination of mariachi, Dixieland, and rock. Life’s Work Alpert rearranged his song “Twinkle Star,” renamed it “The Lonely Bull,” and recorded it in Ameriachi style. Alpert and his friend Jerry Moss paid to press the record, and it became a top-ten hit in 1962. Alpert followed the single with a debut album, The Lonely Bull, on the A&M label, named for Alpert and Moss. Originally there was no band; Alpert just overdubbed—slightly out of synchronization—his own trumpet. In 1964, Alpert hired a group of band members, who debuted in 1965 and became one of the highest paid acts performing at the time. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass included choreography and comedy in its performances and commercials. Its two albums, Whipped Cream and Going Places, sold more than six million copies. Alpert enjoyed primarily a solo career from the 1970’s through the 1990’s. He became one of the only artists to have singles on the top-ten list in three different decades. In 1984, Alpert and the Tijuana Brass performed for the Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games and in 1988 for the Super Bowl XXII in San Diego, California. In 1997, Moss and Alpert won the Grammy Trustees Award for their lifetime achievements as recording executives and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. Both Moss and Alpert have stars on the Hollywood Walk
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of Fame and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Alpert is pursuing a second career as a sculptor and impressionistic painter with nationwide shows; he continues to play the trumpet and has worked as a Broadway producer. Alpert and his second wife, Lani Hall Alpert, whom he married in 1974, released a new album in 2009. Alpert continues to serve as guest artist for friends. To help support youth, arts education, environmental issues, and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason, Alpert created the Herb Alpert Foundation and the Alpert Awards. He gave thirty million dollars to endow the Herb Alpert School of Music at the University of California, Los Angeles, and another twenty-four million dollars to the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) for its music curricula. He is also overseeing the reissue of his music. Significance As of 2010, Alpert’s musical accomplishments included five number one hits, twenty-eight albums on the Billboard charts, eight Grammy Awards, fourteen platinum albums, and fifteen gold albums. Alpert and his group had five albums on the Billboard Pop Chart at the same time—a rare accomplishment that is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. Alpert’s benevolence aids many individuals and groups. Still active, Alpert is rereleasing his music, under his personal supervision. He is also exploring art and sculpture and participates in many art shows. In 2009, he and his wife released a new album. —Anita Price Davis Further Reading Alpert, Herb. Music for Your Eyes: Herb Alpert, Sculpture, and Paintings. Nashville: Tennessee State Museum, 2001. This 149-page book accompanied Alpert’s 2001 exhibitions at the Tennessee State Museum and the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia. Barnes, Molly, Peter Frank, Calvin J. Goodman, and Mauro Caputo. Tango Nuevo: Paintings and Sculpture of Herb Alpert. Santa Monica, Calif.: Molly Barnes Galleries, 1999. This seventy-four-page paperback includes information on the art and musical achievements of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Cheng, Scarlett. “Herb Alpert’s Horn of Plenty.” Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2010, p. E6. A review of Alpert’s career, a description of the development of his artworks, and an account of how his foundation has dispensed $100 million in charitable contributions over twenty years.
Herb Alpert. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
Eizenberg, Julie. Architecture Isn’t Just for Special Occasions: Koning Eizenberg Architecture. New York: Monacelli Press, 2006. This book features a section on the Herb Alpert Educational Village, which combines three schools, a Leadership Center, and a meeting place for nonprofit organizations to develop new programs. Miller, Frederic P., Agnes F. Vandome, John McBrewster. Herb Alpert. Beau Bassin, Mauritius: Alphascript, 2010. This ninety-two-page volume details the musical accomplishments of Alpert and his group, the Tijuana Brass. It also details Alpert’s career as a recording executive. O’Rourke, Stephen Vincent. The Herb Alpert File. Berkeley, Calif.: Stephen Vincent O’Rourke, 2008. O’Rourke’s biography of Alpert covers the details of Alpert’s personal and professional life, including his gold record of 1962, his eight Grammy Awards, and his twenty-first century induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. See also: Burt Bacharach; Neil Diamond; Marvin Hamlisch; Billy Joel. 37
Alzado, Lyle
Jewish Americans
Lyle Alzado Athlete Alzado triumphed over his troubled adolescence by becoming a professional football star. Once his playing career ended, Alzado was diagnosed with cancer, which he attributed to long-term use of anabolic steroids. Until his death, he warned the public about the dangers of performance-enhancing drugs. Born: April 3, 1949; Brooklyn, New York Died: May 14, 1992; Portland, Oregon Also known as: Lyle Martin Alzado (full name) Areas of achievement: Sports; social issues Early Life Lyle Alzado (LI-uhl al-ZAY-doh) was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1949, the third of the five children of Maurice Alzado, a Spanish Italian Catholic, and Martha Sokolow, a Jewish woman of Russian descent. Alzado’s early years were troubled by violence. His father was frequently absent from the family, and when he was home, he was often drunk and physically abusive. At school, Alzado was belittled for his poverty and his attention deficit. Not surprisingly, he grew up angry. Void of any meaningful career goals, Alzado showed
The Athlete as Image Lyle Alzado had a talent for self-promotion. Sports media, likewise, have a long history of mythologizing popular athletes, fitting them into culturally important narratives. As one might expect, Alzado was easily transformed at various points in his career into a caricature. In the mid-1970’s, for instance, with his largerthan-life braggadocio, Alzado was described as a reallife version of Rocky Balboa, the rags-to-riches boxing champion from the award-winning film Rocky (1976). At the time, Alzado’s less-savory personality traits— including his penchant for violence—were portrayed as youthful exuberance. In contrast, sportswriters represented Alzado as simply a violent loudmouth who typified brutality in football. As commentators have pointed out, at the end of his life, after his cancer and his admission of long-term steroid abuse, Alzado rehabilitated his image. He was no longer violent. Instead, he became a symbol of the human cost of the sports culture, with its disposable heroes and its insatiable desire for spectacle.
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interest only in fistfights and in avoiding the police. His religious life was nonexistent. While going to temple was important to his mother, Alzado went just to steal from the unattended cloakroom. When he reached high school, Alzado was asked to join the football team, where he became an unexpected success. His father was athletically gifted, and Alzado and his siblings, who were, like their father, tall, physically robust, and quick footed, competed athletically in college. Given a taste of athletic success and the high school popularity that often goes with it, Alzado hungered for more. Football also helped him work out his inner rage in a socially sanctioned way. From high school onward, Alzado put in countless hours of running, lifting weights, and eating right. By his senior year, a sturdy six feet, one inch and 190 pounds, Alzado was the best player on a good high school team, and he began to view football as a way of escaping poverty. Life’s Work Dogged by poor grades, Alzado was ignored by schools with major football teams and ended up attending Yankton College, a small liberal arts school in South Dakota. For Alzado, college football was the means to the end of playing professionally. He continued to work out, spending up to four or five hours at a time in the gymnasium, lifting weights and getting bigger and stronger. While at Yankton, Alzado admitted later, he also began taking anabolic steroids to help build muscle mass and recover from workouts faster. By the time he was a senior in college, Alzado was six feet, three inches and weighed more than 260 pounds. Although doctors had been prescribing various steroids since the 1930’s, the use of the drugs in football began in the early 1960’s. Anabolic steroids mimic testosterone in the body, increasing potential muscle growth. However, countering this physical benefit is the fact that steroids can cause emotional and psychological problems, including episodes of rage and delusions. Always hot-tempered, Alzado struggled with moodiness throughout his playing career. In fact, several scouting reports pointed out that, once angry, Alzado lost focus on playing and became intent on retaliating. In 1971, Alzado was drafted into the National Football League (NFL) by the Denver Broncos. With his speed and strength, Alzado posed a serious challenge for opposing linemen, and within the season, he was starting
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at right defensive end. As a professional, Alzado found his most statistically productive years were with the Broncos, which is also when he won the most individual awards. On most football teams, right defensive end is an important, albeit difficult, position to play. Given the task of pressuring the opposing quarterback, the right defensive end must be fast, durable, and strong. Because most quarterbacks are right-handed, their backs are turned toward the right defensive end when they throw; to protect the quarterback’s blind side, teams put their best offensive lineman at left tackle. The match-up of talent versus talent creates the potential for dramatic conflict throughout the game. For much of his early career, Alzado usually won those match-ups. Coupled with his flair Lyle Alzado. (AP/Wide World Photos) for self-promotion, Alzado garnered considerable media attention through the late eled by the conditions of his early life and by his years of 1970’s. steroid use. During one game, frustrated by an opposing By the early 1980’s, however, Alzado’s productivity player, Alzado tore the other man’s helmet off and threw had waned. At that time, he played for the Los Angeles it at him. By the next season, the NFL determined this acRaiders, a team with a tradition of welcoming players tion would henceforth result in a heavy fine and the ofwho seemed washed up, who had worn out their welfender’s expulsion. The new regulation was immediately come elsewhere, who had legal or drug problems, or who called the “Alzado rule.” had a reputation for poor sportsmanship. Given the team Unfortunately, violence on the field overshadowed context and his continued braggadocio, Alzado came the work Alzado did off the field. He donated time and across in the media as ill-tempered and brutish. In light of money to more than twenty-five charities, including the this representation, Alzado fit in well with the Raiders, Special Olympics and the National Jewish Hospital. In becoming something of an elder statesman. 1977, Alzado received recognition for charitable work, winning the Byron “Whizzer” White award as NFL Man Significance of the Year. At the end of his life, Alzado’s outspoken Because he was talented and self-promoting, Alzado criticism of performance-enhancing drugs had a similar won several individual and team accolades. Most of his moral underpinning. awards came in 1977, when he played in the Super Bowl In early 1991, Alzado was diagnosed with central nerand the Pro Bowl (the NFL’s all-star game) and when he vous system lymphoma, a cancer difficult to treat and ofwas voted Defensive Player of the Year. In 1978, he ten fatal. Alzado believed that decades of steroid abuse played in the Pro Bowl again. In 1983, he won the Comecaused the cancer. He spent his last year of life, sickened back Player of the Year award with the Raiders. by chemotherapy and ravaged by cancer, going from inIn the mid-1970’s and early 1980’s, Alzado was a terview to interview, speaking about the dangers of stemedia favorite. He loved to brag about his larger-thanroids and offering his physical suffering as visually comlife antics. In 1979, he fought an exhibition boxing pelling evidence. match against the heavyweight champion Muhammad —Michael R. Meyers Ali. Although the exhibition ended without a decision, Alzado, who invested thousands of dollars in the bout, Further Reading lost heavily. Alzado, Lyle, with Paul Zimmerman. Mile High: The Putting aside Alzado’s accolades and exploits, his Story of Lyle Alzado and the Amazing Denver Bronfootball legacy was tarnished by his violent temper, fu39
Annenberg, Walter cos. New York: Atheneum, 1978. Alzado’s autobiography, written when he was at the height of his popularity. Anderson, Dave. “Football: Sports of the Times: Punishment That Fits the Past.” The New York Times, November 18, 1984, p. S3. Typical of news coverage in the early 1980’s, this article uses Alzado to exemplify unsportsmanlike play. Denham, Bryan E. “Building the Agenda and Adjusting the Frame.” Sociology of Sport Journal 16, no. 1 (Spring, 1999): 1-15. This study details the effect dramatic stories—such as the cancer-stricken Alzado’s
Jewish Americans interviews on television—have on the mainstream media’s subsequent coverage of related news. _______. “Performance-Enhancing Drug Use in Amateur and Professional Sports.” Culture, Sport, Society 3, no. 2 (Summer, 2000): 56-69. A study of subjectivity in mainstream news media coverage of steroids. Quindlen, Anna. “Public and Private: Strong Man Weeps.” The New York Times, July 10, 1991, p. E19. This opinion piece focuses on the often cruel lessons of professional sports. See also: Red Auerbach; Barney Ross; Kevin Youkilis.
Walter Annenberg Business executive, publisher, and philanthropist Annenberg was chairman of Triangle Publications, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, TV Guide, and Seventeen, and he was noted for his philanthropy. Born: March 13, 1908; Milwaukee, Wisconsin Died: October 1, 2002; Wynnewood, Pennsylvania Also known as: Walter Hubert Annenberg (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; philanthropy Early Life Walter Annenberg (AN-ehn-burg) was born to Sadie Cecelia Friedman and Moses Louis Annenberg in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on March 13, 1908. Walter Annenberg had eight sisters—Diana, Enid, Esther, Evelyn, Harriet, Jan, Lita, and Polly—seven of whom lived to adulthood, and he was the only son. A shy, retiring child who stuttered, Annenberg was viewed by his father’s associates as an unlikely heir to Cecelia Investment Company, later called Triangle Publications, the family publishing empire. In 1885, Annenberg’s father emigrated from East Prussia to the United States; Moe, as he was known, was a shrewd, wiry businessman with a mercurial temper who sometimes overlooked proprieties in business to build his company. He began in publishing as a distributor for William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers in Chicago, and he later purchased Frank Brunnell’s Daily Racing Form (DRF) in 1922, which remains the premier tabloid for horse racing news and numbers. In one year DRF cleared a million dollars, more than paying for Moe’s initial $400,000 investment, and its reliable cash 40
flow formed the foundation of the Annenberg publishing empire. Young Annenberg, Moe’s son, was groomed to succeed his father. He attended the Peddie School, in Hightstown, New Jersey, from which he graduated in 1927, voted by his classmates as “best businessman.” He attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania from 1927 to 1928, but he dropped out after just one year because he lacked interest in academic studies. It was a decision he later regretted. While at the Peddie School, Annenberg traded in stocks through his father’s newly acquired brokerage, Annenberg, Stein, and Company, using as a stake several thousand dollars of Moe’s poker winnings. In fact, Annenberg was so enthusiastic about stock speculation that by 1927 he began skipping his college classes in order to visit the brokerage office managed by DeBenneville Bell in Philadelphia. From 1927 to October, 1929, Annenberg traded in stocks with an estimated 1929 value of three million dollars. Moe had sensed that the speculative market had run its course and fortuitously pulled back his investments within days of the stock market crash of 1929; however, Annenberg was still trading on Monday, October 28, 1929. The crash erased his three-million-dollar portfolio and left the younger Annenberg $350,000 in debt. In 1938, Annenberg married Bernice Veronica “Ronny” Dunkelman, the beautiful daughter of a JewishCanadian men’s clothier, at the Dunkelman home in Toronto, Canada. However, in 1939, after a decade of work at his father’s lucrative holding corporation, Cecelia Investment Company, Annenberg, his father, and two other employees were indicted on charges of tax evasion after an
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Annenberg, Walter
Walter Annenberg. (AP/Wide World Photos)
extensive investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Annenberg perceived the federal investigation of the Annenberg family and business interests to be payback by the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration for his father’s opposition to the New Deal programs the president had devised to help the struggling U.S. economy. Although Annenberg was never brought to trial because of intense plea negotiations, his father was fined more than nine million dollars and ordered to serve three years in federal prison. Moe was paroled early from federal prison on June 3, 1942, because of poor health. He was diagnosed with brain cancer and died on July 20, 1942. Life’s Work At thirty-four years old, Annenberg acquired the Cecelia Investment Company, renamed Triangle Publications
to avoid the notoriety after the federal tax investigation, indictments, and criminal pleadings. The company’s major holdings included DRF, pulp detective magazines, The Philadelphia Inquirer, several movie and radio guides, and Click, a photographic magazine. It was from this solid but tarnished foundation that Annenberg consolidated a publishing empire. Annenberg and his wife had a daughter, Wallis Huberta, and a son, Roger. After briefly living on tony Rittenhouse Square, the young couple settled at Inwood, a Philadelphia Main Line estate, in the town of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. After divorcing his wife in 1950, Annenberg married Leonore “Lee” Cohn in 1951. Like her husband, Lee had two children from a previous marriage. By 1951, Triangle Publications was swiftly becoming one of the nation’s largest publishing interests. Annen41
Annenberg, Walter
A Legacy of Giving: The Annenberg Foundation In 1989, Walter Annenberg, former publisher and editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and chairman of Triangle Publications (Daily Racing Form, Seventeen, TV Guide), established the Annenberg Foundation with $1.2 billion in proceeds from the sale of his business enterprises. In explaining his philosophy of giving, Annenberg said, “I believe in social responsibility. A man’s service to others must be at least in ratio to the character of his own success in life. When one is fortunate enough to gain a measure of material well-being, however small, service to others should be uppermost in his mind.” The Annenberg Foundation has demonstrated unprecedented generosity and commitment to public giving in a variety of fields, including the arts, education, the environment, health care, historic preservation, leadership development, urban community building, and the media. The stated aim of the Annenberg Foundation is advancing the public well-being through improved communication.
berg had taken his father’s scandal-plagued company and, through savvy business acumen, shrewd marketing ability, and sheer good fortune, transformed it. He launched Seventeen magazine, targeting the untapped, emerging baby-boom teen market, on September 1, 1944. He personally assumed the office of editor and publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and turned the region’s Old Guard Republican news fortress from a flailing daily with an uncertain future to a profitable news organization with circulation statistics to rival the nation’s best papers. DRF continued to be a money-making workhorse for the corporation, and to it and Triangle’s other interests Annenberg added the television era’s popular publication, TV Guide, in 1953. In addition, Annenberg retained or acquired numerous regional radio and television carriers to complete the mix. As the 1960’s commenced, Annenberg was a happy family man and a successful businessman and publisher. However, storm clouds were gathering. On August 7, 1962, when Annenberg and Lee arrived home from a European excursion, he was informed at the airport of the tragic suicide of his son, Roger, a schizophrenic who had attended Harvard University. The boy’s death filled Annenberg, who did not easily show emotion, with grief. Annenberg had worked tirelessly for decades to rehabilitate his father’s name, to revitalize Triangle Publications, and to provide for his family’s financial security. While the business under his father thrived by publishing sensa42
Jewish Americans tional, even salacious, material, Annenberg created products that were wholesome, such as Seventeen and TV Guide. Although Annenberg resented Roosevelt’s administration for targeting his father’s business dealings, he became involved behind the scenes in national politics. He liked and admired Harry S. Truman, supported Lyndon B. Johnson, and curried the favor and friendship of Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. He studiously avoided the appearance of impropriety and undue influence, especially in political campaigns, yet he did not hesitate to use the full publishing force of The Philadelphia Inquirer to undercut candidate Milton Shapp in the 1966 Pennsylvania gubernatorial contest. In 2002, Annenberg died of pneumonia at his estate in Wynnewood. Significance By the time Nixon was elected president in 1968, the country had been torn apart by the Vietnam War, race riots, and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Annenberg knew Nixon and respected his political experience, his stance on law and order, and his position on Vietnam. In 1969, Nixon nominated Annenberg as ambassador to the Court of St. James in London. After a contentious confirmation hearing in the United States Senate, Annenberg was approved and took up his diplomatic post in Great Britain, where he succeeded David K. E. Bruce. Because of the circumstances surrounding his nomination, Annenberg was at first viewed with caution and even skepticism in London. However, he and his wife quickly won favor with the British government and London society when the Annenbergs oversaw a stunning renovation of Winfield House, the American ambassador’s residence. Ambassador Annenberg viewed his appointment as the ultimate vindication of his name and family honor. On June 8, 1976, Annenberg was designated an Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Following his ambassadorship, which spanned the years 1969 to 1974, Annenberg turned his attention back to his business empire and philanthropic activities. He had previously sold The Philadelphia Inquirer and other interests, and he began to sell off the rest of his holdings and to build a billion-dollar family foundation to continue his legacy of charitable giving. He delighted stu-
Jewish Americans dents at Peddie, his prep school alma mater, by arranging a day-long visit and evening speech by former president Gerald Ford in the early 1980’s. It gave Ford a chance to rehabilitate his image following his controversial pardon of Nixon on September 8, 1974. Annenberg’s lasting contribution is his philanthropic activities. He set a high standard for generosity and public giving, a record that complemented his personality and balanced his human failings. Annenberg was a great American patriot, a generous patron of education, a world-class philanthropist, and a highly principled public servant. —Keith Carson
Antin, Mary Further Reading Cooney, John. The Annenbergs: The Salvaging of a Tainted Dynasty. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Focuses on Annenberg’s lifelong quest to rehabilitate the family name. Cooney is a former reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal. Ogden, Christopher. Legacy: A Biography of Moses and Walter Annenberg. New York: Little, Brown, 1999. Covers the period from Moses Annenberg’s birth in Kalvishken, East Prussia, to Walter Annenberg’s philanthropic activities in the late 1990’s. See also: Barry Diller; Meyer Guggenheim; Sumner Redstone; Dorothy Schiff.
Mary Antin Russian-born writer and educator Antin is known for her influential autobiography, The Promised Land, which focused on her family’s emigration from Russia’s Pale of Settlement to the United States and the urban conditions that greeted immigrants in the large Eastern cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born: June 13, 1881; Polotsk, Russia (now Polatsk, Belarus) Died: May 15, 1949; Suffern, New York Also known as: Maryasha Antin (full name) Areas of achievement: Education; literature Early Life Mary Antin (AN-tihn) was born in Polotsk in the Russian Pale of Settlement, the second of the six children of Israel and Esther Antin. After a few failed business ventures in Polotsk, Antin’s father decided to try his fortunes elsewhere and traveled widely. He rose to become assistant superintendent in a distillery and planned to have his family join him. However, his wife’s mother died, leaving Antin’s mother a large market in Polotsk. He returned to the town, where she took the lead in running the store because of her long business experience. Life was prosperous for a time; Antin grew up in a home with a cook, a nursemaid, and a dvornik, or outdoor man, to take care of the livestock and woodpile. Antin’s father had developed a profound respect for learning from his travels, and he started his daughters’
education with both a rebbe and a secular teacher. However, when he and his wife fell seriously ill, the business lapsed. After a period of trying to revive it, Antin’s father decided to immigrate to the United States in 1891. His wife and children joined him in Chelsea, near Boston, in 1894. While Antin’s father struggled to make a living, his daughter excelled in school. Antin had written a detailed account of her journey and life in Chelsea to a maternal uncle in Polotsk, and when translated into English, it appeared as her first book, From Plotzk to Boston, published in 1899 under a misspelled title, with the help of Philip Cowen, editor of The American Hebrew. Antin attended Boston’s prestigious high school, Girl’s Latin School, and met geologist Amadeus William Grabau, a descendant of German Lutheran ministers, whom she married in 1901. He taught at Columbia University; Antin studied at Columbia Teacher’s College and then at Barnard College from 1902 to 1904, never completing a degree. Her only child, Josephine Esther, was born on November 21, 1907. Life’s Work When essayist Josephine Lazarus, the older sister of the poet Emma Lazarus, reviewed From Plotzk to Boston, she became friends with Antin and encouraged her to write an autobiography. After Lazarus died in 1910, Antin dedicated her autobiography “To the Memory of Josephine Lazarus who lives in the fulfillment of her prophecies.” Antin was living in a large house in Scars43
Antin, Mary dale, New York, where she wrote The Promised Land, the first installment of which appeared in Atlantic Monthly in November, 1912. This warm, highly personal autobiography, extolling Antin’s new country and especially its open educational system, became a great hit. She attributes her own rise above poverty to the excellent education she obtained and is grateful that her family recognized her promise and allowed her to go to school. For the next five years Antin continued to publish short stories in Atlantic Monthly and other journals, and she traveled throughout the United States, lecturing Jewish and other groups on emigration and the progressive politics of Theodore Roosevelt, for whom she had campaigned. In 1914, her last full-length work, They Who Knock on Our Gates, appeared, which dealt with the injustice of restricting immigration. It was well received but never enjoyed the great acclaim of her autobiography. The same year that They Who Knock on Our Gates appeared, World War I (1914-1919) broke out and brought the differences that had been simmering in the Grabau household to a head. Although her husband was strongly pro-German, Antin threw herself into lecturing on behalf of the Allied cause. By 1918, Antin suffered a nervous breakdown, which led her to retire from public speaking. The following year the couple separated, and Antin left New York to return to her childhood home in Massachusetts. She spent part of her time in Great Barrington in a social service community and part in her family’s home in Winchester, and she maintained an apartment in Boston. In her final years, illness rendered her an invalid, and she lived with her younger sisters until she died of cancer in Suffern, New York.
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Jewish Americans Significance With the publication of The Promised Land in 1912, Antin secured a place for her work in the world of American classics. The book was a best seller on publication and has remained a landmark work of its genre, despite the numerous autobiographies of Jewish immigrants that came after it. The book enjoyed tremendous popularity for years after Antin’s death, being read in public school classrooms all across America. With its emphasis on assimilation, it has provided hope and encouragement for many Jewish immigrants. The Promised Land works both as a sociology and as a literary account of Antin’s luminous rebirth as an American citizen. — Sheila Golburgh Johnson Further Reading Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. Boston: Penguin Classics, 1997. This autobiography, published first in 1912, includes history, introspection, and political commentary. Guttmann, Allan. “The Rise of a Lucky Few: Mary Antin and Abraham Cahan.” In The Jewish Writer in America: Assimilation and the Crisis of Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Attributes Antin’s success to her academic ability and to her reconciliation of the immigrant’s ambiguity of assimilation. Rubin, Steven J. “Style and Meaning in Mary Antin’s The Promised Land: A Re-evaluation.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 5 (1986): 29-34. Focuses on the contrast between Antin’s Old World experience and her life in the New World. See also: Sholom Aleichem; Saul Bellow; Howard Fast; Emma Lazarus; Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Jewish Americans
Apatow, Judd
Judd Apatow Screenwriter, film director, and producer Apatow was the creative force behind a series of critically acclaimed television series and box-office hits. His popular and financially successful films are male-bonding comedies, or bromances, that expose the vulgar as well as the sentimental sides of men. Born: December 6, 1967; Flushing, New York Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Judd Apatow (juhd A-puh-toh) was born to a nonreligious Jewish family on Long Island, New York. When Apatow was in the eighth grade, his parents divorced and the family split: His brother went to live with his grandparents; his sister went to live with his mother; and Apatow went to live with his father, seeing his mother only on weekends. In high school, Apatow had a radio show, Club Comedy, on which he interviewed comedians. His mother worked at a Long Island comedy club, and Apatow used her contacts to invite performers onto his show. He interviewed such comedy artists as Steve Allen and Howard Stern and such up-and-coming comedians as Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, and Garry Shandling. His obsession with comedy grew, and he spent hours watching Saturday Night Live episodes to learn what was and was not funny. In 1985, Apatow began his own stand-up career in clubs on Long Island. Upon high school graduation, he enrolled at the University of Southern California (USC) as a film major. While at USC, Apatow worked on developing his stage act, performing in comedy clubs in Los Angeles and making friends with many comedians, such as Adam Sandler, Kevin Nealon, David Spade, and Jim Carrey. He dropped out of USC in 1987 to pursue comedy full time. He got a job washing dishes at a comedy club in order to be near the action, and he moved into an apartment with Sandler, a close friend. He continued to develop his stand-up act, but he became increasingly aware that, although he wrote funny jokes, he was not able to create a comfortable and recognizable performance persona. He realized that his friends were much better at
stand-up, and he began writing jokes professionally for Tom Arnold, Roseanne Barr, and others. Life’s Work In 1991, while waiting in line to get into an Elvis Costello show, he met Ben Stiller, who was about to begin the MTV-sponsored Ben Stiller Show. Stiller hired Apatow as chief writer and assistant producer. Although
Apatow Productions Judd Apatow was the most influential producer and creator of film comedies in the first decade of the 2000’s. Apatow’s specialty is the bromance, buddy films that focus on relationships between men, usually nerds. Since writing, producing, and directing The Forty-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Apatow has been involved with dozens of box-office hits. The secret of his success lies in the way in which Apatow Productions allows him to work. Apatow Productions is not affiliated with a studio or a larger company, which allows Apatow to choose the distributor best suited to the film. It also allows him to work without studio executives demanding changes and revisions. Although his process involves shooting of millions of feet of film, most of which is discarded or included as DVD bonus material, his films are relatively inexpensive to produce. By spending approximately twenty-five million dollars to produce a film, Apatow has made money on almost every endeavor. His filmmaking process is eccentric; he shoots short parts of films and then shows them to friends and focus audiences, seeking feedback continuously. He has stated that he has no desire or need to keep his projects secret. He likes feedback to make sure that the films are funny. He prefers working with friends with whom he is intimately involved. The films are collaborations, beginning with improvisation, moving on to a working script, and continuing with improvisations through the completion of the film. His wife, Leslie Mann, and their two children are often featured in his films as are his best friends, Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen, among others. By working with people with whom he is close, Apatow can rely on their talents to help develop the characters and to keep the films timely and funny. In an Apatow film, the main character achieves happiness through family and friendship. When his male characters are introduced, they have the maturity of an adolescent and refuse to grow up. The plot of the film takes them through experiences that force them into a happy and fulfilled adulthood. By combining his love of gross-out comedy and vulgarity with his belief in the essential goodness of people and his love of family, Apatow has breathed new life into traditional buddy films, making them appealing to male and female filmgoers.
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Apatow, Judd the show lasted only one season, 1991-1992, it earned Apatow his first Emmy Award for best comedy writing. In 1992, Apatow was featured on Home Box Office’s Fifteenth Annual Young Comedians Show, but, after more than fifteen years trying to be successful at stand-up, he realized that his stand-up career was over. Then, in 1992, Apatow was hired to write and direct for Garry Shandling’s The Larry Sanders Show, where he worked until 1995. During this period, he received six more Emmy Award nominations and was awarded two CableACE Awards for comedy writing. He then worked on the animated series The Critic for one year. While writing for television, Apatow began working on films, writing Celtic Pride (1996) and The Cable Guy (1996). Although they were not box-office successes, they helped Apatow move from comedy-skit writer to screenplay writer and director. His big breakthrough came in 1999, when he and Paul Feig produced the television series Freaks and Geeks. Although a great critical hit, the show was canceled after one season. It continues to have a large cult following, and it was named one of the one hundred best television series of all time by Time magazine. After that show’s cancellation, Apatow created another underappreciated series, Undeclared, starring many of the young actors from the previous series. Realizing that television was not the perfect place for his brand of humor, Apatow contacted Steve Carell, whom Apatow had directed in the Will Ferrell film Anchorman: The Ron Burgundy Story (2004). At the time Apatow had asked Carell if he had any ideas for a film. Carell responded with a plot based on his stand-up character, a middle-aged guy who had never had sex. The two went on to cowrite The Forty-Year-Old Virgin (2005) based on this material, which Apatow also directed. The film was a big hit, earning both critical and popular respect; it made more than four times its production cost. This success allowed Apatow to begin production on a backlog of projects. Between 2004 and 2009 he produced, wrote, or directed more than ten hit films, including Knocked Up (2007), Superbad (2007), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Step Brothers (2008), Pineapple Express (2008), and Funny People (2009).
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Jewish Americans The films were all created with Apatow’s group of favorite performers and writers, known as the Jewish Apatowniks and the Jew-Tang Clan. Working with people he met on Freaks and Geeks, such as Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and James Franco, Apatow created a circle of friends and coworkers whom he encouraged to write and to direct. With the addition of Jonah Hill, Evan Goldberg, Sandler, and Paul Rudd, among others, Apatow’s group became the nucleus of a male-dominated, all-Jewish creative force in Hollywood known as Apatown. Significance Apatow became a powerhouse in Hollywood because of his personal achievements and the enormous success of his creative circle. He actively mentors new talent, encouraging young comedians to break out of stand-up and begin writing, directing, and producing their own films. Because comedians often are not conventional leadingman types and starring roles are rarely available to them, Apatow believes they should create their own films, with themselves as central characters. He took the teenage Rogen, Segel, and Hill under his wing years ago, and they ended up producing hit films based on their screenplays in which they star. —Leslie Neilan Further Reading Hymowitz, Kay. “The Child-Man.” The Dallas Morning News, February 1, 2008. This opinion piece examines adolescent men in popular culture, focusing on characters in works by Apatow and author Nick Hornby. Rodrick, Stephen. “Judd Apatow’s Family Values.” The New York Times, May 27, 2007. Apatow talks about the surprisingly moral themes in his comedies. Stein, Joel. “Taking Judd Apatow Seriously.” Time (July 20, 2009). Profile written after the release of Funny People, in which Apatow discusses his work style, his relationships with protégés, and the Jewish content in his films. See also: Woody Allen; Peter Bogdanovich; Albert Brooks; Larry Gelbart; Barry Levinson; Harold Ramis; Adam Sandler.
Jewish Americans
Arbus, Diane
Diane Arbus Artist, photographer, and educator Arbus was a photographer whose work appeared in major magazines and in art museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City described her as the most original and influential American photographer of the twentieth century. Born: March 14, 1923; New York, New York Died: July 26, 1971; New York, New York Also known as: Diane Nemerov (birth name) Areas of achievement: Art; photography
Bazaar, Show, Esquire, Glamour, Vogue, and The New York Times. A great deal of Arbus’s most memorable photographs came from her innovative work in magazines, which was artistically striking. In 1956, one photograph was in Edward Steichen’s Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Life’s Work After years of successful fashion photography, Arbus’s work took a major departure. This happened after she met Lisette Model, an Austrian-born documentary photographer. Model became a mentor, and Arbus studied with her at the New School for several years in the 1950’s. Model encouraged Arbus to pursue her personal interests in her photography work. Her husband was supportive, so she left the fashion photography business to him in order to follow another path. In 1959, the couple separated; in 1969, they divorced. Arbus photographed people in locations such as Coney Island, carnivals, Hubert’s Museum and Flea Circus of Forty-second Street, the dressing rooms of female impersonators, and the streets, cinemas, parks, and buses of Manhattan. She explored subjects that occupied her for much of the rest of her career, including nudists, transvestites, dwarfs, and people with mental or physical disabilities. She mastered the photographic technique of using a square format that emphasized the subject more. Flash lighting added theatricality and surrealism.
Early Life Diane Arbus (dee-AHN AHR-buhs) was born into a wealthy Jewish family in New York City. She had two siblings; one was Howard Nemerov, who was twice United States Poet Laureate. Her father, David Nemerov, was the son of a Russian immigrant; her mother, Gertrude, was the daughter of the owners of Russek’s Fur Store. After her parents’marriage, David helped manage Russek’s and oversaw its evolution into a department store that also specialized in furs. The store provided support for the family. Arbus was loved by her parents, but they were distant due to her father’s work and her mother’s depression. Arbus and her siblings attended the Fieldston School for Ethical Culture in the Bronx. The students were mostly children of affluent, liberal Jews. In art class her paintings stood out, but she had no interest in painting. She graduated but did not attend college. At age thirteen Arbus met nineteenyear-old Allan Arbus, an employee in the advertising department of her parents’ store. They quickly fell in love, and they married on April 10, 1941, after Arbus turned eighteen. Her parents gave only grudging assent at first but finally gave their blessing. They had two children, Doon and Amy. Her husband gave Arbus her first camera. During World War II (19391945), he studied photography in the New Jersey Signal Corps. The couple later supported their family as fashion photographers. First they took photographs and created advertisements for Russek’s; later they began a commercial photography business. They did fashion photography for Harper’s Diane Arbus. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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Arbus’s Investment in Eccentric Subjects Diane Arbus’s most notable work was not her traditional portraits or her fashion photography. Instead it was her photographs of eccentrics, the part of society that interested her the most. She was fascinated by how their unusual situation shaped them psychologically and created their identities. Arbus was concerned about the public’s reaction to these photographs, which was often an uncomfortable or even threatened feeling. Some viewers were so upset they spit on the photographs. However, her skill in photographing unsettling subjects made her a famous artist. Perhaps part of this skill comes from the realization that viewers see themselves in the photographs. Arbus also focused on the relationship between the subject and the photographer. She used strangers, but they became intimates. She often would form a long-term relationship with them, sometimes for years. She wanted them to drop their public façade. She also caught her subjects unmasked, when they revealed their essential being. This is what she wanted her photographs to communicate to viewers. Arbus changed photography, to be sure, but after looking at her photographs, viewers might change how they relate to other people. One of the best books on Arbus accompanied the exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Revelations. It contains two hundred photographs as well as excerpts from her letters and notebooks.
In 1960, Esquire published Arbus’s first photo-essay, in which she contrasted privilege and poverty in New York City. Thereafter she made a living as a freelance photographer and photography instructor. In 1959, Arbus met her second mentor, Marvin Israel. In 1961, he became the art director of Harper’s Bazaar and was able to publish her work. She published many of her photographs in Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, and London’s Sunday Times Magazine, sometimes accompanied by her own writing. In 1963 and 1966, Arbus was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships for her project American Rites, Manners, and Customs. By the early1960’s, her commercial portraits for magazines had a distinctive look. The traditional subjects of actors and writers became as strange and troubling as her photographs of more eccentric people. Later she took photos of twins and triplets, families and couples in Central Park, and the uptown and downtown art scenes. Her work was prominent in John Sarkowski’s celebrated New Documents at the Museum of Modern Art. By 1970, Arbus was a legend among young photographers. That year she won the Robert Levitt Award from the American Society of Magazine Photographers for outstanding achievement. She also began what would be 48
one of the final projects of her career: taking pictures of mentally retarded adults at a home in Vineland, New Jersey. The May, 1971, issue of ArtForum published a portfolio of her pictures. Arbus suffered from intermittent illness and harsh depression. On a day when she was deeply depressed, she committed suicide at her apartment in the Westbeth Artists Community, Greenwich Village, New York. She was forty-eight years old.
Significance Arbus produced photographs of eccentric, ordinary, fashionable, and famous people, pushing the limits of photographic art. Her work was shown after her death at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the V & A Museum in London. In 1972, she was the first American photographer to be exhibited at the Venice Biennale. The Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective of her work, the most attended solo photography exhibition in its history. A book that followed was one of the best-selling art books in history. Some of the pictures included a young man in curlers and a Jewish giant at home with his parents. The exhibit by the Museum of Modern Art, which toured the country, and the book of her photographs by Aperture magazine made her one of the most famous photographers in the United States. — Ski Hunter
Further Reading Arbus, Diane. Revelations. New York: Random House, 2003. With many previously unpublished photographs and excerpts from her letters and notebooks, this book provides an autobiographical glimpse of Arbus. Arbus, Diane, Doon Arbus, and Yolanda Cuomo. Diane Arbus: Untitled. New York: Aperture, 1995. This book features photographs of people with mental disabilities. Arbus, Diane, Marvin Israel, and Doon Arbus. Diane Arbus.1972. Twenty-fifth-anniversary ed. New York: Aperture Foundation, 1997. The new edition of this book has three hundred new prints. Arbus, Diane, Thomas W. Southall, Doon Arbus, and Marvin Israel. Magazine Work. London: Robert Hale,
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2001. This book concentrates on the photographs by Arbus printed in magazines. Arbus, Doon, and Diane Arbus. Diane Arbus: The Libraries. San Francisco: Fraenkel Gallery, 2004. This book includes many photographs by Arbus that have been in exhibitions. Crookston, Peter. “Extra Ordinary.” The Guardian, October 1, 2005. Arbus wrote the author letters about her enthusiasms. In an insightful comment, Arbus said
she wanted her photographs to show what was hidden in everyone. Urbach, Henry. “Arrested Vision.” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 8, no. 4 (2007): 353-354. The author compares Arbus’s work to looking out an apartment window at the lives of those in other apartments. See also: Richard Avedon; Margaret Bourke-White; Robert Frank; Irving Penn; Alfred Stieglitz.
Hannah Arendt German-born political theorist Arendt was a student of philosophy who was forced to study politics when she had to flee Nazi rule in Germany. Her controversial seminal work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, analyzed Nazism and Stalinism. Born: October 14, 1906; Linden (now part of Hannover), Lower Saxony, Germany Died: December 4, 1975; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Activism; literature Early Life Hannah Arendt (HA-nah ah-REHNT) was born on October 14, 1906, in Germany. Raised in Königsberg, she was the only child of Paul and Martha Cohn Arendt, both of whom grew up in Russian Jewish families. Arendt’s father died of syphilis when she was seven, leaving Arendt and her mother to witness the episodic battles that were fought between Russian and German armies near their home soon thereafter. In 1920, Arendt’s mother married Martin Beerwald, which brought two older stepsisters into the home. Beginning in childhood, Arendt was an avid reader, and in high school Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were among her literary favorites. Arendt graduated from high school in Königsberg in June, 1924, and later that year she decided to study theology at the University of Marburg with Rudolf Bultmann. Martin Heidegger was lecturing at Marburg on Existenzphilosophie and writing what would eventually become Sein und Zeit (1927; Being and Time, 1962). During her time at Marburg, Arendt began a brief
but passionate affair with Heidegger, a married man and a father; the affair ended when she went on to study at the University of Heidelberg with Karl Jaspers. A psychiatrist who had converted to teaching philosophy, he became her mentor. Life’s Work It was under Jaspers that Arendt wrote her dissertation on St. Augustine’s concept of love, Die Liebesbegriff bei Augustin (1929; Love and Saint Augustine, 1996). Jaspers
THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM Hannah Arendt burst upon the world literary stage in 1951 with The Origins of Totalitarianism and a Saturday Review cover photo. She understood totalitarianism as an unprecedented phenomenon, identifying the several elements that were fused in it and analyzing totalitarian movements and rule. For Arendt, the success of The Origins of Totalitarianism led to prestigious lectureships and twentyfive years of fiercely independent writing and teaching. She proved knowledgeable about philosophy as well as about history and politics; she was fluent not only in English and German (her beloved “mother tongue”) but also in French, Greek, and Latin. This precocious German Jew had devoted her college years to studying philosophy, theology, and Greek (with Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Edmund Husserl, and Rudolf Bultmann), but the Nazi rise to power compelled Arendt to focus on politics, especially the Jewish question. From the 1950’s until her death in 1975, Arendt developed and publicly defended controversial views, including her report on the Adolf Eichmann trial and her coinage of “the banality of evil”; her opposition to integrationist busing and to affirmative-action hiring in universities; and her version of (classical) republicanism, rooted in her radical understandings of human action and the dignity of politics.
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Arendt, Hannah and Arendt maintained a close relationship throughout their lives. In September, 1929, Arendt earned her doctorate and married Günther Stern (who wrote under the name Günter Anders). Rising anti-Semitism in Germany compelled Arendt to undertake a project that helped her to understand the conflict between German nationalism and minority status. The book, which remained unpublished until 1958, was titled Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman. It was a biography of a Jewish salon hostess in Berlin in the early 1800’s who converted to Christianity. In 1933, National Socialism and Arendt’s political activities intensified. She helped the German Zionist Organization and its leader, Kurt Blumenfeld, to publicize the plight of the victims of Nazism. She also conducted research on anti-Semitic propaganda, for which she was arrested by the Gestapo. Arendt managed to escape from prison and fled to Paris. In Paris, she continued her political activism through work with Youth Aliyah, rescuing Jewish children from Nazi Germany and bringing them to Palestine.
Hannah Arendt. (Library of Congress)
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Jewish Americans While in Paris, Arendt divorced her husband and, in January, 1940, married gentile Heinrich Blücher, whom she had met in 1936. Blücher, a political refugee from Germany, was a communist and had been a member of the Spartacus League, an underground political organization run by Rosa Luxemburg. Only six months into their marriage, the Wehrmacht invaded France, and Arendt and Blücher were separately interned, a fate similar to many other stateless Germans. However, Arendt managed to escape from Camp Gurs, where she had been interned. She reunited with her husband, and, in May, 1941, both found safe passage to the United States. Arendt lived in New York throughout the remainder of World War II (1939-1945), and she worked on what would become the groundbreaking text The Origins of Totalitarianism. The book was published in 1951, the same year she obtained United States citizenship. Following the highly controversial The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt received a Guggenheim Foundation grant in 1952. Her next three books soon followed: The Human Condition (1958), Between Past and Future (1961), and On Revolution (1963). The controversial article “Reflections on Little Rock” (1959) studied the emerging African American Civil Rights movement. She wrote articles for The New York Review of Books in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, criticizing the abuse of executive power and what she called the “imperial presidency” associated with military intervention in Vietnam. She became the first woman to hold a full professorship at Princeton University and she went on to teach at the University of Chicago, Wesleyan University, and the New School for Social Research in New York. In 1963, Arendt published what was arguably the most controversial work of her career: Eichmann in Jerusalem. In 1960, Israeli security forces captured the notorious lieutenant colonel responsible for the transportation of Jews to death camps. As a correspondent for The New Yorker, Arendt covered Eichmann’s trial in a series of articles, which were later compiled in Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt’s writing on the Adolf Eichmann trials led to a series of lectures on judgment, the neoKantian meditations which were part of the work for The Life of the Mind (1978). While in Aberdeen, Scotland, delivering these Gifford Lectures, she survived a heart attack. The second and fatal attack occurred while she was entertaining in her New York apartment on December 4, 1975. The first two volumes of The Life of the Mind were pub-
Jewish Americans lished posthumously: the first was Thinking and the second was Willing. Her death cut short her work on the third volume, Judging. Significance Arendt’s Jewish identity was an inescapable aspect of her sensibility; when beginning a lecture in Cologne, less than a decade after World War II (1939-1945), she announced: “I am a German Jew driven from my homeland by the Nazis.” However, her personal knowledge of Judaism was apparently slight and not always accurate. Arendt died unconsecrated by a religious ceremony, and the obituary in The New York Times noted that she had “no religious affiliation.” Arendt denied harboring any special love for the Jewish people. Although Arendt deeply appreciated the refuge that the United States provided (an appreciation that its academic institutions and audiences reciprocated by recognizing her gifts), it is difficult to detect any significant American influences upon her work. — Sarah Cristal Further Reading Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Reprint. New York: Penguin Classics, 2006. Arendt’s report on the trial of Nazi
Arkin, Alan leader Eichmann includes information that came to light after the trial and Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account. _______. The Origins of Totalitarianism. 1951. Reprint. New York: Schocken Books, 2004. Examines two rival totalitarian movements in the twentieth century— Soviet communism and Nazism—and traces their historical roots. _______. The Portable Hannah Arendt. Edited by Peter Baehr. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. The first general anthology of Arendt’s writings, supplemented by a chronology covering the major events in her life and a basic bibliography. Includes selections from her major works and many shorter writings and letters. Sections include extracts from her work on fascism, Marxism, and totalitarianism; her treatment of labor; her writings on politics and ethics; and her views on truth and the role of the intellectual. Villa, Dana. Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. An expert on Arendt explains her views on the relationship between totalitarianism and philosophical tradition. See also: Bruno Bettelheim; Lillian Faderman; Emma Goldman; Rebecca Gratz.
Alan Arkin Actor Arkin is a versatile actor with a facility to play a range of roles, from sympathetic to villainous. Born: March 26, 1934; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Alan Wolf Arkin (full name); Robert Short; Roger Short Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Alan Arkin (AHR-kihn) was born in Brooklyn, the son of David and Beatrice Worth Arkin, who were both teachers. Arkin’s father aspired to be an artist. From a young age Arkin had an interest in acting; later he became attracted to music, and he learned to play the guitar. When he was eleven years old, the family moved to Los Angeles, where his father hoped to obtain work at a film studio as a scene painter. After attending a couple of local colleges, Arkin enrolled in Bennington College in Ver-
An Actor’s Actor Part of Alan Arkin’s appeal as an actor stems from his “Everyman” looks. Not classically handsome, he has developed an ability to disappear into a part. He avers that he may become completely immersed in a role while still remaining “95 percent” himself, but director Mike Nichols said that Arkin becomes completely the person he is portraying. Arkin has convincingly played sympathetic and unsympathetic roles in comedies, dramas, and even melodramas. His facility with accents has immeasurably enhanced his characterizations. While by no means always appearing in successful films (his attempt at following Peter Sellers in the role of the bumbling Inspector Clouseau did not meet with plaudits), his performances are usually well worth seeing. As he has aged, he has portrayed to good effect crusty old men, but they almost always are leavened with likability.
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Alan Arkin. (AP/Wide World Photos)
mont, but he did not graduate. His interest in acting did not abate, but his early career was more focused on music. In the late 1950’s, he became a member of a folk music group, the Tarriers; it gained considerable success with “The Banana Boat Song” and “Cindy, Oh Cindy.” He remained with the group, to which he had also contributed some original songs, until about 1959. Life’s Work Returning to acting, Arkin was cast in an occasional New York stage role before moving to Chicago to become a member of a famous improvisation company, the Second City. He later said he undertook the move because his New York acting career was not proving to be successful. He credited his improv experience with helping him to understand how to build a characterization. It was with the company’s Broadway revue From the Second City (1961) that he launched a more distinguished New York career. The hit plays Enter Laughing (1963) and Luv (1964) soon followed. During that time, he also made some television appearances. In 1955, he married Jeremy Yaffe, a nurse, and they had two sons, Adam and Matthew, who later became actors. Five years later, Arkin and Yaffe divorced. In 1964, he married a second time, to Barbara Dana, and they had a son, Anthony, also an actor. This marriage ended in divorce. In the mid-1960’s, Arkin began a sustained film career that was, with some exceptions, quite successful and has endured to this day. His role (complete with a humorous accent) as the stranded Russian submarine captain in the 52
Jewish Americans hit comedy The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966) brought him considerable attention. For this role he received his first Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award. Although this was publicized as being his first film appearance, he had appeared previously as a member of the Tarriers in Calypso Heat Wave, a 1957 film. Other films of the 1960’s in which Arkin appeared included Wait Until Dark (1967), in which he played a villain; The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), in which he played a deafmute and for which he received an Academy Award nomination; and Popi (1969), in which he convincingly played a Puerto Rican father. Roles in which he used foreign accents were becoming somewhat of a specialty. In the 1960’s, Arkin began his stage directing career, for which he initially identified himself as Robert Short and Roger Short. During the next ten years, he directed several Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, one of which won him an Obie Award. He also directed the 1971 film Little Murders. Throughout the 1970’s Arkin appeared on television, including in a recurring role on the children’s show Sesame Street, and he also starred in some well-received television films. However, for most of the decade, his film career experienced a slump. Although he continued making films, they were not notably successful. With 1979’s The In-Laws (costarring Peter Falk), Arkin’s film career was revived. He continued to appear on television and embarked on yet another career: writer. Earlier he had written some stories for science-fiction magazines, and at this time he turned to writing children’s books. Among them are Some Fine Grampa!, Cissie Loves Beethoven, Tony’s Hard Work Day, The Lemming Condition, and One Present from Flekman’s. As time went on Arkin’s film roles became mainly featured ones. Among his well-received motion pictures were The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976), in which he played Sigmund Freud; Edward Scissorhands (1990); Glengarry Glen Ross (1992); and The Slums of Beverly Hills (1998). In the late 1990’s, Arkin returned to stage acting for the first time in twenty-five years, and he directed three one-act plays. During this decade, he married for a third time, to Suzanne Newlander.
Jewish Americans For the hit 2006 motion picture Little Miss Sunshine, Arkin won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His role as the profane and drug-addicted but loving grandfather of a dysfunctional family won him new plaudits. He continued to appear in films, such as Marley and Me (2008), City Island (2009), and Get Smart (2008), and in made-for-television films. He also lectures on the creative process at universities. He credited the longtime study of yoga with changing him from a moody and driven man to one more peacefully accepting of his life. Significance Although not frequently playing explicitly Jewish characters, Arkin has utilized his background to portray ethnic characters sympathetically. He did not long retain the star status he gained in such early films as Catch-22 (1970), in which he played the leading role, and The Last of the Red-Hot Lovers (1972), but his performances always enlivened even the least successful films. One prominent critic suggested that Arkin might be “the most versatile of all American movie actors,” and his great variety of roles bears out this assessment. His lack of traditional Hollywood good looks seems to make him instantly empathetic to film audiences. While he may not
Arlen, Harold be the typical handsome boy next door, he seems as familiar as your next-door neighbor. — Roy Liebman Further Reading Arkin, Alan. First Steps on a Path Toward Enlightenment. New York: Harper and Row, 1984. Brief volumes that chronicle Arkin’s quest for spirituality through yoga. _______. Halfway Through the Door: An Actor’s Journey Toward the Self. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Sierchio, Pat. “Alan Arkin—Not Just Another Kid from Brooklyn.” The Jewish Journal, February 15, 2007. Wide-ranging interview with Arkin in which he comments on his choice of roles, his childhood, and his interest in music. Skolnik, Fred, ed. Encyclopedia Judaica. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. A well-regarded reference work, covering all aspects of Jewish life and history, which contains an article about Arkin. See also: Woody Allen; Ed Asner; Elliott Gould; Charles Grodin; Ben Stiller.
Harold Arlen Songwriter Arlen composed many highly regarded songs for musical theater and film. While most of them were introduced in the 1930’s, 1940’s, and 1950’s, many of his songs entered the standard repertoire of American jazz and popular musicians. Born: February 15, 1905; Buffalo, New York Died: April 23, 1986; New York, New York Also known as: Hyman Arluck (birth name); Harold Arluck; Chaim Arluck Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment; theater Early Life Harold Arlen (AHR-lehn) was born to Samuel and Celia Arluck in Buffalo, New York. Arlen’s parents were from Orthodox immigrant families from Poland. His father was a cantor, and some of Arlen’s first musical experiences were in the choir at the Pine Street synagogue, where his father served as the music director. In addition to
singing, Arlen began studying piano while still in grade school and became interested in popular music. At age fifteen, he began working as a pianist in film houses and other local venues, and soon he formed a band, the Snappy Trio, with two other teenagers. The group was successful, earning significant income playing on boats and in cabarets, and expanded to become the Southbound Shufflers. Arlen was also arranging music and was invited to join a dance band, which became the Buffalodians. This group began touring in 1925 and eventually came to New York, where Arlen remained, finding ample work as singer, arranger, and pianist. Soon after this, he changed his name to Harold Arlen, combining his birth name, Arluck, with his mother’s maiden name, Orlin. Arlen was talented in many dimensions of music, but singing was his favorite, and he made many recordings as a vocalist. He also began to write songs for musical theater, and in 1929 he started a period of collaboration with lyricist Ted Koehler. One of their first pieces was the song “Get Happy,” which became a hit in 1930. 53
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Harold Arlen. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Life’s Work Building on their success, Arlen and Koehler began writing show music for the famous Cotton Club in Harlem, and many of their songs for this venue became popular, notably “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” (1931), “I’ve Got the World on a String” (1932), and “Stormy Weather” (1933). Arlen, deeply attracted to African American melodic and rhythmic concepts, had a knack for blending these elements with the conventions of popular show music, and the Cotton Club, which featured celebrated African American performers such as Ethel Waters, was an ideal venue for his emerging style. While Arlen continued to compose for live productions, he soon began to write songs for films as well. He and Koehler traveled to Hollywood in 1933 to work on their first film, Let’s Fall in Love, which included a popular song with the same title. Arlen started dating a model, Anya Taranda. Although Taranda was from a Catholic background, she and Arlen were married in 1937 and remained together until her death in 1970. Arlen continued to write for film as well as musical theater, and he began collaborating with other lyricists, such as Yip Harburg. In 1938, they were contracted to write music for a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film, The Wizard of Oz (1939). Although the song they wrote for the film initially was not received well by some in the 54
Jewish Americans organization, “Over the Rainbow,” sung by the young Judy Garland, was included in the film. This song won an Academy Award and became, along with the film, one of the great classics of twentieth century popular American culture. More successful films followed, including Blues in the Night in 1941, featuring a song of the same title by Arlen and lyricist Johnny Mercer, and The Sky’s the Limit in 1943, including the song “My Shining Hour,” also written with Mercer. After other films, Arlen began working with lyricist Ira Gershwin in 1953 to compose music for a Garland film A Star Is Born (1954), which included their song “The Man That Got Away.” Arlen continued to compose until 1976, but he became reclusive after his wife’s death and died of cancer in 1986. Significance Arlen managed the difficult task of combining deep musical creativity with the familiarity and simplicity to appeal to large numbers of people. Aside from the many films and plays in which Arlen’s songs appeared, the songs themselves are treasured, and musicians have dedicated entire albums to his music. In 1960 and 1961, jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald recorded Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Song Book (1961), and in 1992 jazz pianist Dick Hyman recorded Blues in the Night, a compact disc of Arlen’s songs. In 2003, a film directed by Larry Weinstein featured some of his well-loved works, Stormy Weather: The Music of Harold Arlen. In 2001, a compilation of polls by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts selected “Over the Rainbow” as the top song of the twentieth century. — John E. Myers Further Reading Arlen, Harold. The Harold Arlen Songbook. Winona, Minn.: Hal Leonard, 1985. Music score book with seventy-six of Arlen’s most famous songs. Bassan, Jacqueline. From Shul to Cool: The Romantic Jewish Roots of American Popular Music. New York: Jay Street, 2002. Discusses the importance of Jewish musical traditions and attitudes about music in the
Jewish Americans childhood backgrounds of major popular composers, including Arlen. Jablonski, Edward. Harold Arlen: Rhythm, Rainbows, and Blues. Boston, Mass.: Northeastern University Press, 1996. Comprehensive, detailed biography with extensive appendixes, lists of works, annotated lists of films, photos, and bibliography. Keyser, Herbert H. Geniuses of the American Musical Theatre: The Composers and Lyricists. New York: Applause , 2009. Alphabetically arranged chapters, including one on Arlen. Photos, index, and notes. Sheed, Wilfrid. The House That George Built: With a Lit-
Arrow, Kenneth tle Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty. New York: Random House, 2007. Discusses interactions among the major musical theater composers in the first half of the twentieth century and includes a chapter, “Harold Arlen: The Songwriter’s Songwriter.” Index and photos. See also: Irving Berlin; Sammy Cahn; Betty Comden; George Gershwin; Ira Gershwin; Adolph Green; Yip Harburg; Lorenz Hart; Jerome Kern; Alan Jay Lerner; Richard Rodgers; Jule Styne.
Kenneth Arrow Economist and educator A Nobel Prize winner, Arrow made contributions to the field of economic science with his theories on social choice, general equilibrium, and impossibility. Born: August 23, 1921; New York, New York Also known as: Kenneth Joseph Arrow (full name) Area of achievement: Economics Early Life Kenneth Arrow (EH-roh) was born to Jewish parents in New York City and graduated from Townsend Harris High School. He went on to the City College of New York (CCNY), where he graduated in 1940 with a major in mathematics. His family was not wealthy, and he attended college only because CCNY was at the time a free institution. From CCNY, he went to Columbia University, where he earned his master’s degree in mathematics in 1941. His work at Columbia was influenced by an economic statistician, Harold Hotelling, who encouraged Arrow to get a doctorate in economics. He immediately entered the Ph.D. program and completed the necessary course work. However, World War II (1939-1945) interrupted his academic pursuits, and he spent four years in the Army Air Corps, where he rose to the rank of captain in the weather service. Following World War II, Arrow, who did not have a topic for his doctoral dissertation, at first considered entering the insurance industry, and he passed a series of actuarial exams in preparation. However, his mentors at Columbia convinced him to return to the Ph.D. program, and he received his degree in 1951.
During the summers that he was in the doctoral program, he worked at RAND, where he assisted in projects dealing with game theory and mathematical programming. While he was working on his dissertation, he taught at the University of Chicago. His dissertation was published as a monograph entitled Social Choice and Individual Values (1951). In 1949, he joined the faculty at Stanford University, where he stayed for nineteen years, although there were some short-term appointments at various institutes and think tanks. He then spent eleven years at Harvard University before returning to Stanford in 1979. He officially retired in 1991, but he remained active as a professor emeritus. Life’s Work Arrow is known for the development of the impossibility theory, or Arrow’s paradox. This conundrum of social choice suggests that no system of voting with three or more choices can chart the preferences of individuals into an overall ranking for the entire population. First brought forward in Arrow’s dissertation, this axiom has become an element of election theory. Besides formulating social choice theory, which represented his early work, Arrow made contributions with respect to using information as an economic variable. Beginning in 1963, he began studying aspects of medical care and medical insurance and how differences in information levels influenced medical coverage. He concluded that the market for health care was subject to the same rules of competition and profit maximization as existed in other industries, but that there were differ55
Arthur, Bea ences based on information asymmetry. He was later elected to the Institute of Medicine and chaired two economic study groups for that organization, including one on the economic impact of antimalarial medicines. He also did work on the economic aspects of racial discrimination. Arrow won the Nobel Prize when he was fifty-one years old—only twenty-one years after completing his doctorate—which made him the youngest individual ever to win the economics prize. He shared it in 1972 with John R. Hicks, for contributions to general equilibrium theory. Although Hicks pioneered the subject, it was Arrow who applied modern mathematical methods to the theory. Arrow was recognized not for a book on the subject but for a series of articles that dealt with the soundness and the stability of economic systems. Arrow also was the recipient of the 1957 John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association, the 1986 John von Neumann Theory Prize, and the 2004 National Medal of Science, which is America’s highest scientific honor. This last award was bestowed for his work on how people make economic decisions without benefit of perfect information and the risky implications of those decisions. Arrow holds honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago, the University of Vienna, and City University of New York. Significance Arrow’s most significant contribution stemmed from his doctoral dissertation work on social choice theory and the associated impossibility theorem. He expanded that work into the field of health care economics and the importance of medical insurance to the health care indus-
Jewish Americans try. That work, which included aspects of information uncertainty, was later translated into other areas of decision usefulness theory. —Dale L. Flesher Further Reading Arrow, Kenneth J. The Economics of Information. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984. The first book-length publication in the field of decision theory, which Arrow began after winning the Nobel Prize. _______. Social Choice and Individual Values. New York: Wiley & Sons, 1951. Arrow’s doctoral dissertation, which became a classic in economic literature. A second edition was published in 1963. Arrow, Kenneth J., and Gerard Debreu. “Existence of an Equilibrium for a Competitive Economy.” Econometrica 22, no. 3 (July, 1954): 265-290. Cited during the Nobel Prize ceremony as the first of a series of articles for which Arrow was honored. Hammer, Peter J., et al., eds. Uncertain Times: Kenneth Arrow and the Changing Economics of Health Care. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004. This four-hundred-page volume begins with Arrow’s 1963 classic article, “Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care.” Numerous economists analyze how the economics of health care changed in the forty years following Arrow’s original analysis and how Arrow’s thoughts can be extrapolated into the years ahead. See also: Milton Friedman; Paul Krugman; Paul Samuelson; Herbert Stein; Joseph Stiglitz.
Bea Arthur Actor, entertainer, and singer A talented comedian and singer, Arthur first achieved success on Broadway and Off-Broadway stages. At age fifty she catapulted to stardom in two popular television series: Maude and The Golden Girls. Born: May 13, 1922; New York, New York Died: April 25, 2009; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Beatrice Arthur (full name); Bernice Frankel (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater
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Early Life Born to Philip and Rebecca Frankel in New York City, Bea Arthur (bee AR-thur) disliked her given name of Bernice and started calling herself Bea in childhood. She described herself as a quiet and serious girl, but her gift for being funny was already being noticed by friends. In 1933, the family moved to Cambridge, Maryland, where they opened a women’s clothing store. Beatrice later observed that while this Eastern Shore town was a good place to grow up, the need to get out probably accounted for decisions she made in early adulthood.
Jewish Americans These included attending Linden Hall High School, a Pennsylvania boarding school, for two years and Blackstone College in Virginia for two years. From early years, she idolized June Allyson and had ambitions for a stage career. However, she studied at Blackstone to be a medical technician. After a brief try, she decided she was not suited to the work. She moved to New York and entered the Dramatic Workshop and the New School. She had a short early marriage to Robert Alan Aurthur and altered her married name for a stage identity. She lengthened “Bea” to Beatrice to fit on a marquee. Originally, she wanted to be a singer, but her stature (five-footten) and her deep, husky voice did not fit the accepted image of a female vocalist. In an early appearance as a torch singer, the audience laughed when she started singing the lament. She switched to comedy and honed her style with appearances at resorts located near Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, a longtime venue for would-be comics. Life’s Work Arthur’s first stage role came in the late 1940’s, when she performed Off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theater. Over the next quarter century she compiled a solid resumé of work in Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. Among her notable roles were Lucy in The Threepenny Opera (1928), Yente the Matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof (1964), and Vera Charles in Mame (1966). Even though the productions were successes and won her awards, without motion picture or television appearances, she was hardly known to the general public or to many decision makers in these industries. This changed with her appearance on the Norman Lear situation comedy All in the Family. Arthur played a cameo role as Edith Bunker’s more sophisticated cousin, Maude Findley. Her sharp feminist comebacks made her the perfect foil for the irascible Archie. All in the Family’s popularity led to a record number of spinoff series. Among these was Maude, with Arthur in the title role and Bill Macy as her husband, Walter Findley. Maude ran from 1972 through 1978 on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), making Arthur a recognizable personality to millions of Americans. Like other Lear productions, it combined strong characters with controversial issues as plot engines. An early Maude episode on abortion provoked angry letters, advertiser boycotts—and a jump up to fifth place in the show’s Nielsen ratings. Later episodes dealt with menopause, alcoholism, business bankruptcy, and other topics taboo at the time in primetime TV. The show’s success gave an enormous boost to Arthur’s career, which had been languishing in obscu-
Arthur, Bea
The Girls of THE GOLDEN GIRLS Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak was the heart of The Golden Girls, whose main actors all eventually won Emmy Awards for their performances. Arthur brought to Dorothy’s role the same qualities that sustained her previous career: her wry delivery, her brash demeanor, and her well-disguised vulnerability. While Rose Nylund’s credulity and Blanche Devereaux’s sexual voracity are played broadly to parodic result, Arthur’s Dorothy is the one with whom viewers can identify. Despite her sharp witticisms, Dorothy proves to be the voice of reason among those of her flighty housemates and of her cranky mother, portrayed by Estelle Getty. Capsule descriptions of The Golden Girls often describe its story lines as exploring dilemmas of aging. This is a vast oversimplification. The series directly challenged conventional media wisdom that audiences would not watch a show about older women. The series’ success smashed this assumption, without relying too heavily on stereotypes of aging. Arthur’s Dorothy was central to this process. Despite her messy divorce from sad-sack Stanley and her limited career prospects as a substitute teacher, she remains confident and engaged with life. Arthur, who succeeded against high odds in her own career, delivers this message to viewers without ever having to speak it.
rity. When Maude closed after six seasons, its newly empowered star was eager to move on to new projects. Among her ventures were three film roles, including a film version of Mame (1974). She appeared in a songand-dance number in the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, at the height of that film’s popularity. The Bea Arthur Show, centered on music and comedy, became a special aired on CBS on January 19, 1980. Another opportunity opened up in 1985, with a comedy debut that once again ventured into forbidden territory for prime-time television. The Golden Girls focused on a household of four older women. Arthur was the last actor cast and, as it turned out, ended up as the heart of the ensemble. Much to the surprise of media analysts who envisioned The Golden Girls as a specialty offering to the growing demographic of senior viewers, the show was popular with all age categories. The Golden Girls ran for seven seasons and ended largely because, as the case with Maude, Arthur was restless to move on to other projects. Subsequent to the closing of The Golden Girls, Arthur created a one-woman show, An Evening with Bea Arthur, which toured three continents and also opened on Broad57
Arthur, Bea
Bea Arthur. (CBS/Getty Images)
way. It had a mixture of bawdy humor and musical interludes; it was the sort of show she had always dreamed of doing. In 1950, Arthur married director Gene Saks, and they adopted two sons, Matthew and Daniel, in the 1960’s. By many standards, the marriage was successful, lasting for twenty-eight years, but it foundered over a phenomenon frequent in show-business couples: one spouse at the career pinnacle and the other in the career doldrums. Arthur built strong, lasting friendships with many of her costars, a tribute to her likable if shy offstage personality. Angela Lansbury from the Mame stage version, Betty White from The Golden Girls, and Rue McClanahan, with whom she worked in both The Golden Girls and Maude, served as a substitute family for many years. Throughout her career Arthur was supportive of Jewish causes, gay rights and animal welfare. She died of cancer in 2009.
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Jewish Americans Significance From the beginning, Arthur’s show-business ambitions defied the conventional wisdom. Despite her youthful wishes to be blond and petite, she was neither, and her voice, often described as baritone, was another departure from the norm. She was not going to be cast as an ingenue or as a glamour girl, the usual roles for a young actor. Grit and determination, however, put Arthur on a path to a successful career in show business. Even more notable is her stardom—twice—in a medium new to her, television, after the age of fifty. While many aspects of her comedic persona, including the loud, brassy voice and her exaggerated body language, worked well onstage, the facial expressions with which she delivered her witty responses were used masterfully in the television comedies. Her visibility as a confident woman “of a certain age” was a refreshing addition to the usual cast of young and beautiful stars. Maude made an older woman as the centerpiece of an ongoing series not only acceptable but also desirable. In crafting a onewoman stage vehicle that she performed until she was eighty years old, showcasing her singing ability and her comedic ripostes, Arthur showed a grit and a resilience that few performers can equal. — Emily Alward Further Reading Feldberg, Robert. “Arthur’s a Golden Oldie.” The Record, February 17, 2002, P6. Review of Arthur’s one-woman show on Broadway. Describes the role music has played in the actor’s long career. Natale, Richard. “Arthur Made Icon of Maude.” Variety 414 (May 4, 2009): 57. Obituary giving highlights of the subject’s career. Includes a photograph of her 2004 stage performance. White, Betty. Here We Go Again: My Life in Television. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. A costar’s memoir throws light on the behind-scenes dynamics on The Golden Girls. See also: Ed Asner; Roseanne Barr; Fran Drescher; Norman Lear; Jerry Seinfeld.
Jewish Americans
Asch, Sholem
Sholem Asch Polish-born writer Asch was a prolific and popular writer, whose works were translated into more than a dozen languages. Through his fiction and essays, he labored to combat anti-Semitism by promoting greater understanding between Jews and Christians. Born: November 1, 1880; Kutno, Poland, Russian Empire (now in Poland) Died: July 10, 1957; London, England Also known as: Shalom Ash; Szulim Asz Area of achievement: Literature Early Life The son of Moyshe Gombiner Asch and Malke Frayde Vidovska, Sholem Asch (SHOH-lehm ahsh) grew up in the market town of Kutno. Asch’s father served as the model for the benevolent patriarchs and Kutno served as the idealized shtetl (town) in the author’s books. Asch attended the local Hebrew school. His father hoped that the boy would grow up to become a rabbi, but Asch found Talmudic study tedious. He longed for knowledge of the larger world, and he was able to satisfy this desire in part in the home of a classmate, Abraham Glicksman, where Asch found books in German by Heinrich Heine, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and William Shakespeare. Asch’s interest in secular literature led to familial conflict; at the age of seventeen he moved to nearby Wuocuawek, where he taught Hebrew, wrote letters for the illiterate, and read the works of Leo Tolstoy and Isaac L. Peretz, both of whom would influence Asch’s writing. In 1899, Asch, determined to have a career as an author, traveled to Warsaw to show Peretz his Hebrew sketches about Jewish life in rural Poland. Peretz urged Asch to write in Yiddish, the spoken language of Eastern European Jewry, to render his prose more natural. Asch followed this advice, and Peretz helped Asch publish his first story, “Moishele” (little Moses), in the magazine Der Yud (the Jew) in 1900, followed by eight more stories over the next year. In 1901, Asch married Madja Spira; they had three sons and a daughter. Life’s Work Led by Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sholom Aleichem, and Peretz, Jewish writers of the late nineteenth century shaped Yiddish into a literary language and created a reading public for themselves and for their successors,
including Asch. Like his models, Asch began by writing about rural Jewish life, but whereas they had portrayed the shtetl negatively or ironically, Asch romanticized the already vanishing world in such works as In a Shlekhter Tsayt (1903; in a bad time), Dos Shtetl (1905; The Little Town, 1907), and Reb Shloyme Nogid (1913; wealthy Shloyme). Throughout his life Asch wrote in Yiddish, but even his early works reached non-Jewish audiences through translation. While vacationing in Switzerland in the summer of 1906, he composed Der Got fun Nekome (1907; The God of Vengeance, 1918), about a Jewish brothel keeper who tries but fails to preserve his daughter’s purity. Peretz urged Asch to burn the work. Instead, Asch took the play to Max Reinhardt in Berlin, who produced it in German. The drama then traveled to St. Petersburg, where it was performed in Russian, and it was acted in English on Broadway in 1923. An indefatigable traveler, Asch first visited Palestine in 1907 and the United States in 1909. Although he settled in the United States in 1914 and became an American citizen in 1920, his initial impression of America was negative, as evidenced by Amerike (1911; America, 1918), Onkl Mozes (1918; Uncle Moses, 1920), and Di Muter (1925; The Mother, 1930). All show immigrant Jews prospering at the expense of spiritual values. Asch himself returned to Europe in 1925 and came back to live in America only on the eve of World War II (1939-1945). Ist River (1946; East River, 1946) offers a more accepting vision of his adopted country. While living in France, Asch wrote his Tolstoyan epic, Farn Mabul (1927-1932; Three Cities, 1933), consisting of Petersburg (1929), Varshe (1930), and Moskve (1931), depicting these cities between 1912 and 1920 through the lives of various Jewish characters. Three Cities became Asch’s first best seller in the United States and Britain. Another visit to Palestine, in 1936, led to Dos Gesang fun Tol (1938; Song of the Valley, 1939), which celebrates urban Russian Jewish pioneers in the Jezreel Valley. One motive for Asch’s repeated trips to Palestine was to gather material for a novel about Jesus, Der Man fun Notseres (1943; The Nazarene, 1939). Asch saw this work, along with The Apostle (1943) and Mary (1949), as attempts to combat anti-Semitism by emphasizing the Jewish roots of Christianity. The Nazarene proved a critical and popular success: It sold 250,000 copies its first 59
Asimov, Isaac year. Yiddish newspapers outside the United States generally praised it, but in the United States it ignited a firestorm of criticism from the Yiddish press, which accused Asch of abandoning Judaism and trying to convert his readers to Christianity. In his last years Asch left America for Europe and then Israel. He began to focus in his writing on figures from the Hebrew Bible, publishing Moses (1951) and Der Novi (1955; The Prophet, 1955), the latter dealing with Deutero-Isaiah. Ever industrious, on the day he died, while visiting his daughter in London, he was working on a novel about the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs. Significance Asch was the first to gain international recognition for Yiddish literature. Even the anti-Semitic Polish government awarded him a medal in 1932; a year later his name was proposed for the Nobel Prize. His popular works created a wide readership for other Jewish authors. Eager to help Europe’s Jews, Asch served on the People’s Relief Committee during World War I (1914-1919) and was a founding member of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Though materially successful, Asch stressed the primacy of spiritual values to Jews and nonJews alike as he sought to create greater sympathy between them. —Joseph Rosenblum
Jewish Americans Further Reading Kritokov, Mikhail. Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905-1914. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001. A Marxist analysis of early twentieth century Yiddish literature that contextualizes Asch’s writings and provides extended analysis of some of his early works. Madison, Charles. Yiddish Literature: Its Scope and Major Writers. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1968. A survey of a century of Yiddish writing; includes a long chapter about Asch. Siegel, Ben. The Controversial Sholem Asch: An Introduction to His Fiction. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1976. The first book-length critical biography of Asch, with excellent analyses of Asch’s writings. Stahl, Nanette, ed. Sholem Asch Reconsidered. New Haven, Conn.: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2004. Revised versions of papers presented at Yale in 2000 at a conference honoring Asch. Contains many insightful essays about Asch’s novels and plays along with fascinating illustrations. See also: Sholom Aleichem; Saul Bellow; Michael Chabon; Jonathan Safran Foer; Bernard Malamud; Bette Midler; Philip Roth; Leon Uris.
Isaac Asimov Russian-born writer, educator, and scientist A prolific writer and an innovator in science fiction, Asimov developed the Three Laws of Robotics, changing the convention that robots were dangerous and destructive. Born: January 2, 1920; Petrovichi, Soviet Union (now in Russia) Died: April 6, 1992; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Literature; science and technology Early Life Isaac Asimov (I-zak AZ-ih-mawv) was born in Petrovichi, in the Soviet Union, on January 2, 1920, to Judah and Anna Rachel (Berman) Asimov. He was their oldest child. The family immigrated to Brooklyn, New 60
York, in February, 1923, and Asimov became a United States citizen five years later. Though his father was a gentle man who introduced Asimov to literature, his mother was a strong-tempered disciplinarian. Despite their different temperaments, Asimov had a close relationship with both. He taught himself to read before he began school by asking neighborhood children to explain the letters and sounds that he saw on signs. He went to public schools that were populated primarily with Jewish students. He also went to Hebrew school for a short time, but he had a hard time learning the Hebrew language. His religious training was limited to lessons from the Talmud on how to behave. He did have a Bar Mitzvah; however, there were no other strong ties, and he declared himself an atheist at an early age. The family business was candy stores, and Asimov developed a
Jewish Americans
Asimov, Isaac
strong work ethic there under his father’s tutelage. He was also introduced to science-fiction magazines on the shelves of these stores, and at nine years old he became an immediate enthusiast. His writing career began in earnest in 1937 with a story titled “Cosmic Corkscrew.” “Marooned off Vesta,” written and published in 1939, came out in the same year that he graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor of science degree, began graduate school, and started writing robot stories. The next year, “Robbie” (published as “Strange Playfellow”) came out; it was the first story of his positronic robot series. He also developed the Three Laws of Robotics with John W. Campbell, Jr., his editor at Astounding Science Fiction (a leading science-fiction magazine of the time). Asimov also earned his master’s Isaac Asimov. (AP/Wide World Photos) degree in chemistry in 1941. He continued to write and publish short stories for the next two years; however, after marsettlement to half of his savings and their paid-for family rying Gertrude Blugerman on July 25, 1942, he stopped home. writing for a short time. Upon arriving in New York after leaving his first wife, Asimov pursued a relationship with Janet Jeppson, a Life’s Work woman with whom he had been corresponding for years. The next decade was a busy one for Asimov. He pubHe convinced her to marry him as soon as his divorce, lished six short stories, including the final pieces of what which took three years, was final, and they wed on Nowould become known as the Foundation series and sevvember 30, 1973. His second marriage was consistently eral more robot stories. He was drafted into the Army but happy. served less than a year (1945); he completed his doctorNo matter what his life circumstances were, Asimov ate from Columbia (1948); he started teaching at Bosfound joy in writing and produced at least one book per ton University School of Medicine (1949); and he pubyear. He broadened his publication horizons by moving lished his first three novels: Pebble in the Sky (1950), The away from his almost exclusive association with CampStars Like Dust (1951), and The Currents of Space bell and Astounding Science Fiction. In 1960, Asimov fi(1952). I, Robot, his first collection, was also published nally won the critical acclaim that he deserved, and his in 1950. books were reviewed in national publications. He was Asimov’s family life was challenging during many also nominated for the National Book Award that year. In periods in his first marriage. He and Gertrude were not 1965, he grew in recognition with a larger audience when particularly compatible, and according to his autobiograhe began writing humorous pieces for TV Guide. During phy, although she was a good wife, he did not think she the next ten years, he tackled a number of different writever loved him. Despite Asimov’s dislike of children, the ing challenges, producing two biblical reference books, a couple did have a son, David, born August 20, 1951, and number of children’s texts, a literary guide to the works a daughter, Robyn Joan, born on February 19, 1955. Afof William Shakespeare, an autobiography, and critical ter almost thirty years of marriage, Asimov decided to diessays. In 1978, he began his own magazine, Asimov’s vorce Gertrude, although she would not agree to more SF Adventure Magazine, but it lasted only four issues. He than a legal separation. Though the court awarded Gerinterspersed new endeavors with a steady stream of the trude a significant amount of money, Asimov raised the 61
Asimov, Isaac science-fiction novels and short stories that made him famous. Asimov began to have health problems in 1977. At fifty-seven years old, he had a heart attack. He suffered from angina for a number of years before he agreed to medical intervention. On December 14, 1983, he had a triple bypass operation. He went on with his life for the next few years, ignoring symptoms. At seventy, he sought help for his growing health issues. Doctors told him he had a leaky mitral heart valve and kidney problems as a result of his bypass surgery. He had also received a blood transfusion that resulted in a diagnosis of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Asimov finished the final volume of his autobiography in May, 1990; it was published in 1994. On April 6, 1992, he died from complications of AIDS, heart problems, and kidney failure. Significance One of the most prolific writers of his day, Asimov is known not only for his innovative science fiction— which has introduced readers to unforgettable characters, places, philosophies, and social commentaries—but also for the range of work he published during his lifetime: a children’s book, a mystery novel, a humorous piece, a critical examination of Shakespeare, textbooks in science, history, and mathematics. His interests and expertise were so varied that he has at least one piece listed in the ten main sections of the Dewey decimal system. Fearless in his topic choices, Asimov confronted Jewish and Christian critics, tackled the realm of literary criticism, and taught science to laypersons. His constant exploration of ideas and philosophies challenges readers to think more critically while keeping them enthralled in the worlds he creates. —Theresa L. Stowell Further Reading Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979. Asimov’s initial autobiography gives great detail about the first thirty-four years of his life. Amusing tone and rambling conversational style make this a must read. _______. In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954-1978. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
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Jewish Americans
The Three Laws of Robotics Isaac Asimov created his Three Laws of Robotics early in his writing career. They were foreshadowed in a few short stories and then actually stated in “Runaround” (1942). According to the First Law, “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” According to the Second Law, “A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.” According to the Third Law, “A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.” The Three Laws of Robotics changed the way in which artificial intelligence was presented in fiction and launched a literary subgenre that remains popular.
1980. Asimov’s second autobiography chronicles the middle years of his life. Includes detailed information about his personal life and his writings. _______. I. Asimov. New York: Doubleday, 1994. The last installment of Asimov’s autobiography includes information from his whole life span. Provides a retrospective on his life, beliefs, relationships, and works Asimov, Janet. Notes for a Memoir: On Isaac Asimov, Life, and Writing. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2006. Nonfiction narrative of Isaac Asimov’s life as observed by his wife. Includes details of their daily lives together and amusing stories that he did not share in his autobiographies. Freedman, Carl, ed. Conversations with Isaac Asimov. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2005. Collection of interviews with Asimov. Valuable and unusual in content since Asimov gave few interviews during his life. Gunn, James E. Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2005. Updated version of the critical tome about Asimov’s science fiction. This book won the Hugo Award for its analysis of Asimov’s works. Touponce, William F. Isaac Asimov. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Reader-friendly critical essays on Asimov’s most famous science-fiction pieces, including the Foundation series and the robot stories. See also: Harlan Ellison; Richard P. Feynman; Rod Serling.
Jewish Americans
Asner, Ed
Ed Asner Actor and political activist Asner is the first actor to win an Emmy Award for the same character in a comedic role (for The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and in a dramatic role (for The Lou Grant Show). Asner played many stage roles, beginning with productions at Chicago’s Playwrights Theatre Club and later in several Off-Broadway productions. Born: November 15, 1929; Kansas City, Missouri Also known as: Yitzak Edward Asner (full name); Eddie Asner Areas of achievement: Entertainment; activism Early Life Ed Asner (AZ-nur) was born Yitzak Edward Asner in Kansas City. Missouri, on November 15, 1929, to Russian-born parents Lizzie Seliger, a housewife, and Morris David Asner, a merchant who owned a secondhand shop. Both were Orthodox Jews. Ed Asner suffered in childhood from anti-Semitism, being a member of the only Jewish family in a non-Jewish neighborhood. He learned to defend himself physically and vocally, and he developed a pugilistic attitude as a young man. Large and solidly built, Asner became a football star at Wyandotte High School. He also helped organize a championship basketball team that toured Europe shortly after World War II (1939-1945). At the same time, he performed for audiences in broadcasts on his high school’s radio station. Enrolling at the University of Chicago in 1947, Asner began to perform on stage. Afterward, from 1951 to 1953, he joined the U.S. Army and served in the Signal Corps, after which he resumed acting in Chicago’s Playwrights Theatre Club. In 1955, he departed Chicago for New York City to act in Off-Broadway productions and in small television roles. For several years, Asner starred in Off-Broadway’s Threepenny Opera (1933). Four years later, in 1959, he married Nancy Lou Sykes. Life’s Work Asner’s first Broadway role came in 1960 in Face of a Hero with Jack Lemmon. After
his performance in Face of a Hero, Asner kick-started his television career, moving to Hollywood to portray villains, notably on the television’s series Slattery’s People, a political drama that featured Richard Crenna. Asner also played minor roles in The Outlaws, The Reporter, and The Invaders. In 1970, his signature role developed as Lou Grant, a crusty newspaper editor, on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, for which he won three Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. Asner also scored roles on the television series Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) and the miniseries Roots (1977). In Roots, he won an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Captain Davies, who kidnaps the main character Kunta Kinte and sells him as a slave. Asner also supplied voicing talent in many roles, such as Jabba the Hutt on the radio version of Star Wars, and
Ed Asner. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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Asner’s Political Activism Ed Asner became a frequent and vocal critic of the U.S. engagement in war in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2000. He also accused the George W. Bush administration of having foreknowledge of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. He also has an active role in the 9-11 Visibility Project, which questions what the U.S. government knew about the terrorist attacks before they occurred. In addition, Asner has been a spokesman for the 2004 Racism Watch, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and an admirer of Fidel Castro. Asner often uses his acting skills for political causes. For example, he supplied the voice of a villain, Hoggish Greedly, in the animated environmental series Captain Planet and the Planeteers. He also narrated the documentary The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror (2005). Asner has taken an active role in the Jewish peace movement, which seeks reconciliation between Israel and Palestine through the U.S. organization Jewish Voice for Peace, which advocates “Israelis and Palestinians: Two Peoples, One Future.” He has helped coordinate petition drives for release from confinement in Israel of Shministim, Israel’s young conscientious objectors who protest their government’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Asner has taken part in benefits to promote creation of a Cabinetlevel Department of Peace in the U.S. federal government. One such benefit, on February 28, 2007, featured a reading of the play The Gift of Peace (2007) at the Freud Playhouse on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles. Asner has been an adviser to the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which was started by the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, members of the U.S. Communist Party who were executed in 1953 following conviction for conspiracy to commit espionage. The foundation provides benefits for children of activists. An avid comicbook fan, Asner also has been an active member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which advocates free-speech issues for comic-book creators and vendors when the work is threatened with censorship.
for other roles in the animated versions of Spider-Man, Batman, and Star Wars. Asner also provided the voice of Carl Fredricksen in the Pixar film Up (2009), a role that earned him so much praise that some critics suggested creation of a new Academy Award for voice acting. In 1980, Asner began to take an active role in the politics of his profession during a strike by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). A year later, he was elected president of SAG, and he became an advocate of labor rights generally. During the 1980’s, Asner engaged in an active role opposing U.S. intervention in the affairs of Nicaragua and El Salvador. Asner played a major role in the film Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981) and starred in the sequel to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Lou Grant Show, from 1977 to 1982. This series was cancelled by the Co64
lumbia Broadcasting Company (CBS) as Asner’s political activities became more prominent. Asner maintained that the show was terminated because he had become too controversial off-camera. The network denied his assertion. The Lou Grant Show was a top-ten show, according to ACNielsen, the primary television-show ratings agency, during its final month in 1982, when it was canceled. Howard Hesseman, an actor who worked with Asner on a medical relief program for El Salvador, had his highly rated situation comedy, WKRP in Cincinnati, cancelled by CBS the same day. Asner has frequently spoken about his Jewish heritage, saying that being Jewish gives him a perspective of “the other,” leading to greater vision, tolerance, and compassion, which offers a path to avoid prejudice. On discrimination, he believes that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Asner had three children (Matthew, Liza, and Kate) with his wife Sykes, to whom he was married from 1959 to 1988. In 1987, he had a son (Charles) with Carol Jean Vogelman. Asner became engaged to producer Cindy Gilmore in 1991; they married August 2, 1998. Gilmore filed for divorce on November 7, 2007.
Significance Asner has won seven Emmy Awards and seven Golden Globe Awards, and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His acting career combined with his political activism provided him a unique form of celebrity that often sparked controversy. Like other Jewish American actors, such as Rod Serling, Asner placed a high value on living a public life with a sense of conscience. —Bruce E. Johansen
Further Reading Hamill, Pete. “What Does Lou Grant Know About El Salvador?” New York Magazine, March 15, 1982. Veteran journalist Pete Hamill reveals the high cost of Asner’s political activism to his professional and personal life. “Moment Asks Thirty-Five American Jews Two Big Questions: What Does It Mean to Be a Jew Today?
Jewish Americans What Do Jews Bring to the World Today?” Moment: Independent Journalism from a Jewish Perspective, May/June, 2010. Asner’s reflections on growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family. Zager, Norma. “Outspoken Asner’s Activism Is No Act.” The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, August 5,
Auerbach, Red 2005. Asner describes his life as an activist, especially in organizations seeking an enduring peace between Israelis and Palestinians. See also: Alan Arkin; Richard Dreyfuss; Peter Falk; Walter Matthau; Rod Serling.
Red Auerbach Athletic coach and business executive Auerbach spent fifty-seven years with the Boston Celtics basketball team, coaching it to nine championships and managing it to seven more. Born: September 20, 1917; Brooklyn, New York Died: October 28, 2006; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Arnold Jacob Auerbach (full name) Areas of achievement: Sports; business
Nancy and Randy. After serving nearly two years in the Navy, where he coached basketball, he thought he had achieved his life’s goal when he was hired for coaching jobs at St. Albans Preparatory School, then at Roosevelt High School in Washington, D.C. Being in the right place at the right time got him his first professional basketball coaching position at the newly formed American Basketball Association, forerunner of today’s National Basketball Association. He coached the Washington Capitols, then went to Illinois to coach the Moline and Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa-based TriCity Blackhawks. From there he went to the Boston Celtics. Auerbach never left the franchise that made him a legend.
Early Life Red Auerbach (OW-ur-bak) was born in Brooklyn to Hyman and Marie Auerbach, the second of three sons. Hyman, a Russian Jew, had emigrated from Minsk with his family at age twelve, and after working in several restaurants, he went into the cleaning business. There was little extra money in the Auerbach household. The brothLife’s Work ers helped in the business while growing up and scramAs coach of the Boston Celtics, the team with the bled to earn extra money in a number of ways, including worst record in 1950, Auerbach started with a three-year washing taxicabs. His flaming red hair gave Red Auerbach his lifelong nickname. The family lived in Brooklyn’s WilliamsNine Championships burg neighborhood, a stronghold of Eastern European Jews. Baseball and football were almost Red Auerbach coached the Boston Celtics basketball team to unknown in Williamsburg, because the area nine championships, eight of them consecutive, a record unlikely lacked surfaces on which to play, so Auerbach to be broken, especially in these days when fans demand wins, and a coach with even one losing season is soon replaced. gravitated toward basketball. He discovered he Auerbach received the first of his coaching championship rings was good at the game and determined to bein 1957. In the years 1959 through 1966 he won eight more—a come a high school coach. That meant going to win, a repeat, a three-peat, all the way up to an eight-peat. He won college, and though he qualified for basketball with a strategy that included fast breaks, a strong defense, and a scholarships, he lacked the money to pay what handful of plays he perfected; even though opponents guessed was not covered, and so he ended up at the only those plays were coming, they were unable to stop them. That winschool he could afford: Brooklyn’s Seth Low ning streak brought basketball to the attention of the American Junior College, from where he transferred to people and changed the game forever. He followed his unparalGeorge Washington University. leled record with seven more championships as manager. The city He drifted away from Judaism in adulthood, of Boston held him in such high esteem that a life-size statue of Aubut he remained proud of his heritage. In June, erbach was placed in the Faneuil Hall Marketplace, a permanent reminder of his legendary success. 1941, he married Dorothy Lewis, whom he had met in college. The couple had two daughters, 65
Auerbach, Red contract. He knew the job meant more than coaching. In the early days of professional basketball, he also served as manager, talent scout, and public relations professional. Boston, like most cities, had not yet realized the potential of the sport. Auerbach had to be a promoter in order to fill the number of seats necessary to break even. Profitability was still in the future. The situation was rocky at first. Auerbach could be blunt, profane, and abrasive, and he insisted on having complete control. Soon his true talents emerged. First was his genius at making trades to secure the players that best matched his vision for the team. He looked not only at a player’s ability to guard and shoot but also at how he would function
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Jewish Americans with the team as a whole. Auerbach was not afraid to take risks. In what is regarded as one of the best trades in the history of basketball, he acquired Bill Russell. Russell was an important part of Auerbach’s first championship team, which also consisted of Bob Cousy, Tommy Heinsohn, Frank Ramsay, and Bill Sharman, among others. In the 1980’s, when Auerbach had retired from coaching and was the team’s general manager, he pulled off another history-making trade when he acquired Kevin McHale and Robert Parish for the team that eventually made up the best starting five ever to grace a basketball court: Larry Bird, Dennis Johnson, Danny Ainge, McHale, and Parish. Second was his genius in bringing out the best in his players. He had few rules, because he believed in treating his players as individuals. That meant bending when he felt it was the right thing to do. For all his blustery talk, Auerbach cared about his players and knew how to motivate them. When he decided to step down as coach and function only as manager (and, later, president of the club), he selected Russell to take his place, the first black coach in the National Basketball Association. Auerbach did not do it to make history. He knew instinctively that no one else could coach Russell as well as Russell himself. Despite winning nine championships as coach and seven more as manager, Auerbach experienced some bad times. One of the worst came after the Celtics won the 1980 championship (against the Houston Astros) with a dream team comprising Bird, Johnson, McHale, Ainge, and Parish. Bill Walton was the sixth man, and K. C. Jones the coach. Auerbach was confident he had made the right decisions to infuse the aging team with new blood. He had made a deal to get his choice draft pick, Len Bias from Maryland. The day after Bias was seen on television proudly showing his new Celtics jersey, he dropped dead from a drug overdose. Then Reggie Lewis, a new member of the team, died of a heart attack. Walton retired because of foot injuries, and Bird’s back injuries forced his retirement. Auerbach did what he had to do. He kept his focus on the team, and at the time of his death of a heart attack in 2006, the Boston Celtics were still a formidable team.
Jewish Americans Significance Auerbach brought professional basketball to the popularity it enjoys today. He single-handedly built a true sports dynasty, and his record is unlikely to be equaled. Winning teams fill stadiums, both at home and on the road. He spent a total of fifty-seven years with the team and will forever be a Boston icon. He was so famous for lighting his victory cigar when it became apparent his team had the game sewn up that, until his death, many Boston restaurants had signs proclaiming “No Smoking” and in smaller letters, “Except Red Auerbach.” Auerbach was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame and was the recipient of seven honorary degrees. —Norma Lewis Further Reading Auerbach, Red, and John Feinstein. Let Me Tell You a Story: A Lifetime in the Game. New York: Little, Brown, 2004. Auerbach brings the reader behind the
Auster, Paul scenes of his illustrious career with anecdotes about all the game’s greats. Russell, Bill, and Alan Steinberg. Red and Me: My Coach, My Lifelong Friend. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Russell shares his memories of Auerbach, the man who coached him to championships and later made him the NBA’s first black head coach. Shaughnessy, Dan. Seeing Red: The Red Auerbach Story. Avon, Mass.: Adams Media, 1995. The first biography of the legendary Celtics coach. Slater, Robert O. Great Jews in Sports. Middle Village, N.Y.: Jonathan David, 1983. Auerbach wrote the foreword and is featured in the book. Taylor, John. The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Golden Age of Basketball. New York: Random House, 2005. The story of one of sports’ greatest rivalries, with a lot of information about Auerbach. See also: Senda Berenson Abbott; Larry Brown; Nat Holman.
Paul Auster Writer and translator Auster came to prominence in the mid-1980’s as a novelist, and subsequently he worked as a poet, a screenwriter, an essayist, a memoirist, and a translator. He is noted for his genre-bending work. Born: February 3, 1947; Newark, New Jersey Also known as: Paul Benjamin Auster (full name); Paul Benjamin Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Paul Benjamin Auster (AW-stur) is the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Poland. His parents were Samuel Auster, a radio engineer, who deserted the family in the early 1960’s, and Queenie Auster. Born in Newark, Paul Auster was raised in South Orange, New Jersey. Under the influence of such authors as Miguel de Cervantes, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, Fyodor Dostoevski, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, and William Shakespeare, Auster began writing while still in his teens. He graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, just twenty miles from New York City. Auster attended Columbia University from 1965 to 1969, and af-
ter earning a bachelor’s degree he remained for an additional year to obtain his master’s degree in comparative literature. In 1970, he toiled for six months as an ordinary seaman aboard an oil tanker in the Gulf of Mexico in order to earn enough money to live in France. From 1970 to 1974, Auster lived and worked in Paris as an expatriate poet and translator of literature from French to English. He eventually translated the works of such writers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Stéphane Mallarmé, Joseph Joubert, and Maurice Blanchot. In 1974, after returning to New York City—where he published several volumes of poetry that received little notice—he married fellow writer and translator Lydia Davis and fathered a son, Daniel, born in 1977. Auster and Davis divorced in 1978. In the early 1980’s, Auster’s father died, leaving his son an inheritance that enabled the fledgling author to work full-time at his craft for several years until he was able to support himself with the income from his writings. In 1981, he met Minnesotaborn writer Siri Hustvedt at a poetry reading, and the two were married the following year; their daughter, Sophie, was born in 1987. Auster and his second wife settled in a Brooklyn brownstone apartment in the mid1980’s. 67
Auster, Paul Life’s Work In addition to translations—some of which appeared in the anthology The Random House Book of TwentiethCentury French Poetry (1982)—Auster’s early work included poems and nonfiction pieces (such as those later collected in the 1990 volume Ground Work: Selected Poems and Essays, 1970-1979). In 1982, he released a traditional sports mystery, Squeeze Play, under the pseudonym Paul Benjamin. That same year he published a memoir, The Invention of Solitude, part of which concerned his attempt to discover and understand the character of his late father. His research yielded a shocking piece of information: In Wisconsin, in 1919, his grandmother murdered her husband for infidelity and was acquitted for the killing. While neither of these full-length works was a commercial success, together they established several themes that would thereafter appear again and again in Auster’s fiction: crime, the quest for discovery, and the exploration of the nature of identity. Auster first gained widespread critical recognition in the mid-1980’s with the publication of a trio of short nov-
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Jewish Americans els exploding the conventions of traditional mystery stories. The Edgar Award-nominated City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986), and The Locked Room (1986)—collected as The New York Trilogy in 1987—established the author as a consummate storyteller. These include deceptively simple, straightforward prose incorporating autobiographical details, symbols, literary allusions, linguistic games, plot reversals, and the blurring of appearance and reality to deal with larger, universal issues. The juxtaposition of Auster’s eminently readable, suspenseful writing style and his tangled, surreal, multilayered plots has attracted both loyal readership and wildly divergent critical opinions of his work. Commentators have applied such labels as “postmodern” and “metafiction” to his work, though the author in interviews has vehemently insisted that his only intention is to provide entertainment. Since the 1980’s, Auster has released a new fulllength fictional work every few years; his sixteenth novel, Sunset Park, appeared in 2010. Though protagonists vary in gender (a woman narrates the post-apocalyptic In the Country of Last Things, 1987), in age (a boy with the ability to fly is the main character in Mr. Vertigo, 1994), and even in species (a dog tells the story in Timbuktu, 1999), Auster’s books are similar in theme. Coincidence and chance often propel the plot. Characters are typically loners, often occupied as writers or preoccupied with the writings of others. New York and its environs frequently serve as settings. There is an existential quality to most of Auster’s fictional work, since he usually explores the boundaries among the roles of author and character and reader. Since the early 1990’s, Auster has expanded his repertoire into other creative outlets. He has written the screenplays for such films as The Music of Chance (1993), Smoke (1995), and The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2007), the last of which he also directed. He has written additional memoirs, notably Hand to Mouth (1997), which details his years of living in Paris. He served as editor of National Public Radio’s National Story Project, True Tales of American Life (2001). He has even written the lyrics for several songs. Significance Except for his Edgar Award nomination for City of Glass, Auster received relatively scant domestic recognition for his work during the first decade of his career. His early novels, which seldom sold more than twenty thousand copies in the United States, were often best sellers in France, where he received the Littérature Étrangère Prize in 1989 for The New York Trilogy.
Jewish Americans Since the early 1990’s, however, Auster has gained considerable momentum. Each new work draws a significant favorable critical comment, and his readership has consistently increased. He is considered one of America’s premier literary authors. Auster has garnered numerous honors for his work, including the 1990 Zabel Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Bodil and Independent Spirit awards for the screenplay of Smoke, and the 1996 John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence. In 2006, he received the prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for literature, joining such previous internationally acclaimed recipients as Günter Grass, Arthur Miller, and Mario Vargas Llosa. —Jack Ewing
Auster, Paul
THE NEW YORK TRILOGY A treat for students of literature and mystery fans alike, the three short novels of The New York Trilogy employ the conventions of the noir detective story but stand the genre on its head. Paul Auster’s first unqualified success, The New York Trilogy examines different facets of suspense fiction while establishing many of the themes that would mark the author’s later work, including the necessity of solitude, the quirks of chance, the nature of identity, and the obsession for a quest. City of Glass involves a man named Quinn who as William Wilson writes mystery novels about a private eye named Max Work. A mistaken phone call seeking a certain investigator named Paul Auster propels Quinn—impersonating private detective Auster— to accept a case that entangles him in a nightmare universe where nothing is as it seems. The colorful Ghosts concerns a 1940’s-era private investigator named Blue, trained by a man named Brown, whom Mr. White hires to follow a subject named Black. The concluding volume, The Locked Room, is a tour de force, with more plot twists than a corkscrew. A friend of the writer Fanshawe, who has mysteriously disappeared, becomes his literary executor and is absorbed into the missing man’s life.
Further Reading Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy. Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2007. This edition contains the complete texts of three novels—City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room— the author’s groundbreaking takeoffs on traditional mystery and detective fiction that established his literary reputation. Barone, Dennis, ed. Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. The first comprehensive study of Auster’s work, this is a collection of scholarly essays that examines the author’s themes and style throughout his work. Bloom, Harold, and Amy Sickels, eds. Paul Auster. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003. An entry in the Modern Critical Views series, this work includes a brief biography and chronology of the author’s life, plus critical essays that explore Auster’s major works. Martin, Brendan. Paul Auster’s Postmodernity. New York:
Routledge, 2007. Part of the Studies in Major Literary Authors series, this book explores Auster’s maturity as a writer through critical essays that closely examine his major works, particularly those published after The New York Trilogy. Varvogli, Aliki. The World That Is the Book: Paul Auster’s Fiction. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2001. This work examines the sources and analyzes the philosophy behind Auster’s fiction, with emphasis on the consistency of vision among his works. See also: Michael Chabon; Howard Fast; Jonathan Safran Foer; Mark Helprin.
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Richard Avedon Photographer Avedon revolutionized fashion photography in his work for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. His portraits of cultural and political leaders captured the spirit and the history of America in the second half of the twentieth century. Born: May 15, 1923; New York, New York Died: October 1, 2004; San Antonio, Texas Areas of achievement: Photography; art Early Life Richard Avedon (A-veh-don) was born in 1923 to Russian Jewish parents in New York City. His father, a successful businessman in the women’s wear trade, wanted his son to carry on the family business. Because he was not interested in the family business or in obtaining an
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education for business success, Avedon believed he was a disappointment to his parents. He loved reading and poetry, but he was not interested in academics. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and briefly attended Columbia University. In 1941, Avedon joined the merchant marine as a photographer’s mate, second class. He believed that serving in the merchant marine might be safer than serving in the Army during World War II (1939-1945). He spent the next three years photographing sailors for identification cards: head shots, full face, with little expression and a neutral background. Upon his separation from the service in 1944, he developed a portfolio of photographs and tenaciously pursued a meeting with Alexey Brodovitch, also a New York Russian Jew and the art director of Harper’s Bazaar.
Jewish Americans Brodovitch saw promise in Avedon’s work and recommended that Avedon attend Brodovitch’s classes at the New School for Social Research Life’s Work Soon hired by Brodovitch, Avedon photographed professionally for the next half century. His work spans genres, from fashion to documentary to portraits. He believed his documentary work to be his strong suit, although critics did not receive it well at first publication. Avedon called the portraits his serious work, and his fashion photography paid the bills. Brodovitch sent Avedon to Paris to shoot the French couture collection of 1947. At the time, French couture was trying to reestablish itself after years of inactivity during the Nazi occupation. Avedon’s crisp technique and innovative, often dynamic photos captured the new verve. He gained fame quickly, becoming lead photographer at Harper’s Bazaar. (He was the inspiration for the romantic lead character, Dick Avery, in the 1957 motion picture Funny Face.) Renown brought freedom, freedom brought innovation, and innovation resulted in great fame for Avedon. He introduced the first nude model in 1961 and the first black model to Harper’s Bazaar. In 1966, he became lead photographer at Vogue. Avedon yearned for a more serious reputation. Beginning in 1946, he and African American writer James Baldwin (a high school friend) collaborated on a documentary project for Life magazine called “Doorways.” Partway through the project, however, Avedon returned the magazine’s advance—a sizable twenty-five thousand dollars—because he believed the photos he took of Harlem were exploitative. Much later, in 1964, he and Baldwin reconnected for Nothing Personal, a book-length project of photos with a linking essay by Baldwin. It was a polemical work of cultural politics, focusing on social injustice; it was not well received by critics. Despite this disappointment, Avedon remained engaged in social activism throughout the 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s. Beginning in the mid-1950’s, Avedon produced a series of portrait photographs for Harper’s Bazaar, and his subjects included Marian Anderson, contralto, in 1955; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1957; and actor Marilyn Monroe in 1957. In the decades that followed, he photographed counterculture figures and the political elite. Collaborating with interviewer and essayist Doon
Avedon, Richard
Photography as Fine Art Throughout its almost two-hundred-year history, photography has sparked a debate about its role and purpose. Is it mere mechanical reproduction? Is it a form of social control? Is it an art form on a par with printmaking or painting? Richard Avedon’s career marks the acceptance of at least some photography into the hallowed halls of the fine arts. His portraits have been exhibited at sites such as the Minneapolis Institute of Art (1970), the Corcoran Gallery of Art (2008), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2002). His major show at the commercial fine arts Marlborough Gallery in New York (1975) proved that photography, though in theory endlessly reproducible, was salable. In the debate about fine arts and commercial arts, Avedon was a traditionalist. He spoke of his fashion photos as less significant than his “serious” portraits. However, an analysis of the fashion photos demonstrates that their aesthetic accomplishment was possible only through great formal and technical control. In examples such as Dovima with Elephants (1955), composition and texture support a dreamlike subject, evoking fantasy and desire. Similarly, though Avedon was proud of them, his politically tinged photographs of Harlem and of the dispossessed across America were panned as visual rhetoric—a message in visual form rather than visual form for its own sake. The portraits, however, are usually discussed with the vocabulary of fine arts. Critics cite Avedon’s sources (Francisco Goya, Egon Schiele, Fayum mummy portraits) and debate whether the portraits are examples of existentialism, minimalism, or modernism. Although the portraits of power clearly grew out of the activism that was the heritage of his New York City and Jewish background, Avedon often claimed that there was no bias and no political message to the works. Rather he discussed them as purified and innocent: form for form’s sake.
Arbus, daughter of esteemed photographer Diane Arbus, Avedon captured in these portraits the turbulent history of America. He changed his working method to better engage with his sitters, sacrificing his hand-held Rolleiflex in 1969 for a tripod-steady Deardorff view camera that produced eight-by-ten-inch negatives. He placed sitters against an empty white ground to condense the visual confrontation between the sitter and the viewer. His portraits were received as art and exhibited in major museums. The first exhibition was in 1962; museum solo shows followed consistently from the 1970’s through the early twenty-first century. Many of these exhibitions were designed by his close friend and art director, Marvin Israel. In 1992, he was hired by Tina Brown to be the first staff photographer for The New Yorker. He died at the age of eighty-one of a cerebral hemorrhage in 71
Axel, Richard San Antonio, Texas, while on assignment for The New Yorker. Significance Avedon’s importance lies in two areas: photographic arts and American social history. His work was presented as an art form at galleries and at museums at a time when both criticism and art markets were debating the issue of photography as art. His work was central to the elevation of photography to an elite status. His portrait photos captured the identity of America in the second half of the twentieth century. His uncanny knack for capturing cultural moments (whether the Chicago Seven during their trial for disrupting the 1968 Democratic Convention or Bob Dylan on the eve of his success) gives his photos a historical significance unmatched since Matthew Brady’s record of the Civil War a hundred years earlier. Though many critics believed Avedon when he declared that his photographs were innocent of political intent, his sympathy with counterculture figures and his liberal opinions on politics are apparent. —Jean Owens Schaefer Further Reading Avedon, Richard. An Autobiography. New York: Random House, 1993. Consisting mainly of photographs with only two pages of text by Avedon, this primary source is nonetheless insightful. Avedon, Richard, Maria Morris Hambourg, and Mia Fineman. Richard Avedon Portraits. New York: Harry N. Abrams and Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002. Finely printed accordion book replicates the format
Jewish Americans and scale of the photos as exhibited. Includes a biography and a comprehensive study of Avedon’s cultural sources. Blair, Sara. “Photo-Text Capital: James Baldwin, Richard Avedon, and the Uses of Harlem.” In Harlem Crossroads: Black Writers and the Photograph in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007. Study of Baldwin and Avdeon’s collaboration, which culminated in Nothing Personal (1964). Danto, Arthur C. “Richard Avedon.” In The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. Critique that discusses fashion photography and portraits. Goldberg, Vicki. “Richard Avedon.” In Light Matters: Writings on Photography. New York: Aperture, 2005. An accessible overview of Avedon’s life and work. Goodyear, Frank, and Paul Roth. Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power. Introduction by Renata Adler. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2008. Essays address Avedon’s engagement in politics. Roth offers detailed and original research on the period 1969-1976. Lengthy bibliography. Holm, Michael Juul, ed. Richard Avedon: Photographs, 1946-2004. Humblebaek, Denmark: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2007. An exhibition of the full range of Avedon’s output—fashion, portrait, and documentation photography. Includes a biographical essay by Helle Crenzien and a chronology of Avedon’s career. See also: Diane Arbus; Alfred Eisenstaedt; Annie Leibovitz; Irving Penn; Herb Ritts.
Richard Axel Scientist A pioneer in the field of molecular neurobiology, Axel discovered a method for inserting foreign genes into deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and he won a Nobel Prize for his research into how the brain recognizes a smell. Born: July 2, 1946; Brooklyn, New York Area of achievement: Science and technology Early Life Richard Axel (AK-sihl) was born to a tailor and his wife who emigrated from Poland to escape the Nazis. 72
Axel grew up in a poor area of Brooklyn called Crown Heights. Although his Jewish parents were not well educated, they respected education. Axel went to a public elementary school and Lefferts Junior High School. A teacher suggested that the Manhattan school for gifted students, Stuyvesant High School, would be a good place for Axel. While in high school, Axel learned about reading and about opera. Axel did a number of odd jobs to be able to afford his new-found passion of attending operas. Although he claims that he was not an exceptional student, he was awarded a full scholarship to attend Columbia College (now Columbia University). When Axel received his
Jewish Americans bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1967, he also received his draft notice. To stay out of the Vietnam War, Axel entered Johns Hopkins Medical School. Axel claims that he was a terrible student and received his degree only by promising not to work on living patients. His internship was in pathology at Columbia, studying tissues and performing autopsies. Axel was awarded a fellowship at Columbia in pathology for a year. The next two years, he fulfilled his military obligation by working as a fellow at the National Institutes of Health, doing research in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and chromatin structure. Life’s Work In 1974, he became an assistant professor of pathology in the Institute of Cancer Research. With Saul J. Silverstein, a microbiologist, and Michael H. Wigler, a geneticist, Axel developed a method to insert foreign DNA into a host cell that would then produce proteins of a certain type. The process was issued a patent in 1983. Since any recombinant DNA study would require the technique, industrial companies had to pay Columbia for the rights to use the technique. Until the “Axel patents” expired in 2000, the university earned almost $100 million a year. Axel also did work in immunology. His laboratory was one of the first to discern the connection of the immunoreceptor CD4 and HIV infection. In 1982, Axel began to work with combining molecular biology and neuroscience. As developed in his laboratory, this combination led to a new method to identify genes that would encode neurotransmitter receptors. A new area of interest developed in the late 1980’s when Axel studied how the brain visualizes the external world. A postdoctoral candidate in his group, Linda B. Buck, developed a method to identify olfactory genes. In 1991, Axel and Buck published a paper that laid the foundation for understanding the olfactory system. Buck, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington, and Axel continued to work individually on the function of the olfactory system. For their research, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004. With his first wife, Ann Cotrell, Axel had two sons, Adam and Jonathan. When that marriage ended, he wed Cornelia “Cori” Bargmann. Axel became a medical investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1984; he was named university professor in 1999, Columbia’s highest academic honor; and he served in Columbia’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular
Axel, Richard Biophysics, the Department of Pathology, the Institute of Cancer Research, and the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior. In 1983, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Several of his students have since been elected to the NAS. Significance Using the field of molecular neurobiology to study the olfactory system, Axel and Buck discovered that the olfactory genes make up about 3 percent of the body’s genes. These genes produce neurons, which, when excited by molecules of a scent, release a protein that is detected by the olfactory bulb. There, the combination of “scents” is organized and sent to the cortex, where conscious thought occurs, and to the limbic center, where emotion is generated. The work of Axel and Buck begins to explain how the sense of smell can identify scents from a previous time and why certain scents create an emotional surge. —C. Alton Hassell Further Reading Altman, Lawrence K. “Unraveling Enigma of Smell Wins Nobel for Two Americans.” The New York Times, October 5, 2004. Discusses the award and its scientific basis, and gives some information about Axel and Buck. Axel, Richard. “The Molecular Logic of Smell.” In Secrets of the Senses: How the Brain Deciphers the World Around Us. New York: Scientific American, 2006. Summarizes Axel’s findings on the sense of smell. _______. “Richard Axel.” In Les Prix Nobel/The Nobel Prizes 2004, edited by Tore Frängsmyr. Stockholm, Sweden: Nobel Foundation, 2005. Autobiography written at the time of the Nobel presentation. Eisner, Robin. “Richard Axel: One of the Nobility in Science.” Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University 25, no. 1 (Winter, 2005). Biography of Axel. Malcolm, Alan D. B. “Not to Be Sniffed At: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2004.” Journal of Biological Education 39, no. 1 (Winter, 2004): 11. Discusses the basis for the awarding of the Nobel Prize. See also: Seymour Benzer; Paul Berg; Michael Brown; Carl Djerassi; Gertrude Belle Elion; Paul Greengard; Stanley B. Prusiner.
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B Lauren Bacall Actor Bacall is an actor best known for her performances in such memorable films as To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and for her award-winning turns in the Broadway shows Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981). Born: September 16, 1924; New York, New York Also known as: Betty Joan Perske (birth name); “The Look” Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Lauren Bacall (LAW-ruhn buh-KAWL) was born September 16, 1924, into a middle-class family in New York City. Her mother, a Romanian immigrant named Natalie Bacal, worked as a secretary. Her father, William
Lauren Bacall. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Perske, was a salesman (related to former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres). The couple divorced when their only child was around six years old. Raised by her mother, with whom she had a warm and enduring relationship, and several maternal relatives, Bacall spent her early grade-school years in a boarding school, Highland Manor, in Tarrytown, New York, a safer environment than New York City public schools. A good student, Bacall graduated from grade school at age eleven. She liked and played sports, such as volleyball, basketball, baseball, and swimming; she performed in plays and danced. She attended Julia Richman High School in New York City. She took Saturday-morning classes at the New York School of the Theater and dancing lessons, including ballet. After high school, Bacall was determined to pursue an acting career. She could afford to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1940 for only a year. She found work as a model with the David Crystal agency at age sixteen. Working at this agency, she met other models who, when they learned she was Jewish, commented that she “didn’t look Jewish.” Incidents of outright antiSemitism were not frequent, but she remembers that on a vacation trip to Florida with her mother, they were told there were no vacancies when the clerk discovered they were Jewish. After the David Crystal job, she worked as a model for the Sam Friedlander agency and volunteered at the Stage Door Canteen. Later she got a job as an usher at a theater where she saw some of the leading actors of the time perform. Finally, in 1942, she got a walk-on part in a debuting Broadway play, Johnny 2 x 4. At eighteen she posed for a Harper’s Bazaar photo spread, which led to opportunities that changed her life. Life’s Work Bacall’s picture in Harper’s Bazaar caught the attention of a Hollywood producer, and her acting career took off in 1944 with her costarring role with Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not. During the filming of this movie, she fell in love with Bogart, who was married at the time. When their relationship became serious, she had some trepidation about telling him she was
Jewish Americans Jewish. According to her account in her autobiography, By Myself and Then Some (2005), Bogart “couldn’t care less”; her religion made no difference to him. As for Bacall, she said she loved being Jewish and had no problems with it, although she got a little tired of being told she “didn’t look” Jewish. She and Bogart married in 1945. She made several films in the 1940’s: Confidential Agent (1945) with Charles Boyer and The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948) with Bogart. She refused to do films that had no appeal to her and got a reputation for being difficult. Still, the 1950’s found her starring in critical and commercial favorites such as Young Man with a Horn (1950) with Kirk Douglas and Doris Day, How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe, Written on the Wind (1956) with Rock Hudson, and Designing Woman (1957) with Gregory Peck. In the 1950’s she raised the two children she had with Bogart, son Stephen and daughter Leslie. By tradition the children were considered Jewish, but she and Bogart sent the children to an Episcopal church Sunday school and ultimately allowed them to join that church. However, Bacall said she had no intention of converting to Episcopalianism, Bogart’s lapsed religion, as she was “totally Jewish” even if she did not go to synagogue. Allowing the children to become Episcopalian was a practical decision, but Bacall was determined that they remain aware of their Jewish heritage. Bogart died in 1957, and Bacall’s movie career waned in the 1960’s. She went back to Broadway, where she achieved several triumphs. In 1959, she starred in Goodbye, Charlie. Then, in 1965, she appeared in Cactus Flower. By 1970, when she appeared in Applause, her star was on the rise once again, and she won a Tony Award for her performance. Meanwhile, between Broadway appearances, she made a few films with large all-star casts such as Sex and the Single Girl (1964), with Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda, and Tony Curtis; Harper (1966), with Paul Newman, Julie Harris, Shelley Winters, Janet Leigh, and Robert Wagner; and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), with Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, and Albert Finney. She appeared on television, in episodes of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) drama Mr. Broadway. She was given the 1972 Sarah Siddons Award for her work in the Chicago theater. A few years after Bogart’s death, Bacall married her second husband, stage actor Jason Robards, and they had a child, Sam. This marriage lasted from 1961 to 1969.
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Stage Triumphs Lauren Bacall made many commercially successful films in the early part of her career. After her marriage to Humphrey Bogart and the rearing of their children reduced her cinematic work, critics began to denigrate her star potential. However, when she began to take roles in the theater, she revealed acting qualities that had not been apparent in her films. Her most prestigious awards, the Tonys, were given for her stage work. Her performance in Goodbye, Charlie made the entertainment world aware that she was more than the smoldering vamp of her first films. Cactus Flower further highlighted her acting skills. Then came Applause, a musical that required her not only to sing but also to dance. She put so much into the role of Margo Channing that she won the 1979 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. In 1981, she won another Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her performance in Woman of the Year. The roles that garnered her greatest acclaim as well as two Sarah Siddons Awards, in 1972 and 1984, were ones originally created in films that starred her movie idols, Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn. As Bacall’s work in film, theater, and television continued, she was continually lauded with nominations and awards that recognized her achievement as a consummate actor.
In the 1980’s and 1990’s Bacall made such films as The Fan (1981), Appointment with Death (1988), and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), for which she received a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination. She was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor in 1997 and in 1999 was voted, by the American Film Institute, one of the twenty-five most significant female movie stars in history. In 2006, she was awarded the first Katharine Hepburn Medal, which recognizes women whose lives and work “embody the intelligence, drive and independence” of four-time Academy Award winner Hepburn. Significance Becoming a breakout star in her first movie, marrying a legendary movie star, having an apparently storybook marriage, and appearing in films and stage plays that won critical acclaim, Bacall may have lived every aspiring actor’s fantasy. She has proved her mettle in practically every medium of entertainment, including radio and television. She even branched out in writing to win the 1980 National Book Award for Best Nonfiction Book 75
Bacharach, Burt for her autobiography, By Myself. The world of entertainment honored her over the years with many lifetime achievement awards, including from the Stockholm Film Festival (2000) and the Norwegian International Film Festival (2007), the Bette Davis Medal of Honor (2008), and the Kennedy Center Honors (1997). —Jane L. Ball Further Reading Bacall, Lauren. By Myself and Then Some. New York: HarperCollins It Books, 2005. An autobiography that incorporates her first memoir, beginning in her “confusing” childhood and detailing Bacall’s experiences as an aspiring actor, a wife, a mother, a widow, and a
Jewish Americans divorcé. She describes the many celebrities and fellow actors she encountered. Lyman, Darryl. Great Jews in Entertainment. Middle Village, N.Y.: Jonathan David, 2005. Portraits and thumbnail sketches of more than two hundred Jews in the performing arts, Bacall among them. Slater, Elinor. Great Jewish Women. Middle Village, N.Y.: Jonathan David, 2006. Bacall’s is one of more than one hundred profiles of Jewish women who have made impressive contributions in their fields of endeavor. Relationships to Judaism are highlighted. Includes black and white photos. See also: Tony Curtis; Paul Newman; Shubert brothers.
Burt Bacharach Musician and composer Bacharach wrote more than fifty Top 40 hits in the 1960’s and 1970’s and continued to produce hits into the 1980’s. A prodigious musical talent, he composed songs for popular singers and for musical theater. Born: May 12, 1928; Kansas City, Missouri Also known as: Burt Freeman Bacharach (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; theater Early Life Burt Bacharach (BAK-ah-rak) was the son of syndicated columnist Bert Bacharach and Irma Freeman. Although he was born in Kansas City, Missouri, Burt Bacharach spent most of his early life in New York City. His mother insisted that he study a variety of musical instruments, including cello, piano, and drums. It is reported that he disliked the piano (which eventually became his instrument of choice) as a youngster. He developed an interest in jazz and often used a fake identification card to slip into nightclubs to hear such musicians as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. He graduated from Forest Hills High School in 1946. Bacharach started a band while in high school and later played at resorts in the Catskills, a favorite vacation spot for Jewish people. After high school he studied music theory at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He also attended Mannes School of Music, the New School for Social Research in New York, and the Berkshire Music Center in Massachusetts. 76
Bacharach served in the military from 1950 to 1952. While in the Army, he played at officers’ clubs and continued polishing his piano and entertainment skills. While stationed in Germany, Bacharach met Vic Damone, a singer. After both were discharged from the Army, Bacharach worked as Damone’s accompanist. He also accompanied such performers as the Ames Brothers, Imogene Coca, Polly Bergen, Joel Grey, Steve Lawrence, and a singer named Paula Stewart. He married her in 1953; they divorced in 1958. Life’s Work Bacharach is probably best known for his collaboration with Hal David. They worked together for the first time in 1957, and they became overnight sensations with a hit they wrote for Marty Robbins (“The Story of My Life”), which reached fifteen on the Top 40 charts in 1957. They also composed “Magic Moments” for Perry Como, which was in the top ten in 1958. Between 1958 and 1961, Bacharach worked as musical director for Marlene Dietrich. In this capacity he toured widely in Europe and in the United States and composed several major hits: “Please Stay” for the Drifters; “Baby, It’s You” for the Shirelles; and “Tower of Strength” for Gene Pitney. Pitney recorded several Bacharach-David hits in the early 1960’s. These included “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and “Only Love Can Break a Heart.” These moved up the pop charts as high as number four and number two respectively. Bacharach worked a great deal with the Drifters dur-
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ing this period, and through them he met Dionne Warpher, who was born in 1986. Their collaboration was prowick. At the time Bacharach met Warwick, she was a ductive in terms of Bacharach’s music, the pair creating member of a backup singing group, the Gospelaires. Her top hits such as “Making Love” (1982), “That’s What style matched the type of music Bacharach and David Friends Are For” (1985), “On My Own” (1986), and produced. They wrote and produced twenty Top 40 “Love Power” (1987). In 1985, Bacharach and Sager hits for Warwick over the next ten years, seven of which composed the title theme to the television series Finder received top-ten status: “Anyone Who Had a Heart” of Lost Loves, which became a hit. Bacharach and Sager (1963), “Walk on By” (1964), “Message to Michael” divorced in 1991. He married Jane Hansen in 1993, and (1966), “I Say a Little Prayer” (1967), “Do You Know they had two children. the Way to San Jose?” (1968), “This Girl’s in Love Bacharach collaborated with Elvis Costello to prowith You” (1969), and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” duce an album, Painted from Memory, which combined (1969). Bacharach’s style with Costello’s, and it rose on the The team of Bacharach and David wrote hits for other charts in the late 1990’s. Bacharach collaborated with performers, including Jackie DeShannon (“What the Cathy Dennis in 2002 to write a song for British televiWorld Needs Now”), the Fifth Dimension (“One Less sion show Pop Idol contestant Will Young. This compoBell to Answer”), Bobby Vinton (“Blue on Blue”), Herb sition appeared on Young’s album From Now On. After Alpert (“This Guy’s in Love with You”), Tom Jones fifty years in show business, Bacharach has continued to (“What’s New, Pussycat?”), Jack Jones (“Wives and write songs and perform. Lovers”), Dusty Springfield (“The Look of Love”), and B. J. Thomas (“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”). Significance During this period, Bacharach and David were probably Bacharach’s composing and musical career is signifithe most productive Top 40 collaborators. cant in part because of its longevity. He wrote music that Bacharach married film star Angie Dickinson in 1966. appeared on recordings, on stage, and on screen and went His interest in writing film scores began during this to the top of the charts throughout the 1960’s, 1970’s, and period. He wrote the title song for the film Alfie (1966) 1980’s. Many well-known singers made their mark by and the score for What’s New, Pussycat? (1965). The singing his compositions. Bacharach’s unique style is song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” and the recognizable, whether Warwick or Costello performs his score from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) music. The appeal of his music is timeless. He has reearned Bacharach Academy Awards for Best Score and Best Theme Song. He also received a Grammy Award for Best Score for the music Fifty Years in Show Business from that film. Bacharach and David collaborated with Neil Few composers of popular hits are able to maintain the sort of Simon on a Broadway musical, Promises, Promacclaim that would keep them at the top for more than two decades. ises (1968). That show ran for three years and Burt Bacharach broke into the pop hit world in 1957, surpassed most other composers for numbers of top hits in the 1960’s and won two Tony Awards and a Grammy Award. 1970’s, continued with hits in the 1980’s, and in the twenty-first Most of Bacharach’s creative projects were century he again made successful collaborations with such musisuccessful. However, he and David collabocians as Elvis Costello. His success has not been tied to work with rated on a musical version of the film Lost Horijust one lyricist, although his longest partnership was with Hal Dazon in 1973 that failed, and shortly after that vid. He also has a history of successful collaboration with Carole Bacharach, David, and Warwick sued and counBayer Sager, Cathy Dennis, and Costello. Now, in his eighties, tersued each other as they tried to work out a Bacharach has been active and productive. In the time span of his “professional divorce.” composing career, he received many accolades, including the PoFor a time after this, Bacharach did not write lar Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in chart-topping hits. However, in 1981 he scored 2001; six Grammy Awards; numerous Tony nominations and the film Arthur, and his song, “Arthur’s Theme awards; the Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2008; and several Academy Awards for film scores and theme songs. This time (Best That You Can Do),” earned Bacharach anspan of productivity and popularity is unsurpassed in the music other Academy Award, his third. He also began business. working with a lyricist, Carole Bayer Sager. They married in 1982 and had a son, Christo77
Baer, Max ceived many awards throughout his career. Perhaps the most prestigious—the lifetime achievement award of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences— was given him in 2008. —Mary C. Ware Further Reading Bacharach and David (Burt and Hal). Los Angeles: Almo, 1978. Includes lyrics to eighty songs from these collaborators that became hits over two decades. Also includes a history of their collaboration and photographs. Brocken, Michael. Bacharach: Maestro! The Life of a Pop Genius. New Malden, England: Chrome Dreams,
Jewish Americans 2003. This book covers Bacharach’s early life; his work with lyricist David; his successful years composing many hits; his relationships with women and his marriages, including those to Dickinson and Sager; and his collaborations with Costello and Noel Gallagher. Platts, Robin. Burt Bacharach and Hal David: What the World Needs Now. Burlington, Ont.: Collector’s Guide, 2002. In-depth coverage of Bacharach and David’s contributions to the music world, including a discography and images of vintage record sleeves. See also: Herb Alpert; Neil Diamond; Marvin Hamlisch; Neil Simon.
Max Baer Boxer Baer was a popular heavyweight boxer during the 1930’s, holding the world heavyweight boxing championship from 1934 to 1935. He was also known for his flamboyant lifestyle and celebrity status that continued until his death in 1959. Born: February 11, 1909; Omaha, Nebraska Died: November 21, 1959; Hollywood, California Also known as: Maximilian Adelbert Baer (full name); Livermore Larupper; Madcap Maxie Areas of achievement: Sports; entertainment Early Life Max Baer (behr) was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1909. His father, Jacob, a butcher and packinghouse worker, was of Jewish background, and his mother, Dora Bales, was of German and Scots-Irish descent. Baer was the second of their five children. At the time of Baer’s birth, his father was employed at the Swift and Company meatpacking plant in Omaha. Six months later, the family moved to Denver, where his father assumed a management position in the Swift plant located there. With the exception of three years spent in Kaylor, New Mexico, from 1915 to 1918, the family spent the next thirteen years in Colorado. In 1922, they moved again, settling in the Northern California town of Livermore, and Baer’s father entered the livestock business. It was in Livermore that Baer’s career as a professional boxer began to take shape. At a fairly young age Baer had shown exceptional athletic skills. He excelled in baseball, football, and basket78
Max Baer. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
ball before dropping out of high school following his freshman year. Baer was known for his size and strength, and when he got into an altercation with a local man who
Jewish Americans had a reputation as a fighter, he knocked him out with one punch. Word of this accomplishment gained Baer further local recognition. In the years that followed he continued to build his strength and stamina, working long hours on his father’s ranch and at a local gravel pit. Eventually he purchased a heavy punching bag and began perfecting his punching ability; from that he progressed to sparring at a local boxing gym. In the late 1920’s, he moved to Oakland, California, to train at the well-known Yosemite Athletic Club. His first professional fight took place in Stockton, California, on May 16, 1929, and he knocked out in the second round a well-respected local fighter named Chief Caribou. Life’s Work Following his first professional bout, prizefighting became Baer’s primary vocation. During the next two years, he fought on a regular basis in California, amassing a record of twenty-four wins, four losses, with twenty of his victories scored by knockout. By August, 1930, he had gained a considerable local following. This success, however, came to a sudden halt on the night of August 25, 1930, when his opponent in a match, Frankie Campbell, died of injuries sustained in a brutal fight. After initially being charged with manslaughter for his part in the fight (a crime for which he was later acquitted), he was banned from boxing in California for one year. As a result he headed east for his next several fights. While the move brought him to national attention, he was, in the period following the Campbell fight, never again the fierce competitor he had been in the early part of his career, often holding back when he had an opponent hurt and frequently engaging in clowning and other antics in the ring. During the course of the next three years, he moved up steadily in the heavyweight ranks, fighting many of the best boxers of the era and forming a close friendship with former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey. A highprofile technical knockout of former champion Max Schmeling in June, 1933, put Baer in line for a shot at the title. It was in the fight against Schmeling that Baer first wore the Star of David on his boxing trunks, as a reaction against Adolf Hitler’s portrayal of the German-born Schmeling as a symbol of Aryan supremacy. Baer’s shot at the heavyweight title came in June of the following year against champion Primo Carnera. He in a masterly manner defeated the oversized but clumsy Italian fighter,
Baer, Max
Winning the Heavyweight Title Max Baer won the world heavyweight title after an eleventh-round knockout of champion Primo Carnera on June 14, 1934. Carnera, who was born in Italy, was an extremely large heavyweight for the period, standing over six feet, five inches and weighing 275 pounds. By comparison, Baer, who was also considered a big heavyweight for the time, was three inches shorter and weighed 209 pounds for the fight. From the beginning of the match Baer engaged in his trademark clowning techniques, and he frequently taunted the champion. The early rounds were marked by a good deal of wrestling by both fighters, but in the tenth round Baer grew serious and began to rain heavy blows on the larger fighter. The champion, who had been knocked down several times early in the fight but had gotten to his feet quickly, seemed badly hurt. At one point, the referee seemed ready to stop the bout, but the champion pleaded to continue. As Carnera came out for the eleventh round, however, he was clearly beaten. Baer implored the referee to end it. Finally, Carnera indicated that he was finished, and the fight was stopped. Altogether, he had been down eleven times in the fight. At this point Baer’s arms were raised in victory, and he had reached the pinnacle of his boxing career.
winning by technical knockout in the eleventh round. Baer kept the title for only a year, losing it to James J. Braddock in a fifteen-round upset on June 13, 1935. Baer continued fighting for six more years, but he lost most of his big fights during this period, among them a devastating knockout by soon-to-be-champion Joe Louis in September, 1935. He fought for the last time on April 4, 1941. During his career, Baer was noted for his extravagant and flamboyant lifestyle. He showed an early predilection for big cars, flashy clothes, and fast women. He was married briefly (1931-1933) to socialite and former actor Dorothy Dunbar. A second marriage, to Mary Ellen Sullivan in 1935, proved more lasting and produced three children, including television actor Max Baer, Jr., who appeared on the situation comedy The Beverly Hillbillies. In addition to maintaining his celebrity status as a boxer, Baer appeared in numerous films and later on several popular television programs. The best known of his films was The Prizefighter and the Lady in 1933, in which Baer starred with Myrna Loy and Walter Huston. Both Baer and his brother Jacob (“Buddy”) Baer, who was also a boxer, served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. In the late 1940’s, he teamed up with former light heavyweight champion Max (“Slapsie Maxie”) 79
Ballmer, Steve Rosenbloom in a popular nightclub act. In his final years, in addition to acting, Baer frequently refereed boxing and wrestling matches. He died suddenly of a heart attack on November 21, 1959, at the age of fifty. Significance Baer is best remembered as a world heavyweight champion during an era when boxing was a high-profile sport, but he was also known generally during the 1930’s, 1940’s, and 1950’s as a popular celebrity, with his flamboyant lifestyle and his career in entertainment. While he was half Jewish by lineage and was buried in a Catholic cemetery, his Jewish heritage played a key role in his popular persona, especially when he began wearing the Star of David on his boxing trunks at the time of the Schmeling fight in 1933. He gained popular attention many decades after his death with the release of the 2005 film Cinderella Man, depicting the career of boxer Braddock, although the negative characterization of Baer in the film is generally considered to be factually inaccurate. —Scott Wright
Jewish Americans Further Reading Fimrite, Ron. “Send in the Clown.” Sports Illustrated 48, no. 13 (March 20, 1978): 66-76. Written nearly twenty years after his death, this article is considered a definitive assessment of the man and his career. Fleischer, Nat. Max Baer, the Glamour Boy of the Ring. New York: C. J. O’Brien, 1941. An early, popular biography by a well-known boxing writer. McCallum, John D. The World Heavyweight Boxing Championship: A History. Radnor, Pa.: Chilton, 1974. Places Baer in the context of the major fighters and titleholders of his era. Schaap, Jeremy. Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer, and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. In addition to discussing the famous 1935 fight, the book contains solid background material on Baer, offering a more accurate and balanced depiction of the man than the 2005 film adaptation. See also: Moe Berg; Barney Ross.
Steve Ballmer Business executive and entrepreneur Ballmer led Microsoft from its small-business beginnings to its current position as one of the industry’s top companies. His brilliant marketing strategies and salesmanship, combined with his aggressive promotion, made him a business luminary. Born: March 24, 1956; Farmington Hills, Michigan Also known as: Steven Anthony Ballmer (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; science and technology Early Life Steve Ballmer (BAWL-mur) was born to Frederic Henry and Beatrice Ballmer in Michigan in 1956. Steve Ballmer’s father was a Swiss immigrant and worked in middle management at the Ford Motor Company. His mother was Jewish, and her family came from Pinsk, now in Belarus. With his sister Shelly, Ballmer traveled to Pinsk to visit places significant to Jewish history. A special menorah was presented to him there. Ballmer at80
tended a private high school, where he was known for the energy and motivation that would become his hallmarks at Microsoft. He was valedictorian of his class. He attended Harvard University, where he met Bill Gates. Ballmer graduated magna cum laude with a degree in applied mathematics and economics. Ballmer started working at Procter and Gamble in 1977 as an assistant product manager, where he marketed cake mixes. He left in 1979 to enroll in Stanford University’s business school. Even though he had no technological background, he dropped out after Gates called with an offer to work at Microsoft. He was given ten percent of the company’s stock and the task of watching the fledgling company’s bottom line. Life’s Work Ballmer started at Microsoft as the senior vice president of system software and head recruiter. Ballmer could not program a computer, but he had an eye for talent. He later moved on to vice president of sales and support. Microsoft worked a deal with International Business Machines (IBM) to create an operating system for its new line of personal computers, which would become
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Steve Ballmer. (Bloomberg via Getty Images)
known as MS-DOS. Gates and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen worked on technical issues and Ballmer dealt with the business. He managed the company’s relationship with IBM, an industry giant, for years. Gates received most of the media attention, especially after the departure of Allen in 1983. Ballmer was in charge of the core of the business, operating systems, in the 1980’s. He recruited top students from first-rate universities to work at Microsoft. He was the one who pushed the marketing and sales efforts. When Gates came up with ideas, Ballmer put them into practice. Ballmer saw the importance of Apple’s graphical user interface and strove to make sure that Microsoft had a competing product, Windows. He forged deals with major players in the computer industry and helped drive software innovations. Ballmer married Connie Snyder in 1990. Between 1991 and 1995, Microsoft sales increased at the rate of a billion dollars per year. In 1995, under Ballmer’s guidance, Microsoft had revenues that neared six billion dollars. He was so enthusiastic about
Microsoft that he once damaged his vocal cords cheering in a motivational meeting. Ballmer was key to the success of Windows 95, and he designed everything from pricing to the distribution of Microsoft’s products. Ballmer’s enthusiasm complemented the keen marketing strategies that he had crafted for Microsoft’s future. In 1995, Microsoft had more than twenty thousand people on its payroll. Because of the successful way he had positioned Microsoft in the computer industry, Ballmer did very well financially and at one time was ranked as the twenty-ninth richest man in America. In 1999, he was worth an estimated twentythree billion dollars. In 2000, he became the chief executive officer and president of Microsoft. Ballmer’s aggressive marketing tactics have caused some issues. Two lawsuits in 2001 and 2003 cost Microsoft more than $2 billion. Regardless of the missteps, Microsoft had revenues of more than $26 billion for 2004, and Ballmer’s net worth of $12.4 billion placed him nineteenth on the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people. 81
Bara, Theda Ballmer is involved in philanthropic efforts, but he keeps his interests and his personal life private. Significance Ballmer is generally hailed as the architect of Microsoft’s success. The passion he has shown for his company has led it to the forefront of the computing industry. The mark that he has left on the face of computing is undeniable, as shown by the fact that a commanding majority of today’s computers run some kind of Microsoft product. He helped to bring personal computing to a mass audience. The average person can use a computer with more ease because of the innovations that he helped develop and bring to the marketplace. Ballmer uses some of his wealth to donate to political causes. —James J. Heiney
Jewish Americans Further Reading Foley, Mary Jo. Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era. Indianapolis, Ind.: John Wiley & Sons, 2008. Insights into how Microsoft works and what business models it uses, many of which were formulated by Ballmer. Maxwell, Frederic Alan. Bad Boy Ballmer. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Glosses over the biography of Ballmer and focuses more on the business strategies and tactics that he employs. Slater, Robert. Microsoft Rebooted: How Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer Reinvented Their Company. New York: Portfolio, 2004. Details the steps that Gates and Ballmer have taken to reinvent Microsoft to remain current and on top of the industry. See also: Sergey Brin; Michael Dell; Larry Ellison; Larry Page.
Theda Bara Actor Bara was one of the first major silent film actors to portray a “vamp,” a ruthless woman, which was a departure from the virginal heroine types played by other female stars in the 1910’s. Born: July 20, c. 1885; Cincinnati, Ohio Died: April 7, 1955; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Theodosia de Coppet; Theodosia Burr Goodman (birth name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Theda Bara (THEE-duh BA-ruh) was born Theodosia Burr Goodman, most probably in 1885, to immigrant parents, Bernard and Pauline, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Without a confirming birth certificate, her birth year is commonly assumed from the year of her high school graduation in 1903. She had a younger sister and brother. Called Theda or Teddy within the family, she grew to slightly above average height for those days, with an inclination toward plumpness. Her outstanding features were her strikingly large and intense dark eyes. She is said to have attended the University of Cincinnati for two years before going to New York to pursue a career in the theater. 82
Theda Bara. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
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Bara, Theda
Life’s Work The Vamp Given the fevered publicity during her career as a silent film star, Bara’s activities during Relatively few stars strayed as far from their true roots as the sethe ten years that preceded are not known with date, matronly Jewish woman who was metamorphosed into a certainty. Apparently she played minor roles on mysterious man-devourer from the sands of the Egyptian desert. In so doing, Theda Bara became the exponent of a new screen type Broadway and in touring companies under the that held audiences spellbound—and kept Fox Studios’ coffers name of Theodosia de Coppet. What is clear is healthy—for several years. Bara’s vamp persona was not just misthat she never became a star performer. At some chievous or misguided but deliberately evil. Her characters did not point she met movie director Frank Powell, regret their actions because they knew what they wanted (usually who cast her as an extra in a 1914 film. He was riches) and went after it. The vamp left her victims penniless and preparing a motion picture at the Fox studio sometimes dead, either indirectly or by her own hand. While the called A Fool There Was, based on a play and a modern vamp often has psychological reasons for her actions, poem by Rudyard Kipling. With practically no Bara’s characters offered no excuse. Widely circulated photofilm experience, Bara was cast in a star role as graphs showed her posing with a human skeleton and in the middle Gilda the home-wrecker. Her dark eyes accenof a giant web like some venomous spider. With Cleopatra (1917), tuated with black kohl, she slunk through the the greatest historical vamp met the greatest screen vamp. In this film Bara often wore a minimal amount of clothing, sometimes just film, destroying the lives of all those with whom a few strategically placed beads hid parts of her ample anatomy. she made contact. To a public used to petite Bara’s characters exemplified her irresistible control over the male blonde heroines, Bara was a sensation. sex, paving the way for later femmes fatales in films, portrayed by Her role as the vampire—not a bloodsucker actors from Myrna Loy to Elizabeth Taylor and Sharon Stone. but a cold seductress of men—resulted in the word “vamp” becoming part of the American lexicon. In addition, entering film immortality and much parodied was her famous line, “Kiss By 1918 Bara’s films had become less popular. There me, my fool.” The studio’s public relations department were real horrors emanating from the Great War, and her made Bara the first actor to be turned into a major star evil ways seemed tame by comparison. By 1919 she was through sustained publicity. It claimed that Bara had been making four thousand dollars a week and demanding a born in Egypt within the shadow of the Sphinx to a French raise to five thousand dollars, but her films were collectactor and an Italian sculptor. Her name was supposedly ing less and less money. Her attempt at another nonvamp an anagram for “Arab death.” Her contract specified that film, Kathleen Mavourneen (1919), was a failure, and she was not to appear in public unless heavily veiled and there were protests by Irish Americans about her playing she was not to marry. The Jewish girl from Ohio was the famous fictional Irish lass. When Fox did not renew metamorphosed into an international woman of mystery. her contract, the reign of the screen’s premier vamp Bara did not always portray “vamp” roles, but those ended. In 1920, a promoter cast her in a Broadway play, were the most popular with the public and the most pubthe melodrama The Blue Flame. The critics all but laughed licized by Fox. Their titles told the audience all they her off the stage in New York, but a curious public supneeded to know: Sin (1915), The Devil’s Daughter (1915), ported the play on tour. A year later she and Englishman Destruction (1915), The Tiger Woman (1917), The Vixen Charles Brabin, who had directed her in Kathleen Ma(1916), The Rose of Blood (1917), Gold and the Woman vourneen, were wed. (1916), The Serpent (1916). With Carmen in 1915, she Bara accepted an offer from the small Chadwick Stubegan a series of classic roles that were to include Romeo dio in 1925 to appear in The Unchastened Woman. Her and Juliet (1916), Madame DuBarry (1917), Salome acting style had not evolved and her floridly theatrical (1918), Camille (1917), and, her most famous, 1917’s gestures seemed fatally old-fashioned in the midst of the epic Cleopatra. For that film she relocated to California Jazz Age. She then agreed to star in Hal Roach comedy and remained there. She also essayed old stage meloshorts, but the only one completed was Madame Mystery dramas such as The Two Orphans (1915), East Lynne in 1926, which spoofed her persona. Wealthy from the (1916), Lady Audley’s Secret (1916), and Under Two high salary she had made, Bara was a popular Beverly Flags (1916). Bara’s few attempts at sympathetic roles Hills socialite who only occasionally entered the limewere not greeted with enthusiasm either by moviegoers light. There was a short local run of a play in the midor by critics. 83
Baron, Salo 1930’s and a few radio broadcasts. These revealed that Bara had exchanged her Midwestern speech patterns for a posh English accent. Of the more than forty films in which Bara starred, only four are known to exist today. A fire in the vaults of Fox in the mid-1930’s destroyed whatever negatives of her films still existed. Only a small number of major silent stars have so few films remaining for appraisal by modern audiences and historians. The pictures she made in her prime, notably Cleopatra, are among the most sought after “lost” films. What remains are the multitudes of stills and publicity photographs, most of which show Bara in her vamp mode. Only a legendary name is left to memorialize an important starring career. A wellreviewed musical, Theda Bara and the Frontier Rabbi, played Off-Broadway in 1993. Bara died of stomach cancer in Los Angeles in 1955. Significance The vampire character played by Bara worked its way into the American stereotype. She was the first major Jewish cinema star, although this was never publicized until later in her career. Then, the contrast between her non-Jewish public image (she sometimes wore a cross in character onscreen) and her private life as a devoted Jewish daughter was mentioned occasionally. The publicity campaign launched to sell her as a femme fatale was the largest and most spectacular (and in some ways the most absurd) ever attempted until that time and for many years thereafter. The more naïve segments of the public bought
Jewish Americans the hype and believed her to be what she portrayed on the screen. During World War I, she used her star power to raise a considerable amount of money for war bonds. Her name still resonates as one of the memorable silent stars and a documentary about her, The Woman with the Hungry Eyes,was produced in 2006. —Roy Liebman Further Reading Bodeen, De Witt. From Hollywood: The Careers of Fifteen Great American Stars. South Brunswick, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1976. All the performers are from the silent screen days, including Bara. _______. “Theda Bara.” Films in Review, May, 1968. A magazine article with a brief biography and synopses of Bara’s films. Genini, Ronald. Theda Bara: A Biography of the Silent Screen Vamp, with a Filmography. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996. A fairly brief biography that does not reveal much new information. Golden, Eve. Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara. Vestal, N.Y.: Emprise, 1996. A brief biography that recites the facts of Bara’s life. Zierold, Norman. Sex Goddesses of the Silent Screen. Chicago: Regnery, 1973. Bara is one of several actors featured in profile. See also: Cecil B. DeMille; Arthur Freed; Samuel Goldwyn; Ernst Lubitsch; Joseph L. Mankiewicz; Louis B. Mayer.
Salo Baron Polish-born scholar and educator Baron was one of the most prolific historians of Jewish life to write in English. His deeply researched multivolume histories present the story in academically acceptable form. Born: May 26, 1895; Tarnów, Galicia, AustroHungarian Empire (now in Poland) Died: November 25, 1989; New York, New York Also known as: Salo Wittmayer Baron (full name) Areas of achievement: Scholarship; education Early Life Salo Baron (SAH-loh beh-ROHN) was born in Galicia, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that had a large 84
Jewish population. His father, Elias Baron, was a banker who owned real estate; his mother, Minna Wittmayer, came from one of the leading Jewish families in Tarnów. Salo Baron had two sisters. The affluence of Baron’s parents provided him a standard religious education, followed by exposure to the wide areas of study available in schools. Even when he was taking exams, he was being tutored privately. In 1913, he started at the university, and he moved to Vienna the next year. During the years of World War I, Baron studied a variety of disciplines, and he received three doctorates from the University of Vienna: philosophy in 1917, political science in 1922, and law in 1923. The cosmopolitan environment of Vienna encouraged Baron to study lan-
Jewish Americans guages, and he was master of twenty of them. His historical perspective in later years was affected by the challenges of being in Vienna through the Treaty of Versailles and the alterations it wrought in the political map of Europe. He came to appreciate the crucial role that communities and not just individuals play in creating a quality of life. Baron taught at the Jewish Teachers College in Vienna, and his writings attracted the interest of scholars in the rest of the world. In 1926, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise persuaded Baron to come to the United States to teach at the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, which saved Baron’s life. His parents and other family members who stayed in Europe were killed during the Nazi era. Life’s Work In 1928, there was talk of endowing a chair in Jewish history at Columbia University. Such an appointment would have been considered an innovation at a secular institution in the United States, especially within the Ivy League. There were many distinguished names considered, but the range of scholarship Baron had already displayed secured the appointment for him, and he began an association with Columbia that lasted for many decades. He married Jeanette Meisel in 1934, and she served as the only research assistant he acknowledged in the course of his academic career. They had two daughters, who were given a Jewish education in addition to a secular one, but they were not synagogue-goers. It is not clear what led Baron, who had been observant of Jewish tradition in his youth, to give up on practice of the family religion. Baron’s voracious reading and writing led to his becoming a one-man industry in Jewish history. One of the characteristics of his historical writing was that he adopted the language and methods of sociology to relay the narratives of Jewish history. Because he wrote of Jewish communities rather than following a biographical approach, the sociological scholarship blended well with the material. His writing in his adopted language of English was scholarly rather than artistic, and his erudition was displayed in his footnotes. His best-known work was A Social and Religious History of the Jews (first edition in three volumes in 1937). In it he stressed the need for a pluralistic approach to Jewish history. He worked his way through demographic issues, theological topics, and political history, and the result was widely praised by scholars and purchased by general readers. His subsequent revision of the history into a seventeen-volume edition was not as successful. A
Baron, Salo prominent way in which he altered the perception of Jewish history (especially that of the Middle Ages) was replacing the “lachrymose” conception, in which Jews were always the victims of other, more powerful groups, with a picture of the Jewish living successfully with other groups, enjoying a modicum of stability, and even holding some positions of power. He also suggested that the emancipation of the nineteenth century was not an unmixed blessing for Jewish communities, whatever its apparent benefits for individuals. Baron was director of the Center for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia from 1950 to 1968, and he was invited to lecture around the world. In the course of his later years, he was recognized with honorary degrees and conferences held in his honor. He was president of the American Academy for Jewish Research on three separate occasions, and he was involved in looking into cultural items plundered by the Nazis from the Jews after World War II. Baron died at the age of ninety-four of congestive heart failure. Significance Baron was the first individual to occupy a position in Jewish history at an American university, and the discipline of Jewish studies came into existence in academia during his tenure at Columbia University. He accommodated a wide range of approaches to Judaism within the scholarly tent, and he warned against easy generalizations. In a time when it was common to regard non-Jews as threatening, he pointed to periods when Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Muslim interaction had been positive for both groups, thereby offering a historical precedent to the solution of contemporary political issues. —Thomas Drucker Further Reading Blau, Joseph L., et al., eds. Essays on Jewish Life and Thought Presented in Honor of Salo Wittmayer Baron. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959. Representation of the range of Baron’s influence through his students and his place in Jewish historiography. Engel, David. “Crisis and Lachrymosity.” Jewish History 20 (2006): 243-264. Argues that Baron’s rejection of the lachrymose conception differed with regard to different historical periods. Liberles, Robert. Salo Wittmayer Baron: Architect of Jewish History. New York: New York University Press, 1995. A detailed biography of Baron, putting his work in context, although the text is uniformly favorable. 85
Barr, Roseanne Lieberman, Saul, ed. Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume. Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974. Offers a bibliography as well as information about Baron’s Columbia teaching career. Wisse, Ruth. Jews and Power. New York: Schocken, 2007. Applies Baron’s historical approach to the Jew-
Jewish Americans ish communities outside Israel and their ability to survive. See also: Hannah Arendt; Daniel J. Boorstin; Lillian Faderman; Peter Gay; Oscar Handlin; Gerda Lerner; Moses Rischin; Barbara W. Tuchman.
Roseanne Barr Comedian, actor, and activist Barr combined her sharp wit with her feminism to create the “domestic goddess,” a comic persona who made her audience of ordinary women feel that their lives were significant. Born: November 3, 1952; Salt Lake City, Utah Also known as: Roseanne Cherrie Barr (full name); Roseanne Pentland; Roseanne Arnold; Roseanne Thomas Areas of achievement: Entertainment; women’s rights
Not long after her commitment, she became pregnant. She moved to Denver, where she lived in a Salvation Army home and placed her daughter, Brandi, up for adoption. Years later, after Barr had become a wellknown comedian, she reunited with her daughter. Barr eventually moved to Georgetown, Colorado, where she lived in a hippie community and met Bill Pentland, a motel night clerk who later worked for the post office. The two moved to Denver, were married in 1974, and had three children, Jennifer, Jessica, and Jacob.
Life’s Work Early Life While living in Denver, Barr became active in the Roseanne Barr (ROH-zan bahr) was the oldest of four women’s rights movement and performed in a guerrilla children born to Helen Davis, a homemaker, and Jerry theater group connected with the feminist Woman to Barr, a salesman. Growing up in Salt Lake City, Roseanne Woman Bookstore. She began developing a stand-up Barr often felt uncomfortable because she and her sibcomedy routine, telling jokes aimed at raising women’s lings—brother Ben and sisters Geraldine and Stephanie—were among the few Jewish children in an area of the country domThe Wit and Wisdom of a Domestic Goddess inated by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons. When Roseanne Barr began performing stand-up comedy in the early Barr’s life abruptly changed on Sep1980’s, she was, in her own words, a “regular housewife” who “stood for tember 17, 1968, when she was hit by a all the latent energy and talent that resides in ordinary folks living ordinary lives of quiet desperation in better trailer parks everywhere.” She car while she was walking in a crosswalk. presented a new brand of feminist humor by adopting the persona of the The car’s hood ornament hit her head, “domestic goddess.” This term originally was the title of a book about causing a large gash, and she was dragged women manipulating their husbands. However, according to Roseanne’s twenty feet before the driver stopped the sister, Geraldine Barr, Roseanne used the term “as the vehicle for rebelvehicle. She eventually recovered and suflion” and thought women would relate to another woman who was a fered no long-term physical damage, but domestic goddess instead of a mere housewife. the incident changed her outlook on life. Barr expressed her feminist beliefs in her jokes. “Women complain She became aware of her own mortalabout premenstrual syndrome,” she once said, “but I think of it as the only ity, and she was determined to live a more time of the month that I can be myself.” She commented on her family by adventurous life. She also fell behind in explaining, “I’ve been married fifteen years. I have three kids because I her schoolwork, had trouble sleeping, and breed well in captivity.” These and her other jokes were well received by women who, like Barr, were overweight, struggling to raise children, and suffered memory loss. Seeking relief from often frustrated with their housework, husbands, and lives. these problems, she checked into a state mental hospital in Provo, Utah, in 1969. 86
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Roseanne Barr. (Getty Images)
consciousness. She performed at comedy clubs in Denver and later traveled to other cities, perfecting her act and her comedic character along the way. By the early 1980’s, there were numerous comedy clubs throughout the country where aspiring comics could try out their material. However, most of the comedians were men, and women who were funny were stereotyped as being shrill and unfeminine. Barr did not let these perceptions bother her. She did not apologize for being overweight, outspoken, and not conventionally pretty, and she used these characteristics as a source of her humor. Barr knew that blue-collar women, such as she considered herself, were not the perfect homemakers depicted in television shows and that raising children could be as bothersome as it was fulfilling. She expressed these truths in her act, and by dubbing herself a “domestic goddess” and “an urban guerrilla fighter housewife” she sought not only to make her audiences laugh but also to offer respect to the
women other feminists had demeaned as “just housewives.” Barr’s big break came in 1985, when she was booked at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. An employee of The Tonight Show saw her performance and invited her to appear on the program. Barr made her national television debut on this show on August 23, 1985, and her wellreceived routine resulted in an avalanche of offers for additional work. She starred in a comedy special for Home Box Office (HBO) in 1987, and she appeared in a television commercial for Pizza Hut. Her growing popularity led to her own network situation-comedy program. Roseanne debuted on October 18, 1988, and remained on the air for nine seasons. Barr played Roseanne Conner, a blue-collar wife and mother similar to the character she created for her standup routine. She was married to Dan Conner (actor John Goodman) and had three children and a younger sister. The show was in the tradition of other sitcoms about 87
Barr, Roseanne working-class families, such as The Honeymooners and All in the Family, but unlike the others it focused on the wife in the household, not the husband. Both Roseanne and Dan worked, their family experienced financial difficulties, and their kids were not always model children. Barr also starred in the 1989 film She-Devil with actor Meryl Streep. While Barr achieved success with her work, her relationships appeared to be in shambles. She battled with her program’s writers and executives, firing two head writers and acquiring greater control of the show. She carried on a highly publicized affair with comedian Tom Arnold while she was still married to Pentland, and she insisted that Arnold be hired as a writer for her show. She married Arnold in 1990, less than a month after she divorced Pentland, but she divorced Arnold in 1994, alleging she was the victim of domestic violence. She claimed to have repressed memories of her parents sexually and physically abusing her, and she announced during a television appearance that she was a victim of incest. Her parents vehemently denied these accusations and even submitted to a polygraph that showed they were not lying. Barr refused to retract her remarks and remained estranged from her family for more than a decade. Barr’s penchant for notoriety turned ugly on July 25, 1990, when she sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a baseball game. After singing off-key, she grabbed her crotch and spit on the ground. Her performance ignited a firestorm of criticism. She was denounced in the press and insulted when she appeared in public. President George H. W. Bush issued a statement that condemned Barr’s actions as “disgraceful,” while businessman James Rees organized the Bar Roseanne Club. Rees’s advertisements for the club in Rolling Stone attracted six hundred members, most of them men. Amid the controversy, Barr continued to star on Roseanne and to appear in other television programs and films. In 1995, she married her third husband, bodyguard Ben Thomas, and the couple had a son, Buck, before they divorced in 2002. In its final season, Roseanne had dropped in the ratings and had deteriorated in quality. By the time the last episode of the show
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Jewish Americans aired on August 26, 1997, the public had grown tired of Barr’s program and her confused personal life. In subsequent years, Barr returned to stand-up comedy and maintained an Internet blog. In 2003, a reality program about her life, The Real Roseanne Show, aired for a few episodes but was quickly canceled. Three years later, she starred in a comedy special for HBO, Roseanne Barr: Blonde and Bitchin’. She began studying Kabbala, a type of Jewish mysticism, and she appeared to be happier and more stable. Significance Barr eventually became such a lightning rod for controversy that her comic talent was lost amid her notoriety. At her best, however, Barr was a brilliant comedian with a crack sense of timing and the ability to use her life experiences not only as a source of humor but also as a means of drawing attention to the serious concerns of housewives and mothers. — Rebecca Kuzins Further Reading Barr, Geraldine, with Ted Schwarz. My Sister Roseanne: The True Story of Roseanne Barr Arnold. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1994. Barr’s sister, who worked for Barr and helped develop her comedy routine, presents her version of Barr’s life, often contradicting many of the incidents described in Barr’s autobiographies. Barr, Roseanne. My Life as a Woman. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. In her first autobiography, Barr recounts her early years and the development of her comedy routine. _______. My Lives. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994. Barr’s second autobiography focuses on her life during the heyday of her fame, recounting the contentiousness surrounding her television sitcom, her relationship with Arnold, and her recollections of being an incest victim. See also: Bea Arthur; Rodney Dangerfield; Fran Drescher; Richard Lewis.
Jewish Americans
Baruch, Bernard
Bernard Baruch Financier and statesman Baruch, a Wall Street investor and an international commodities dealer, served as a trusted financial adviser to American presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry S. Truman. He headed the War Industries Board during World War I, orchestrated America’s rubber-rationing program during World War II, and coined the phrase Cold War. Born: August 19, 1870; Camden, South Carolina Died: June 20, 1965; New York, New York Also known as: Bernard Mannes Baruch (full name); “The Park Bench Statesman” Areas of achievement: Economics; government and politics Early Life Born in South Carolina during the Reconstruction period following the American Civil War, Bernard Baruch (BUR-nahrd ba-REWK) was the son of Isabelle and Simon, a famous surgeon in Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The family moved to New York in 1881, and Baruch attended public schools before entering the College of the City of New York, which would eventually have a college named in his honor. As a student, he excelled both in athletics and in his studies. He graduated in 1889 and immediately began making his mark. Early on, Baruch developed a fascination with Wall Street, learning the tricks of the financial trade as an errand boy for local firms. Soon he began working for A. A. Houseman and Company, before buying a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. According to Baruch’s account, he became a millionaire by age thirty, and with his brother Hartwig Baruch formed a trading firm, known simply as Baruch Brothers. Always adventurous, the Baruch brothers, in 1907, purchased H. Hentz and Company, an international commodities firm with offices across the globe. Before long, Baruch had established himself as one of the most respected and sought-after financial consultants in the United States. Despite Baruch’s economic success, he remembered his father instilling in him the value of public service. War broke out in Europe in 1914, and it was not long before the United States was dragged into the conflict. Baruch soon found himself in the national spotlight. Life’s Work Following American entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson called on Baruch to chair the War
Industries Board, and Baruch, along with U.S. Food Administrator Herbert Hoover, did an excellent job marshaling the nation’s industrial and agricultural resources for war, despite the fact that national preparedness was practically nonexistent. Following the armistice, Baruch served as one of Wilson’s advisers at the Paris Peace Conference. Baruch’s successful service during World War I garnered him national attention, and his knowledge of financial matters made him a trusted adviser to American presidents, regardless of party affiliation, from the 1920’s to the 1940’s. He often dispensed advice from a park bench in Washington’s Lafayette Park. This garnered him the moniker “The Park Bench Statesman.” Baruch’s interest in the national spotlight was tempered by a wave of anti-Semitism that swept the nation in the 1920’s. Automobile mogul Henry Ford launched a widely publicized and highly critical campaign against Baruch, accusing him of being part of an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world’s financial markets. Even more galling, the Nye Committee, a U.S. Senate committee that investigated wartime profiteering, questioned Baruch’s involvement with the War Industries Board. Despite the scrutiny of his motives, Baruch continued his invaluable service to American presidents, a job he found increasingly time consuming with the onset of the Great Depression and his quasi-official appointment to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Brain Trust,” charged with formulating ideas to help end the nation’s economic malaise. As another European war loomed, Baruch urged the United States to commence rationing rubber and metal, reflecting the lessons he learned from the nation’s lack of preparedness for World War I. During World War II, he oversaw the Rubber Survey Committee charged with ensuring that America’s military had all of the rubber that the highly mobile force needed. After World War II, Baruch served as the U.S. delegate to the United Nations’s Atomic Energy Committee, where he championed strict international oversight of nuclear development programs. The Soviet Union’s delegates vetoed the proposal in large part because it begrudged its nemesis, the United States, a nuclear monopoly. It was during this period that Baruch, feeling firsthand the hostility of the Soviet Union toward the United States, coined the phrase Cold War. Baruch died of a heart attack in New York City on June 20, 1965, at the age of ninetyfour. 89
Beame, Abraham Significance Despite achieving enormous wealth, Baruch answered the call when his nation needed him. Every American president from Wilson to Harry S. Truman utilized Baruch in some capacity, because of his business and finance acumen or because of his proven track record of getting things done. Baruch is most remembered for his work in helping to bring to bear America’s industrial might during World War I and World War II. He was also a noted philanthropist, giving New York’s Columbia University, for example, a million-dollar endowment in memory of his father. New York City’s Baruch College was named in his honor. —Keith M. Finley Further Reading Baruch, Bernard M. Baruch: My Own Story. New York: Henry Holt, 1957. First installment of Baruch’s twovolume autobiography. This account proves especially beneficial in helping to understand his childhood and his young adult life. _______. Baruch: My Own Story II, The Public Years. New York: Henry Holt, 1960. In this second install-
Jewish Americans ment of his two-volume autobiography, Baruch offers insight into his multifaceted service to a variety of American presidents. It reveals the cunning and wisdom of the Park Bench Statesman and his devotion to the national interest. Coit, Margaret L. Mr. Baruch. Hopkins, Minn.: Beard Books, 2001. This is a reissue of the 1957 biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Coit. Written while Baruch was still alive, Coit’s book benefits from the unprecedented access the author was given to Baruch’s personal papers throughout the writing process. Field, Carter. Bernard Baruch: Park Bench Statesman. Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger, 2008. Reprint of a widely circulated popular biography first published in 1944. Field’s work offers a complimentary examination of the famous statesman. Grant, James. Bernard M. Baruch: The Adventures of a Wall Street Legend. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 1997. An evenhanded account of Baruch that offers the benefit of detachment from the subject. See also: Marcus Goldman; Meyer Guggenheim; Jerome Kohlberg, Jr.; Robert B. Reich; George Soros.
Abraham Beame Politician Beame guided New York City through a financial crisis during his single term as the city’s first Jewish mayor. His actions restored confidence in the city’s fiscal management and prevented the collapse of a major American city into bankruptcy. Born: March 20, 1906; London, England Died: February 10, 2001; New York, New York Also known as: Abraham David Beame (full name); Abraham David Birnbaum (birth name) Area of achievement: Government and politics Early Life Abraham Beame (AY-brah-ham beem) was born Abraham David Birnbaum in London, England, on March 20, 1906, and he was brought to the United States by his mother, Esther Goldfarb Birnbaum, shortly after his birth. His father, Philip Birnbaum, and mother fled Warsaw at a time when the city was part of czarist Russia. Philip came directly to the United States, while Esther joined him three months later, after she first escaped to 90
London. The two changed their name to Beame when they arrived at Ellis Island. Abraham Beame graduated from the High School of Commerce at the top of his class. He also volunteered at the University Settlement House, where he met his future wife, Mary Ingerman, over a game of checkers. They married in 1928, the same year Beame graduated from City College with an accounting degree. They had two sons, Bernard and Edmond. The couple settled in Brooklyn, where they joined the Madison Democratic Club. At the same time, Beame worked as an accountant and a teacher. His political connections helped him get appointed assistant budget director in 1946, and budget director in 1952 and get elected as city comptroller in 1961. Beame won the Democratic nomination for mayor in 1965, but he lost the general election to Republican John Lindsay. Beame worked as a bank director for four years following his defeat, and he was again elected city comptroller in 1969. In the early 1970’s, Mayor Lindsay’s popularity was slipping, and Beame’s professional competence helped
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gain him support. After winning a hard-fought primary battle in June, 1973, Beame eventually won a four-way mayoral contest in November by approximately 700,000 votes.
He underwent surgery in August, but complications forced a second surgery in December. The former mayor died in the New York City Medical Center in Manhattan on February 10, 2001.
Life’s Work Beame was sworn in as the first Jewish mayor of New York City in January, 1974. He was immediately confronted with a deep financial crisis, sparked by the refusal of banks to purchase city bonds. New York faced a $1.5 billion deficit with little or no credit. Some of the drastic measures Beame took to address the crisis included cutting the city workforce by sixty-five thousand, making deep reductions in the budget and city services, and imposing wage freezes for city employees. The mayor also appealed to federal and state governments for help. At first, President Gerald Ford’s administration refused. The state government eventually established an Emergency Financial Control Board, which created a controlled receivership and essentially stripped the mayor of fiscal power. These actions prompted the Ford administration to relent and guarantee loans to the city. In addition, Beame faced a number of challenges that were not of his making. A series of bombings, a blackout in 1977, and the Son of Sam murders by serial killer David Berkowitz all contributed to a growing sense of crisis in the city. However, the mayor could claim several successes: He persuaded the Democratic Party to hold its presidential convention in the city in 1976, and the U.S. Bicentennial celebrations that same year also brought new attention to the city. By the time Beame prepared to run for reelection, the mayor could claim a two-hundred-million-dollar budget surplus. However, two strong candidates, Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo, mounted challenges to him in the primary. Beame was accused of concealing information on the city’s finances from investors, an accusation later shown to have no merit. He denied the allegation, but the damage was done: He lost the primary to Koch, who would go on to be elected mayor. After leaving office, Beame became a member of many different private and public institution boards. In 1991, he suffered his first heart attack, sparking a long series of cardiac problems. Beame’s wife Mary died in 1995, and his son Edmond died just four years later. In July, 2000, Beame suffered a second heart attack.
Significance Beame demonstrated political courage by making hard decisions in the face of the city’s budget crisis. Although these decisions cost him reelection, Beame can be credited with providing the leadership New York City needed to reestablish its financial solvency. As the first Jewish mayor of the city, Beame represented a major religious and ethnic population in New York, and encouraged other Jewish politicians to seek higher elective office. Beame’s professional approach also set the tone for better management of city government across the United States. — David Smailes Further Reading McMahon, E. J., and Fred Siegel. “Gotham’s Fiscal Crisis: Lessons Unlearned.” Public Interest 158 (Winter, 2005): 96-110. An analysis of the New York City financial crisis of the 1970’s, focusing on the events that precipitated the crisis and Beame’s efforts to confront the problem. McNickel, Chris. To Be Mayor of New York: Ethnic Politics in the City. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. A discussion of the effect of ethnicity on New York City politics, with a chapter on Jewish voters during the 1970’s, which relates to Beame’s difficulties in gaining support from the Jewish community. Pileggi, Nicholas, “The Men Around Beame: That Old Hack Magic.” New York Magazine 7, no. 12 (March, 1974): 35-44. A description of Beame’s administration, with focus on Beame’s connections to the Democratic Party machine and his management style. Weikart, Lynne. Follow the Money: Who Controls New York City Mayors? Albany: State University of New York Press, Albany, 2009. Weikart’s book has a good chapter on Mayor Beame’s poor relationship with the banking industry. See also: Bella Abzug; Michael Bloomberg; Benjamin N. Cardozo; Ed Koch; Fiorello Henry La Guardia; Herbert Lehman; Charles Schumer; Eliot Spitzer.
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S. N. Behrman Playwright and essayist Over a forty-year period Behrman wrote dozens of plays, chiefly comedies, which excelled in wit and psychological insight. He also wrote film adaptations of classic literary works, short stories, literary criticism, and essays about his personal life. Born: June 9, 1893; Worcester, Massachusetts Died: September 9, 1973; New York, New York Also known as: Samuel Nathaniel Behrman (full name); Sam Behrman Areas of achievement: Theater; literature Early Life S. N. Behrman (BAYR-man) was the son of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants. His father, who had little formal education, was acknowledged in his community as an apt student of Talmudic theology. The youngest child of five, Behrman was the only one born in the United States, specifically in an immigrant section of Worcester, Massachusetts. As a boy Behrman was nearsighted and unsuccessful in athletics, which he cherished. In the summer he and his friends walked to and from Lake Quinsigamond, four miles from his home, every day to swim. He loved to read and admired particularly the novels of Horatio Alger, whose young heroes overcome obstacles and rise to success. Behrman attended public schools and Clark University in Worcester, and he was influenced strongly by an older boy named Daniel Asher, of whom Behrman later wrote, giving him a fictitious name. Known to his friends throughout his life as Sam, Behrman preferred to use his first two initials in his numerous writings. After two years at Clark, Asher convinced Behrman to transfer to Harvard University to study drama with George Pierce Baker. Graduating in 1916, Behrman studied French drama under Brander Matthews at Columbia University, where Behrman earned his master’s degree in 1918. After he had accepted an offer to teach English at the University of Minnesota, Asher stepped in and persuaded Behrman to remain in New York because of the writing opportunities he would find there. Life’s Work Behrman’s ambition was to write for the theater, but his early publications in New York were short stories and book reviews. Sent by The New York Times to interview Siegfried Sassoon, Berhman developed a friendship with 92
the British poet, the first of many with outstanding artists. By the mid-1920’s Behrman began to find companies willing to stage his plays. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne starred in his comedy The Second Man (1927), which ran for six months in New York and later in London. Many comedies followed, with the participation of such actors as Ruth Gordon, Ina Claire, Katherine Cornell, and Laurence Olivier. With Maxwell Anderson, Sidney Howard, Elmer Rice, and Robert E. Sherwood, Behrman formed the Playwrights’ Company in 1938 to promote their own plays and those of other playwrights. In the 1930’s, Behrman was much in demand in Hollywood, where he was called upon to write screenplays based on such well-known works as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), and A Tale of Two Cities (1859). Among the film stars he met was Greta Garbo, who starred in his adaptations of Queen Christina (1933) and Anna Karenina (1935). A later screenplay, which he wrote in association with Joshua Logan, was the musical Fanny in 1954. In 1936, Behman married Elza Heifetz Stone, the sister of violinist Jascha Heifetz. The two had one son, Arthur; his wife had two children from an earlier marriage. Much of Behrman’s nondramatic writing deals with his life. A series of essays about his early years was published in The New Yorker. It caused a division with the Asher family because the final essay was about the mental illness and suicide of Daniel Asher, revealing facts that Asher’s mother had kept secret. In the opinion of the magazine’s editor, that revelatory piece was the finest of the ten essays. Later the essays were published as The Worcester Account (1954). Another autobiographical volume was People in a Diary: A Memoir (1972), which focuses on his friendships with writers such as Sassoon, W. Somerset Maugham, Sinclair Lewis; actors such as Garbo, Lunt, and Fontanne; and musical genius George Gershwin. Significance As an author of comedies of manners with sparkling dialogue, characteristically developing the ambitions of the upper class, Behrman not only entertained audiences but also probed their social consciences. He was inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1943 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959. His plays dealt so pervasively with topics of the 1920’s and 1930’s that they have not held up well with later audi-
Jewish Americans ences, but his autobiographical essays recapture his experiences and friendships tellingly. During the Nazi terror, Behrman wrote recommendations for many European Jews to help them gain entry to the United States. —Robert P. Ellis Further Reading Asher, Don. The Eminent Yachtsman and the Whorehouse Piano Player. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1973. This book, which amounts to the Asher family’s reconciliation with Behrman by Daniel Asher’s son, contains letters that passed between the two men and that demonstrate the closeness of their relationship. Behrman, S. N. People in a Diary: A Memoir. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972. Based on the sixty volumes of his diary, this work illustrates Behrman’s knack for friend-
Bell, Daniel ship. His aim in recalling many prominent friends, he said, was to “revive their society.” _______. The Worcester Account. 1954. Reprint. Worcester, Mass.: Tatnuck Bookseller Press, 1996. All chapters but the first were originally published in The New Yorker. The work deals with Behrman’s early years. These experiences are thoroughly and vividly autobiographical (the names of some of the participants were changed). Reed, Kenneth T. S. N. Behrman. New York: Twayne, 1975. Although not a comprehensive biography, this book contains the most salient facts and discussions of some of Behrman’s many literary works. See also: Paddy Chayefsky; Edna Ferber; Lillian Hellman; George S. Kaufman; Tony Kushner; David Mamet; Neil Simon; Wendy Wasserstein.
Daniel Bell Scholar, sociologist, and journalist Bell is a leading futurist who predicted the end of ideological concerns in the 1960’s and the waning of traditional industrial production for Japan and the Western nations. Born: May 10, 1919; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Daniel Bolotsky (birth name) Areas of achievement: Sociology; economics; education Early Life The son of Benjamin Bolotsky and Anna Kaplan, Polish Jewish immigrants, Daniel Bell grew up in poverty on New York’s lower East Side. His father died when Bell was six months old, and his mother worked long hours in a garment factory to make ends meet. Much of Bell’s childhood was spent in a Jewish day orphanage. His first language was Yiddish, and he did not master English until he began to attend public school at the age of six. By the age of thirteen, with the Great Depression dampening the economy, Bell had read Karl Marx and joined the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL), the youth organization of the American Socialist Party. Unlike the Young Communist League, YPSL espoused evolutionary democratic socialism rather than violent revolutionary communism. When he was legally adopted by his uncle, an Ameri-
canized dentist, his surname was changed to Bell. He graduated from high school at the age of sixteen and then attended City College of New York, where he continued membership in YPSL and majored in sociology, along with others who would become leading sociologists, such as Seymour Lipset and Nathan Glazer. Bell graduated in 1938 with a B.S. degree in sociology and began graduate studies at Columbia University. He also began writing articles for The New Leader, a magazine founded by members of the Socialist Party of America, later becoming its managing editor, and he became the managing editor of Common Sense, another Socialist publication. Medical issues prevented him from being drafted into the military during World War II. Life’s Work From 1945 to 1948, Bell served as a social science instructor at the University of Chicago. In 1948, he became labor editor for Fortune magazine and continued this work while serving as a part-time sociology lecturer at Columbia University. He was promoted to associate professor at Columbia in 1958 and finally received his doctoral degree in 1960, the same year that his book, The End of Ideology, launched his reputation as a major American thinker. In the work, Bell argued that the ideologies of the political left, including Marxism, and other 93
Bell, Daniel ideologies that evolved during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were irrelevant to the American experience. This was because of the tremendous growth of the public sector and the systemic capacity of the existing political system to resolve inequalities. Attacked by the political left as a “sellout” to the consensus movement, Bell earned a full professorship at Columbia in 1962 based on the success of the book. Bell’s appointment in 1965 by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as chairman of the Commission of the Year 2000 caused him to focus on futurism. Bell’s landmark study, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), predicted the advent of an informationbased and a service-oriented society rooted in new technological elites, information, and statistical manipulations. The days of industrial production for the industrialized nations would rapidly fade into history. His Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976) exposed the evolution of thrift-directed virtues into an everincreasing irresponsible consumer ethic of “buy now, pay later.” In 1969, Bell left a Columbia University torn by the protests against the Vietnam War for a full professorship in sociology at Harvard University. He remained at Harvard until 1990. Bell received numerous awards for his work, including the American Sociological Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award (1992), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Talcott Parsons Prize for the Social Sciences (1993), and France’s Alexis de Tocqueville Prize (1993). In 1999, as the millennium approached, a thoroughly updated version of the prophetic The Coming of Post-Industrial Society was published. Even in his nineties, Bell continued his long career of insightful analysis. He was the first foreigner hired since the Cultural Revolution to teach humanities at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University. His reflections and experiences resulted in the publication by Princeton University Press in 2008 of China’s New Confucianism and Everyday Life in a Changing Society, which was updated and published as a paperback in 2010. The work is hailed
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Jewish Americans as a combination of scholarship and keen observations of everyday life. Bell moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his third wife, Pearl Kazin, a scholar of literary criticism, whom he married in 1960. Their son, David, became a dean and a professor of French history at Johns Hopkins University. His daughter, Jordy Bell, from his first marriage in 1943 to Nora Potashnik, served as administrator and teacher of women’s history at Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, until her retirement in 2005. Significance A leading sociologist in futuristic studies of the direction of American political and economic development, Bell defined the basic issues that industrialized Western societies must face in order to maintain progress and stability as the new millennium approached. He coined the concept of the post-industrial society. His two significant studies, The End of Ideology and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, were listed on the Times Literary Supplement among the one hundred most important books in the second half of the twentieth century. —Irwin Halfond Further Reading Liebowitz, Nathan. Daniel Bell and the Agony of Modern Liberalism. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 1985. An analysis of Bell’s works as a journalist and a futurist sociologist, based on extensive interviews and a thorough knowledge of Bell’s writings. Waters, Malcolm. Daniel Bell. New York: Routledge, 1996. A study of Bell’s major and minor works and an examination of his preoccupations. Webster, Frank. Theories of the Information Society. New York: Routledge, 2002. An eminent British sociologist examines divergent theories about the information society and post-technological age. See also: Nathan Glazer; Immanuel Wallerstein; Louis Wirth.
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Saul Bellow Canadian-born writer A preeminent writer of the post-World War II period, Bellow produced novels that yoked a sophisticated formal literary style with the patois of the street, leavened by Jewish humor. Born: July 10, 1915; Lachine, Quebec, Canada Died: April 5, 2005; Brookline, Massachusetts Also known as: Solomon Bellows (full name); Solly Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Saul Bellow (BEHL-loh) was born in Lachine, Quebec, Canada, the fourth child of Abraham and Liza Bellow, Jewish immigrants from St. Petersburg, Russia. By the age of four, Bellow could quote in Yiddish and Hebrew lengthy passages from Genesis. In 1923, he had an emergency operation for appendicitis, subsequently developed peritonitis and pneumonia, and then spent almost six months in the hospital because his doctors worried that he was deathly ill with tuberculosis. This extended stay in the hospital resulted in his separation from his family and his anxiety that he would die; this traumatic event profoundly shaped the future writer’s character and outlook. In 1924, the Bellow family moved to the United States, where they settled in Chicago. Bellow attended several schools, finally in 1933 graduating from Tuley High School, where he became good friends with the future writer Isaac Rosenfeld, who would later be the inspiration for a character in Bellow’s fiction. The tragic death of Bellow’s mother from breast cancer a month after his graduation was a formative event that he would repeatedly write about in his fiction; he believed that his life was forever altered as a consequence of her death. In the fall of 1933, Bellow became a student at the University of Chicago, where he and Rosenfeld became involved in socialist politics. In the winter of 1935, Bellow had to withdraw from the University of Chicago because he was unable to pay the tuition, but he was later able to enroll in Northwestern University. After graduating from Northwestern in 1937, he was awarded a fellowship for graduate study in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. After only a few months of graduate school, he left to marry Anita Goshkin. Beginning in 1938 he worked for the Federal Writers Project doing a variety of tasks, including writing biographical profiles of American writers.
Life’s Work Although his father and brothers were hostile to Bellow’s desire to become a writer, he was determined to do so. In 1941, he published for the first time a story in a major journal, Partisan Review. In 1944, his son Gregory was born, and he published his first novel, Dangling Man, in which his intellectual protagonist awaited induction into the Army. The following year Bellow joined the merchant marine. After the Japanese surrender, he taught at the University of Minnesota and worked on his next novel, The Victim (1947), which explored the relationship between a Jew and an anti-Semite. In the late 1940’s, he lived in Europe and worked on his next novel, The Adventures of Augie March, a picaresque narrative with an exuberant Jewish American narrator. This 1953 novel won the National Book Award and made Bellow famous.
Saul Bellow. (Getty Images)
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HERZOG Many regard Saul Bellow’s Herzog as his finest novel. Published in 1964, it won the National Book Award and attracted enormous attention from the public and from the critics, many of whom regarded it as a masterpiece. The book, with its complex style and challenging content, became a surprising number one on best-seller lists. The autobiographical novel consists primarily of Herzog’s recollections of his life and of his philosophical meditations on a wide range of topics from the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche to his troubled childhood. The crisis that initiates Herzog’s obsessive recollections is his discovery that his second wife, Madeleine, has been having a longtime affair with his best friend. His discovery results in his divorce from Madeleine and a near mental breakdown. Attempting to understand how his life has been ruined, Herzog feels compelled to recollect his past history and to reevaluate the important thinkers of Western civilization who have had such a profound impact on his worldview. The novel is brilliantly effective at capturing the interior life of an introspective professor by conveying the nuances of his intricate psychology.
During the 1950’s, he continued to teach at various universities and to publish, including Seize the Day (1956) and Henderson the Rain King (1959). In 1956, he married Alexandra Tschacbasov, who gave birth to their son Adam the following year. Four years later he married Susan Glassman, who gave birth to their son Daniel in 1962. The next year he edited Great Jewish Short Stories and taught at Bard College. In 1964, his play The Last Analysis was performed on Broadway, and his novel Herzog won a number of awards, including the National Book Award. This autobiographical novel about an introspective Jewish professor who discovers his best friend has cuckolded him created a sensation when it appeared. In 1967, he reported on the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War for Newsday magazine and later joined the faculty of the University of Chicago. In 1970, he published his controversial novel Mr. Sammler’s Planet, whose protagonist is a Holocaust survivor critical of much of what he sees in American culture of the late 1960’s, including his eccentric daughter, a Holocaust survivor herself. In 1975, he married Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea and published Humboldt’s Gift, a novel about a visionary poet of great promise who selfdestructs. The novel was partially inspired by the sad fate 96
of Bellow’s friend the poet Delmore Schwartz. The following year he published To Jerusalem and Back, a nonfiction book about his impressions of Israel, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature. During the 1980’s, he published two full-length novels, The Dean’s December (1982) and More Die of Heartbreak (1987), as well as shorter works, including Him with His Foot in His Mouth, and Other Stories (1984), A Theft (1989), and The Bellarosa Connection (1989). In 1989, he married Janice Freedman, with whom he had a daughter, Naomi-Rose, when he was eighty-four years old. In 1993, he left Chicago to accept a position at Boston University. He continued to publish, including a collection of his nonfiction, It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future (1994); a novella, The Actual (1997); another full-length novel, Ravelstein (2000); and his Collected Stories (2001). Ravelstein became controversial when some commentators criticized Bellow for revealing that his good friend Allan Bloom (the model for Ravelstein) was a homosexual who died of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). In declining health for a few years, Bellow died on April 5, 2005, at the age of eighty-nine. Significance Bellow is considered one of the monumental giants of modern American literature, and his work influenced other major writers, including Philip Roth, Martin Amis, John Berryman, and Salman Rushdie. His fiction explores with great power and sophistication the nature of modern culture, especially in the context of American society and its contradictions. With much sensitivity and learning, Bellow’s work also examines Jewish issues, including Jewish identity, assimilation, Israel, the Holocaust, and anti-Semitism and Jewish history. Bellow is much admired for creating a highly original prose style of great vitality and passion that conveys the range and the variety of modern experience; in his vivid fiction he blends the lowbrow and the highbrow, juxtaposing jokes with allusions to Marcel Proust and Plato. His exuberant prose is profoundly influenced by his adaptation and interpretation of Jewish humor, which became in his work a unique yoking of comedy and trembling. — Allan Chavkin and Nancy Feyl Chavkin Further Reading Allen, Brooke. “The Adventures of Saul Bellow.” Hudson Review 54, no. 1 (2001): 77-87. This article pre-
Jewish Americans sents some unflattering details about Bellow’s life and personality; it also includes information about his Jewishness. Atlas, James. Saul Bellow: A Biography. New York: Random House, 2000. This huge tome is an unparalleled source of information about Bellow, but it does not include information on the last five years of his life. Cronin, Gloria L., and Ben Siegel, eds. Conversations with Saul Bellow. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994. This excellent collection of interviews
Benjamin, Judah with the highly articulate author, conducted by different interviewers from 1953 to 1991, includes useful information about his life and his work. Miller, Ruth. Saul Bellow: A Biography of the Imagination. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Although Atlas’s newer biography is superior to this book, Miller, a friend of Bellow, does include some information not found elsewhere. See also: Allan Bloom; Joseph Heller; Norman Mailer; Bernard Malamud; Philip Roth; Leon Uris.
Judah Benjamin Lawyer and statesman Benjamin was a lawyer, a planter, and a U.S. senator. He served the Confederacy as an attorney general, a secretary of war, and a secretary of state. After the Confederate collapse, he escaped to England and succeeded at the British bar. Born: August 6, 1811; Saint Croix, Virgin Islands (now U.S. Virgin Islands) Died: May 6, 1884; Paris, France Also known as: Judah Philip Benjamin (full name); Judah P. Benjamin Areas of achievement: Government and politics; law Early Life Born on August 6, 1811, on Saint Croix, Judah Benjamin (JEW-duh BEHN-juh-mihn) was the oldest surviving son of Philip and Rebecca de Mendes Benjamin, both with Sephardic ancestry. The family moved to North Carolina when Judah Benjamin was a toddler; in 1821, they moved to South Carolina, where they settled in Charleston, barely making a living by running a fruit stand. Benjamin attended a Jewish school in Charleston and, probably through the generosity of a merchant who appreciated the boy’s studiousness, entered Yale College when he was fourteen. His career at Yale strangely ended when he was seventeen, perhaps because he had lost money at card games. Soon after leaving Yale, Benjamin traveled with a cousin to New Orleans, hoping for a new beginning. It was there that Benjamin began to earn a fortune. He studied law and, in 1832, gained admission to the bar. He also studied French, made friends, and, in 1833, married
Natalie St. Martin, a sixteen-year-old from a prominent Catholic family. Early in the marriage, the couple lived with the bride’s parents and cared for her baby brother, Jules, who became a surrogate son to Benjamin and even lived with him in Richmond during the Civil War. Trouble soon arrived, however, in the marriage. Benjamin’s devotion to commercial law brought him money to support his stylish wife, but his long hours of work kept him away from her. Natalie’s insistence on calling him “Philippe,” his middle name in French, suggests that, despite his not joining a synagogue, his not converting to Catholicism kept him in her mind at a distance. In the 1840’s, he bought 140 slaves and a sugar plantation near New Orleans, hoping that being a planter would boost his political career and improve his relationship with his wife, who might enjoy being a landed socialite. Natalie, however, remained discontented. In 1845, about two years after she had borne a daughter, Ninette, she took the child to Paris and never returned to America, except for a brief stay in Washington in the late 1850’s, where gossip hinted that Benjamin was not Ninette’s father. Life’s Work Being ethnically Jewish did not stop Benjamin in Louisiana politics. With the friendship of the powerful politician John Slidell and a reputation as a smart, eloquent attorney, Benjamin was elected as a Whig in 1842 to the Louisiana House of Representatives. In 1852, he won a seat in the Louisiana Senate. Later, when a vacancy occurred for Louisiana in the U.S. Senate, Benjamin won election to that position. Before Benjamin had even taken his oath as a U.S. senator, President Millard Fillmore offered to nominate Benjamin to the U.S. Su97
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land in North Carolina, Benjamin took the blame and did not disclose the critical shortages the war departA cosmopolitan expert in international law, Secretary of State Judah Benment faced. Leaving his second cabijamin worked closely with not only Confederate president Jefferson Davis but net position, Benjamin acquired his also the president’s wife, Varina Howell Davis, whom Benjamin trusted as an equal. Benjamin tried to gain diplomatic recognition from France and Britain, third one, that of secretary of state, in but Confederate defeats in battle and predominantly Unionist sympathies March, 1862, and served in that caamong the French and the British doomed his efforts. To gain cash for his counpacity for the rest of the Confedertry, he did, however, successfully negotiate a loan from a big French bank. Anacy’s short life. other task Benjamin had as secretary of state was, most likely, heading the seWhen the Confederacy collapsed, cret service, which, late in the war, had charge of espionage, sabotage, Benjamin fled Richmond with Davis subversion, and propaganda on behalf of the South. Benjamin and Davis may and other high civilian officials. On have known of a plan for Confederate agents to capture President Abraham May 3, 1865, soon after the presiLincoln, and John Wilkes Booth may have been an agent, but both Davis and dential party entered Georgia, he reBenjamin objected to assassination. Nevertheless, Lincoln’s death on April 15, spectfully left Davis and, disguising 1865, intensified militant Unionists’ hatred of Benjamin and solidified his himself, made his way to southwest determination to escape his country’s ruin. Florida, where Confederate loyalists found two sailors to take him to British territory in the Bahamas. Benjapreme Court, but he declined. Although he sold his planmin’s flight from arrest involved weeks of adventures tation and ceased to hold slaves, Benjamin defended and cheerfully endured hardships, but eventually it proved slavery and supported its spread into the territories. successful. Arriving in England on August 30, Benjamin While the Whig Party disintegrated over slavery, he beagain started over, restudying law, writing A Treatise on came a Democrat in 1856 and won reelection in 1858. the Law of Sale of Personal Property (1868), and estabNevertheless, he defied his new party in 1860 by supportlishing another lucrative practice. Upon his retirement ing the return of unlawfully seized Africans to their from the British bar in 1883, its prominent members home continent. Meanwhile, during his senatorial career, lauded him. He then moved to an elegant house in he still had time to argue cases as an attorney and to visit Paris, where he succumbed to diabetes and heart disNatalie and Ninette on several occasions in France. ease on May 6, 1884. As her husband was dying, Natalie Benjamin was slow to support secession, but in the had a priest administer the last rites of the Catholic Senate on December 31, 1860, he dramatically asked his Church. Northern colleagues to let the South leave peacefully and declared that, were war to devastate the seceding states, Significance even then Northerners would never make Southerners The first openly Jewish U.S. senator, Benjamin betheir slaves. When the Confederacy formed, President lieved that slavery, though ethically wrong, was necesJefferson Davis named Benjamin attorney general, desary in the antebellum South, and he defended the ideas spite a brief but serious clash they had had in 1858 in the of the majority of Louisiana voters. In Davis’s cabinet, he Senate. The first cabinet position Benjamin held would worked tirelessly for the good of the Confederate presihave suited him perfectly, but there was too little work for dent and the survival of the South. When the South fell, him. When a vacancy developed in September, 1861, Dahe escaped to England and there again achieved riches vis named Benjamin the acting secretary of war, and the and fame. Nevertheless, he wanted privacy, even after Confederate Congress later confirmed him. Benjamin’s death. Benjamin long had a practice of destroying letters lack of military experience did not appear to be a serious he had received, and he also destroyed his papers near the handicap, because Davis himself wanted to work unoffiend of his life, asked Davis to leave him out of memoirs, cially as his own secretary of war. Benjamin, however, and discouraged the writing of his biography. Benjacame into conflict with several generals, and, despite his min’s grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris gave no organizational skills and attention to detail, he could not clue to his eminence, until, in 1938, the United Daughsupply the men and the matériel the Confederacy needed. ters of the Confederacy placed a plaque there to honor a When the Confederates lost battles west of the Appalabrilliant Confederate statesman. chians and, in February, 1862, surrendered Roanoke Is—Victor Lindsey
Serving as Confederate Secretary of State
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Benny, Jack
Further Reading Butler, Pierce. Judah P. Benjamin. Philadelphia: Jacobs, 1907. The first full-length biography of Benjamin includes input from Jefferson Davis’s wife and Benjamin’s nephew, Ernest Benjamin Kruttschnitt. Evans, Eli N. Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate. New York: Free Press, 1988. Investigates Benjamin’s personality, career, and relationships, including with the Davises, in the context of his Jewishness. Hanna, A. J. Flight into Oblivion. Reprint. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999. Includes Benjamin’s escape in this story of what happened to the Confederate president, vice president, and cabinet members as their government collapsed. Meade, Robert Douthat. Judah P. Benjamin: Confederate
Statesman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1943. Portrays Benjamin as a resilient, gifted man who often triumphed over political and personal adversity. Robbins, Peggy. “Jefferson Davis and the Jews.” Civil War Times Illustrated 39, no. 1 (March, 2000): 52-57. Recounts the effort by Confederate congressman Henry S. Foote, Davis’s political enemy, to destroy Davis by making anti-Jewish slurs against Benjamin. Rosen, Robert N. The Jewish Confederates. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000. Discusses Southern Jews loyal to the Confederacy, devoting much attention to Benjamin. See also: Isaac Leeser; Mordecai M. Noah; Ernestine Rose.
Jack Benny Comedian, actor, and entertainer Benny entertained audiences for decades on radio and television programs with his comedic character, who was stingy, vain, and inept. Born: February 14, 1894; Chicago, Illinois Died: December 26, 1974; Beverly Hills, California Also known as: Benjamin Kubelsky (birth name); Ben K. Benny Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Jack Benny (BEH-nee) was the son of Meyer Kubelsky, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, and Emma Sachs from Lithuania. Meyer was a saloonkeeper, and Emma was a housewife. Although Benny lived in Waukegan, Illinois, until only the age of seventeen, he always held the city in high regard. As a boy he showed little interest in school but much promise as a violinist. He began playing at age six, although his talent far exceeded his work habits. The violin became an important factor in his career, but he did not develop into the classical musician his parents wished. Benny’s mother died in early middle age, but his father, a strict Orthodox Jew, lived to see his son become a famous entertainer. Benny was expelled from high school in his first year. Although the principal informed
Benny that he might return if his study habits improved, he never did. His entry into the entertainment world was playing violin in a vaudeville theater in Waukegan at the age of seventeen. In 1912, he responded to the query of a middle-aged pianist named Cora Salisbury, who was looking for a violinist to accompany her. Although this was not the career his parents wanted, they discovered that she was a respectable woman and agreed. He took the
Entertaining the Troops Jack Benny was prouder of his work in World War II than of anything else he did, and he especially valued his trips to military medical camps. On radio he had, after abandoning the violin, taken it up again to befuddle his teacher with his atrocious playing. Benny found that hospitalized military men enjoyed hearing him play seriously. During one performance, a patient fell out of his wheelchair in an epileptic fit and had to be taken out. To break the tension, Benny told the troops that usually his playing sickened even people in fine health. The audience roared, and a psychiatrist told Benny that the joke was worth six months of psychotherapy. At a war relief event in 1944 Benny received permission to solo with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, which was also on the program. This led to further appearances after the war. Feeling fortunate to be accepted by such superior players, Benny performed with professional orchestras for charity many times after the war and even made friends with one of the greatest of all violinists, Isaac Stern.
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Benny, Jack name Ben K. Benny because a violinist named Kubelik complained that the young man’s similar name was confusing audiences. After two years with Salisbury, Benny joined another pianist, Lyman Woods, until 1917, when Benny joined the Navy. He continued to play the violin but initiated a comedy act in shows at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, near Waukegan. Continuing his act after the war, he oddly ran into another complaint about his name, this one from vaudeville performer Ben Bernie. In 1921, when his comic talent began to draw wide attention, he finally became Jack Benny. Life’s Work Through the 1920’s Benny was essentially a vaudevillian who became sufficiently well-known to be offered film roles, the first being Hollywood Revue in 1929. A comic routine on Ed Sullivan’s radio show impressed an advertising agent who gave Benny a chance to have his own program. Although not a well-educated man, Benny
Jack Benny. (CBS/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans became a keen student of radio comedy and developed an acute sense of the relationship between performer and the unseen radio audience in the next few years. In 1934, he was given a temporary assignment on Sunday evenings at seven on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) Blue network. His position on the dial lasted twenty-one years, the final six years being on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and led to many years on early television. Benny developed a role as a character with obsessive but familiar faults: vanity, stinginess, and a comprehensive ineptness. The character emerged in his relationships with a set of performers, all perennials on his programs. One was Sadie Marks, the woman he had married in 1927. Although she did not think of herself as a performer, Benny perceived her comic talent and encouraged her to work with him in his final vaudeville years. On radio she became Mary Livingstone, a name she took legally. She appeared not as Mrs. Benny, not even as a regular girlfriend, for in his shows Benny was usually portrayed as dating younger women, often telephone operators, who grudgingly put up with him despite his flaws. Livingstone, who saw the flaws clearly, needled him constantly about them. Another character was Benny’s butler, Rochester. Although black performers at the time were invariably saddled with demeaning roles, Eddie Anderson performed a part different from that of humble black servant. A competent comic actor, he appeared on more of Benny’s shows than anyone else. The Benny character, of course, paid Rochester skimpily and was paid back in putdowns. If the doorbell rang and Benny was closer to the door, for instance, Rochester would tell him to answer it himself. In real life, Benny and his cast would never stay at a hotel that refused service to Anderson. Other regulars included tenor Dennis Day, who even as a middle-aged man played the part of a “silly kid”; orchestra leader Phil Harris, who portrayed an unruly character with a casual way with Benny, whom he always called “Jackson”; and Mel Blanc, who did a variety of characters, voices, and noises. For example, Blanc made the sounds that came from Benny’s ancient Maxwell car. The home and studio audience often laughed more at them, or with them, than at Benny,
Jewish Americans but Benny perceived their value in enhancing his character. Benny took his character into television fairly regularly from 1950 to 1965 and occasionally thereafter. He also was cast in many films. The relative failure of The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945) became his running gag for years thereafter. His most successful film was To Be or Not to Be (1942), a satire on Nazi Germany, in which he imitated Adolf Hitler, a role that initially enraged Benny’s Orthodox Jewish father until he came to understand the satirical purpose of the characterization. During his World War II summers, Benny entertained American troops at home and abroad. Until Benny died in 1974 of pancreatic cancer, he remained a comic star of the first magnitude. Significance Ernst Lubitsch, a famous director, wanted Benny for the leading role in To Be or Not to Be. When Benny asked why, Lutbitsch explained that he saw Benny not as a comedian but as an actor skillful at playing the part of a comedian, a capacity that set Benny apart from most other nominal comedians. In comedy Benny prevailed because he understood so well the preparation and timing involved in playing this role. He pointed out that one of the most successful of all his routines on radio happened accidentally with three words from Livingstone: “Oh, shut up.” The audience found it uproariously funny because it came at the end of a long dialogue on opera between Benny’s announcer, Don Wilson, and an operatic guest on the show. After maintaining a long silence as listener, Benny—presumably ignorant about opera—suddenly interjected, “Well, I thought. . . .” His well-established role and the timing of the remark prepared the audience to howl at Livingstone’s putdown. Benny’s signature
Benzer, Seymour comment, “Well!”—said with his hand resting on his cheek and a roll of his eyes after he sensed he was being ridiculed—also became a classic. Benny understood that he did not have to tell jokes to be funny. — Robert P. Ellis Further Reading Benny, Jack, and Joan Benny. Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story. New York: Warner Books, 1990. Although the portions by Benny’s daughter Joan sometimes stray into merely her autobiographical details, this book is valuable for incorporating her father’s unpublished autobiography. Benny, Mary Livingstone, Hilliard Marks, and Marcia Borie. Jack Benny. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978. This biography draws upon the insights of Marks, Livingstone’s brother, who wrote for Benny and later produced his show. Fein, Irving. Jack Benny: An Intimate Biography. New York: Putnam, 1976. Fein was a business associate and a friend of Benny. With him he formed Amusement Enterprises, which discovered talent, including Jack Paar, who gained renown as a summer replacement for Benny. Benny’s longtime friend, comedian George Burns, wrote the introduction. Leannah, Michael, ed. Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny. Duncan, Okla.: BearManor Media, 2007. Contains essays by various authors on such Benny allies as Livingstone and Blanc, and one on Benny’s famous “feud” with comedian Fred Allen. See also: Milton Berle; George Burns; Sid Caesar; Eddie Cantor; Ernst Lubitsch; Groucho Marx; Isaac Stern.
Seymour Benzer Behavioral geneticist, molecular biologist, and physicist A pioneer in the field of neurogenetics, Benzer used viruses to map genes, showing the connection between molecular biology and genetics. His research with the Drosophila fly showed how genes control behavior. Born: October 15, 1921; New York, New York Died: November 30, 2007; Pasadena, California Area of achievement: Science and technology
Early Life Seymour Benzer (BEHN-zur) was born to parents who had immigrated from Poland in 1910 and who both worked in the clothing industry. Benzer was the third of four children. When Benzer was age four, the family moved to Brooklyn, where he went to a Jewish school until he had his Bar Mitzvah. He did not have strong religious convictions, but he went to the synagogue out of re101
Benzer, Seymour spect for his parents. There he would place a physics book on top of the Torah. His education was in a public elementary school and New Utrecht High School. His parents worked late into the night to pay the bills, and there was no extra money for college. Benzer had been interested in biology for several years. He had dissected frogs in the laboratory in the basement of his home. When his uncle gave him a microscope as a Bar Mitzvah gift, it opened up new worlds for Benzer. A Regents Scholarship of five hundred dollars a year allowed Benzer to start Brooklyn College in 1938. At Brooklyn College, he majored in physics because he did not want to take biology courses. He graduated in January, 1942, and married his girlfriend of four years, Dorothy Vlosky, in an Orthodox ceremony. The newlyweds boarded a train the night of the wedding, bound for Purdue University in Indiana, where Benzer would attend graduate school. Life’s Work Soon after starting graduate school, Benzer became involved in a secret project for the government, dealing with radar. His work earned him a military deferment. The crystals used in radar as detectors at that time would often burn out because of the high voltage. He developed a germanium-doped crystal that would detect the microwave signal and not burn out. After the war, the research group turned its information over to Bell Laboratories, where Benzer’s information was used to create a transistor. He received his Ph.D. in 1947 and was hired by Purdue as an assistant professor in the physics department. During this time, he became interested in the mapping of genes on chromosomes and attended a summer course at Cold Spring Harbor, spent a year at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, two years at the California Institute of Technology, and a year at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, learning about gene mapping and bacteriophage. When he returned to Purdue, Benzer selected a virus that would not infect the strain of Escherichia coli called K, because it was a defective mutant of the gene. By infecting bacteria repeatedly, some of defective genes combined to produce a virus that could infect the E. coli K strain. The new gene had pieces of both of the original genes. His experiments proved that genes are not one indivisible piece but are made of many small pieces. By looking at the mutant combinations and the length of the pieces of the gene, he built a map of the rII gene that was large enough to see the difference of one nucleotide. Part of his work was used later by Francis Crick to determine 102
Jewish Americans that the codon in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) contains three nucleotides. In 1967, Benzer moved to the California Institute of Technology and began using the Drosophila fly to study how genes determine behavior. Selecting flies and creating mutants that behaved strangely, Benzer began to locate the gene responsible for particular behavior. He identified genes linked to memory, internal clocks, courting, learning, and aging, among others. In a collaboration experiment, the fly antibodies reacted with some human tissue, indicating that some of the genes are the same. In 1978, his wife died of breast cancer; later, he met and married Carol Miller, a neuropathologist. Benzer died of a stroke in Pasadena, California, at the age of eighty-six. Significance Benzer was a pioneer in the field of mapping genes before the DNA double helix was established. His work in molecular biology and in genetics attracted many scientists to that field. When the field became crowded with researchers, he changed fields. A pioneer in neurogenetics, Benzer led many scientists to look at the relationship between genes and behavior. The relationship is studied for links to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Other studies involve alcoholism, aging, and drug addiction. —C. Alton Hassell Further Reading Benzer, Seymour. “The Fine Structure of the Gene.” Scientific American 206 (January, 1962): 70-84. Benzer explains the results of his research into genes. _______. Interview with Seymour Benzer. Interview by Heidi Aspaturian. Pasadena, Calif.: California Institute of Technology Archives, 2002. Benzer recounts his life story, with many amusing tales, in this interview conducted in eleven sessions between September, 1990, and February, 1991. Holmes, Frederic Lawrence. Reconceiving the Gene: Seymour Benzer’s Adventure in Phage Genetics. Edited by William C. Summers. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006. This technical biography covers the first part of Benzer’s career, up to the mid1960’s. _______. “Seymour Benzer and the Definition of the Gene.” In The Concept of the Gene in Development and Evolution: Historical and Epistemological Perspectives, edited by Peter J. Beurton, Raphael Falk,
Jewish Americans and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Describes Benzer’s role in advancing science’s understanding of genes. Weiner, Jonathan. Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior. New York: Knopf, 1999. A thorough biography of Benzer
Berg, Moe that also explores the field of molecular biology, by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. See also: Richard Axel; Paul Berg; Michael Brown; Stanley Cohen; Mildred Cohn; Carl Djerassi; Gertrude Belle Elion; Stanley B. Prusiner.
Moe Berg Athlete and spy Highly educated, Berg was a reserve catcher in Major League Baseball for fifteen years. During World War II, he conducted espionage on the development of atomic weapons for the Office of Strategic Services. Born: March 2, 1902; New York, New York Died: May 29, 1972; Belleville, New Jersey Also known as: Morris Berg (full name) Area of achievement: Sports Early Life The parents of Moe Berg (burg) were Ukrainian Jewish immigrants who settled in New York, New York, but after several years moved to Newark, New Jersey. Berg’s father, Bernard, was a pharmacist who owned his own drugstore; his mother, Rose, was a housewife. There were three children in the Berg family, Samuel, Ethel, and Moe. The Bergs placed a high value on education. The parents encouraged their children to improve themselves intellectually in hopes of leading them to success in life, which meant acquiring a profession. At age seven, Berg began playing baseball for a Methodist church team: to avoid anti-Semitic sentiments, he called himself Runt Wolfe. Throughout primary and secondary school, Berg proved himself an exceptional student, but his scholarly activities were counterbalanced with a love for athletics, especially baseball. Berg graduated from Barringer High School in Newark; he enrolled in New York University, but shortly after he transferred to Princeton University. This was an incredible accomplishment for the times: Berg was a lower-middle-class Jew, and elite Ivy League schools maintained quotas restricting the number of Jewish students admitted. Berg majored in linguistics, mastering seven languages, and he also played shortstop and first base for the Princeton baseball team; as a senior he was team captain. Berg graduated magna cum laude and was offered a teaching position in Princeton’s Department of Romance Languages and a
baseball contract with the Brooklyn Robins. Berg decided to further his education by attending the Sorbonne in Paris to study linguistics, but he lacked funds. To raise the money to attend the Sorbonne, Berg signed a oneyear contract to play professional baseball. After playing for a season, Berg went to the Sorbonne, where he mastered three more languages. In 1924, Berg returned to the United States and went back to baseball. In 1926, Berg entered Columbia Law School, and for the next few years he divided his time between the classroom and Major League Baseball. Upon graduation, Berg chose baseball over a law career and played thirteen more years as a professional. Berg’s father was so disenchanted by his son’s career choice that he never once went to see him play professional baseball. Life’s Work In professional baseball, Berg was considered an average player. While Berg was an excellent defensive player—from 1931 to 1934 he set an American League record for a catcher, playing 117 consecutive games without an error, a record that stood until 1946—as an offensive player he struggled. He posted career statistics of a .243 batting average with six home runs and 206 runs batted in. However, Berg was considered by his peers as having an exceptional understanding of the intricacies of baseball, and his mentoring helped advance the skill level of pitchers for whom he caught. Though a journeyman player, Berg made two trips to Japan in the early 1930’s as part of baseball teaching tours. The first Japan tour was in 1932; after his duties to the tour were over, Berg traveled throughout China, Southeast Asia, India, Egypt, and Germany before returning to fulfill his baseball contract. In 1934, Berg was invited to participate in a second tour of Japan; on this trip he took along a sixteen-millimeter film camera and a cover letter from Movietone News which said Berg was documenting the tour. While in Tokyo, Berg gained ac103
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The Many Honors of Berg While many of Moe Berg’s friends and family felt he squandered his great intellectual gifts to play a game, Berg chose to play baseball for the pure reason that it made him happy. For his bravery, patriotism, and exceptional counterintelligence work during World War II, Berg was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom in October, 1946, but he rejected the honor in December of the same year because he was embarrassed. Berg’s sister, Ethel, accepted the medal on her brother’s behalf after his death in 1972. Berg’s Medal of Freedom currently resides in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Berg is honored as a member of both the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and the Baseball Reliquary’s Shrine of the Eternals. For his help in introducing baseball to Japan, the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame houses a special Berg collection. Berg is also honored at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, where his baseball card is proudly displayed.
cess to the roof of the tallest building in the city and filmed panoramas of the city and the harbor. After the tour was completed, Berg traveled on to the Philippines, Korea, and Russia. On his return to the United States, Berg resumed his baseball career, playing through 1939 and then coaching for the Red Sox in 1940 and 1941. When the United States entered World War II, Berg took a posting with the Office of Inter-American Affairs, where he assessed fascist threats to Central and South America. Ironically, Berg took the job the day his father died. Berg remained only a short time with Inter-American Affairs before transferring to the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency. Prior to his transfer, Berg screened his film footage of Tokyo to the U.S. military, which was planning a bombing raid on Japan. With the Office of Strategic Services, Berg became a paramilitary operations officer, parachuting into Yugoslavia to assess the needs and the strength of resistance groups. Berg’s mastery of languages resulted in clandestine assignments to Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland, where he interviewed numerous European scientists; in many instances he arranged for their escape to the United States. Berg’s sharp intellect allowed him to become quickly versed in nuclear physics, moving him into a position at the center of the American atomic intelligence program. One of Berg’s missions took him to Zurich, where he masqueraded as a physics student to attend lectures by German physicist Werner Heisenberg. Berg’s mission was to determine if Nazi Germany was capable of building an atomic device; if so, he was to kidnap or to kill Heisenberg. Berg decided Germany was not capable of 104
constructing an atomic weapon. Berg’s intelligence analyses also confirmed the Nazis lacked a meaningful bacteriological warfare program. Berg liked being an intelligence officer as much as he liked playing baseball, but after World War II he left the intelligence services, though he occasionally took assignments from the Central Intelligence Agency to assess information concerning Soviet nuclear programs. Sometimes Berg would accept contracts as a legal or as a business consultant, but he did not pursue them as a career. For the most part, the postwar years of Berg’s life were spent living as an enigmatic recluse; he traveled widely, did as he wished, pursued his passions, and relied on the generosity of friends and family to meet his living needs. Berg never married. In 1972, Berg took a fall in his home, and he died at the age of seventy from those injuries.
Significance Berg’s courageous efforts as an intelligence officer during World War II are well documented and legendary; they resulted in significant advances to the American atomic program. As an athlete, Berg is among the most intellectually gifted and well-educated men ever to play professional baseball, although he distanced himself from his training in law and in linguistics for love of the game. While Berg could have been an academic or a lawyer, for fifteen years he worked one of the most demeaning positions in professional baseball: reserve catcher. Berg’s dedication and passion for baseball, in defiance of his family’s wishes, demonstrated the generational and cultural conflicts that often existed within immigrant families. While immigrant parents often wanted their children to concentrate on an education that would lead to financial success, the children often wished to embrace broadly the American experience. For Berg, that experience was exemplified in America’s national pastime, baseball. — Randall L. Milstein Further Reading Dawidoff, Nicholas. The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. Documents the enigmatic life and eclectic personality of Berg; lacks deep character insights but contains a wealth of information about his eccentricities. _______. “Scholar, Lawyer, Catcher, Spy: Moe Berg, Baseball’s Renaissance Man of the ’20’s and ’30’s,
Jewish Americans Was a U.S. Atomic Spy in World War II.” Sports Illustrated 76, no. 11 (March 23, 1992). Well-illustrated article encapsulates Berg’s careers in baseball and in espionage. Simmons, William M. “Morris Berg.” In Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Sports in the United States, ed-
Berg, Paul ited by George B. Kirsch, Othello Harris, and Claire Elaine Nolte. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Thumbnail biography of Berg; also offers a detailed account of other Jewish sports heroes. See also: Hank Greenberg; Sandy Koufax; Bud Selig.
Paul Berg Microbiologist and educator Berg won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980 for his pioneering technique of splicing together deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from different types of organisms, which revolutionized the study of viral chromosomes and launched the field of genetic engineering. Born: June 30, 1926; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Paul Naim Berg (full name) Area of achievement: Science and technology Early Life Paul Berg was born to Sarah and Harry Berg on June 30, 1926, in Brooklyn. Paul Berg graduated from the New York City public schools in 1943 with a great interest in microbiology, fostered by Mrs. Wolf, a high school teacher who ran an after-school science club. Berg entered Pennsylvania State University in 1943, served in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946, and returned to school to graduate with a degree in biochemistry in 1948. He then moved to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, graduating with a doctorate in biochemistry in 1952 and taking a yearlong American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship with Herman Kalckar at the Institute of Cytophysiology in Copenhagen, Denmark, and then a second fellowship with Arthur Kornberg at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1956, he became an assistant professor of microbiology. He accepted the position of professor of biochemistry at Stanford University’s School of Medicine in 1959. Life’s Work Throughout the 1950’s Berg patiently conducted a series of experiments to determine how amino acids, which combine to form proteins, join together. In 1956, he determined that a special molecule specifically joined the amino acid methionine to the ribonucleic acid (RNA) during replication. This molecule was one of a class of
similar molecules, each specific to a unique amino acid that ultimately became known as transfer RNA (tRNA). His important discovery increased his interest in the study of genes, so he spent a sabbatical year in 1967 learning about deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) tumor viruses at the Salk Institute with Renato Dulbecco. He returned to Stanford and began working with the monkey tumor virus SV40 to figure out how mammalian genes operate. Patient accumulation of data from many experiments enabled him to map out where on the DNA molecule the various viral genes occurred and the relationships among the various specific sequences of nucleotides in the genes and how they affect the DNA of the host organism that they infect. This information was important in ascertaining how cells became cancerous, that is, exhibit abnormal reproduction and growth. Berg realized that he might be able to combine the DNA of the SV40 with the DNA of a bacteriophage (a type of virus) that would infect the intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli. In this way it would be possible to study a gene from one species in isolation from the usual set of genes with which it naturally interacted in its original host, since it was in another host that lacked such genes. This was the first time that anyone had artificially engineered at the genetic level what was in effect an organism possessing genes from two different organisms. Berg’s methodology also would enable scientists to replicate quickly particular proteins or other desirable materials using the second organism as a convenient host, a technique widely applied in agricultural, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries. The problem with these newly created organisms was that they contained foreign genes, and the harmful effects of such artificial manipulation could not be reasonably predicted. This suggested to several scientists who were following these developments that caution should be exercised. A group of scientists in Boston first raised the issue. Berg published in the July 26, 1974, issue of 105
Berg, Paul Science a letter that listed a series of recommendations from a quickly convened Committee on Recombinant DNA Molecules Assembly of Life Sciences that Berg chaired for the National Academy of Sciences. It raised the possibility of the biological hazards posed by the new genetic engineering and called for a temporary moratorium on further work until such time as a meeting of experts could be assembled to “discuss appropriate ways to deal with the potential biohazards of recombinant DNA molecules.” A group of 140 scientists with a few lawyers and science journalists gathered for a three-day meeting at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California, on February 27, 1975, to take up these issues. A set of safeguards was created that was further refined by the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee of the National Institutes of Health. Among many provisions was a requirement that special facilities be created for work with recombinant DNA to ensure that organisms undergoing genetic manipulation did not escape from laboratory facilities. Initially there was considerable controversy over these rules and their implementation on university and research campuses across the nation. Ultimately the standards for work with many organisms were relaxed, but certain pathogenic organisms require high standards of biosecurity. Berg became a professor emeritus at Stanford; he ceased conducting research in 2000 but still serves on many important advisory boards. Significance Berg’s work over many years to elucidate the biochemistry of nucleic acids, especially in regards to recombinant DNA, resulted in his winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980, the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 1980, the National Medal of Science in 1983, and numerous other awards. His careful attention to the ethical dimensions of his scientific work, mo-
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Jewish Americans tivated by a precautionary principle, has been heralded as a model for others to emulate. He chaired the advisory board of the Human Genome Project of the National Institutes of Health as well as numerous other important boards and panels over the years. —Dennis W. Cheek Further Reading Berg, Paul, and Maxine Singer. Dealing with Genes: The Language of Heredity. Herndon, Va.: University Science Books, 2008. A book for nonspecialists explaining how genetics influences human health and development, agriculture, and ecology. Frederickson, Donald S. The Recombinant DNA Controversy: A Memoir. Science, Politics, and the Public Interest, 1974-1981. Washington, D.C.: American Society for Microbiology, 2001. A firsthand account by a participant in the Asilomar meeting and former director of the National Institutes of Health who supervised the creation of national guidelines for laboratory work with recombinant DNA technology. Morange, Michel. A History of Molecular Biology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. An excellent history by a leading French researcher in the field that sets Berg’s work within the larger context. Wade, Nick. The Ultimate Experiment. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1977. A chronicle of Berg’s famous experiment that led to the genetic engineering revolution. Wright, Susan. Molecular Politics: Developing American and British Regulatory Policy for Genetic Engineering, 1972-1982. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. The definitive sociohistorical account of this important period in genetic engineering. See also: Michael Brown; Gerald Edelman; Gertrude Belle Elion; Paul Greengard; Rudolph Marcus; Irwin Rose; Harold E. Varmus.
Jewish Americans
Berkowitz, David
David Berkowitz Serial killer Berkowitz was convicted of being the serial killer known as Son of Sam who terrorized New York City, although he later claimed that he was part of a satanic cult and did not act alone. Born: June 1, 1953; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Richard David Falco (birth name); David Richard Berkowitz (full name); Dave Berkowitz; “the .44-Caliber Killer”; “Son of Sam” Area of achievement: Crime Early Life David Berkowitz (BUR-koh-wihts) was born on June 1, 1953, to Jewish parents Betty Broder Falco and Joseph Kleinman. Although his mother was still married to Anthony Falco, his mother and Kleinman had a longrunning affair. The newborn was adopted by Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz, a childless Jewish couple who lived in the New York City borough of the Bronx and who reversed the order of their adopted son’s original first and middle names. As a boy, David Berkowitz suffered from severe depression; sometimes he hid in his apartment for hours or contemplated suicide. He also had episodes of violently disruptive behavior at home and in public school, and his adoptive parents sought help from school counselors, a rabbi, and a psychologist. A bad situation became worse in 1967 when Pearl developed cancer and died. Having to work sixty hours a week in his hardware store, Nathan spent little time with his troubled son, but he did persuade Berkowitz to graduate from high school. In 1971, immediately after graduation and not long after Nathan remarried, Berkowitz joined the Army and, after training, served in Korea and Kentucky. Upon his honorable discharge in 1974, he returned to metropolitan New York City, where he eventually worked for the United States Postal Service. He had been baptized into Christianity in Kentucky, but he had stopped attending church upon leaving the Army. Life’s Work Berkowitz achieved notoriety through eight incidents of nighttime murder or attempted murder with a .44caliber revolver in New York City from July 29, 1976, until July 31, 1977. The dead were Donna Lauria, Christine Freund, Virginia Voskerichian, Alexander Esau, Valentina Suriani, and Stacy Moskowitz. Among the
wounded were Joanne Lomino, left paraplegic, and Robert Violante, left almost totally blind. All the victims were young. When reporters and police noticed the similarities among the shootings, news coverage intensified and a massive manhunt began. Soon, on April 17, 1977, at the scene of the double murder of Esau and Suriani, police officers found a note addressed to one of their captains; and the killer, suspected of acting alone, acquired a name. According to the note’s author, he was the Son of Sam, ordered to kill to supply blood for his father. Next, in early June, Jimmy Breslin, a columnist for New York’s Daily News, received a letter, signed Son of Sam, that heightened the fear among New Yorkers and the attention of the news media. At last, after two more shootings and another death, police followed up on a parking ticket issued near the time and place of the final shooting and, on August 10, 1977, arrested Berkowitz outside his apartment building in suburban Yonkers. Within hours, he told assistant district attorneys that he had committed all the crimes blamed on Son of Sam. After delays, he rejected his attorneys’advice and pled guilty; eventually he received a sentence of 365 years in prison. He survived a nearly deadly attack by another inmate in 1979. In 1987, Berkowitz said that he converted to Christianity through the witness of a fellow prisoner and considered himself a Messianic Jew. In 2006, Morning Star Communications published a collection of journal entries by Berkowitz in which he told of God’s forgiveness and of ministry, life, and hope in a place that might seem hopeless. Significance The coverage of the Son of Sam shootings became frenzied in 1977, and public attention rose correspondingly. Berkowitz’s confession relieved the fears of millions. Nevertheless, doubt has arisen about whether Berkowitz was the only criminal involved, despite a widespread idea that he was too antisocial to cooperate with others. While serving a life sentence, he has said that, although he knowingly played a part in all the Son of Sam incidents and was therefore entirely guilty, he personally killed only three people. He belonged, he claims, to a satanic cult but would not reveal the names of his surviving accomplices in the Son of Sam cases, partly because he fears for the safety of his relatives. Knowing that many persons outside prison 107
Berkowitz, Henry doubt his sincerity, he has written that he does not deserve parole and has found freedom through Christ inside prison walls. —Victor Lindsey Further Reading Abrahamsen, David. Confessions of Son of Sam. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Psychoanalyzes Berkowitz, finding him a double-natured, manipulative misogynist who killed alone and later lied about a murderous cult. Berkowitz, David. Son of Hope: The Prison Journals of David Berkowitz. Vol. 1. New York: Morning Star Communications, 2006. Contains a short autobiography and edited selections from Berkowitz’s prison journals, presenting struggles and successes at the Sullivan Correctional Facility. Ewing, Charles Patrick. Insanity: Murder, Madness, and
Jewish Americans the Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Devotes a chapter to Berkowitz and, assuming he acted alone, studies his competence to stand trial. Klausner, Lawrence D. Son of Sam: Based on the Authorized Transcription of the Tapes, Official Documents, and Diaries of David Berkowitz. New York: McGrawHill, 1981. Claims Berkowitz murdered alone and provides photographs, a list of victims, an annotated map of the New York metropolitan area, and writings in Berkowitz’s hand. Terry, Maury. The Ultimate Evil: The Truth About the Cult Murders: Son of Sam and Beyond. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1999. Argues dramatically that Berkowitz did not act alone but belonged to a murderous satanic cult. See also: Mickey Cohen; Meyer Lansky; Abraham Reles; Arnold Rothstein.
Henry Berkowitz Religious leader, social reformer, and writer A renowned rabbi, Berkowitz founded the Jewish Chautauqua Society, believing that all people could learn from the fundamental tenets of Judaism on social justice, peace, and freedom of choice. Born: March 18, 1857; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Died: February 7, 1924; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Areas of achievement: Religion and theology; education; social issues Early Life Henry Berkowitz (BUR-koh-wits) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Louis Berkowitz, an Austrian immigrant, and Henrietta Jaroslawski. When Henry Berkowitz graduated from Central High School in 1872, he enrolled at Cornell University. At age sixteen, Berkowitz, inspired by Isaac Wise, decided to become a rabbi. In 1873, the youth received his hattarat hora’ah (rabbinical diploma), and soon after he enrolled in Hebrew Union College. During the same year, he enrolled part-time at the University of Cincinnati, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in literature in 1881. Meanwhile, he read law with the firm of Brown and Lamble for five years, until 1875. When Berkowitz graduated from Hebrew Union College in 1883, he married Flora Brunn of Coshocton, 108
Ohio. The couple moved to Mobile, Alabama, where he served Congregation Sha’are Shomayim, the first Reform congregation in Alabama. Berkowitz admired Theodore Parker, the abolitionist, and remained sardonic about racism in the South throughout his life. He joined the Humane Movement for the Protection of Children and Animals from Cruelty, with his concern about animals prompted in part by the need of his congregation for properly slaughtered meat. In 1884, Berkowitz and Joseph Krauskopf published Bible Ethics: A Manual of Instruction in the History and Principles of Judaism. His daughter, Etta Pearl, was born in 1885. Hebrew Union College awarded him the doctor of divinity degree in 1887, and one year later he published Judaism on the Social Question (1888), in which he attacked lynching. Life’s Work In 1888, Berkowitz became rabbi of Congregation B’nai Jehudah in Kansas City, Missouri, where his son, Max Edward, was born. The family stayed in Missouri for four years, until Berkowitz was elected in 1892 to be rabbi to Temple Rodelph Sholem in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During his thirty-two years in Philadelphia, he worked closely with the Federation of Jewish Charities and the Philadelphia Rabbinical Association. Berkowitz
Jewish Americans joined the Universal Peace Union, as an early advocate for a League of Nations and for international disarmament. In Judaism on the Social Question, Berkowitz advocated education in Jewish principles for all as the way to resolve class conflict. Accordingly, he established the Jewish Chautauqua Society in 1893. The Chautauqua provided reading groups and texts for people of all faiths. Berkowitz wrote The Open Bible (1896) and Kiddush (1898). The Chautauqua held annual colloquiums that drew hundreds of participants. Berkowitz led seven of the summer sessions. In 1900 and again in 1903, Berkowitz traveled to England to organize the Jewish Chautauqua. He also toured around the United States to promote the organization. Berkowitz was a founding member and secretary of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Berkowitz was a member of Philadelphia’s Vice Commission and of the Social Purity Alliance. He reveled in controversy. In 1913, he delivered a sermon opposing “white slavery” in Philadelphia, in which he charged that local elites perpetuated prostitution. City fathers nevertheless regarded Berkowitz highly enough to sponsor an official trip to Europe for Berkowitz and his wife to study social conditions there. Berkowitz opposed Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish state. When U.S. congressman Julius Kahn circulated a petition against creation of a Jewish state in Palestine for presentation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Berkowitz was one of the 299 signatories and one of thirty-one prominent Jewish men who traveled to Paris to hand the petition to U.S. president Woodrow Wilson. In 1921, Berkowitz published Intimate Glimpses of the Rabbi’s Career, a collection of four talks on leadership delivered to rabbinical students at Hebrew Union College and an appropriate coda to his career. In ill health for two years, Berkowitz died in Philadelphia in 1924. Significance For more than fifty years, Berkowitz worked to build the Reform movement within Judaism. His belief was that the fundamental tenets of Judaism included striving
Berkowitz, Henry for social justice and peace and for freedom of choice. Berkowitz promulgated these ideas through his speeches and sermons, through the assistance he provided to his alma mater, Hebrew Union College, and to the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and especially through his establishment of the Jewish Chautauqua. The Chautauqua, the college, and Reform Judaism flourish, Berkowitz would say, because they educate people not to conform thoughtlessly but to unite with respect for differences. — Christine Lutz Further Reading Berkowitz, Henry. Judaism on the Social Question. New York: John B. Alden, 1888. Berkowitz’s first solo published work illuminates his commitment to the right of individual choice and to Reform Judaism. Berkowitz, Max E. Beloved Rabbi: An Account of the Life and Works of Henry Berkowitz. New York: Macmillan, 1932. Written by his son, this book is the only full-length biography of Henry Berkowitz. The book provides a sense of the brilliant, sophisticated organizer behind the rabbi, who called down fire upon monopolies and states. Kaufman, David. Shul with a Pool: The SynagogueCenter in American Jewish History. Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 1999. Kaufman credits Berkowitz with originating the synagogue-center and discusses the history and the fruits of his “invention.” Zola, Gary Phillip. “Southern Rabbis and the Founding of the First National Association of Rabbis.” American Jewish History 85, no. 4 (December, 1997): 353372. Zola writes about Berkowitz’s role in founding the Central Conference of American Rabbis, a group important to Berkowitz not only because it united like-minded rabbis but also because his first two rabbinates were in the South, where Jews faced particular difficulties. See also: Harold S. Kushner; Judah Leon Magnes; Isaac Mayer Wise.
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Milton Berle Entertainer, actor, and philanthropist Berle was a first-class entertainer in vaudeville, theater, East and West Coast films, and early television. Born: July 12, 1908; Harlem, New York Died: March 27, 2002; Beverly Hills, California Also known as: Milton Berlinger (birth name); “Mr. Television,” “Uncle Miltie” Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater; philanthropy Early Life Milton Berle (MIL-ton BURL) was born Milton Berlinger in Harlem to Moses (Moe) and Sarah (Sadie) Glantz Berlinger. Moses worked in a paint store on First Avenue in New York City owned by his Jewish father Jacob, who had migrated to America from Germany, in
Milton Berle. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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1849. Sarah’s ancestry reached back to Poland, and her father was a cobbler; she worked as a store detective. Berle was born at home at 68 West 118th Street; his older brothers were Philip Louis, Francis, and Jacob, and his younger sister was Rosalind Marianna. The Berlingers struggled to make ends meet, living in a flat surrounded by Italians, Jews, Germans, and blacks. Berle and his siblings went to the Imperial Nickelodeon and lived next door to George Jessel. Out of family necessity, Berle went to work when he was five years old after winning a contest showcasing amateur talent. His stagestruck mother took him for auditions, and he received children’s parts beginning in silent films, such as The Perils of Pauline (1914) with Pearl White, and continued with Bunny’s Little Brother (1914) with John Bunny, Tess of the Storm Country (1922) with Mary Pickford, Birthright (1920) with Flora Finch, Love’s Penalty (1921) with Hope Hampton, and Ruth of the Range (1923) with Ruth Roland. He received acclaim in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), starring Pickford; The Mark of Zorro (1920), starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.; and Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914), starring Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, and Marie Dressler. With these film credits, Berle was on his way to bigger opportunities. He attended the Professional Children’s School in 1916, was tutored on the road, and at twelve he appeared in the stage play Floradora (1920), first in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and then on Broadway in 1920. Berle worked at a frantic pace in theaters, films, and vaudeville and wore his own tuxedo. He changed his name to Milton Berle as Floradora wound down in 1921 to work with Elizabeth Kennedy as Kennedy and Berle on the Orpheum Circuit, two shows per day, seven days a week, for a twenty-eight-week tour of the United States. His mother changed her name to Sandra Berle and his siblings also took Berle as their last name. In comedy acts peppered with song and dance, Berle worked in nightclubs, then moved into radio and television. He sent much of his income home to New York, to his father and older brothers, while he toured with his mother, his early agent. At thirteen, he had his Bar Mitzvah at Mount Zion Synagogue in New York.
Jewish Americans By the early 1930’s Berle was a stand-up comedian of renown, and he appeared in the musical comedy Poppin’ the Cork in 1933, for which he wrote the theme song. His creative stint as a songwriter—he would write more than three hundred songs—continued with his collaboration with Milton Drake and Ben Oakland in writing the title song for Li’l Abner starring Buster Keaton in 1940. Success on radio followed, with Berle featured on the Rudy Vallee Hour from 1934 to 1936. Berle appeared on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) variety-comedy broadcast The Gillette Original Community Sing on Sunday evening radio from 1936 to 1937. Berle was tapped as the funnyman host of Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One, a radio program airing in 1939, as Europe moved toward World War II and Americans needed a lift with comedy. Radio audiences found emotional release and joy with Berle’s Campbell’s Soups sponsored comedy-variety show Three-Ring Time in 1943, Let Yourself Go in 1944-1945, and CBS’s Kiss and Make Up in 1946. He often entertained troops in hospitals on United Service Organizations (USO) tours. Performing comedy during the war to raise spirits was a patriotic endeavor, and Berle did his duty admirably. Berle founded the Friars Club, composed of celebrities and famed for its members’ comedic roasts, in Beverly Hills in 1947. He became a household favorite on radio with The Milton Berle Show on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), sponsored by Philip Morris 1947-1948. The apex of Berle’s radio career was The Texaco Star Theater on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in 1948-1949, and it elevated him toward television. Berle had three wives, Joyce Mathews (1941-1947 and 19491950), Ruth Cosgrove (1953-1989), and Lorna Adams (1991-2002). Life’s Work Berle had already worked for thirty-five years (from age five) by the time he took his radio program to television with The Texaco Star Theater beginning in 1948. His work ethic continued as he enthusiastically pursued his comedian’s craft on television, the new medium. Berle was superbly suited to the new visual vehicle of household television sets, with his slapstick routines, his outlandish costumes, his clean jokes, and his funnyman gags promoted as family entertainment. Berle often chided other comedians who used off-color jokes, saying they should work “clean,” and he became a beloved comedian, appealing to all ages and ethnic backgrounds.
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Berle’s Feature Films Milton Berle was not only a comedian but also a respected film star. His prodigious schedule and high energy allowed him to appear in films for more than fifty years. He did Radio-KeithOrpheum’s New Faces (1937) and Radio City Revels (1938). Berle appeared in twenty-five films, including Tall, Dark, and Handsome (1941); Sun Valley Serenade (1941); Rise and Shine (1941); A Gentleman at Heart (1942); Over My Dead Body (1942); Whispering Ghosts (1942); Margin for Error (1943); Always Leave Them Laughing (1949), with Virginia Mayo and Bert Lahr; Let’s Make Love (1960), with Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand; It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963); The Loved One (1965); For Singles Only (1968); and Storybook (1995). Films proved lasting and better quality tributes than the early television kinescopes.
His comedy was a great healer following World War II, and he built a sense of postwar community. On Tuesday evenings, Americans across the nation tuned in to his television show, and he endeared himself as Uncle Miltie, earning the moniker Mr. Television. NBC made a kinescope (a film made from television) of each show. Berle would sue NBC in 2000 for negligence when they were feared lost, but the kinescopes were found in Burbank, California. Berle invited black performing artists to appear, opening doors formerly closed to them. Stars wished to appear on Berle’s show because it gave them wide exposure, and each episode was produced for a modest fifteen thousand dollars. Each show offered singing acts, including the regularly featured singing Texaco station attendants, dancing, comedy, and skits. So successful was The Texaco Star Theater that NBC gave Berle a thirtyyear television contract in 1951, at the height of his popularity, guaranteeing Berle $200,000 per year if he would appear exclusively on NBC. Berle did television specials, such as Uncle Miltie’s Christmas Party (1950), Show of the Year (1950), and Uncle Miltie’s Easter Party (1951). Berle received the Yiddish Theatrical Alliance Humanitarian Award, and the Look magazine television award in 1951. Buick replaced Texaco as the sponsor of the Buick-Berle Show for the 1953-1954 season. Production costs rose because of labor union negotiations and higher salaries commanded by guests for appearances. For the 1955-1956 season, the Milton Berle Show moved production to California, closer to the variety of talent Berle desired to showcase on his program, then being shown in color. Berle gave El111
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Jewish Americans variety shows. His brand of humor was inclusive, appealing to children and adults alike. Berle, as Mr. Television, expanded the new medium’s reach to a wide audience, extending its cultural influence to compete with films. — Barbara Bennett Peterson
vis Presley early breaks, inviting him to appear in his show during his last NBC season on April 3, 1956, and again on June 5. Berle’s show became more refined and lost the zaniness and spontaneity of early days. Berle faced increasing competition from other comedians. In 1957, Berle appeared in the Kraft Music Hall programs, and in 1960 he hosted Jackpot Bowling. He won the National Academy of Arts and Sciences Man of the Year Award in 1959, and he was an Emmy Award nominee in 1961. In 1959, he starred in The Milton Berle Special on television. Berle was given an Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1978/1979. A Tribute to “Mr. Television” Milton Berle was a 1978 television special. Berle was awarded an honorary degree by McKendree College in 1984. He cohosted NBC’s Sixtieth Anniversary Celebration in 1986. Berle died of colon cancer at ninetythree in 2002. Berle was inducted into California’s Hall of Fame posthumously in 2007.
Further Reading Allen, Steve. The Funny Men. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956. Allen was a funny man himself who studied Berle. Berle, Milton. Milton Berle: An Autobiography. New York: Delacorte, 1974. Written by Berle in collaboration with Haskel Frankel, this is an authoritative personal account. Berle, William, and Brad Lewis. My Father, Uncle Miltie. New York: Barricade Books, 1999. Laudable biography written by the adopted son of Berle and Ruth Cosgrove. Berle adopted daughter Victoria with Joyce Mathews.
Significance Berle was a celebrated comedian who established the genre of comedy on television as part of family-oriented
See also: Jack Benny; Albert Brooks; George Burns; Sid Caesar; Eddie Cantor; Danny Kaye; Henny Youngman.
Irving Berlin Russian-born songwriter The best-selling American songwriter in history, Berlin penned fifteen hundred songs, nineteen Broadway musicals, and scores for eighteen Hollywood films. Born: May 11, 1888; Mogilyov, Russia (now Belarus) Died: September 22, 1989; New York, New York Also known as: Israel Isidore Baline (birth name); Israel Beilin Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment Early Life Irving Berlin (bur-LIHN) was born in Mogilyov in what is now Belarus. His father, Moishe Baline, was a shochet, one who kills kosher animals according to religious laws, and a cantor in a synagogue. Moishe moved his wife Leah and six children several times to avoid the pogroms, violent attacks on Jews that destroyed their village in 1893. Berlin spoke of a childhood memory of watching his house burn to the ground. Escaping through Poland and Germany into Belgium, the Balines took the 112
steamer Rhynland to the United States, passing through Ellis Island. One of Leah’s relatives found them a threeroom basement apartment on Monroe Street on the lower East Side, but as soon as they could afford it they moved to a larger place at 330 Cherry Street. When his father died in 1896, eight-year-old Berlin took to the streets—along with the rest of his siblings— to support the family. He spent the next six years as a newsboy, but in 1902, at age fourteen, mortified that even his sisters earned more than he, Berlin left home to eke out a living in the Bowery. Inheriting his father’s musical ability, he became a “busker,” a bar singer who serenaded patrons for tips. This was the best possible training for a songwriter, because he was memorizing the most popular songs in the biggest song market in the world. Moving up to classier bars, and finally to the premier venue in New York, Tony Pastor’s Music Hall, Irving Berlin—as he called himself—became a “plugger,” a singer of new songs to impresarios in hopes they will use the songs in their shows. This practice put Berlin in contact with the major music publishers in New York. After the bars
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closed each night, Berlin practiced on the bar pianos the songs he sang until he could play all the current hits by ear. In 1907, he published his first song, “Marie from Sunny Italy.” Life’s Work Berlin continued to write, hitting it big with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” in 1911. While not really a rag, it revived popular interest in syncopated music and influenced later composers. George Gershwin called the song the first real American musical work. It was an international hit, known even in Berlin’s native Russia, and sparked a ragtime dance craze in America. The following year Berlin married Dorothy Goetz, but she died sixth months later of typhoid contracted on their honeymoon in Havana. He expressed his grief in a ballad, “When I Lost You,” the first of many hits in that popular idiom. In 1914, Berlin wrote an entire Broadway musical in ragtime, Watch Your Step, solidifying the role of syncopation in American popular music. When America entered World War I in 1917, Berlin began writing the patriotic songs that would typify his later work. Berlin’s patriotism was genuine: As an immigrant, he often expressed his gratitude to his adopted country. Berlin’s celebration of the immigrant nature of America, however, was a mixed blessing for Irving Berlin. (Library of Congress) his Jewish identity. The emphasis in 1917 was on assimilating, which Berlin acknowledged did marry in 1925. “Blue Skies” was Berlin’s celebration by collaborating with George Meyer and Edgar Leslie of the birth of their first daughter a year later. on a song called “Let’s All Be Americans Now,” proThe advent of sound in motion pictures provided a moting an end to ethnicity in the face of worldwide connew showcase for Berlin’s talents. The first talking picflict. ture, The Jazz Singer (1927), featured Berlin’s “Blue Drafted into the U.S. Army, thirty-year-old Berlin Skies.” Many songwriters became attached to film stuwas commissioned to write a review for servicemen to dios, but Berlin’s name was such a draw in itself that his boost morale. The result was Yip Yip Yaphank, which inname often dominated the marquis in films such as Top troduced the hits “Mandy” and “Oh, How I Hate to Get Hat (1935), On the Avenue (1937), and Holiday Inn Up in the Morning.” One song cut from the show, “God (1942), which introduced the classic “White Christmas.” Bless America,” would become one of Berlin’s most reWorld War II brought Berlin back to patriotism, recorded songs and an unofficial national anthem. sulting in the stage show This Is the Army (1943), conAfter the war, most of his big hits in the 1920’s were verted immediately into a successful film with Ronald romantic ballads: “What’ll I Do?” (1924), “Always” Reagan. After touring for three and a half years with the (1925), and “Blue Skies” (1926). Perhaps not coincidenshow, Berlin returned to Broadway with Annie Get Your tally, the 1920’s also saw Berlin’s courtship with his secGun (1946), Miss Liberty (1949), Call Me Madam (1950), ond wife, Ellin Mackay, a society heiress whose father, and, after a decade of retirement, Mr. President (1962). head of a telegraph service, vowed she would marry the Berlin died in his sleep in 1989 at the age of 101. songwriter only over his dead body. Nevertheless, they 113
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Significance The Americanization of “Yiddishe Musik” Jerome Kern once said that Berlin did not have a place in American music; he was Irving Berlin’s post-World War I emphasis on assimilating—in the American music. Berlin dominated twentiwords of his song “Let’s All Be Americans Now”—seems to pull eth century music in quantity (more than against any ethnic or religious identity, despite his family’s pilgrimage fifteen hundred published songs), quality to America to escape anti-Semitic persecution. In a sense he even secu(twenty-five number one hits certified by larized Americans’ Christian holidays by turning, in Philip Roth’s words, Easter into “a fashion show” (“Easter Parade,” 1933) and Christthe American Society of Composers, Aumas into “a holiday about snow” (“White Christmas,” 1940). As music thors and Publishers), and longevity (sixty professor and historian Jack Gottlieb has demonstrated, Berlin’s roots years of songwriting). In addition to nuin Jewish sacred music and Yiddish theatrical music are evident in his merous awards from the entertainment inpopular songs, especially in his early, prewar songs mostly forgotten. dustry, the United States recognized Berlin Songs such as “Yiddle on Your Fiddle, Play Some Ragtime” (1909), with the Medal of Merit for This Is the “Yiddisha Eyes” (1910), “Yiddisha Nightingale,” (1912) and “The Army in 1944, a Congressional Gold Medal Yiddisha Professor” (1912) exploited the Yiddish character Abie the for “God Bless America” in 1954, a PresiFiddler. Gottlieb’s musical quotation shows that the opening seven dential Medal of Freedom in 1977, and a notes of “Steppin’ out with My Baby” (sung by Fred Astaire in Easter Medal of Liberty in 1986. Berlin charted at Parade, 1948) exactly correspond to the Purim song “Haynt iz Purim” age ninety-four with Taco’s 1982 cover of (today is Purim) by Mordecai Rivesman, though its likeness is obscured by Berlin’s syncopation. Similarly, Berlin’s classic “There’s No Busi“Puttin’on the Ritz,” which peaked at numness Like Show Business” (1954) echoes the Passover Seder sequence ber four, and posthumously with Celine Ma nishtano (why is this night different?), which Berlin would have Dion’s version of “God Bless America,” sang as a child. Berlin’s father, his grandfather, and great-grandfather which reached number fourteen in 2001. were all cantors, and he remembered singing with his father in temple. Always a leading contributor to Jewish charities, Berlin was honored in 1944 by the National Conference for Christians and Jews for promoting religious and racial section on Berlin with side-by-side comparisons of harmony. Jewish sacred music and Berlin’s songs shows a clear —John R. Holmes influence. Jablonski, Edward. Irving Berlin: American Troubador. Further Reading New York: Henry Holt, 1999. Jablonski is nearly exBarrett, Mary Ellin. Irving Berlin: A Daughter’s Memoir. haustive in his coverage of Berlin’s songs, including a New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994. Family memodetailed discography and filmography. ries (and rare photos) enhance this biography, written Leopold, David. Irving Berlin’s Show Business: Broadby the daughter for whom Berlin wrote “Blue Skies.” way, Hollywood, America. New York: Harry N. Bergreen, Laurence. As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Abrams, 2005. This study parallels cultural events in Irving Berlin. New York: Viking Press, 1990. At 658 various periods of Berlin’s life with his own works. pages, this is a thorough and balanced biography of Whitcomb, Ian. Irving Berlin and Ragtime America. Lonthe composer. don: Century-Hitchinson, 1987. A study of Berlin’s Furstinger, Nancy. Say It with Music: The Story of Irving music focusing on the influence of modern jazz in its Berlin. Greensboro, N.C.: Morgan Reynolds, 2003. creation. This brief biographical introduction (128 pages) in the Modern Music Masters series is rich in photoSee also: Harold Arlen; Sammy Cahn; George Gershgraphs. win; Ira Gershwin; Yip Harburg; Jerome Kern; Jule Gottlieb, Jack. Funny, It Doesn’t Sound Jewish. Albany: Styne. State University of New York Press, 2004. A brief
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Ben Bernanke Economist, scholar, and politician Bernanke, the fourteenth chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, oversaw economic recovery efforts during periods of extreme financial instability. Nominated to successive terms by presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Bernanke had been an economist at Princeton and chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. Born: December 13, 1953; Augusta, Georgia Also known as: Ben Shalom Bernanke (full name) Areas of achievement: Economics; government and politics
crimination in the still-volatile South in the wake of desegregation. Additionally, the Bernankes were one of the only Jewish families in the community, and his parents feared that at Harvard he would lose touch with his religious heritage. However, Bernanke was eager to leave Dillon, not only because of the racially charged climate but also because there were few outlets for his intelligence. As a senior in high school, Ben had taught himself calculus (the school did not offer any calculus courses), became a speed-reader, and scored a 1,590 out of 1,600 on his Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). He played the alto saxophone in the school’s marching band before graduating at the top of his class in 1971. At Harvard, Bernanke studied economics after considering both English and mathematics as potential majors, eventually graduating summa cum laude in 1975 before attending MIT. There, he studied under current Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer and met his future wife Anna, who was attending Wellesley College at the time. Bernanke received his Ph.D. in 1979, and he married Anna the day after her graduation.
Early Life Ben Bernanke (bur-NAN-kee) was born in Augusta, Georgia, and grew up in the small community of Dillon, South Carolina. His paternal grandfather, Jonas, immigrated to the United States from Austria-Hungary in the early 1920’s. An Army officer during World War I, Jonas worked in the drugstore business in New York until the stock market crash of 1929 forced him to relocate to the South. In Dillon, Bernanke’s grandfather founded Jay Bee Drug Company in 1941 and ran it along with his two Life’s Work sons, Philip and Mort. In the absence of many regular Bernanke served as a professor at Stanford Univerdoctors in the community, the brothers were known to sity’s graduate business school between 1979 and 1985. give advice to customers on aspects of healthy living as Afterward, he had stints as a visiting and tenured profesthey filled their prescriptions. Philip’s wife Edna had sor at New York University and Princeton University, rebeen an elementary school teacher until Bernanke was born in 1953. The eldest of three, Bernanke was a precocious child who displayed an early knack for TIME’s Person of the Year for 2009 words and numbers. He could add and subtract at age three and learned chess at age six. He While the title is neither an award nor an endorsement (previous skipped first grade and eventually won the state winners include Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler), there are few spelling bee at age eleven, finishing twentybetter markers of a group’s or an individual’s influence than being considered for Time’s person of the year. In 2009, the magazine’s sixth in the national competition only after faileditors chose Ben Bernanke over such nominees as record-setting ing to spell the word “edelweiss.” Olympic track star Usain Bolt, commander of the war in AfghaniKnown as one of the most intelligent students stan General Stanley McChrystal, Chinese workers who contribin Dillon by the time he was in high school, uted to the fastest-growing major economy in the world, and Bernanke wrote poetry and even penned a novel Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. based on the school’s football team and the In the magazine’s estimation at least, there was no bigger story community’s experience with integration. His in 2009 than the economy, and Bernanke was able to rein it in, haltfriendship with Kenneth Manning, a black stuing many of the recession’s major negative effects while simultadent and fellow intellectual who would go on to neously bringing new levels of focus and scrutiny to the institution teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technolthat some have even labeled the fourth branch of United States ogy (MIT) after Bernanke joined him at Hargovernment. vard, caused him to be the target of some dis115
Bernanke, Ben spectively, becoming chair of Princeton’s Economics Department by 1996. Throughout his academic career, Bernanke studied Great Depression-era economics, in particular, the role played by the U.S. Federal Reserve in causing the meltdown of the financial system. Influenced by economist Milton Friedman and critiques involving interest rates and money supply, Bernanke demonstrated in his research that the Great Depression was also exacerbated by the actions of banks and private financial institutions, which decreased loans and restricted spending on pursuits they deemed too risky when faced with relatively small downturns in the economy. According to Bernanke, the financial shocks in the early 1930’s reduced both credit availability and demand, creating an economic snowball effect he referred to as the “financial accelerator.” Though he was seen by many colleagues as having few overtly political inclinations, Bernanke served in a public capacity as a school board member in Montgomery Township, New Jersey, between 1994 and 2000. He also served as editor of the American Economic Review before taking leave from Princeton in 2002 to become a member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System. Just three years later, he was appointed chair-
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Jewish Americans man of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, and on February 1, 2006, he was nominated chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve by President George W. Bush, succeeding Alan Greenspan. Although Greenspan said he and Bernanke rarely differed on economic beliefs, Bernanke did make a few changes when he took over as chairman, some of which included subprime-lending reforms and a plan to promote transparency and accountability at the Federal Reserve. However, neither Greenspan nor Bernanke anticipated the economic downturn and eventual recession that began in December of 2007, which was spurred by several factors, including risky mortgages and years of imprudent lending practices by multiple banks. Bernanke and the Federal Reserve were criticized for not ramping up oversight efforts and bailing out lenders such as American International Group (AIG) and Bear Stearns, which had dispensed large bonuses to top executives even as they were preparing to file for bankruptcy. Nevertheless, Bernanke was praised for many of his actions. To counter the effects of the recession, he dramatically lowered interest rates, pumped cash into the economy, and implemented temporary emergency finance programs to keep open multiple credit channels. He also backed a $787 billion federal stimulus plan and had the Federal Reserve purchase billions in mortgage bonds to revive the housing market. While many of the long-term effects of Bernanke’s actions as chairman are still being evaluated, he is credited by many for helping to allay the worst effects of the recession. Bernanke was nominated for a second term in the chairmanship on August 25, 2009, by President Barack Obama, who cited Bernanke’s decisiveness and imagination in confronting the recession as reasons for his renomination. Members of the U.S. Senate approved Bernanke on January 28, 2010, by a vote of 70-30, the lowest margin for a chairman in history. Significance When confronted with one of the most pressing economic challenges since the Great Depression, Bernanke was widely lauded for his actions as chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. In the process of slowing the recession, he worked closely with Treasury secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner and set the course for expanded government action during the financial crisis. At the same time, he has been criticized for allying himself with Wall Street banks and ignoring worries about inflation and unemployment. His expansion of the
Jewish Americans Federal Reserve’s authority has resulted in calls from Congress and elsewhere to strip Bernanke and the institution of some of its powers. While the effects of some of his actions remain unclear, Bernanke has brought more visibility to Federal Reserve and remains the driving force behind recovery efforts from the late 2000’s recession in the United States and much of the world. —Andrew P. Maloney Further Reading Bernanke, Ben. Essays on the Great Depression. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. Original Bernanke essays that highlight his findings about the “financial accelerator” and how the Federal Reserve influenced Great Depression-era economics. Grunwald, Michael. “Person of the Year 2009: Ben Bernanke.” Time (December, 2009). Bernanke’s “Per-
Bernstein, Carl son of the Year” profile includes anecdotes from Bernanke’s childhood and professorial career and specifics about Bernanke’s actions during the financial crisis. Harris, Ethan S. Ben Bernanke’s Fed: The Federal Reserve After Greenspan. Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2008. A look at the basic functions of the Federal Reserve and how the institution will likely be impacted by Bernanke and his economic beliefs. Wessel, David. In Fed We Trust. New York: Crown, 2009. An exposé of the actions taken by the U.S. Federal Reserve during the financial crisis of the late 2000’s. Chronicles Bernanke as well as other major government players during the financial crisis. See also: Kenneth Arrow; Arthur Burns; Milton Friedman; Alan Greenspan; Herbert Stein.
Carl Bernstein Journalist Bernstein and fellow Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward reported the break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate office complex in July, 1972, by operatives associated with President Richard M. Nixon’s reelection campaign. The attention drawn to the incident and its subsequent cover-up led to official investigations that finally brought about Nixon’s resignation. Born: February 14, 1944; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Carl Milton Bernstein (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; journalism Early Life Carl Bernstein (BURN-steen) was born to Albert Bernstein and Sylvia Walker Bernstein, who were active in leftist politics in America and were under frequent surveillance and investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other government agencies for alleged ties to the Communist Party. In a memoir about his parents, Bernstein noted that the FBI kept watch on his Bar Mitzvah, apparently looking for known subversives among the guests. Bernstein was educated primarily in the public schools of the Washington, D.C., area, but occasionally he attended the Cooperative Jewish Children’s School of
Greater Washington. The Jewish education there was heavy on social responsibility and political activism and light on Hebrew language, Torah study, and even the mention of God. Though his mother professed no belief in God, she took social responsibility seriously and was heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement. Bernstein accompanied her on many protest marches and sit-ins during the campaign to end segregation of public facilities in the Washington area. While in high school, Bernstein participated in the Jewish youth organization Aleph Zadik Aleph, and he caused some controversy in trying to prod the group into more activism on civil rights. Bernstein was a poor student in high school, except for assignments that required writing. He learned to type and, with that skill, succeeded in getting a job as a copy boy on The Washington Star when he was sixteen. He eventually became the paper’s leading telephone dictationist, who took down the stories phoned in by reporters. In 1963, he was hired as a reporter for a summer vacancy and managed to continue in this position for several months. While working for The Washington Star, he attended the University of Maryland at College Park but never graduated. After working for a brief time with the Daily Journal in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Bernstein was hired as a reporter for the metropolitan staff at The Washington Post in 1966 and assigned to cover the local police, court matters, and the Virginia state legislature. 117
Bernstein, Carl Life’s Work Both Bernstein and Bob Woodward (who had been at The Washington Post about a year at the time) were relatively young reporters without a great deal of significant experience when the Watergate story broke. When the break-in at the Watergate office complex was discovered, Woodward and Bernstein were at first working on separate and relatively minor aspects of the story. The national media soon decided the story was not worthy of further attention, but Woodward and Bernstein continued to investigate and follow up leads. Editors at The Washington Post, including executive editor Ben Bradlee, encouraged the two reporters to collaborate on the story in depth. Over a period of several months, they wrote numerous front-page stories about the break-in and its subsequent cover-up. A secret source, who came to be called “Deep Throat,” provided leads and confirmed when the reporters were on the right track. This source, who was eventually revealed as W. Mark Felt, an FBI official, told the reporters to follow the money trail, and they were eventually able to show that the break-in was engineered and financed by people associated with Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President. Eventually, other journalists began to realize there was more to the story, and Watergate became a major political crisis for Nixon’s administration. Several members of his administration were forced to resign because of their involvement in the
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Jewish Americans scandal, and some went to prison, in most cases because of attempts to cover up connections between the break-in and people working in the White House. Eventually, it became clear that Nixon would face impeachment proceedings if he remained in office, so on August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned as president. Nixon always denied ordering the break-in or having any prior knowledge of the incident, but he eventually admitted that he had created an environment in which aides might have concluded that such action was acceptable and that he tried to cover up the incident once he was aware of it. Primarily because of Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting, The Washington Post received a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1973. Woodward and Bernstein published their first book on their coverage of the Watergate story, All the President’s Men, in April, 1974—four months before Nixon left office. In 1976, they published a sequel, The Final Days, which was an in-depth look at the last fifteen months of Nixon’s presidency. In 1976, All the President’s Men was made into a popular film in which Robert Redford portrayed Woodward and Dustin Hoffman played the role of Bernstein. Since the Watergate era, Bernstein has worked in various capacities as a writer and television reporter. He frequently appears on television news shows or political talk shows. He has written numerous books, mostly dealing with political subjects, but also one on Pope John Paul II. From 1976 to 1980, Bernstein was married to the author and filmmaker Nora Ephron. When they divorced after revelations of Bernstein’s involvement in an extramarital affair, Ephron wrote a thinly veiled autobiographical novel about their marriage titled Heartburn (1983). This was later made into a film by the same name in which Jack Nicholson portrayed a character allegedly based on Bernstein. Significance The kind of hard-hitting investigative reporting that Woodward and Bernstein did in their coverage of Watergate was not new—political scandal has been a favorite subject of American journalists since at least the days of the early twentieth century muckrakers. However, the vast system of corruption that came to be known simply as “Watergate” was one of biggest political crises in modern American history. When many, even among
Jewish Americans the media, seemed ready to accept Nixon’s characterization of the break-in at the Watergate as “a third-rate burglary,” and thus unworthy of extended attention, Woodward and Bernstein stuck with the story, which, in the end, led to the investigations by federal officials that finally forced Nixon to resign rather than face impeachment proceedings. —Mark S. Joy Further Reading Bernstein, Carl. Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989. Bernstein’s record of his own investigation into the political activities of his parents in the period from the New Deal era through the 1950’s, when they were almost continually under investigation by various government agencies for alleged ties to the Communist Party. _______. “A Reporter’s Assessment.” Afterword to The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. Bernstein wrote this brief afterword for Woodward’s book on Felt, the source known as “Deep Throat,” whose identity the two reporters had kept secret for more than thirty years. Bernstein, Carl, and Bob Woodward. All the President’s Men. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. A booklength retelling of the Watergate investigation and the two reporters’ roles in it. First published four months before Nixon resigned. Shepherd, Alicia C. Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadows of Watergate. New York: Wiley, 2006. A biographical study focusing on the careers of the two reporters in the years since their coverage of Watergate brought them to national attention.
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The Watergate Story In the nearly four decades since reporter Carl Bernstein and his partner Bob Woodward precipitated the Watergate crisis, Bernstein has continued to publish widely and to serve as a commentator on various television shows involving American politics. However, the names “Woodward and Bernstein” will always be linked in the public mind with their reporting that played a major role in awakening attention to the extent and seriousness of the corruption within the Richard M. Nixon administration. Bernstein played a key role in covering what is arguably the major political crisis in American history. Perhaps Bernstein and Woodward’s major accomplishment in the Watergate investigation was simply the determination to keep following their inquiries when other major reporters and media outlets had decided the story had run its course. To many, especially young people, Woodward and Bernstein became national heroes partly because of the popularity of the film version of All The President’s Men. Enrollment in journalism courses surged in universities around the country, as students envisioned emulating the kind of work Woodward and Bernstein had done. In many ways, the reporters themselves became celebrities and an integral part of the story they had covered.
Woodward, Bob, and Carl Bernstein. The Final Days. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976. An in-depth look at the final fifteen months of Nixon’s presidency, leading up to his resignation in August, 1974. See also: Nora Ephron; David Halberstam; Seymour M. Hersh; Ted Koppel; Walter Lippmann; Daniel Schorr.
Elmer Bernstein Musician and composer Bernstein revolutionized the role and importance of film scores. He created the score to fit the film in tone and interpretation, making it an essential component of the film. Born: April 4, 1922; New York, New York Died: August 18, 2004; Ojai, California Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment
Early Life Elmer Bernstein (EHL-muhr BURN-stin) was born in New York City on April 4, 1922. He was the only child of Edward and Selma Bernstein, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father was an English teacher, and both of his parents were interested in the arts and invited artists, writers, and musicians to their home. Elmer Bernstein also was introduced to films at an early age. By 119
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Jazz in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM Elmer Bernstein composed the film score for Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) when he was just beginning his career. Starring Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine, the film told the story of a jazz musician and his struggles with drug addiction. Bernstein, with his keen sense of the importance of the music reflecting the story line and his intention to tell the story musically, became convinced that the film score needed to be primarily jazz. Traditionally, jazz had not been used as a major part of a film score; however, Bernstein boldly wrote a film score that was predominantly jazz. It was very successful. For Bernstein, composing film scores was a creative endeavor in which the composer artistically contributed to the film’s unique statement. This work marked the beginning of a long career in film scoring, during which he revolutionized the art of composing music for films. Beginning with his music for The Man with the Golden Arm, Bernstein enriched the experience of a film’s audience by creating music that helped tell the story.
the time he was seven years old, his grandmother was taking him to see silent films with her. For Bernstein, as for many of his generation, going to the motion-picture theater on Friday night was a regular part of life. As a child, Bernstein took lessons in dancing, painting, acting, and piano. During the time he was taking acting classes at the King Coit Drama School for Children, he appeared in a Broadway production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611). By the time he was twelve years old, he had decided that he preferred piano to the other arts, and he wanted a career as a concert pianist. He received a scholarship to study with Henrietta Michelson, who taught at the Juilliard School of Music. Bernstein was a good student and appeared in a concert at Steinway Hall in New York City just three years later. However, Michelson believed that Bernstein possessed the talent necessary to compose music as well as to play it. She arranged an audition with composer Aaron Copland, who also saw potential in him. As a result, Bernstein began studying composition with Israel Citkowitz, a student of Copland. In 1936, Bernstein received scholarships to study piano and composition at the Chatham Square Music School. He also pursued his training with Roger Sessions, Ivan Langstroth, and Stefan Wolpe. While studying piano and composition, Bernstein completed his secondary education and graduated from Walden School in 1939. On the advice of his parents, he enrolled at New York University, where he took courses in music education. In 1942, his career was interrupted 120
when he was drafted into the United States Army. However, he had the fortune to be assigned to the special services of the Army Air Corps. This assignment gave him the opportunity to continue composing as an arranger for the Army Air Corps Radio and to work with Glenn Miller doing arrangements for the Army Air Force Band.
Life’s Work When he came back from his military service, Bernstein intended to pursue his career as a composer, but he was unable to find employment. He returned to the stage as a concert pianist until 1949. That year he was hired to compose the music for a United Nations radio show. This work led to his being hired by Columbia Pictures to compose the music for the film Saturday’s Hero (1951), and in 1950, he moved to Hollywood. Bernstein spent two years composing film scores. Saturday’s Hero was released in 1951 and Boots Malone was released in 1952. Then, his career suffered another setback. The anti-Communist campaign led by Senator Joseph McCarthy was having its effect in Hollywood. Not only avowed members of the Communist Party but also those with liberal political views were suspected of subversion and prevented from working in the film industry. Although he was not a Communist, Bernstein’s political views were liberal enough to cause him to be blacklisted; his situation was referred to as “graylisted.” Thus, for a time, he was able to obtain work composing only for low-budget films. Then, his career prospects improved. When Cecil B. DeMille was making The Ten Commandments (1956), his film-score composer became ill and was unable to continue. DeMille met with Bernstein and, convinced that Bernstein was not politically dangerous, hired him to do the film’s score. This was the real beginning of Bernstein’s career as a film-score composer. Soon, Bernstein did the music for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), a score in which he used jazz innovatively to reflect the film’s story. This attempt to fit the music to the character and the story of the film was the foundation of Bernstein’s great success as a composer of film scores. He also exhibited a versatility that enabled him to write scores for different kinds of films. The music he composed for The Magnificent Seven (1960) revolutionized the Western film score. Instead of using the traditional “commercial” Western music, Bernstein created a score that used folk music as its base. For To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Bernstein abandoned
Jewish Americans the full orchestra to use only piano and flute in order to reflect the fact that the film’s story is seen simply through a child’s eyes. Bernstein made another innovation in film music when he composed a score appropriate for a drama to accompany the comedy National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978). Bernstein continued to compose film scores, still innovating and adding to his craft, into his seventies. During his career, he received many awards and nominations, including fourteen Academy Award nominations, an Academy Award for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), two Golden Globe Awards, and several lifetime achievement awards. Bernstein died of cancer in his sleep on August 18, 2004, in Ojai, California. Significance Bernstein made a significant contribution to the entertainment industry with his innovations in the composition of film scores. He viewed the music as an integral part of the film. For him, the score needed to reflect what themes and moods the film was presenting. The film score played a part equal to the dialogue, the action, and the setting in revealing the tone, the characterization, and the import of the film. He opened the score to all genres of music, and he shifted away from generalized types of music, especially for Western films, to a score marked individually for the film. Bernstein’s sense of the film’s story line and its musical interpretation made him an important influence in raising film scores to the level of art. —Shawncey Webb
Bernstein, Leonard Further Reading Burt, George. The Art of Film Music. Boston, Mass.: Northeastern University Press, 1995. In-depth study of the craft of composing film music. Addresses philosophical, aesthetic, and technical aspects of writing film scores. Discusses Bernstein’s work on The Man with the Golden Arm and Torn Curtain (1966). Cooke, Melvyn. A History of Film Music. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Excellent comprehensive discussion of film music both in the United States and abroad. Good coverage of the contributions of Bernstein. Morgan, David. Knowing the Score: Film Composers Talk About the Art, Craft, Blood, Sweat, and Tears of Writing for Cinema. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. Interviews with film score composers that provide excellent understanding of what is involved in creating music for films. Two interviews with Bernstein, one on The Grifters (1990), one on Cape Fear (1991). Pendergast, Roy M. Film Music: A Neglected Art. 2d ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. Comprehensive treatment of the composition of film music. History, technique, technology, and aesthetics. Includes sections on Bernstein and a good bibliography. See also: Leonard Bernstein; Danny Elfman; Marvin Hamlisch; Bernard Herrmann; Randy Newman.
Leonard Bernstein Conductor, educator, and composer One of the youngest to lead the New York Philharmonic and a versatile composer, Bernstein used the medium of television to bring classical music to a wide audience, especially young people. Born: August 25, 1918; Lawrence, Massachusetts Died: October 14, 1990; New York, New York Also known as: Louis Bernstein (birth name) Areas of achievement: Education; music; theater Early Life Leonard Bernstein (LEHN-urd BURN-stin) was born to Samuel and Jennie Bernstein, Russian immigrants. Although intelligent, Leonard Bernstein was a sickly child until he discovered the piano at the age of ten. He
practiced incessantly, and, amazingly, his health improved. He studied with a series of teachers until he met Helen Coates, who encouraged his playing and compositions, and ultimately she became his secretary. Bernstein’s love of music caused considerable friction with his father, the owner of a beauty supply company, who was concerned that his firstborn son would not be able to make a living in music. Bernstein’s two younger siblings, Shirley, born in 1923, and Burton, born in 1932, would be his lifelong friends, companions, and confidants. Bernstein’s father was raised Orthodox and was descended from a long line of rabbis, and the family attended Temple Mishkan Tefila in Roxbury, a Boston suburb. Bernstein was captivated by the rich musical tradition of the synagogue, which, although Conservative, 121
Bernstein, Leonard included an organ and a mixed choir, directed by Solomon Braslavsky. Much of this music would influence Bernstein’s compositions, which were often infused with Jewish melodic motifs. During his Bar Mitzvah, Bernstein led the service and gave a speech in both Hebrew and English. Bernstein attended the William Lloyd Garrison School and the Boston Latin School and later graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1939. While at Harvard, he met the Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, who suggested that Bernstein study conducting, which he did at the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia. In 1937, Bernstein met Aaron Copland, who became his lifelong friend and mentor. Bernstein was one of the first conducting students at the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he became a protégé of Serge Koussevitzky, the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Koussevitzky tried to convince Bernstein to change his name to the more Anglo-sounding Leonard S. Burns, but Bernstein refused. On his twenty-fifth birthday, Bernstein was offered the position of assistant conductor of the New York
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Jewish Americans Philharmonic and, only three months later, on November 14, 1943, conducted his first performance with the orchestra as a last-minute replacement. Life’s Work After his auspicious debut, Bernstein served as a guest conductor all over the world yet still found time to compose art music, including symphonies (Jeremiah, 1942; The Age of Anxiety, 1949; and Kaddish, 1963) and musicals (Fancy Free, 1944, and On the Town, 1944). He was also in demand as a pianist. He was frequently criticized for being unable to concentrate on one aspect of music. In the 1940’s, Bernstein made several trips to Palestine, often performing on the front lines during wartime. He was offered the position of conductor of the Israel Philharmonic but respectfully declined. Throughout his life, he maintained strong ties with Israel. The 1950’s brought much success for Bernstein with his opera Trouble in Tahiti (1952), the film score for On the Waterfront (1954), and two musicals, Wonderful Town (1953) and West Side Story (1957). He served on the faculty of Brandeis University, commuting from New York. He also began his long association with television, first with his series Omnibus, in which he made classical music comprehensible and entertaining to a mass audience. This trait would serve him well with his televised Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic. He became conductor of that orchestra in 1958, a post which he retained until 1969. In 1951, he married Felicia Montealegre y Cohn, the daughter of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. Felicia converted to Judaism before the wedding, held at Temple Mishkan Tefila. They had three children: Jaime, born in 1952; Alexander, born in 1955; and Nina, born in 1962. However, all was not perfect. Candide (1956), based on the story by Voltaire, was intended as a satire of the Senator Joseph McCarthy-era hearings that accused many people in creative fields of being associated with the Communist Party and therefore treasonous. Candide was revised several times but never achieved widespread acclaim. Bernstein’s 1970 work, Mass, written for the opening of the Kennedy Center, alienated Jews who felt he should not compose such a work, and Catholics, who felt he treated one of their most sacred rites in a sacrilegious manner. That same year, his wife hosted a party to support the Black Panthers, a group known for their violence and anti-Semitism. As a result, Bernstein was booed at the New York Philharmonic.
Jewish Americans His reputation later improved. In 1973, Bernstein delivered the six Norton Lectures at Harvard and, the same year, conducted his Chichester Psalms (1965) at the Vatican. He began a long association with the Vienna Philharmonic, where he championed the works of Gustav Mahler. Later compositions include the ballet Dybbuk (1974), the flute concerto Halil (1981), A Quiet Place (1983), Arias and Barcarolles (1988), and Jubilee Games, later called Concerto for Orchestra (1986), his final composition. A lifelong smoker, Bernstein died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-two. Significance Bernstein proved that an American-born Jew could ably lead the top-rated orchestra in the United States, a feat never before achieved. Through his compositions, especially West Side Story, he bridged the gap between classical and popular music, thereby reaching a large and diverse audience. Moreover, Bernstein showed that he was proud of his Jewish heritage, both by incorporating Jewish aspects into his works and by supporting Jewish causes, especially Zionism. Bernstein’s activism, which began when he was a Harvard student, extended throughout the course of his life. He championed numerous causes, notably nuclear disarmament, environmental issues, and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) research. He performed at the Berlin Wall in 1989 as it was toppled and was an outspoken advocate for the arts. Many of his compositions deal with the crisis of faith on some level, but Bernstein ultimately believed in the triumph of the human spirit. His activism on behalf of numerous causes illustrates the concept of tikkun olam, the repair of the world, espoused in the Jewish scripture. Above all, he was passionate about music and wanted to share it with as many people as possible. —Ann Glazer Niren Further Reading Bernstein, Burton. Family Matters: Sam, Jennie, and the Kids. New York: Summit Books, 1982. This often humorous book gives an insider’s view of Bernstein, his parents, and his siblings. The book has a significant Jewish focus.
Bernstein, Leonard
Music Educator Although Leonard Bernstein was a multitalented individual, his greatest strength was his ability to explain music to a widely diverse audience. He was able to do so in every aspect of his career. When conducting, he often held preconcert discussions on the pieces to be performed, especially when dealing with New Music. With an orchestra, he had the uncanny knack for being able to succinctly explain the mood and effect he was trying to achieve. He could even do so in multiple languages. In his television appearances, he helped make classical music understandable and interesting to an audience that thrived mostly on rock and roll. As a professor at Brandeis, and on the faculty at Tanglewood, he used his communication skills in much the same way. As a composer, Bernstein conveyed numerous stories through music, many of which stemmed from his Judaic background. Bernstein believed that he was a teacher at heart, and in this way, he continued his family’s ancestral rabbinic tradition. Although he did not succeed his father in business, he achieved success as an outstanding educator and champion of music.
Bernstein, Leonard. Findings. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Although not an autobiography in the traditional sense, this book contains articles, letters, poems, and essays written throughout Bernstein’s life and even includes his Harvard thesis. Burton, Humphrey. Leonard Bernstein. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Burton’s book is a comprehensive biography on Bernstein. It includes numerous photographs and detailed discussions of some of his works. Laird, Paul. Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research. New York: Routledge, 2002. Anyone undertaking research on Bernstein needs to consult this painstakingly thorough work, which lists everything written by and about Bernstein up to 2001. Oja, Carol J., and Kay Kaufman Shelemay. “Leonard Bernstein’s Jewish Boston: Cross-Disciplinary Research in the Classroom.” Journal of the Society for American Music 3, no. 1 (February, 2009): 3-33. This article evolved from a Harvard seminar that examined various facets of Bernstein’s Boston roots; the entire issue of the journal is devoted to Bernstein. See also: Elmer Bernstein; Itzhak Perlman; André Previn; Jerome Robbins; Isaac Stern.
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Hans Albrecht Bethe German-born physicist, scholar, and inventor Bethe discovered the process that produces energy in stars, played a central role in laying the foundations for quantum electrodynamics, and made important contributions to the understanding of nuclear physics, atomic physics, solid-state physics, and astrophysics. Born: July 2, 1906; Strassburg, Germany (now Strasbourg, France) Died: March 6, 2005; Ithaca, New York Also known as: “The Titan of Physics” Area of achievement: Science and technology Early Life Born to a Protestant father, who was a professor of physiology, and a Jewish mother, Hans Albrecht Bethe (hahnz AHL-brehkt BAY-tuh) was reared as a Christian. He developed a passion for history, stamp collecting, and mountain climbing and attended a gymnasium in Frankfurt from 1915 to 1924. Inspired by his mathematical ability, he studied physics at the University of Frankfurt and earned his doctorate in theoretical physics from the University of Munich in 1928 under the tutelage of Arnold Sommerfeld. In 1929, he developed the basic concepts of atomic energy-level splitting in a solid when an atom is inserted into a crystal. He also developed a theory on the order and disorder in alloys. While he was working at the University of Munich between 1929 and 1933, Bethe served postdoctoral stints at the University of Cambridge and at the Institute of Physics in Rome, where he worked in Enrico Fermi’s laboratory. During the winter semester of 1932-1933, he was an assistant professor of physics at the University of Tübingen in Germany. When the Nazi regime came to power in 1933, he was dismissed from his professorship because his mother was Jewish. He emigrated to England in the latter part of 1933, where he served as a lecturer at the University of Manchester. Working with Rudolf Peierls, he developed a theory of the deuteron in 1934. In 1935, he accepted a faculty position at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, which he held for the rest of his career. In 1939, he married Rose Ewald, and they reared two children. Life’s Work In 1935, Bethe discovered the nuclear reactions that produce energy in stars, the carbon-nitrogen cycle in bright stars and the proton-proton reaction in fainter 124
stars. Between 1935 and 1938, he resolved some discrepancies in the nuclear mass scale, predicted many nuclear reaction cross sections, and, along with Milton Stanley Livingston and Robert Bacher, wrote a series of papers that served as the textbook for nuclear physics for several years. During the summer of 1942, Bethe, Robert Oppenheimer, and others at the University of California, Berkeley, outlined the first designs for the atomic bomb. Soon thereafter, Bethe was appointed director of the Theoretical Division for the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos as part of the Manhattan Project. He calculated the critical mass of uranium-235, parameters for the chain reaction of nuclear fission in an exploding atomic bomb, and, along with Richard Feynman, the explosive yield of an atomic bomb. In 1943 and 1944, he developed the theory for the implosion method for atomic bombs, which was used for the Trinity test in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, and for the “Fat Man” bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. After World War II, Bethe played a key role in the development of the hydrogen bomb. Although he opposed the project, he continued to return to Los Alamos to act as a consultant during H-bomb development. In 1947, he was the first to correctly explain the Lamb shift in the spectrum of hydrogen, which gave impetus to Julian Schwinger, Feynman, and other physicists to develop quantum electrodynamics. Bethe had the ability to use the minimal mathematical complexity necessary to solve any problem at hand. His approximations unveiled the simplicity and beauty of the problem he was addressing. In addition to the Nobel Prize in Physics (1967), his expertise and contributions to many areas of physics were rewarded with the Henry Draper Medal (1947), the Max Planck Medal (1955), the Enrico Fermi Award (1961), the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1961), the Rumford Prize (1963), the Lomonosov Gold Medal (1989), the Oersted Medal (1993), and the Bruce Medal (2001). Bethe died at ninety-eight after a long illness at his home in Ithaca. Significance A giant of the golden age of twentieth century physics, Bethe developed the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis that explained how the sun shines and that formed the foundation for the development of nuclear fusion energy. For this work, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967.
Jewish Americans His explanation of the Lamb shift played a central role in the development of modern quantum electrodynamics. Although he was a key figure in the building of the first atomic bomb, Bethe was a strong advocate for the peaceful use of nuclear energy for the generation of electricity. He campaigned against nuclear testing and the nuclear arms race and was influential in promoting the signing of the 1963 partial ban of atmospheric nuclear tests and the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He served as a scientific adviser to several U.S. presidents on ways to limit nuclear proliferation and deter further development of atomic weapons. —Alvin K. Benson Further Reading Beyer, Don E. The Manhattan Project: America Makes the First Atomic Bomb. New York: F. Watts, 1991. Discusses the development of the project that led to the first atomic bomb, Bethe’s contributions to it, and the devastating effects and political consequences.
Bettelheim, Bruno Brown, Gerald Edward, ed. Hans Bethe and His Physics. Hackensack, N.J.: World Scientific, 2006. With treatises prepared by many physics experts, Bethe’s work and his contributions to nuclear physics, solid-state physics, and astrophysics are clearly explained. This volume also presents insights into the life of this great scientist. Schweber, Silvan S. In the Shadow of the Bomb: Bethe, Oppenheimer, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. Schweber unveils a deep appreciation for the scientific abilities, political enlightenment, and personal integrity of Bethe. Oppenheimer and Bethe are linked together in their opposition to the H-bomb project and their spiritual commitment to a world redeemed by love. See also: Albert Einstein; Richard P. Feynman; J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Bruno Bettelheim Austrian-born educator, philosopher, and psychologist A pioneer in the study of autism, Bettelheim was an early advocate of milieu therapy for troubled children. In addition, he argued for educational reform for the general population of students. Born: August 28, 1903; Vienna, Austria Died: March 13, 1990; Silver Spring, Maryland Areas of achievement: Education; psychology Early Life Bruno Bettelheim (BREW-noh BEHT-tel-him) was born in Vienna, Austria, into a family of secular Jews. His father, Anton, was a lumber merchant; his mother was Pauline Seidler. As a child, Bettelheim, who was often ill, spent much time reading. He also suffered from poor eyesight and felt insecure about his appearance. His childhood home, plagued with the effects of his father’s syphilis, was not a happy one. His older sister, Margarethe, eventually committed suicide, and Bettelheim fought a lifelong battle with depression. During high school, Bettelheim joined a German youth group movement, which promoted educational reform. Becoming acquainted with the work of Sigmund Freud through interest in a teenage girl, Bettelheim
dreamed of studying psychology in college; however, after the death of his father in 1926, he was forced to leave Vienna University in order to take over the family lumber business. In 1930, Bettelheim married Regina (Gina) Alstadt. Though the couple was financially prosperous, the marriage was not a happy one. Teaching at a local Montessori school, Gina became acquainted with an American girl, who would come to live in the Bettelheim home for a period of seven years. Bettelheim described this girl as autistic. Both Bettelheim and his wife completed psychoanalysis while in Vienna. Bettelheim became involved with Gertrude (Trude) Weinfeld, who encouraged him to return to school. In 1938, he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy, writing a dissertation in the discipline of aesthetics. This same year, Adolf Hitler took over Austria. Although Gina immigrated to America, Bettelheim remained in Austria to take care of his mother and his sister. He was arrested by the Nazis and deported to Dachau, a concentration camp, but soon was relocated to Buchenwald. After his release in 1939, he immediately immigrated to the United States. Upon his arrival in the United States, Bettelheim’s marriage ended. He and Gina divorced in 1941. He im125
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mediately married Weinfeld. Bettelheim accepted a teaching position at Rockford College, outside Chicago. His wife gave birth to their first child, Ruth, in 1942, and they had two more children, Naomi and Eric. Bettelheim published his first academic article in 1943, “Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations,” based on his experience in the concentration camps.
of their homes and placed in a more hospitable environment. The Orthogenic School provided full-time care in the form of milieu therapy. In addition to his work teaching and directing the Orthogenic School, Bettelheim was a prolific writer, publishing both academic scholarship and works for a general audience. He was a popular author, known for his skill in storytelling and his lack of technical jargon. Life’s Work Three of his early books originated specifically from his In 1944, Bettelheim acquired United States citizenwork at the school: Love Is Not Enough (1950), Truants ship. He also accepted a position at the University of from Life (1955), and The Empty Fortress (1967). DiaChicago as an assistant professor and director of the Orlogues with Mothers, published in 1962, originated from thogenic School, a residential program for emotionally a weekly question-and-answer session Bettelheim held disturbed children. He reorganized the school, limiting at the University of Chicago between 1948 and 1952. He entrance to less disabled children and extending the upalso used this material for a column in Ladies’ Home per age limit, thereby allowing the school the opportuJournal, a popular women’s magazine. The Children of nity to rehabilitate its students more fully before they rethe Dream, published in 1969, documented Bettelheim’s turned to society. He also hired young, inexperienced visit to Israel and study of child rearing in the kibbutz, a staff members so he could train them in his own methods, utopian agricultural collective community. which consisted of a combination of observation of the Following his retirement from the University of Chistudent’s behavior and introspection on the part of the cago and the Orthogenic School in 1973, Bettelheim observer. moved with his wife to California for the climate. He Bettelheim applied what he had learned through his taught at Stanford University and, in his writing, turned experience in the concentration camps to his work at the to the needs of mainstream children. The Uses of EnOrthogenic School. He conceived that the suffering of chantment, which argues for the value of fairy tales in the the withdrawn children he observed was similar to the inner development of a child, was published in 1976. suffering of the victims of the Nazi work camps during Partnering with Karen Zelen for On Learning to Read, World War II. He postulated that these children, like published in 1981, he similarly argued for the inclusion other victims in extreme situations, had lost their humanof meaningful reading material in the curriculum for ity from living in a hostile environment, one largely creyoung children. ated by their parents, most specifically their mothers. Bettelheim returned to his interest in the Nazis, pubTherefore, he thought these children should be taken out lishing The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass Age in 1974 and Surviving and Other Essays in 1979. He also recalled his interest in Freud with Freud and Man’s Soul, published in 1982, and Freud’s Scholarship on the Holocaust Vienna and Other Essays, published in 1990. Bettelheim’s wife died in 1984 after a long Bruno Bettelheim produced the first published scholarship on bout with cancer. Bettelheim suffered from poor the Holocaust. Although some firsthand accounts had appeared, health in his later years. After living for a short “Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations,” published in The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1943, was time with his eldest daughter, Ruth, and her two the first systematic account to analyze the dehumanizing methods young children, he moved into a nursing home of the Nazi machine. Before publication, the article was rejected in Maryland. He committed suicide in 1990. by various journals because of the lack of documentation for its research. Detained in two German work camps, Bettelheim was not allowed to keep notes, relying purely on memory. Bettelheim’s remarks after the publication of Anne Frank’s Het Achterhuis (1947; The Diary of a Young Girl, 1952) stirred controversy and were seen by some as anti-Semitic. He argued that the Jews, as illustrated in this book, walked quietly and obediently to their own deaths when they should have fought to save their lives.
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Significance Although Bettelheim’s theories about the etiology of autism have been disproved, he was one of the first researchers to study this still somewhat mysterious condition. Although his statistical research at the Orthogenic School has been questioned, because of the lack of docu-
Jewish Americans mentation and follow-up studies, many of his students, who entered as seemingly hopeless cases, eventually left the school to live productive lives. The Uses of Enchantment, one of Bettelheim’s most popular books, won both a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award. This book, along with On Learning to Read, encouraged professional educators and parents to provide children with meaningful reading materials. Similarly, he argued that engagement in meaningful activity, such as public service, would discourage college-age students from disruptive behavior. —Nettie Farris Further Reading Angres, Ronald. “Who Really Was Bruno Bettelheim?” Commentary 90, no. 4 (October, 1990): 26-30. Written by a former student, this short essay details some of the influences on Bettelheim’s theory of education. Bettelheim, Bruno. “Student Revolt.” Vital Speeches of the Day 35, no. 13 (April 14, 1969): 405-410. Text of Bettelheim’s speech presented to the U.S. House of Representatives’Special Subcommittee on Education on March 20, 1969. Pollak, Richard. The Creation of Dr. B. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Written by the brother of a
Bikel, Theodore former patient of Bettelheim, this highly readable biography develops an unflattering portrait of this controversial figure. Raines, Theron. Rising to the Light: A Portrait of Bruno Bettelheim. New York: Knopf, 2002. This full-length biography, written by Bettelheim’s literary agent, largely portrays Bettelheim as a teacher and an educator. Based on interviews with Bettelheim and former counselors at the Orthogenic School, and material from Bettelheim’s publications. Sutton, Nina. Bettelheim: A Life and a Legacy. Translated by David Sharp. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. A comprehensive biography of Bettelheim, this volume confronts the derogatory allegations made against this complex man immediately following his death. Willhauck, Susan. “Identity, Morality, and Fantasy in the Works of Bruno Bettelheim: Implications for Religious Education.” Religious Education 93, no. 2 (Spring, 1998): 156-172. This highly readable scholarly article provides background on Bettelheim and applies principles of his work to religious education. See also: Joyce Brothers; Jerome Bruner; Albert Ellis; Herbert Simon.
Theodore Bikel Austrian-born actor, singer, and writer Bikel is an actor, a singer, and a musician. He has a passion for civil rights, and he has made a strong contribution to the preservation and dissemination of Jewish tradition and culture. Born: May 2, 1924; Vienna, Austria Also known as: Theodore Meir Bikel (full name); Theo Bikel Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater; music Early Life Theodore Bikel (THEE-oh-dohr bih-KEHL) was born on May 2, 1924, in Vienna, Austria. His parents were Josef and Miriam Riegler Bikel. In 1938, when the Nazis invaded and occupied Austria, Bikel’s family went to Palestine, where he spent his adolescence. Fluent in five languages, Bikel considered a career in comparative linguistics. However, in 1943, he obtained a position as an
apprentice actor with the Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv. The following year, he cofounded the Cameri Theatre, which continues to be Israel’s premier municipal theater. Having decided to pursue a career in theater rather than in linguistics, Bikel enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London in 1946. He graduated with honors in 1948. During the time he was studying at the academy, Bikel developed another interest, which would become an additional facet of his career. He began playing the guitar and singing folk music. After graduation, Bikel performed in plays in the small theaters of the West End. Michael Redgrave, impressed with Bikel’s acting ability, suggested to Sir Laurence Olivier that he might wish to hire him for his West End premier of A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). Olivier saw Bikel perform and hired him to understudy the two main male roles of the play, Stanley Kowalski and Mitch. Soon Bikel was no longer working as an understudy; he was playing the role of Mitch. While contin127
Bikel, Theodore uing to perform in live theater, Bikel also began to appear in films. His first film role was in 1951 as the first officer in the classic motion picture The African Queen. During the 1950’s, Bikel played in several films. He moved to the United States in 1954 and became a citizen in 1961. Life’s Work The career of Bikel spans film, theater, television, opera, folk music, political activism, writing, and lecturing. Bikel has great versatility in his acting career, skilled in comedy and drama and in his ability to create diametrically opposed characters. In 1958, Bikel was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his interpretation of the role of Max Muller, the southern sheriff in The Defiant Ones. In 1959, he performed the role of Captain Georg Von Trapp in the original Broadway production of the Sound of Music, for which he received a Tony Award nomination for best featured actor in a musical. This was his second nomination for a Tony Award. Previously, he had been nominated for best featured actor in a drama for his role in The Rope Dancers (1957). In 1965, he played the role of a Russian submarine captain in the comedy The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming. In 1956, Bikel performed a program of folk songs in a concert at Carnegie Hall. In 1961, he participated in the founding of the Newport Folk Festival. He has toured throughout the world, performing folk music, especially Jewish and Russian Gypsy songs. Bikel sings in some twenty different languages and also translates songs into English. He is particularly devoted to singing original Jewish folk songs in Yiddish. During the 1980’s and 1990’s, he performed with four opera companies, including the Yale Opera Company. Bikel has made a wide variety of recordings, including Silent No More (1972), an album of Soviet Jewish freedom songs. One stage role, however, has become the highlight of Bikel’s career. The lead character of Tevye the Milkman in Fiddler on the Roof (1964) is based on a story by Sholom Aleichem, a Jewish writer who wrote his tales in Yiddish, the vernacular version of Hebrew, during the nineteenth century. Bikel’s first professional role was the part of the constable in a production of Teyve the Milkman, based on Aleichem’s 1894 short story. Bikel portrayed Tevye the Milkman in Fiddler on the Roof more
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Jewish Americans than two thousand times. In 2008, Bikel began performing a one-man show, Sholom Aleichem: Laughter Through Tears (2008), a musical based on Aleichem’s writings. In 2010, he again toured in a production of Fiddler on the Roof. In addition to entertaining, Bikel has been active in the Civil Rights movement, Amnesty International, Actors’ Equity, and the American Jewish Congress. Significance During his multifaceted career, Bikel has appeared in dozens of films and plays; he has performed folk music concerts throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. These performances have enriched the cultural life of his audiences. His theatrical and folk music performances aid in the appreciation and the understanding of Jewish traditions and artistic expression throughout the world. In performances he writes, he maintains a sense of the drama of real life so that his presentations teach as well as entertain. With his energy, talent, and enthusiasm, Bikel promotes a sense of the shared human condition in his audiences. —Shawncey Webb Further Reading Aleichem, Sholem. Tevye’s Daughters. Translated by Francis Butwin. New York: Sholom Aleichem Family, 1999. Good for understanding the problems faced by the family portrayed in Fiddler on the Roof and the persecution and the tradition that surrounded their lives. Useful to understand Bikel, who listened to and read Aleichem’s stories as a child and whom he greatly admires. Bikel, Theodore. Theo: An Autobiography. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. Best source for accurate information about Bikel, his life, his beliefs, and his goals. Includes a postscript on his view of the situation in the Middle East in the twenty-first century. Cohen, Roland. Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940 -1970. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. Excellent for understanding the folk song milieu that Bikel found when he arrived in the United States. See also: Fyvush Finkel; Walter Matthau; Bette Midler; Mandy Patinkin; Molly Picon; Shubert brothers.
Jewish Americans
Black, Jack
Jack Black Actor, musician, and comedian A singer, songwriter, and actor, Black has a genius for parody and satire. His memorable performances in The School of Rock (2003) and King Kong (2005) propelled him to multimillion-dollar paychecks. Born: August 28, 1969; Santa Monica, California Also known as: Thomas Jacob Black (full name); JB, Jables Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music; theater Early Life The son of two aerospace engineers, Jack Black was born in 1969 in Santa Monica, California. His mother, Judith, was Jewish, and his father, Thomas, converted to Judaism. Black was ten when his parents divorced, and he went to live with his father. Black later attended the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences, where he first studied drama. Black attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), dropping out in his second year to join the Actors Gang, a theater group cofounded by actor and director Tim Robbins. It was at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1989 that Black first appeared on stage in Carnage (1987), directed by Robbins. Black would go on to appear in all three films directed by Robbins: Bob Roberts (1992), Dead Man Walking (1995), and Cradle Will Rock (1999). Throughout the 1990’s, Black appeared in many roles on television, in such series as Northern Exposure, Picket Fences, and The XFiles, and he appeared in numerous films, notably Mars Attacks! (1996), The Cable Guy (1996), and Jesus’ Son (1999). In 1994, Black, a self-taught singer and musician, formed a duo acoustic rock-comedy band called Tenacious D with Kyle Gass, guitarist and fellow Actors Gang member. Tenacious D, a scathing parody of heavymetal rock bands, following in the tradition of Spinal Tap, began performing in dive bars and comedy clubs in Los Angeles, with Gass playing guitar and Black singing satirical lyrics to music he had written. Life’s Work In 1999, Tenacious D signed a contract with Home Box Office (HBO) to perform in a half-hour television series. After appearing on HBO, Tenacious D went from playing small bars and comedy clubs to filling stadiums. Tenacious D recorded two albums, Tenacious D (2001) and the sound track for the film Tenacious D in The Pick
of Destiny (2006), in which Tenacious D also starred. Tenacious D led Black to a role in the film High Fidelity (2000), which brought him sweeping critical acclaim. John Cusack—the star of High Fidelity, a former member of Robbins’s Actors Gang, and a huge fan of Tenacious D—offered Black a supporting role in the film, including a performance by Tenacious D. Black’s performance as Barry, a thoroughly obnoxious record store clerk whose encyclopedic knowledge of rock music is used as a weapon against unsuspecting customers, is searing. High Fidelity forever changed Black’s status from minor supporting actor to leading man. Shortly after High Fidelity, Black starred as Hal in Shallow Hal (2001), about a man who, while hypnotized, falls in love with a three-hundred-pound woman, seeing her instead as Gwyneth Paltrow. Shallow Hal ushered in the first of multimillion-dollar paychecks for Black. Tenacious D
Jack Black. (WireImage/Getty Images)
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Blitzer, Wolf was the impetus for Black to receive a Golden Globe nomination and widening critical acclaim for his role as Dewey Finn in The School of Rock (2003), about a failed rocker who impersonates a substitute teacher, turning his students into a rock band. Black’s status as a leading Hollywood star was cemented in 2005 when director Peter Jackson cast Black in King Kong as Carl Denham, an opportunistic film director who sees the ape as his ticket to fame and fortune. In 2008, Black starred with Ben Stiller and Robert Downey, Jr., in Tropic Thunder, directed by Stiller. Black’s role as a heroin-addicted actor going through withdrawal while making a Vietnam War film was made to order for Black’s brand of wild-eyed, selfsatirizing humor. In 2008, Black’s voice starred in the enormously successful children’s animated film Kung Fu Panda, the story of Po, an obese panda on a quest to become a martial arts Dragon Master. Extremely popular with kids, Black has become a spokesman for panda conservation, appearing on Sesame Street, Nickelodeon Network, and The Simpsons. Black eloped with cellist Tanya Haden, daughter of jazz bassist Charlie Haden, in 2006, and they had two sons. Significance Black’s primary screen role is as a large, cocky, funny man who laughs best at himself, similar to those played by W. C. Fields, John Belushi, and Chris Farley. Black offers in his sketches a comfortable outlet for those who have
Jewish Americans ever felt awkward in any situation. A physical comedian, Black understands better than anyone the incongruity between his superstardom and his physical appearance. Black’s genius for parody and satire, both as an actor and a musician, is his greatest talent and richest legacy. —Mary E. Markland Further Reading Musgrave, Ruth A. “Bamboozled!” National Geographic Kids, June/July, 2008, 30. Describes the plight of pandas and their disappearing habitat, with Black championing panda protection and conservation. Black passionately advocates environmental responsibility and gives environmental tips. Rottenberg, Josh, and Jake Chessum. “The Thunder Cats!” Entertainment Weekly 1006 (August 15, 2008): 22-28. Black, Stiller, and Downey discuss making Tropic Thunder. Provides insight into the film, Black’s role as Jeff Portnoy, and Black’s membership in Hollywood’s group of young male comedic actors. Snierson, Dan. “Picking and Screaming.” Entertainment Weekly 908 (November, 2006): 66. Interview with Black and Gass upon the release of their band Tenacious D’s film and sound track. Provides valuable insight into Black’s satire and humor. See also: Woody Allen; Judd Apatow; Adrien Brody; Albert Brooks; Billy Crystal; Judd Hirsch; Ben Stiller.
Wolf Blitzer German-born journalist and broadcaster Blitzer was a journalist specializing in Israel-U.S. relations when he became an anchor on Cable News Network (CNN). Born: March 22, 1948; Augsburg, Germany Also known as: Wolf Isaac Blitzer (full name) Area of achievement: Journalism Early Life Wolf Blitzer (BLIHT-zur) was born to Polish Jewish refugees living in Augsburg, Germany, shortly after World War II. They soon immigrated to the United States, to Buffalo, New York. Blitzer attended Kenmore West High School and then took undergraduate study at the University of Buffalo. He received a B.A. in history in 1970. Blitzer went on to graduate studies at the Johns 130
Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, receiving his M.A. in 1972. He then joined the Reuters News Agency with a goal of becoming a journalist. He was sent to the Tel Aviv bureau in Israel. In 1973, he was offered a job at the Jerusalem Post, an English-language daily newspaper, as Washington correspondent. Covering both American politics and the Middle East, he stayed with the paper until 1990. Life’s Work Among Blitzer’s significant assignments was his coverage of the first visit by a German chancellor to Israel, when Willy Brandt visited Jerusalem in 1973, and the first Israel-Egypt peace conference in Egypt in 1977. Blitzer raised several questions with Egyptian leader
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Anwar Sadat over cross-border visits. Blitzer CNN Coverage of 2008 Election followed this up with another Mideast visit later in 1977 to Jerusalem to report on Sadat’s hisWolf Blitzer joined the Cable News Network (CNN) in 1990, toric visit to Israel. At this time the newsman when it was still a fledgling news organization. After showing his was also working for the American Israel Pubtremendous skills as a journalist, news broadcaster, and interlic Affairs Committee as editor of its monthly viewer, Blitzer was given his own programs, notably The Situation magazine, the Near East Report. His analysis of Room with Wolf Blitzer, which ran in a late-afternoon slot. Blitzer became increasingly involved in the various U.S. presithe Arab-Israeli conflict was printed in Myths dential elections. In 2000, he interviewed all the major party candiand Facts 1976: A Concise Record of the Arabdates, anchored The Late Show while traveling the campaign trails, Israeli Conflict, published as a Near East Reand hosted a number of CNN Special Reports in connection with port. the election. In the 2004 election, Blitzer anchored reporting on the In 1979, Blitzer traveled with President Jimmy Iowa caucus (among the first of the campaign), the New HampCarter to Israel and Egypt during the final round shire primary (another early indicator), and the Democratic and of peace negotiations between Sadat and IsRepublican conventions. He also covered the election night from rael’s premier Menachem Begin, which led to Times Square in New York City and the inauguration of the the decisive peace treaty between those two presidential election’s winner, George W. Bush. countries. Blitzer recounted his part in the treaty After further success in reporting the 2006 midterm elections, in the 2009 documentary Back Door Channels: Blitzer was given the role of CNN’s main anchor for the 2008 elections. He provided on-the-ground coverage, as he did in the 2004 The Price of Peace. He helped establish some of elections, with significant interviews with both candidates, and he the backdoor communications that facilitated also chaired several of the presidential debates that were broadcast the treaty. around the world. By general consensus, he was found to be fair in Meanwhile, he had met and married Lynn his role, though some suggested he could have been more firm in Greenfield, and they had a daughter, born in his questioning. However, the quality of debate between Barack 1981. In 1982, he was in Beirut, Lebanon, for Obama and John McCain was generally of a high order, and most the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Orconsidered Blitzer’s interviewing to be penetrating but fair. ganization (PLO) and the Syrian forces then ocOn election night in 2008, television technology had advanced cupying the city. His experiences of this time to give the impression that Blitzer, sitting in his Times Square stuappear in A Reporter’s Notebook (1985). He dio, was interviewing people in the room. In fact, holograms of the also wrote an article in 1987 for TV Guide about interviewees were being projected from various studios across the United States. Blitzer had no difficulty handling this increasingly the representation of Israel in the media, “Is TV complex technology. As in 2006, Blitzer then anchored the historic News Too Tough—or Too Easy—on Israel?” inauguration of Obama as America’s first black president. Blitzer In late 1985, the Jonathan Pollard spy case was awarded CNN’s Peabody Award for his work on the election. broke in Washington, D.C. Pollard was accused of being an Israeli spy working at U.S. Navy Intelligence. Blitzer was deeply involved in reporting on the case, which ended in a life senment. While there, Blitzer was one of the first Western tence for Pollard, although he had been led to expect journalists permitted to visit the headquarters of the some clemency in a plea-bargain deal. Blitzer was not KGB (Committee for State Security), the feared Russian happy about the way the United States and Israel handled secret police service. He returned a few months later to the case, and he wrote an account of it in Territory of Lies witness the handover of political power from the last (1989). The book proved controversial, and Blitzer had Communist president, Gorbachev, to the new post-Comto defend his position against several critical reviews. It munist-era one, Boris Yeltsin. is still the best account of the incident; The New York Blitzer then covered the first Gulf War from Kuwait. Times named Territory of Lies a notable book of the year. His reporting made him a household name and earned In 1990, Blitzer joined Cable News Network (CNN), him a CableACE Award (award for cable excellence). the up-and-coming television news channel, as the miliCNN then transferred him to the White House, as chief tary affairs reporter. One of his first assignments was to correspondent, until 1999. During this period, he covfly to Moscow to cover the 1991 failed coup against ered the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building, Mikhail Gorbachev, who was unsuccessfully challenged reportage that garnered him an Emmy Award in 1995. by hard-line Community Party members in the govern131
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Jewish Americans Building on the success of his reporting and interviewing for the 2000 presidential election, CNN appointed him to anchor its coverage of the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. In the 2006 elections, Blitzer won an Emmy Award for CNN’s America Votes 2006. However, CNN allowed Blitzer to pursue his interests in the Middle East. The 2003 Gulf War reporting was followed by his coverage in 2005 of the Dubai Ports story, about a controversial plan to permit management of U.S. ports by the United Arab Emirates, and of the Israel-Hezbollah war in southern Lebanon in 2006. In 2005, CNN moved Blitzer to The Situation Room, a three-hour lateafternoon slot. This news format proved highly successful. In March, 2010, the show was reduced to two hours. Blitzer has continued to receive many honors. He won the Lowell Thomas Broadcast Journalism Award (1999), Hubert H. Humphrey’s First Amendment Freedoms Prize (2000), and the Ernie Pyle Journalism Award for military reporting (2002). He has been given various honorary doctorates, from such institutions as Niagara University in New York, George Washington University in St. Louis, the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Wolf Blitzer. (Film Magic/Getty Images)
In 1998, Blitzer was given his first hosting job, on CNN’s Sunday-morning interview program, appropriately named Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. The program was beamed to 180 countries and made him an international news celebrity. The transition from host to anchor came soon after, in 1999, when he anchored The World Today daily newscast. In this capacity he covered the Asian tsunami, and he and his team won an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for the coverage. The next year he was given his own show, Wolf Blitzer Reports, to anchor. He reported on the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, and his news team won the Edward R. Murrow Award for its coverage. 132
Significance Blitzer has shown it is possible for a journalist to move from a specialized concern, such as Israeli-American relationships, to an international platform. He has received wide recognition for his professionalism and his fairness in reporting. He promoted CNN’s international reputation with his accurate and unbiased news broadcasting and played a major role in making it one of the most respected sources of news in the world. — David Barratt Further Reading Goldenberg, Elliott, and Alan M. Dershowitz. The Hunting Horse: The Truth Behind the Jonathan Pollard Spy Case. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2000. Another account of the Pollard case, about which Blitzer reported and wrote. Includes a critique of Blitzer’s book. Kurtz, Howard. Spin Cycle: How the White House and the Media Manipulate the News. New York: Simon
Jewish Americans and Schuster, 1998. A critical account of the news reporting from Washington during the presidency of Bill Clinton, including that of Blitzer. Makovsky, David. “Wolf Blitzer, ‘Symbol of Integrity,’ Leaves Post for Cable Network.” Jerusalem Post,
Bloom, Allan May 21, 1990. Shows how highly regarded Blitzer and his reporting were to his readers in Israel. See also: David Halberstam; Seymour M. Hersh; Ted Koppel; Morley Safer; Daniel Schorr; Mike Wallace.
Allan Bloom Educator and philosopher Bloom’s book on American higher education, The Closing of the American Mind (1987), examined the failing role of universities, exposed the root causes of the problem, and suggested using the Great Books of Western civilization and thought as the cure. Born: September 14, 1930; Indianapolis, Indiana Died: October 7, 1992; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: Allan David Bloom (full name) Areas of achievement: Education; scholarship; social issues Early Life Allan Bloom (blewm) was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1930 to Allan and Malvina Glasner Bloom, both of Jewish descent. His father worked for Jewish charities, and his mother was a social worker. Bloom attended Indianapolis public schools and, after reading an article about the University of Chicago, dreamed of studying there. He moved with his family to Chicago in 1944, and his parents, encouraged by a friend, let him enroll in a special liberal arts program for gifted high school students at the University of Chicago. He studied the classics of Western literature, and he completed his B.A. in 1949. He then continued with graduate work in crossdisciplinary studies at John U. Nef’s Committee on Social Thought, a program of rigorous academic requirements, and he received his M.A. in 1953. Two years later he was awarded a Ph.D. degree with his dissertation on the political philosophy of Isocrates, a leading rhetorician of fourth century Athens. During this time, he was greatly influenced by Leo Strauss, a professor of political philosophy at the University of Chicago. An ethnic Jew and refugee from Nazi Germany, Strauss was best known for his writings that commented on the crisis of liberal democracy and the problem of liberal education. It was Strauss who sent Bloom to the University of Paris to study in an exchange program with the University of Chicago after Bloom completed his master’s degree.
There Bloom studied under Strauss’s friend Alexandre Kojeve, a renowned political philosopher. Bloom’s ideas about education later found in his writings also showed the influence of Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the university until 1951, who advocated the study of the Great Books of Western civilization and thought. Life’s Work Bloom started his career as a lecturer in political science at the University of Chicago. He became a Rockefeller Fellow in legal and political philosophy and studied at the University of Heidelberg, West Germany, during the 1957-1958 academic year. His first book, Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. D. Alembert on the Theatre (1960), was a translation of the Swiss-born writer and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s classic work Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles (1758) regarding the principles of politics and morals. Bloom became a visiting assisting professor at Yale University in 1962 and taught at Cornell University the following year. In his second book, Shakespeare’s Politics, published in 1964, he used political philosophy as a framework within which to view the problems of the Shakespearean heroes. He aimed to make Shakespeare’s plays a recognized source for the serious study of political problems. Four years later he published his translation of Plato’s Politeia (c. fourth century b.c.e.; Republic, 1701). A strictly literal translation, it was considered the most accurate rendering of the Greek classic. According to Bloom, this was the first important work of political science because its political philosophy was grounded in the idea of building a city on the principles of reason. Bloom was greatly disappointed with the political atmosphere at Cornell when a student who occupied a campus building demanded and won curricular concessions from the university. These concessions, Bloom believed, marked the beginning of the end for American universities. He became a visiting professor at the University of Tel Aviv and the University of Paris during the 133
Bloom, Allan 1969-1970 academic year, and then he resigned from Cornell. He taught political science at the University of Toronto for the next nine years. A heavy smoker, he suffered a heart attack in 1972. While teaching in Toronto, he worked on a translation of another work by Rousseau, Émile: Ou, De l’éducation (1762), and published it in 1979 as Émile: Or, On Education. The book had been banned in France and Switzerland, and the French parliament had ordered it to be burned. Bloom related the structure and the themes of the book to the preoccupations of the field of education and to the concern about the limits and the possibilities of human nature. In 1979, Bloom returned to Chicago and taught at the Committee on Social Thought. Besides teaching, he edited the scholarly Journal of Political Theory and contributed to the History of Political Philosophy, edited by Joseph Cropsey and Strauss. Bloom was also codirector of the John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy at the University of Chicago. In 1987, he published The Closing of the American Mind,
SOULS WITHOUT LONGING The book that made Allan Bloom famous originated from an essay he had written for National Review. It was his friend and colleague, writer Saul Bellow, who encouraged Bloom to expand the essay into a book titled Souls Without Longing. The title was later changed to The Closing of the American Mind (1987). The long subtitle says it all: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. Bellow wrote a foreword for the book. It became an instant success, staying on The New York Times bestseller list for months and selling more than a million copies. An important part of the book is Bloom’s comments about the moral and intellectual state of modern university students. He thinks that students are deficient in morality, in the reading of serious books, in musical taste, and in love. The causes of this state are moral relativism, the poverty of their education, and the need for instant gratification. Another important part of the book goes deeper, to the roots of the problem: the kinds of political principles of liberty and equality espoused by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and the interpretations of nihilism by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Max Weber. The book blames the universities for embracing these political principles and nihilism. Bloom offers a way of opening students’ minds: a liberal education with a judicious use of the Great Books of Western thought.
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Jewish Americans an analysis of the shortcomings of American higher education and a primer on the proper relationships that should exist among students, the university, and society. The book made him famous and earned him both praise and virulent criticism. In 1990, Bloom published Giants and Dwarfs, a collection of essays written over a period of thirty years (1960-1990). He wrote about Plato, Rousseau, Strauss, and Kojeve and about teaching, education, and the university. Later, Bloom became seriously ill; while he was hospitalized, he dictated his last book, Love and Friendship. Published posthumously in 1993, it explores the notions of love and friendship in well-known romantic novels, in Shakespeare’s plays, and in Plato’s Symposion (c. fourth century b.c.e.; Symposium, 1701). Bloom died of peptic-ulcer bleeding complicated by liver failure in 1992. He was survived by his mother, his stepfather, and his sister. Significance With The Closing of the American Mind and publications regarding Western classic works, Bloom continued a line of argument developed by Hutchins and Mortimer Adler in the 1930’s. The early promise of the Great Book programs, Bloom believed, was not fulfilled because it was thwarted by what he saw as the philosophical poverty of higher education. Thus he served as a staunch champion of the traditional authorities in education. Moreover, he shared with Ralph Waldo Emerson the belief that books are not ends in themselves but guides for identifying and achieving the good life. Bloom’s controversial book inspired a continuation of critical assessments of higher education, among them Roger Kimball’s Tenured Radicals (1991), Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education (1991), and Russell Jacoby’s Dogmatic Wisdom (1994). In addition, Bloom’s name has become synonymous with traditional views of higher education and is invoked in debates about such issues as multiculturalism, curriculum reform, and political correctness. — Anh Tran Further Reading Bellow, Saul. Ravelstein. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. Bloom’s biography, written by his friend and colleague, in fictional form. Cole, Jonathan. The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must be Protected. New York: PublicAffairs, 2010. Explores the vital role of America’s research universi-
Jewish Americans ties as engines of technological and economic growth and illuminates the urgent need to protect them. Menand, Louis. The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010. Argues that twenty-first century professors and students are trying to function in a
Bloom, Harold nineteenth century system, and that the resulting conflict threatens to overshadow the basic pursuit of knowledge and truth. See also: Saul Bellow; Harold Bloom; Daniel J. Boorstin; Lionel Trilling; Barbara W. Tuchman.
Harold Bloom Literary critic and educator Bloom, a leading literary critic and influential academic in the field of Western literature, became almost synonymous with the “Western canon,” those great works of literature that form the basis of the twentieth century American literature curricula. Born: July 11, 1930; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Literature; scholarship Early Life Harold Bloom was born in the South Bronx area of New York City to William and Paula Bloom. His family was Yiddish speaking, and Bloom learned Yiddish and Hebrew before English. He proved a precocious boy, reciting English poetry by the age of seven. By ten he was reading books from Fordham University, including William Blake’s poetry. By sixteen he was reading Moby Dick (1851), William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens. In 1947, he won a scholarship to Cornell University, where he was greatly influenced by M. H. Abrams, a leading Romantic scholar. He graduated in 1952, then spent a year at Pembroke College, Cambridge University. He returned to Yale University for his Ph.D., which he obtained in 1955. He was then offered a position in the English department there, and he remained at Yale for the rest of his academic life. In 1959, he married Jeanne Gould, with whom he had two children. He never embraced Judaism but remained interested in the Hebrew Bible and religious matters. In the 1960’s, a personal crisis pushed him to reading the Kabbala, Jewish esoteric or mystic writings based on Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, and his religious outlook became increasingly Gnostic. Life’s Work Although Bloom remained an active teacher all his life, eventually becoming Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale, his reputation rests on the prodigious amount of crit-
ical work he wrote or edited on English and European literature. His first work, Shelley’s Myth-Making (1959), signaled both his early interest in Romantic poets and his typical confrontational stance, accusing earlier critics of misreading. This was followed by more works on English Romanticism, The Visionary Company (1961) and Blake’s Apocalypse (1963). Blake’s influence on him was profound, especially in developing his Gnostic beliefs. However, Bloom’s lifelong interest developed into how literary tradition works, especially in the way one writer may be influenced by earlier writers, and the way the literary canon is formed. An early example was his book on William Butler Yeats, written in 1970. His first major work was The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry in 1973. Previous critics had written on tradition, from Samuel Johnson through Matthew Arnold, to F. R. Leavis, T. S. Eliot, and, Bloom’s great Canadian contemporary, Northrop Frye. Bloom’s understanding of how tradition works was altogether more complex than that of these writers, being based on Freud’s theory of anxiety. The book is extremely technical, with Bloom using terminology from Kabbalistic writings in tracing a sixfold categorization of types of influence. The basic theory is that in the writer’s anxiety to be original he or she will misread earlier writers. The angst for originality developed with Samuel Johnson and the subsequent Romantic movement. Shakespeare altogether escaped it or easily brushed aside influences such as Christopher Marlowe. To the Romantics, however, poets such as Shakespeare and Milton proved major hazards to avoid. Bloom went on to develop this theory in A Map of Misreading (1975) and Kabbalah and Criticism (1975). Here he strengthened his differentiation between “strong” and “weak” or imitative writers. He also expounded on “influence” as necessarily a baleful source of anxiety for strong writers. The 1970’s, of course, was also the period when European literary theory went in quite new directions, especially through such writers as Jacques Lacan 135
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THE WESTERN CANON The magisterial tome The Western Canon (1994) must be seen as the culmination of Harold Bloom’s work on tradition in Western literature. It comes out of a more general debate on canonicity that occurred in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Bloom’s embattled stance is laid out frequently as he attacks “the school of resentment.” However, there is also a good deal of attention paid to “the common reader” rather than just academic debate. The book begins and centers on Bloom’s great hero, William Shakespeare, who was the source of influence and therefore anxiety for most subsequent writers, followed by Dante. Bloom divides literary history into three parts: the Classical Age, comprising writers from Geoffrey Chaucer through Samuel Johnson and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, two other great heroes for Bloom; the Democratic Age, comprising Romantics and Victorians, including such greats as William Wordsworth (the founder of modern poetry), Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, and Henrik Ibsen; and the Chaotic Age, the twentieth century. Here he can only suggest the writers who will enter the canon, but he posits his literary modern greats, including Sigmund Freud. Freud, he suggests, though not a literary writer, was much influenced by Shakespeare and wrote essentially Shakespearean texts. Bloom sees Franz Kafka as the center point of this age. What makes a great writer and one worthy of being included? Bloom uses the term “strangeness” rather than originality: a writer who causes readers to see themselves and reality in a new way. In his appendix, he includes a long list of those writers he views as canonical. Later, when the list had become somewhat notorious, he claimed he included it only “off the top of his head” at the request of his editor. If nothing else, the list shows Bloom’s own breadth of reading, which ranges into Asian literature and literature written in all the West’s major languages.
and Jacques Derrida. After initial brushes with deconstruction, Bloom found himself increasingly determined not to be influenced by such theories and consequently alienated himself from the American establishment’s rush to poststructuralism, historicism, and feminist theory. However, he did share their fascination with the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, though he counterbalanced this with equal admiration for the American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the late1980’s he turned his attention to the writing of sacred texts, in Ruin the Sacred Truths (1989), The Book of J (1990), and Jesus and Yahweh (2005), and to religion in general in The American Religion (1992), in which he sees American Christianity becoming Gnostic. The Book of J takes the old and somewhat outdated theory of a Yahwist writer of the Torah and in Blakean fashion Bloom sees the depiction of God as Gnostic, jok136
ingly adding that the writer was probably Bathsheba. Rather than retiring, Bloom chose to use his senior decades in two quite different ways: first, to edit a series of guides to major writers or texts from the past and, second, to appeal over the heads of academia to the “general reader” to continue reading literature as a humane and liberal study. A cottage industry emerged under the imprint of Chelsea House Press: a series with titles such as Bloom’s Guides, Bloom’s Bio-Critiques, Bloom’s Literary Criticism. Books aimed at the common reader are How to Read and Why (2000) and a 2007 anthology of great poems in English. They show Bloom’s amazing range of reading and his personal enthusiasms, but at times he cannot help theorizing in ways that alienate rather than attract readers. Probably Bloom’s greatest popularization was of his idol, Shakespeare. In his Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human (1998), Bloom goes through most of the plays, trying to show that Shakespeare’s construction of his characters was the forerunner of how people view themselves today.
Significance Throughout his career, Bloom received many awards, becoming Berg Professor of English at New York University and Charles Norton Professor at Harvard. Bloom’s confrontational methodology takes on the form of a heroic, if maverick, defiance of current forms of antiliberal theory, which he labels “the politics of resentment.” However, Bloom more than compensates for espousing causes with his general and generous scholarship and sheer knowledge of a huge corpus of literary and nonliterary texts. For him, the Greek ideal, not social or societal improvement—to know oneself—is the ultimate goal of all reading. —David Barratt
Further Reading Allen, Graham. Harold Bloom: A Poetics of Conflict. New York: Harvester Press/Wheatsheaf, 1994. An early critical study of Bloom’s literary theories, here centering on how Bloom maneuvers himself into adversarial and confrontational positions. Fite, David. Harold Bloom: The Rhetoric of Romantic
Jewish Americans Vision. Amherst: University of Massachussetts Press, 2009. Looks at Bloom’s critical writing on Romanticism, one of his major fields of scholarship. Sauerberg, Lars Ole. Versions of the Past—Visions of the Future: The Canonical in the Criticism of T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, Northrop Frye, and Harold Bloom. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. An important contribution from one of the growing number of European scholars responding to what started as an AngloAmerican debate on tradition and canonicity in the early 1970’s.
Bloom, Sol Sellars, Roy, and Graham Allen, eds. The Salt Companion to Harold Bloom. Cambridge, Mass.: Salt, 2007. Published on the occasion of Bloom’s seventy-fifth birthday, this is a collection of some of his major essays on poetry, literature, canonicity, biblical studies, and literary theory. See also: M. H. Abrams; Stanley Fish; Irving Howe; Alfred Kazin; Elaine Showalter; Lionel Trilling; Louis Untermeyer.
Sol Bloom Entertainer and politician Bloom contributed to the development of the entertainment industry in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City, although those efforts were overshadowed by the controversies in which he became embroiled as a member of Congress. Born: March 9, 1870; Pekin, Illinois Died: March 7, 1949; Washington, D.C. Areas of achievement: Entertainment; government and politics Early Life Growing up in San Francisco, Sol Bloom (sawl blewm), the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, became involved in the entertainment industry as a teenager. Among other things, he worked as a theater manager and a promoter of boxing matches. The ambitious Bloom visited the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris in search of ideas for new attractions. At twenty-two, he organized the extremely popular Midway Plaisance exhibits at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The entertainment included the first Ferris wheel and an Algerian and Tunisian Village that introduced the American public to belly dancers and ignited a nationwide dance craze known as the hootchy-kootchy, to a tune Bloom had composed. Bloom stayed in Chicago to become a branch manager for a sheet-music publisher. Later he began his own sheet-music line, calling himself “Sol Bloom, the Music Man.” Relocating to New York City in 1903, Bloom developed music departments in major department stores, and he also promoted Victor Talking Machines, an early phonograph. He parlayed some of the profits into a string of successful real-estate ventures.
Life’s Work Bloom’s professional life took a dramatic and unexpected turn in 1922, when U.S. congressman Samuel Marx, who represented Manhattan’s Silk Stocking District, suddenly passed away. Local Democratic Party leaders enlisted Bloom to seek the vacant seat, choosing him, Bloom later joked, because he was “amiable and solvent.” Evidently they did not think that Bloom stood much of a chance in the usually Republican district, but he managed to eke out a victory by 145 votes. For someone with no political background, Bloom quickly warmed to his new profession, serving in the House of Representatives. Although undistinguished in his performance, Bloom was repeatedly reelected. He eventually acquired sufficient seniority to become, in 1938, chairman of the powerful House Committee on Foreign Affairs. That same year brought the first of several controversies in which Bloom’s defense of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Jewish refugee policy caused conflicts with Jewish organizations. To deflect congressional and media criticism, the administration organized an international conference, in Evian, France, to consider the refugee crisis. The State Department, which regarded Bloom as “easy to handle,” named him to serve on the U.S. delegation to the conference. That prompted American Jewish Congress leader Rabbi Stephen S. Wise to privately complain that Bloom was picked because he could be counted on to serve the role of “the State Department’s Jew.” The Evian conference ultimately produced no concrete plans to resettle large numbers of refugees. When privately approached by constituents to help individuals or small groups of refugees reach the United States, Bloom tried to be helpful. There were instances 137
Bloom, Sol when he personally signed affidavits to facilitate immigrants’ entry. At the same time, Bloom was deeply loyal to the Roosevelt administration and fearful that Jewish agitation for rescue might stir anti-Semitism. He strongly supported the administration’s restrictionist refugee policy, and, at the State Department’s behest, he sponsored legislation in 1941, known as the Bloom-Van Nuys bill, that had the effect of tightening the policy even further. To the dismay of Jewish leaders, Bloom was chosen in 1943 to serve on the U.S. delegation to an Anglo-American conference in Bermuda on the Jewish refugee problem. Although Bermuda, like Evian before it, failed to produce any serious U.S. intervention to help the refugees, Bloom said afterward, “I as a Jew am perfectly satisfied with the results.” His position prompted widespread criticism in the Jewish community. One periodical complained that Bloom had been “used as a stooge to impede Jewish protests against the nothing-doers of the Bermuda conference.” In the autumn of 1943, Jewish activists known as the Bergson Group arranged for the introduction of a congressional resolution urging the president to create a government refugee rescue agency. Bloom, following the State Department’s lead, tried to undermine the resolution by insisting on full hearings. He was strongly criticized in New York’s Yiddish-language press for his stand on the resolution. Ultimately Bloom was able to persuade most members of the committee to shelve the measure. A major controversy soon erupted, however, when it was revealed that the behind-closed-doors testimony of Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long contained serious errors and distortions. These developments, a major embarrassment to Bloom, brought about the removal of Long from his post and contributed to Roosevelt’s decision to create unilaterally the rescue agency that the resolution demanded rather than risk further criticism. Bloom sympathized with the Zionist goal of creating a Jewish state in British Mandatory Palestine, but he was reluctant to cross swords with the administration. He en-
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Jewish Americans dorsed the State Department’s 1943 proposal to ban all public discussion of the Palestine issue for the duration of the war. At the behest of Roosevelt, Bloom also helped block a congressional resolution that Zionist leaders sought to have introduced in the autumn of 1944, expressing support for Jewish statehood. An enthusiastic proponent of the United Nations, Bloom served as a U.S. representative to the founding convention of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945 and to the first meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in London the following year. Bloom died of a massive heart attack in 1949, in the midst of his fourteenth consecutive term in the House of Representatives. Significance Bloom’s achievements in the entertainment industry might well have earned him a more prominent place in the annals of American Jewish cultural history had it not been for the public controversies that surrounded his political career. He is remembered primarily for his unpopular defense of the Roosevelt administration’s policies concerning the Holocaust and Zionism. —Rafael Medoff Further Reading Bloom, Sol. The Autobiography of Sol Bloom. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1948. Bloom details his Horatio Alger rise to the halls of Congress. Feingold, Henry L. The Politics of Rescue. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1970. This book discusses the Roosevelt administration’s responses to the Holocaust, with many references to the efforts of Bloom. Roth, Walter. “Sol Bloom, the Music Man.” Chicago Jewish History 24, no. 3 (Summer, 2000): 4-7. Colorful details about Bloom’s early career in the entertainment business. See also: Bella Abzug; Mary Antin; Samuel Dickstein; Morris Michael Edelstein; Emma Goldman; Lillian D. Wald.
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Bloomberg, Michael
Michael Bloomberg Businessman and politician Bloomberg made his money in the securities business and parlayed that success into a financial data and news company that made him one of the world’s richest men. Not content, he set his sights on a political career, becoming the mayor of New York City at a time when it was reeling from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Born: February 14, 1942; Medford, Massachusetts Also known as: Michael Rubens Bloomberg (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; business
In 1972, only six years after graduating from Harvard Business School, Bloomberg was made a partner in one of the largest equity trading and sales companies in the world. His promotion put him in charge of overseeing all trading within the company, the company’s information systems, and eventually systems development. Bloomberg married Susan Brown in 1975, and they had a daughter, Emma, in 1979. Bloomberg continued to develop his business savvy and grew within the company over the next few years. In the early 1980’s, there were rumors of a merger. In 1981, the rumors proved true, and Bloomberg was let go from Salomon Brothers, which became known as Phibro-Salomon. Bloomberg did not leave Salomon empty handed. His
Early Life Michael Bloomberg (BLEWM-burg) was born on February 14, 1942. His parents, Michael and Charlotte, were middle class and the children of hard-working Russian immigrants. The family remained in the Boston area for the first few years of Bloomberg’s life, settling in Medford, Massachusetts, roughly five miles northwest of Boston on the Mystic River. Certainly part of the success Bloomberg experienced in his business life and in his political life stemmed from the hard work of his parents and his solid upbringing. As an adolescent, Bloomberg became an Eagle Scout, a mark of distinction awarded to only about 5 percent of all scouts. This desire for achieving hard-won goals continued through his young adulthood. Bloomberg attended Medford High School, graduating with an excellent academic record, which helped him to enter the prestigious Johns Hopkins University to pursue a degree in electrical engineering. Bloomberg graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1964, and he followed that with a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School. Upon the completion of his education, he was quickly hired in 1966 by Salomon Brothers, a Wall Street investment company, where he would work for fifteen years. Life’s Work At Salomon Brothers, Bloomberg worked as a trader and a broker, and his skills for his task at hand did not go unnoticed. By the late 1960’s, Bloomberg was making a name for himself within the company.
Michael Bloomberg. (Getty Images)
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Bloomberg ran on the platform that in order for New York to rebound from the tragedies of September 11, 2001, the mayor must be business Michael Bloomberg’s first major achievement was his success savvy and know how to lead. Bloomberg won in security investments. However, when he was forced out of his the contest, but not in a landslide. In a state that is job, he founded Bloomberg, L.P., a thriving company that, twenty years later, would make him one of the world’s richest men. His traditionally Democrat and had not elected backcompany sells subscriptions to information—in the form of finanto-back Republican mayors in years, Bloomcial data, analytic software, and news—packaged in a neat termiberg won with just over 50 percent of the vote. nal. Subscriptions can cost up to fifteen hundred dollars a month. Although Bloomberg struggled to gain acFinancial institutions, bankers, even private investors are willing to ceptance in his first term, something not easily pay the price for content that has promoted continued growth in the done for any Republican, after his reelection in area of stocks, trading, and technology. After developing his com2005 he managed to turn New York City’s $6.3 pany, Bloomberg eyed a career in politics. He set his sights on bebillion deficit into a nearly $3 billion surplus. ing the mayor of New York City, a goal he accomplished, and he Bloomberg ran on a finance reform agenda, and has used his business expertise to help turn around the city’s flaghe far exceeded public expectations in this area. ging economy. He does all this for an annual salary of one dollar. Nevertheless, his success has come with some backlash from the public. He is a strong supporter of abortion rights and is against a timeline severance package totaled more than ten million dollars. for withdrawal from Iraq. The latter has garnered him With the knowledge he gained from working for Salomuch pressure from the public, especially in 2004 when mon in information systems and technology and with the New York City hosted the Republican National Convenhandsome buyout package he received, Bloomberg betion. Bloomberg refutes the outcries of nonsupporters came an entrepreneur. He started a new company, Innosimply by saying, “Don’t forget that the war started vative Market Systems, which sold financial information not very many blocks from here.” Bloomberg’s stance that was delivered by terminals in client offices. His first on Iraq gained him valuable clout within the Repubcustomer was Merrill Lynch. By the late 1980’s, Bloomlican Party, and his name has been mentioned as vice berg’s company was a leading performer in the informapresidential material. In 2008, Bloomberg asked for an tion and technology trades. The software provided by the unprecedented third consecutive four-year term, to be company currently allows companies in the financial granted in a time of financial crisis. The city council aparena to analyze data and equity trading news, using the proved it, and in his third election as mayor, Bloomberg sophisticated Bloomberg Terminal purchased through defeated Bill Thompson with just under 51 percent of his company. In addition to the core products, the comthe vote. pany offers Bloomberg Tradebook, trading software, messaging services, and a radio station (1130 WBBRSignificance AM) in New York City. By the 1990’s, the company had Bloomberg’s success following graduation from coldoubled in size; by 2007, the company had more than ten lege, as he quickly moved through the business world, thousand employees, nearly 300,000 clients, and served made possible his political career. His personal fortune more than 160 nations. gave him an edge in the business world as well as in the Bloomberg surrendered his role as chief executive ofpolitical arena. His ability to lead the city shortly after the ficer of his company in 2001 when he decided to enter the terrorist attacks has been remarkable. The primary for political arena and run for mayor of New York City. The his first mayoral race was scheduled to begin on Sepmayoral race was shaping up to be tightly contested, betember 11, 2001, and had to be postponed. The winner of cause the term of the incumbent, Rudy Giuliani, had exthat contest would be taking the reins after one of the pired, and both Democratic and Republican leaders were most traumatic tragedies in American history. Bloomeager to place their candidates in the office. Bloomberg berg accepted the challenge, faced the opposition headhad three major advantages in the 2001 election. First, he on, gained bipartisan support throughout New York and took no donations, sidestepping campaign laws on limits the nation, and used his business intellect, financial of political donations; he funded his campaign with his savvy, and tough leadership skills to rebuild New York personal fortune. Second, Bloomberg gained the support City into a profitable powerhouse. Throughout his term, of the Independent Party, a good source of votes. Third, he remained steadfast in his positions on gun control,
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Jewish Americans abortion, the war in Iraq, and other matters of importance. Bloomberg earned the respect of New York voters, who gave him the mayoral office three times. — Keith J. Bell Further Reading Biographiq. Michael Bloomberg, Billionaire Mayor. New York: Filiquarian, 2008. Details Bloomberg’s rise to power in the business sector and how this success propelled him to the mayoral seat in 2001. Bloomberg, Michael. Bloomberg by Bloomberg. New York: Wiley, 2001. The autobiography of Bloomberg.
Blume, Judy Purnick, Joyce. Michael Bloomberg: Money, Power, and Politics. New York: PublicAffairs, 2009. How Bloomberg used his fortune wisely to navigate the business and the political worlds. Silverstein, E. Michael Bloomberg: A Biography. New York: Greenwood Press, 2010. Easy-to-read biography of one of American’s foremost political figures; discusses Bloomberg’s political achievements. See also: Bella Abzug; Abe Beame; Ed Koch; Fiorello Henry La Guardia; Bess Myerson; Charles Schumer; Eliot Spitzer.
Judy Blume Writer and social reformer
Born: February 12, 1938; Elizabeth, New Jersey Also known as: Judy Sussman (birth name); Judy Sussman Blume (full name) Area of achievement: Literature
gan to create, write, and illustrate stories for children. Publishers, however, issued her only rejection slips. Blume enrolled at NYU in a class on writing for children and young people. As assignments in this course, Judy developed the children’s book The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo (1969) and her first draft of Iggie’s House (1970), a young adult book about a nonwhite family that moved into an all-white neighborhood. These two assignments became her first and second published books. More than twenty other books for children and young people would follow.
Early Life Judy Sussman Blume (blewm), the daughter of dentist Rudolph and Esther Sussman, grew up in a Jewish family that emphasized books and reading. When Blume was in the third grade, her family moved to Florida for two years in the hope that the climate would help her older brother’s health problems. Blume took dance classes and excelled academically. At the all-girls Battin High School in Elizabeth, New Jersey, she sang in the chorus and was a features editor for the newspaper. After high school graduation, she enrolled in Boston University. When she contracted mononucleosis, however, she withdrew; she then enrolled in New York University (NYU) with a major in early childhood education. During her junior year at NYU, she married attorney John M. Blume; they had their first child, Randy Lee (a daughter), shortly after Blume’s 1961 graduation. Their son, Lawrence Andrew, was born two years later. While she cared for the house and children, Blume be-
Life’s Work Although she and her husband divorced in 1975, Blume continued to write as Judy Blume. Even after her 1976-1979 marriage to physicist Thomas A. Kitchens and her third marriage on June 6, 1987, to law professor and writer George Cooper, she retained the Blume name. Her works were a refreshing departure from the predictable, simplistic literature of the time. Many of her books— like life itself—do not have a tidy ending. Blume’s writings remain popular. In addition to her work for adolescents and children, she has written three adult novels and three memoirs. Many of her volumes appear in translations; some are available in more than thirty languages. Her novels for adults include Wifey (1978), Smart Women (1984), and Summer Sisters (1998). Religion—with particular emphasis on the Jewish faith—figures in many of her books, especially Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970) and Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself (1977). The last received critical reviews because of the ten-year-old girl’s obsession with
Blume has published books for all ages: children, young people, and adults. Her works treat in a humorous yet compassionate way such controversial subjects as religion, divorce, social exclusion, relocation, and sex. An activist for freedom to read, Blume is an opponent of censorship and book banning.
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ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET Judy Blume’s third novel, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, is about a teenager trying to choose a religion. The main character, Margaret, is being pulled in several directions on this issue, by her family members and by her friends and by her curiosity. This book is characteristic of Blume’s style, in which she effectively captures in print the thoughts, concerns, emotions, and speech of young characters; chooses topics vital to them; avoids a moralizing approach; uses first-person narration; and utilizes informal writing. Although Blume is a Jew, she does not push the character in this story toward the Jewish religion and does not insist that a single choice is the right one. Because of her frank handling of subjects that were usually taboo in children’s and young adult literature, such as that proposed in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Blume and her books have been subject to censorship and banning. For this reason, the writer has become a bold proponent of free speech, freedom of religion, and the freedom to read and write. Despite the controversy stirred by her works, Blume increased reading among her target audience: children and young adults. Blume’s books have sold more than eighty million copies; translations appear in more than thirty languages.
and mourning of the Nazi cruelties toward the Jews during the Holocaust. Blume’s writings treated frankly such sensitive topics as religion and sex. Her Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret appeared on the Top One Hundred List of Banned Books from the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC); several of her other books made OCLC’s Top One Thousand List. To protest censorship, Blume joined the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). In support, she produces posters, writes articles, speaks to groups, and encourages writers, teachers, and librarians facing criticism. All profits from her Places I Never Meant to Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers (2008) go to the NCAC. Blume’s books have appeared in a variety of formats: paperback, hardcover, large print, video, filmstrip, plays, animated films, film adaptations, teacher guides, television productions, and audio—some read by Blume herself. Her Fudge books were adapted for a Saturdaymorning television series. Walt Disney Pictures and Blume have contracted to produce films based on some of her books, including Deenie (1973) and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Blume’s honors include receiving the Young Readers Choice Award from the American Library Associa142
tion (1996); earning the Distinguished Alumna Award from New York University (1996); and accepting the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret became one of the all-time best sellers in paperback; by the mid-1990’s it had sold some six million copies. Her Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972), dealing with sibling rivalry, became the third-best-selling children’s book of all time; more than six million paperbacks were sold by the mid-1990’s. Superfudge (1980) was her best-selling hardcover.
Significance With her books having sold eighty million copies, translated into thirty-one languages, and available in many formats, Blume has remained a foremost writer for children and young people since 1969. Many of her more than twenty books for them treat such sensitive topics as sex and religion—especially her Jewish faith. While some groups have tried to ban or censor her works and those of other writers, Blume openly discourages censorship, remains an activist for the freedom to read, and encourages better communication among adults, children, and young people. Her more than ninety prestigious honors and awards attest to the enduring significance of Blume’s works. —Anita Price Davis
Further Reading Blume, Judy. Letters to Judy: What Your Kids Wish They Could Tell You, a Kids Fund Project. New York: Putnam, 1986. This collection of letters that Blume received from her readers contains some of her own comments. In this work for adults and young people, Blume urges communication between adults and young people. This book helps young adults to realize they are not alone in their feelings and experiences. Jones, Jen. Judy Blume: Fearless Storyteller for Teens. Berkeley Heights, N.J.: Enslow, 2009. Jones’s biography of writer and social activist Blume treats the life and works of the author in 112 pages. Nault, Jennifer. Judy Blume. Mankato, Minn.: Weigl, 2003. This biography of Blume, aimed at high school students, provides a life history of the writer and a review of some of the things she advocates, including the freedom to read and to write. O’Connell, Jennifer, Meg Cabot, Beth Kendrick, and Julie Kenner. Everything I Needed to Know About Be-
Jewish Americans ing a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume. New York: Pocket Books, 2009. Each essay in this collection by twenty-four women writers notes the impact Blume and her works had on the essayist’s life. Telford, Cee. Judy Blume. New York: Rosen Central, 2004. Telford discusses the life, the writing process and methods, the inspirations, and the work of this
Boas, Franz popular author. The book includes a biographical timeline of Blume’s life, a review of some of the awards Blume has earned, a discussion and critique of some of her books, and an overview of some of Blume’s beliefs. See also: Erica Jong; J. D. Salinger.
Franz Boas German-born anthropologist and ethnologist Considered the father of American anthropology, Boas established the first academic departments and almost single-handedly trained the first generation of professionals. Born: July 9, 1858; Minden, Westphalia, Prussia (now in Germany) Died: December 21, 1942; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Education; social issues
sulting in his first book, The Central Eskimo, in 1888, as an annual report for the Bureau of American Ethnology). While working at the Royal Ethnological Museum in Berlin, Boas met a group of Bella Coola Indians from British Columbia and became fascinated with Northwest Coast languages and cultures. Field trips began in 1886, and in 1887 he came to the United States because his chances for a professorship in anti-Semitic Germany were slim. He took a job at Clark University in Massachusetts in 1888, where he produced America’s first anthropology Ph.D., A. F. Chamberlain. In 1892, Boas became a curator at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and worked for the Field Museum (which grew out of this fair). He married Marie Krackowizer, the daughter of an Austrian radical physician, in 1887 and permanently made the United States his home. He took an appointment at Columbia University in 1899, where
Early Life Franz Boas (frahnz BOH-az) was born in the Westphalia region after the Revolution of 1848, a series of political and social upheavals that swept Europe. His father, Meir, was a prosperous merchant, and his mother, Sophie, founded a progressive kindergarten. Though his Orthodox grandparents were observant, Boas’s family was a typical assimilated mid-nineteenth century German-Jewish household, fostering the liberal ideas and secular values of the German Separating Race, Language, and Culture revolution. As Boas said, his parents had broken the shackles of religious “dogma” in Some scholars have claimed that Franz Boas did more to combat their freethinking ways. He was strongly opracial prejudice than any other person in history. Whether that claim is posed to the casual anti-Semitism all around exaggerated or not, his work certainly changed how race is viewed. He worked closely with W. E. B. DuBois and other early civil rights leadhim, however, and his several deep facial ers and was deeply involved with the National Association for the Adscars were said to be the result of a duel over vancement of Colored People (NAACP). Perhaps his most important an anti-Semitic incident. Frail and bookish insight was that race, language, and culture are not synonymous. Failas a child, Boas went on to study natural sciing to distinguish among them, Boas said, can lead to dire conseences in Heidelberg and physics and geograquences. For example, nativist ideologues such as Adolf Hitler often phy at the University of Kiel, where he rereduce culture to something biological or visceral—“in the blood”— ceived his Ph.D. in 1881 (later rescinded by which can be transmitted only by the mother tongue. Equating ethnicthe Nazis in the 1930’s) on the color of seaity with speech and with physical type has been the source of countless water. An influential professor, Theobald wars, even though in reality none can be reduced to the other. For Fischer, urged him to look at the ethnoBoas, the human animal is plastic: It can learn any language or any set graphic and historical aspects of geography, of customs; it can appear in many bodily forms, the differences between which are trivial. and two years later Boas went to Baffin Island to study Inuit migration patterns (re-
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Boas, Franz he established the first anthropology Ph.D. program, and remained there for forty-three years. Life’s Work Boas began his career before anthropology was recognized as a field of study. At the time, several intellectual strains concerning human cultures and origins were coming together in Europe and the United States, and Boas was one of the first to synthesize and formalize them. By the latter half of the nineteenth century most of Earth had finally been explored. The world’s geography, languages, societies, and human physical types were basically known. Simply put, anthropology as an academic discipline developed out of the attempts to explain the great variation—past and present—found among the world’s people in terms of race, language, and culture, and, indeed, it could be said that this was Boas’s personal and professional life’s goal. In 1902, Boas was a founder of the American Anthropological Association, an organization that brought together people from various areas working on these problems. Boas vehemently argued for a “four-field” approach to academic anthropology, combining archaeology, lin-
Franz Boas. (Library of Congress)
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Jewish Americans Association for being unpatriotic. In 1937, Boas became professor emeritus at Columbia University. He collapsed and died in 1942 while at a luncheon at Columbia’s Faculty Club. Significance Boas’s impact on both anthropology and prewar American intellectual life was profound beyond measure. There has never been a more prolific anthropologist than Boas, who wrote some seven hundred articles and at least a dozen books or monographs. He established the International Journal of American Linguistics and was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Upon his death, one obituary said that Boas found anthropology to be a mere hunting ground for those interested in the collecting of quaint and exotic primitive things, and he left it as a rigorous discipline founded on scientific principles and theory. Boas trained some three dozen Ph.D. students who went on to establish the first programs of anthropology in the United States and Canada (and Brazil and Mexico), and their students went on to build other departments. In a sense, practicing anthropologists today in North America—as well as many in Europe, Japan, and South America—are in some sense Boasians. — James Stanlaw Further Reading Boas, Francis. Franz Boas, 1858-1942: An Illustrated Biography. Mystic, Conn.: Seaport Autographs Press, 2004. The only biography of Boas written by a family member (his grandson), with many unpublished photographs.
Bogdanovich, Peter Boas, Franz. Race, Language, and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. A readable and accessible six-hundred-page collection of some of Boas’s most important writings, gathered in 1940. Many editions available. Darnell, Regna. And Along Came Boas: Continuity and Revolution in Americanist Anthropology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1998. An examination of Boas’s “historical particularist” theories by one of the foremost historians of anthropology and linguistics. Frank, Gelya. “Jews, Multiculturalism, and Boasian Anthropology.” American Anthropologist 99, no. 4 (1997): 731-745. An examination of the alleged preponderance of Jewish intellectuals in the early years of American anthropology. Glick, Leonard. “Types Distinct from Our Own: Franz Boas on Jewish Identity and Assimilation.” American Anthropologist 84, no. 3 (1982): 545-565. A major discussion on Boas’s resistance to positing a distinct Jewish cultural identity. Lewis, Herbert. “The Passion of Franz Boas.” American Anthropologist 103, no. 2 (2001): 447-467. A response by a noted historical anthropologist to mounting criticism against Boas in the last decades of the twentieth century. Williams, Vernon. Rethinking Race: Franz Boas and His Contemporaries. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. A history of the study of race in the United States, focusing on Boas’s views on racial equality, which, at the time, were considered radical. See also: Hannah Arendt; Daniel Bell; Nathan Glazer.
Peter Bogdanovich Director, actor, and writer Bogdanovich is an auteur whose early accomplishments in film direction earned worldwide acclaim and who contributed to film history. Born: July 30, 1939; Kingston, New York Areas of achievement: Entertainment; literature Early Life Peter Bogdanovich (bahg-DON-oh-vich) was born on July 30, 1939, to an Austrian Jewish mother, Herma, and a Greek Orthodox Serbian painter and pianist father, Borislav Bogdanovich. The couple fled Europe in 1939
with visas for the New York World’s Fair as Adolf Hitler’s noose tightened on European Jewry. They never went back. The efforts of Bogdanovich’s father saved his wife’s immediate family, but extended family members were all murdered. Bogdanovich was born soon after they arrived and settled in New York. Growing up in Manhattan, Bogdanovich was a film aficionado and the film expert for his high school newspaper. As he told a reporter in a 1995 interview, “I was looking for ways to get into films for free, and I found you could get on screening lists if you wrote columns.” He bluffed his way into Stella Adler’s acting school by 145
Bogdanovich, Peter lying about his age and eventually found minor roles on television and in summer stock. By the early 1960’s, he was a film programmer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His fascination with American directors John Ford, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, and Allan Dwan inspired him to write books about each of them. In another interview, Bogdanovich observed, “I started as a theater actor hoping I’d be discovered. I wasn’t. I wrote about films to learn about them . . . for my own purposes . . . and as a way of meeting legendary figures. I did and I published twelve books on them. But I prefer acting and directing to writing. It’s more fun than working by yourself.” A friend at Harper’s magazine noticed his writing, and soon he was contributing articles about film to Esquire, The New York Times, and Cahiers du Cinema. (A collection of his profiles, Pieces of Time, was first published in 1973.) In 1962, he married fellow film buff Polly Platt. She would soon become his artistic collaborator. They had two daughters, Antonia and Sashy. Following such New Wave directors as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Bogdanovich decided to become a film director. In 1964, he and his wife headed to Los Angeles. In Hollywood, Bogdanovich met Roger Corman, who, familiar with Bogdanovich’s written work, offered him a job. Corman, a Hollywood legend whose main oeuvre was shlock epics made quickly and within budget, became a seminal figure in film because under his tutelage many actors and directors would go on to achieve great fame. Corman taught Bogdonavich the basics of the film industry. (In a 2001 interview Bogdanovich revealed, “I went from getting the laundry to directing a picture in three weeks. Altogether, I worked for twenty-two weeks—preproduction, shooting, second unit, cutting, dubbing—I haven’t learned as much since.”) In 1966, Bogdanovich assisted Corman with The Wild
Connecting with His Heritage Judaism has had little influence on Peter Bogdanovich’s life, except for the 1999 “Stories of Courage: Two Women” episode of Rescuers that he directed for Showtime. Produced by Barbra Streisand, who was working on a series of stories about non-Jews who were rescuers during the Holocaust, it has been for Bogdanovich the only one of his works that related to his familial past. He noted that it was not until he made this film that he realized he was among the rescued, and that gave the film a special resonance.
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Jewish Americans Angels and acted in The Trip (1967). Under Corman, Bogdanovich directed Boris Karloff’s final film, Targets (1968), and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968). In 1971, Bogdanovich was hired by Italian director Sergio Leone (who turned Clint Eastwood into a megastar with his spaghetti Westerns) for Duck You Sucker! The relationship quickly soured, and Bogdanovich returned to the United States to film the American Film Institute documentary Directed by John Ford (1971). Life’s Work In 1970, as part of his continuing work for various publications on the subject of film, Bogdanovich interviewed Welles. The two developed a deep rapport. When pinched for cash, Welles even lived with Bogdanovich. (In 1992, Bogdanovich published This Is Orson Welles.) It was at this time that BBS Films, former Corman associates, approached him to write and direct a film of his own choosing. Platt advised him to adapt The Last Picture Show (1966), a Larry McMurtry coming-of-age novel, for the screen. It went on to be nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Director. It also led to his divorce when he fell in love with its lead, Cybill Shepherd. Along with fellow wunderkinds Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin, Bogdanovich formed the Director’s Company, making a deal with Paramount Pictures that would allow them latitude on future productions. Bogdanovich’s next two films came out of that affiliation. Bogdanovich was also asked to direct The Godfather (1972) and turned it down. Eventually, partner Coppola took it on. What’s up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973), films Platt had committed to finish with him, were successful. Once their relationship professionally ended, so did his success in films. Again, his choice of films failed him. When he was offered Chinatown (1974), he rejected the offer. His company also fell apart. Asked why he consistently turned down films that would go on to be major successes, he responded: “I made a lot of mistakes when I was successful in the 1970’s. You know, there’s no handbook for success, so I couldn’t make out what vibe I was picking up. But it’s called jealousy, envy, and loathing, though they come at you with smiles because they want something from you. So you put on a front of arrogance to cover insecurity.” Bogdanovich then showcased Shepherd in Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975), both
Jewish Americans bombs at the box office. After directing flops Nickelodeon (1976) and Saint Jack (1976), though it did win best film at the Venice Film Festival, by 1978 his personal life fell apart as well. He and Shepherd split. In 1980, Bogdanovich fell in love with Playboy Bunny Dorothy Stratten and showcased her in They All Laughed (1981). Stratten’s soon-to-be ex-husband, in a fit of jealous rage, killed her and then himself. It took three years for Bogdanovich to recover from the blow. In tribute, Bogdanovich wrote The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten (1960-1980), published in 1984. Four years later he married Stratten’s twenty-year-old half-sister. Their marriage lasted thirteen years. In 1985, Bogdanovich had some success with Mask, starring Cher, but Illegally Yours (1988) and Texasville (1990), the sequel to The Last Picture Show, were failures. Noises Off was released in 1992 and then in 1993 The Thing Called Love opened. Both films were boxoffice failures. During the 1990’s, Bogdanovich concentrated on television. He directed “Song of Songs,” an episode of Picture Windows; “A Dime a Dance” for Fallen Angels; Never Say Goodbye (1996); To Sir with Love II (1996); Blessed Assurance (1997); “Stories of Courage: Two Women,” for Rescuers; “A Killer Christmas” for Naked City; A Saintly Switch (1999); The Mystery of Natalie Wood (2004); “Sentimental Education” for The Sopranos; and Hustle: The Pete Rose Story (2004). Another theatrical release in 2001, The Cat’s Meow, enjoyed minor praise, but failed at the box office. After that Bogdanovich worked only sporadically, including appearing in a recurring role on television’s The Sopranos. Significance Because he knew film history and had a journalist’s access to the Hollywood greats, Bogdanovich became a consistent and prolific writer of serious articles and reference works. In addition to his books on Orson Welles
Bogdanovich, Peter (1961), Howard Hawks (1962), Alfred Hitchcock (1963), John Ford (1967), Fritz Lang (1968) and Allan Dwan (1970), he wrote A Moment with Miss Gish (1995), Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors (1997), Peter Bogdanovich’s Movie of the Week (1999), and Who the Hell’s in It: Conversations with Hollywood’s Legendary Actors (2004). His work earned him a 2007 award from The International Federation of Film Archives and a 2010 appointment to the faculty of the School of Filmmaking at the University of North Carolina. — Jeanette Friedman Further Reading Bogdanovich, Peter. “What They Learned from Roger Corman.” Interview by Beverly Gray. Moviemaker Magazine, Spring, 2001. A nicely done examination of the many directors who benefited from the Corman school of directing. _______. Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors. New York: Knopf, 1997. In an examination of the director’s craft, this book collects interviews with some of Hollywood’s best practitioners—Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, George Cukor, and Josef von Sternberg, among others. _______. Who the Hell’s in It: Conversations with Hollywood’s Legendary Actors. New York: Knopf, 2004. Lifetime experiences of Hollywood stars, as seen through the eyes of a friend. Yule, Andrew. Picture Shows: The Life and Films of Peter Bogdanovich. New York: Limelight, 1992. An examination of the life and work of the director, with special emphasis on the late Dorothy Stratten. See also: Woody Allen; Judd Apatow; Stanley Kramer; Barry Levinson; Michael Mann; Steven Spielberg.
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Ivan Boesky Wall Street investor and criminal Boesky specialized in arbitrage trades—buying the stock of companies that were expected to merge with or be taken over by other companies. His skill at this form of stock trading made him one of the wealthiest Americans in the 1980’s. However, charges of illegal insider trading brought him a fine of one hundred million dollars and a prison sentence. Born: March 6, 1937; Detroit, Michigan Also known as: Ivan Frederick Boesky (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; crime Early Life Ivan Boesky (I-van BOH-skee) was the son of a Russian émigré, William, who came to the United States in 1912. William settled in Detroit and started a bar and grill, which eventually grew into a chain of clubs throughout the city. His son, Ivan Boesky, was educated mostly in the public schools of Detroit, although he briefly attended the Cranbook School, a prestigious private preparatory school outside Detroit. As a young man, Boesky did not appear to be involved heavily in Jewish religious life. He told an interviewer in the 1980’s that the major emphasis in his family during his youth was achieving a good education. Boesky attended Wayne State University, Eastern Michigan University, and the University of Michigan, but he never received a college degree. In 1959, he enrolled in the Detroit College of Law, which did not require a college degree for entrance at that time, and he earned a law degree there in 1964. After law school, Boesky worked for a time as a partner in his father’s bar and nightclub business. While in law school, Boeksy met Seema Silberstein, the daughter of Ben Silberstein, a wealthy Detroit real estate developer. They were married in 1964 and moved to New York City, where Boesky worked for a number of Wall Street firms before starting his own company. In 1975, Boesky borrowed funds from his in-laws and opened Ivan F. Boesky Company, an investment firm in New York City. Life’s Work On Wall Street, Boesky developed a reputation as a tough competitor, a demanding boss, and a hard worker. In 1981, he sold his interests in Ivan F. Boesky Company and formed a new venture, Ivan F. Boesky Corporation, which specialized in arbitrage trading—trading stock in companies that were the targets of mergers or acquisi148
tions, anticipating that the takeover bids would cause the price of such firms’ stocks to rise. His investments made a great deal of money for his clients, and he became one of the wealthiest men in the United States. In 1985, he published a book on arbitrage trading, Merger Mania: Arbitrage, Wall Street’s Best Kept Money-Making Secret. Boesky maintained that his success in predicting which companies would become targets of acquisition or takeover efforts was due to solid research and analysis. Nevertheless, his remarkable successes led to speculation that he was using insider information, that is, making his purchases based on secret information provided by sources within the companies involved. Insider trading is illegal because it allows investors to profit from information not available to the general public. Federal investigations into Michael Milken and Dennis Levine, two brokers at the investment firm Drexel Burnham Lambert who had many dealings with Boesky, eventually led to intense scrutiny of Boesky’s trading activities. On November 14, 1986, federal prosecutors announced a plea bargain with Boesky, and he agreed to testify against others involved in insider trading. He was fined one hundred million dollars, sentenced to three and a half years in prison, and banned for life from working in securities trading. He served his sentence at the Federal Prison Camp at Lompoc, California, and was released after twenty-two months. Before his arrest and prosecution, Boesky had given liberally to various Jewish charities. He had made a two-million-dollar gift to the Jewish Theological Seminary for a new library that was to bear his name. After his conviction, he asked the school to remove his name. Before he went to prison, his interest in the Jewish faith deepened, and he enrolled in courses at the seminary in the study of the Talmud, Mishnah, Midrash, and Hebrew language. After his release from prison, he largely avoided the public spotlight, spending much of his time in California and in Europe. Significance Boesky came to symbolize both the good and the bad of the heady days of the 1980’s bull market on Wall Street. His success at arbitrage made this formerly arcane form of stock trading a major interest of many Wall Street firms. However, Boesky’s involvement in insider trading eventually led to a large sell-off of many stocks involved in any kind of merger or acquisition ventures.
Jewish Americans The prosecution of Boesky and others involved in the insider-trading scandals of the mid-1980’s marked a new era of vigilant oversight of such activities by the Securities and Exchange Commission. —Mark S. Joy Further Reading Boesky, Ivan F. Merger Mania: Arbitrage, Wall Street’s Best Kept Money-Making Secret. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985. Boesky’s advice on making money from trades involving companies facing takeovers or considering mergers; published shortly before his involvement in illegal insider trading was made public. Bruck, Connie. “‘My Master Is My Purse’: Ivan Boesky Is the Biggest Winner in the Dangerous Game of Arbitrage.” The Atlantic 254, no. 6 (December, 1984): 94-110. An in-depth interview with Boesky when
Boorda, Jeremy Michael he was at his height as an arbitrage trader; contains more background on his early life than most other sources. MacDonald, Scott B., and Jane E. Hughes. Separating Fools from Their Money: A History of American Financial Scandals. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2009. Originally published in 2007, this edition has a revised preface and a new postscript. Valuable for putting Boesky’s illegal-trading practices in the context of the general history of such scandals. Stewart, James B. Den of Thieves. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010. Originally published in 1991, this is reissued with a new introduction by the author. An in-depth study of the insider-trading scandal, with significant coverage of Boesky and other major figures. See also: Leona Helmsley; Michael Milken.
Jeremy Michael Boorda Military leader Boorda enlisted in the Navy at age sixteen, and he rose through the ranks to become the twenty-fifth chief of naval operations (CNO) in 1994. He was the first CNO who started his career as an enlisted man and who had not graduated from the Naval Academy. His career ended in tragedy. Born: November 26, 1939; South Bend, Indiana Died: May 16, 1996; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Mike Boorda; Jeremy M. Boorda Area of achievement: Military Early Life Jeremy Michael Boorda (JEH-ruh-mee MIK-uhl BORdah) was born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1939. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants who moved to the United States from Ukraine. Boorda was the second of three children of Herman and Gertrude Boorda. The family moved around a lot when Jeremy Michael Boorda was a child, but they settled in Momence, a farming town south of Chicago. Boorda’s parents owned the only dress shop in town, which took the majority of their time and kept them from spending time with their children. Boorda’s father tried to commit suicide by jumping off of a bridge when Boorda was thirteen; later, the father was given a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. The par-
ents’ marriage was not a happy one, and they divorced when Boorda was in his early teens. Boorda began skipping school and drinking alcohol heavily, up to a six-pack of beer a day. At age sixteen, he lied about his age and enlisted in the Navy. Boorda was sent to the training center in Norman, Oklahoma, where he met Bettie Moran, who was a student at the University of Oklahoma. The two married in 1957. They had their first child, David, soon after. Three more children, Edward, Anna, and Robert, were born before David was four. Boorda was encouraged to apply for the enlisted-toofficer program by his mentor, chief petty officer George Everding. Boorda was eventually accepted, despite not having a college education. Life’s Work Upon completion of Officer Candidate School in Rhode Island, Boorda became an ensign in August, 1962. He continued to advance in rank, and soon he graduated from Naval Destroyer School. Boorda served his first tour of duty in Vietnam on the USS Craig as a weapons officer in 1965. He attended the U.S. Naval War College and earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Rhode Island in 1971. Boorda served as executive officer on the USS Brooke and completed a second tour of duty off the coast of Vietnam. By 149
Boorstin, Daniel J. 1978, Boorda had commanded the USS Farragut and taken an executive assistant position at the Pentagon. Boorda continued to move up the chain of command, serving as commander of Destroyer Squadron TwentyTwo, executive assistant to the chief of naval personnel, and executive assistant to the chief of naval operations. He was promoted to rear admiral in the early 1980’s and served as commander of several different battle groups before becoming commander of the Sixth Fleet in 1987. The following year, as vice admiral, Boorda became the chief of naval personnel and deputy chief of naval operations for manpower, personnel, and training. He was promoted to four-star admiral in November of 1991, and he was appointed commander in chief of allied forces in southern Europe and commander in chief of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe. The Navy was suffering from a number of scandals in the early 1990’s, including Tailhook, and experiencing several cases of sexual harassment and assault against female personnel. When Admiral Frank Kelso was forced to retire because of the scandals, President Bill Clinton appointed Boorda chief of naval operations (CNO) in 1994. Among Boorda’s several awards were two Navy commendation medals for his actions while serving during the Vietnam War. They came with bronze V’s, which are to be worn only by those who had seen combat. On May 16, 1996, Boorda was scheduled to discuss with a reporter allegations that the V’s Boorda was wearing were false. Boorda returned to his home at the Washington Navy Yard, wrote letters to his wife and to his sailors, and took his own life. Boorda had stopped wearing the medals about a year before. The letters were not released to the public, but many believe that in the wake of the scandals, Boorda did not want to further disgrace and harm the reputation of the United States Navy, which he loved so much.
Jewish Americans Significance Boorda never forgot that he started his Navy career as an enlisted man. One of his first actions as CNO was to re-create the enlisted-to-admiral program, hoping it would help young sailors the way it had helped him. Boorda pushed for changes to how officer fitness reports, enlisted evaluations, and enlisted advancements were handled so that the systems were consistent. He approved Navy policies that advanced the science and technology of oceanography. Boorda also proposed equipping all future LPD-17 amphibious class vessels with complete communication, information, and defense systems, known as C41 suites. The first of these was commissioned in January, 2006. —Jennifer L. Campbell Further Reading Kotz, Nick. “Breaking Point.” Washingtonian, December, 1996. Article by an award-winning journalist chronicles the last twenty-three days of Boorda’s life. Shenon, Philip. “His Medals Questioned, Top Admiral Kills Himself.” The New York Times, May 17, 1996. Article probes reasons why Boorda may have killed himself and offers reactions from his colleagues. Vistica, Gregory. Fall from Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy. Austin, Tex.: Touchstone, 1997. Vistica investigates the Tailhook scandal, out-of-control Navy spending during the 1980’s and the 1990’s, and the men who were in command at the time. Boorda was given command of the U.S. Navy after the scandal and tasked with redeeming it in the eyes of the country. Contains graphic descriptions of abuse of women. See also: Julius Ochs Adler; Uriah P. Levy; Hyman G. Rickover.
Daniel J. Boorstin Historian A scholar and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Boorstin headed the Library of Congress and was a foremost proponent of the consensus approach to history. Born: October 1, 1914; Atlanta, Georgia Died: February 28, 2004; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Daniel Joseph Boorstin (full name) Areas of achievement: Education; history 150
Early Life Daniel Boorstin (BOR-stihn) was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Samuel Aaron and Dora Olsan Boorstin, second-generation descendants of Jews fleeing persecution in czarist Russia. Anti-Semitic prejudice was common throughout the Deep South in the early twentieth century, and Daniel Boorstin’s father attracted regional scorn when he served as the counsel for Leo Frank, a Jewish factory worker who allegedly raped and murdered a non-
Jewish Americans Jewish teenage girl. Frank was later lynched, forcing the Boorstin family, then closely associated with Frank, to flee the state to avoid the wave of anti-Semitic violence engulfing the region. The family settled in Oklahoma, where Boorstin graduated from Tulsa Central High School in his early teens. He enrolled in Harvard University at the age of fifteen, where he majored in English history and literature. After graduating with honors in 1934, Boorstin became a Rhodes scholar and attended Balliol College at Oxford, where he earned another bachelor of arts and then a civil law degree in 1937. Back in America, Boorstin enrolled in Yale University’s Law School and began teaching at Harvard. It was during this period that Boorstin began a brief flirtation with communism. He soon found that Soviet oppression and the Nazi-Soviet Pact were evidence of the movement’s hypocrisy. He quit the organization and renounced his participation in it. During the same period, he began a journey that would take him from being a promising lawyer to a noteworthy historian. Life’s Work In 1944, Boorstin accepted an invitation to serve in the department of history at the University of Chicago, partially on the strength of his first published work, The Mysterious Science of the Law (1941), which examines Sir William Blackstone’s commentaries on English law. He worked at the University of Chicago for the next twenty-five years. While there, Boorstin was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953, where he faced questioning about his former Communist affiliation and provided the names of others who joined the Communist cause. By this time, Boorstin’s youthful radicalism had been replaced by a pragmatic conservatism that marked the remainder of his career. During this period, Boorstin became one of the leading proponents of the consensus school of history that found unity rather than conflict in America’s past and celebrated American exceptionalism. Writing at the height of the Cold War, consensus scholars assaulted the relativist view of history that had once dominated the profession. Boorstin’s The Genius of American Politics (1953) underscored his consensus credentials. In it, he argued that America’s political system remained nonideological in nature, the byproduct of pragmatic rather than dogmatic responses to the challenges faced in North America. Boorstin began writing a trilogy titled The Americans in 1958. Each book in the series received important awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Bancroft Prize.
Boorstin, Daniel J. In 1969, Boorstin abandoned academia for the directorship of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of History and Technology. He stepped down from the post in 1973 but remained with the museum as senior historian. Despite some congressional concerns about his conservatism, Boorstin became the Librarian of Congress, working hard to make the institution more accessible to both scholars and the general public. Boorstin held that post from 1975 to 1987, during which he continued to publish. He commenced publication of another popular trilogy that included The Discoverers (1983), The Creators (1992), and The Seekers (1995). In retirement, Boorstin continued to write, remained active in the publishing industry, and worked to spread his love of reading and books. Boorstin died of pneumonia in 2004. Significance Boorstin’s books enjoyed a readership in the millions. In them, he advanced a popular theme of mankind finding simple solutions to the seemingly complex problems that it faced. His writings also proved remarkably prescient. Boorstin’s 1962 treatise, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, warned how the proliferation of new technology had dulled peoples’ senses, creating a vapid popular culture where the vicarious thrill and the sound byte was preferred to reality. The Image, like so many of his other works, struck a resonant chord with Americans. —Keith M. Finley Further Reading Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The Colonial Experience. New York: Vintage Books, 1964. Bancroft Prizewinning book that explores the roots of modern America in the nation’s colonial period. _______. The Genius of American Politics. 1953. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. A classic of consensus historiography, this book reflects Boorstin’s vision of the American nation, which remained consistent throughout his life. Emphasizes how American institutions forged on the American continent were not exportable abroad. _______. The Mysterious Science of Law: An Essay on Blackstone’s Commentaries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Boorstin’s first book, originally published in 1941, reveals the young scholar’s talent and reflects his early interest in the law. Galgano, Michael J., J. Christopher Arndt, and Raymond M. Hyser. Doing History: Research and Writing in 151
Borge, Victor the Digital Age. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2007. Offers a brief analysis of the transformation and the evolution of the American historical profession. Boorstin’s consensus school is given considerable attention. Oshinsky, David M. A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy. New York: Oxford Univer-
Jewish Americans sity Press, 2005. Examines anti-Communist hysteria in America in the 1950’s; offers context for Boorstin’s embrace of consensus historiography at the same time. See also: Harold Bloom; Noam Chomsky; Peter Gay; Lionel Trilling; Barbara W. Tuchman.
Victor Borge Danish-born pianist and comedian Borge was an accomplished classical concert pianist and a consummate entertainer. Through the use of humor, he endeared himself to his audiences and made classical music appealing. Born: January 3, 1909; Copenhagen, Denmark Died: December 23, 2000; Greenwich, Connecticut Also known as: Børge Rosenbaum (birth name); “The Great Dane,” “The Unmelancholy Dane,” “The Clown Prince of Denmark” Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment Early Life Victor Borge (VIHK-tur BOR-guh) was born Børge Rosenbaum on January 3, 1909, in Copenhagen, Denmark, to Bernhard and Frederickke Lichtinger Rosenbaum. Borge’s parents were musicians, and he began piano lessons at the age of three. In 1918, when he was nine years old, Borge won a scholarship to the Royal Danish Academy of Music, where he studied the piano. Borge gave his first performance as a soloist with the Copenhagen Philharmonic when he was ten years old. In 1926, he played in his first major concert and continued to play as a concert pianist until 1934. Life’s Work In 1933, Borge married Elsie Chilton, an American. Borge began to mix humor with his music and developed a nightclub revue act, which debuted in 1933. He toured Europe extensively, and in 1937 he made his film debut. Borge appeared in six Danish films before World War II broke out, and by 1940 he became one of the best-known entertainers in Scandinavia. Borge ridiculed the Nazis extensively during his act, and he was blacklisted, both because he was Jewish and because of his outspoken criticism of the Nazis. Borge was playing a revue in Stockholm, Sweden, when the 152
Germans invaded Denmark on April 9, 1940. His wife was still in Denmark, but both Borge and his wife managed to escape to Finland, where they boarded the USS American Legion, bound for New York City. Borge and his wife arrived on August 28, 1940, with about twenty dollars between them. Borge did not speak any English, so he began to learn the language by watching films, and he started translating his revue act from Danish into English. He changed his name from Børge Rosenbaum to Victor Borge, using his given name as his new last name. Borge thought that his name sounded too German to Americans, and his choice of Victor was in homage to his piano teacher. In 1941, Rudy Vallee hired Borge to do audience warm-ups for his radio program. Borge also auditioned for another radio program, Bing Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall. Borge first appeared as a guest, but his success led to him being signed as a regular performer. He went on to do fifty-four performances for the show. In 1942, he was named best new radio performer of the year. Borge also had his own radio show between 1943 and 1951, which aired on various networks, including the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), and Mutual. He debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1945. In 1953, Borge opened a show called Comedy in Music at the Golden Theatre in New York City. It was so popular that Borge set a world record of 849 consecutive performances for the show. In 1948, Borge acquired his American citizenship. He and Elsie adopted twins but divorced in 1951. In 1953, Borge married again. His second wife, Sarabel (Sanna) Scraper, had been his manager and had a daughter from a previous marriage. The couple later had a son and a daughter. In 1951, Borge starred in his own television series for a single season. He continued to appear on television as a guest star and in the occasional special. Borge would re-
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main active as a touring performer until his death. A consummate performer, Borge was affectionately called “The Great Dane,” “The Clown Prince of Denmark,” and “The Unmelancholy Dane.” Several of his concerts were recorded by the Public Broadcasting System and made available in audio and video formats, including his two most famous acts, “Phonetic Punctuation” and “Inflationary Language.” In 1963, Borge and New York attorney Richard Netter established the “Thanks to Scandinavia” scholarship fund, which awards scholarships to health-care practitioners and students from Scandinavia and Bulgaria to travel to the United States to further their education. The scholarship is a way of expressing gratitude to the peoVictor Borge. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) ple of those countries for their protection of Jews during World War II. people. Borge’s humor included sight gags and wordBorge cowrote two English-language books with Robplay, and he often included audience members in his act ert Sherman, My Favorite Intermissions in 1971 and My by asking them questions or passing out sheet music. Favorite Comedies in Music in 1980. In 1997, with —Karen S. Garvin Niels-Jørgen Kaiser, he cowrote a Danish-language book, Smileter den korteste afstand (a smile is the shortest disFurther Reading tance). Borge, Victor, and Robert Sherman. My Favorite ComeIn 1999, Borge received the Kennedy Center Honors dies in Music. New York: Franklin Watts, 1980, 1994. for his lifetime achievement of contribution to American Borge tells anecdotes about the history of modern muculture through the performing arts. He received seven sic and the composers and performers who make it. honorary degrees and was knighted five times, once by _______. My Favorite Intermissions: Victor Borge’s Lives each of the Scandinavian countries. of the Musical Greats and Other Facts You Never At the age of ninety-one, Borge died in his sleep of Knew You Were Missing. New York: Doubleday, 1971. heart failure at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Borge writes in a humorous vein about the lives and he was buried at Putnam Cemetery. His grave is marked times of famous composers, including Giuseppe Verdi with a statuette of the Little Mermaid (the original statue and Richard Wagner. stands in the harbor of Copenhagen, a tribute to the story McConnell, Stacy A. Contemporary Musicians: Profiles by Hans Christian Andersen). of the People in Music. Vol. 19. Detroit, Mich.: Gale, 1997. An encyclopedia of musicians, this work inSignificance cludes a biography and discography. Borge’s contribution to the fields of music and entertainment helped to draw to classical music audiences that See also: Burt Bacharach; Sammy Cahn; Billy Joel; otherwise would not have been interested in it. His work Randy Newman. appealed to both sophisticated listeners and ordinary
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Margaret Bourke-White Photojournalist Bourke-White was an industrial photographer who became a photojournalist, working for Life magazine on such topics as the Great Depression poor, pre-war Nazi Germany, and the fighting in World War II. She followed the Allied troops into Germany, and she was the first to photograph the German concentration camps. Born: June 14, 1904; Bronx, New York Died: August 27, 1971; Stamford, Connecticut Also known as: Margaret White (birth name) Areas of achievement: Journalism; photography Early Life Margaret Bourke-White (boork wit) was the daughter of Joseph White and Minnie Bourke. Joseph was Jewish, and he worked as an engineer for a factory that produced printing presses. Minnie was Irish-Catholic, and she
Margaret Bourke-White. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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raised Bourke-White as a Christian. Both parents valued education, and they had a strong work ethic, which they passed on to Bourke-White. Industrial processes fascinated her as a child, and that later shaped her passion for industrial photography. Joseph had an interest in taking pictures and in nature. These interests inspired Bourke-White to study photography and zoology when she went to college. She enrolled at Columbia University in 1921 when she was seventeen years old. She had a number of financial problems at school because her father died of a stroke in her first year of college. Her father’s brother and later some friends helped her with tuition so she could continue. During this time, she learned that her father was Jewish. She kept her Jewish heritage a secret for most of her life, likely because of the prejudice against Jews in the workplace and in education, especially in the 1920’s. She also took a photography class when at Columbia from Clarence White. White was a skilled teacher who trained a number of people who became famous photographers, such as Dorothea Lange and Ralph Steiner. Bourke-White had to work in black and white since there was no easy way at that time to make color photographs. She then went to the University of Michigan to study under a famous zoologist, and she continued to make money selling her photographs. There she met her first husband, Everett “Chappie” Chapman. They were married in 1924, and they were able to work together in photography. However, the relationship did not fare well, partly because of her abusive mother-in-law, so they divorced after several years. Life’s Work Bourke-White finished college at Cornell University, graduating in 1927. She then went to Cleveland, Ohio, and made a portfolio of photographs of many industrial buildings. That garnered her many assignments to photograph estates and factories, including steel mills, from 1927 to 1929. She generally used a large camera such as the Graflex view camera that made four-by-five-inch negatives. By 1929, Bourke-White was well known, and she was hired to be the main photographer for a new magazine called Fortune in which pictures
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would be used to illustrate the stories. Some of Documenting Poverty in Southern her stories were of the Elgin watch factory, the Rural Areas Swift meat plant, the Campbell’s soup factory, coal mining, and the construction of the ChrysIn 1936, Margaret Bourke-White went with Erskine Caldwell, ler building in New York City. She made trips to the writer, to rural areas in the South. Caldwell was a southerner, Germany and Russia in 1930, taking industrial and he had a pleasant personality that easily related to the rural poor and their problems. Their houses often had no electricity, and photographs for Fortune, collected in a book the walls were papered with old newspapers to help conserve heat. called Eyes on Russia (1931). Caldwell spent several hours talking to the people in a house while She was assigned by Fortune in the midBourke-White waited for the right expression of the occupants to 1930’s to document the drought in the Midcapture with her large cameras. Sometimes Bourke-White would west and the problems of the poor in the South pose her subjects. in the United States during the Great DepresAfter the interviews, Caldwell and Bourke-White returned to sion. These assignments made her more aware New York City. There Caldwell wrote the personal stories about of people and their problems, so her photothe people depicted in Bourke-White’s pictures, and these were graphs took a dramatic thematic turn, causing collected in You Have Seen Their Faces. Many thought this book her to document people more often than inwas a classic that helped others understand the grinding poverty animate objects. For instance, Bourke-White that existed in the South. Some, however, were not quite so complimentary. Nevertheless, this was a turning point for Bourke-White, worked with the famous novelist Erskine Caldand many of her subjects after this project were people rather than well, and they produced a book in 1937 on povobjects. Caldwell and Bourke-White had a romance during this erty in the South called You Have Seen Their time, and they later married. Faces. In 1937, Bourke-White and three other photographers were hired for another new magazine called Life in which photographs were to pictures are those at Buchenwald and of surgeons operatbe used with only abbreviated written material to docuing on wounded troops in Italy. ment the news. Life was an instant success since this was After World War II Bourke-White worked on a varithe first time that people could see news stories with clear ety of international stories, such as the troubling situation pictures. Bourke-White continued to use her large camin India and Pakistan, apartheid in South Africa, and eras, whereas the other photographers at Life used the problems in Korea. Eventually her Parkinson’s disease smaller and more mobile Leica 35 millimeter cameras to kept her from traveling, so she spent more time organiztake candid photographs. ing and exhibiting her photographs and writing her memAssignments for Life included documenting the homeoirs. She died at the age of sixty-seven from complicaless during floods, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and tions of Parkinson’s disease. problems with the Nazis in Europe. She made dramatic photographs of Nazi troops and of Europe’s growing Significance anti-Semitism. This was the time when many Jews were Bourke-White achieved outstanding success as an inbeing transported to concentration camps or ghettos. dustrial photographer and photojournalist at a time when Bourke-White continued to document the war in Eualmost all the workforce was dominated by men. She was rope before and during World War II. These stories inone of the first women to produce outstanding architeccluded the lives of Prime Minister Winston Churchill in tural photographs and to work for such prestigious publiEngland and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. She was the cations as Fortune and Life magazines. She was the first only foreign photographer in Moscow in 1941 when the foreign photographer to be allowed into the Soviet Union Germans invaded Russia, making dramatic photographs in the 1930’s and also the first woman to photograph of the bombing in Moscow and of the fighting between fighting in Europe during World War II. the Germans and Russians. During World War II, she Her photographs allowed people to see dramatic news was made an official war correspondent for the Army Air stories since there was no television or Internet. For inForce. She photographed, for instance, B-17 bombers stance, her photographs of the Buchenwald concentraand their crews fighting in Italy, General George Patton tion camp in Germany were taken a few hours after the and his troops, and the Jewish prisoners in the concentraNazis fled. These photographs showed gaunt prisoners tion camp at Buchenwald. Some of her most memorable 155
Bowles, Jane lined up along fences, piles of dead bodies not yet buried, cremation ovens, prisoners too weak to move confined to their beds, and local people forced by the American soldiers to view these horrors. —Robert L. Cullers Further Reading Goldberg, Vicki. Margaret Bourke-White. New York: Harper and Row, 1986. This is a detailed biography with a few of her pictures and an index. McEuen, Melissa A. Seeing America. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000. This volume describes the work of prominent women photographers
Jewish Americans from World War I and II, including a chapter on Bourke-White. There are only a few pictures. Rubin, Susan Goldman. Margaret Bourke-White. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999. This is a short biography about Bourke-White that is written clearly and succinctly. It has many of her best photographs. Silverman, Jonathan. The Life of Margaret Bourke-White. New York: Viking Press, 1983. This is a detailed biography that has many of her important photographs. See also: Diane Arbus; Alfred Eisenstaedt; Annie Leibovitz; Alfred Stieglitz.
Jane Bowles Novelist, writer, and playwright Bowles wrote a novel, short stories, and plays in a distinctive and avant-garde style. Born: February 22, 1917; New York, New York Died: May 4, 1973; Málaga, Spain Also known as: Jane Stajer Auer (birth name); Jane Auer Bowles (full name) Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Jane Bowles (bohlz) was born in New York City to Sidney and Claire Stajer Auer, Hungarian Jews who had been born in the United States. One of seven siblings, Bowles moved with her family to Woodmere, Long Island, at the age of ten. At thirteen, after her father’s death, she returned to New York City with her mother. Educated at a French school in Manhattan and briefly at a boarding school in Massachusetts, Bowles spent two years at a sanatorium in Switzerland, where she was treated for a tubercular knee. Her relationship with her mother was a major influence on her adolescence; Auer impressed on Bowles her gifts of talent and intelligence and her need to succeed in a career. Millicent Dillon, Bowles’s biographer, found relatives and friends who commented on the young Bowles’s fragile emotional world, her performative personality, and her creation of a public persona. In 1938, at twenty-one, she married Paul Bowles, who was already known as a composer. She began work on her only published novel, Two Serious Ladies (1943), while on her honeymoon. In 1948, after stays in New York and France, Bowles traveled to Morocco, where she and her 156
husband would live intermittently for the rest of their lives. They did not always spend time in each other’s company, because each had several major love affairs. The couple did not divorce, however, and their lives remained closely bound. Bowles’s principal affairs were with Helvetia Perkins, an American, and Cherifa, a Moroccan woman with whom she lived in Tangier. The husband and wife remained dependent on each other creatively, and Bowles often contrasted her own writer’s block and slowness with her husband’s easier and more rapid success. Although Bowles’s religion did not play an overt role in her life, and although she converted to Catholicism shortly before her death, her childhood and adolescence, spent in an extended Jewish family, are considered by most critics to have played a major part in her work. The short story “Camp Cataract,” which depicts a relationship between two sisters, is Bowles’s most autobiographical, despite the fact that its characters, like most of those created by the author, live in a state of neartotal isolation from the social and familial world. Life’s Work During her lifetime, Bowles published a novel, Two Serious Ladies; a play, In the Summer House (1953); and a short-story collection, Plain Pleasures (1966). Her work, with the addition of a puppet play called A Quarreling Pair and previously unpublished material, was collected and published as The Collected Works of Jane Bowles in 1966. She worked for many years on a second novel, entitled Out in the World, and on a number of other stories and plays, a handful of which were published
Jewish Americans in the 1980’s by the literary magazine The Threepenny Review. Prominent literary figures, including Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams, supported her efforts; however, she never found the wide audience she sought. Accordingly, her work fell out of print and subsequently was rediscovered in the 1960’s. Bowles struggled with alcoholism for much of her adult life and, after suffering a stroke at forty, she depended increasingly on a variety of medications for the treatment of high blood pressure and depression. Despite incessant rumors regarding her having been poisoned by her live-in Moroccan partner, and despite her husband’s assertion that the partner had tried to harm his wife, Bowles’s health problems stemmed from a combination of natural causes and from her abuse of alcohol and drugs. She spent the last several years of her life in a convent hospital in southern Spain, where she had been placed because of progressively worsening emotional illness, and she died of a stroke in 1973.
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On and off the Island: TWO SERIOUS LADIES With its extended set pieces and theatrical dialogue, Jane Bowles’s only published novel owes a lot to the French existentialism and absurdism that the author read widely during her youth. (She is believed to have met the French novelist Louis Céline on a ship bound from Europe to New York and to have decided from that point on to become a writer.) Set in part in Panama City and in part on a fictionalized Staten Island, Two Serious Ladies brims with childhood lost and regained, random encounters and reversals, and struggles to connect with others in a world suffused with hostile and often undecipherable meaning. The novel’s importance, though, lies more in its depiction of a particularly American despair and in its abandonment of psychological realism in favor of an emphasis on action and speech. The main characters, Mr. and Mrs. Copperfield, Miss Gamelon, Miss Goering, Arnold, Andy, and Pacifica, do not develop so much as they live—often on impulse, with emotions expressed either through monologues or through abrupt comings and goings, escapades, and love affairs, whose meanings vary wildly in the assessments of those involved. People travel and return home, set up and abandon collective homes, argue and reconcile. The business of living—eating, housekeeping, and being—often overwhelms; to Bowles’s credit, humor of a mordant sort eases the struggle, and individual pasts threaten always to flood the present. A collection of mysterious misfits, sympathetic in their efforts and in their failures, Bowles’s characters may be usefully read against the denizens of Sherwood Anderson’s 1919 novel of Ohio, Winesburg, with whom they share affinities of temperament, if not of lifestyle.
Significance Associated with literary modernism by some and with feminist literature by others, Bowles’s work tends to resist easy classification because of its singularity. Reviewers and critics often focus on the themes of duality and subjectivity with which her work is infused; mother-daughter relations also figure largely, and so do efforts at human connectedness and belonging. Critics such as Stephen Benz and Carol Schloss have placed Bowles’s work in the context of postmodernism, highlighting issues of habitation, migration, and colonialism. Bowles’s attention to language and to characterization, her vivid—often exaggerated— dialogue and descriptions, and her lack of attention to realist motivation and depth have produced works that, though usually called minor, herald an important career. Compared variously to those of Samuel Beckett, Carson McCullers, and Jean Stafford, Bowles’s vision remains intensely her own. —Liana Scalettar Further Reading Bowles, Jane. My Sister’s Hand in Mine. New York: Ecco, 1978. The expanded edition of the collected
works and a comprehensive way to be introduced to Bowles’s writing. The original version of the collected works was published first by Peter Owen in London and then by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1966, while the author was still alive. _______. “Señorita Córdoba.” The Threepenny Review 21 (Spring, 1985): 18-21. Unpublished during her lifetime, this fragment gives readers a good sense of Bowles’s stylistic and narrative concerns. Dillon, Millicent. “Keeper of the Flame.” The New Yorker ( January 27, 1997): 27. Details the efforts of a Spanish high school student to find and protect Bowles’s grave. _______. A Little Original Sin: The Life and Work of Jane Bowles. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981. A definitive biography of Bowles and the major resource for anyone wishing to know more about her. Skerl, Jennie. A Tawdry Place of Salvation: The Art of Jane Bowles. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997. An anthology of critical work about 157
Boxer, Barbara Bowles, this volume includes the essays “Jane Bowles in Uninhabitable Places: Writing on Cultural Boundaries,” by Carol Schloss, and “‘The Americans Stick Pretty Much to Their Own Quarter’: Jane Bowles and Central America,” by Stephen Benz. Skerl’s introductory essay outlines the reception of Bowles’s
Jewish Americans work by literary historians, noting in particular the perpetual rediscovery of the author by succeeding generations. See also: Paul Auster; Lillian Hellman; Grace Paley; Susan Sontag.
Barbara Boxer Politician A congresswoman and senator from California, Boxer has been a strong voice for progressive values, originating numerous bills and amendments in the areas of environmental protection and of women’s equality. Born: November 11, 1940; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Barbara Levy (birth name); Barbara Levy Boxer (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; women’s rights Early Life Barbara Boxer (BOK-sur) was born in Brooklyn to Ira and Sophie Silvershein Levy. She grew up in Flatbush and Crown Heights, in secure and close-knit neighborhoods of Jewish and Italian residents. Her father was keenly interested in politics, and he admired both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Boxer was a bright girl who made friends easily, but she was not afraid to do the unexpected. Along with a friend, she coached the boys’ baseball team at her high school. After graduating, she enrolled in Brooklyn College, earning a degree in economics with a political science minor. During her senior year, Boxer married fellow student Stewart Boxer; the couple moved into a small apartment. When her husband enrolled in Fordham University’s law school, Boxer, armed with her economics credentials, looked for a job in one of the Wall Street trading firms. Her first employer hired her as a secretary and denied her entrance to its stockbroker training program. She studied on her own and passed the exam; then she went to work at another firm that would allow her to manage accounts. The couple planned a move to California, where Boxer’s husband had a job offer. Boxer went ahead to look for housing. She was pregnant at the time, and their first child, Doug, was born the day after she arrived. It was a dramatic start to a new chapter in her life. 158
Life’s Work The Boxers lived in San Francisco for two years and then moved to Greenbrae in Marin County, north of the city. A daughter, Nicole, was born in 1967. Boxer describes the late 1960’s as a time she devoted to family life. Nevertheless, she was shocked by the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy in June,1968, and the other political assassinations that had rocked the United States: Martin Luther King, Jr., in April, 1968, and President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Like many others, she reacted to the escalation of the Vietnam War with profound unease about the future that lay ahead for her children. For Boxer, this unease stimulated her activist’s temperament. She joined with other young women in setting up a job-preparation project for school dropouts, a program so successful that it was later adopted by the county. She worked on environmental issues, an afterschool day care center, an Education Corps providing job training, and support centers for women. Her community involvement was strong enough that she ran for the governing body, the Marin County Board of Supervisors, in the 1972 election. She won the primary but narrowly lost the general election, hurt by an opponent that used her status as a mother against her. Nevertheless, Boxer was resilient. She went to work for the Pacific Sun newspaper, first as a reporter and then as an assistant editor. In 1974, she took a job as an aide to Congressman John Burton, representative for California’s fifth district. In 1976, she ran again for the Marin County Board of Supervisors. This time she won, with much support from women, and ultimately she was chosen its president. After six years, Boxer ran for Burton’s seat in Congress, redistricted as the sixth district. Newly elected to Congress, she almost immediately was elected president of the Democratic new members’ caucus. As a representative, she championed many of the same issues on which she had worked previously. Her
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nees, including Condoleezza Rice for secretary of state district included part of San Francisco as well as Marin and John Bolton for ambassador to the United Nations. County. Most of her constituents were supportive of her Meanwhile, she continued to craft new legislation in supstands. She soon gained a reputation for being strongly port of her trademark issues of environmental protecprogressive and outspoken, with an instinct for getting tion, women’s equality, and the interests of Califormaximum news coverage. nians. Boxer won reelection in 2010 after a grueling In her ten years as a congresswoman, she served campaign. on the Armed Services Committee, where she became known as a foe of such projects as the Patriot missile and Significance funding for the Nicaraguan Contras. She brought atBoxer’s career can be viewed as a series of milestones tention to such wasteful practices as six-hundred-dollar in defying the conventional wisdom. She experienced toilet seats and seventy-five-hundred-dollar coffeepots, frustrations based on gender stereotypes, but her deterleading to reformed practices in military procurement. mination to make the world better overcame most of the Perhaps her most dramatic action was organizing a march warnings of “you can’t.” The most persistent of these is of women representatives to the Senate hearings on Clarthat an outspoken, liberal woman could not win a seat in ence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The the U.S. Senate; and if she did, she could not function efprotest, aimed at the committee’s rejection of attorfectively. Boxer’s three largely successful terms disney Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment, failed. proved this. The only senator to hold two committee Thomas was confirmed, but millions of women who had chairmanships (environment and public works, and ethexperienced sexual harassment without recourse joined ics), she has also been a member of the party leadership the outcry. Boxer gave up her House seat to run for the as chief deputy whip. Senate. Boxer has been open about her Jewish affiliation, alIn 1992, Boxer became California’s junior senator. though it is not much of a factor in her electoral strategy. She is often labeled the Senate’s most liberal member. She is a member of Hadassah, a Zionist organization for While labels seldom describe the entire range of a senawomen, and, in general, is a supporter of Jewish entor’s positions, there is little doubt that Boxer has been a deavors and of Israel. She is strongly associated with strong supporter of a variety of progressive measures and women’s causes. To many of her constituents, Boxer, as a reasonably effective at getting a number of them enacted woman who found her way into politics for the sake of into law. While still in the House, she cosponsored her children’s future, is a role model to emulate. the Family and Medical Leave Act, only to have it ve— Emily Alward toed by President George H. W. Bush. It was signed by his successor, President Bill Clinton. She was not an automatic supporter of Clinton’s efforts, however; she voted against his adminisGuarding the Environment tration’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and fast-track trade initiatives. Although her efforts on behalf of women’s issues have often After 2000 she found herself in an altered stolen the spotlight, Barbara Boxer’s legislative initiatives on envipolitical landscape, in which many of her Demronmental matters have been more numerous. This interest goes all the way back to her early activist work with the Marin Alternative, ocratic colleagues hesitated to oppose Republia progressive political network. In Congress, she repeatedly led can measures when they were framed as necesfloor battles against allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National sary for a war on terror. With reservations, she Wildlife Refuge. Her work as Senate sponsor of the Northern Calivoted for the Patriot Act but against the invasion fornia Coastal Wilderness Act resulted in a law that protects many of Iraq. She had earlier decided not to run wild and scenic areas from exploitation. She introduced many for reelection in 2004, but, stung by criticism other conservation and antipollution measures, such as a bill aimed from House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that at cutting toxic emissions from power plants and a bill to protect equated criticism of Bush administration poliocean habitats and to manage marine resources more wisely. With cies with disloyalty, she changed her mind. In Senate colleagues she has instituted a program to cut electricity usthe 2004 election, she received almost seven age in their offices. Since former Vice President Al Gore’s deparmillion votes, the largest total ever for a Senture from office, she is one of the most visible Washington figures consistently concerned with environmental protection. ate candidate. In the next four years, she spoke out forcefully against some high-profile nomi159
Brandeis, Louis D. Further Reading Boxer, Barbara. Blind Trust. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2009. Boxer’s third book is a novel of political suspense with a heroine who resembles Boxer. _______. “Interview: Barbara Boxer.” Interview by Ruth Coniff. The Progressive 69, no. 7 (July, 2005): 39-43. Summarizes Boxer’s achievements, explores her reactions to political events, and includes her observations on Iraq.
Jewish Americans Whitney, Catherine. Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate. New York: HarperPerennial, 2001. This is a collection of short essays by women senators, including Boxer, and the essays recount their experiences in the Senate and what they have learned. See also: Bella Abzug; Dianne Feinstein; Henry Waxman.
Louis D. Brandeis Lawyer, U.S. Supreme Court justice (1916-1939), and Zionist leader
Born: November 13, 1856; Louisville, Kentucky Died: October 5, 1941; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Louis David Brandeis (birth name); Louis Dembitz Brandeis (full name) Areas of achievement: Law; social issues
his grades put him at the top of his class. Shortly after his graduation, the family took an extended trip to Europe. During this European visit, Brandeis attended three terms at the Annen-Realschule in Dresden. In the fall of 1875, after his return to the United States, he entered Harvard Law School, where he again excelled. Brandeis found life in Cambridge and Boston to his liking Although he practiced briefly in St. Louis after his graduation from Harvard, he returned to Boston in 1879 and formed a law partnership with Samuel D. Warren, one of his close friends from Harvard Law School.
Early Life Louis D. Brandeis (BRAN-dis) was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on November 13, 1856. His parents, Adolph and Frederika Brandeis, were middle-class Czech Jews who emigrated to the United States in 1849. Two other Czech families to whom they were related—the Dembitzes and the Wehles—came on the same ship. After a brief sojourn in Madison, Indiana, they settled in Kentucky. The families started two successful businesses. Although not wealthy, they lived in comfortable surroundings. The home was bilingual; Brandeis’s parents viewed German as the language of the arts and culture. The works of Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were read aloud in German to the children, and Brandeis’s mother frequently played the compositions of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on the piano. Brandeis was heavily influenced by a much-admired uncle, Lewis Dembitz, a lawyer. He later adopted “Dembitz” as his middle name to honor his uncle. The family did not observe Jewish ritual or traditions or celebrate the Jewish holidays. Brandeis attended the German-English Academy for a solid grounding in German and then the Louisville Male High School, where
Life’s Work The firm of Warren and Brandeis was immediately successful. It practiced commercial and business law primarily. Brandeis’s special strength was mastering the facts of a case in great detail. This often enabled him to suggest litigation-avoiding solutions to business disputes. Warren and Brandeis became Boston’s leading law firm, and the partners became wealthy. Brandeis’s increasing prominence and his growing reputation as an innovator and reformer in the law brought many cases of broader social and economic significance to the firm. The most important of these was Muller v. Oregon (1908). This case tested the constitutionality of an Oregon statute establishing maximum hours of labor for women. Under the Supreme Court’s precedents at the time, the statute would have been unconstitutional. Brandeis marshaled medical and other socioeconomic facts to prove that the law was rationally connected to reality and to the state’s interest in promoting public health. The form of the brief Brandeis devised became known as the “Brandeis brief.” His victory in Muller v. Oregon catapulted him to the highest level of the American bar. Brandeis was also interested in social and economic
Brandeis devised the “Brandeis brief,” in which social and economic facts became part of the argument to justify legal reform. As a Supreme Court justice, he was noted for his eloquent and persuasive opinions in free-speech cases.
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reform by political means. He had started Brandeis and the First Amendment out as a Republican, had supported Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, but left the Re“Brandeis and Holmes dissenting” was commonly noted in freepublican Party after the election of Wilspeech cases before the United States Supreme Court in the 1920’s and liam Howard Taft in 1908. In 1912, he 1930’s. Both justices were celebrated for their opposition to restrictions was deeply involved in the presidential on speech. The dissents written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes were campaign as a supporter of and adviser better known to the public and widely admired for their passion in defense of free-speech values. However, it was the craftsmanlike approach of to Woodrow Wilson. On Wilson’s elecLouis Brandeis that the Supreme Court later adopted. In effect, he estabtion, it was widely rumored that Branlished the right to free speech that Americans enjoy today. deis would receive a high administrative The original constitutional rule for free speech was the famous “clear post in the new administration. Apparand present danger test.” If a speech or publication presented a clear and ently Wilson had considered Brandeis for present danger of resulting in some evil that the government had the the post of attorney general, but at least in power to prevent, then the speaker could be punished. It was the opinions part because of virulent objections from of Justice Brandeis that ultimately persuaded later courts to put real teeth the business community, some of them into the test. In case after case, Brandeis insisted that the “danger” has to probably anti-Semitic in origin, the apbe real and substantial; it has to be danger to the safety of the state itself, pointment was not offered. Brandeis connot just danger of riot or property destruction. Moreover, he argued that tinued as an independent adviser to the the prosecution in a free-speech case has to show that the words used were an actual incitement to imminent lawless action. If it were otherwise, then president on antitrust, banking, and other any criticism of the government’s programs could subject the critic to business and labor issues. criminal penalties. In Whitney v. California (1927), Brandeis’s bestAfter the death of Justice Joseph Lamar known free-speech opinion, he pointed out that restrictions on speech in 1916, President Wilson nominated Branusually spring from fear: “Men feared witches and burnt women.” deis to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. A bitter four-month confirmation struggle ensued. Brandeis was opposed by the business community and by antitutional history. Brandeis’s long struggle—eventually Semitic forces, both explicit and veiled. He was charged successful—against the Court’s practice of striking down with being a socialist and with unethical behavior as an state economic and social legislation as violations of advocate. The charges proved to be unfounded. Al“liberty of contract” under the due process clause of the though for a time it appeared that the nomination would Fourteenth Amendment is less well known, but it refail, the Senate acted to confirm his appointment on June mains one of his main contributions to the canon of 1, 1916. Brandeis took his seat on the Supreme Court on American law. He also fought against the use of antitrust June 5, 1916. He was to serve for twenty-three years. statutes to prevent or to punish the organization of labor Although Brandeis was a nonobservant Jew, his other unions. This battle, too, was eventually won. main interest outside the law was Zionism. He was a In 1939, Brandeis, then eighty-three, began to feel leader in the Zionist Organization of America from 1910 himself failing physically and mentally. His retirement until his death, and although for a time he was at odds on February 13, 1939, evoked hundreds of letters to the with the movement’s leadership, his faith in the Zionist editor and newspaper editorials praising his work and his ideal never wavered. He also attempted to do what he life. Many came from people who had formerly been his could—with no more success than anyone else—to depolitical adversaries. He lived quietly in retirement with vise practical means of assisting European Jews threathis wife until his death after a heart attack in October, ened by the Nazi rule in Germany. He continued his ac1941. tive assistance to Zionism even after this appointment to the Supreme Court, an extrajudicial activity that would Significance be frowned upon today. Brandeis’s work on the Supreme Court remains sigAs associate justice of the Supreme Court, Brandeis nificant because issues he considered important were made his primary mark as a dissenter. He and Oliver carried into law. For example, because of his efforts, the Wendell Holmes were widely celebrated as champions people in the United States have the most freedom in the of free speech, and the eloquence and power of their world in the areas of speech and press rights. The constiopinions have never been surpassed in American consti161
Breuer, Marcel tutional tests the Court uses derive directly from Brandeis’s free-speech opinions. In the area of economic regulation Brandeis’s views have also prevailed. Brandeis believed in capitalism, but he was opposed to banks and corporations growing too big because he feared that concentrations of capital would distort democratic processes. As an assimilated American Jew, Brandeis and his support of Zionism inspired other assimilated Jews to remember their heritage, and his prominence helped create the atmosphere of public support for the state of Israel when it was founded. — Robert Jacobs Further Reading Burt, Robert A. Two Jewish Justices: Outcasts in the Promised Land. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Burt attempts to discern what role the Jewishness of Justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter played in their conduct on the Court. Gal, Allon. Brandeis of Boston. Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
Jewish Americans vard University Press, 1980. Traces the development of Brandeis’s political and Zionist thought. Halpern, Ben. A Clash of Heroes: Brandeis, Weizmann, and American Zionism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Extensive discussion of Brandeis’s role in the Zionist movement and his conflict with Weizmann over the future direction of the Zionist movement. Mason, Alpheus Thomas. Brandeis: A Free Man’s Life. New York: Viking Press, 1946. This biography draws heavily on Brandeis’s papers and the recollections of his immediate family. Strum, Philippa. Louis D. Brandeis: Justice for the People. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984. A brief overview of Brandeis’s life and work. Urofsky, Melvin I. Louis D. Brandeis: A Life. New York: Random House, 2009. A thorough biography of Brandeis, integrating his family, legal, political, and Zionist activities. See also: Stephen G. Breyer; Abe Fortas; Felix Frankfurter; Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Arthur J. Goldberg.
Marcel Breuer Hungarian-born architect and designer An architect and furniture designer, Breuer trained and taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, and then practiced in Berlin and Paris. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power forced Breuer to immigrate first to England and then to the United States. Born: May 21, 1902; Pécs, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Hungary) Died: July 1, 1981; New York, New York Also known as: Marcel Lajos Breuer (full name) Area of achievement: Architecture and design Early Life Marcel Breuer (MAHR-sehl BROY-ur) was born in 1902 in what is now Hungary. After an unhappy brief stint at the fine arts school in Vienna, he became a student at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, soon after its founding. He later taught there and would remain in close contact with the school’s first director, Walter Gropius, for much of his life. Like Gropius, Breuer believed firmly in the principles upon which the workshop was founded: simplicity of style, attention to context and function, and a willingness to break with established models and prac162
tices. After a brief stint in England, Breuer followed Gropius to Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where Breuer taught for a decade, from 1937 to 1946, and continued to develop his work. Hoping to bolster his reputation, Breuer eventually broke with his partner, left academia, and established a firm in New York. Having made a name for himself at a young age, Breuer became renowned in the 1950’s and 1960’s, as the international style and the architectural modernism at which he excelled were integrated into American life and culture. The economic recession of the early 1970’s and the beginnings of postmodernism led to a waning of Breuer’s reputation, although his importance to the canon of world architecture remains unquestioned. As a young man, Breuer formally renounced Judaism; however, along with that of many of his colleagues, his life was permanently affected by World War II and by his position as an émigré. Life’s Work During his lifetime, Breuer designed and built singlefamily houses, college dormitories, department stores, museums, and a range of civic, governmental and reli-
Jewish Americans gious buildings. Cantilevering, the use of split levels, and, in terms of materials, the use of concrete were all hallmarks of his work in both architecture and design; flat roofs, expansive unbroken planes, and rectilinear rooms and modules are also important features of Breuer’s work. These are expressed in his work on the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris, the U.S. Embassy in The Hague, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and a significant number of religious, educational, and residential buildings in the United States, Europe, and Asia. In addition to these significant buildings, Breuer designed St. John’s Abbey Church in Collegeville, Minnesota; the members’ housing building at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University; and the Gropius and Breuer houses in Lincoln, Massachusetts, both of which highlight uniformity in design. Breuer was noted for his signature “Wassily” and “Cesca” chairs, which incorporated steel, cane, and leather in simple but elegant streamlined forms. Breuer died of a heart condition in 1981 at the age of seventy-nine. Significance Together with such theorists and practitioners as Philip Johnson, Louis Kahn, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and others, Breuer helped distinguish the mid-twentieth century as a hotbed of new ideas in architecture. Although their practices and styles differed, these men shared a belief in the potential value of architecture to society, in the connections between aesthetics and social and private life, and in the integration of design into all areas of society. Accordingly, Breuer believed strongly in detail, in craftsmanship, and in new developments in city planning and public housing. Unlike many of his peers, Breuer maintained a respect for local traditions and a willingness to study local and contextual needs in depth. In New England, for example, Breuer was swayed by the plainness and harmony of the vernacular; in Minnesota, working with the Benedictine community, he was impressed by the fervency and integrity of the mon-
Breuer, Marcel astery’s aims and way of life. Most critics consider the residential (single-family) houses to be Breuer’s best work, noting that his originality is more in evidence there than in his public and commercial buildings. —Liana Scalettar Further Reading Driller, Joachim. Marcel Breuer Houses, 1923-1973. Translated by Mark Cole and Jeremy Verrinder, edited by Mark Jarzombek. London: Phaidon, 2000. Driller’s work discusses Breuer’s residential houses in detail. Distinctive features, including binuclearity, balloon frames, and the use of natural materials, are mentioned. Gatje, Robert F. Marcel Breuer: A Memoir. New York: Monacelli Press, 2000. A memoir by one of Breuer’s former partners in New York. Hyman, Isabelle. Marcel Breuer, Architect: The Career and the Buildings. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001. In this major overview of Breuer’s career, the author details the chronology of Breuer’s professional life, focusing in particular on his life after World War II. A substantial number of color plates and reproductions of plans (of projects built and unbuilt) are included. Vitra Design Museum. Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture. Translated by Jeffrey Lieber, Ian Pepper, and Julia Thorson, edited by Alexander von Vegesack and Mathias Remmele. Weil am Rhein, Germany: Vitra Design Shiftung, 2003. This exhibition catalog contains critical articles and reminiscences, some of which consider the varied receptions of Breuer (and his legacy) in Europe and the United States, his place within architectural modernism and the history of architecture, and his efforts to build an independent career. The architect I. M. Pei, to whom Breuer was close, gives his opinion of Breuer’s greatness. See also: Dankmar Adler; Gregory Ain; Louis I. Kahn; Paul László; Robert Moses; Richard Neutra.
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Stephen G. Breyer U.S. Supreme Court justice class honors in 1961. A bachelor of laws degree received from Harvard Law School in 1964 completed his formal education. Breyer began his legal career clerking for Justice Arthur Goldberg during the U.S. Supreme Court’s 19641965 term, after which Breyer worked in the Justice DeBorn: August 15, 1938; San Francisco, California partment’s antitrust division until 1967. That year he met Also known as: Stephen Gerald Breyer (full name) Area of achievement: Law Joanne Hare, the daughter of an English aristocrat. The couple wed in England in an Anglican ceremony from which all references to Christ had been removed. Breyer’s Early Life marriage made him a wealthy man, and he was able to Stephen G. Breyer (BRI ur) was born in 1938 to a leave the Justice Department to return to Cambridge, middle-class family living in San Francisco, California. Massachusetts, where he taught regulatory law at HarHis family was only one generation removed from povvard Law School, while his wife became a psychologist erty, however: His father, Irving, worked as an attorney for at the Dana Farber Clinic in nearby Boston. The couple the San Francisco Board of Education, and his mother, raised two sons and a daughter, and despite their affluAnne, volunteered for the Democratic Party and the ence, they lived modestly, following the frugal habits League of Women Voters. Breyer and his younger brother Breyer had learned in childhood. both attended Hebrew school, but in general the family From 1967 until 1994, when he joined the Supreme was not observant. Breyer did well in school and tended Court, Breyer continued to teach at Harvard (both in the toward bookishness, although his parents encouraged him law school and, from 1977 to 1980, in the Kennedy to participate in such extracurricular activities as scouting. School of Government), even as he took on other roles in In 1959, Breyer graduated magna cum laude from government. In 1973, he served as an assistant special Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in philosoprosecutor under Archibald Cox during the Watergate phy. At Stanford, he also won a Marshall Scholarship to hearings. The next year, he went to work for Senator Edstudy at Oxford University in England, where he develward Kennedy as legal counsel to the Judiciary Commitoped an interest in economics and graduated with firsttee, where Breyer concentrated on airline deregulation. During his tenure at Harvard, Breyer published an oftenEstablishing Federal Sentencing Guidelines cited argument against copyright expansion, “The Uneasy Case for CopyStephen G. Breyer was a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission that right,” in the Harvard Law Review and met in the latter half of the 1980’s to standardize sentences imposed on crimitwo well-regarded books on deregulanal defendants across the country. In the field of criminal justice, there was at the time no hotter topic, and consensus was elusive. It was Breyer who pertion, Regulation and Its Reform (1982) suaded the six other members of the panel that guidelines should be based on and Breaking the Vicious Circle: Tonational averages. The resulting changes have been controversial, with many ward Effective Risk Regulation (the charging that the rules are inflexible and racially inequitable because they de1992 Oliver Wendell Holmes lectures, prive judges of latitude. However, it was that very latitude, the variability of published in 1993). As Supreme Court justice, Breyer emphasized the purpose of laws and the effects of their implementation, providing ballast for the Court’s strict constructionist approach to the U.S. Constitution.
criminal sentences from one region and state to the next, that the guidelines addressed. Since passage, the guidelines have come under fire from many quarters. Judges chafe under restraints they feel undermine their discretion, and the Supreme Court, in Blakely v. Washington (2004), questioned the guidelines’ constitutionality. However, in United States v. Booker, which the Court decided the following year, Breyer salvaged the guidelines by convincing the majority that the system he helped create should be considered advisory rather than mandatory—a solution worthy of Solomon.
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Life’s Work Breyer’s role as a Harvard Law School professor continued even after, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter nominated—and the Senate quickly confirmed—Breyer to sit on the bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. While working as both an aca-
Jewish Americans demic and a judge, Breyer also served, between 1985 and 1989 on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, where he played a key role in reforming and standardizing federal criminal sentencing provisions. From 1990 to 1994, Breyer served as the First Circuit’s chief judge, and he also was a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, a body charged with administering federal courts. In 1993, Breyer was on President Bill Clinton’s short list of replacements for the retiring Supreme Court Justice Byron White. Clinton, who reportedly found Breyer dry and unfriendly, nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg instead. When Associate Justice Harry Blackmun retired the next year, Breyer was, once again, not the president’s first choice as a replacement. Clinton stated that he wanted to appoint an individual with “real world” experience, but after other candidates did not work out, Breyer, whose record was almost exclusively academic, political, and judicial, got the nod. In the end, Breyer’s long acquaintance with Washington insiders served him well, and he was easily confirmed by a vote of eighty-seven to nine. On the sentencing commission and on the circuit court, Breyer had exhibited no particular ideological orientation, just pragmatism and a penchant for consensus building. These were characteristics he shared with his predecessor, and Clinton may have chosen Breyer precisely for these, so there would be a reliable middleman on the increasingly conservative and discordant Supreme Court. Breyer, in fact, voted most often with the Court’s liberal wing, consistently supporting, for example, abortion rights. His record also reveals, however, consistent deference to law enforcement and legislation. He has voted to overturn congressional legislation less often than any other member of the Court since 1994. Breyer’s pragmatism also continues to be a notable aspect of his judicial persona and is often portrayed by commentators as a counterweight to Justice Antonin Scalia’s bias toward strict construction of the Constitution when deciding cases that come before the Court. Concurring with a unanimous Court in Clinton v. Jones (1997) that a sitting president is not immune from lawsuits, Breyer nevertheless cautioned that such suits could significantly interfere with the president’s fulfillment of his professional responsibilities. In Bush v. Gore (2000), Breyer strongly disagreed with the majority that handed the presidency to George W. Bush, in large part because, as the disputed election of 1876 showed, history does not treat judicial overreaching—such as deciding the outcome of presidential elections—well. Such decisions, Breyer argued, are wrong if for no other reason than they undermine the authority of the judiciary.
Breyer, Stephen G. In his 2005 book, Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution, Breyer argues for an approach to statutory interpretation that emphasizes the purpose of the law in question and the manner in which a given ruling will conform to that purpose. Breyer’s central point is, not surprisingly, a utilitarian one: Judges have a primary responsibility to render decisions that conform to the spirit of the democratic intentions memorialized in the Constitution, wherein the Framers attempted to secure true, involved, “active” liberty for all citizens. To his critics, who find this line of reasoning too open-ended, perhaps too liberal, Breyer responds with typical wit and practicality that democratic means did not end slavery. Significance Part of Breyer’s importance to the Supreme Court and the nation it serves is the contradictory roles he plays as both a middleman and a counterweight to the textualism of Scalia. Breyer has a reputation for being at once a pragmatic, clear-sighted judge who has been known to speak of American democracy in terms approaching sentimentality. Breyer’s ability to occupy the middle ground of a highly polarized Court in a time of extreme partisanship is a tricky act he performs with considerable grace. Throughout his career he has made a practice of writing and speaking about the engine of democracy, articulating his vision of America for all those who benefit from it. —Lisa Paddock Further Reading Breyer, Stephen G. Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution. New York: Knopf, 2005. Breyer explains his judicial philosophy, encouraging judges to pay more attention to what he considers the democratic purpose that informs the Constitution. _______. “The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs.” Harvard Law Review 84, no. 2 (December, 1970): 281-351. Although Breyer lost the argument against the expansion of copyright protection, his skeptical take on the subject is still widely read. Toobin, Jeffrey. “Breyer’s Big Idea.” The New Yorker (October 31, 2005): 36-43. A sympathetic profile of Breyer that outlines the justice’s wishful thinking about a progressive reformation of the Court. See also: Louis D. Brandeis; Abe Fortas; Felix Frankfurter; Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Arthur J. Goldberg; Laurence Tribe. 165
Brice, Fanny
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Fanny Brice Actor, entertainer, and singer Brice was a versatile performer, appearing in every phase of show business, from burlesque to vaudeville to films to radio. She was known for portraying stock Jewish characters on the stage. Born: October 29, 1891; New York, New York Died: May 29, 1951; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Fania Borach (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music; theater Early Life Fanny Brice (FAN-nee bris) was born Fania Borach in 1891 in New York City, the daughter of saloon owner Charles Borach and Rose Stern. She was the third of four
Fanny Brice. (NY Daily News via Getty Images)
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children. The family moved among Manhattan’s lower East Side, Harlem, and Newark, New Jersey. Brice claimed to have been expelled from or run away from several schools, until she quit at the age of fourteen. Her heart was set on a show-business career, and she had been singing in amateur contests since she was thirteen. She also may have danced in her father’s saloon. Still in her midteens, she procured a job in a Broadway revue, but she was fired before the show opened. Her next venture was burlesque. A tall and gangly young lady, she adopted the surname of Brice, supposedly after a friend of her mother. Her younger brother Lew, who followed her into show business, also adopted that surname. By the time she was sixteen, Brice had found some small success in touring companies, and by nineteen she was on Broadway to stay. She also married for the first time, to Frank White, but the marriage was annulled, presumably on the grounds that she was not of age. Life’s Work For an Irving Berlin musical, Brice performed a song in a Yiddish accent, something that was to become a lasting part of her repertoire. Theater impresario Florenz Ziegfeld signed her for the 1910 edition of his famous Follies, a revue in which she was to appear several times until the mid-1920’s. Because of her gawky height and prominent nose, Brice was destined to shine primarily in comic roles, although she could perform love ballads as movingly as any of the best female singers. Her philosophy as a comic actor was that she had to be likable as well as funny. Along with her Broadway roles Fanny also appeared in vaudeville, becoming popular in England as well. She eventually appeared at the Palace Theater in New York, the venue that was considered the acme of vaudeville fame. In 1918, Brice married again; her new husband was gambler Jules Arnstein, known as Nicky. The marriage remained secret for a couple of years and endured until 1927. It produced a son and a daughter, but it was a troubled one and ended in divorce. Brice had supported Nicky through his many legal problems, including prison terms in Sing Sing and
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Leavenworth. Finally, it was his infidelities A Clown with Great Heart that proved too much for her to bear. Another unfortunate marriage was later underFanny Brice’s comedy was sometimes so broad that she could taken with impresario Billy Rose, and this fairly be called a clown. She did not tell jokes; rather, she would conalso ended in divorce. In the mid-1930’s she vulse audiences with her wide-ranging dance parodies of ballets returned to the Follies, produced by the Shu(such as Swan Lake), fan dancing, tap dancing, and modern dance. bert brothers after Ziegfeld’s death, and She was famous for her monologues, many with a Jewish theme, such as “Mrs. Cohen on the Beach.” She also did spoofs of silent film scored a great success. Brice also did a few actors. Her lasting fame may lie in her song stylings, fortunately medramatic stage roles, but these did not prove morialized in old recordings. Some were humorous, such as her popular with her fans. well-known “I’m an Indian,” but undoubtedly the one most associIn 1928, Brice began to appear in films, but ated with Brice is the romantic ballad “My Man,” an English version cinema did not prove to be a strong suit. In a of the French song “Mon Homme.” This was presumably an ode to sense, her talent was too big to be captured her husband, Nicky Arnstein, and a song that she could perform with on a film screen, and she said that she could a heartfelt, and no doubt heartbreaking, sincerity. She usually sang it never forget a camera was focused on her. standing perfectly still on an almost empty stage, and her first film Cast in only six films, at least one of which bore the title of this signature song. Other songs associated with her seems to be lost, she often was called on to included “Second Hand Rose” and “Rose of Washington Square.” repeat her stage routines and to not be a cenEven in these semicomic numbers, she expressed a note of underlying pathos. In some ways she deliberately made herself appear less tral part of the plot line. Her films were My attractive in order to emphasize the sadness at the heart of her comMan (1928), Night Club (1929), Be Yourself! edy. In private life, Brice was a woman of great culture and much dif(1930), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Everybody ferent from her raucous professional persona. Sing (1938), and The Ziegfeld Follies (1946). More famous than the films in which she appeared were those about her, foremost being the popular (but largely inaccurate) Funny and used a heavy Yiddish accent frequently. The first Girl in 1968, previously a Broadway musical. It was prosong associated with her, “Sadie Salome, Go Home,” duced by Brice’s son-in-law and starred Barbra Streiwas about a young Jewish girl who goes on the stage, sand, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal. The much as Brice did. Although her exaggerated Jewishsequel, Funny Lady, came out in 1974. The 1939 motion ness might seem politically incorrect or even offenpicture Rose of Washington Square was also supposedly sive by some standards, in her heyday such ethnic humor based on Brice’s life. She sued Twentieth Century-Fox was commonplace and acceptable. Even some nonfor defamation for having made it without her permisJewish performers made their livings as professional sion. “Hebrews.” In an era when very few women had signifiTo audiences who never saw Brice on the stage or in cant careers as comic performers, Brice was world fathe films, she was better known as the bratty but endearmous. She was so renowned that, in 1923, when she had ing “Baby Snooks” on the radio. The character was based the famous Brice nose straightened, it was a major news on a sketch she had performed many years before in the event. Follies. At first Brice performed “Snooks” as a part of —Roy Liebman other stars’ radio programs, but she ultimately had a series of her own, beginning in the late 1940’s. Although no Further Reading longer the top headliner she had been for most of her stoGoldman, Herbert F. Fanny Brice: The Original Funny ried career, she continued to work and was performing Girl. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Rethe “Snooks” role at the time of her death in 1951 from a lates the facts of Brice’s life without a deep examinacerebral hemorrhage at the age of fifty-nine. tion of her private self. Green, Stanley. The Great Clowns of Broadway. New Significance York: Oxford University Press, 1984. This account of Although she changed her name to one that sounded great stage comedians contains an entry on Brice. non-Jewish, red-haired Brice certainly did not conceal Grossman, Barbara Wallace. Funny Woman: The Life her heritage; in fact, she reveled in it, at least profesand Times of Fanny Brice. Bloomington: Indiana Unisionally. She often told stories with a Jewish theme 167
Brin, Sergey versity Press, 1991. Published one hundred years after her birth, this objective biography of Brice does not delve deeply into her interior life. Katkov, Norman. The Fabulous Fanny: The Story of Fanny Brice. New York: Knopf, 1953. The first biographical account published after Brice’s death con-
Jewish Americans tains much material from her unpublished autobiography and some oral history. See also: Fran Drescher; Goldie Hawn; Elaine May; Bette Midler; Gilda Radner; Joan Rivers; Barbra Streisand.
Sergey Brin Russian-born entrepreneur, innovator, and philanthropist Brin, together with Larry Page, created the global phenomenon of Google, a search engine designed to organize all the world’s information. Born: August 21, 1973; Moscow, Soviet Union (now in Russia) Also known as: Sergey Mihailovich Brin (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; science and technology Early Life Sergey Brin (SUR-gay brihn) was born in Moscow on August 21, 1973, to Michael and Eugenia Brin. Sergey Brin’s parents wanted to work in the Soviet space program, but the Communist government unofficially barred Jewish people from the top professional positions, including those in the physics and astronomy departments at universities, so they settled for careers in mathematics. In 1978, fed up with the pervasive anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and limited future for their son, the Brins applied for exit visas. Brin’s father was fired from his university job when he filed for the exit visa; surprisingly, the visa was approved in 1979, and the Brins fled to the United States, eventually settling in Maryland. Brin’s father became a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, and his mother became a research scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Brin, six years old, went to a Montessori school that fostered his creativity. He was quiet, but he quickly learned English and gravitated toward puzzles, maps, and mathematical games. Brin had a middle-class upbringing, and he attended public high school, finishing in just three years. He graduated near the top of his class at the University of Maryland only three years later, with majors in mathematics and computer science. He won the National Science Foundation scholarship for graduate school and earned his M.A. at Stanford University in 1995. He chose Stanford for its 168
beauty, prestige, and reputation for supporting high-tech entrepreneurs. Life’s Work Brin met Larry Page, a University of Michigan graduate, at a Stanford University Ph.D. program orientation in 1995. Both sons of high-powered intellectuals, they were Jewish, had strong mathematics and computer science backgrounds, and were opinionated and cocksure. Bonding was almost immediate. While working on a research project, Brin and Page believed the process of searching on the Internet could be improved, and they decided to build a company to pursue this, eventually taking leave from Stanford. Using Brin’s interest in data mining and Page’s interest in information linking, they set out to make Internet search intuitive and relevant by ranking links between Web pages by their relative importance. Building on the academic concept of measuring topicality and value based on citations in research papers, Brin and Page believed that if you could link one page to another, that was similar to citing that link, and the page was given a vote of importance. The more votes a page received, the more relevant it was to the link. This was called the PageRank algorithm. This idea was the root for the company they would call Googol, a mathematical term meaning the number one followed by one hundred zeros. Brin and Page began shopping their company around Silicon Valley and landed a meeting with Sun Microsystems cofounder and Silicon Valley investor Andy Bechtolsheim. Bechtolsheim liked what he saw, and he wrote a $100,000 check to “Google, Inc.,” even though “Google, Inc.” did not yet exist. Google grew through a cult following during the dotcom bubble of the late 1990’s, and it managed to survive when the bubble burst in 2001, after the terrorist attacks on September 11. Brin and Page wanted to legitimize the business in the eyes of Wall Street, so they hired a sea-
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soned software executive, Eric Schmidt, to be chief executive officer. He ran the day-to-day business, while Brin and Page, the copresidents, worked on innovation. In 2004, Google filed paperwork for its initial public offering of stock. Rumors swirled that the privately held Google was a strong company, but when the staggeringly large revenue and profit figures were released, a feeding frenzy began. The smalltext advertisements Google provided with its search results surprised Wall Street with their enormous profitability. Google’s stock first started trading on August 16, 2004, with an unusually high initial public offering (IPO) price of $85. The IPO raised $1.67 billion, making Google a $23 billion company and Brin and Page instant billionaires. Many Google employees also became millionaires. However, even with his extreme increase in personal wealth, Brin remained humble in his personal spending. Significance Brin, a third-generation mathematician and brilliant computer scientist, is a pioneer in Internet search, advertising, and building one of the most potent companies in the Internet age. He is a relatively young billionaire, whose legacy is still being written. Following the philanthropic lead of Bill Gates, Brin has taken an active role using his considerable wealth and influence to effect positive change throughout Sergey Brin. (Bloomberg via Getty Images) the world. With the creation of Google.org and other charitable entities, Brin has pledged to aggressively cious Plan to Organize Everything We Know. New help causes important to him. His contributions to the York: Simon and Schuster, 2008. A simple, well-writMichael J. Fox Foundation for research into Parkinson’s ten overview of Google and its business. The book exdisease are significant because Brin’s mother is afflicted plains how Brin and Page started Google while they by this disease, and, because he may carry a genetic link were students at Stanford and made it their mission to to the disease, Brin may get Parkinson’s. organize all of the world’s information. —Jonathan E. Dinneen Vise, David. The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time. Further Reading New York: Random House, 2005. A detailed account Lowe, Janet. Google Speaks: Secrets of the World’s of Google cofounders Brin and Page focusing on their Greatest Billionaire Entrepreneurs, Sergey Brin and backgrounds, their motivations, and their personal Larry Page. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, growth. 2009. An inside look at the personal and business lives of the Google founders, their business practices, See also: Steve Ballmer; Michael Dell; Larry Ellison; and their philosophies by a best-selling author. Carl Icahn; Larry Page. Stross, Randall. Planet Google: One Company’s Auda-
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Broderick, Matthew
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Matthew Broderick Actor Whether he is in a play on Broadway, dancing and singing, or acting in a film, dramatic or comedic, Broderick is a versatile, accomplished actor. Born: March 21, 1962; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Matthew Broderick (BRAWD-rihk) was born in New York City, the son of James, an actor, and his wife, Patricia. Broderick attended the private Walden School. While at Walden, he had an injury that reportedly prevented his participation in sports, and so he took up acting. Perhaps with assistance from his actor father, Broderick had the opportunity to begin his stage career at age seventeen. He had a role in a workshop theater production of On Valentine’s Day (1986), in which his father was also acting. That led to a lead role in the Off-Broadway production of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy (1982). During its run, the show did not receive much critical acclaim. However, Broderick was featured in a favorable review by New York Times theater critic Mel Gussow. This brought him to the attention of theatregoers and critics. Broderick attributed much of his success to that review.
Shortly after his Torch Song Trilogy performance, Broderick played parts in two Neil Simon productions: the film Max Dugan Returns (1983) and the play Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983), for which he received a Tony Award. This was an early career success, revealing Broderick’s theatrical potential. In 1983, he also received accolades for his role in the film WarGames (1983), which was a box-office success the summer it was released. He played a computer hacker who nearly sets off a world war. Broderick returned to the stage in 1985 to star in Simon’s sequel to Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues (1985), which also received critical acclaim. Continuing his successes in portraying youthful characters, and moving back into the film world, Broderick then took on the title role in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). This is the cinematic role most connected to Broderick, who became the most famous truant in film history. He was twenty-four years old when he played the seventeen-year-old Bueller, a character film-watchers of all ages recognize. Broderick considers himself a “cultural Jew.” His wife, Sarah Jessica Parker, also considers herself a “cultural Jew,” having had no formal religious training but identifying with her father’s Judaism. However, they were married in a civil ceremony by Broderick’s sister Janet, an Episcopal priest.
A Youthful Actor Matures Successfully Many film and stage stars who began with youthful successes are unable to bridge the gap from young celebrity to mature actor. Matthew Broderick’s major achievement has been his ability to mature in talent on stage and screen while maturing in real life. He had an early rise to fame, receiving a Tony Award after only six years in show business. He could have been typecast in the film medium by his popular role in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), the role for which he is still best remembered. However, in twenty-five years after that, he has managed to rack up stage and screen successes and has moved toward serious acting roles, matching his current stage in life. He also has voiced animated characters with great success (the voice of Desperaux in 2008’s The Tale of Despereaux, for example). He has been selecting major roles in independent films with serious messages (such as 2007’s Then She Found Me and 2009’s Wonderful World). In contrast to many actors with youthful good looks whose careers collapsed as they aged, Broderick has lived up to the promise of his early successes. He can be funny or serious; he can sing and dance; he brings a warmth even to unpleasant characters. He is an actor who can light up either stage or screen.
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Life’s Work Broderick, a versatile, accomplished actor, moves effortlessly from stage to screen and back, having had major parts in numerous Broadway plays and having appeared in many films. He is often asked which he prefers, and his response is that he prefers whichever he is not doing at the time: When performing on Broadway, he likes the film medium better; when preparing a film role, he longs for Broadway. Broderick’s credits include forty films, including those that became well known (such as WarGames and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) and some that were not successful (such as 1994’s The Road to Wellville and 1998’s Godzilla). His career on stage began in his late teens and flourished, both on and Off-Broadway. He has received sev-
Jewish Americans eral Tony Awards for best actor, and he was nominated for another, for The Producers (2001), which he lost to his costar and friend, Nathan Lane. Perhaps because many of Broderick’s films have been humorous, many believe that his acting talent has been underestimated by critics. He has played a leading role opposite other top actors, and certainly he has held his own. One of his major supporters and fans is his wife, Parker, whom he married in 1997. He and Parker have a son, born in 2002, and twin daughters, born in 2009. Some of Broderick’s stage successes have been How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961) and The Producers. The Producers received a record-setting twelve Tony Awards and generated much critical acclaim during its run on Broadway. Broderick and Lane had a true camaraderie, being friends on and off the stage. Broderick has many friends and, despite a busy career in film and on stage, keeps in touch with them. He plays obsessive Ping-Pong with a high school friend, Kenneth Lonergan, and chooses to act in plays and in independent films written and produced by friends such as Lonergan and Josh Goldin. Broderick, moving away from his youthful roles, has portrayed on stage two professors—an astronomy professor in The Starry Messenger (2009) and a British philologist in The Philanthropist (1969). The latter role brought him a fair amount of negative criticism. His role in The Starry Messenger received mixed reviews, perhaps because the play was thought to be overly long, and the playwright, Lonergan, a close friend of Broderick, kept tinkering with the script. In the film world, Broderick began to take several serious roles. In 2008, he played a character with memory loss in Diminished Capacity (2008) and a compulsive gambler and alcoholic in Finding Amanda (2008). In Wonderful World (2009), he portrayed a negative-thinking but likable cynic. Significance Broderick is significant for his great versatility: He has sung and danced on Broadway, played a youthful high school truant in a film classic, won Tony Awards for stage performances, and acted in top money-making films (such as WarGames). He has voiced characters in animated films (such as 1994’s The Lion King and 2008’s The Tale of Despereaux) and acted in films such as Godzilla. His serious roles in Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, such as Mark, the astronomy professor, in The Starry Messenger, are generating attention and
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Matthew Broderick. (Getty Images)
showing his maturity as a performer. When a part he likes comes along, for stage or screen, Broderick is prepared to turn in a stellar performance. — Mary C. Ware Further Reading Matloff, Jason. “Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane.” Premiere 19, no. 4 (December, 2005): 162-163. A close-up view of Broderick and his friend Lane and their performances in The Producers. Miller, Frederick, et al. Matthew Broderick. Beau-Bassin, Mauritius: Alphascript, 2010. A book-length account of Broderick’s life. Smith, Russell S. “Matthew Broderick’s New York Story.” US Weekly 325/26 (May 1, 2001). A look at the home life and interests of Broderick, who appreciates life in New York City. See also: Bette Midler; Sarah Jessica Parker; Neil Simon; Barbra Streisand; Gene Wilder. 171
Brodsky, Joseph
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Joseph Brodsky Russian-born poet A poet and essayist, Brodsky secured his reputation in his early thirties when political persecution forced him to leave the Soviet Union and to settle permanently in the United States. Although he wrote his poetry almost exclusively in Russian and gained fame in part for his attention to Russian-language prosody, Brodsky earned his major awards, including the MacArthur Foundation fellowship and the Nobel Prize in Literature, as a poet in the Anglophone world. Born: May 24, 1940; Leningrad, Soviet Union (now St. Petersburg, Russia) Died: January 28, 1996; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Joseph Aleksandrovich Brodsky (full name) Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Born to Joseph Aleksandrovich Brodsky and Maria Volpert in 1940 in Leningrad, Joseph Brodsky (BRAWD-skee) dropped out of high school and became a fixture on the literary scene in that city, writing poetry and translating. Charged with “literary parasitism” by Soviet authorities, Brodsky was sentenced to five years of manual labor in the Arctic north. Later the sentence was commuted to eighteen months’ duration, thanks in part to international outcries. After his incarceration, he took a series of menial jobs and resumed his writing. In 1972, Brodsky’s home was raided by the authorities, and he was deported, choosing the United States as his new residence. He spent a year as a writer-in-residence at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and later he established himself in New York and as a professor at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where he was still teaching at the time of his death. Before being deported, Brodsky received two invitations to immigrate to Israel, both of which he turned down. Although he was harassed in part because he was a Jew, his heritage does not appear often in his work. A series of poems dedicated to Jesus Christ’s birth and to Russian celebrations of Christmas suggests the poet’s lifelong investigation of faith in various forms, and several critics note that Brodsky resisted attempts by reviewers and peers to ferret out definitive statements as to his beliefs. 172
Life’s Work Brodsky’s books published in English include Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems (1973), A Part of Speech (1980), To Urania (1988), So Forth (1996), and Collected Poems in English, 1972-1999 (2000). As an essayist, Brodsky published Less Than One (1986), Watermark (1992), and On Grief and Reason (1996). He remained a translator—from Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian, among other languages—throughout his life, and he collaborated with many prominent poets in the rendering of his works into English. The majority of his poems were written in Russian; the majority of his essays were written in English and published in their original versions. Several of the author’s plays were produced during his lifetime. Named the poet laureate of the United States in 1991 and 1992, Brodsky was also the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation award
A PART OF SPEECH Written between the late 1960’s and late 1970’s, the poems collected in A Part of Speech (1980) display Joseph Brodsky’s literary scope and depth. Russia, Italy, Mexico, England, and the United States make up the bulk of the exterior and interior landscapes; Ancient Greece, Rome, and China also appear. Ode, lyric, and dramatic monologue are the prominent forms. Of equal importance is the profundity of the poet’s creations of various narrators, single and plural, who encounter each other and the world. Throughout, Brodsky delights in language and its effects; in the interplay among the natural, the literary, and the built worlds; and in the commingling of thought, feeling, and observation that mark the entirety of his work. Brodsky coaxes the reader toward new considerations of the self in the world, of the meaning of reflection, and of the places of memory, art, and desire in any individual life. It is fair to say that, despite the obvious nods to art, literary, and intellectual history (painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, poet Dante, and philosopher Plato being some of the major references), these pieces are vigorous and fresh because of the poet’s refusal to make easy associations. In the “Part of Speech” sequence, for example, the narrator’s engagements with memory, the visual, the felt, and the thought produce a series of quiet but forceful images, the aggregate of which lingers. As in most of his work, Brodsky interpolates statements with implicit questions and the physical with the metaphysical. Despite the constant attention to the life of the mind, though, the language and syntax of these works are anything but pompous, relying on figures of speech and rhyme to do the majority of their questioning.
Jewish Americans in 1981 and of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987. Brodsky died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-five. Significance Thanks to his recognition by Anna Akhmatova early in his life, Brodsky was esteemed as a Russian poet from the beginnings of his writing career. He was later championed by English poet W. H. Auden, and West Indian poet Derek Walcott helped establish Brodsky on the world stage starting in the early 1970’s. Taken on its merits, Brodsky’s work owes a debt to the metaphysical tradition (to John Donne, in particular), both in English and in Russian, and is admired for its range of thought, observation, and keen attention to line, meter, and rhyme. For some critics and poets, Brodsky’s emphasis on prosody, and his insistence on maintaining that emphasis in the English-language versions of his work, did not justify his fame. Others suggest that the poet’s life, subject as it was to mythmaking, overshadowed his work. (In addition to his forced exile from his home, Brodsky underwent open-heart surgery at thirty-nine.) As a radical individualist, Brodsky insisted in his poems and prose on a singularity of vision and voice, on a capacious range of subject matter, and on the value of lived experience. Erudite, polyglot, and autodidactic, the poet wrote constantly of matters that continue to be of pressing concern, claiming that poetry is a force in favor of the individual life. —Liana Scalettar Further Reading Brodsky, Joseph. Collected Poems in English, 19721999. Edited by Ann Kjellberg. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000. This volume brings together all of the poet’s English-language publications. Those
Brodsky, Joseph translators whose efforts appear in this volume include Anthony Hecht, George Kline, and Richard Wilbur. Extensive notes round out the collection. Brodsky, Joseph, and Derek Walcott. “Form in Poetry.” The Kenyon Review 23, no. 2 (Spring, 2001): 185200. In this conversation, Brodsky and Walcott discuss questions of form, content, and meaning. Both poets attest to the inseparability of the three and to the ways in which American poets have historically dealt with prosody. Kozlov, Vladimir. “Brodsky’s Untranslatable Years: Two Countries and Two Languages in the Poetry and Prose of Joseph Brodsky, 1972-1977.” Russian Studies in Literature 42, no. 3 (Summer, 2006): 21-52. The critic considers the effects of Brodsky’s move to the United States on the writer’s poetics. Volgina, Arina. “Iosif Brodskii and Joseph Brodsky.” Russian Studies in Literature 42, no. 3 (Summer, 2006): 7-20. In this article, Volgina discusses the creation of Brodsky’s persona as an English-language poet and a literary celebrity. Along with Kozlov, Volgina argues that there is an untranslatable element to Brodsky’s work, mired as it is in his native Russian. Williams, David-Antoine. “Tête-à-tête, Face-à-face: Brodsky, Levinas, and the Ethics of Poetry.” Poetics Today 30, no. 2 (2009): 207-235. Williams suggests that, despite Emmanuel Levinas’s arguments against figuration and Brodsky’s valuation of individual faces and identities, the philosopher and poet may be usefully read as similarly involved in questions of ethics and the interpersonal. See also: Stanley Elkin; Maxine Kumin; Stanley Kunitz; Grace Paley; Muriel Rukeyser.
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Adrien Brody Actor With his understated yet powerful acting style, Brody became the youngest actor to win an Academy Award for a leading role in 2002’s compelling The Pianist. Born: April 14, 1973; Woodhaven, Queens, New York Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Adrien Brody (AY-dree-ehn BROH-dee) was born in New York City. His mother, Sylvia Plachy, who was born in Budapest, Hungary, is a well-known photojournalist for The Village Voice. His father, Elliot Brody, of Polish Jewish descent, is a retired schoolteacher and painter. Growing up in Woodhaven, Queens, Brody became intrigued by the ability to create illusion; starting at age twelve, he performed magic acts at birthday parties to entertain children as “The Amazing Adrien.” Encouraging a creative outlet, his parents enrolled Brody in Saturday acting classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan. At thirteen, he got his first acting role in an OffBroadway play, Family Pride in the Fifties (1986). His first big break in front of the camera came in the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) drama Home at Last (1988). To escape attending the local public high school in Queens, his parents enrolled Brody at the highly regarded Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan. At fifteen, Brody landed the part of Mary Tyler Moore’s stepson Lenny on the 1988 television situation comedy Annie McGuire, but the series was canceled after only three months on the air. After graduating in 1991, Brody spent one year at the State University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island before deciding it was too far away from New York auditions. He then attended one semester at Queens College, but he lost enthusiasm for academics and, as he has acknowledged in interviews, grew tired of being criticized as an actor, and so he dropped out and relocated to Los Angeles. Life’s Work In 1993, Brody played Lester, a savvy teenage youth in Steven Soderbergh’s film about the Great Depression, King of the Hill. That same year, he was involved in a motorcycle accident in Hollywood that rendered him immobile for months. He fully recovered and, over the next five years, became involved in a variety of independent 174
films. He played the lead role in the 1995 film Ten Benny, followed by supporting roles in Bullet (1996) and The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997). Subsequently, Brody won the lead role as Chris, a bartender and aspiring playwright, in Restaurant (1998). Taking roles in more commercial films, Brody was enlisted to play Corporal Fife in Terrence Malick’s World War II drama The Thin Red Line (1998). The experience proved to be a disappointment when Brody’s performance was cut almost entirely during editing. The following year, Brody landed his breakthrough role as bisexual punk rocker, Ritchie, in Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam (1999). He was then called upon by Barry Levinson to play Van in Liberty Heights (1999). Reviewers speculated that his performance might land him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Though he was not nominated, his performances were gaining notoriety, and new projects continued to present themselves. Brody found supporting roles in Bread and Roses (2000) and Harrison’s Flowers (2000) and a costarring role as Count Nicolas De La Motte in the aristocracy drama The Affair of the Necklace (2001). The biggest opportunity of Brody’s career came with The Pianist (2002), Roman Polanski’s World War II Holocaust drama based on the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman. To prepare for his role as Szpilman, Brody shed thirty pounds, learned how to play Frédéric Chopin, and placed himself into seclusion for several months. For his acting in the film, Brody became the youngest man to win an Academy Award for Best Actor at age twenty-nine. Since winning an Academy Award, Brody has continued to make unconventional choices by selecting quirky film roles: starring as Noah, the town simpleton in The Village (2004); the haunted war veteran Jack Starks in The Jacket (2005); and a screenwriter in the remake of King Kong (2005). He was cocky private detective Louis Simo in Hollywoodland (2006) and then boarded a train to journey through India as Peter in the offbeat comedy The Darjeeling Limited (2007). In 2008, Brody starred in The Brothers Bloom (2008) and Cadillac Records (2008). He starred in Splice in 2009 and in High School in 2010. Significance Brody has spent his life in front of the camera. Starting at an early age by joining his mother on photo assignments, he developed a restrained acting style that reflects the influence of a photojournalist who draws on the quiet
Jewish Americans expressiveness of an image to tell a story enriched with psychological resonance. Ultimately, his drive as an actor to seek out challenging, edgy projects culminated into his profound, authentic portrayal of Szpilman in The Pianist. —Kyle Bluth Further Reading Hochman, D. “A Second Once-in-a Lifetime Chance.” The New York Times, November 3, 2002, p. B6. A well-written article that provides an array of details and insights regarding Brody’s experiences while making The Pianist. Melton, Mary. “Beat Generation: Hip-Hopping with Actor Adrien Brody.” Los Angeles Magazine (January, 2003): 17. Interview that explores Brody’s love for
Brooks, Albert hip-hop music that started when he was growing up in Queens. Plachy, Sylvia. “Adrien’s Excellent Adventures.” Condé Nast Traveler (September, 2003): 156. A complimentary and lighthearted article that provides interesting details about Brody’s passion for travel and his close relationship with his mother. Young, Jamie Painter. “Post-Oscar Bash: Adrien Brody Worked Hard to Make His Dream Come True. Now What?” Back Stage West (December 9, 2005): 1. A nicely done question-and-answer article that reveals Brody’s focus as an artist. See also: Alan Arkin; Matthew Broderick; Dustin Hoffman; Harvey Keitel.
Albert Brooks Writer, actor, and director A master of satire, Brooks is best known for his comedic skewering of the self-indulgent and for his self-deprecating humor. Born: July 22, 1947; Beverly Hills, California Also known as: Albert Lawrence Einstein (birth name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Albert Brooks was named Albert Einstein by his father, professional comedian Harry Einstein, whose stage name was Harry Parke. Parke was a Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) radio personality best known for the character Parkyakarkus (“park your carcass”), which he created first for the Eddie Cantor show and later adapted for film. He married Thelma Leeds, an RKO contract player, in 1937, and they had four sons: Albert, Charles, Clifford, and Robert. Albert Brooks attended Beverly Hills High School, where he honed his comedic skills among schoolmates, such as Rob Reiner and Richard Dreyfuss. He earned a drama scholarship to Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology, but he dropped out in 1967 to become an actor, taking the stage name Brooks. As he told one interviewer about his return to Los Angeles, “I came back and tried to get work . . . I was nineteen and nobody at nineteen was getting much acting. Whenever a part would come up, Richard Dreyfuss would get it.”
With actor’s roles hard to find, Brooks became a stand-up comic. As he stated: “It was taking what I really wanted to do [acting] and putting it in the stand-up world. I would play these characters. Most of your stand-up comedians were not actors—they were joke tellers. . . . I certainly wasn’t going to do ‘Two Jews walk into a bar,’ so I started out satirizing show business, the . . . part of show business that I hated. I did these entertainers that were terrible at it and didn’t know it. That’s the whole nature of making fun of the beast, to punch it in the mouth and see where it goes.” By 1969, he was a regular on popular television variety programs such as The Steve Allen Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He also released two comedy albums, Comedy Minus One (1973) and A Star Is Bought (1975), the latter earning him a Grammy Award nomination. Nevertheless, Brooks still yearned to be an actor. In 1975, he was offered the job of host of Saturday Night Live during its inaugural season. The pressure of a live weekly television series was more than he wanted to handle, so he turned it down. However, he did not sever ties. That first season Brooks produced for the program a series of short satirical films. He chose not to return for the next season. In 1976, he was cast in a minor role in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and then went on to cowrite, perform in, and direct Real Life (1979). In 1980, he played a bit role in Private Benjamin. Ever since, he has 175
Brooks, Albert been working in films, as a screenwriter, a performer, or a director. Life’s Work Actor-producer-director Penny Marshall introduced Brooks to Monica Johnson, and she became his lifelong collaborator. Together they wrote Modern Romance (1981), Lost in America (1985), Defending Your Life (1991), Mother (1996), The Muse (1999), and Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (2006). Mother won the National Society of Film Critics Award and the New York Film Critics Award for best screenplay. Brooks directed and starred in them as well. Brooks also worked as an actor in a number of films by others: Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Terms of Endearment (1983), Unfaithfully Yours (1984), I’ll Do Anything (1994), Critical Care (1997), Dr. Dolittle (1998), Out of Sight (1998), My First Mister (2001), and The InLaws (2003). He also acted in and wrote The Scout (1994). He has done voices for Finding Nemo (2003) and The Simpsons Movie (2007), as well as some television work on The Simpsons (1990-2005) and Weeds (2008). Brooks’s greatest achievement came in 1987, however, when he worked for another director, James L. Brooks: He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in the film Broadcast News. While Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, and other Jewish writers operate in a world of Jewish identity, Brooks, on the other hand, is content to work in more universal genres. His characters are usually a nondescript everyman, not a member of a minority with the tensions that reverberate in the work of Brooks’s comedic colleagues. Throughout his career, Brooks’s humor has always
Jewish Americans been subtle, an intellectual challenge to life’s contradictions in order to clarify their obfuscations. For example: Brooks: Knock, knock. Reply: Who’s there? Brooks: [pauses, confused] I don’t—what do you mean?
Contradictions are also apparent in this exchange from A Star Is Bought: Psychiatrist: Do you still feel you can buy your friends with laughter? Brooks: [angrily] Let me tell you something. I know I don’t have to buy my friends with anything. I don’t need friends. I shouldn’t have friends. You don’t go into this business and expect friends. I am a loner, I must be a loner—that’s what an artist is. Psychiatrist: You don’t believe that. Brooks: [deflated] You’re damned right I don’t believe that. Help me, man, I’m sick.
Despite the joke, Brooks has always been a loner. Through the years he was linked romantically to Linda Ronstadt, Carrie Fisher, Julie Hagerty, and Kathryn Harrold, but he was fifty years old before he found a wife. On March 15, 1997, Brooks married multimedia producer Kimberley Shlain. They have two children, Jacob Eli (born in 1998) and Claire Elizabeth (born in 2000). Perhaps because his characters lack that outsider empathetic appeal and perhaps because the action that governs his protagonists is such an interior process, his films have not always enjoyed the commercial popularity of more physically An Introspective Approach to Comedy exuberant vehicles. Brooks’s canon has never generated big box-office receipts. NevertheMany of Albert Brooks’s films are about quests—all too human less, Brooks enjoys a special place in the coones. For Brooks, however, the battle is primarily an internal one, a medic pantheon. mental confrontation with self. This introspection has always been both the positive and the negative of his career. His intellectual approach has brought critical acclaim but resulted perhaps in less commercial success than the more physical comedy of actors such as Mel Brooks, Jim Carrey, and Robin Williams. Brooks recalls the comments of a producer: “‘You know what? If you do this kind of material you’re going to have trouble your whole life, because you’re ten feet above the audience.’ I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about— this is all I know how to do.’”
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Significance Brooks does not go for the guffaw, the slapstick, or the snarky put-down. Brooks’s humor is thought provoking and revolves around the archetypal man who tries to make sense of absurdities imposed on his existence. “Wouldn’t this be a great world,” he asked in Broadcast News, “if insecurity and
Jewish Americans desperation made us more attractive?” For Brooks life’s questions come not with answers but with other questions: “Q: Is a life in comedy always fun? A: No. But is anything always anything?” As critics have proclaimed, there is a sense of desperation in Brooks’s humor, but it is a characteristic he believes offers sustenance to those living lives of quiet desperation. Brooks said, “What I like best is when movies capture life. . . . If the result of something I do is that someone feels 10 percent less crazy because they see someone else is thinking what they’re thinking, then I provide a service.” —Jeanette Friedman Further Reading Epstein, Lawrence J. The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America. New York: PublicAffairs, 2001. An anecdotal, sometimes psychologi-
Brooks, Mel cal, analysis of the top Jewish comics of the past half century, from the Marx brothers to Jerry Seinfeld. Includes references to Brooks. Smith, Gavin. “All the Choices.” Film Comment 35, no. 4 (July, 1999): 14. A weighty analysis of Brooks’s methodology with a concluding interview. Zehme, Bill. “Albert Brooks.” Rolling Stone, April 18, 1991. A reverent paean to the oracle of comedy. Zoglin, Richard. Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970’s Changed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2009. A comedic collection of 1960’s to 1980’s performers replete with jokes and anecdotes. Included is a Brooks profile that deals with his stand-up career. See also: Woody Allen; Alan Arkin; Billy Crystal; Rodney Dangerfield; Larry David; Richard Lewis.
Mel Brooks Comedian, actor, writer, and filmmaker Brooks is a prolific comedic movie maker—from The Producers through Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein to Dracula: Dead and Loving It and then back to The Producers: The Musical. He has made significant contributions to television, film, and the theater, exercising his prodigious talent in many roles—stand-up comic, actor, scriptwriter, song composer, director, and producer—as the ultimate “renaissance” comedian. Born: June 28, 1926; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Melvin Brooks (full name); Melvin Kaminsky (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music Early Life Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky on June 28, 1926, the youngest of four brothers, in Brooklyn, New York, on the family’s kitchen table. His father Max died three years later, forcing his mother and the boys to move to a cheap tenement. All had to work to keep the family going during the Great Depression. He adopted the name Mel Brooks when he decided to perform in the Catskills; “Mel” was a shortened form of his first name, and “Brooks” was an adaptation of his mother’s maiden name, Brookman. After he graduated from high school in 1944, Brooks
enlisted in the U.S. Army and served during World War II in the 1104th Engineer Central Battalion of the 78th Division. His job was to clear minefields ahead of advancing troops. When not defusing mines, he used his comedic skills to entertain his fellow soldiers as a way to decrease the tension of their job. When the war ended, Brooks was asked to join Special Services to entertain the troops with his comedy act; during this time he also began to write songs. Upon his return to the United States, he went to work in the theater (first in New Jersey), which may have inspired his later work, The Producers (1968). Life’s Work Brooks’s early stand-up comedy in the Catskills was to be of great value to him when he joined the comedywriting team for the series Your Show of Shows. In addition to writing alongside Sid Caesar, he worked with Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, and Woody Allen—talents that would dominate the early Golden Age of Television as well as that of theater and film. Brooks became a gag writer and script doctor for a variety of shows. He also developed a comedy act with Reiner called the Two-Thousand-Year-Old Man, which was a staple in shows such as Steve Allen’s and resulted in a hit record album. In 1965, Brooks teamed with fellow writer Buck Henry to cocreate the hit television series Get 177
Brooks, Mel Smart, which would remain popular decades later in reruns. In the late 1960’s, comedy-writing opportunities began to diminish, and Brooks began to turn toward film. In 1968, he put together a low-budget film that was to become a cult classic and then a Broadway musical hit, The Producers. Brooks followed this with a movie about the Russian Revolution called The Twelve Chairs (1970), which was a straight comedy, instead of a social critique like The
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Producers. Neither film was a moneymaker, but Brooks was honing his directorial talents and his lyric-writing and compositional skills with such songs as “Springtime for Hitler,” “Prisoners of Love,” and “Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst.” Brooks’s first big financial hit was with Blazing Saddles (1974), which allowed him to produce, act, and write more songs. The film also brought him back together with Gene Wilder, who had worked so well in the role of Leo Bloom, the accountant in The Producers. Although Blazing Saddles was attacked as crude and crass by critics, theatergoers loved it. Brooks’s film made the natural biologiTHE PRODUCERS cal outcome of a group of cowboys, sitting around a campfire eating beans, the subject In 1968, Embassy Pictures released The Producers, considered to of riotous laughs and addressed such sensibe Mel Brooks’s masterpiece. The movie tells the story of a down-andtive topics as the way an all-white town in the out theatrical producer (Max Bialystock, played by Zero Mostel) and his neurotic accountant (Leo Bloom, played by Gene Wilder), who toOld West would react to a black sheriff. The gether concoct a scheme to bilk investors in a Broadway theatrical film was not only a parody of Western films production by creating a surefire flop of a musical, one that glorifies but also a critique of social ills such as racthe Nazi regime and which they give the repugnant title Springtime for ism, alcoholism, and political corruption. Hitler. The producers expect the show to close on its opening night, Brooks also showcased his songwriting with leaving them rich from the proceeds of the investors. The show turns the title song and the parody of Marlene out to be a hit instead of a flop, creating panic and mayhem for the Dietrich in “I’m Tired.” producers. The financial success of Blazing SadThe movie, which was originally panned by critics, is considered a dles paved the way for what many consider comic masterpiece. The humor was typical for a time when people Brooks’s masterpiece, Young Frankenstein were used to the Jerry Lewis style of simplistic slapstick. Although de(1974). While The Producers and Blazing scribed as an exercise in bad taste, it can be seen as a blend of Marx brothers’ sophistication with a touch of Monty Python absurdity. The Saddles are respectively satires of the theatfilm was ahead of its time, which is why it took so long for people to rical world and society as a whole, Young warm up to it. Frankenstein is a masterful homage to the Brooks did not make it easy on himself, either. His first title for the Universal Pictures monster films from the movie was “Springtime for Hitler,” but no studio would go for a movie 1930’s and 1940’s. The film was shot in with such a title. He finally settled on The Producers. Mostel at first reblack and white and used props and diafused to be in the film, but Brooks convinced Mostel’s wife to get him logue from the original Frankenstein series to accept the offer. The first choice for Leo Bloom was Dustin of films. It is based loosely on the 1939 film Hoffman, who turned down the role in order to be in The Graduate Son of Frankenstein but incorporates ele(1967) with Brooks’s wife, Anne Bancroft. ments of the original Frankenstein (1931) Although he had never directed before, Brooks insisted on being and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). The film the director. The studio was reluctant to let him until he agreed to direct a snack-food commercial to prove he was up to the task. He did brings back Brooks’s film regulars Wilder, and he was. In addition to writing the script for the movie, he also comKenneth Mars, and Madeline Kahn, addposed the two primary songs for the film “Springtime for Hitler” and ing newcomers Cloris Leachman, Teri Garr, “Prisoners of Love.” The only thing he did not do was act in the film, Peter Boyle, and Marty Feldman as Igor. but he did do a voice-over in the musical dance number when a GeBrooks does not appear in the film but shines stapo officer comes forward and encourages the audience: “Don’t be as its director. His willingness to step back stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi Party.” and let his actors go on to reach their comic Not everyone understands satire, but the Academy of Motion Picpeak must have taken both self-control and ture Arts and Sciences did when it nominated Wilder for best supportself-sacrifice. The movie was a hit with criting actor and Mel Brooks for best original screenplay for 1968. Wilder ics and audiences alike. Brooks appeared to lost, but Brooks won an Academy Award for his work. reach his peak with Young Frankenstein.
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Brooks was to try his hand at television again with a short-lived show called When Things Were Rotten, a parody of the Robin Hood legend that proved to be a flop. In the 1980’s, he made a parody, Silent Movie (1976), and an homage to Alfred Hitchcock with High Anxiety (1977), which did not come close to achieving the boxoffice success of his previous films. He tried to return to his early television roots with the movie The History of the World Part I (1981), which contains a series of comic vignettes from prehistoric times to the French Revolution. Most fall flat, but a few, such as the Inquisition vignette, are quite funny. Brooks tried an homage film again with wife Anne Bancroft Mel Brooks. (AP/Wide World Photos) in a remake of the Jack Benny film To Be or Not to Be (1983), which found no audience. He ended the Significance 1980’s with another parody film, Spaceballs (1987), In addition to being a certified legend and renaissance which was a takeoff of Star Wars (1977) and a number of man as a writer, producer, director, and lyricist, Brooks other science-fiction films. opened the way for others, such as Allen and his films While Brooks’s films seemed to wander from homage Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), Steve Martin in to parody with minimal success in the 1980’s, he proved Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), and the Zucker brothto be more successful in purchasing rights to films such ers, David and Jerry, who created Airplane! (1980) and the as The Elephant Man (1980). He hired David Lynch to Police Squad! television series. Lines written by Brooks direct the film, which was hailed as a dramatic success. have also been enshrined in popular culture, from “Could Brooks would produce several more serious films in the be worse … could be raining” to “Put the candle back.” 1980’s and 1990’s. —David R. Stefancic In the 1990’s, he tried a serious film as director-actor, called Life Stinks (1991), but it received little attention. Further Reading Returning to the homage-parody approach, Brooks then Crick, Robert Alan. The Big Screen Comedies of Mel produced Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) and DraBrooks. London: McFarland, 2002. A thorough analcula: Dead and Loving It (1995), which found appreciaysis of Brooks’s films, from the original The Productive audiences. Both had respectable success at the box ers to Dracula: Dead and Loving It. office, but nothing compared to Young Frankenstein or Parish, James Robert. It’s Good to Be the King. Hoboken, Blazing Saddles. N.J.: Wiley, 2007. A comprehensive and popular biIn April, 2001, Brooks took a new direction: The Proography. ducers opened as a musical on Broadway, becoming a Yacowar, Maurice, Method in Madness. New York: St. megahit and winning a Tony Award for Brooks. The reMartin’s Press, 1981. An academic analysis of Brooks’s make of The Producers (2005) as a movie musical was comedy. also a success, if lacking some of the charm and freshness of the original. Recognizing this appreciation for his See also: Woody Allen; Jack Benny; Milton Berle; Matearly work, Brooks began work on Young Frankenstein thew Broderick; Sid Caesar; Larry Gelbart; Dustin as a musical Off-Broadway with hopes of recapturing his Hoffman; Jerry Lewis; Groucho Marx; Carl Reiner; earlier success. Gene Wilder. 179
Brothers, Joyce
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Joyce Brothers Psychologist, writer, and lecturer A psychologist, Brothers is best known for her wisdom and commonsense approach to life. She became popular as an advice columnist and television celebrity. promoting healthy relationships, family values, and positive mental health. Born: October 20, 1929; New York, New York Also known as: Joyce Diane Bauer (birth name); Dr. Joyce Brothers Areas of achievement: Psychology; entertainment Early Life Joyce Brothers was born Joyce Diane Bauer in 1929 in New York. She was the older of two daughters of Morris K. Bauer and Estelle Rapoport, both career lawyers. Brothers’s parents passed on their values of achieving excellence and respect for a job well done through working hard. They stressed academic performance and reared their daughters with the understanding that girls
were as valuable as boys. The Bauers made their home in a predominantly Christian area, but they practiced the Jewish faith with strong ethics and belief in God. Brothers graduated with honors from Far Rockaway High School in 1943 and continued her education at Cornell University, where she received a bachelor’s degree with honors in psychology in 1947 at age eighteen. Brothers finished her master’s degree at Columbia University in 1949, and she married Milton Brothers, a medical student, while working as a teacher and researcher. In 1953, she completed her doctorate at Columbia University. Brothers and her husband both had careers as doctors, and they embraced the Jewish culture and faith. After the birth of their daughter, Lisa, Brothers chose to stay home and care for the baby. Living on her husband’s salary as a resident was not easy, so Brothers decided to appear as a contestant on a quiz show called The $64,000 Question. She studied diligently and won the top prize money. Several years later she went on to The $64,000 Challenge, where her expert knowledge of boxing paid off with maximum earnings.
A Writing Legacy Joyce Brothers reached out to people through every media opportunity afforded her. Of all her credits, writing is the one she can pass easily to other generations as a legacy. At one point Brothers’s syndicated daily advice column was available to her readers in more than 350 newspapers. She wrote a monthly column in the popular women’s magazine Good Housekeeping for many years. Brothers published more than ten books in her career, with profound impact on her readers. Her first book, Ten Days to a Successful Memory, was published in 1959. Two years later she offered her second book, Woman. In 1974, she published The Brothers System for Liberated Love and Marriage, followed by Better than Ever in 1975. She authored four additional books between 1979 and 1990. Three of these titles addressed women: What Every Woman Should Know About Men (1982), What Every Woman Ought to Know About Love and Marriage (1985), and The Successful Woman: How You Can Have a Career, a Husband, and Family—and Not Feel Guilty About It (1988). In 1992, Brothers bared her soul and suffering in Widowed, a book about the death of her husband Milton. Once again Brothers connected to her readers in the midst of her pain to give support and inspiration to widows. Four years later, she offered her public Positive Plus: The Practical Plan for Liking Yourself Better (1994). In 1996, while Brothers was in her late sixties, she gave her readers Dr. Brothers’s Guide to Your Emotions.
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Life’s Work Winning these quiz shows pushed Brothers into the public arena, where she quickly became known for her commonsense psychology. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) offered her a trial television spot in which she could give advice on topics such as relationships, families, child rearing, love, and marriage. She gained a following with her open and sympathetic attitude for people and their problems. Her simple language and nonjudgmental manner earned her acclaim, especially among women, as a pop psychologist. Sometimes she surprised her followers with frank discussions on such taboo subjects as sex, female frigidity, impotence, and menopause. Her way of presenting these topics put people at ease and led to open discussions without embarrassment. She shined a light on universal concerns common among her fans and spoke against sexism. Brothers did not claim to give counseling through the media, but rather she offered information and referral to literature so her followers could learn for themselves. She
Jewish Americans helped remove the stigma related to psychology. Before long she was a household name in America. Brothers was successful in many different media. In 1956, she appeared on Sports Showcase, where she conducted interviews and gave commentaries as a sports expert. In 1958, she had her own television show, Dr. Joyce Brothers. A few years later she had syndicated shows such as Consult Dr. Joyce Brothers, Tell Me Dr. Brothers, and Ask Dr. Brothers. Her credits in television include The Bob Hope Show, The Chevy Chase Show, The Bold and the Beautiful, One Life to Live, George Burns’s How to Live to Be One Hundred, Happy Days, Charlie’s Angels, Taxi, Mama’s Family, Married . . . with Children, and Night Court. In the 1990’s, she lent her voice to The Simpsons and appeared on Melrose Place, The Nanny, Police Academy, Ally McBeal, Suddenly Susan, Mike Hammer: Private Eye, and Everybody Loves Raymond. She appeared on such game shows as Hollywood Squares, What’s My Line?, Match Game, and The Gong Show. Brothers was seen in films by Twentieth CenturyFox, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and Universal Pictures. Brothers was also successful in print media, with her daily columns syndicated to more than 350 newspapers and more than ten published books. Her message made sense, gaining her loyal followers from across the country. Brothers stayed true to her Jewish heritage as a longterm member of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. She was named Woman of Achievement in 1964 by the Federation of Jewish Women’s Organizations. Four years later she was honored with a merit award from Bar Ilan University. Brothers participated in the People to People program, established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 to build bridges in communication among world countries. Celebrities such as Bob Hope, Walt Disney, and Charles Schulz also joined this initiative. Brothers is known for her generosity in giving back to the community.
Brothers, Joyce Significance Brothers embodies a cultural icon as a pop psychologist with a successful career as a syndicated columnist who also worked in television, film, radio, and print media. Viewers, listeners and readers received practical advice on everyday problems in language they could understand. Her sensitivity and open approach to life challenges built bonds with people all over the United States. Through her books, columns, films, television and radio shows, she showed Americans that everyone is linked through common life struggles. She demonstrated that a woman could successfully combine a career with marriage and family. —Marylane Wade Koch Further Reading Brothers, Joyce. Chicken Soup for the Single’s Soul: Stories of Love and Inspiration for Singles. Deerfield Beach, Fla.: Health Communications, 1999. Brothers offers a touching Chicken Soup story about the death of her husband and the healing she witnessed her first year single again. _______. Widowed. New York: Ballantine, 1992. Brothers describes her lonely and painful journey to despair and back to hope after her husband of more than thirty years died. Heinze, Andrew R. Jews and the American Soul: Human Nature in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. Summarizes the many ways that Jewish people and practices have influenced American culture. Includes Brothers as an example. Munier, Paula. On Being Blonde: Wit and Wisdom from the World’s Most Infamous Blondes. Gloucester, Mass.: Fair Winds Press, 2004. Profiles famous blondes, including Brothers, with a summary of their life and famous quotes. See also: Susan Estrich; Betty Friedan; Monty Hall; Gloria Steinem; Abigail Van Buren.
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Larry Brown Basketball coach Brown combined athletic talent with a winning outlook to become a prominent coach in professional basketball. Born: September 14, 1940; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Lawrence Harvey Brown (full name) Area of achievement: Sports Early Life Born and raised in New York, Larry Brown demonstrated athletic talent early in life, playing basketball throughout school. His parents were observant Jews of Russian descent. According to his family’s history, an ancestor had been a chef to the czar of Russia. By senior high school, Brown was attracting the attention of recruiters from colleges, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). In 1959, Brown was recruited to UNC by basketball coach Frank McGuire, who over most of the past decade had built a successful New York City-to-Chapel Hill recruiting pipeline. Within a year of Brown’s arrival in Chapel Hill, McGuire had resigned and the program was out on probation by the National Collegiate Athletic Association for recruiting violations. Brown was fortunate to stay at UNC rather than transfer to one of the other schools that had recruited him because UNC’s chancellor elevated McGuire’s assistant coach, a little-known Kansan named Dean Smith, to head coach. Although wins were few for the next several seasons, Brown made progress in his association with Smith, whom Brown credits with helping shape his playing and coaching philosophy. As a college student, Brown experienced culture shock, coming from New York to a small, fairly rural town in North Carolina. Although it had a reputation for being more progressive than other parts of North Carolina, Chapel Hill was a southern institution in a southern town, which meant that it was predominantly conservative, that white males held almost all positions of prestige and power, and that Northerners and Jews, if not gifted with athletic talent, were mostly unwelcome. An observant Jew, Brown quickly made himself a fan favorite. Always a fiery player, Brown refused to back down on the basketball court. During one basketball game versus Duke University in early 1961, for instance, Brown got into a fight with a significantly larger Duke player—six inches taller and much heavier—which turned into a bench-clearing 182
brawl that lasted for ten minutes and included Duke students and football players. Life’s Work As talented as he was scrappy, Brown proved that he could compete athletically on the collegiate and the international levels. Brown won a gold medal in the Maccabiah VI games in Israel in 1961 and an Olympic gold medal in 1964. The only arena in which he was not successful as a player was the National Basketball Association (NBA), although he had been drafted in 1963 by the NBA’s Baltimore Bullets. After a few years as an assistant coach at UNC, Brown began playing professionally in a new basketball league, the American Basketball Association (ABA). Although it was only in existence from 1967 to 1976, the ABA was eventually credited with breathing new life into the NBA since the newer league promoted an exciting, flashy style of play. For instance, the ABA authorized the three-point shot from outside, which gave more incentive for teams to sign guards who could shoot the ball, regardless of height. With a height generously listed at five-feet-eleven, Brown played for several ABA teams through the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. During his professional career, Brown averaged a little more than eleven points per game and led the ABA in assists three times. In 1974, Brown ended his playing career and began coaching for the ABA’s Denver Nuggets. Immediately he was able to breathe new life into a mediocre team, finishing the 1974-1975 season with the best overall record in either of the two professional leagues. When the ABA collapsed in 1976, the Nuggets entered the NBA and continued as one of the best teams in professional basketball. From that point forward, Brown was seen as a “player’s coach,” someone who could sympathize with the professional athlete of the 1970’s. For the next three decades, his ability to motivate superstar athletes kept Brown in demand in the NBA. By the 1990’s, however, Brown was increasingly seen as a “quick-fix” coach, someone who could quickly turn around a struggling team, but who would inevitably get bored and start looking for other coaching jobs. From the late 1970’s to the early 2000’s, Brown seemed to coach or to manage a different team every year or two. Over the course of his career, Brown either played or coached for eighteen NCAA, ABA, and NBA teams. One of his shortest coaching stints was at Davidson Col-
Jewish Americans lege, where he was head coach for a short eighty-four days. It was suggested that Brown’s job-hopping was driven by his ego; several sportswriters commented that Brown enjoyed being “recruited” for various jobs, with the accompanying drama in the press, at least as much as he enjoyed coaching. Significance Although the majority of the credit goes to Smith, Brown deserves some mention for helping lay the foundation for the remarkable success of UNC in collegiate basketball, since he was one of Smith’s earliest star players and assistant coaches. Before the early 1960’s, UNC was considered a football school; basketball was an afterthought. During Brown’s playing days and his tenure as an assistant coach, UNC developed a reputation for fundamentally solid, winning basketball. Further, Brown has been recognized as one of the best coaches of professional basketball players. From his coaching debut, he demonstrated considerable talent as a teacher and a motivator. —Michael R. Meyers
Brown, Michael S. Further Reading Featherston, Alwyn. Tobacco Road: Duke, Carolina, N. C. State, Wake Forest, and the Histories of the Most Intense Backyard Rivalries in Sports. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons, 2006. Describes the early years of Smith’s tenure at UNC, when Brown was getting his start in basketball. Menzer, Joe. Four Corners: How UNC, N.C. State, Duke, and Wake Forest Made North Carolina the Center of the Basketball Universe. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. History of basketball in North Carolina, with colorful anecdotes, by a newspaper sportswriter. Slater, Robert. “Larry Brown.” In Great Jews in Sports. New York: Jonathan David, 2005. A brief biography of Brown in a book written for juvenile audiences. See also: Senda Berenson Abbott; Red Auerbach; Nat Holman.
Michael S. Brown Scientist and physician Brown discovered the means by which cells regulate cholesterol biosynthesis and provided the biochemical foundations for the invention of cholesterol-lowering medicines. Born: April 13, 1941; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Michael Stuart Brown (full name) Areas of achievement: Science and technology; medicine Early Life Michael S. Brown was the first child born to Harvey and Evelyn Brown in Brooklyn, New York. When he was eleven years old, the Brown family relocated to Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. Brown attended Cheltenham High School, and at the age of thirteen he obtained an amateur radio operating license. This sparked a fascination with science that would last his whole life. Later Brown developed a passion for journalism, and these two interests remained central to his professional pursuits. Brown attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in chemistry, and he worked for the student
newspaper as the features editor and the editor-in-chief. He graduated in 1962 and attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. While in medical school, Brown married his childhood friend, Alice Lapin, in 1964. He received his medical degree in 1966, and he moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked as an internal medicine intern at the Massachusetts General Hospital for two years. While there, Brown met a fellow intern, Joseph Goldstein, who became his long-term scientific collaborator and friend. In 1968, Brown went to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a clinical associate in gastroenterology and hereditary disease. He later joined the Laboratory of Biochemistry, where he worked with one of the pioneers in enzyme regulation, Earl R. Stadtman. While at the NIH, Brown mastered the tools of biochemistry that he used to make many of his later discoveries. Life’s Work In 1971, Brown joined the division of gastroenterology in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas. Goldstein, his friend, arrived one year later, and 183
Brown, Michael S. together Brown and Goldstein began working on an inherited disease called familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), which causes the accumulation of excess cholesterol in blood and tissues. Examinations of FH patients showed that they had high concentrations of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) particles in their blood. Since molecules such as cholesterol and fats are poorly soluble in a water-based solution such as blood, LDL particles package these molecules into a soluble form and ferry them through the bloodstream to cells. In 1974, Brown and Goldstein reported that cultured cells from FH patients showed reduced abilities to bind and internalize LDL. Therefore, FH patients showed elevated serum LDL concentrations because they lacked a functional cell surface protein known as the LDL receptor that specifically binds LDL and removes it from the bloodstream. This initial observation led to a rash of publications that described how cells brought bound LDL particles from the cell surface into the cell interior. In 1975, Brown and Goldstein reported that LDL uptake removed LDL receptors from the cell surface. In 1977, they showed that once LDL receptors bound LDL, they were clustered into a “coated pit” before they were drawn into the cell. Other experiments showed that defective LDL receptors were not properly localized to the cell surface, did not bind LDL, or bound LDL but resisted being drawn into the cell. Brown and Goldstein called this new process by which cells specifically bound and internalized larger particles “receptor-mediated endocytosis” (RME). Brown and Goldstein extended these discoveries by showing in great detail that once cells internalize LDL particles, they are degraded by fusion with special vesicles called lysosomes, which act as the garbage disposal of the cell. Degraded LDL particles flood the cell with cholesterol, which inhibits endogenous cholesterol biosynthesis and increases the production of LDL receptors. Heightened LDL receptor synthesis increases the clearance of LDL particles from the blood, thus lowering serum cholesterol levels. Significance Brown and Goldstein shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1985. Their work revealed the way cells regulate cholesterol biosynthesis and strongly suggested that pharmacological inhibition of endogenous
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Jewish Americans cholesterol biosynthesis would raise LDL receptor levels and further decrease blood cholesterol levels. In addition, Brown and Goldstein showed that the enzyme that catalyzed the rate-limiting step of cholesterol biosynthesis, 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase (HMG-CoA reductase), also served as the main control point for cholesterol biosynthesis in the cell. These data provided the target for drug companies as they searched for compounds to fight high cholesterol. This precise targeting strategy allowed drug companies to rapidly develop a class of molecules that inhibit HMGCoA reductase-called statins, which are one of the most successful pharmaceutical agents of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. — Michael A. Buratovich Further Reading Brown, Michael S., and Joseph L. Goldstein. “Expression of the Familial Hypercholesterolemia Gene in Heterozygotes: Mechanism for a Dominant Disorder in Man.” Science 185 (1974): 61-63. This paper describes Brown and Goldstein’s original observations of the attenuated ability of cultured skin cells from FH patients to bind and to take up LDL. Freeman, Mason, and Christine Junge. The Harvard Medical School Guide to Lowering Your Cholesterol. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. A readable but highly accurate explanation of cholesterol metabolism that includes sound, commonsense measures to control blood cholesterol levels. Rinzler, Carol A., and Martin W. Graf. Controlling Cholesterol for Dummies. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2008. A light and even humorous guide to cholesterol management that gives good, solid advice. Tolleshaug, Helge, and Joseph L. Goldstein, Wolfgang J. Schneider, and Michael S. Brown. “Posttranslational Processing of the LDL Receptor and Its Genetic Disruption in Familial Hypercholesterolemia.” Cell 30, no. 3 (1982): 715-724. This report shows that LDL receptors from FH patients are structurally defective, which demonstrates that FH occurs because of mutations in the gene that encodes the LDL receptor. See also: Paul Berg; Stanley Cohen; Mildred Cohn; Carl Djerassi; Gertrude Belle Elion; Stanley B. Prusiner.
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Brownmiller, Susan
Susan Brownmiller Activist, feminist, and writer A prominent feminist of the 1960’s and 1970’s, Brownmiller raised awareness about troubling societal issues such as pornography, sexual violence, and the negative media portrayal of women. Her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape redefined rape from a sexual act to an act of violence. Born: February 15, 1935; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Susan Brownmiller (full name); Susan Warhaftig (birth name) Areas of achievement: Activism; journalism; women’s rights
joined the Freedom Summer effort to get African Americans in Mississippi to register to vote. Like many women active in the Civil Rights movement, Brownmiller became increasingly aware of women being treated as second-class citizens. The sexism she experienced during the summer of 1964 led to her involvement in the women’s liberation movement. In 1968, Brownmiller cofounded the New York Radical Feminists. As a member of this group, Brownmiller helped organize a sit-in at the Ladies’ Home Journal offices in protest of what the protesters regarded the magazine’s demeaning coverage of women. Brownmiller’s prominence in the women’s liberation movement arose around the time she published her first book, a biography, Shirley Chisholm (1971), a work for youth that originated as a cover story she wrote for The New York Times. It was in this book that her feminist leanings surfaced and defined her as a feminist writer.
Early Life Susan Brownmiller was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Mae and Samuel Warhaftig. As a child, Brownmiller was schooled in Hebrew and Jewish history during the Zionist movement of World War II. As an adolescent, she was inspired by the antiviolence message of Jewish teachings, which influenced her work to alleviate violence against women. Redefining Rape After graduating from Cornell University in 1955, Brownmiller moved to New York to purSusan Brownmiller is best known for changing the social and lesue a career in acting. It was during this time gal definition of rape. Among the first feminists in the 1960’s, that she adopted the stage name Brownmiller, Brownmiller made a commitment to increasing awareness of violegally changing it in 1961. When her career in lence against women after participating in consciousness-raising acting stagnated and her interests changed, groups and “speak-outs.” It was after a particularly intense “Speakout on Rape” in 1971 that Brownmiller began her book Against Our Brownmiller began her career in journalism. Will: Men, Women, and Rape. In it, Brownmiller explores the hisAs a budding journalist, Brownmiller worked tory of rape and its use as a weapon of war and discusses the foundaas assistant to the managing editor for Coronet tion for and the inequities of U.S. rape laws. Following the publish(1959-1960). In the early 1960’s, she held a ing of Against Our Will, Brownmiller traveled the United States, number of positions at the National Broadcastlecturing on the subject of rape and appearing on popular talk ing Company (NBC) in Philadelphia, at The shows. Against Our Will reached far outside feminist and scholarly Village Voice, and at the American Broadcastcircles and into the homes of the general public, contributing to a ing Company (ABC) in New York City. As a change in cultural perceptions of rape and reducing the perception freelance writer in the late 1960’s, Brownthat the victim is to blame. Furthermore, Brownmiller was one of miller was a frequent contributor to The New the first to allude to the connection between violent pornography York Times, Newsday, New York Daily News, and rape. It was this connection that led to her involvement in Women Against Pornography, an organization that spearheaded the Vogue, and The Nation. antipornography movement of the 1970’s and 1980’s. BrownWhile working as a journalist and freelance miller’s work to raise awareness of sexual violence created a diawriter, Brownmiller was active in the Civil logue not only about the use of rape as a method to intimidate and Rights movement. Inspired by the Southern sitgain power but also about sexuality. Against Our Will is considered ins of the 1960’s, Brownmiller became a mema classic feminist text. It and Brownmiller’s other works on sexualber of the Congress of Racial Equity (CORE), ity continue to influence feminist and sexuality theories today. organized picket lines, and marched against the war in Vietnam. In 1964, Brownmiller
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Brownmiller, Susan Life’s Work In 1971, Brownmiller helped organize a conference on rape that led to the creation of her book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, a comprehensive study of rape. It traces the history of rape, the origins of rape law, and the cultural perceptions of rape. Through extensive research into fields ranging from history to mythology, Brownmiller concludes that rape “is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.” When published, Against Our Will stirred up controversy, receiving acclaim for its revolutionary thinking and criticism from those who felt her research was biased. Furthermore, many feminists of color argued that Brownmiller’s book did not address the intersections of race and class in sexism. Regardless of these critiques, Against Our Will became a best seller. The success of her second book increased Brownmiller’s visibility and credibility in the women’s liberation movement, which prompted Time to name her one of twelve women of the year in 1975. In the years after Against Our Will’s release, Brownmiller traveled the United States, appearing on talk shows and lecturing on the topic of sexual violence. As her prominence grew, so did Brownmiller’s definition of violence against women. She began to see a link between violent pornography and rape. In 1979, Brownmiller cofounded Women Against Pornography, an organization that targeted the sale of pornography in New York City’s Times Square by hosting walking tours of notorious hot spots for prostitution and pornography. The success of Against Our Will allowed Brownmiller to continue publishing books pertinent to the women’s liberation movement. In 1984, she published her third book, Femininity, which critically analyzes cultural feminine qualities and the way in which society imposes those qualities on women. Although less controversial than Against Our Will, Femininity drew criticism for not providing a vision for redefining femininity. In another analysis of violence against women, Brownmiller wrote a novel titled Waverly Place (1989). In it Brownmiller explains why domestic abuse happens in a fictional treatment of the real-life Joe Steinberg domestic abuse case that took place in New York in the 1980’s. In what appeared to be a move away from feministthemed writing, Brownmiller wrote Seeing Vietnam: Encounters of the Road and Heart (1994), a travel memoir. While much of this book details her experience as a tourist in Vietnam, Brownmiller also includes her critique of the growth of prostitution in Vietnam after U.S. occupation. 186
Jewish Americans In 1999, Brownmiller published In Our Time. Beginning in 1994, Brownmiller began interviewing women involved in the women’s liberation movement in an effort to chronicle radical feminist activism. In Our Time paints a clear and honest picture of the radical feminist movement while recording an important piece of American history. Significance Many credit Brownmiller with not only changing the way the U.S. legal system handles rape cases but also transforming American society’s perception of rape. In fact, shortly following the publication of Against Our Will, Brownmiller reported that rape crisis centers became part of the legal system’s and law enforcement’s response to rape. Furthermore, Brownmiller’s efforts to create awareness of violence against women contributed to a change in rape laws around the nation. Brownmiller’s theory that rape is a violent, criminal act and not a sexual act took the legal burden from the victim and put it on the perpetrator. As a result, rape laws changed, women became more likely to report rape, and law enforcement attitudes toward victims improved. In addition to Brownmiller’s contributions to reform in rape laws and cultural perceptions, she was vital in recording an important piece of American history in her book In Our Time. Through personal experience and interviews with more than two hundred women, Brownmiller captures the women’s liberation movement in the words, minds, and hearts of those who liberated the modern woman. —Erin Elizabeth Parrish Further Reading Brownmiller, Susan. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. New York: Bantam Books, 1975. This is Brownmiller’s best-known book. It includes a personal statement that explains her reasons for writing this book. _______. In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution. New York: Dial Press, 1999. This book chronicles the women’s liberation movement of the 1970’s and includes autobiographical information. _______. Seeing Vietnam: Encounters of the Road and Heart. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. This is a travel memoir of Brownmiller’s experience in Vietnam in the early 1990’s. It offers readers insight to Brownmiller’s journalism career outside the women’s liberation movement. Gerhard, Jane. Desiring Revolution: Second-Wave Femi-
Jewish Americans nism and the Rewriting of American Sexual Thought, 1920 to 1982. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. A review of feminist thought on sexuality, with a focus on writers such as Brownmiller, Betty Friedan, and Germaine Greer and their contributions to the feminist movement. Siegel, Deborah. Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical
Bruce, Lenny Women to Grrls Gone Wild. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Contends that the battle for women’s rights is not over and includes several references to Brownmiller and her writings. See also: Judy Blume; Betty Friedan; Erica Jong; Ayn Rand; Gloria Steinem; Naomi Wolf.
Lenny Bruce Comedian Bruce became famous during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s for his comedic nightclub routines that satirized the hypocrisy of American society. Arrested numerous times for using obscenities in his act that are commonplace today, he is considered a martyr for free speech onstage. Born: October 13, 1925; Mineloa, New York Died: August 3, 1966; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Leonard Alfred Schneider (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; social issues Early Life Lenny Bruce was born Leonard Alfred Schneider, the son of working-class Jewish parents Myron Schneider and Sadie Kitchenberg, a stage performer and actor who worked as Sally Marr. Bruce’s mother and father divorced when he was a child, so Marr raised her son with the assistance of other relatives. After attending grade school on Long Island, Bruce ran away from home at the age of sixteen. In 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and shipped out for North Africa aboard the USS Brooklyn. A shell-passer during World War II, he saw action in Africa, Italy, and southern France. He was discharged in 1945 after allegedly dressing in women’s clothes for the express purpose of getting out of the military. After leaving the Navy, Bruce returned home to New York to live with his mother, who was then teaching night classes in dance and comedy and occasionally performing at nightclubs. He gained his first show-business experience in 1947, filling in as master of ceremonies at the Victory Club, where his mother was appearing. He soon began performing stand-up comedy at clubs in New York, on Long Island, in Greenwich Village and Jackson Heights, and in New Jersey, working for little or no pay.
Originally, he did one-liners, traditional jokes, impressions, and standard sketches, but his act evolved as he included more original material. In the late 1940’s Bruce was chosen for a slot on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, a nationally broadcast series before a live studio audience, where he garnered the largest ovation on an applause meter. Success made Bruce a hot commodity, and he was booked into comedy clubs from Milwaukee to Broadway at $450 a week. However, as he continued experimenting, adding more confrontational avant-garde material, audiences dimin-
Lenny Bruce. (Getty Images)
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clubs in San Francisco, earning good wages, and gaining a reputation as a uniquely unconventional comic to whom nothing was sacred. Originally published in installments in Playboy magazine between Playboy magnate Hugh Hefner, a fan, helped 1963 and 1965, and later collected in book form and edited by writer Bruce gain a high-paid spot at the Cloister Paul Krassner, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People is Lenny nightclub in Chicago in 1958 and later pubBruce’s autobiography. Reprinted many times since the comedian’s lished Bruce’s autobiography serially in the death, it is his written record of his life and, in conjunction with the numerous recordings of the comedian’s performances—notably the sixpages of his magazine. The following year, volume collection on compact disc spanning his entire career, Let the when several recordings of Bruce’s San FranBuyer Beware (2004)—provides a full picture of the forces that cisco performances were released (includshaped his cutting-edge work. While probably not an entirely truthful ing The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce and Toaccount—Bruce, after all, like most comedians, used exaggeration, getherness: Lenny Bruce’s Interviews of Our understatement, and sarcasm for humorous effect—How to Talk Dirty Times), he appeared on the nationally teleand Influence People nonetheless offers an invaluable glimpse into the vised Steve Allen Show. By 1961, at the comedian’s psyche, established while growing up in a broken family, height of his career, when he was making tempered in war, and significantly affected by a troubled marriage and thousands of dollars weekly, he performed increasing drug dependency. at Carnegie Hall, with every seat filled. Though somewhat dated, with cultural references that are obscure, Bruce’s downfall began soon afterward. the book gives excerpts from Bruce’s routines and details the background of the obscenity trials that consumed the last several years of In late 1961 he was arrested in Philadelphia his life. More than anything, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People for narcotics possession, only to have the reveals the foundation and development of Bruce’s aggressive, abracharges dropped when the narcotics or drugs sive, no-holds-barred attitude, which made him the most talked-about in question turned out to be legally presatirist and social critic of his era and which paved the way for a legion scribed. A month later, he was arrested for of other stand-up performers who followed him. using obscenities during his act in San Francisco. Though he was tried and acquitted in 1962, his troubles were only beginning. Over the next several years, he was arrested ished, and he was forced to accept low-paid work at secnumerous times for obscenity in Los Angeles, San Franond-class establishments. Discouraged, Bruce enlisted cisco, Chicago, and New York City. He was convicted in in the merchant marine and set sail for Europe, where his Chicago and in New York City—despite a public petition main preoccupation was touring as many brothels as posof protest signed by eighty prominent Americans, insible at every port of call. cluding Arthur Miller, Woody Allen, Gore Vidal, Elizabeth Taylor, and Paul Newman—and sentenced in both Life’s Work places to prison terms. In 1951, Bruce returned to the United States, where he Released on bail while awaiting appeals (which would married “Hot” Honey Harlowe, a stripper he had met in overturn the convictions), Bruce, addicted to drugs and Baltimore. Before their divorce in 1957, they had a daughsuffering various physical ailments, found it difficult to seter, Brandy Kathleen “Kitty,” born 1955. Bruce was arcure work. In 1962, he was prohibited from performing a rested for the first time in Miami in 1951, posing as a planned tour of Australia, and the following year he was priest collecting funds for a British Guiana leper colony. banned from entering England. Most American nightLet off with a fine, he and Honey relocated to Pittsburgh, clubs, afraid of legal difficulties surrounding the comewhere Bruce rejoined the comedy circuit, playing mostly dian, refused to hire him. By 1965 he was declared bankburlesque theaters. By 1953 he had gravitated to Califorrupt. In mid-1966, then engaged to Lotus Weinstock, he nia, where over the next several years he honed his craft, made his last performance at the Fillmore Auditorium in refining his sharp-edged routines and perfecting his sense San Francisco. Weeks later, he was found dead in Los of comic timing. He also wrote screenplays for several Angeles, at age forty, of a morphine overdose. low-budget films, including Dance Hall Racket (1953)— in which he appeared with his mother and his wife— Significance Dream Follies (1954), and The Leather Jacket (1955). During his abbreviated but influential career, Bruce By the late 1950’s, Bruce was playing quality nightsingle-handedly changed the style and direction of Ameri-
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Jewish Americans can comedy. Using Beat-type delivery blended with bebop and jazz rhythms in skits and sketches, impressions, and imagined interviews, he humorously and bluntly challenged accepted notions of race, religion, politics, sexuality, drugs, homosexuality, abortion, the use of language, and other controversial aspects of society. Compared during his lifetime and afterward to history’s great satirists (Aristophanes, Rabelais, Jonathan Swift, and Mark Twain), Bruce made possible the untamed, boundary-shattering comedy of such later performers as Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Robin Williams, and Howard Stern. Modern films and literary works routinely contain all the words for which he was arrested, without prompting undue outrage. Bruce’s life and death have inspired several plays and films, and dozens of musicians have paid tribute to him in song. In 2003, New York Governor George Pataki granted Bruce a posthumous pardon for his 1964 obscenity conviction—the first such pardon in state history. —Jack Ewing Further Reading Bruce, Lenny. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. Chicago: Playboy Press, 1972. Bruce’s autobiography provides insight into his sometimes troubled life. Cohen, John, ed. The Essential Lenny Bruce. London: Pan, 1999. This new edition of the original 1960’s work offers uncensored transcriptions of some of
Bruckheimer, Jerry Bruce’s highly original and controversial comedic sketches, presented by topic. Collins, Ronald K. L., and David M. Skover. The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon. Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 2003. An illustrated work, supplemented with a compact disc containing some of Bruce’s memorable routines, this focuses primarily on the freedom-of-speech issues he encountered. Goldman, Albert, and Lawrence Schiller. Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce. New York: Penguin, 1992. This work contains a detailed biography of the comedian, accounts of his legal troubles, and analyses of his comedy style. Guse, Joe. The Tragic Clowns: An Analysis of the Short Lives of John Belushi, Lenny Bruce, and Chris Farley. Scotts Valley, Calif.: CreateSpace, 2009. This work presents biographical studies and psychological profiles that compare and contrast the factors that led to the untimely deaths from drug overdoses of the three comedians. Thomas, William Karl. Lenny Bruce: The Making of a Prophet. North Haven, Conn.: Archon Books, 2000. An insightful study of the comedian, written by a film photographer and scriptwriter who met Bruce in the mid-1950’s and shared many experiences with him. See also: Woody Allen; Tony Kushner; Norman Mailer; Joan Rivers; Mort Sahl.
Jerry Bruckheimer Film and television producer Hollywood producer Bruckheimer created, with partner Don Simpson, the “high-concept” blockbuster film. Born: September 21, 1945; Detroit, Michigan Also known as: Jerome Leon Bruckheimer (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Jerry Bruckheimer (BRUH-ki-mur) was born on September 21, 1945, the only child of Jewish Germans who immigrated to America in the 1920’s. When Bruckheimer was born, the family lived in a small apartment in a Jewish section of Detroit, Michigan. Bruckheimer’s fa-
ther was a salesperson for a clothing store, and his mother was an accountant and homemaker. When Bruckheimer was six, he began taking pictures, and he loved attending film matinees. By the time he graduated from Mumford High School in Detroit, his photographs had won prizes. At first, Bruckheimer studied to become a dentist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he joined the Jewish fraternity Zeta Beta Tau. He quickly changed his major to psychology, and he earned his bachelor of arts in 1965. Returning to Detroit, Bruckheimer worked in the mail room of a small advertising agency before moving to New York City in 1968 to join the worldwide advertising agency BBDO (a merger of Barton, Durstine, and Osborn and the Batten Company). There, Bruckheimer wrote, 189
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the film as a feature-length music video, it became the third-highest-grossing film of 1983. Bruckheimer and Simpson followed up their success with the Eddie Murphy feature Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and the Tom Cruise vehicle Top Gun (1986) which catapulted the two producers to Hollywood fame. The commercial success of Beverly Hills Cop 2 (1987) followed. In Hollywood, Simpson became known as “Mr. Inside,” for his film-industry connections and deal-making, and Bruckheimer became known as “Mr. Outside,” for his focus on the filmmaking process. Bruckheimer and Simpson’s Days of Thunder (1990) was considered a failure. Featuring Tom Cruise as a race car driver, it never rose to the expected blockbuster status. Blame ranged from a poor script and poor marketing to Simpson’s insistence on taking a role in the film. Bruckheimer and Simpson returned to success with Dangerous Minds (1995), starring Michelle Pfeiffer as an ex-Marine turned teacher at a Latino ghetto school. Bad Boys (1995), a cop-buddy action comedy starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, drew in large audiences but got negative reviews for its formulaic story. In December, 1995, Simpson’s drug and alcohol addictions forced a reluctant Bruckheimer to dissolve their partnerLife’s Work ship. After Simpson died of a drug overdose on January Bruckheimer produced his first hit films, American 19, 1996, Bruckheimer released their last coproduced Gigolo (1980) and Cat People (1982), with director picture, The Rock (1996), an Alcatraz film, and dedicated Paul Schrader. Simpson-Bruckheimer Productions was it to Simpson. formed in 1983, and their first film was the runaway surThe action thriller Con Air (1997), pitting Nicolas prise hit Flashdance (1983). While many critics panned Cage’s and John Cusack’s characters against the villain played by John Malkovich, proved that Bruckheimer could succeed as sole proThe PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN Franchise ducer and head of Jerry Bruckheimer Films, founded in 1995. Around this time, he married Jerry Bruckheimer’s success with high-production-value, popnovelist and writer Linda Sue Cobb, and she ular films with global appeal reached a climax with Walt Disney and her daughter Alexandra Balahoutis made Pictures’s Pirates of the Caribbean series. The commercial and critical success of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black up the Bruckheimer family. Pearl (2003) vindicated Bruckheimer’s belief in the appeal of a Bruckheimer’s series as producer of blockfilm based on a ride at Disneyland, if produced with a strong dose busters continued in force. The science-fiction of fantasy and Hollywood panache. Disney was ready immediately film Armageddon (1998) was as successful as to launch two sequels, and both were produced by Bruckheimer the tongue-in-cheek car thief action-adventure and shot with the original cast. With the release of the next Pirates Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) and the grim war films in 2006 and 2007, Bruckheimer’s franchise developed into a film Black Hawk Down (2001) about a real-life global phenomenon. Mixing the fantastic and exotic with a cast of incident in Somalia in 1993. Critics decried the interesting, if somewhat one-dimensional characters and a quirky historical inaccuracies in Bruckheimer’s Pearl story line, the three Pirates films enchanted audiences worldwide. Harbor (2001), but audiences did not mind. Together, they earned Disney spectacular gross revenues of about Bruckheimer became executive producer of $2.6 billion, about four times more than their combined cost of $665 million. A fourth film, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger television series starting in 1997 with the foundTides, has been produced. ing of Jerry Bruckheimer Television. His crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (since directed, edited, and produced commercials, creating a notable spoof on Bonnie and Clyde (1967) for the Pontiac car. While working in New York City, Bruckheimer married Bonnie Fishman. In 1972, Bruckheimer quit his advertising job and moved to Los Angeles, where he started as associate producer for director Dick Richards’s Western film The Culpepper Cattle Company (1972). In 1973, Bruckheimer met Don Simpson at a film screening. They formed a friendship that evolved into a professional partnership. After working as associate producer on a second film, Bruckheimer produced his first film, Farewell, My Lovely (1975), directed by Richards. Around this time, his marriage ended in divorce, and Bruckheimer moved into Simpson’s Los Angeles home for a time. Bruckheimer rarely has commented on his Jewish faith. He has stated that God is important to him, that he likes to sink his teeth into Judaism, and that he feels spiritually grounded. He has been called by the nickname “Rabbi,” and a critic likened him to Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem (pen name of Sholom Naumovich Rabinovitz).
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Jewish Americans 2000) and his reality show The Amazing Race (since 2001) earned top ratings, ensuring their renewal season after season. A show including a Jewish pornography producer, Skin (2003), was quickly canceled after three episodes. CSI spawned two spinoffs, CSI: Miami (since 2002) and CSI: NY (since 2004). Bruckheimer’s collaboration with Walt Disney Pictures led to the astonishing commercial success of the Pirates of the Caribbean series (2003, 2006, and 2007) and the National Treasure films (2004 and 2007). However, the relative lack of success of Bruckheimer’s four films in 2009 and 2010 disappointed the studio. The historical adventure The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) starring Jake Gyllenhaal failed to attract American audiences. The Nicolas Cage fantasy about Merlin’s modern-day legacy, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010), did not fare well among young filmgoers. Significance By 2010, the forty-four films produced by Bruckheimer attracted a vast global audience. His films have come to epitomize the contemporary blockbuster Hollywood film since the 1980’s. Bruckheimer and Simpson’s “high concept” approach, outlining a film’s appeal in one sentence, made most of their productions popular. Audiences are attracted to the clear, optimistic storytelling of Bruckheimer films and their big spectacles, car chases, and exotic historical locations. Fast-paced action sequences are generally complemented by quick editing cuts and a superbly matched sound track. By 2009, Bruckheimer’s films had earned gross revenues of thirteen billion dollars. The success of Bruckheimer’s series on American television has been outstanding. Although critics sometimes dismissed Bruckheimer’s films as shallow fare, Bruckheimer stated that he liked to make films people really want to see. Films produced by Bruckheimer won six Academy Awards, five Grammy
Bruner, Jerome Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. His television shows earned seventeen Emmy Awards. In 2000, the Producers Guild bestowed on Bruckheimer the prestigious David O. Selznick Award for Lifetime Achievement. —R. C. Lutz Further Reading Denby, David. “Epic Struggles.” The New Yorker 86, no. 15 (May 31, 2010): 82. Negative review of Prince of Persia. The movie is panned for having a simplistic story told with high production values, but the critic likens Bruckheimer to classic Hollywood director legend Cecil B. DeMille. Fleming, Charles. High Concept: Don Simpson and Hollywood’s Culture of Excesses. New York: Doubleday, 1998. Sarcastic look at Bruckheimer’s former partner, which discusses Bruckheimer’s role in Simpson’s life. Hannaford, Stephen. Market Domination! Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2007. “The Oligopoly in the Movie Industry,” a section in chapter 8, argues that film studio power behind Bruckheimer’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) propelled it to commercial success despite its artistic weakness. Shone, Tom. Blockbuster. London: Simon and Schuster, 2004. Chapter 9 discusses Bruckheimer and Simpson’s successful production of Top Gun; chapter 11 reflects on their failure with Days of Thunder. Waterman, David. Hollywood’s Road to Riches. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. Chapter 1 places Bruckheimer among Hollywood’s top producers. Good look at the American film industry, where Bruckheimer has left his successful mark. See also: Judd Apatow; Larry David; Arthur Freed; Stanley Kramer; Sidney Lumet; Harold Ramis.
Jerome Bruner Psychologist and educator A groundbreaking psychologist, Bruner has made contributions to theories of education, drawing upon his extensive experimental and theoretical work in cognitive psychology. Born: October 1, 1915; New York, New York Also known as: Jerome Seymour Bruner (full name) Areas of achievement: Education; psychology
Early Life Jerome Bruner (BREW-nur) was born to Polish Jewish immigrant parents, Herman and Rose. At birth he was blind, because of cataracts. Two successful operations, while he was still an infant, restored his sight. Educated in New York City public schools, he went to Duke University to study psychology, graduating in 1933. Duke placed him under the influence of William McDougall, who dis191
Bruner, Jerome agreed with the dominant ideas in psychology at the time. Moving from Duke to Harvard University to pursue his master’s degree (1939) and his doctoral degree (1941), Bruner noted the stark contrasts between the views of his doctoral supervisor Gordon Willard Allport and Henry Murray, whole-person theorists, and the views of experimental psychologists Edwin Garrigues Boring and Karl Spencer Lashley, strict behaviorists. Combining rigorous experimental work with a focus on the whole person would occupy Bruner’s attention throughout his career. Life’s Work During World War II, Bruner applied his doctoral dissertation on propaganda to practical use within the psychological warfare division of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force Europe. Cessation of hostilities enabled him to return to Harvard as an assistant professor of psychology in 1945. Bruner teamed with Leo Postman to conduct a series of elegant experiments to demonstrate that thinking mediated the processes of what people observed. People exposed to an emotionally charged word and then shown an object would often perceive the object differently than if they were first presented with a neutral word that elicited no emotion. In another experiment, children presented with tokens that varied in size but were disproportionate in value often believed that smaller tokens that were worth more were much larger in size. These series of experiments and their interpretation became known as the “new look in perception,” a position that argued, contrary to the behaviorists’ position, that active mental process was involved in human perception, not just passive elicitation of a response to a visual stimulus. These experiments, coupled with memorable conversations with the famous physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer about whether scientific ideas in the scientist’s mind influenced observations, led Bruner and his colleagues in the Center for Cognitive Studies to conduct a series of important studies focused on how people form concepts and place things in different conceptual categories. It helped launch a cognitive revolution in psychology. The logical extension of this work for Bruner was to apply it to problems in American education. He chaired an important conference of thirty-four experts who met for ten days at Woods Hole in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 1959 under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation. Their charge was to determine what America should do to improve its mathematics and science education in light of the perceived challenges to democracy posed by the suc192
Jewish Americans cessful launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union. Three central themes were summarized by Bruner in the nowclassic The Process of Education (1960), a small but highly influential book translated into more than twenty languages: First, children should “think” science and mathematics, not “think about” science and mathematics; second, how children think will be different, depending upon their cognitive development (drawing heavily on the work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget); and, third, teaching children the structure of a discipline— that is, how knowledge is put together—is vitally important to its mastery. Bruner’s most famous dictum is also found in this book: “Any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.” The Woods Hole conference influenced an enormous surge of science and mathematics curriculum development and instructional strategies in the United States and globally, and some of its core ideas, refined by further research, remain important to this day. Bruner continues to expand, alter, and generate novel ideas about human thinking, including the vital and central roles that culture and narrative play in how people think. He held faculty posts at Harvard University, Oxford University, and the New School for Social Research in New York City, before moving to New York University as research professor of psychology and senior research fellow in the School of Law. Significance Bruner, one of America’s foremost psychologists, made substantial contributions to cognitive learning theory and to applying cognitive research to educational settings, especially precollege mathematics and science education and language learning in young children. Bruner and his work have been recognized with the Distinguished Scientific Award of the American Psychological Association (APA), with the 1987 Balzan Prize for “lifelong contribution to the understanding of the human mind,” with the 1974 Ciba Gold Medal, and with numerous other awards. Bruner has been elected to be APA president and to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received numerous honorary doctorates and lectured at universities all over the world. His ideas, which consider the impact of culture and narrative on human thinking, find expression in many curriculum materials used in schools, in instructional practices employed daily by teachers, and in principles used to teach foreign languages and native languages to children and to adults. —Dennis W. Cheek
Jewish Americans Further Reading Bruner, Jerome. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990. A set of public lectures that Bruner delivered at Harvard University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, arguing against a digital-processing approach to the human mind. _______. The Culture of Education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. The fullest exposition of Bruner’s understanding of the role that culture plays in human thinking and education. _______. On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979. Speculative essays addressing a wide range of topics.
Buchalter, Louis _______. The Process of Education. 2d ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977. The classic summary of the influential Woods Hole conference. Bruner, Jerome, and Anthony Amsterdam. Minding the Law. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. Explores how legal codes and legal practice influence and are influenced by human thinking. Olson, David. Jerome Bruner. New York: Continuum, 2007. An analysis of Bruner’s work relevant to education. See also: Daniel Bell; Noam Chomsky; Alfred Kazin; Immanuel Wallerstein.
Louis Buchalter Criminal An unassuming but ruthless criminal, Buchalter was prominent in labor racketeering in New York’s garment district and in the organization of contract killers known as Murder Incorporated. Born: February 6, 1897; New York, New York Died: March 4, 1944; Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York Also known as: Lepke Buchalter; Louis Buckhouse Area of achievement: Crime Early Life Louis Buchalter (BOOK-ahl-tur) was born on New York City’s lower East Side. His parents, Barnet and Rose Buchalter, were Russian Jewish immigrants, and his father managed a hardware store. The family had seven children, six of whom became upstanding citizens, counting among them a dentist, a pharmacist, a teacher, and a rabbi-university professor. However, the youngest child, Buchalter, known by the Yiddish diminutive “Lepke,” resolved on a life of crime. There was an underside to life in the Jewish tenements of New York City in the 1910’s and 1920’s. Most children of the predominantly Russian, Polish, and German Jewish immigrants of the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, the lower East Side in Manhattan, and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx worked diligently to improve their status in life. However, in many of America’s poor ethnic neighborhoods, a small criminal element emerged, coalescing into the notorious Jewish gangs of the period. Arnold Rothstein was the first Jewish racketeer of national significance. He was
followed by a more vicious type that looked to profit from opportunities made by Prohibition, when the sale of liquor was banned, and by the rise of the heavily Jewish garment industry. Growing up in the Jewish Williamsburg neighborhood, Buchalter was first arrested at fifteen for his involvement in a gang fight. Arrests for burglary soon followed, and on May, 18, 1916, he was sentenced to his first term in prison. Upon his release in 1917, he resumed his criminal ways, serving two more terms in Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, from January, 1918, to January, 1919, and June, 1920, to March, 1922. Life’s Work In and out of prison, Buchalter was recognized as a thug with ambition; he became associated with Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro, a criminal partnership that would see great profits for both gangsters and the death of both in Sing Sing prison. They joined the gang of Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen, killing him in 1927 to take over his lucrative business. The gang of Buchalter and Shapiro made inroads into New York’s garment industry, running the labor rackets, profiting from labor-management strife, and extorting money from unions and businesses. By 1932, Buchalter had established illegal control over a wide range of businesses in New York and a lucrative drug trade. The national criminal syndicates tapped Buchalter to manage the Brooklyn-based Murder Incorporated, a vicious outfit of legendary status that contracted out murders to hit men across the country. It is estimated that in the 1930’s Murder Incorporated carried out more than one thousand murders. 193
Buchalter, Louis At the time, special prosecutor Thomas Dewey made inroads into organized crime. The notorious criminal Dutch Schultz proposed assassinating Dewey. For fear that this act would focus the public’s wrath on the mobs, the crime bosses were reputed to have assigned the murder of Schultz to Buchalter. On March 20, 1931, Buchalter married a young widow by the name of Betty Wasserman. She was from a Russian Jewish family and had one son, Harold. Buchalter has been portrayed as a faithful Jewish husband and a loving father to his stepson, whom he adopted in 1934. When Harold celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in 1935, Buchalter invited leading Jewish gangsters from throughout the New York area, including the flamboyant Bugsy Siegel. The Buchalter family lived in a luxurious apartment in Central Park South, and Buchalter spent most nights at home, enjoying a quiet domestic life with his family. Nevertheless, law enforcement pursued him. On November 12, 1936, he was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to two years in prison. Buchalter went into hiding, surrendering himself on August 24, 1939. To his surprise he was then sentenced to a lengthy term in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary for his criminal activity. To his even greater surprise, he was convicted of the murder of garment worker Joe Rosen on the testimony of a Murder Incorporated hit man, Abe “Kid Twist” Reles. On December 7, 1941, Buchalter was sentenced to death. Despite appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Buchalter was executed in Sing Sing’s electric chair on March 4, 1944. He was buried in the Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens. Significance Buchalter, a prominent member of New York’s Jewish gangs, was involved in the professionalization of organized crime. He systematically infiltrated and corrupted the garment industry, extorted money from a swath of industries, and managed a group of killers, providing their services to crime chieftains for a fee.
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Jewish Americans Buchalter is commonly reputed to be the only modern crime boss ever to be legally executed in the United States. His demise presaged the end of Murder Incorporated and the dissolution of the Jewish gangs of New York City. — Howard Bromberg Further Reading Cohen, Rich. Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. Anecdotal accounts of Jewish gangsters such as Buchalter. Feder, Sid, and Burton Turkus. Murder, Inc.: The Story of the Syndicate. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951. Reprint. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1992. The story of the New York gangs. Turkus was a Brooklyn County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Buchalter. Fried, Albert. The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America. Rev. ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Chapters 4 and 5 chronicle the rise and fall of Buchalter as a labor racketeer and criminal boss. Joselit, Jenna. Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community, 1900-1940. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. Analyzes the complex interactions between the Jewish community and Jewish gangsters of twentieth century New York. Kavieff, Paul. The Life and Times of Lepke Buchalter: America’s Most Ruthless Labor Racketeer. Fort Lee, N.J.: Barricade Books, 2006. Biography of Buchalter in the context of New York City’s Jewish rackets. Rockaway, Robert. But He Was Good to His Mother: The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters. New York: Gefen, 2000. This portrayal of the dual lives of Jewish gangsters includes an account of Buchalter’s happy and devoted domestic life. See also: Leo Frank; Meyer Lansky; Abraham Reles; Arnold Rothstein; Bugsy Siegel.
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Art Buchwald Journalist, writer, and humorist Buchwald went from writing his “Paris After Dark” nightlife column for the Herald Tribune in Paris to writing award-winning political satire during his years in Washington, D.C. At its peak, his column appeared in more than 550 newspapers. He published more than thirty books, two novels, and a stage play. Born: October 20, 1925; Mount Vernon, New York Died: January 17, 2007; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Arthur Buchwald (full name) Areas of achievement: Journalism; literature
Aviation and served in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific theater during World War II as part of an ordnance unit. Honorably discharged from the Marines on November 12, 1945, he then moved to Los Angeles and attended classes at the University of Southern California under the G.I. Bill. He took writing and literature courses and wrote columns for the campus humor magazine and the campus newspaper. At the end of his third year, Buchwald learned that the G.I. Bill would also pay for schooling in Paris.
Life’s Work Early Life The twenty-two-year-old Buchwald booked one-way Art Buchwald (BUHK-wahld) was born in 1925 in passage to France, arriving in Paris in June, 1948. Like Mount Vernon, New York, to Jewish parents. His father, Ernest Hemingway before him, the expatriate Buchwald Joseph Buchwald, was from Austria, and his mother, planned to hone his writing among the city’s sidewalk Helen Klineberger Buchwald, was from Hungary. Folcafés. He first worked as a stringer for Variety and then lowing Art Buchwald’s birth (he was the last of four chiltalked his way into a job with the prestigious internadren), his thirty-year-old mother became delusional, and tional edition of the New York Herald Tribune, where he she was committed to a private sanatorium and later to a began his famous column, “Paris After Dark.” At first a state mental hospital. Diagnosed with manic depression, restaurant critic, he went on to write about the famous she spent the remaining thirty-five years of her life institutionalized. Unable to support his four children during the Great Depression, his father The Man Who Would Not Die sent Buchwald to stay in a foster home. Later, Buchwald lived briefly at the Hebrew Orphan The final chapter of Art Buchwald’s extraordinary life was as Asylum in New York City and in a string of fosremarkable as his earlier ones. Following the amputation of his ter homes. right leg below the knee, Buchwald decided to forgo further dialyWhen he was fifteen, the family reunited, sis treatment and calmly prepared to die. On February 7, 2005, he occupying a cramped apartment in Hollis, New was admitted to the Washington Home and Hospice, where he was expected to live for two to three weeks. Since he was dying, he was York, where Buchwald attended Forest Hills allowed to eat what he wanted. Here, he began to “hold court” as High School. Disappointing his father, Buchthe rich, famous, and powerful paid their respects (and brought wald refused to be bar mitzvahed. In the summer food). Buchwald enjoyed being the center of attention, and his nuof 1942, Buchwald worked as a hotel bellboy merous visitors included Tom Brokaw, Walter Cronkite, John and dated a waitress named Flossie Starling. At Glenn, Donald Rumsfeld, Ethel Kennedy, Eunice Shriver, and summer’s end, they parted. He returned to high Maria Shriver. Unexpectedly, a kidney began working again. As school, and she to the University of North Caroweeks stretched into five months, Buchwald was interviewed on lina at Greensboro. Wanting to escape his humnumerous television programs, including This Week with George drum life in Hollis, the adolescent Buchwald Stephanopoulos, Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour, The Today Show, and devised a romantic plan. He would run away, Fox News Sunday. After two months, he returned to writing his colhitchhike to Greensboro, woo Flossie, and enumn. As a result of his support for hospice care, he received the National Hospice Award from the Hospice Foundation of America. list in the Marines. How could she resist a man He became known as “The Man Who Would Not Die” and began going off to war? His reunion with Flossie did writing his last book, Too Soon to Say Goodbye (2006), while still not go well, but Buchwald decided to go ahead in the hospice. The former Marine faced death with courage, grace, and enlist. Bribing a drunk to provide parental and, of course, great humor. consent, Buchwald joined the Marines at age seventeen. He was assigned to Marine Corps 195
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Art Buchwald. (CBS/Getty Images)
people who frequented the restaurants and nightclubs of Paris. He wrote for the Herald Tribune until he returned to the United States in 1961. His popular column became syndicated internationally in 1952. When American celebrities visited Paris, they would touch base with Buchwald as a tour guide or for an interview. In this manner, he became acquainted with many such individuals, including Jack Benny, Ingrid Bergman, George Burns, Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Humphrey Bogart, Elvis Presley, and Audrey Hepburn. In Paris, he met and married his wife, Ann McGarry. She was Catholic, and they were married in London by a priest. She was unable to conceive, so they adopted children from different countries: Joel (from Ireland), Connie (from Spain), and Jennifer (from France). They were married for forty years. His wife died July 3, 1994. He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1961, and his new column dealt increasingly with political commentary and satire. He became a celebrity himself, as he hob196
Jewish Americans nobbed with the famous and politically powerful. At its peak, his column appeared in more than 550 newspapers. For his efforts, Buchwald received a Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary (1982) and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1986). As Buchwald’s fortunes grew, he bought a home on Martha’s Vineyard and spent his summers there with friends such as television reporter Mike Wallace, television news anchor Walter Cronkite, and writer William Styron. In 1963, Buchwald suffered his first bout with severe depression. He was hospitalized for a week, and it took him several weeks to recover. In 1987, he suffered a second depression. In both instances he was suicidal. A decade later, both he and Wallace made a joint appearance on Larry King Live to talk about the debilitating effects of depression. In the 1980’s, he was the plaintiff in an eight-year lawsuit against Paramount Pictures. Buchwald had originally submitted a script to the studio that was rejected. The plot of his script was quite similar to that of a subsequent film produced by Paramount, Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America (1988). The court eventually ruled in his favor. In 2005, a blood clot required the amputation of his right leg below the knee. Just prior to that, his kidneys failed, so he was forced to undergo dialysis treatment so the amputation could be done. He decided to discontinue dialysis and moved into a hospice to die. To everyone’s surprise, a kidney began working and he did not die. Buchwald moved back to live with his son and his family on Martha’s Vineyard. On January 17, 2007, at the age of eighty-one, Buchwald died of kidney failure. Significance Born of Jewish Eastern European immigrant parents, Buchwald rose from humble beginnings in New York foster homes to high literary and social circles in both Paris and Washington, D.C. He wrote widely syndicated, award-winning newspaper columns for more than fifty years and wrote more than thirty books, including the autobiographical best sellers Leaving Home: A Memoir (1993) and Too Soon to Say Goodbye (2006) and many anthologies of his biting political commentary, such as Beating Around the Bush (2005). The mischievous, cigar-smoking Buchwald was also a much sought-after speaker on the lucrative lecture circuit. His political commentary set the bar for other columnists of the times. Columnist Erma Bombeck once called him “the reigning genius of American satire.” —Russell N. Carney
Jewish Americans Further Reading Brokaw, Tom. The Greatest Generation. New York: Random House, 1998. Brokaw, a news anchor on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and longtime friend of Buchwald, devotes a section of his book to Buchwald’s service in the Marine Corps during World War II. Buchwald, Art. Beating Around the Bush. New York, N.Y.: Seven Stories Press, 2005. Collection of Buchwald’s satirical newspaper columns. _______. I’ll Always Have Paris: A Memoir. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996. Buchwald’s description of his years in Paris, where he wrote his “Paris Af-
Burns, Arthur ter Dark” column for the International Herald Tribune. _______. Leaving Home: A Memoir. New York: Putnam, 1993. Buchwald’s account of his early years, which ends with his employment at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. _______. Too Soon to Say Goodbye. New York: Random House, 2006. Buchwald’s last book was written in a hospice after his decision not to undergo kidney dialysis did not immediately result in his demise. See also: Tom Lehrer; Walter Lippmann; Mort Sahl; Mike Wallace.
Arthur Burns Economist, diplomat, and chair of the Federal Reserve Board (1970-1978) As head of the Federal Reserve Board, Burns, a renowned economist, was a central figure in the formation of American economic policies during the 1970’s. Born: April 27, 1904; Stanisuawów, Galicia, AustroHungarian Empire (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) Died: June 6, 1987; Baltimore, Maryland Also known as: Arthur Frank Burns (full name) Areas of achievement: Economics; government and politics Early Life Arthur Burns was born in Stanisuawów, Galicia, in 1904. His family, which was of Austro-Hungarian Jewish background, immigrated to the United States in 1914, settling in Bayonne, New Jersey. Burns was awarded a scholarship to Columbia University, and to supplement his scholarship income he worked a variety of jobs, including writing articles for the New York Herald Tribune. He received his B.A. from Columbia in 1925 At Columbia, Burns became a student of Wesley Claire Mitchell, whose Business Cycles (1913) was a statistical analysis of the transitions from economic prosperity to depression to revival. Mitchell established the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) at Columbia in 1920. Burns worked with Mitchell at the NBER, which published his first major work in economics, Production Trends in the United States Since 1870, in 1934, the year he received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University. During the Great Depression, the ideas of John
Maynard Keynes were influential, with their advocacy of government spending and deficit financing to counteract the impact of mass unemployment. Burns agreed that the government had a role in maintaining employment, but differed with the Keynesians in arguing that statistical data was as important as abstract economic models, and that any government intervention must be carefully and cautiously put into motion. Life’s Work After Mitchell’s retirement, Burns became the director of the NBER. With full employment after World War II Burns feared the possibility of runaway inflation. The solution, according to Burns, was for the government to push against the current economic trends, whether inflationary or deflationary, applying cautious countervailing economic pressure to control inflation and encourage employment whenever necessary, thus placing Burns in the moderate middle between the pure Keynesians and the free-market advocates. In 1953, Burns, a Republican, was appointed as head of the Council of Economic Advisors by President Dwight Eisenhower. When a recession seemed to loom on the economic horizon, Eisenhower inclined to a Keynesian solution, but Burns argued that the recession would be slight and little government involvement was necessary. Burns was correct. Burns resigned and returned to Columbia and the NBER after the 1956 election, but he continued to counsel Presidents Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. After the 1968 election, President Richard 197
Burns, Arthur Nixon, whom Burns had known during the Eisenhower administration, appointed Burns as his domestic counselor. It was a time of inflation, in part because of the costs of the Vietnam War, and Burns recommended a reduction in government spending and more restrictive Federal Reserve monetary policies. In 1970 Nixon appointed Burns as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, where he generally pursued moderate Keynesian policies. To counteract a mild recession, the Federal Reserve under Burns’s leadership increased the currency supply. In the face of the collapse of the Penn Central Railroad, Burns stated that the Federal Reserve would make sufficient funds available, thus reducing the possibility of an economic downturn. He agreed with President Nixon’s 1971 wage and price guidelines, and the Federal Reserve’s continued expansion of the money supply saw the economy growing but prices holding steady, possibly contributing to Nixon’s reelection in 1972. Burns was accused of using Federal Reserve actions to facilitate the president’s reelection, a charge that that he denied. The 1973 Arab oil embargo resulted in a 12 percent inflation rate by 1974, but Burns feared high unemployment would result if the Federal Reserve tightened its monetary policies. The result was “stagflation”: high inflation but little economic growth. Burns’s term as chairman of the Federal Reserve expired in 1978. He was criticized in some circles for not stemming the stagflation threat, but when he was not reappointed by the newly elected president, Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, it led to a fall in the value of the dollar. Burns joined the American Enterprise Institute, lectured widely, and in 1978 published his Reflections of an Economic Policy Maker. In 1981, he was appointed ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany by Republican President Ronald Reagan, a crucial diplomatic position given the concern by many Europeans about the deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles on that continent. Burns’s favorable reputation and his diplomatic skills helped defuse the potential conflict. He resigned
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Jewish Americans his ambassadorship after four years. Burns died in June, 1987, after complications from triple-bypass heart surgery, in Baltimore, Maryland. Significance Burns’s moderate economic policies at the Federal Reserve and elsewhere gained him a widespread following, and his influence has been widely felt in the United States and abroad. In the years that followed, his moderate Keynesian policies were sometimes rejected in favor of supply-side and monetarist economic policies by both economists and government officials. Nevertheless, his activist Federal Reserve approach continued to be largely followed by subsequent presidential administrations. — Eugene Larson Further Reading Safire, William. Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House. Piscataway, N.J.: Transaction, 2005. The author, a speechwriter for Nixon and a columnist for The New York Times, gives an insider view of the Nixon administration, including Burns. Sobel, Robert. The Worldly Economists. New York: Free Press, 1980. A business historian and popular writer, Sobel writes about a number of important economic figures, including Burns. Tuch, Hans N. Arthur Burns and the Successor Generation: Selected Writings of and About Arthur Burns. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1988. A collection of articles by and about Burns, published shortly after Burns’s death. Wells, Wyatt C. Economist in an Uncertain World: Arthur F. Burns and the Federal Reserve, 1970-78. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. A comprehensive discussion of Burns’s tenure as head of the Federal Reserve Board. See also: Ben Bernanke; Alan Greenspan; Jeffrey D. Sachs; Paul Samuelson; Herbert Stein; Joseph Stiglitz.
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Burns, George
George Burns Entertainer, actor, and writer Burns had a remarkable show-business career that spanned ninety-four years. It began when he was eight and sang with a children’s quartet, and he made guest appearances until shortly before his death at one hundred. He distinguished himself in vaudeville, radio, early television, and films. Born: January 20, 1896; New York, New York Died: March 9, 1996; Beverly Hills, California Also known as: Nathan Birnbaum (birth name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life George Burns was born in 1896 in New York City to Orthodox Jews Louis Philip and Dora Bluth Birnbaum, the third of their twelve children and the first child born after they immigrated from Eastern Europe. The family lived in a one-room tenement apartment until they could afford a three-room cold-water flat. Burns’s father worked in a kosher butcher shop, and he sang as a cantor at the synagogue. The show-business bug bit Burns at age eight, when he began singing in a quartet. The boys called it the Pee Wee Quartet, and they sang for pennies. As Burns got older, he had “small-time” gigs, meaning a few minutes on the bill, after the jugglers or animal acts, and before the main or “big-time” acts. Big-timers were on stage fourteen minutes or more. Burns became a vaudeville song-and-dance man, and he frequently changed partners, once working with a trained seal. It was an exciting time. He got enough bookings to support himself, and he met future stars: Jack Benny, Milton Berle, the Marx Brothers, George Jessel, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, and Bob Hope. Burns knew them all, and they became his lifelong friends. There were women performers, too. They included Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, and an Irish Catholic girl named Gracie Allen, who sang with her sisters before becoming Burns’s partner in the early 1920’s. They began honing the material that would eventually bring them fame and fortune in a new medium, radio, that was just beginning to appear on the scene. Burns had only a fourth-grade education, but he wrote all their comic material. Allen became his life partner. They married in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1926, despite religious differences. Benny served as best man. The couple adopted two children,
daughter Sandra in 1934 and son Ronald in 1935. The adoptions were finalized through a Catholic adoption agency, with the condition that the children be raised in that faith. Burns, though not observant in adulthood, never renounced his Judaism. When asked why he never legally changed his name to George Burns, he replied that he was born Jewish and would die Jewish. Life’s Work The original Burns and Allen routine was what vaudeville called a Dumb Dora act. However, they refined the concept until it sparkled. While the Gracie character acted befuddled, she was in her convoluted way brilliant, and their routines were never mean-spirited. Burns easily made the switch from vaudeville to radio, and the show he wrote was always in the top ten. The couple started out on the Guy Lombardo show, offering comic relief between the musical numbers. Soon they had their own show. Eventually Burns hired a team of writers that included his brother Willie, but Burns remained the genius behind their success.
George Burns. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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Knowing When to Get out of the Way To choose one achievement from a career that lasted nearly a century would be impossible. George Burns reinvented himself for a film comeback in his late seventies, a time of life when few actors are sought after. This was possible only because his past work and reputation had made him one of America’s most beloved performers. That said, his greatest achievement was reaching that status. Burns worked with many partners, including a trained seal, but he did not find his niche until he teamed with Gracie Allen. Then he knew instinctively how to build their act around what he called her “illogical logic.” He was the comic genius who wrote their material, and in a business where egos reign supreme, he give her all the funny lines, then stayed out of her way and played the straight man. For example, “Gracie, some of our listeners are wondering if your nurse dropped you on your head when you were a baby.” “Oh, no, George. We were so poor my mother had to do it herself.” Audiences loved it, and so did Burns. In one of the most successful show-business partnerships ever, he created her character, gave her free rein to play it, and then gave her the credit for their phenomenal popularity.
When television burst on the scene, he again made the leap and again enjoyed phenomenal success. The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show was one of the first situation comedies and was a hit for eight years. They had been doing films as well, dating back to the vaudeville days, when some of the theaters interspersed motion-picture footage with the live acts. The film work was an extension of the radio and television shows. The show ended in 1958. Burns began the signature sign-off: “Say good night, Gracie.” “Good night, Gracie,” she replied for the last time. She developed a heart condition and the work was becoming increasingly difficult. She retired, and she died of a massive heart attack in 1964 at the age of sixty-nine. Burns never remarried. He is said to have broken down in tears twice in his adult life: when his wife of thirty-eight years died and, years later, when he tried to give the eulogy at Benny’s funeral. Burns tried doing other television work, but he realized it was Gracie who made their acts work. He had reinvented himself several times before they teamed up, and he had to do it again. Toward that end, he made a number of films, including a series of three that were commercial hits, Oh, God! (1977), Oh, God! Book II (1980), and Oh, God! You Devil (1984). He did Just You and Me, Kid (1979) with Brooke Shields. These works introduced him to new audiences that were too young to remember Burns and Allen. 200
His biggest opportunity came when Benny asked that Burns be the one to replace him in the film The Sunshine Boys (1975), in which he was to star with Walter Matthau. Benny’s health had declined, and he wanted Burns to take over the role. Burns received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in The Sunshine Boys, about two aging vaudeville performers. He was eighty years old. One way he worked through his grief when Allen died was to write about her and their life together. Thus came Gracie: A Love Story, in 1989. He wrote ten books in all, and each is a delight, filled with stories of the old days and told by a consummate storyteller and someone who clearly loved the life he had lived and the people who had shared it. Burns began to slow down as he approached his hundredth birthday, and he died on March 9, 1996, of cardiac arrest.
Significance “Legendary” is the right word to describe Burns. Few people have had the good fortune to do what they love, become wealthy doing it, and do it for ninety-four years. Burns worked in, and succeeded at, every area of show business. Some performers never worked again when vaudeville disappeared. Others could not make the leap from radio to television. He kept going, learning and adapting as he went along, always ready for the next challenge. Every time, he made it look easy. When he lost the woman to whom he had been married for thirty-eight years and with whom he worked almost that long, he became an Academy Award-winning film star. He outlived most of his friends, but he never wallowed in self-pity. Retirement was not in his vocabulary. It was not until he was nearing one hundred that he talked about dying and being with his beloved Gracie again. — Norma Lewis Further Reading Burns, George. Gracie: A Love Story. New York: Penguin, 1989. Burns’s memoir of his professional partnership and his marriage to Allen, whose hilarious twisted logic was the basis for their act, beginning with vaudeville and enduring through radio, television, and film. They had one of the great show-business love stories.
Jewish Americans Burns, George, with David Fisher. All My Best Friends. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1989. Fascinating anecdotes of Burns’s friendships with some of the best-loved entertainers of the twentieth century, including Benny, Cantor, Jessel, Groucho Marx, Hope, Brice, and Jolson, to name a few. Fagen, Herb. George Burns: In His Own Words. New York: Avalon, 1996. An intimate look at the life and career of one of America’s most enduring entertainers. Gottfried, Martin. George Burns and the Hundred-Year Dash. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. A detailed biography covering Burns’s childhood, family, his marriage to Allen, and the legendary career that spanned decades.
Byoir, Carl Jenkins, Henry. What Made Pistachio Nuts? New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Despite the humorous title, this is a serious examination of the early days of comedy as it evolved from its vaudeville beginnings to other media as they became available. Reinehr, Robert C. The A to Z of Old Radio. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2010. In-depth study of the golden age of radio, and all those, including Burns, who made it great. See also: Jack Benny; Milton Berle; Sid Caesar; Eddie Cantor; Al Jolson; Alan King; Groucho Marx; Molly Picon; Henny Youngman.
Carl Byoir Public relations executive, journalist, and philanthropist An early innovator in the field of public relations, Byoir was known for his many successful campaigns, particularly his work for governments and large retailers. Born: June 24, 1888; Des Moines, Iowa Died: February 3, 1957; New York, New York Also known as: Carl Robert Byoir (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; journalism Early Life Carl Byoir (BI-ur) was born in Des Moines, Iowa, to Jewish parents. The teenage Byoir found work in the archives of the Waterloo Times-Tribune, moving quickly up the ranks to become city editor. He became the managing editor of the Waterloo Times-Tribune when he was only seventeen. He quit to attend the University of Iowa, where he won numerous writing awards and became general manager of the school yearbook. After graduation, he found work as a low-level member of the advertising department of William Randolph Hearst’s magazines; again, he swiftly climbed the ranks. After revitalizing the circulation numbers for Cosmopolitan with sales contests offered to the magazine’s local distributors, he was made circulation manager for Hearst’s publications. Life’s Work During World War I Byoir was recruited by the U.S. government’s Division of Advertising, a group within the Committee on Public Information, run by early ad-
vertising innovator George Creel. Byoir proved expert at combining patriotism and private business. He approved a coconut seller’s campaign, which boasted that empty coconut shells were used to create gas masks, and Kodak advertisements that encouraged Americans to buy more cameras, because Germans had boycotted the Kodak brand. Byoir also designed a successful campaign to encourage U.S. citizens who did not speak English to enlist and aid the war effort. Byoir and Associates specialized in rehabilitating the public image of disreputable clients, an uncommon business in Byoir’s day but a major feature of modern publicrelations firms. While working for Henry Doherty, a businessman perceived as an opportunist who had taken advantage of the economic travails of the Great Depression, Byoir seized a chance to publicize Doherty’s charitable side. In 1932, after Doherty was persuaded to contribute to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fund for infantile paralysis, Byoir engineered a large-scale event, the FDR Birthday Ball, to raise money for the charity, while keeping Doherty’s name in the headlines. One of Byoir’s publicity-savvy moves has been widely imitated: He contacted newspaper publishers and requested that each of them supply a local chairman to represent their paper at the event. The charity balls were an annual success, eventually becoming the modern March of Dimes. Byoir’s focus on the press was a fresh approach for public relations. Only those who had worked for a newspaper for at least three years could be hired to work an account at his firm. He took a hands-on approach to man201
Byoir, Carl agement, and he was known for his lenience with employees who had made honest mistakes. Byoir’s work with foreign governments often spurred criticism from the U.S. press. Byoir and Associates managed public relations for the Cuban government in the 1920’s and 1930’s, employed by the controversial Cuban president Gerardo Machado. Byoir and Associates took control of two Cuban newspapers in an attempt to create a public image of Cuba that would attract more tourists. In 1938, gossip columnist Walter Winchell accused Byoir of creating propaganda for Adolf Hitler (Winchell, like Byoir, was Jewish). Byoir had created a campaign in the mid-1930’s for the German Railroad Association, apparently to attract tourists to Germany; Byoir said he believed that giving Germany an economic boost would help Jews, because it would relieve the poverty that German citizens had blamed unfairly on the Jewish population. Byoir insisted on a U.S. Senate hearing on the matter, and he was cleared of all charges. Byoir’s frequent tactic of setting up phony citizens groups to influence the public left him vulnerable to lawsuits and violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In 1946, Byoir and Associates was forced to pay five thousand dollars after losing a federal case in which Byoir was accused of conspiring with the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A and P) to prevent a tax bill from passing. In 1952, Byoir and Associates took on Eastern Railroads during the company’s bitter dispute with Pennsylvania truckers, an ongoing battle labeled the “RailroadTruckers Brawl” by the popular press. Byoir needed to defeat a bill that would have raised the weight limit on trucks in the state, allowing truckers to conduct business more efficiently. Again drawing on his knowledge of journalism, Byoir sent messages to reporters, warning about the downside of expanded trucking business, including a new report from the Maryland State Road Commission about the detrimental effects of truck axles on public roads. The bill was vetoed, but the truckers fought back by hiring a rival public-relations firm to attack Byoir’s business practices. Using evidence from one
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Jewish Americans of Byoir’s former employees, the truckers filed a conspiracy suit against the railroads and Byoir and Associates under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The trial was not resolved until 1961, when the Supreme Court exonerated Byoir and Associates. Byoir died of cancer on February 3, 1957. Significance Byoir changed the face of public relations through his clever strategies, which focused on newspapermen as opinion-makers and played on group psychology. Many of the techniques he popularized, from sales contests to attack ads, dominate public-relations work today. Byoir’s willingness to work for virtually any client led to many verbal attacks on his character and that of his company, but he weathered them all. Though many of Byoir’s tactics proved controversial, his advertisement agency, Byoir and Associates, became one of the most successful publicrelations companies in the world. — C. Breault Further Reading Conroy, M. S. The Cosmetics Baron You’ve Never Heard Of: E. Virgil Neal and Tokalon. Englewood, Colo.: Altus History, 2009. Several references to Byoir, who used his innovative public-relations skills to promote Neal’s cosmetics. Cutlip, Scott. The Unseen Power, Public Relations: A History. New York: Routledge, 1994. A comprehensive, entertaining history of public-relations techniques that includes a chapter on Byoir. Pope, Daniel. “The Advertising Industry and World War I.” The Public Historian 2, no. 3 (Spring, 1980): 4-25. An illuminating academic article examining the activities of Creel’s Committee on Public Information, its Division of Advertising, and the relationship of both to private business. See also: Walter Annenberg; Michael Dell; Mel Karmazin; David Sarnoff.
C James Caan Actor and director A visceral actor, Caan came to prominence as the swaggering son in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). Born: March 26, 1940; Bronx, New York Also known as: James Edmund Caan (full name); Jimmy Caan; “Shoulders,” “Killer Caan,” “The Jewish Cowboy” Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life James Caan (kahn) was born to Arthur and Sophie, who were of German Jewish heritage. Caan has a brother named Ronald; his sister Barbara died of leukemia in 1981. Caan attended Rhodes High School in New York before playing football for Michigan State University, where he studied economics and finance. He received the nickname “The Jewish Cowboy” when he regularly attended the rodeo circuit during college and continued riding in rodeos for nine years. Sometimes filmmakers had him sign a contract to make sure he did not ride during the making of a motion picture and suffer injury. Caan worked random jobs as a waiter, bouncer, lifeguard, and camp counselor. He was first introduced to acting when he studied at Hofstra University, a private college on Long Island. The first play he auditioned for was at Sanford Meisner’s Neighborhood Playhouse, where he took acting classes. However, his acting career did not begin to develop until Caan won a scholarship to study under Wynn Handman, a New York acting coach and the artistic director of the American Place Theatre. Caan first appeared in Off-Broadway productions before he started appearing in films in 1963. His first role, uncredited, was as a sailor in Irma la Douce (1963). It was followed by starring roles in Lady in a Cage (1964), and Red Line 7000 (1965), directed by Howard Hawks. Caan married DeeJay Mathis, a dancer, in 1961, but they divorced in 1966. Caan then married Sheila Ryan, a model and an actor, in 1976, and they divorced a year later. He married Ingrid Hajek in 1990, and they divorced as well. Caan married Linda Stokes in 1995, and they divorced in 2009. Caan has five children from his mar-
riages. He has worked with his son, Scott Caan, on Openfilm.com, an online showcase for independent filmmakers. Scott appeared in the films Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and Ocean’s Twelve (2004). Life’s Work Caan’s lifework is well documented by his appearances in films, which have experienced a range of successes and failures. His earliest recognition was in 1966, when he received a Golden Globe Award nomination for most promising male newcomer in The Glory Guys (1965). One of his most significant parts, however, came in The Godfather, a Mafia film directed by Francis Ford
James Caan. (Terry O’Neill/Getty Images)
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Caesar, Sid Coppola in 1972. Coppola cast Caan as the mobster Santino “Sonny” Corleone, and the role continued in The Godfather: Part II (1974). Toward the end of the 1970’s the films Caan acted in—Comes a Horseman (1978), Chapter Two (1979), Kiss Me Goodbye (1982)—began to fail. Caan tried to direct a film, but his 1980 film Hide in Plain Sight also did not succeed. After these failures, Caan stopped acting for five years. He suffered depression after the death of his sister, and he struggled with a cocaine habit. Caan returned to the film industry in 1987 when he acted in a war drama, Gardens of Stone (1987), and a science-fiction film, Alien Nation (1987), followed by a hit in 1990 called Misery. In 1990, he was also able to stop his abuse of cocaine, an addiction that lasted about twenty years. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award for the Florida Film Festival in 2003 and in the first five years of 2000 he acted in The Yards (2000), City of Ghosts (2002), Dogville (2003), and a television series, Las Vegas. In Las Vegas he portrayed a casino security chief called “Big Ed” Deline. After 1991 Caan began acting mainly in supporting roles in films. Some of those films included Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Eraser (1996), and the independent film Bottle Rocket (1996). Caan became chairman of Openfilm.com, a Web site started by Scott Caan, Robert Duvall, and Mark Rydell. The Web site is a place for filmmakers to post animated or live-action films, with a place for viewers to leave
Jewish Americans comments. Caan’s goal is to mentor new filmmakers and help them grow through competitions for which he will be one of the judges. Significance Caan appeared in more than eighty films from 1963 to 2003. As an important participant in Openfilm.com, for which he serves on the advisory board, Caan provides constructive criticism for the work of aspiring filmmakers in competitions. —Kate Leifheit Further Reading Macnab, Geoffrey. “James Caan: The Reformed Character Actor.” The Independent, October 19, 2000. Macnab interviews Caan and details the actor’s career successes and failures. Morris, Chris. “Website Offers Filmmakers Aid: Caan Lends Name to Openfilm.com.” Variety, April 15, 2010. Article about the debut of the Web site that offers help to novice filmmakers. Weinrab, Bernard. “James Caan Rises from the Ashes of His Career.” The New York Times, November 17, 1991. Caan talks frankly about the rough patch his career encountered in the 1970’s. See also: Alan Arkin; Ed Asner; Matthew Broderick; Adrien Brody; Richard Dreyfuss; Judd Hirsch.
Sid Caesar Comedian, actor, entertainer, and writer A major force on early television, Caesar dominated the new medium during the decade of the 1950’s. He was host of a succession of highly rated variety shows that featured skilled acting ensembles and sharp writing to help showcase his multiple talents as a mimic, a musician, and an improvisational and sketch comedian. Born: September 8, 1922; Yonkers, New York Also known as: Isaac Sidney Caesar (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Sid Caesar (SEE-zur) was the son of Max Caesar and Ida Raphael. His Yiddish-speaking parents owned a restaurant in Yonkers, New York, that catered primarily to 204
foreign immigrants working at local factories. As a child, Sid Caesar waited on tables, and it was there he learned to imitate a variety of accents—Italian, Russian, Spanish, Hungarian, and more—a skill that he would employ to good effect during his career as actor and comedian. Caesar’s first love, however, was music. At age fourteen, he worked as a saxophonist at resorts in the Catskills, where he also performed in skits for the entertainment of largely Jewish audiences. Following graduation from Yonkers High School in 1939, he moved to New York City, where he audited classes at the Juilliard School of Music. Hired as a band member at the Vacationland Hotel at Swan Lake in the Catskills, he also performed in troupe revues. Caesar began developing original sketch comedy routines and worked in bits of his specialty, double-talk in different languages. He later
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played at Kutsher’s Country Club in Monticello and at the Avon Lodge in Woodridge. It was at the latter establishment he met Florence Levy, whom he married in 1943; they had three children. Off-season, Caesar worked as doorman and usher at New York City movie theaters. He played with a number of small bands and occasionally with well-known orchestras, including those led by Shep Fields, Claude Thornhill, Charlie Spivak, Art Mooney, and Benny Goodman. Late in 1942, as World War II was reaching its height, Caesar signed on with the U.S. Coast Guard. Originally stationed in Brooklyn, Caesar, in collaboration with songwriter Vernon Duke, began staging dances and revues to boost troop morale. The shows were so popular that Caesar was later ordered to Palm Beach, Florida, to participate in a show to entertain the military. In conjunction with Duke, Broadway producer Howard Dietz, and director Max Liebman, Caesar developed and performed routines for the service revue Tars and Spars, which toured nationally for a year; he also appeared in the 1946 film version of the revue. Life’s Work Following World War II Caesar returned to New York City. He performed stand-up comedy at the Copacabana and appeared in the Broadway revue Make Mine Manhattan in 1948 and 1949. In addition, in 1948, he made a standout guest appearance on Milton Berle’s television show Sid Caesar. (AP/Wide World Photos) The Texaco Star Theater, which led to his being signed to costar with comedian Imogene Coca on By the end of the decade, Caesar had succumbed to a National Broadcasting Company-Dumont television the pressures of performance and was an alcoholic, a series, The Admiral Broadway Revue, in 1949. Though condition that kept him out of the limelight for several an enormous hit, the show ran only twenty-six weeks, years. He tried his hand at songwriting and published two because appliance manufacturer Admiral could not prominor successes in the early 1960’s, “I Wrote This Song duce enough television sets to keep pace with the defor Your Birthday” and “Was That You?” He recovered mand created by the show. In 1950, however, Caesar and sufficiently—though he did not give up drinking entirely Coca were signed to a new National Broadcasting Comuntil 1977—to return to Broadway in a hit musical-company (NBC) variety program, Your Show of Shows, edy revue, Little Me (1962), for which he received a Tony which, during the height of its four-year run, captured 80 Award nomination. Television beckoned again, and he percent of the Friday-night television audience. After starred in The Sid Caesar Show, which garnered only meCoca left to pursue solo projects, Caesar appeared on a diocre ratings on ABC in 1963 and 1964. new show, Caesar’s Hour, which ran on NBC from 1954 In the 1960’s, Caesar began performing on stage, in to 1957. This was followed by Sid Caesar Invites You, television, and in film, but mostly in secondary or cameo which reunited the comedian with Coca for a four-month roles. He appeared on Broadway in Four on a Garden run on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in (1971) and in an original comedy revue, Sid Caesar and 1958. 205
Caesar, Sid Company, which ran for four days in 1989. On television, he made frequent guest appearances on such programs as The Lucy Show, The Carol Burnett Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and Whose Line Is It Anyway? He was seen in such films as It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), The Busy Body (1967), Airport 1975 (1974), Silent Movie (1976), Grease (1978), The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980), History of the World: Part I (1981), The Emperor’s New Clothes (1987), Vegas Vacation (1997), and The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998). He also wrote two memoirs about his life in show business.
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YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS Your Show of Shows was daring for its time. A ninety-minute revue consisting of musical and dance acts, scripted and improvised skits, monologues and movie parodies, the show was performed live from start to finish. Even commercials were done live. Major guest stars of the era— Robert Preston, Michael Redgrave, Basil Rathbone, Charlton Heston, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Fred Allen, Lena Horne, Benny Goodman, and other household names—were eager to appear in front of sixty million viewers. The quality of the material remained high throughout the show’s run. This was due to a corps of top-notch writers, many of whom would later script other hit television series, such as M*A*S*H, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and All in the Family; popular films, such as Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Young Frankenstein (1974), and Bye, Bye Birdie (1963); and Broadway smashes, such as The Sunshine Boys (1972), Sweet Charity (1966), and The Odd Couple (1965). Writers Lucille Kallen, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Mel Tolkin, Mike Stewart, Bill Persky, Sam Denoff, and Larry Gelbart created funny situations for the regulars: Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris. Every topic was fair game for satire: Current or foreign or silent films, and other television shows were the most frequent targets. Several recurring routines—the battling Hickenloopers (Caesar and Coca), Caesar’s nutty Professor, and the Commuters (Caesar, Reiner, and Morris)—are considered classics. Some of Caesar’s best work on the series, demonstrating his amazing range and impeccable comic timing, is preserved in the feature-length compilation film, Ten from Your Show of Shows (1973).
Significance A true innovator in early television, Caesar—like Berle, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and Jack Benny—helped bring the successor of vaudeville, the variety show, to the small screen. A gifted musician, actor, and improvisational performer, Caesar was a master of imitation and pantomime, able to slip into and out of dozens of sympathetic character types. He worked especially well in ensembles, particularly in concert with Coca, during what has been called the Golden Age of Television. Nominated for seven Emmy Awards between 1951 and 1958 (he won in 1952 and 1957), Caesar and his fast-paced brand of sketch comedy paved the way for such later television hits as The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, and Saturday Night Live. In recognition of his work, Caesar has received many honors, including the Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy (1987), the Career Achievement Award (2001), and the Pioneer Award (2006). — Jack Ewing
Further Reading Brooks, Tim, and Earle Marsh. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946Present. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007. An invaluable resource, this volume gives details on all five of Caesar’s television shows, including dates, times, cast lists, and descriptions of content. 206
Caesar, Sid, and Bill Davidson. Where Have I Been? An Autobiography. New York: Signet, 1983. This memoir documents the comedian’s rise to stardom during the 1950’s, focusing on his simultaneous descent into addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs that plagued him until the late 1970’s. Caesar, Sid, and Eddy Friedfeld. Caesar’s Hours: My Life in Comedy, with Love and Laughter. New York: PublicAffairs, 2005. A continuation of Caesar’s earlier memoir, this book concentrates more on the sources of and influences on his style of comedy and provides details of his work as a professional saxophonist that was instrumental to his later career. Kilpatrick, Bill. How to Be an Old Guy: Dispatches from the Retiree Front. Greentop, Mo.: Hatala Geroproducts, 2009. Caesar wrote the foreword to this book, showing his deft comic touch. See also: Jack Benny; Milton Berle; George Burns; Larry Gelbart.
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Abraham Cahan Lithuanian-born journalist, activist, and writer A labor activist and democratic socialist, Cahan was a novelist and the longtime editor of the Yiddishlanguage newspaper the Jewish Daily Forward (Forvarts).
Early Life Abraham Cahan (kahn) was born in Podberezy, the only child of Shachne Cahan, a poor shopkeeper and Hebrew teacher, and Sarah Goldarbeter. When Abraham Cahan was almost six years old, the family moved to Vilna (now Vilnius), the capital of rabbinic learning and the seat of a growing modernization movement. Although Cahan went to religious school and studied the tractates of the Talmud, he also read deeply in secular works. Mainly through independent study, Cahan mastered Russian, and in 1878 he gained admission to the Vilna State Teachers Training College, a center for student radicalism. Within three years Cahan became a certified schoolmaster, a socialist, and an underground revolutionary. After the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881, Cahan, though not involved, had to flee the police, whose suspicions had been aroused by the young teacher’s radical associations. As an expedient, he joined with an Am Olam (people of the earth) group, which, in the wake of several hundred post-assassination pogroms in Ukraine, was emigrating to the United States to experiment with Jewish agricultural communalism. After Cahan’s arrival in New York on June 6, 1882, he worked at a variety of odd jobs, mostly in factories. His greatest joy, however, came from teaching rudimentary English to his East Side neighbors at night. To learn the language better himself, the twenty-two-year-old Cahan sat among twelve- and thirteen-year-olds (mostly nonJews) in an elementary school on New York’s lower East Side.
among his socialist colleagues in the early 1880’s), Cahan in 1884 and 1885 helped organize a Jewish tailors’ union and a Jewish cloakmakers’union. This marked the beginning of his lifelong association with the militant labor movement and socialism. Cahan’s primary intention was to bring his leftist outlook to the Jewish proletariat through journalism. In addition to joining the Socialist Labor Party of America, he wrote articles, mostly on socialism, and translated European literary works for the party’s Yiddish-language newspaper, the Arbeiter Zeitung. He also became a star reporter for Lincoln Steffens’s New York Commercial Advertiser in 1897 and worked there until 1902, even as he continued to play a leading role in socialist politics. At the same time he wrote for a variety of Yiddish journals, including the newly founded Forward, before taking the helm there in 1903. Cahan turned Forward, which was a virtually unreadable, somewhat sectarian Yiddish daily into a landmark of American and progressive investigative journalism. Under his editorship, Forward deemphasized theoretical pieces and paid more attention to presenting the class struggle in the form of stories and news from the home and factory. In this way, and by featuring literary pieces and short stories, the paper remained attractive to nonsocialist as well as socialist Jews and reached a circulation of more than 300,000, with editions in other large cities, including Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In addition to his labor militancy, Cahan was a vigorous advocate of tenement and sweatshop reform, and he supported the crusading work of Jane Addams and other progressive settlement house workers in Chicago and New York. Forward remained socialist but became increasingly anticommunist after 1917 in the face of militant Bolshevism and Soviet authoritarianism. Cahan was particularly interested in the oppression of Jews in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. Although he did not consider himself a Zionist, he paid tribute to the courage and idealism of Zionist pioneers who settled in Palestine. Throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s Cahan continued to be productive and creative. Only after suffering a stroke in 1946 did he stop appearing at the Forward office on a daily basis. He died of heart failure at the age of ninety-one.
Life’s Work Cahan continued to teach English to immigrants for ten years, but his main interest was in education in a broader sense. Lecturing in English as well as in Yiddish (a novelty
Significance Cahan made Forward into a creative tool for Jewish immigrants struggling to be American, and it became a critical component of the Jewish labor movement and
Born: July 6 or 7, 1860; Podberezy, near Vilna, Russian Empire (now Vilnius, Lithuania) Died: August 31, 1951; New York, New York Also known as: Abe Cahan; Avraham Kahan Areas of achievement: Activism; journalism; literature
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Cahn, Sammy Jewish socialism. The paper, under Cahan, was also a defender and patron of Yiddish literature and modern culture. Among the authors sustained by Forward were Sholem Asch and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Cahan pushed Yiddish to journalistic and literary heights. At the same time, he also tried to broaden the Yiddish-speaking community with articles and stories both in the English press and in several of his English-language books, among them Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto (1896) and his classic novel of the urban immigrant experience, The Rise of David Levinsky (1917). Cahan continues to be remembered as a great journalist, a legendary teacher to a people in the process of acculturation, and an indefatigable crusader for progressive causes. —Gerald Sorin Further Reading Cahan, Abraham. The Education of Abraham Cahan. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969. Cahan’s autobiography.
Jewish Americans Howe, Irving. World of Our Fathers. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. Contains a beautifully written, perceptive interpretation of Cahan’s life and the immigrant world he inhabited. Marovitz, Sanford E. Abraham Cahan. New York: Twayne, 1996. A critical, interpretive biography of Cahan and his work. Rischin, Moses, ed. Grandma Never Lived in America: The New Journalism of Abraham Cahan. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. A collection of Cahan’s English-language journalism demonstrating his wit and sensibility. Stein, Leon, et al., trans. The Education of Abraham Cahan. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1969. Invaluable translation of the first three volumes of Cahan’s autobiography. See also: Sholom Aleichem; Sholem Asch; Bernard Malamud; Isaac Bashevis Singer; Isidor Stone.
Sammy Cahn Songwriter During his fifty years as a lyricist, Cahn wrote songs that were used in 137 motion pictures and earned 26 Academy Award nominations, winning four. He had a special relationship with Frank Sinatra, who memorably recorded many of Cahn’s songs. Born: June 18, 1913; New York, New York Died: January 15, 1993; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Samuel Cohen (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music; theater Early Life Sammy Cahn (kahn) was born to Abraham and Elka Riss Cohen, Jewish immigrants from Galicia, Poland, and he was the only son in a family with four daughters. Cahn’s father ran a restaurant. Growing up, Cahn was a notably poor student who often skipped school, preferring pool rooms, motion-picture shows, and vaudeville performances over the classroom. He compensated for his lack of interest in academics with his love for music. He took violin lessons, but it was not until he was thirteen that he realized music could be something more than a hobby. When he saw his mother pay the hired band at his 208
Bar Mitzvah, he discovered that he could earn money for playing the violin. About a year later, he joined the Pals of Harmony, and with the band, he wrote his first song, “Shake Your Head from Side to Side” and formed a songwriting partnership with the band’s pianist, Saul Chaplin. In the beginning, Cahn and Chaplin had moderate success writing songs for vaudeville, but they had difficulties getting their songs published. When word reached them that bandleader Jimmie Lunceford, who was playing at the Apollo Theater, needed a song, they wrote and recorded “Rhythm Is Our Business,” which became a modest hit. The song that brought them to fame and riches was “Bei mir bist du schoen.” Cahn had heard the Yiddish version performed at the Apollo Theater and translated an English version, which was recorded by the Andrews Sisters and topped the hit parade in January, 1938. Life’s Work In the late 1930’s, Cahn and Chaplin were working under contract with Viaphone Studios in New York, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. When Viaphone closed, the two spent a short time at the Warner Bros. studio in Hol-
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lywood and then got jobs at Republic Pictures. However, without work in 1941, the partners decided to go their separate ways. It was at this time that Cahn formed a new partnership, this time with Jule Styne. Cahn won his first Academy Award in 1954 for a song he wrote with Styne called “Three Coins in the Fountain.” Working under contract with Columbia Pictures, Cahn and Styne went on to write many more hits, including “I’ve Heard That Song Before,” “I’ll Walk Alone,” “As Long as There’s Music,” “Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week,” and “Time After Time.” These songs and more appeared in the films Anchors Away (1945), Tonight and Every Night (1945), Wonder Man (1945), The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), Romance on the High Seas (1948), and The West Point Story (1950). Cahn also wrote songs for singers, and many of the ones he wrote for Frank Sinatra helped propel both men to fame. When Sinatra was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to appear in the film Anchors Away, he refused to sing unless Cahn wrote the material; Cahn and Styne’s “Three Coins in the Fountain” was also written for Sinatra to sing in the film Three Coins in the Fountain (1954). Sammy Cahn. (Redferns/Getty Images) It was through Sinatra that Cahn met his first wife, Gloria Delson; the pair met at a party at SiSignificance natra’s home, married in 1945, and had two children beAlthough he reportedly could produce a song on defore divorcing. His second marriage, in 1970, was to Virmand, Cahn is noted for his timeless lyrics. In 1993, he ginia “Tita” Basile. founded the High Hopes Fund at the Joslin Diabetes While writing for Sinatra, Cahn paired with another Center in Boston to provide hope and inspiration to chilcomposer, this time Jimmy Van Heusen, and the two won dren while funding diabetes research. With twenty-six three Academy Awards. The first was for the song “All Academy Award nominations and five Golden Globe the Way” from the film The Joker Is Wild (1957); the secnominations, Cahn’s optimistic and romantic songs beond was for the song “High Hopes,” from the film A Hole came classics. in the Head (1959); and the third was for the song “Call —Sarah Small Me Irresponsible” from the film Papa’s Delicate Condition (1963). The pair also wrote “Love and Marriage” Further Reading and “Come Fly with Me.” Cahn later collaborated with Cahn, Sammy. I Should Care: The Sammy Cahn Story. Nicholas Brodszky to produce the songs “Be My Love” New York: Arbor House, 1974. In his autobiograand “Because You’re Mine.” phy, Cahn shares stories of encounters with the stars His songwriting was not limited to motion pictures; and reveals background information on many of his he also wrote for the stage, and in 1974 he performed in songs. his own Broadway show, Words and Music. The show _______. Sammy Cahn’s Rhyming Dictionary. Secaucus, was a hit, loved by audiences and critics alike, and ran on N.J.: Warner Bros., 1983. Primarily interested in the Broadway for nine months. Then the show went on tour sound of words and not their spellings, Cahn arranged for nearly twenty years. The tour ended because of more than fifty thousand words phonetically rather Cahn’s declining health, and he died of congestive heart than alphabetically. The dictionary also includes an failure in Los Angeles in 1993. 209
Calisher, Hortense introduction by Cahn, in which he shares the stories behind songs and other anecdotes from his career. Cramer, Alfred W., ed. Musicians and Composers of the Twentieth Century. Vol. 1. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2009. A biographical sketch of Cahn and details on his best-known songs. Holden, Stephen. “Sammy Cahn, Word Weaver of Tin Pan Alley, Dies at Seventy-Nine.” The New York Times, January 16, 1993. Obituary gives a good overview of Cahn’s career and works.
Jewish Americans Lahr, John. Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Lahr, prolific writer of celebrity articles for The New Yorker, includes in this book a profile of Sinatra and interesting stories about when he worked closely with Cahn. See also: Harold Arlen; Irving Berlin; Betty Comden; George Gershwin; Ira Gershwin; Adolph Green; Yip Harburg; Lorenz Hart; Jerome Kern; Alan Jay Lerner; Frederick Loewe; Richard Rodgers; Jule Styne.
Hortense Calisher Writer A novelist and short-story writer, Calisher was a major presence on the American literary scene from her publishing debut in 1951 until her death in 2009. Her work deals with the gaps between the verbal and the gestural, between the felt and the thought, and between the ideal and the real. Born: December 20, 1911; New York, New York Died: January 13, 2009; New York, New York Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Hortense Calisher (hohr-TEHNS CAL-ih-shur) was born in New York City to Joseph Henry Calisher, a Virginian Jew with roots in England and Germany, and Hedvig Lichstern, a German Jewish immigrant to the United States. Hortense grew up in Washington Heights in northern Manhattan, and she graduated from Hunter College High School and Barnard College, after which she worked for a time for the city’s social services department. In 1935, she married Heaton Bennet Heffelfinger and moved with him to Nyack, New York, where they raised two children. Between 1935 and the late 1940’s Calisher wrote a great deal, but she did not begin to publish until The New Yorker magazine accepted several of her stories. Divorced from Heffelfinger in 1958, Calisher married the writer Curtis Harnack in 1959; their marriage lasted until her death at the age of ninety-seven. Influenced by William Shakespeare, William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry James, and the Bible, Calisher is not usually categorized as a Jewish writer, but her earliest and latest work—in particular the novel Sunday Jews (2002) and the memoir Tattoo for a Slave (2005)—deals with Jewish identity, 210
family life, and myth in deeply sustained and often startling ways. Life’s Work Beginning with the publication of her story collection In the Absence of Angels in 1951, Calisher established herself as a writer of the first rank who, at the same time, often puzzled critics and readers. Her subject matter ranged from the domestic lives of newly married couples to family sagas to science fiction and fantasy; her style was usually dense, given to extended metaphor and allusion. After her second marriage and her return to New York City, Calisher became a fixture on the New York literary scene and also traveled widely, sometimes on behalf of the U.S. Department of State. She was president of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters from 1987 to 1990 and of the PEN American Center in 1986 and 1987. Interested in novels of ideas and a longtime admirer of James, the author did not shy away from questions of consciousness in all their variety. She did not ally herself with any particular school, preferring instead to shape each work into a distinctive whole. A working writer well into her ninth decade, Calisher published her last volume at the age of ninety-three. In addition to the works cited here, Calisher’s novels include Textures of Life (1963) and Journey from Ellipsia (1966); her stories have been collected in the volumes Tale for the Mirror (1962), Extreme Magic (1964), Saratoga, Hot (1985), and The Collected Short Stories (1975). Significance To fans such as fellow writer Cynthia Ozick, Calisher has long been a touchstone, admired for the unity of her vision and for her commitment to literature in the fullest
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sense. That commitment has most often taken the form of a steadfast devotion to language and to a prolonged investigation of narrative form. The companion volumes False Entry (1961) and The New Yorkers (1969), for example, create a panoramic vision of English and American society while at the same time probing the inner lives of a handful of protagonists. Though she is often a miniaturist in her stories, the author’s veneration of the life of the mind keeps her work from straying into solipsism or provincialism. “Old Stock,” for example, and the autobiographical—and early—Hester Elkin stories take readers into mostly Jewish worlds without forsaking the rest of the social scene. Calisher’s novels and stories deal repeatedly with the gaps between the verbal and the gestural, between the felt and the thought, and between the ideal and the real. Her commingling of the everyday and the abstruse is also notable, and the attention to the human is a constant presence in her work, no matter how complicated her style and philosophizing become at times. Her range and depth, as well as her incorporation of intellectual concerns into much of her work, have guaranteed her a place in the canon. —Liana Scalettar
memoir, is a fine introduction to her erudite and ambitious style, and to some of the thematic concerns that link her often disparate works to one another. _______. The New Yorkers. Boston: Little, Brown, 1969. This companion volume to False Entry paints a vivid and original portrait of several interlocking families in the New York of the postwar twentieth century. _______. Tattoo for a Slave. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2005. A memoir, this book tackles the question of Jewish American slaveholding in the author’s paternal family with nuance and probity. Churchwell, Sarah. “License to Chat.” The New York Times, January 30, 2005. A review of Tattoo for a Slave, and a comparison of Calisher to two other Jewish writers. Noble, Holcomb. “Hortense Calisher: An Obituary.” The New York Times, January 15, 2009. Obituary of the author gives a brief overview of her career. Snodgrass, Kathleen. “Review: On Hortense Calisher.” The Iowa Review 24, no. 3 (Fall, 1994): 185-187. In this review of one of Calisher’s novels, Snodgrass discusses the author’s interest in the visual, the perceptual, and the dynamic.
Further Reading Calisher, Hortense. False Entry. Boston: Little, Brown, 1961. The author’s first novel, written in the form of a
See also: Jane Bowles; Cynthia Ozick; Grace Paley; Susan Sontag.
Eddie Cantor Actor, entertainer, and singer Known for his bulging “banjo eyes,” Cantor was a major entertainer in vaudeville, on radio, and on early television. Born: January 31, 1892; New York, New York Died: October 10, 1964; Hollywood, California Also known as: Edward Israel Iskowitz (birth name); “Banjo Eyes” Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Eddie Cantor (KAN-tur) was born on January 31, 1892, the only child of Russian immigrants Mechel and Meta Iskowitz. Cantor’s mother died from tuberculosis when Cantor was two, and his father apparently deserted his son shortly afterward. Cantor was subsequently raised by Esther, his grandmother.
After briefly living with one of Esther’s sons in New York, Esther and Cantor moved into a basement apartment on Henry Street, an address Cantor would later incorporate into his shtick. In 1898, Cantor entered Public School 126 and Americanized his name. The young Cantor ran with hoodlums, became a petty thief, and eventually stopped attending school. Always small, Cantor found that acting as a street-corner comedian brought him acceptance by his peers. He was also introduced to the Educational Alliance, an organization that provided a warm place to stay, some education, and an opportunity to attend an outdoor camp in Cold Spring, New York. As an adult, Cantor would provide similar opportunities for children raised in poverty. During the summer of 1906 Cantor became acquainted with a local girl from a wealthy family, Ida Tobias. The smitten Cantor began spending more time with her; 211
Cantor, Eddie
Eddie Cantor. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
among her friends was a boy named Eddie, a name that Israel adopted as his own. Tobias’s family did not approve of Cantor, a “bum” in their eyes. However, time and maturity worked in Cantor’s favor, and eventually she became his wife. Cantor also began his involvement with politics, becoming a lifelong Democrat. Life’s Work Cantor’s first attempt at acting began in 1908 at Miner’s Bowery Theatre, where he won ten dollars for his improvisation in an amateur competition. Cantor continued making rounds as an amateur in local theaters with limited success, eventually ending up on Coney Island at Carey Walsh’s saloon in 1909. There he became friends with the pianist Jimmy Durante. Cantor’s career significantly improved as he became active on vaudeville circuits, playing a “Hebrew” comic as well as a comedic singer. Cantor often sang in blackface, clearly racist but common for the times. By 1912 Cantor was a major performer in Gus Edward’s Kid Cabaret, a popular vaudeville show. Eventually he came to 212
Jewish Americans the attention of Florenz Ziegfeld, a major show producer on Broadway, who offered Cantor a contract for the show Midnight Follies, a smaller version of Ziegfeld Follies, Ziegfeld’s primary annual show. Cantor remained associated with Ziegfeld for a decade, becoming one of the impresario’s primary performers. During these years, Cantor refined his musical comedy act, starring in a number of Broadway musicals and beginning a recording career with Victor Records and Columbia Records. Cantor also became increasingly involved in charities, foremost the Surprise Lake Camp, sometimes called the Eddie Cantor Camp, and with religious groups. His onstage career was at its peak during this period, until the stock market crash in 1929 wiped out his savings and those of many entertainers and producers. During the 1920’s and 1930’s, Cantor’s career began to include radio and films, because talking pictures were clearly here to stay. His first significant radio appearance was on Rudy Vallee’s The Fleischmann Hour during the winter of 1931, followed by seven weeks on The Chase and Sanborn Hour. Cantor remained a major radio host and performer for most of the following two decades. During these years, his act often revolved around his family, particularly his wife Ida and their five daughters, which became a running joke in his dialogue with his audience. During the 1950’s, Cantor entered the newest entertainment medium, television. He became a rotating host on The Colgate Comedy Hour, often reprising his vaudeville routines. Twenty-six-year-old Sammy Davis, Jr., was a guest on the show presented in February, 1952. After a spirited performance by the young entertainer, Cantor wiped Davis’s forehead with his handkerchief. The result was an avalanche of racist hate mail. Cantor’s response was to include black performers on his next show and to make a point of again wiping Davis’s forehead. Ill health and the deaths of Ida and of his oldest daughter from cancer marked Cantor’s last years. The last of several heart attacks proved fatal to Cantor in October, 1964. Significance Cantor was arguably the first musical entertainer to bridge vaudeville to films and radio, and from these to early television. Cantor contributed more than musical comedy as he became involved with both social and political causes late in his career, unusual for entertainers during this period in American history. His friendship
Jewish Americans with U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt subsequently led to Cantor’s coining the term the “March of Dimes,” and he supported generously the fight against polio. —Richard Adler Further Reading Cantor, Eddie. “My Life Is in Your Hands” and “Take My Life.” New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000. Combined edition of Cantor’s two autobiographies, the first written as his career was beginning (1928), the other during the 1950’s. Highly idealized works, they nevertheless provide insight into the author’s career and life. Goldman, Herbert. Banjo Eyes. New York: Oxford Uni-
Capa, Robert versity Press, 1997. A well-researched biography that scrutinizes both the public persona and the private individual the public never saw. Included are a filmography and a radiography. Mordden, Ethan. Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008. Ziegfeld was known as “the man who glorified the American girl.” His annual follies included young entertainers such as Cantor. The biography provides a picture of the entertainment industry of the period. See also: Milton Berle; George Burns; Sid Caesar; Sammy Davis, Jr.; Al Jolson; Danny Kaye; Henny Youngman.
Robert Capa Hungarian-born photojournalist A photojournalist who captured pictures of fighting in five wars from 1936 to 1954, including the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and World War II (1939-1945), Capa was in the first wave of American troops landing on Omaha Beach in northern France during the Allied invasion.
was assigned to photograph a well-known Russian, Leon Trotsky. He obtained close-up portraits of Trotsky that his editor liked. In 1932, Adolf Hitler took over Germany and began to persecute Jews, so Capa fled to Paris. Again, with little money, he was starving and homeless for some time.
Born: October 22, 1913; Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Hungary) Died: May 25, 1954; Thai Binh, Vietnam Also known as: Endre Erno Friedmann (birth name) Areas of achievement: Journalism; photography
Life’s Work In Paris, Capa became acquainted with famous photographers, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Capa’s future love, Gerda Taro. He and Taro invented an imaginary photographer, Robert Capa, to market his photographs. Thus, he changed his name from Friedmann in 1936, and he sold his pictures for high prices. Vu magazine sent Capa and Taro to Spain to cover the civil war. They photographed a variety of subjects, including soldiers relaxing and fighting and people fleeing the fighting. Capa took perhaps his most famous photograph: a close-up shot of a soldier just as he was shot to death, called The Falling Soldier. It was published in Vu and other magazines, making Capa well known. He returned to France in 1938, and Taro stayed behind in Spain. She was killed in the fighting, which devastated Capa. Capa then went to China to take pictures for Life magazine of the Japanese fighting in China. His pictures also documented the problems civilians faced during the fighting. When the Germans invaded Poland in September, 1939, Capa went to the United States. There he soon married a U.S. citizen so that he could become a citizen him-
Early Life Robert Capa (KAP-uh) was born Endre Erno Friedmann, the son of Denzso Friedmann and Julianna Berkovits, both Jews who did not practice their faith. Denzso was a successful tailor in Hungary, and Julianna helped with the business. Hungary was in turmoil with the Soviet dictatorship in 1918, and fascists took over the country, killing many and discriminating against Jews. Later, Capa joined a group of radicals, and he was eventually arrested and beaten. Capa had a likable personality and a fondness for women. When his girlfriend, Eva Besnyo, left for Berlin, Germany, in 1930, he followed her in 1931. He had little money, so he was near starvation by the winter of 1932. Besnyo found him a job as a darkroom assistant to a photographer at an agency called Dephot. There he worked a number of jobs, and he eventually got a break when he
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Capp, Al self. Life magazine hired him to make a variety of photo stories about the violent elections in Mexico, Ernest Hemingway, and the bombing of London by the Germans. In 1942, Collier’s hired Capa to cover the Allies fighting in France and northern Africa. Unfortunately the U.S. government declared Capa an enemy alien. He wrote in his book, Slightly out of Focus (1947), about how he worked with the British and the Americans to solve this problem so he could go overseas. Initially in England he covered a variety of stories, documenting problems in a mining village, plastic surgery for war injuries, and B-17 bomber pilots. He also had time to charm the English women, gamble, and party as he had done in the past. Capa went to Algiers in 1943 to take front-line pictures of the fighting between the Allies and the Germans. Then he photographed the Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy. Capa returned to England in 1944, and he accompanied the early wave of Allied troops invading Omaha Beach in northern France; some of his most memorable pictures were of the troops wading onshore during the battle. He finished his career by going to the Soviet Union in 1947 to cover, among other subjects, the damage after World War II. Finally Capa went to Vietnam for Life magazine to cover the fighting between France and Indochina. There he was killed by a land mine. Significance Capa documented wars on the front lines and in the midst of the fighting. In this sense he redefined wartime
Jewish Americans photojournalism. Readers could see the horrible devastation of soldiers and of civilians in the wars. Capa also founded the first major organization for freelance photographers in 1947, called Magnum, which worked to ensure that photographers retained copyrights and had better controls on their photographs. This was a major step in helping photographers to protect their pictures from being exploited by big organizations, such as Life magazine, and by other groups that used their photographs without compensating the photographers. —Robert L. Cullers Further Reading Capa, Robert. Slightly out of Focus. 1947. Reprint. New York: Modern Library, 1999. Capa’s account of his activities during World War II, including many of Capa’s war photographs. Kershaw, Alex. Blood and Champagne. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003. A biography of Capa with a number of pictures of him and some of his famous acquaintances and girlfriends, such as the actor Ingrid Bergman. Includes an index and detailed references. Marton, Kati. The Great Escape. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006. An account of how Hungarian Jews who later became famous escaped the Germans. Covers several scientists (such as Edward Teller), two film producers, and two photographers (including Capa). See also: Margaret Bourke-White; Alfred Eisenstaedt; Alfred Stieglitz; Weegee.
Al Capp Cartoonist and writer Capp wrote and drew the syndicated newspaper comic L’il Abner, one of the most popular and highly regarded strips of its day. L’il Abner had a variety of licensing products and media spin-offs, and several characters and concepts introduced in its panels became catchphrases and fads. Born: September 28, 1909; New Haven, Connecticut Died: November 5, 1979; Cambridge, Massachusetts Also known as: Alfred Gerald Caplin (birth name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Al Capp (kap) was born to a family of Latvian Jewish immigrants. His father, Otto Caplin, was an unsuccessful 214
salesman who relocated frequently, and his mother, Tillie, was the daughter of a grand rabbi of New York City. The family lived in extreme poverty in Capp’s youth. Capp was the eldest of three brothers, the others being Jerome and Elliot, and Capp had one sister, Madeline. The family moved to the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn when Capp was eleven and then to Bridgeport in Connecticut. On August 21, 1919, Capp lost most of his left leg in a trolley accident. He wore a wooden leg, which gave him a limp and caused immense pain. Capp moved to Boston at the age of nineteen. He studied art there and in Philadelphia, without taking a degree, at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Designers Art School in Boston and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In Boston he met his future wife,
Jewish Americans Catherine Wingate Cameron, the daughter of a Massachusetts politician. The couple married in 1929. In 1932, he moved to New York, hoping to find work as a newspaper cartoonist. He worked for six months drawing an established property called Colonel Gilfeather for the Associated Press, changing its name to Mister Gilfeather. In 1933, he was hired as an assistant to Ham Fisher, creator of the popular Joe Palooka strip. In a strip created while Fisher was on vacation, Capp introduced the villainous hillbilly character, Big Leviticus, and his family. Fisher would later claim that Leviticus, Fisher’s property, was the basis of Capp’s hillbilly character, Abner Yokum, despite the many differences between the two. The ugly feud between Fisher and Capp would last until Fisher’s suicide in 1955. On his own, the ambitious Capp was working on a strip based loosely on characters he had met while hitchhiking through West Virginia as a teenager.
Capp, Al
Sadie Hawkins Day A master caricaturist, Al Capp relished drawing ugly women as well as pretty ones. One of his ugly women was Sadie Hawkins, “the homeliest gal in the hills,” the daughter of Dogpatch’s earliest settler, Hekzebiah Hawkins. Sadie was too ugly to win a husband, so her father organized a race in which the town’s bachelors were given a head start, but the one Sadie caught had to marry her. This became a Dogpatch tradition, in which single women chased down the town’s bachelors with the object of matrimony. Any woman who caught a man and dragged him over the finish line could marry him. Sadie Hawkins Day first appeared in the November 15, 1937, strip. Within two years, more than two hundred colleges were holding Sadie Hawkins Day. Sadie Hawkins Day, when girls ask boys out and sometimes pay for the date, has continued to inspire events at hundreds of American and Canadian colleges and high schools. Although Capp never set a firm date for Sadie Hawkins Day, the “official” date has come to be recognized as the first Saturday after November 9.
Life’s Work Eager to strike out on his own, Capp sold L’il Abner to syndication giant United Feature Syndicate. The first strip appeared in the New York Daily Mirror on August 13, 1934. Its setting was the fictional backwoods community of Dogpatch, and its central character was the lazy and stupid but good-hearted and patriotic hillbilly, Abner Yokum. Other central characters included Abner’s formidable mother, Pansy Yokum, known as “Mammy,” always shown with a corncob pipe; his overmatched father, Lucifer Yokum, known as “Pappy”; and the family pig, Salomey. There were also numerous attractive women, demonstrating the exuberant physicality that was a hallmark of Capp’s art. Women were often competing for Abner’s favors, but his true love was the buxom blond Daisy Mae Scragg. In the early days of the strip, Abner’s rival for Daisy’s affections was massive wrestler Earthquake McGoon. Despite his mockery of his Dogpatch creations, Capp took their side against outsiders, including greedy capitalists. Ethnic stereotypes were a mainstay of Capp’s humor, and Jews, often portrayed as big-nosed, greedy hustlers, were not exempt. The denizens of the Eastern European country that Capp’s family had left were also mocked in the fictional country of Slobbovia. Humor based on the unique sounds of Yiddish was also part of Capp’s arsenal, as in the famous “Shmoos,” vaguely phallic fictional creatures that could supply every human need, voluntarily dying when hu-
mans needed food. The shmoos were introduced in 1949 and set off a national craze. By the late 1940’s, Capp had gained control over L’il Abner from the syndicate. The strip was produced by a team under Capp’s leadership working out of a studio in Boston’s Beacon Hill. He devised the story lines and characters, worked on the pencil drafts, and inked the main characters. He adopted the name “Al Capp” with which to sign his comics; he legally changed his name to Al Capp in 1949. Abner and Daisy Mae eventually married—the wedding made the cover of Life magazine—and had a child, honest Abe, part of a deliberate turn, on Capp’s part, away from political satire, which he viewed as too dangerous in the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hunt for Communists and other subversives, to domestic comedy. He returned to politics with a vengeance in the 1960’s, when Capp, until then a liberal Democrat who had supported the presidential campaigns of Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy, took a sharp turn to the right. His increasing rage at the culture of the left seems to have gone along with an increasing self-identity as a Jew; he joked that the reason he had not received the Nobel Prize was anti-Semitism. Ironically, his savage mockery of campus radicals and the left generally helped make him a popular speaker on college campuses. Capp also became embroiled in a series of sexual scandals. Following an incident at the University of Wisconsin, Capp was convicted of attempted adultery in February, 1972. It was a 215
Cardozo, Benjamin N. disaster for L’il Abner, which was dropped by hundreds of newspapers. Capp grew more bitter and isolated, and he retired from cartooning in 1977. The last L’il Abner daily strip appeared on November 5, 1977, and the final Sunday color strip days later on November 13. Capp died of emphysema in 1979. Significance Capp was a master of a distinctly twentieth century art form, the newspaper comic strip. L’il Abner transcended the form to enter comic books, films, musical theater, and even a theme park, Dogpatch USA, outside Harrison, Arkansas. The strip also became a licensing giant and made Capp a celebrity. Such concepts as Dogpatch, Lower Slobbovia, Shmoo, and Sadie Hawkins Day, all Capp creations, entered the lexicon. Capp was a leader in the cartoonist community, receiving the Rube Goldberg Award from the National Cartoonist Society in 1947 and advocating the cause of the individual cartoonist against the giant syndicates that ruled the comic-strip industry. Posthumously, Capp received the Elzie Segar Award from the National Cartoonist Society in 1979; L’il Abner was included in the U.S. Post Office’s series of stamps of classic cartoon characters in 1995; and Capp was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2004. —William E. Burns
Jewish Americans Further Reading Berger, Arthur Asa. L’il Abner: A Study in American Satire. 1970. Reprint. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994. This monograph was one of the earliest critical studies of an American comic strip. Buhle, Paul, ed. Jews and American Comics: The Illustrated History of an American Art Form. New York: New Press, 2008. Examines Jewish artists’roles in the history and development of American comics; includes discussion of Capp. Caplin, Elliot. Al Capp Remembered. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Press, 1994. Memories of Capp by his brother and business associate, also a comic-strip creator. Capp, Al. My Well-Balanced Life on a Wooden Leg: Memoirs. Santa Barbara, Calif.: John Daniel, 1991. A collection of cartoons and autobiographical pieces, focusing on Capp’s disability. Theroux, Alexander. The Enigma of Al Capp. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 1999. A biographical sketch by a fan, with numerous illustrations of panels and entire strips from L’il Abner. See also: Jules Feiffer; Rube Goldberg; Roy Lichtenstein; Ben Shahn.
Benjamin N. Cardozo U.S. Supreme Court justice (1932-1938) A legal philosopher, Cardozo first served on the New York State Court of Appeals and later on the U.S. Supreme Court. Born: May 24, 1870; New York, New York Died: July 9, 1938; Port Chester, New York Also known as: Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (full name) Area of achievement: Law Early Life Benjamin N. Cardozo (car-DOH-zoh) descended from the Cardozos and the Nathans, two of the oldest Jewish families in America. Of Sephardic heritage, they arrived from Portugal before the American Revolution; by the time of Cardozo’s birth in 1870, the families were well established in New York’s legal and professional communities. They observed traditional Sephardic rituals 216
at home and maintained membership in Congregation Shearith Israel. Cardozo drifted away from observance in later life (although he always kept a kosher household), but he remained a member of the temple until his death. He and his family shared a sense of belonging to the elite of American Jewry and took great pride in their heritage. Cardozo’s childhood was substantially affected by three important events. His father, Albert, was a judge of the New York State Supreme Court (the trial-level court) and was forced to resign after charges of unethical behavior were brought against him. Cardozo attempted to redeem the dishonor to the family name through his own career. The second event was the illness and death of his mother. She suffered a stroke and was paralyzed for several years before her death in 1879, when Cardozo was nine. Third, his father died in 1885 when Cardozo was fifteen. By then, the maternal role in the family had al-
Jewish Americans ready been assumed by Cardozo’s eldest sister, Ellen. He and Ellen were devoted to one another, and they lived together until her death in 1929. Cardozo was privately tutored as a child, for a time by the writer Horatio Alger. Cardozo attended Columbia College and Columbia Law School, finishing his studies in June, 1891, at the age of twenty-one.
Cardozo, Benjamin N. munity in deciding cases. The Nature of the Judicial Process is still in print after nearly ninety years and continues to be widely used in law schools and graduate political science departments. Its publication further enhanced Cardozo’s reputation, which at the time became national in scope. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., retired from the Supreme Court in 1932. Because of Holmes’s reputation, choosing a worthy successor was a delicate task. President Herbert Hoover chose Cardozo, whose credentials overcame the perceived problems of having two Jews and three New Yorkers on the Court. Cardozo’s appointment was unanimously confirmed in the Senate by voice vote. Cardozo was to serve only five and a half years on the Court, and he was ill for part of that time. He normally voted with the so-called liberal wing of the Court—that is, upholding both state and federal regulation of economic and financial matters. He wrote the Court’s opinion in a number of important cases. In the Social Security cases, Cardozo upheld the constitutionality of the Social Security Act, and, by extension, the constitutionality of conditional federal grants to state governments. Another
Life’s Work On leaving law school Cardozo joined his brother in his late father’s law firm. His practice developed rapidly as he was particularly skillful in framing appeals. He became a “lawyer’s lawyer,” called in when complex appellate briefs and arguments were needed in a case. Most of his work was in business law: Contracts and torts were his particular strengths, although he also argued some personal-injury cases. In 1913, when Cardozo was fortythree, his career as a practicing attorney was interrupted when the anti-Tammany fusion movement nominated him to run for a seat on the New York State Supreme Court. He won the election and took his seat on January 5, 1914—only to be designated by Governor Martin Glynn within five weeks to sit on New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. He was elected as regular member of that court in 1917, elected chief judge in 1925, and appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1932. This remarkable progression was brought about by Cardozo’s literate and persuasive opinions from the bench. He believed that rules of law should be responsive to reason and to common sense. His decisions reflected that conviction, placing him squarely in the tradition of legal realism pioneered by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Learned Hand, among others. During the years of Cardozo’s tenure on the Court of Appeals, it became the leading state court in the country, its precedents followed widely in the high courts of other states. Cardozo’s work became widely known. In 1920, Cardozo had been invited to deliver the Storrs Lectures at the Yale Law School. He decided to describe the process by which he arrived at decisions in cases. Cardozo worked on these lectures for a year, delivering them at Yale in four sessions in February, 1921. They were immediately acclaimed; indeed, after the first lecture the series had to be moved to a larger hall. Cardozo published the whole series as The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921). The book describes Cardozo’s use of logic, precedent, social custom, and the good of the comBenjamin N. Cardozo (Library of Congress)
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Cardozo, Benjamin N. important case was Palko v. Connecticut. Here Cardozo laid down a sensible constitutional test for determining the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. Although the specific holding in the case was later overruled, the test remains in use to this day. Cardozo suffered a stroke in January, 1938, and was unable to work from then until his death on July 9, 1938. Significance Cardozo’s life and work are worth studying because of the impact of his decisions on the law. Despite the fact that his Supreme Court service was limited by his illness, his enunciation of what became the great principle of due process analysis endures to this day. His opinion in Palko v. Connecticut devised the selective incorporation test. The Court was to decide which liberties are protected by the due process clause of the Constitution by determining whether the right claimed is “fundamental.” — Robert Jacobs Further Reading Cardozo, Benjamin N. The Nature of the Judicial Process. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1921. Cardozo’s explanation of the duties and the techniques of judging is considered the most influential work on the subject. Hellman, George S. Benjamin N. Cardozo: American Judge. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1940. Admiring biography focusing more on Cardozo’s personality and education than on his legal work. Kaufman, Andrew L. Cardozo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. A thorough biography of Cardozo, offering a detailed account of his life and his thought.
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Defining the Role of the Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo’s development of a rational judicial technique is his most enduring contribution. He articulated how he decided cases in his book, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921), and his decisions demonstrated how true he was to the judicial technique he promoted. His model for judging continues in use today: Cardozo believed that judges have a creative function and that they “make” law when they exercise it. He argued that justice can be achieved only when judges are free to operate. He recognized, of course, that the exercise of the judicial function must be subject to institutional and political restraints; within that framework, however, judges make law. Cardozo was the first modern judge to analyze his decisionmaking processes and justify them rationally. The proper role of the judge continues to be a controversial matter, but the starting point of all discussion, either explicitly or implicitly, is Cardozo’s brilliant formulation.
Polenberg, Richard. The World of Benjamin Cardozo: Personal Values and the Judicial Process. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997. Polenberg tries to connect Cardozo’s personal convictions and character with his decisions in the areas of insanity, gender, sexuality, and religion. Posner, Richard A. Cardozo: A Study in Reputation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Judge Posner argues that Cardozo was essentially a pragmatic judge; Posner seeks to determine Cardozo’s influence by comparing citations of Cardozo’s opinions to those of other judges. See also: Louis D. Brandeis; Stephen G. Breyer; Abe Fortas; Felix Frankfurter; Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Arthur J. Goldberg.
Jewish Americans
Celler, Emanuel
Emanuel Celler Politician, social reformer, and lawyer A lawyer by training, Celler served fifty years in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing New York’s tenth congressional district. During his tenure, he advocated civil rights and immigration reform and chaired the powerful Judiciary Committee for twenty-two years. Born: May 6, 1888; Brooklyn, New York Died: January 15, 1981; Brooklyn, New York Areas of achievement: Government and politics; law Early Life A grandson of German Jewish immigrants, Emanuel Celler (ee-MAN-yew-ehl SEHL-ur) grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where he attended local public schools. His father turned the family home into a whiskey distillery that produced the Celler brand, Echo Spring. Despite enlisting the assistance of the entire family (even young Celler affixed labels to the bottles), the business fell on hard times and eventually ceased production. After high school, Celler entered New York’s Columbia College, beginning a period that would ultimately change his life. While Celler was in college, his father and mother died, leaving the family’s newest enterprise, wine selling, to the young student. In spite of the rigors and time constraints imposed by the classroom and the family business, Celler managed to graduate from Columbia College before moving on to Columbia Law School, from which he graduated in 1912. After college, Celler won appointment as a draft board appeal agent when the United States entered World War I. At this time, he developed particular interest in assisting his immigrant neighbors, who found the United States less than hospitable to “outsiders.” In 1922, a pivotal year for Celler, he, at the urging of a friend, procured the Democratic Party’s nomination for the tenth congressional district’s seat. Although happy with the nomination, Celler faced extraordinarily long odds, because his district generally chose Republicans. An aggressive door-to-door campaign closed the gap, and his message of opposition to Prohibition and support for the League of Nations propelled him to a narrow victory. This launched a fifty-year career in Washington that continued until 1973. Life’s Work Throughout the 1920’s the Republican Party controlled the White House, and immigration reform was
one of the critical issues on Capitol Hill. After a large influx of southern and Eastern Europeans to America in the late nineteenth century, many of whom were Roman Catholic and Jewish, there emerged a clamor for immigration restrictions to check the growing foreign national population. For years, the immigration “reform” movement gathered momentum, reaching a critical stage in the 1920’s. With the votes in place, Congress passed the National Origins Act of 1924 and a series of subsidiary bills that created an immigration quota system, limiting the number of “new immigrants” that the United States was willing to accept each year. Remembering his roots and the multiethnic Brooklyn community from which he sprang, Celler engaged in a dedicated, albeit quixotic, battle to block the regressive legislation. Despite repeated failure, Celler never gave up the fight to liberalize the nation’s archaic immigration laws. His determination finally paid off with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which destroyed the quota system during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Another issue Celler found of particular interest was civil rights. As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Celler was positioned to make a difference on the issue since his committee received all civil rights bills sent to Congress. Starting in the 1950’s, Celler’s push for civil rights advances started to bear fruit. In 1957, he helped draft and then push through Congress the first civil rights bill since the Reconstruction era. He did the same in 1960, before the big success in 1964 when the civil rights bill enacted that year ended legally enforced racial segregation in the South. Throughout his career, Celler championed liberal reforms. From the New Deal to the Fair Deal to the Great Society, the New Yorker played a crucial role in some of the most important legislative advances in Washington. Only his opposition to feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment that it produced placed him at odds with the liberal establishment. Significance Celler’s contribution to American politics in the twentieth century spans an array of issues, from championing immigration reform and civil rights to helping bring about four constitutional amendments during his fifty years on Capitol Hill. The Twenty-third Amendment, which gave the District of Columbia electoral college representation; the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which 219
Chabon, Michael prohibited the poll tax: the Twenty-fifth Amendment, which defined presidential succession, and the Twentysixth Amendment, which granted eighteen-year-olds the right to vote all found the New York congressman to be an active spokesman in their favor. He also fought to toughen America’s antitrust legislation, seeking to put professional athletics under its rules, especially after his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team relocated to Los Angeles. —Keith M. Finley Further Reading Celler, Emanuel. “The Seniority Rule in Congress.” The Western Political Quarterly 14, no. 1 (March, 1961): 160-167. Celler offers a stirring defense of the principle of seniority, which at the time this article was written had made the New Yorker one of the most powerful men in the House of Representatives. _______. You Never Leave Brooklyn: The Autobiography of Emanuel Celler. New York: John Day, 1953. Written before he left office, the work covers Celler’s
Jewish Americans rise to national prominence. It offers invaluable personal insight into the factors and the personality traits that made Celler a successful politician. Finley, Keith M. Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938-1965. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008. Explores the decades-long legislative battle for civil rights advances in the twentieth century. Provides critical insight into the Senate struggle over the issue that greatly informed Celler’s strategy in the House. Radosh, Ronald, and Allis Radosh. A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel. New York: Harper Perennial, 2010. This work explores American involvement in the creation of a Jewish state. Celler found the issue especially important and helped shape U.S. policy toward the fledgling nation. See also: Bella Abzug; Abraham Beame; Michael Bloomberg; Ed Koch; Fiorello Henry La Guardia; Bess Myerson; Charles Schumer; Eliot Spitzer.
Michael Chabon Novelist, short-story writer, columnist, and screenwriter Chabon writes in a variety of literary genres, addressing such themes as escapism, superheroes, and the powerful force of history. Born: May 24, 1963; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Leon Chaim Bach, Malachi B. Cohen, and August Van Horn (pseudonyms) Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Michael Chabon (SHAY-bon) was born in Washington, D.C., to Robert, a physician, and Sharon, a lawyer. When Chabon was eleven years old, his parents divorced, and he began to reside with his mother. He was raised primarily in Columbia, Maryland, in the middle of tobacco country. While growing up, he enjoyed reading comic books and was certain from a young age that he would pursue a career in writing. In an essay written for The New Yorker in 2008, Chabon recalls sitting in a religious-school class on Jewish ethics and hearing his teacher raise the issue of escapism and its accompanying ethical problems. The story Chabon’s teacher told— about a child who loved Superman so much that he se220
cured a red towel around his neck and then jumped to his death from the roof of his house—was memorable not because it suggested a kind of danger associated with escapism, but because it signaled a cultural need for transformation, a theme that Chabon would explore in his writing. Chabon studied at Carnegie-Mellon as well as at the University of Pittsburgh, where he earned an undergraduate degree in English in 1984. He also received a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, which proved to be a critical juncture for the start of his career. While at Irvine, Chabon began working on his master’s thesis, which would eventually become his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, published in 1988. The novel was on The New York Times list of best sellers, and so was his second novel, Wonder Boys, which was published seven years later in 1995 and was made into a film in 2000, featuring Tobey Maguire and Michael Douglas. Chabon has often expressed astonishment at the success of his literary career. It comes as no surprise, then, that it was not Chabon who submitted his first manuscript for publication, but his professor, Donald Heiney (also
Jewish Americans known as MacDonald Harris), who submitted Chabon’s master’s thesis to a literary agent, who in turn secured Chabon a $155,000 advance—an amount far higher than the typical advance given to new writers. In 1987, Chabon married the poet Lollie Groth, but this marriage ended in 1991, and later Chabon married the writer Ayelet Waldman. Chabon and Waldman moved to Berkeley, California, and had four children: Sophie, born in 1994; Ezekiel “Zeke” Napoleon Waldman, born in 1997; Ida-Rose, born in 2001; and Abraham Wolf Waldman, born in 2003.
Chabon, Michael Chabon has written two collections of short stories, A Model World, and Other Stories (1990) and Werewolves in Their Youth (1999). His first young adult novel, Summerland, was published in 2002, and he has written articles and essays, screenplays (sharing story credit for the 2004 film Spider-Man 2), and edited the collection The Best American Short Stories, 2005. His 2007 novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, is a hard-boiled detective novel set in an alternate world in which the state of Israel failed to come into existence. Chabon offers readers a counterhistory in which millions of European Jewish refugees take shelter in Alaska, creating a Yiddish colony. Gentlemen of the Road, a fifteen-part serial novel about two ancient Khazar bandits that ran in The New York Times Magazine, was published in 2007. Chabon has published two collections of essays: Maps and Legends (2008) and Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son (2009).
Life’s Work Shortly after publishing his second novel, Chabon discovered a box of old comic books from his youth and began working on his third novel, which would mark a turn in his work toward an exploration of the themes of escapism and fantasy. In 2000, Chabon published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. It was also a finalist for both the Significance National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/FaulkChabon is skilled in many literary genres, and he is the ner Award. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and rare artist whose works appeal to many different types of Clay harks back to the work of other great Jewish comics readers. Avid readers of comic books, of detective stocreators, such as Will Eisner, and follows the characters ries, of gangster mob tales, and of alternate histories will Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier, two Jewish cousins who find something pleasing in Chabon’s works. One of his create comic books in the early 1940’s, the years leading common themes is redemption, and another is the overup to the entry of the United States into World War II. whelming power of historical forces. Chabon creates The novel tracks the rise of the modern superhero and characters who come alive, reflecting readers’ secret deconnects it to the ancient story of the golem. sires for fantasy and for escape. Chabon does not deal directly with the events of —Monica Osborne World War II, but his 2005 novella, The Final Solution, winner of the National Jewish Book Award, tells the story of Linus Steinman, a mute nine-year-old boy who has escaped Nazi Germany with his sole companion, an African parrot. This book deals indirectly with the aftermath of what was arguably the twentieth century’s most horrific tragedy: the Holocaust. Devoid of typical images of corpses, camps, and gas chambers, The Final Solution is an unusual book because the Holocaust is not mentioned except for a few oblique allusions. Instead, the reader wonders who has stolen the child’s parrot and is forced to consider the tragedy that hovers darkly over the story. Michael Chabon. (Ulf Andersen/Getty Images) 221
Chayefsky, Paddy Further Reading Behlman, Lee. “The Escapist: Fantasy, Folklore, and the Pleasures of the Comic Book in Recent Jewish American Holocaust Fiction.” Shofar 22, no. 3 (Spring, 2003): 56-71. Examines how Chabon uses fantasy to address the difficulty of representing the Holocaust. Myers, D. G. “Michael Chabon’s Imaginary Jews.” Sewanee Review 16, no. 4 (Fall, 2008): 572-588. Examines how Chabon reinvented himself as a Jewish writer after winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2001.
Jewish Americans Straub, Peter, ed. American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940’s to Now. New York: Library of America, 2009. Explores the tropes of fantasy and horror that genre writers—including Joyce Carol Oates, Vladimir Nabokov, Ray Bradbury, and Chabon—incorporate into their work. See also: Nelson Algren; Saul Bellow; E. L. Doctorow; Howard Fast; Edna Ferber; Jonathan Safran Foer; Joseph Heller; Bernard Malamud; Philip Roth; Herman Wouk.
Paddy Chayefsky Playwright and screenwriter Chayefsky was an influential television writer during the 1950’s Golden Age of Television. He made the one-hour television drama a serious literary arena in which characters and stories were treated with respect. Born: January 29, 1923; Bronx, New York Died: August 1, 1981; New York, New York Also known as: Sidney Aaron Chayefsky (full name); Sidney Aaron Chayefski (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Paddy Chayefsky (PAD-ee chi-EHF-skee) was born Sidney Aaron Chayefski in the Bronx to Ukrainian Jewish parents on January 29, 1923. His father and mother both encouraged the arts, reading, and music. His father, Harry, would take Chayefsky to the Yiddish theater, and his mother made him learn the piano. Growing up, he discovered that he had a way with words and used comedy to deflect attacks in his ethnically diverse neighborhood. He cemented his friendships with the Italian and Irish kids by satirizing the people on the streets and delivering comic rants. He also wrote comedic pieces for his high school’s newspaper. In 1943, Chayefsky was drafted into World War II, and he was wounded in Germany, earning the Purple Heart. While recuperating in England, Chayefsky wrote No T. O. for Love (1945), a musical that was produced by the Army’s Special Services Unit and played to military audiences for two years. In 1945, the play opened in London’s West End. As a result of this experience and of meeting both Joshua Logan and Garson Kanin, both al222
ready important theater people, Chayefsky’s career as a professional writer began. It was a few years before anything else happened for him professionally. Upon returning to the United States, Chayefsky began work at his uncle’s print shop and continued to write stories and plays, although they were not produced or published. The time at this uncle’s shop did provide the material for a later work, A Printer’s Measure (1953). He left New York to try to become a Hollywood screenplay writer, but he returned home after finding no success there. At one time Chayefsky had hoped to be a stand-up comic, and he used this interest to get a job writing jokes for Robert Q. Lewis’s radio show. This led to opportunities to write scripts for Theater Guild on the Air, through which he met the director Elia Kazan. Chayefsky’s radio experience opened doors to television writing, and, by the end of the 1940’s, he was writing teleplays for television shows such as Danger and Manhunt. Life’s Work Chayefsky’s big break came in 1949 when Fred Coe, head of Philco Television Playhouse, asked him to write a teleplay based on a reunion of two Holocaust survivors. He was also asked to adapt Budd Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run? (1941). This ran on the Philco Television Playhouse on April 10, 1949, and it was the first of Chayefsky’s live hour-long drama scripts for which he was to become so famous. From 1952 to 1956, Chayefsky wrote scripts for Philco Television Playhouse and its subsidiary, Goodyear Theatre. After his experience adapting Schulberg’s work, Chayefsky was determined to work on only original teleplays. Notable among these
Jewish Americans
Chayefsky, Paddy
works were Marty (1953), The Bachelor Party MARTY and NETWORK—Chayefsky’s (1953), The Catered Affair (1955), The Mother Greatest Films (1954), and Holiday Song (1952). He wrote mainly about working-class people, the kinds Marty, expanded from Paddy Chayefsky’s 1953 teleplay into a of people he grew up with in the Bronx. Called full-length film in 1955, is the story of a lonesome Bronx butcher. “kitchen-sink drama” and “clothesline drama,” With little sentimentality, Chayefsky explored the plight of an orthese stories centered on ordinary people and dinary man doomed by his social awkwardness and his shyness to their everyday lives. an empty and loveless life. One night, venturing out of his shell, Marty meets a woman, sweet and shy like himself. Afraid to lose His television successes led Chayefsky to him, Marty’s mother and friends disparage the girl and the relationHollywood a second time. This time proved difship, and Marty almost gives up on his chance to find love. Ultiferent from his first attempt to break into films. mately, Marty dares to accept the possibility of happiness. The Successful and popular film versions of some film, a great hit when released, was preserved in 1994 by the Naof his television stories were produced: Marty tional Film Registry because of its “cultural significance.” Two de(1955, which won an Academy Award), The Cacades later, Network (1976) was similarly honored, and it was intered Affair (1956), The Bachelor Party (1957), cluded in the top one hundred greatest films of all time by the and The Middle of the Night (1959). These were American Film Institute. Network satirically exposes television as followed by original screenplays, including The a medium that destroys honesty, integrity, and dignity. Its hero, Goddess (1958); The Americanization of Emily Howard Beale, attempting to save the public from television’s lies (1964); Paint Your Wagon (1969); The Hospital and distortions, is manipulated and sacrificed by the people he was trying to expose, and he ends up destroyed. Seemingly different, (1971), which won an Academy Award; Netthese films champion individuals and their quest for decency. Even work (1976), which won an Academy Award; in failure, Chayefsky’s work exclaims, people can find purpose and Altered States (1980), based on his own and achieve dignity. 1978 novel. Chayefsky is the only person to win three Academy Awards for solo screenwriting. Seven of Chayefsky’s plays have been performed on the Broadway stage. These include ence contributed to his increasing health problems. It Middle of the Night (1956), The Tenth Man (1959), and was Chayefsky’s final work. He died in New York on AuGideon (1961). gust 1, 1981, of an undisclosed cancer. Chayefsky won many awards, including the Sylvania Television Award, 1953; Screen Writers Guild Award, Significance 1954 and 1971; Palme d’Or, Cannes Film Festival, 1955; Chayefsky was a rarity, successful at radio, television, Look Magazine Award, 1956; New York Film Critics theatrical, and literary writing. His unerring ear for diaCircle Award, 1956, 1971, and 1976; Venice Film Festilogue allowed his characters to speak in a natural way and val Award, 1958; Edinburgh Film Festival Award, 1958; made him one of the great television writers. He elevated and the Critics’ Prize, Brussels Film Festival, 1958. In the language of television writing and championed the 1976, the Writers Guild inaugurated the Paddy Chayefhour-long drama. Viewers responded to the tenderness sky Laurel Award for Television, honoring work that adand warmth of Chayefsky’s characters. Although about vanced the literary merit of television writing. sad and depressing topics, many of these television stories After suffering a heart attack in 1977, Chayefsky featured happy endings, perhaps at the behest of the sponwent on to finish a novel and began work on the film. The sors. However, he never sacrificed the story’s integrity. His filming of Altered States was a difficult time for Chayefmove to Hollywood allowed his satiric side to flourish. In sky. The original director quit after feuding with ChayefThe Hospital Chayefsky lampooned the American medisky; the new director, Ken Russell, had monumental difcal profession by exposing doctors’ incompetence and ferences of opinion with Chayefsky on everything from lack of interest. In Network, Chayefsky exposed the crass pacing to special effects. Chayefsky hated the way Rusword of television journalism, which he perceived as besell treated his script, making the actors rush through the ing interested only in making money and in maintaining dialogue so quickly that at times the words were incomviewership. Whether tender or satiric, a story by Chayefprehensible. Ultimately, to distance himself from the sky always explored the human condition truthfully. project, Chayefsky released the film under the name Sid— Leslie Neilan ney Aaron. Many believe that the stress of this experi223
Chicago, Judy Further Reading Boddy, William. Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1992. This book looks at the television industry in the 1950’s, with commentary on live hour-long drama and on Chayefsky. Chayefsky, Paddy. Altered States. New York: Bantam Books, 1980. This is Chayefsky’s science-fiction novel that he adapted as a screenplay. It concerns a scientist’s search for the origins of consciousness. _______. The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky: The Television Plays. New York: Applause Books, 2000. This is one of a multivolume set of books compiling all of Chayefsky’s original work for theater, film, and
Jewish Americans television. Complete scripts and author’s commentary are included. Considine, Shaun. Mad as Hell: The Life and Work of Paddy Chayefsky. New York: Random House, 1994. This is a biography of Chayefsky and an analysis of his writings. It envisions Chayefsky as a split personality: the Bronx Everyman and the sophisticated intellectual. Lanza, Joseph. Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2007. This book discusses the experience of filming Altered States and the conflict between Russell and Chayefsky. See also: J. J. Abrams; Michael Chabon; Larry David; Tony Kushner; David Mamet; Rod Serling; Neil Simon.
Judy Chicago Artist and feminist Chicago is an artist who came to prominence during the feminist movement of the second half of the twentieth century. The Dinner Party, which honored thirty-nine women overlooked by history, and The Holocaust Project, which documented the atrocities of the Holocaust, are two of her major works. Born: July 20, 1939; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: Judith Sylvia Cohen (birth name); Judy Gerowitz Area of achievement: Art Early Life Judy Chicago (shih-KAH-goh) was born Judith Cohen, the elder child of first-generation American Jews. Her father was active in organizing labor and in leftist politics. He died when Chicago was thirteen years old. Her mother supported her ambitions to be an artist. Chicago attended the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 1962, and she continued for a master’s degree in fine arts, which she achieved in 1964. She married Jerry Gerowitz in 1961, but her husband died in an accident two years later. She again married and divorced. In 1985, she married for a third time, to photographer Donald Woodman, with whom she would collaborate in The Holocaust Project (1993). In her autobiography, Through the Flower (1975), written when she was only thirty-six, Chicago describes at length her early career as what she called a male-identified artist. Her work developed from the California 224
trends of Fetish Finish (in which the artwork surfaces were highly polished) and minimalism (in which the artwork was created from a few simple elements). Chicago’s journey toward feminism was gradual, but it crystallized when she taught women artists in an experimental program, first at Fresno State University and later, in collaboration with Miriam Schapiro, at the California Institute of the Arts. In 1970, in a conscious feminist gesture to divest herself of patriarchal markers, she legally changed her name from Judy Gerowitz to Judy Chicago. Life’s Work Chicago’s feminism culminated in The Dinner Party, first exhibited in 1979. This large-scale, multimedia, collaborative piece developed directly from the research she did for her feminist teaching. The work represented thirty-nine notable women who had been forgotten, undervalued, or misinterpreted by history. Arranged as thirty-nine place settings—each with a painted china plate and elaborate embroidered table runner—at a triangular table, the work evoked both pagan and Christian symbolism. From the first, it was notorious and controversial. Seen as brilliant and uplifting by some, it was panned as simplistic and universalizing by others. No one could argue that it did not put visual forms to the service of a political message. In all aspects, it contravened the tenets of modernism. Rising above the negativity surrounding the reception of this project, Chicago continued to work collaboratively and in large formats: The Birth Project (1980-1985) and Power Play (1983-1987).
Jewish Americans Identity politics continued to inform her work. In 1985, deeply affected by seeing the film Shoah (or chaos, the word Israelis use to refer to the Holocaust) by Claude Lanzmann, she and her husband began to research the Nazi persecutions. For Chicago and her husband, what began as an investigation of their Jewish heritage expanded to include mistreatment of others (gays, lesbians, Gypsies, and others). Archival research, drawings, paintings, and documentary photographs combined to create The Holocaust Project, first exhibited in 1993. The subject is painful; its treatment is didactic; and Chicago is brutally honest in her paintings. Rainbow Shabat, the large stained-glass representation that concludes the project, can be seen as an expression of hope. Chicago began working on Resolutions: A Stitch in Time in 1994. This project, also, is an act to counter despair and, in Chicago’s words, to choose life. In it, adages are explored and remade in a combination of needlework and a painting technique that recalls folk art forms. The artworks show a wit and cheerfulness not usual in her work. Significance Chicago produced major works throughout the last third of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, creating out of her experience as a woman and as an American Jew. Because she consistently worked in collaboration (with her husband, needleworkers, and others) and because she worked with a political and didactic point of view, she consciously challenged the tenets of modernism that insist on the solo artist and the supremacy of the aesthetic over the moral. Exploiting both crafts and folk art, Chicago’s work is germane to a contentious discussion in the art world: the relationship between fine arts and crafts. Chicago’s career demonstrates her progressive identification with her heritage, making it possible to view her work in terms of tikkun olam, the moral imperative to attempt to heal the world. Whether she took aim at
Chicago, Judy women’s exclusion from history or at persecution on the unprecedented scale of the Holocaust, Chicago’s works seek to rectify the wrongs she perceives in the world. —Jean Owens Schaefer Further Reading Chicago, Judy. Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light. New York: Viking Penguin, 1993. Documentation of the research for and creation of the project. Extensive illustrations; bibliography for works on prejudice against Jews and others who suffered under the Nazis. _______. Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist. New York: Doubleday, 1975. Chicago was only thirty-six when this was published, and it recounts her experience with and her commitment to psychotherapy. Detailed information on her feminism. Levin, Gail. Becoming Judy Chicago: A Biography of the Artist. New York: Harmony Books, 2007. A biography based on interviews, Chicago’s writings, and archival research at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. Addresses Chicago’s relationship to Judaism. Extensive bibliography and endnotes. Archival photographs and illustrations of a few works. Lucie-Smith, Edward. Judy Chicago: An American Vision. New York: Watson-Guptill, 2000. Monograph of the artist’s work placing her within broad historical and critical contexts. Many illustrations. Sackler, Elizabeth A., ed. Judy Chicago. New York: Watson-Guptill, 2002. Catalog accompanying the retrospective of her work at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. Extensive illustrations and complete bibliography. See also: Jim Dine; Helen Frankenthaler; Lee Krasner; Louise Nevelson; Barnett Newman.
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Noam Chomsky Linguist, philosopher, and social activist Opposing behaviorist theories, Chomsky argued that children are hard-wired for language. A renowned linguist and academic, he demanded that intellectuals be responsible for ensuring justice and liberty in society. Born: December 7, 1928; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Also known as: Avram Noam Chomsky (full name) Areas of achievement: Education; scholarship; social issues
and politics, Chomsky soon became interested in Harris’s linguistic work, his Methods in Structural Linguistics (1951). Chomsky completed his master’s degree in 1951 and his Ph.D. in 1955, when he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty. In 1957, his book Syntactic Structures appeared; it was a landmark not only in linguistics but also in psychology and in philosophy. Life’s Work Syntactic Structures argued that children did not simply imitate language but plugged the language information they observed into a universal grammar with which they were born. He demonstrated this with sentences that could be “embedded” in others. For example, “A professor who taught at Princeton disagreed with Chomsky” contains two sentences, the embedded version represented by “who taught at Princeton.” Embedding, part of what Chomsky called “recursiveness,” has no limits, so that any sentence could in theory be infinitely long—and therefore could not have been learned by imitation. The book demonstrated that syntax and meaning were separate phenomena. “Colorless green ideas sleep fu-
Early Life Avram Noam Chomsky (AHV-ruhm nohm CHAHMskee) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 7, 1928. His early life powerfully shaped his future as a linguist, a philosopher, and a social commentator. His father, Dr. William Chomsky, was a Russian Jew who emigrated in 1913 to avoid being drafted into the Russian army. Dr. Chomsky taught in Hebrew schools while attending Johns Hopkins University, eventually joined the faculty of Gratz College, and became a leading expert on Hebrew grammar. His son thus became familiar with both Hebrew (as well as other languages) and grammatical study, leading to his master’s thesis—a grammar of modern Hebrew—which was completed in 1951. Challenging Behaviorism Growing up in a socially activist, often proZionist Jewish community, young Chomsky Behavioral psychology’s essence was the stimulus-response encountered both the hardship of labor and the model, the idea that one could train an animal or a human to act a terror of fascism. His German and Irish neighcertain way with the right reward and that results could be meabors were often violently anti-Semitic, and he sured empirically. Noam Chomsky rejected this model in a review recalled once watching the police beat women of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, arguing that children’s ability to garment workers who were on strike. learn language involved more than a simplistic imitation of adult For several years Chomsky was enrolled in speech. Chomsky had laid the groundwork for this argument a few Oak Lawn Day School, a private elementary years earlier in Syntactic Structures. That book demonstrated that school that encouraged children’s creativity. A children have the ability to create new sentences and not simply imitate what they have already heard. Using models from formal precocious student, he was alarmed by the rise logic and mathematics, Chomsky contended that children have an of fascism in Europe and wrote a paper in innate ability to learn language, a universal grammar that allows 1938—at the age of ten—on the fall of Barcechildren to identify rules for sentence creation. These “translona during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). formational” rules allow the creation of different sentences from At sixteen, he became a freshman at the Univerthe same deep structure, so children can apprehend “John hit the sity of Pennsylvania, where he was the first, and ball” and “the ball was hit by John” as the same meaning or idea, a for that year the only, student to study Arabic. process for which a stimulus-response model cannot account. An Active in Zionist student organizations, he at understanding of the universal grammar’s rules, moreover, can one point considered leaving college to join a reveal something about the human mind that cannot be directly kibbutz in Israel. Instead he met Zellig Harris. observed. Attracted at first to Harris’s views on Zionism 226
Jewish Americans riously” is meaningless, but it is recognized as normal English syntax because the words are in the right places, as they are not in “Furiously colorless ideas green sleep.” His next groundbreaking work was his review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior in 1959. Because Chomsky claimed that the structure of language could tell something about the human mind, which could not be observed directly, he was a heretic to behaviorists. When Skinner later proposed to create a happy society using behavior modification, Chomsky wrote that the idea resembled a “well-run concentration camp.” However, other issues soon drew his attention. In the 1960’s, he openly criticized America’s war in Vietnam, and in American Power and the New Mandarins (1969) he argued that America’s intellectuals, in both government and the universities, had abandoned their obligation to be watchful and were thus complicit in that war’s destruction. In this and subsequent works, such as Language and Politics (1988), he argued that academics had a responsibility to pursue not only their own research but also a life of public action. Chomsky put his beliefs into practice, sometimes at personal risk. When he came to speak at an antiwar rally in Boston in 1965, he saw the demonstration attacked by angry crowds and denounced by the mainstream press. At a similar rally his wife Carol and their children endured abuse. Realizing the risks, the Chomskys began to plan ways to support the family in case he went to jail. Carol, in fact, did pursue a Ph.D. and became an expert in language acquisition, but Chomsky’s eminence in linguistics was such that his job was secure. He was, however, briefly jailed during the antiwar movement’s March on the Pentagon in 1967, sharing a cell with Norman Mailer (who wrote about their meeting in his 1968 book The Armies of the Night). Chomsky continued to oppose war, aggressive foreign policy, and the exercise of government power itself. As a member of the Jewish community, he was appalled by the Israelis’ treatment of the Palestinians and spoke out against it. For this reason he received death threats. He frequently had plainclothes security available at his public appearances, making him subject to derision by his linguistic critics. At an appearance at the Summer Linguistics Institute at the University of Massachusetts in 1974, he gave a lecture on his language theories and then left immediately. Some of those present mistakenly assumed he did not want to answer questions. Criticism of Chomsky continued. One issue involved his methods, which used as examples idealized, made-up
Chomsky, Noam sentences rather than speech recorded from real life. Another controversy centered on his insistence that human language was unique and did not develop from animal communication. Some who observed that chimpanzees could be taught sign language (not having human vocal organs) were especially critical of this position. Chomsky himself made some concessions on this point in 2005, agreeing that evolution could play some role in human language development. Chomsky’s social criticisms were less successful. Some of his political writing was suppressed by publishers, and he found it difficult to get published in the mainstream press. He claimed that none of the letters to the editor that he submitted to newspapers were ever printed. Significance In arguing that language was not, as Skinner believed, learned through a stimulus-response process, Chomsky helped to demolish behaviorism as the dominant form of American psychology. In linguistics, attention turned from the simple observation of language to the search for the universal grammar that enables language learning. —Timothy C. Frazer Further Reading Barsky, Robert. Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997. A readable biography that outlines the personal side of Chomsky’s life (rarely available elsewhere), covering his linguistic work but also detailing his life as a political commentator. Bickerton, Derek. Adam’s Tongue. New York: Hill and Wang, 2009. Bickerton is a linguist with a lively sense of humor who suggests ways that human language might have evolved from animal communication systems. While he is critical of Chomsky, he offers a good layperson’s account of the content of Syntactic Structures. Chomsky, Noam. Syntactic Structures. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton, 1957. The basics of Chomsky’s influence on linguistics appear in this short volume, which is fairly easy to read. Mailer, Norman. The Armies of the Night. New York: New American Library, 1968. A leading novelist’s account of the 1967 march on the Pentagon, including his meeting with Chomsky in a jail cell. What Chomsky endured testifies to the integrity of his belief in an academic’s responsibility. 227
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Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: William Morrow, 1994. Another readable book for laypersons on the sort of work linguists do, with special attention to Chomsky’s contributions.
Yang, Charles. The Infinite Gift. New York: Scribner, 2006. Narrates the latest (as of 2006) results of the search for universal grammar. A pleasure to read. See also: Albert Ellis; Alfred Kazin.
Joel and Ethan Coen Filmmakers, screenwriters, and directors The Coen brothers create low-budget Hollywood films that possess the originality of independent cinema and capitalize on the distribution potential of major studios.
Joel Coen Born: November 29, 1954; Minneapolis, Minnesota Also known as: Joel David Coen (full name); Roderick Jaynes (shared pseudonym)
Ethan Coen Born: September 21, 1957; Minneapolis, Minnesota Also known as: Ethan Jesse Coen (full name); Roderick Jaynes (shared pseudonym) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; literature Early Lives The sons of an academic couple, Joel and Ethan Coen (KOH-ehn) were raised in a middle-class, predominantly Jewish suburb of Minneapolis. Their father, Edward, an economist, was born in the United States, but he was raised in London. Their mother, Reba, an art historian, came from an Orthodox Latvian family. The brothers attended Hebrew school and had Bar Mitzvahs, but, as adults, they described their Jewish associations as more ethnic than religious. In their early teens, the boys developed an interest in popular culture and began making their versions of Hollywood films. After graduating from their suburban public high school, St. Louis Park, they both attended and graduated from Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Subsequently, Joel 228
majored in film at New York University and continued his film studies for one semester of graduate school at the University of Texas, Austin. Ethan studied philosophy at Princeton, writing his senior thesis on Ludwig Wittgenstein. Several years of apprentice film work in New York City preceded their startling, self-financed debut feature, Blood Simple (1984). To produce the film the brothers obtained a list of the one hundred wealthiest Jews in Minnesota from a fund-raiser for Hadassah; they contacted these potential donors and spent nine months fund-raising. The originality, striking visual style, and violent black humor of Blood Simple took audiences and jurors by surprise at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and the USA Film Festival in Dallas, where the
Joel and Ethan Coen. (WireImage/Getty Images)
Jewish Americans film won grand jury prizes and launched the Coens’ professional career. Lives’ Work In the last years of the twentieth century and into the first decade of the twenty-first, an era characterized by big-budget Hollywood sequels, the Coens released a steady stream of features, typically produced on small budgets, usually based on their highly original screenplays and their explicit storyboards: Miller’s Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), Intolerable Cruelty (2003), The Ladykillers (2004), No Country for Old Men (2007), Burn After Reading (2008), and A Serious Man (2009). Through their films, the Coens have created a rich, idiosyncratic map of the United States: Blood Simple is a Texas tall tale of violent betrayal; Raising Arizona (1987) is a screwball comedy that places a quirky couple on Arizona interstate highways; Miller’s Crossing imagines the gang wars and corrupt politics of New Orleans during Prohibition, when the sale of liquor was illegal; Barton Fink explores the mind-numbing 1941 Hollywood studio system; The Hudsucker Proxy satirizes the corporate world of 1958 New York City; O Brother, Where Art Thou? follows three Depression-era Mississippi chain gang escapees in a hayseed Odyssey; Santa Rosa, California, in 1949 is the setting for the black-and-white neonoir The Man Who Wasn’t There. The Ladykillers, a remake, moved the 1955 English classic to rural Mississippi. No Country for Old Men depicts the violent west Texas-Mexican border of the 1980’s. The goofy spy comedy Burn After Reading spins its circles in Washington, D.C. The Coens return to the setting of their youth—St. Louis Park, Minnesota, in the 1960’s—and to a small budget and largely unknown actors for A Serious Man (2009). In their most autobiographical film, a long-suffering Job-like academic seeks wisdom from a series of rabbis, in vain, as his life falls apart. Two of the Coens’ many unforgettable characters, the perpetually dazed Dude (Jeff Bridges) and his bowling buddy, the combustible Vietnam vet and Jewish convert Walter (John Goodman), move through 1990’s Los Angeles locked into 1960’s attitudes in The Big Lebowski. Although set in the present, Fargo evokes an earlier time of innocence in the midwestern character of Marge
Coen, Joel and Ethan
Independent Filmmaking In many respects, Joel and Ethan Coen continue the practice they began as boys: working together, having fun, and making their own versions of Hollywood genre films. Having developed a cordial, but removed, relationship with the Hollywood studios that finance and distribute their films, the Coens enjoy an independence that is rare within contemporary commercial filmmaking. Into their third decade of feature production, the Coen brothers have created a substantial and a deeply original body of work, displaying an endlessly inventive ability to combine pulp fiction and philosophy, macabre violence and clever dialogue, in ways both derivative and unique. Their films are often stylistically beautiful and peopled with dim-witted crooks and selfimportant schemers. Known for their wildly imaginative screenplays, their characters’ original dialogue, and their extravagant sense of humor, the Coens nevertheless achieved a great critical and financial success with their powerful adaptation of a 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men, a grim, serious story about mostly silent men.
(Frances McDormand), the practical, optimistic, and pregnant policewoman faced with a series of hideous murders. Coen films have not always made money. Their most expensive production of the 1990’s, The Hudsucker Proxy, and of the next decade, Intolerable Cruelty (2003), both farces with big stars (Paul Newman and Tim Robbins; George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones) whose presence bloated the pictures’ costs, were financial flops. Other Coen productions have also lost money; however, intermittent and solid financial successes (Raising Arizona; Fargo; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; No Country for Old Men; Burn After Reading), a loyal and growing fan base in both the United States and Europe, and the accumulation of major awards have kept the Coen brothers viable. They have won major awards—among them, Academy Awards for Best Screenplay (Fargo) and for Best Picture and Best Director (No Country for Old Men) and best director prize at Cannes (The Man Who Wasn’t There)—and in 2010 True Grit opened to acclaim and ten Academy Award nominations. The Coens both receive writing credits, and, although Ethan is credited as producer and Joel as director (before 2004), they share these responsibilities and also coedit, under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes. Adding to the family atmosphere are regular crew (cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, then Roger Deakins) and cast members (John Turturro, Goodman, Steve Buscemi, and 229
Cohen, Leonard McDormand, who is married to Joel). In 2000, the brothers launched their own company, Mike Zoss Productions, headquartered in New York City, where both Joel and Ethan live with their families. The brothers’ irreverent sense of humor frequently catches film reviewers and interviewers off guard. The Coens’ dismiss the intense academic interest in their films and mock such attention by creating fictional interviewers and commentators who introduce published versions of their screenplays and offer dim, self-important analyses. Ethan began a solo career as an author with the publication of a collection of his short stories, Gates of Eden (1998). Three of his plays—Sawbones (2005), Almost an Evening (2008), and Offices (2009)—have been produced. Significance The Coen brothers have brought a quirky, literate, ironic, and often shocking sensibility to their unique versions of American genre films, from the screwball comedy to the film noir. Working with studio support financially but with a free rein artistically, the Coen brothers continue to surprise and to delight audiences with their outrageous sense of humor and their wide-ranging originality. —Carolyn Anderson Further Reading Allen, William Rodney, ed. The Coen Brothers Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2006. A collection of twenty-five interviews conducted over
Jewish Americans two decades, from American, French, British, and Internet publications. Doom, Ryan P. The Brothers Coen: Unique Characters of Violence. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2009. Considers thirteen films, in separate chapters, with special attention to character analysis; bibliography is organized by film titles. Falsani, Cathleen. The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2008. Although Falsani draws from Jewish mysticism in her treatment of The Big Lebowski, the religion columnist finds “spiritual messages” in fourteen Coen films, mostly based on a Christian perspective. Includes appendix of study questions. Levine, Josh. The Coen Brothers: The Story of Two American Filmmakers. Toronto: ECW Press, 2000. Seven chapters are devoted to behind-the-scenes stories of single films; five chapters cover thematic or biographical topics. Includes black-and-white photographs and filmography. Robson, Eddie. Coen Brothers. London: Virgin Books, 2003. Chapters focus on individual films; includes an interview with the brothers. Rowell, Erica. The Brothers Grim: The Films of Ethan and Joel Coen. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2007. Based on the author’s Ph.D. dissertation; provides a comprehensive survey of films to 2004. Numerous black-and-white photographs. Extensive bibliography. See also: Woody Allen; Judd Apatow; Larry David; Harold Ramis.
Leonard Cohen Canadian-born songwriter, poet, and folksinger Cohen is an influential poet-singer-songwriter, whose work encompasses folk, popular, and rock music. Born: September 21, 1934; Montreal, Quebec, Canada Also known as: Leonard Norman Cohen (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; literature Early Life Leonard Cohen (LEHN-urd KOH-ehn) was born on September 21, 1934, in Montreal, Quebec, to Nathan Cohen, an engineer and a men’s clothing store owner of self230
proclaimed Kohanim descent, and Marsha Klinitsky, a nurse of Lithuanian Jewish descent. Cohen’s childhood was steeped in Judaism; Cohen later claimed it had been a Messianic childhood. He was taught that he was not merely of Jewish descent, but he was a descendant of Aaron, the first Hebrew high priest of the Israelites. This and other legacies would influence Cohen’s work. From his father, who died in 1943, when Cohen was only nine years old, he inherited a modest trust fund that would support his future ambitions; from his mother, he probably inherited a propensity for periods of depression. Cohen thrived in his progressive, open-minded upbringing,
Jewish Americans and he was given a wide range of freedom of expression. He played piano and clarinet; and by the age of thirteen he had learned guitar. Attending Herzliah Hebrew High School, he studied with creative fellows A. M. Klein and Irving Layton, and he played guitar at local coffeehouses and in a country-folk band, Buckskin Boys, he and his friends formed in 1951. Throughout the 1950’s, Cohen was also active in the underground literary scene, and he combined his attraction to the writings of William Blake, Jean Genet, and Walt Whitman with his affinity for the folk music of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and others. Life’s Work In 1951, Cohen began to study at McGill University. His poems were published in a collection, Let Us Compare Mythologies, which was the first book in the McGill Poetry Series in 1956. He won his first creative writing award, the McNaughton Prize, before graduating with a B.A. in English in 1955. He had a single term at McGill’s law school and then briefly, from 1956 to 1957, took graduate studies at Columbia University in New York. Let Us Compare Mythologies won the 1956 McGill Literary Award, which included a grant that enabled the twenty-three-year-old to travel. He visited Cuba, lived and wrote in England for four years, traveled throughout Europe, and then moved to Greece. For six years he lived on the island of Hydra with his muse, model Marianne Ihlen, and her son. He wrote and published three poetry collections and two novels; he drafted his first songs; and occasionally returned to Montreal to give readings. By the mid-1960’s, Cohen’s published poetry and prose had earned critical and popular favor. His songs, thanks to the work of folksinger Judy Collins, soon got the same reception. In 1966, he visited New York, where he was introduced to Collins, who in turn introduced several of his pieces on her next album, In My Life (1966). In the summer of 1967, Cohen debuted at the Newport Folk Festival and followed up with two sold-out New York City concerts and a television appearance, in which he sang his songs and recited his poetry. Despite his private concerns that he did not have a suitable voice, in 1968 Cohen produced his first album, The Songs of Leonard Cohen. For the next twenty-five years, Cohen would produce eleven albums and four collections of poetry. During this time, Cohen broke ties with Greece and Marianne (a farewell immortalized in the song “So Long, Marianne”), moved back to the United States, and met Suzanne Elrod, who became his longtime companion and with whom he had two children, Adam and Lorca. His career briefly
Cohen, Leonard
Rock’s Poet Laureate Leonard Cohen is a creative powerhouse, earning the praise of literary and musical critics. Although decidedly his own man, Cohen has been described by Nicholas Jennings of Maclean’s as “Canada’s answer to Bob Dylan” and by Rolling Stone as “the Jewish Bryan Ferry” and by the The Boston Globe as the “[living] James Joyce.” What connects these monikers is Cohen’s multitalent, which transcends the limiting poet or songwriter designations. His aesthetic embraces several creative fields, including poetry, lyrics, and music that is rooted in European and American country-folk and pop, cabaret, European, and world melody and instrumentation.
stuttered through the early 1980’s, but soon he saw a rising wave of new followers, as devout as those of the 1960’s and 1970’s. In 1986, singer Jennifer Warnes recorded an album called Famous Blue Raincoat that featured mostly Cohen songs. In 1988, Cohen had success with I’m Your Man; in 1991, the editor of France’s premier rock magazine, Les Inrockuptibles, Christian Fevret produced an album titled I’m Your Fan, for which eighteen singers and groups, among them the Pixies, R.E.M., and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, recorded their favorite Cohen song. After several years of touring, in 1994, Cohen moved to the Mount Baldy Zen Center, outside Los Angeles. There, Cohen trained in the discipline of Japanese Rinzai Zen and released albums of his live concerts. In 1996, Cohen moved to Los Angeles; in 2001, he produced his thirteenth album, Ten New Songs. After that came five new and three digitally remastered albums. Significance Cohen’s music and performances have made him an iconic figure. His music and poetic lyrics have attracted audiences of all ages, and his songs are thematically rich, on spiritual, political, sensual, historical, and religious topics. In an interview, Cohen admitted that he has “a lot of versions” of himself and that he has “used religion to support” them. His career has lasted for decades, through Cohen’s varied life changes, but audiences consistently respond to his revelatory music. —Roxanne McDonald Further Reading Footman, Tim. Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah—A New Biography. New Malden, Surrey: Chrome Dreams, 2009. 231
Cohen, Mickey Chronicles the stages of Cohen’s life through his songs; includes updated and previously unpublished research and photography. Hendrickx, Marc. Yesterday’s Tomorrow: Leonard Cohen. Australia: Brandl and Schlesinger, 2008. Approaching Cohen’s work from the position of literary critic, Hendrickx examines the unique success of a poet reconciling the literary (poetry) with the musical (lyrics). Nadel, Ira B. Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. Elaborating on his first Cohen biography. A Life in Art
Jewish Americans (1994), author Nadel includes research into Cohen’s career by way of interviews, letters, and tight literary exploration of the icon’s poetry, prose, and song lyrics. Sheppard, David. Leonard Cohen: Kill Your Idols. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2000. A chronicler of the lives of popular musical artists, Sheppard depicts Cohen as an antihero and analyzes his songs and influences. See also: Bob Dylan; Billy Joel; Carole King; Carly Simon; Paul Simon; Stephen Sondheim; Kurt Weill.
Mickey Cohen Crime boss Cohen was a low-level gunman for Al Capone who rose in the gangster world to take over the West Coast operations of the New York Italian mobs. Born: September 4, 1913; Brooklyn, New York Died: July 29, 1976; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Meyer Harris Cohen (full name) Area of achievement: Crime Early Life Mickey Cohen (KOH-ehn) was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in an impoverished home. Two months after Cohen was born, his father died. When Cohen was four years old, his mother moved to Los Angeles, where she ran a drugstore to support her five children. Cohen was not particularly literate or educated. He was interested in making money on the streets. Cohen’s first job after arriving in California was selling newspapers with his older siblings in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles. Cohen struggled throughout school and later dropped out. It was reported that Cohen could not add or subtract, a significant disadvantage in his later years of crime. At the age of nine, he attempted to rob a film theater in downtown Los Angeles, using a baseball bat as a weapon. After the end of Prohibition in 1933, Cohen began boxing in illegal prizefighting matches. He fought several nights a week in clubs throughout Los Angeles. His brother, Harry, who had moved to Cleveland, Ohio, decided that he would promote Cohen’s career by sending him to a professional training gym run by Lou Stillman in New York City. At age sixteen, Cohen was a profes232
sional boxer. He fought in various weight divisions and, by all accounts, experienced limited success. However, Cohen’s exposure to the pugilists’ circle provided him with an entry into the underworld of New York City. It also gave him some notoriety and a reputation that would allow him to promote himself later as a strongman. Cohen left boxing after four years. He was not making much money, and he was more interested in associating with members of the criminal element who came to watch him fight. Cohen decided to move to Cleveland to become a full-time mobster. Initially, he was not accepted by those involved with criminal syndicates in Ohio, so he committed robberies on his own. He was successful robbing brothels, gambling houses, and clubs where bootlegged liquor was sold. Cohen attracted a crew of his own, and he was commissioned to work for the local mob. One day he got into a fight with the brother of one of Cleveland’s top organized crime leaders. This led to his departure for Chicago, where he would become a gunman for the notorious mobster Al Capone. Life’s Work Cohen’s level of contribution to the Capone gang is unclear, because there are competing accounts as to how much Cohen was involved in Capone’s activities. What is indisputable is that Capone accepted Cohen as a low-level gunman in his organization. When he was not acting as an enforcer for Capone, Cohen was making money by running illicit underground card games. Cohen became dissatisfied with his take from the card games and started to run a dice gambling enterprise. The Chicago organized crime syndicate was upset by Cohen’s entrepreneurial
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endeavors. This, accompanied by Cohen’s capacity to aggravate other criminals and get into brawls and disputes, led to his hasty departure from Chicago. In 1937, Cohen returned to Los Angeles to work as a strongman for Bugsy Siegel. Siegel had been a pivotal player in a criminal syndicate in New York City run by Lucky Luciano. The syndicate appointed Siegel as the organizer of gambling operations on the West Coast. Siegel, who had relocated his family to Los Angeles in hopes of removing himself from criminal enterprises, was called upon to coordinate and control the illegal activities outside the reach of the East Coast organization. He responded by quickly establishing gambling houses and offshore gambling ships, while consolidating bookmaking, prostitution, and narcotics rackets. He maintained an extravagant lifestyle in Beverly Hills, where he attended parties with Hollywood stars. Cohen, who had emulated the fashion style and demeanor of Capone, began to imitate Siegel’s Hollywood lifestyle. In 1947, Siegel was shot and killed, leaving Cohen to become the West Coast boss. Cohen learned from his days with Chicago’s organized crime that being connected to politicians and leaders in his community was vital to keeping him out of trouble. As a result, he immediately began to ingratiate himMickey Cohen. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) self with Hollywood studio executives and prominent political figures. Significance Cohen was particularly adept at exploiting others. Cohen was an enterprising individual who, despite a When he was not making friends with the Hollywood set, lack of education and connections, became a leading figsuch as Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., he was blackure as an affiliate of Italian-based organized crime. He mailing studio elites with photographs of famous actors created his own criminal gang, known as the Combinain compromising positions. One of the most infamous tion, because of its members’ mix of ethnicities. Cohen was the recording of Lana Turner engaged in a sexual act attained success by maximizing his strengths and emwith John Stompanato, an affiliate of organized crime. ploying individuals with various racial backgrounds. Stompanato was employed as Cohen’s bodyguard. — Karen K. Clark William H. Parker, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, aggressively sought to end organized crime Further Reading and political corruption in Los Angeles. Parker’s strugBlock, Lawrence, ed. Gangsters, Swindlers, Killers, and gle against Cohen has been popularly covered in various Thieves: The Lives and Crimes of Fifty American Vilfilms, such as L.A. Confidential (1997). Ultimately, it lains. London: Oxford University Press, 2004. Block, was the federal government that put Cohen in prison. In the editor of this collection of biographies, is a writer 1950, the Senate Select Committee on Organized Crime of crime fiction. This book includes brief yet compreindicted Cohen on tax evasion, and he received a fourhensive memoirs of fifty American criminals. year sentence. In 1961, Cohen returned to prison for a Butin, John. L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of second term, again relating to tax evasion. This time he America’s Most Seductive City. New York: Harmony was sent to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. He was Books, 2009. Butin is a crime writer for Governing transferred to a prison in Atlanta and finally released in magazine. In this remarkable text, he outlines how 1972. Although there were many attempts on his life, Cohen’s life as a gangster developed and how the Los Cohen died peacefully at home in 1976. 233
Cohen, Paul Joseph Angeles Police Department struggled to rein in organized crime. Cohen, Michael, and John Nugent. Mickey Cohen, in My Own Words. Englewood, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1975. This book is an autobiography written with reporter Nugent. Cohen lists his skills as a gangster and names celebrities with whom he did business. Lewis, Brad. Hollywood’s Celebrity Gangster: The In-
Jewish Americans credible Life and Times of Mickey Cohen. New York: Enigma Books, 2007. This book is both entertaining and informative. There are more than forty pages of notes to substantiate this comprehensive recounting of Cohen’s life. See also: Leo Frank; Meyer Lansky; Arnold Rothstein; Dutch Schultz; Bugsy Siegel; Abner Zwillman.
Paul Joseph Cohen Mathematician Cohen revolutionized mathematical logic by introducing a new technique to solve a long-standing problem in set theory. Born: April 2, 1934; Long Branch, New Jersey Died: March 23, 2007; Stanford, California Area of achievement: Mathematics Early Life Paul Joseph Cohen (KOH-ehn) was born in New Jersey but spent most of his childhood in Brooklyn. His parents, Abraham Cohen and Minnie Kaplan, emigrated from Poland when they were in their teens, and they provided a fair amount of Jewish tradition to the household. There were three older siblings in the family, two sisters and a brother. Cohen’s father had had some religious education, but neither parent had had much exposure to the secular world. Cohen was always interested in mathematics, and he was assisted by his older sister, who would get books out of the Brooklyn Public Library and elsewhere for him before he was old enough to do so for himself. He went to Stuyvesant High School, one of the best schools in the country for mathematics, and he graduated sixth in his class. After that he turned to Brooklyn College and studied there for three years, but he left to pursue graduate study at the University of Chicago without taking an undergraduate degree. At Chicago he blossomed under the guidance of outstanding mathematicians, including Antoni Zygmund, who advised Cohen while he was writing his dissertation on trigonometric series, for which Cohen received his doctorate in 1958. Life’s Work While still finishing his degree at Chicago, Cohen took teaching jobs elsewhere, including at the Massachu234
setts Institute of Technology, and he had a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1959 to 1961. His first permanent position was at Stanford University, where he became an assistant professor in 1961 and rapidly rose through the ranks to full professorship in 1964. He married Christina Karls, whom he had met on a cruise in 1962, and they had three sons, including twins. Cohen received the Bôcher Prize from the American Mathematical Society for work he had done in the area of his thesis, but he had his sights set on a higher prize. There is no Nobel Prize in mathematics; the highest honor is the Fields Medal, given every four years at the International Mathematical Congress. It is awarded for work done before the age of forty, and Cohen was already thirty-two when he came to Stanford. As a result, he was looking for a problem for which his solution would attract worldwide attention. When set theory was created by Georg Cantor in the nineteenth century, an outstanding problem was the relationship between the number of whole numbers and the number of real numbers. David Hilbert had put it in a list of mathematical problems for the twentieth century, and the great Austrian logician Kurt Gödel had come up with a partial solution some decades before. This problem, known as the continuum hypothesis, was certainly famous in the world of mathematics. Even though Cohen was not trained in logic, he had some interest in the field. He conceived of the idea of looking for a model of the axioms (fundamental principles) governing set theory that included an infinite number of generic elements. Gödel had been able to show that if one added an axiom to the standard list for set theory, then the truth of the continuum hypothesis followed. Cohen’s new model enabled him to show that if one added a different axiom to the standard list, then the falsity of the continuum hypothesis followed. As a result,
Jewish Americans Hilbert’s original problem had been settled, if not to everyone’s complete satisfaction. The truth of the continuum hypothesis could not be settled by the ordinary axioms of set theory. For this work Cohen received the Fields Medal in 1966, and he made it the subject of his book, Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis, published in 1966. The rest of Cohen’s career was spent teaching and thinking about other long-standing problems in mathematics. He traveled a good deal, was fluent in a number of languages, and enjoyed music in various forms. Among the recognitions he received were an honorary degree from the University of Southern California and the National Medal of Science. He retired in 2004 and died of a rare lung disease three years later. Significance Cohen’s work was important in three ways. First, he resolved a mathematical question that had been part of the field of set theory since its creation. He demonstrated that there were questions not settled by the standard axioms for set theory and thereby raised the question of whether there were other axioms that ought to be added, an issue that remains a lively topic for debate among mathematicians and philosophers. Second, he introduced the technique known as forcing (to prove consistency and independence), which has become one of the standard tools in mathematical logic. Third, he was able to accomplish a task without having received his graduate
Cohen, Stanley training in that area. While many mathematicians decry the increasing specialization of branches of their subject, Cohen defied disciplinary boundaries and altered the logical landscape forever. Further Reading Albers, Donald J., G. L. Alexanderson, and Constance Reid, eds. More Mathematical People. Boston: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. An extended interview with Cohen offers a description of his home life as a child and of the sequence of thoughts that led to his major discovery. Barwise, Jon, ed. Handbook of Mathematical Logic. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1977. Offers a characterization of forcing that underlines its breadth of application. Gray, Jeremy J. The Hilbert Challenge. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2000. Provides a philosophical perspective for examining Cohen’s work in comparison to other work in logic over the last century. Yandell, Ben H. The Honors Class: Hilbert’s Problems and Their Solvers. Natick, Mass.: A. K. Peters, 2002. Describes the intellectual climate at Stanford during the years in which Cohen achieved his best-known result. —Thomas Drucker See also: Hans Albrecht Bethe; Albert Einstein; Rosalyn Yalow.
Stanley Cohen Biochemist Cohen, with Rita Levi-Montalcini, discovered, isolated, and characterized nerve growth factor. His research led to a better understanding of how wounds heal and of how to treat many serious ailments, such as cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and cardiovascular disease. Born: November 17, 1922; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Stanley Harold Cohen (full name) Areas of achievement: Medicine; science and technology Early Life Stanley Cohen (COH-uhn) was born on November 17, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York. He was the son of Rus-
sian Jewish immigrants—his father, Louis, was a tailor, and his mother, Fannie, a homemaker. As a child, Cohen suffered from polio, which left him with a permanent limp. Cohen describes himself in these years as being extremely interested in how things worked—from the interior workings of a telephone to the gears on his bicycle. While his parents had a high regard for education, money was tight, and all four Cohen children attended the local public school, James Madison High School. His grades were good enough to earn his entrance to Brooklyn College, a city school that charged no tuition fees. Following his graduation in 1943 with a double major in chemistry and biology, Cohen worked as a bacteriologist in a milkprocessing plant. At this point, his ambition was to become a laboratory technician, but one of his former pro235
Cohen, Stanley fessors at Brooklyn College offered him a scholarship in biology to Oberlin College in Ohio. Because of his keen interest in the subject, Cohen enthusiastically accepted the opportunity. Cohen graduated from Oberlin with a master’s degree in zoology in 1945. He was then awarded a Ph.D. fellowship in biochemistry at the University of Michigan. His thesis was on earthworm metabolism. While his days were spent working in the laboratory, his nights were often spent collecting thousands of earthworms from the university grounds. Upon completion of his Ph.D. in 1948, he accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado. In 1952, Cohen decided to study the emerging technique of using radioisotopes in metabolic studies, and he obtained an American Cancer Society Fellowship to work at Washington University in the radiology department. A year later he moved to the zoology department, where he embarked on a lifelong study of growth factors, for which he and Rita Levi-Montalcini were later to share the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986. Life’s Work Cohen joined the laboratory of Viktor Hamburger and Levi-Montalcini at Washington University in 1957. Hamburger and Levi-Montalcini were both Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe who had built a vibrant research laboratory investigating why nerves in chick embryo eggs grew when implanted with a mouse tumor. They recruited Cohen, a biochemist, to identify the active substance. He isolated the substance, nerve growth factor (NGF), and then created antibodies that blocked the growth factor’s activity. By this time, Cohen had a young family to support, and in 1959 he accepted his first teaching position as assistant professor of biochemistry at Vanderbilt University. There, he continued to study growth factors, focusing on epidermal growth factor (EGF), which he discovered, isolated, purified, and sequenced. He also identified the receptor for EGF and discovered its mechanism of action. This led to a new understanding of the mechanisms whereby a cell responds to signals from its surroundings. In 1976, Cohen was appointed American Cancer Society Research Professor at Vanderbilt. Together with Levi-Montalcini, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986, for their discovery of growth factors. He was also named Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt in that same year. Until his retirement in 2000 he was a familiar, unassuming figure in the research halls of Vanderbilt, usually seen smoking his pipe. Upon his retirement he became Distinguished Pro236
Jewish Americans fessor Emeritus at Vanderbilt. Over the course of his career he received many other honors and awards, including the Vanderbilt University Earl Sutherland Prize for Achievement in Research in 1977, the National Medal of Science in 1986, and the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 1986. Cohen was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1980 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984. Significance The discovery of growth factors had a major impact on understanding how cell growth in the body is stimulated in normal and abnormal circumstances. This had enormous implications for cancer therapy and led directly to the development of targeted anticancer drugs such as Herceptin (trastuzumab) and Gleevec (imatinib mesylate). EGF is also currently used to treat corneal ulcers and in burn healing. Growth factors may also hold important clues to a variety of other diseases, including Alzheimer’s. Applications of growth factors in the areas of aging and regenerative medicine, cardiovascular biology, cancer, and metabolic disease are currently being actively pursued. — Rosemary Whelan Further Reading Cohen, S. “Origins of Growth Factors: NGF and EGF.” Journal of Biological Chemistry 283, no. 49 (2008): 33793-33797. A personal reflection on Cohen’s early life and the path he took to the discovery of growth factors. This paper also includes a detailed description of the Nobel Prize-winning research and is a fascinating insight into the process that led Cohen to his major discoveries. _______. “Stanley Cohen—Autobiography.” In The Nobel Prizes 1986. Stockholm: Nobel Foundation, 1987. The text of Cohen’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Includes biographical details and honors up to 1986. Kresge, N., R. D. Simoni, and R. Hill. “Precocious Newborn Mice and Epidermal Growth Factor: The Work of Stanley Cohen.” Journal of Biological Chemistry 281, no. 10 (2006): e10-e11. Chronicles the life of Cohen with emphasis on his major contribution to growth factor discovery. Lists his many awards and achievements. See also: Richard Axel; Michael Brown; Gerald Edelman; Gertrude Belle Elion; Paul Greengard; Stanley B. Prusiner; Harold E. Varmus.
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Cohen, William S.
William S. Cohen Politician A congressman from Maine who served in the Senate and the House of Representatives, Cohen was a Republican who became secretary of defense in a Democratic administration when President Bill Clinton appointed him to the position in 1996. Born: August 28, 1940; Bangor, Maine Also known as: William Sebastian Cohen (full name) Area of achievement: Government and politics Early Life William S. Cohen (KOH-hehn) was born to a working-class family in Bangor, Maine. His father was a Russian Jewish immigrant who ran a small bakery; his mother was an Irish Protestant. Cohen attended the public schools of Bangor, where he sometimes faced ostracism because he would not recite the Christian prayers that were often part of the school day. When Cohen turned seven, his father sent the boy to evening Hebrew school. His father did attend synagogue services, but Cohen did not believe his father was deeply religious; Cohen thought his father wanted his son to have the advantages of a Hebrew education. While Cohen did well in Hebrew school, he felt out of place there as well as at the public school. Cohen believed that students and staff at the Hebrew school did not consider him truly Jewish because he was from a religiously and ethnically mixed family. As an adult, Cohen did not become an observant Jew, and his official congressional biography lists his religion as Unitarian. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine in 1962 and from Boston University Law School in 1965. In 1962, he married Diana Dunn, a young woman from Bath, Maine, whom he had met the previous summer. They divorced in 1987. Cohen’s first political experience was service on the city council in Bangor. He also served as an assistant county prosecutor for Penobscot County and on the Bangor School Board. He was elected mayor of Bangor in 1971. Life’s Work In 1972, Cohen was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served until 1979. In 1978, he won a seat in the U.S. Senate and served in that position until 1997. Cohen held to a moderate, independent course as a member of Congress. In 1974, he was one of the first Republican members of the House to favor the impeach-
ment of President Richard Nixon because of the Watergate affair. In the Senate in 1986, he was chosen to serve on the Iran-Contra Committee and was one of only eight Republican senators to approve the committee’s report that was critical of President Ronald Reagan’s role in that scandal. In February, 1996, Cohen married Janet Langhart, an African American author and journalist, in a small service in the chapel in the U.S. Capitol. After leaving the Senate, Cohen established the William S. Cohen Center for International Policy and Commerce at the University of Maine. President Bill Clinton appointed Cohen to be secretary of defense in December, 1996. The Senate confirmed his appointment on January 22, 1997. Cohen was the first Republican political figure to serve as secretary of defense in a Democratic administration. The major tasks he faced were reconfiguring the U.S. military forces to meet the conditions of a post-Cold War threat environment. There were also several prominent cases of sexual harassment in the uniformed services and at the service academies that were addressed during his
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Cohn, Mildred term. The terrorist attack on the destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen, was also a major crisis that struck on Cohen’s watch. Cohen continued to demonstrate an independent streak as a cabinet secretary. At times he openly differed with President Clinton, as on the question of committing U.S. forces to Bosnia. He also squared off against old congressional allies with his position on closing unneeded military bases around the U.S. and in his opposition to the B-2 stealth bomber program. When he left the secretary’s position, he worked in consulting and served on the board of directors of several major corporations. Significance Few politicians have had the breadth of experience that Cohen has had, serving multiple terms in the House and the Senate and directing a major cabinet office in the executive branch. He also stands as a prominent example of a moderate politician at a time when party lines were hardening and politics was becoming more stridently partisan. Cohen and his wife, Janet Langhart Cohen, have also worked to promote racial and ethnic reconciliation in the United States. While it is not uncommon for political figures to write nonfiction books on politics and government service, Cohen has published several books, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. —Mark S. Joy
Jewish Americans Further Reading Cohen, William. Roll Call: One Year in the U.S. Senate. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981. A personal account of Cohen’s freshman year in the U.S. Senate. Cohen, William, and George J. Mitchell. Men of Zeal: A Candid Inside Story of the Iran-Contra Hearings. New York: Viking Press, 1988. Cohen served on the Iran-Contra Committee in the Senate and cowrote this memoir of that experience with Mitchell, who was the other senator from Maine at that time. Cohen, William, and Janet Langhart Cohen, eds. Race and Reconciliation in America. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2009. In July, 2008, Cohen and his wife brought several prominent spokesmen from a variety of backgrounds to a conference in Washington, D.C., to address the issues of race and ethnic relations in the U.S. This book is a collection of the addresses made by the participants at that meeting. Cohen, William, with Janet Langhart Cohen. Love in Black and White: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Romance. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. A personal memoir reflecting on the experiences of the Cohens as a mixed-race couple and as children from families of mixed ethnicity. See also: Rahm Emanuel; Barney Frank; Henry Kissinger; Paul Wolfowitz.
Mildred Cohn Scientist Cohn spent her scientific career in the study of molecules and their roles in metabolic reactions. Her research into magnetic forces played a significant role in the development of medical instrumentation and their application in new techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Born: July 12, 1913; New York, New York Died: October 12, 2009; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Area of achievement: Science and technology Early Life Mildred Cohn (kohn) was born in New York City in 1913, the second child of Russian Jewish immigrants Isidore Cohn and Bertha Klein. Mildred Cohn first developed an interest in science and mathematics while attending public high school in New York City, graduating at the age of fourteen. As Cohn later described her 238
schooling, while most high schools of the period provided one year of chemistry, she was fortunate that her school provided two years for study of the science. Cohn’s interest in chemistry was further piqued by her best friend’s father, the owner of several beauty salons, who manufactured some of his own cosmetics. At the age of fourteen, Cohn enrolled at Hunter College in New York, majoring in chemistry. Her interests had veered to the study of physics, but the college did not offer a program in that area because women were not supposed to be interested in such a career. Cohn had to be satisfied with a minor in physics. Encouragement from her teachers was mixed. The chairman of the chemistry program, Charles Moore, made clear his feelings that it would not be “ladylike” for a woman to become a chemist and that the purpose of such an education was to train women to become chemistry teachers. Cohn was awarded a bachelor’s degree cum laude in
Jewish Americans 1931 and prepared to further her education in a graduate program at Columbia University. She was unable to obtain scholarship money at Columbia or even to serve as a paid teaching assistant—such positions were open only to men. Cohn was forced to use her own savings to pay for her education, earning money by working as a babysitter. She spent a year studying with Harold Urey, who would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for work leading to the discovery of the heavy isotope deuterium. Cohn received her master’s degree in chemistry in 1932. However, her inability to obtain scholarship money forced her to leave school, temporarily interrupting her education. Life’s Work In 1932, Cohn entered the workforce with a job at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, forerunner of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), at Langley Field, Virginia. There she became involved with computational work on a project dealing with ignition systems in airplane engines. In 1934, Cohn returned to Columbia University to continue work toward a doctorate. Working again under the direction of Urey, Cohn began her research with a project involving the separation of carbon isotopes. Urey also found a source of financial aid for Cohn through a work-study program, the National Youth Act, and even provided a loan from his Nobel award to supplement her salary. Unfortunately, the instrument necessary for carrying out the work, a special type of mass spectrometer, was not yet available. Cohn’s experiments continued to produce few useful results, and after a year she decided to pursue a different project, studying isotopes of oxygen. In 1937, Cohn received her Ph.D. in physical chemistry. Jobs remained scarce through the late 1930’s, and even where industrial jobs did exist few employers would hire either a woman or a Jew. Urey was able to arrange for a postdoctoral position for Cohn at George Washington University Medical School, working with future Nobel laureate Vincent du Vigneaud. In 1938, Cohn accompanied du Vigneaud to the medical school at Cornell University. That year Cohn married physicist Henry Primakoff, whom she had met at Columbia while a graduate student. They had three children. Cohn worked with du Vigneaud nine years. In 1946, Cohn moved with her husband to Washington University in St. Louis, where she began working with Carl and Gerty Cori, who would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine the following year. The research program carried out by the Coris involved the study of sugar me-
Cohn, Mildred tabolism in an area that Cohn independently continued. Applying new procedures such as X-ray diffraction and developing instrumentation utilizing nuclear magnetic resonance, Cohn provided an understanding of structural changes to molecules during metabolic reactions. In 1958, Cohn was promoted to associate professor of biochemistry. In 1960, she moved to the University of Pennsylvania, becoming a full professor in 1961 and retiring from there in 1982, as Benjamin Rush Professor Emerita of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Cohn died of respiratory failure at the age of ninety-six on October, 2009. Significance Cohn’s work was critical to the application of instrumentation, some of which she designed herself, to the understanding of metabolic processes. For example, her use of nuclear magnetic resonance enabled her to provide an improved understanding of the mechanisms by which enzymes catalyze metabolic reactions. During her professional career, Cohn published more than 160 scientific papers, and she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. She was also awarded nine honorary doctorates. Cohn accomplished her work despite having to overcome discrimination, for being a woman and for being a Jew, during much of her early professional career. —Richard Adler Further Reading Cohn, Mildred. “Mildred Cohn, Upfront.” The Scientist 17 (October 6, 2003): 15. Interview with Mildred Cohn. Cohn provided answers to questions about her early life and highlights from her personal life. Hargittai, Istvan. Candid Science III: More Conversations with Famous Chemists. London: Imperial College Press, 2003. One of a series of books by the author in which scientists are interviewed. Cohn describes her early life and her reasons for developing an interest in science. Wasserman, Elga. The Door in the Dream: Conversations with Eminent Women in Science. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2000. The author interviewed women elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Questions address their challenges, including those faced by Cohn, as the women pursued professional careers. See also: Paul Berg; Gertrude Belle Elion; Stanley B. Prusiner. 239
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Roy Cohn Lawyer Known as a fierce anti-Communist and hard-driving, no-holds-barred lawyer, Cohn was on the prosecution team that won the espionage conviction against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Born: February 20, 1927; New York, New York Died: August 2, 1986; Bethesda, Maryland Also known as: Roy Marcus Cohn (full name) Areas of achievement: Crime; government and politics; law Early Life Roy Cohn (kohn) was born in New York City, the only child of Albert Cohn, a New York County judge, and Dora Marcus. Roy Cohn spent his childhood in Manhattan. A gifted student, he accelerated in his studies and graduated from Horace Mann School early. Attending Columbia University, he earned a bachelor’s and a law degree in three and a half years. At the time of his graduation at age twenty, Cohen was too young for admission to the bar. Cohn clerked for New York law firms until he was able to take the bar, and then he was appointed to the staff of United States attorney Irving Saypol. When military conscription was reintroduced in 1947, Cohn enlisted, at age twenty-two, in the New York National Guard. Life’s Work Cohn’s tenure in the U.S. Attorney’s office occurred when both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) were investigating Communist espionage. Much of this was triggered in April, 1947, with the issuance of the U.S. Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations. Quickly, they held sensational hearings on left-wing Hollywood screenwriters and the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers espionage case. Saypol assigned Cohn the task of prosecuting William Remington, who had formerly worked on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program. Appointed to the Council of Economic Advisors in 1947, Remington was exposed as a Communist spy by his former wife, Ann. Her charges were investigated by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (later known as the McCarthy Committee) and HUAC. Remington and his ex-wife fired charges against one another. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and DOJ opened investigations of their own, including perjury charges. 240
Cohn’s team won a judgment against Remington, and, following appeals, he was sentenced to five years in prison. On November 24, 1954, Remington was found murdered at the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. While the Remington case garnered headlines, the explosion of an atomic bomb by the Soviet Union shocked the nation. The FBI had been monitoring evidence of Soviet penetration of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the first atomic bombs were tested. Laboratory technician David Greenglass admitted that he passed secret documents on to Soviet operatives, including his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg. Most of Greenglass’s network had already fled the country when the news of the espionage was revealed in 1950. Fresh from his triumph in the Remington case, Cohn was assigned by Saypol to help prosecute Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel. Cohn’s position on the prosecution team and the presence of Judge Irving Kaufman helped to defuse charges of anti-Semitism in the case. The couple were found guilty on March 29, 1951, and sentenced to death. After exhausting their appeals, the Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953. Cohn’s reputation for pursuing Communist espionage brought him to the attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Already well known for his own investigations of Communist infiltration, the senator became chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953. McCarthy selected Cohn for chief counsel; another candidate was Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy served as deputy staff counsel for six months before resigning in June, 1953. McCarthy used his position to investigate vigorously Communist subversion. Controversy marked both the senator’s tactics in hearings and the actions of staffer Cohn. When G. David Schine joined the staff, he and Cohn became close friends. Their visits to U.S. Information Agency libraries to pull allegedly subversive books off their shelves created unfavorable headlines, both at home and abroad. Eventually Schine was conscripted into the Army in November, 1953. Cohn quickly tried to secure special privileges for Schine, even requesting the private’s posting in Washington, D.C. Failing to bring this about, Cohn encouraged McCarthy to investigate Army security at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. The resulting field hearing, in which McCarthy sat as a committee of one, triggered a strong reaction from the Presi-
Jewish Americans dent Dwight Eisenhower’s administration, which urged the Army to inform the Senate about Cohn’s efforts to obtain special privileges for Schine. This created an impasse and eventually set the stage for the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, which took place over thirty-six days, between March 16 and June 17, 1954. Following the hearings, Cohn returned to New York, where he entered private law practice. Between 1961 and 1967, he was under criminal investigation for various allegations of misconduct. Having successfully dodged prosecution for wrongdoing most of his career, Cohn was disbarred in 1986 for wrongful conduct. Shortly later, Cohn died of complications from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) on Aug. 2, 1986.
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The Army-McCarthy Hearings For two months in 1954, Roy Cohn held the center stage of American politics. His role in triggering the Army-McCarthy hearings had major ramifications for Senator Joseph McCarthy and for Cohn himself. Prior to the hearings, McCarthy was popular, but the daily gavelto-gavel coverage proved to be too much exposure, placing the senator in an unfavorable light. The hearings involved two issues: whether Cohn had exerted undue pressure on the Army to give preferential treatment to his close friend and coworker G. David Schine and whether McCarthy had been too aggressive in pursuing Communist and other subversive influences in the Army. When Cohn offered testimony before Army counsel Joseph Welch, McCarthy asked Welch about the effort to bring Fred Fisher to the Army legal team. Fisher’s name had already been publicized in The New York Times, with stories about how McCarthy linked Fisher to the National Lawyers Guild, a Communist front group. Prior to the session, Welch approached Cohn about keeping McCarthy quiet about Fisher. In return, Welch would not mention Cohn’s failure to pass West Point’s physical tests. When McCarthy observed Welch baiting Cohn, he reneged on the understanding and brought up Fisher. Angrily, Welch chastised McCarthy for character assassination. There was no resolution to either the charges of Communists penetrating the Army or of Cohn seeking special Army privileges for Schine. The Senate wanted Cohn discharged from the committee, and this was quietly done after the hearings. For causes stemming from before and during the Army hearings, McCarthy was later condemned by the Senate on December 2, 1954.
Significance Among the most visible Cold War Jewish conservatives, Cohn was indelibly marked by his close association with McCarthy. For eighteen months, from January, 1953, to June, 1954, Cohn was one of the best-known figures in the United States. Mention of his name immediately recalled the Rosenberg case and the Army hearings. He resolutely defended McCarthy long after the senator’s passing. Toward the end of his life, Cohn became an unusually popular personality who mixed with many socialites, the Studio 54 nightclub scene in New York City, and political conservatives. His somewhat flamboyant lifestyle and eventual death from AIDS focused considerable attention on this disease. This led to his becoming a popular cultural subject for a Broadway drama by Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (1991) and a made-for-television biopic, Citizen Cohn (1992). —Michael W. Rubinoff Further Reading Adams, John G. Without Precedent: The Story of the Death of McCarthyism. New York: Norton, 1983. The author was an integral part of the Army’s legal time during the McCarthy hearings. Cohn is criticized for the pressing the Army unfairly on many issues. Eisenhower is widely credited as moving behind the scenes to bring about McCarthy’s fall. Cohn, Roy M. A Fool for a Client: My Struggle Against
the Power of a Public Prosecutor. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1971. Very personal account of Cohn’s six-year legal battle with United States Attorney Robert Morgenthau. _______. McCarthy. New York: New American Library, 1968. An unapologetic portrait of McCarthy. Many important points surrounding the Army hearings are left out of the narrative. The book’s final chapter is disjointed, perhaps reflecting Cohn’s professional circumstances at the time. Cohn, Roy M., and Sydney Zion. The Autobiography of Roy Cohn. Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, 1988. Posthumously published update of Cohn’s earlier book, McCarthy. Zion’s writing makes this an interesting read, especially with regard to Cohn’s problems after the 1950’s. Herman, Arthur. Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator. New York: Free Press, 2000. Scholarly revision of McCarthy in the post-Cold War era. Herman argues Communist subversion and espionage made McCarthy or a similar figure inevitable. He justifies anti241
Cole, Kenneth Communism as a legitimate cause but does not defend the senator’s controversial tactics. Hoffman, Nicholas von, Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn. New York: Doubleday, 1988. A blunt, journalistic biography that portrays Cohn in a highly negative light. The author says many associates had difficulty speaking openly about Cohn, even after his death. Oshinsky, David M. A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy. New York, Free Press, 1983. Solid scholarly treatment of McCarthy’s life and times.
Jewish Americans Cohn’s central position in the Army hearings is well explained. Reeves, Thomas C. The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography. New York: Stein and Day, 1982. An academic study of the senator. The author tries to explain McCarthy less as a villain and more as a tragic figure. The veracity of Cohn’s accounts of major events is called into question. See also: Gloria Allred; Alan M. Dershowitz; William Kunstler; Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
Kenneth Cole Designer Widely recognized for his achievements as a fashion designer who employs innovative marketing, Cole is a corporate leader in supporting such social causes as homelessness, gun control, and research into acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Born: March 23, 1954; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Kenneth Dwight Cole (full name); Kenneth D. Cole Areas of achievement: Fashion; business; activism
crowd. It worked; women purchased multiple pairs of the shoes in different colors. El Greco rapidly grew, creating five footwear divisions with licensing agreements for other shoes and accessories. At this time, the corporation was worth more than one hundred million dollars, and Cole’s sister and two brothers were also involved in the operations. In 1982, Cole decided to leave El Greco to launch his own shoe line. With $200,000, he started Kenneth Cole, Inc., contracting with Italian manufacturers to produce samples for several women’s shoe designs.
Early Life Kenneth Cole (kohl) was born March 23, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York, to Charles and Gladys Cole. His father owned a vending-machine company, and Cole grew up in Great Neck, Long Island. In the 1960’s, his father sold the vending-machine company and bought a shoe factory. El Greco Leather Products made sandals and everyday footwear. Cole once crossed the designs of two of the popular styles as a joke, but he otherwise showed no interest in going into design. He planned to become a lawyer, attending Emory University and earning his undergraduate degree in 1976, with plans to attend law school in the fall. That summer the manager of his father’s factory quit, so Cole agreed to fill in. As the summer progressed, he agreed to postpone school to continue helping at the factory. At a trade show in Italy, Cole and his father discovered a woman’s high-heeled slide with a unique wooden sole and heel and leather uppers available in a variety of colors. They bought the design and the Candie’s logo, and they began producing them at El Greco. Cole took charge of the marketing strategy, wisely aiming at the disco
Life’s Work Cole changed the name of his company to Kenneth Cole Productions, and he launched his line of shoes at a trade show in New York City. This allowed him to obtain a film permit (for the production “Birth of a Shoe Company”), which gave him permission to park a trailer on Sixth Avenue, setting him apart from the thousands of other companies participating in the trade show. Within three days, he and his crew sold forty thousand pairs of shoes, launching the Kenneth Cole brand and identifying it as hip and stylish urban footwear. First-year sales totaled five million dollars with profits of one million dollars. Cole followed this success by branching into women’s accessories, and in 1984 the first Kenneth Cole store opened in Manhattan. Men’s shoes, socks, and neckwear were added to the lineup, and in 1997 sales reached two hundred million dollars. In 1998, he launched a menswear line, with suits, jeans, and sportswear, and he followed that with the debut of his womenswear line, Kenneth Cole New York, in 2000. As Cole’s company grew, his ad campaigns evolved. With the Candie’s marketing experience to build upon,
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Cole wrote his own ads, known for blending political issues with personal views and bold images with quirky messages. He targeted such hot-button issues as smoking, voting, prejudice, unequal pay for women, homelessness, reproductive rights, and gun control. In 1985, he addressed acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) awareness in his ads and began to devote both time and money to AIDS research. Since 1986, he has served on the board of directors of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amFAR), becoming vice chairman in 2002 and chairman in 2005. His approach in raising social consciousness also expanded into fashion show themes, sales incentives, giveKenneth Cole. (AP/Wide World Photos) aways (which once included blank voter registration cards), and benefits. He Further Reading has even requested that those attending fashion events Alfano, Jennifer. “All-American Chic.” Harper’s Bazaar donate used shoes or clothing to low-income families (October, 2003): 224-228. Describes Cole’s business through the HELP USA Homeless Project, with which beginnings and his company’s growth and business his wife, Maria Cuomo Cole, is involved. This approach philosophy. Shows Cole’s Westchester, New York, has earned him numerous leadership awards, including home. Humanitarian of the Year from Devine Design in 1996, Cole, Kenneth, ed. Awearness: Inspiring Stories About Man of the Year from Footwear News for business sucHow to Make a Difference. New York: Melcher Mecess and social activism in 1997, the Dom Pérignon dia, 2008. Ninety individuals, from the unknown to Award for Humanitarian Leadership in 1997, and the the well-known Elton John and economist Jeffrey Milton Margolis Humanitarian Award from the National Sachs, share their informative and empowering stoFather’s Day Committee in 2002. ries on what they did to effect social change. Gault, Yolanda. “Giant Leap for Cole: Shoe Magnate Significance Steps onto Runway with Fashion Line.” Crain’s New Cole’s fashion blends classic lines and fabrics with York Business 14, no. 1 (January 5, 1998): 1-2. Deimaginative and edgy design to achieve styles that transiscribes the launch of the menswear line, the growth of tion between dress and casual, a quality important to the the company, and Cole’s success as entrepreneur. young professional. Cole’s brilliant entrepreneurial deciJacob, Mira, and Kenneth Cole. Footnotes: What You sions have allowed his generosity to flourish, as he incorStand for Is More Important than What You Stand In. porated cause-related advertising into ad campaigns to New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003. Heavily illushelp raise the consciousness of consumers and offset the trated biography of Cole’s company and how he comextravagance and waste within the fashion industry. He bined ads for his fashion and footwear with calls for was among the first designers to incorporate technology raising social consciousness. into his runway shows, opening with films in support of social causes or displaying images around the runway, See also: Donna Karan; Ralph Lauren. and using webcams and viral advertising to get his message out through the Internet. —Lisa A. Wroble
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Betty Comden Songwriter Comden and her partner, Adolph Green, created some of the most memorable musicals for the Broadway stage and for Hollywood film. Born: May 3, 1917; Brooklyn, New York Died: November 23, 2006; New York, New York Also known as: Basya Cohen (birth name); Elizabeth Cohen; Betty Cohen; Mrs. Steven Kyle Areas of achievement: Theater; entertainment Early Life Betty Comden (BET-tee COM-duhn) was the daughter of Leo Cohen, a lawyer, and Rebecca Sadvoransky, a schoolteacher. She married Steven Kyle, a designer and businessperson, on January 4, 1942; they had two children. Comden graduated from New York University in 1938, where she met Adolph Green. At the suggestion of their friend Judy Holliday, the pair formed a cabaret act in 1938 called the Revuers and performed at the Village Vanguard in New York’s Greenwich Village beginning in 1939. There, Comden and Green were often joined by Leonard Bernstein, who played piano for the musical act for free. The show’s success prompted Bernstein to approach the duo about writing the book and lyrics for an original musical comedy based on Fancy Free (1944), a ballet created by Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins. Developing Robbins’s ballet theme of three sailors celebrating a twenty-four-hour leave in New York City, Comden and Green crafted a light comedy featuring the nautical trio in manic pursuit of an alluring “Miss Turnstiles” poster girl. Directed by George Abbott, On the Town (1944) became a smash hit on the Broadway stage and launched the successful theatrical careers of its four young creators. Green and Comden appeared in the original cast as the sailor Ozzie and his museum-anthropologist flame, Claire, and the duo later wrote the screenplay for the equally successful 1949 film version. Life’s Work After writing the lyrics for the 1949 film Take Me out to the Ballgame Comden and Green penned Singin’in the Rain (1952), a spoof of the advent of “talking pictures,” that was directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. They won a Screen Writers Guild Award for their original screenplay, which they built around a catalog of 1920’s songs by Arthur Freed and composer Nacio Herb Brown. 244
Comden and Green had a long and fruitful association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as part of producer Arthur Freed’s unit, which began in 1947, when the team adapted the screenplay for the musical comedy Good News (1947), then scored a great success two years later with their first original screenplay, The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), also directed by Kelly and Donen, which reunited the dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The writers also turned a satirical eye on show business in their next two hit film musicals, The Band Wagon (1953) and It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), winning Academy Award nominations for both. Comden and Green devised their original story for The Band Wagon around another catalog of songs, this one by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, who had earlier contributed to a hit Broadway stage revue of the same title starring Astaire and his sister, Adele. The writing couple, played by Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray in the film, were based on Comden and Green. In 1989, thirty-six years after The Band Wagon was released, Comden and Green began writing the book for a Broadway stage musical to be based on the film. In It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), three war buddies reunite after ten years and are featured on a ludicrous “human interest” television show, but the team also spoofed singing commercials, audience-participation shows, and other eccentricities of the medium. In 1958, Comden and Green wrote the screenplay for Auntie Mame (1958), based on the hit Broadway play. The team’s stage successes were many, and they won seven Tony Awards and numerous Grammy Awards. An early show, Two on the Aisle (1951), with Bert Lahr and Dolores Gray, was a musical revue, and Wonderful Town, their 1953 comedy collaboration with Bernstein and Abbott, was primarily a vehicle for Rosalind Russell. It was filmed for television, again with Russell, and successfully revived in 2003. The writing partners followed this Tony Award-winning venture by contributing the songs “Never Never Land” and “Wendy” to the 1954 Broadway version of Peter Pan that starred Mary Martin; it was quickly filmed and it became an annual television event. Comden and Green also wrote the book and lyrics to Jule Styne’s score for the musical comedy Bells Are Ringing (1960), with Holliday as a telephone-answering service operator who becomes romantically involved with one of her clients. Both the Broadway show and a 1960 film adaptation, with Holliday in her last film role,
Jewish Americans proved highly popular. In 1958, Comden and Green performed a compilation of their own material in the popular A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, which reprised the duo’s songs and sketches dating back to the beginning of their careers as “The Revuers.” Do Re Mi (1960), with a book by Garson Kanin and music by Styne, had a largely forgotten score but two memorable stars: Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker. In 1961, Comden and Green wrote Subways Are for Sleeping and Fade Out-Fade In; both had scores by Styne. The duo won a second Tony Award in 1967 for the lyrics to Hallelujah, Baby!, a Broadway production starring Leslie Uggams as a black singer who faces racial discrimination while trying to break into show business. In 1970, Comden and Green enjoyed one of their biggest successes in years with Applause, their musical version of the 1950 film classic All About Eve; it garnered rave reviews and swept the Tony Awards. The writing duo scored another hit in 1978 with On the Twentieth Century, based on the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play about a flamboyant producer and his leading lady traveling from Hollywood to New York on the Twentieth Century Limited train in the 1930’s. Green and Comden won Tony Awards for their book and lyrics. In a joint writing career remarkable for its many successes and few failures, Comden and Green suffered a notable disappointment in 1982 with A Doll’s Life, a sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s classic tragedy Et dukkehjem (1879; A Doll’s House, 1880). Critics dismissed the production as ill-conceived, and the show closed in less than a week. The team’s last major Broadway show was The Will Rogers Follies (1991), a Ziegfeld-style extravaganza, with music by Cy Coleman and book by Peter Stone. It won six Tony Awards, including one for the music and lyrics, and it ran for more than two years. In 1999, performers such as Nathan Lane, Faith Prince, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Amanda Green performed in Carnegie Hall Celebrates Betty Comden and Adolph Green, to sing the duo’s famous show tunes. The show included selections from Bells Are Ringing, Peter Pan, and Wonderful Town. As a solo artist, Comden appeared in films such as Greenwich Village (1944), My Favorite Year (1982), Sidney Lumet’s Garbo Talks (1984), and Slaves of New York (1989).
Comden, Betty Significance Comden was part of one of the longest-lasting writing teams in show business, and she was known for her quick wit and facile ability to pen words and lyrics that captured the essence of a character and sharp, but always affectionate, slices of American life. While reflecting on the durability of his creative partnership with Comden, Green once suggested that their being married to different people helped. The collaborators were so in sync with each other that neither could say exactly who came up with any given phrase or idea in their finished writings. — Martin J. Manning Further Reading Comden, Betty. Off Stage. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Describes Comden’s life apart from Green, including her youth in Brooklyn, her husband’s death, and her son’s losing battle with drug addiction. Kresh, Paul. “Betty Comden and Adolph Green: A Profile.” Stereo Review 30 (April, 1973): 54-63. Essay focused on the recordings produced from Comden and Green shows. Rather dated, although the piece is especially good on the team’s early years. Robinson, Alice M. Betty Comden and Adolph Green: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. This is a thorough compilation of the team’s work and the critical reception of each work, along with other material on them. Roddick, Nick. “Betty Comden [and Adolph Green].” In American Screenwriters: Second Series, edited by Randall Clark. Vol. 44 in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, 1986. Comprehensive treatment of the Comden-Green team, with emphasis on the films they wrote for Hollywood, along with play productions and television presentations. See also: Burt Bacharach; Sammy Cahn; George Gershwin; Ira Gershwin; Adolph Green; Lorenz Hart; Jerry Herman; Jerome Kern; Alan Jay Lerner; Frederick Loewe; Richard Rodgers; Stephen Sondheim; Jule Styne.
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Aaron Copland Composer and conductor As a composer, teacher, critic, and writer, Copland played a primary role in creating a distinctively American music. Born: November 14, 1900; Brooklyn, New York Died: December 2, 1990; North Tarrytown, New York Also known as: Aaron Kaplan (birth name) Area of achievement: Music Early Life Aaron Copland (EHR-ehn KOHP-land) was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900, into a Jewish immigrant family. His father had immigrated from Lithuania and his mother from Poland. Copland was their fifth and last child. The family owned a neighborhood store in Brooklyn and lived above the establishment, a common practice at the time. They attended religious ser-
Aaron Copland. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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vices at Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes. Copland attended public school in Brooklyn. When he was eleven, he took his first piano lessons from his older sister, Laurine. Three years later, he began studying piano with Ludwig Wolfsohn, a professional teacher. In 1917, he played the piano for the first time in a public performance. After graduating from Boys High School in Brooklyn, he continued his musical training, studying harmony and counterpoint with Rubin Goldmark and piano with Victor Wiggenstein and Clarence Adler. Fascinated by the jazz sound, Copland also played in a number of dance bands. In 1921, Copland went to Paris to study at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau. He studied with Paul Vidal and took a class in harmony with the famous pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Later he became Boulanger’s composition student, and he continued to study with her for three years. Boulanger was the primary influence on Copland’s career. Under her tutelage he developed the talent and skill in musical composition that would enable him to create an American music. In 1922, he wrote Four Motets, a work for chorus, his first composition for her. In addition, the prestigious French publisher Durand published his first work, Le Chat et le Souris, written the previous year. In 1923, Boulanger introduced him to Serge Koussevitzky, who played an important role in bringing Copland and his music to American audiences. Koussevitzky had just been named conductor of the Boston Symphony, when Boulanger, also an organist, was asked to perform with his orchestra. At Koussevitzky’s request, Copland wrote Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1924). Its performance by Boulanger and the Boston Symphony of his modernist work introduced Copland to the American music world. Life’s Work After returning to the United States from France, Copland continued to develop his skill as a composer and to experiment with innovations in music. In 1925 and 1926, he received Guggenheim Fellowships. He taught, gave recitals, lectured, wrote musical criticism, and composed. During this time, his interest in jazz decreased and he concentrated more fully on developing an American classical music. He was a founding member of the Young
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Composers Group and worked with other comAPPALACHIAN SPRING posers to promote a modernist classical music. In 1927, Copland played his Piano Solo in a Aaron Copland originally composed Appalachian Spring as the premiere performance with the Boston Symmusic for a ballet at the request of Martha Graham. It premiered on phony, with Koussevitzky conducting. From October 30, 1944, at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. 1928 to 1931, Copland and Roger Sessions Graham danced the lead role. Both Copland and Graham were inpresented a series of concerts, called “Coplandvolved in creating artistic works that were identifiably American, and they both drew upon American folklore and tradition to create Sessions Concerts,” in New York City as part artistic compositions. Their collaboration resulted in one of the most of their efforts to bring new music by Amerisignificant and popular American musical scores and ballets. Gracan composers to public attention. In 1932, ham’s choreography depicted a newly married young couple homeCopland organized a festival of music by Amersteading in 1800’s Pennsylvania. The ballet celebrated the courage, ican composers at Yaddo, an artists’ retreat in work ethic, and religious faith of the American pioneer. Copland Saratoga Springs, New York. In 1933, he orwrote a musical score for the ballet for thirteen instruments and set ganized a second festival. the final scene of the ballet to variations on the Shaker song “Simple During the late 1930’s and the 1940’s, Gifts.” Copland enjoyed enormous success and estabIn 1945, Copland rearranged his ballet score for a full orchestra. lished himself as one of the foremost AmeriHe received the 1945 Pulitzer Prize in music for the orchestra score. can composers. In 1935, he introduced his El In 1958, Copland rearranged the music of the ballet’s final scene as a stand-alone performance piece, “Variations on a Shaker Tune,” for Salón Mexico to the public; this was the beginband and then, in 1967, for orchestra. Appalachian Spring showning of Copland’s efforts to produce works cases Copland’s ability to work in various music genres. that combined elements of symphonic and popular music. This desire to increase the audience for his music also led him to compose music for films and ballets. In 1939, he comwidely performed by choral groups. In 1955, he wrote posed the sound track for Of Mice and Men and in 1940 Canticle of Freedom and in 1957 Piano Fantasy, in the music for Our Town. His music for The Heiress won which he explored elements of the abstract in music. the 1949 Academy Award for Best Score. From 1938 to By 1970, Copland stopped writing new compositions 1944, Copland composed the music for three American and concentrated on conducting. In 1983, he conducted ballets: 1938’s Billy the Kid (choreographer Eugene his last symphony. Throughout his life, he continued Loring), 1942’s Rodeo (choreographer Agnes De Mille), teaching at major music centers, such as Tanglewood and 1944’s Appalachian Spring (choreographer Martha in Massachusetts, writing and working to increase the Graham). In these ballet scores, Copland included tradiprestige of American music. He died of respiratory failtional songs of distinctly American groups—cowboys, ure in North Tarrytown, New York, on December 2, Shakers, and pioneers. The ballets were highly success1990. ful, and Copland received a Pulitzer Prize for Appalachian Spring in 1945. Significance During the 1940’s, Copland also composed classical Copland was a significant contributor to the developand patriotic music. In 1942, he produced his highly acment of an American music. He incorporated elements claimed and popular A Lincoln Portrait for the Cinof jazz, folk, and other traditional American music styles cinnati Symphony Orchestra. In 1944, he wrote Syminto his musical compositions. He composed music for phony No. 3, which included the popular Fanfare for the many different types of artistic performance, including Common Man. In 1947, he wrote In the Beginning, setorchestra, band, ballet, film, opera, chorus, and narrating thirty-eight verses of Genesis to music. tive pieces. Along with creating an American music, In the 1950’s, Copland continued to compose and Copland played an important role in producing an Ameradded new fields of music composition to his endeavors. ican ballet through his collaboration with De Mille and He also began conducting. From 1952 to 1954, he comGraham. He is celebrated for his popular American patriposed an opera, The Tender Land, which tells the story of otic works, Fanfare for the Common Man and A Lincoln a Midwestern girl preparing to leave home. Two songs Portrait. As a composer, teacher, critic, conductor, and from the opera, “The Promise of Living” and “Stomp lecturer, he worked fervently to introduce American muYour Foot,” both traditionally American in theme, are 247
Copperfield, David sic worldwide and to gain its acceptance and appreciation. As a teacher and mentor to young composers and musicians, Copland exercised a strong influence on the evolution of American music. —Shawncey Webb Further Reading Copland, Aaron, and Vivian Perlis. Copland: 1900-1942. New York: St. Martin’s/Marek, 1984. Detailed autobiography enhanced by reminiscences by Leonard Bernstein, Boulanger, and others. Includes letters, photographs, and music scores. Documentation and footnotes by Perlis. _______. Copland: Since 1943. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Continuation of the autobiography, with documentation by Perlis. Crist, Elizabeth Bergman. Music for the Common Man: Aaron Copland During the Depression and the War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Study of Copland’s compositions from the 1930’s and the 1940’s emphasizes his political beliefs and ideas re-
Jewish Americans garding social justice and their effect on his music. A different approach to some of his best-known works. Daniel, Peggy. Tanglewood: A Group Memoir. Milwaukee: Amadeus Press, 2008. Excellent source for understanding Copland’s importance to Tanglewood. Includes letters, interviews, newspaper accounts, and photographs. Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. Aaron Copland: A Reader— Selected Writings, 1933-1972. New York: Routledge, 2004. Includes a wide variety of Copland’s writings on music, composers, and social issues, and his letters and journal notes. Pollack, Howard. Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. In-depth study of Copland’s music, his dedication to creating an American music, and his contributions as a composer and teacher. See also: Elmer Bernstein; Leonard Bernstein; Danny Elfman; Philip Glass; Lorin Maazel; Itzhak Perlman; André Previn.
David Copperfield Magician and illusionist An amazing magician, Copperfield is noted for his dramatic art of storytelling and his mesmerizing illusions. Born: September 16, 1956; Metuchen, New Jersey Also known as: David Seth Kotkin (birth name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life David Copperfield (COP-ur-feeld) was born David Seth Kotkin in Metuchen, New Jersey, on September 16, 1956. His mother, Rebecca, worked at an insurance firm. His father, Hyman, worked at a haberdashery store, a location where one could buy buttons, ribbons, and zippers for sewing purposes. His parents were Jewish, and his grandparents came from Russia. At an early age, Copperfield became fascinated with magic. When he was ten years old, he used the stage name Davino, the Boy Magician, around his neighborhood. Two years later, at twelve, he became the youngest person accepted into the Society of American Magicians (SAM), which is the oldest magic organization in the United States. It has always been open to a wide array of magicians, from professional to novice, but it 248
was quite a feat for Copperfield to be admitted at such an early age. Although Copperfield was considered introverted, perhaps even an outsider, he used his magic as a way to fit in, to make friends, and to meet members of the opposite sex. At sixteen, he began teaching a magic course to college students at New York University. When he began Fordham University, at eighteen, he was cast in a Chi-
The Incredible Illusions David Copperfield has been called the most successful magician of all time. Known primarily through his innovative television specials, Copperfield has dazzled audiences by making the Statue of Liberty disappear in midair, by levitating over the Grand Canyon, by walking through the Great Wall of China, by surviving the Bermuda Triangle, and by nearly plunging over the raging Niagara Falls. He escaped from Alcatraz Island, home of the prison, in 1987. In his career, he has made more than one billion dollars.
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cago production, The Magic Man, playing the lead character. As a result of both his musical and his magical talents, the show became the longest running musical production in the history of Chicago. It was also at this time that he assumed the stage name David Copperfield. One year later, when he was nineteen, he began performing various magic acts at the Pagoda Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii. Soon he caught the eye of Joseph Cates, a well-known producer of Broadway musicals and television shows. In 1977, Cates produced The Magic of ABC, and it was hosted by Copperfield. This, in turn, led to several hugely popular The Magic of David Copperfield specials, which spanned from 1978 to 1998. Copperfield also had some film roles, including in the horror film Terror Train (1980). Life’s Work Copperfield became a household name with his The Magic of David Copperfield television specials throughout the years. During one of the specials in 1980, he levitated a Ferrari. While most magicians are satisfied to levitate an audience member, Copperfield had the skill to raise a two-ton vehicle. A year later, he made a full-sized airplane disappear within seconds. His deathdefying feats included surviving the Bermuda David Copperfield. (AP/Wide World Photos) Triangle, nearly plunging over the raging Niagara Falls, and escaping from an imploding building. Significance Ever the Renaissance man, Copperfield teamed with Copperfield has presented magic in an innovative and a writers Dean Koontz, Joyce Carol Oates, Ray Bradbury, captivating light to audiences of all ages, and he has also and others for David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible preserved the historical relevance of magic in his Inter(1996). The anthology contained original works of fiction, national Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts. Loall of which revolved around the history of magic. It cated in Las Vegas, Nevada, it is home to the world’s largwas later followed by a second volume, David Copperest collection of magic-related memorabilia, textbooks, field’s Beyond Imagination (1997). In 1996, Copperand relics. Copperfield obtained the Mulholland Library field’s Broadway show Dreams and Nightmares became of Conjuring and the Allied Arts in 1991; it held the a runaway hit, breaking numerous box-office records. world’s largest collection of Harry Houdini artifacts. His Copperfield said his role models were never magipersonal collection today contains more than eighty thoucians. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 1996, he sand items of memorabilia, including Houdini’s props stated, “My idols were Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and and the buzz saw used by Orson Welles in his War of the Orson Welles and Walt Disney . . . they took their individWorlds radio broadcast. While the museum is not open to ual art forms, and they moved people with them.” He the public, Copperfield allows entry to select magicians claimed he wanted to do the same with magic. He wished and collectors. to make it romantic, sexy, funny, and even goofy. These Copperfield maintains that his greatest accomplishwere things a songwriter or a filmmaker could express ment is Project Magic. Founded in 1982, Project Magic with ease. As a magician, he wanted to do the same on is a rehabilitative program that assists patients who have stage. 249
Cosell, Howard physical challenges because of arthritis, brain injuries, drug abuse, or learning disabilities. The therapeutic use of magic, including sleight-of-hand tricks, and of traditional rehabilitative techniques helps these patients increase mobility and dexterity and gain self-confidence. The program provides positive behavioral exercises, which assist in confronting real-life situations outside the medical facility. The American Occupational Therapy Association has endorsed Project Magic, and its programs are used as restorative measures in many hospitals in thirty countries around the world. Copperfield performs more than five hundred shows in Las Vegas yearly. He holds ten Guinness world records, including most tickets sold worldwide by a solo entertainer, largest international television audience for a magician, and the largest illusion ever staged. He has received several Emmy Awards, the Library of Congress Living Legend Award, a knighthood from the French government, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. —Natalie M. Dorfeld
Jewish Americans Further Reading Copperfield, David. Beyond Imagination. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. The text contains original stories involving all facets of magic by such noted contributors as Neil Gaiman, Tad Williams, Greg Bear, and Raymond E. Feist. _______. Tales of the Impossible. New York: EOS, 1996. Edited and written by Copperfield, the collection includes odd, electrifying, and original essays that capture the supernatural world of magic. Milbourne, Christopher. The Illustrated History of Magic. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2006. With a foreword by David Copperfield, this lively text presents a sweeping overview of magic from medieval Europe to Las Vegas’s shows, including those of Siegfried and Roy, Copperfield, and Melinda Saxe. Tannen, Louis. Louis Tannen’s Catalogue of Magic: David Copperfield. New York: Louis Tannen, 1983. Tannen explains the magic and subtle trickery behind many of Copperfield’s simpler illusions. See also: Harry Houdini; Ricky Jay.
Howard Cosell Sportscaster and journalist Cosell’s controversial reporting style and outspoken commentary often made more headlines than the sports events he covered. Born: March 25, 1918; Winston-Salem, North Carolina Died: April 23, 1995; New York, New York Also known as: Howard William Cosell (full name); Howard William Cohen (birth name) Areas of achievement: Journalism; entertainment Early Life Howard Cosell (HOW-urd koh-SEL) was born when his family was living for a brief time in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Before he was a year old, the family returned to their original home in Brooklyn, New York. Cosell’s father, Isadore Kassel, came to the United States from Russia in 1890. As often happened, immigration officials arbitrarily changed surnames, and the family became Cohen. Howard later adopted the name Cosell, which was closer to the original family name. Although his mother’s father was a rabbi, Cosell did not become an 250
observant Jew. He occasionally accompanied his father to synagogue, but he was never bar mitzvahed. In 1944, he married Mary Edith Adams (who went by the name Emma). Adams was a Protestant woman Cosell met while in the Army. Her parents attended their civil wedding ceremony at the city hall in New York, but both sets of parents opposed the mixed-faith marriage. Cosell was educated in the public schools of New York, and later he graduated from New York University with a degree in English. He also graduated from the New York School of Law. From 1941 to 1945, he served as an officer in the U.S. Army Transportation Corps. After the war, he began practicing law in New York City. His practice involved union labor matters primarily, but he also represented some actors and athletes, including the baseball star Willie Mays. In 1953, Cosell was asked to host a weekly radio program dealing with Little League baseball players in New York; this came about because of his work as a lawyer for the New York State Little League organization. Cosell worked with this show without pay for three years, and then he decided to abandon his legal practice to pursue
Jewish Americans a career in broadcasting. After lining up his own sponsor, he convinced the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) to hire him for a radio show. This began an association between Cosell and ABC Radio that lasted more than thirty years; he continued doing variations of his radio show, even after he became prominent as a television broadcaster.
Cosell, Howard moving live updates from inside the Olympic Village; later, when the terrorists took the nine hostages to a military airport near Munich to try to fly to the Middle East, all the hostages were killed when German authorities tried to rescue them in a raid. In 1970, Cosell became one of the three broadcasters involved in Monday Night Football, an innovative move to broadcast a National Football League game during weeknight evening prime time. Cosell was teamed with two former football players, Frank Gifford and Don Meredith. Their banter, often including barbed comments aimed at one another, became a standard part of the broadcasts. In September, 1983, Cosell referred to Alvin Garrett, an African American receiver for the Washington Redskins, with the comment, “Look at that little monkey run.” Although Cosell denied any racist intent in what he said, he was widely criticized, despite his long association with many prominent African American athletes. Later that fall, he left the Monday Night Football program. Cosell occasionally did other sports broadcasts for ABC television until the mid-1980’s, when his outspoken critiques of some of his fellow broadcasters in his book I Never Played the Game (1985) led to the end of his association with the television network. He continued working in radio until the early 1990’s. After his wife, Emma, died in 1990, Cosell suffered a series of strokes and largely withdrew from the public spotlight until he died in April, 1995.
Life’s Work Cosell covered sports in many different aspects over his long career with both ABC Radio and television. Early on, he was considered an expert on boxing, but he also became known for his play-by-play coverage of baseball, football, and several Olympic events. While he enjoyed this aspect of sports journalism, and developed a unique style of color commentary, he believed the heart of sports journalism was covering the lives of the athletes and the institutional aspects of American sports. Cosell first gained national attention for his association with the heavyweight boxing champion, Muhammad Ali. In 1967, the New York State Boxing Commission stripped Ali of his heavyweight world championship because he had been convicted of refusing induction into the U.S. military, after the Selective Service had rejected his request for conscientious objector status. Cosell believed this action was a hypocritical expression of racism, and speculated that Ali would have never been stripped of the title if he had been white. Cosell covered several Olympic Games during his career. Two of the most memorable were the 1968 Mexico City games and the 1972 Munich games. In 1968, two African American sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raised a “black power” salute and stood with their heads bowed while the American national anthem was played during the medals ceremony; they were protesting the treatment of African Americans in the United States. Cosell interviewed Smith shortly afterward, and Cosell’s sympathetic approach to the two athletes was resented by many viewers who believed Smith and Carlos had embarrassed the United States. When Arab terrorists killed two Israeli athletes and took nine others hostage in Munich in Howard Cosell. (AP/Wide World Photos) 1972, Cosell broadcast emotionally
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Cosell, Howard Significance Cosell pioneered a new form of sports journalism that focused on hard-hitting reporting and erudite commentary. He saw himself as a journalist who reported on the dramatic aspects of the sports world, rather than just reporting scores, statistics, and play-by-play. As part of the original crew of ABC’s Monday Night Football, he helped to create a new venue for professional football broadcasts in weeknight prime time. Monday Night Football became an institution to many fans across the United States. Cosell’s reporting of the 1972 Olympics, when the Israeli athletes were taken hostage and later murdered; the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, with the protests by African American athletes; and his vocal defense of and long association with Muhammad Ali will be long remembered as some of his major accomplishments. —Mark S. Joy
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Sports Journalism In the early days of his career as a broadcaster, Howard Cosell believed that most journalists covering sports were little more than biased cheerleaders for their local teams. He sought to bring higher journalistic standards to the coverage of American sports. Journalists in the sports field had often avoided any controversial subject for fear of alienating the athletes who were their most important sources. Cosell, however, relished controversy and eagerly sought interviews with those in the middle of any breaking controversy. He developed a style that was known for its eloquence and its indepth content and for his refusal to shy away from hot issues. His inquisitorial style (perhaps a legacy of his legal training) infuriated many of his subjects and much of the listening public, but at the height of his career no one could match Cosell for the impact and the influence he had on his field. He also personally editorialized on many subjects, such as scandals in professional and collegiate sports and Muhammad Ali being stripped of his heavyweight title after refusing induction into the American military. Cosell’s strong opinions were not well received by the sports world or by his audience.
Further Reading Cosell, Howard. I Never Played the Game. New York: HarperCollins, 1985. Cosell is critical of what he called the “jockocracy”—former athletes who were made sports journalists simply because of their previous experience in professional sports. _______. What’s Wrong with Sports. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. Cosell’s last book, with his commentary on the American sports scene in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. Cosell, Howard, and Mickey Herskowitz. Cosell. Chicago: Playboy Press, 1973. Cosell’s memoir deals almost exclusively with his career in sports broadcasting. Kindred, Dave. Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship. New York: Free Press, 2006.
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An in-depth examination of the relationship between Cosell and boxer Muhammad Ali. Includes more information about Cosell’s early life than any of his memoirs. _______. “Telling It Like It Was.” The Sporting News 226, no. 3 (January 21, 2002): 64. A brief retrospective of Cosell’s career, written shortly before the debut of Turner Network Television’s made-for-television film Monday Night Mayhem (2002), about the early days of ABC’s Monday Night Football broadcasts. See also: Mel Allen; Max Baer; Hank Greenberg; Sandy Koufax; Al Michaels; Bud Selig; Mark Spitz.
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Crystal, Billy
Billy Crystal Actor, entertainer, and writer Crystal is a comedian, an actor, a voice artist, a director, a producer, and a writer. He first captured national attention playing Jodie Dallas on the television series Soap, and he continued to charm audiences with his talents as an actor, in game show appearances, and as a guest host on television programs and award shows. Born: March 14, 1948; Long Beach, Long Island, New York Also known as: William Edward Crystal (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment
he hosted a university radio show. Crystal transferred to Nassau Community College in Garden City, Long Island, as a theater major. While at Nassau, Crystal directed a musical, The Apple Tree (1966), and spent several summers working with the college’s Alumni Theater Group. In 1969, Crystal joined two of his college friends to form an improvisational troupe that was variously called the Three C’s, We the People, Comedy Jam, and Three’s Company. The threesome toured and entertained at clubs, in coffee shops, and on college campuses. Crystal earned a bachelor’s degree in television and film direction from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. While still a student at NYU, Crystal was the house manager for the musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1971). On June 4, 1970, Crystal married Janice Goldfinger, a secretary and guidance counselor, whom he had met in college. Crystal toured and supplemented their income as a substitute teacher at Long Beach Junior High School.
Early Life Billy Crystal (KRIHS-tuhl) was born in Doctors Hospital in Manhattan to Jewish American parents. Crystal was the youngest of three sons of Jack Crystal, the manager of Commodore Music Shop, a producer of jazz concerts, and a record company executive, and Helen Gabler, a housewife and a performer at the family’s temple. Billy Crystal’s uncle, Milt Gabler, was a record producer, and Life’s Work Crystal’s grandparents were involved with Yiddish theFollowing college graduation, Crystal, his wife, and ater. When he was two years old, Crystal and his family their firstborn daughter, Jennifer, relocated to California. moved from the Bronx to Long Beach, New York. As chilOne night, while Crystal was giving a stand-up comedy dren, Crystal and his brothers enjoyed doing shtick, bit performance at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, execucomedy routines for their family members. Show busitives from the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) ness contacts that Crystal made through his father and viewed his solo nightclub act. ABC’s Norman Lear hired uncle as a youngster helped Crystal realize that he enjoyed performing. He took pleasure in sports, particularly baseball, and comedy. By the time he was sixteen years old, Crystal had begun performing at clubs. In 1964, he emceed for his school variety show. Crystal was captain of his high school baseball team; he enjoyed wrestling, football, and soccer; and he was nominated as the wittiest student in his high school class. After graduating from Long Beach High School, Crystal briefly attended Marshall University, in Huntington, West Virginia, on a baseball scholarship. When the baseball program was eliminated for lack of funds, Crystal left Marshall University after one year. While in attendance there, Billy Crystal. (1988 George Rose/Getty Images) 253
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During this time, Crystal created impressions of Sammy Davis, Jr., Joe Franklin, and Fernando Lamas that became popular attracOn September 13, 1977, the American Broadcasting Company tions in his shows. From 1984 to 1985, Crys(ABC) aired its first episode of Soap, a prime-time situation comedy tal joined the cast of NBC’s Saturday Night about two sisters, Jessica Tate (Katherine Helmond) and Mary CampLive and earned accolades for his perforbell (Cathryn Damon), and their families. The weekly half-hour sitmances. Crystal appeared in a number of com spoofed daytime soap operas. Media announcements broadcast before the show premiered foretold that it would include controversial films in the 1980’s, including This Is Spinal topics that were heretofore taboo for television programs. These proTap (1984), Running Scared (1986), The nouncements led some family and religious groups and organizations Princess Bride (1987), Throw Momma from to predetermine that they would boycott the program. Billy Crystal, the Train (1987), Memories of Me (1988), cast as Jodie Dallas, Mary’s younger son, played a particularly contenand When Harry Met Sally . . . (1989). With tious role as an overt homosexual. After some initial opposition from Dick Schaap, Crystal wrote and published the National Gay Task Force, Crystal toned down his rendition of Absolutely Mahvelous, his autobiography, in Jodie, and, ultimately, the character and the show were a success. In 1986. later episodes, Crystal’s character created more sensation when he faDuring the 1990’s, Crystal’s talents were thered a daughter through a seductive female friend. Crystal’s role as a used in fourteen films. In many of his films, gay or bisexual parent was a breakthrough for television. Soap aired including City Slickers (1991) and City Slickfor four seasons until April 21, 1981, and it helped to set new norms for television. Crystal achieved acclaim in Soap and went on to become a ers II (1994), Crystal played a role in and well-known Hollywood actor. produced the film. In 1992, Crystal wrote, directed, and produced Mr. Saturday Night. He did likewise for Forget Paris in 1995. In 2001, Crystal directed 61*, a baseball movie Crystal to appear as Meathead’s friend in several epifor television. sodes of All in the Family and as a guest on Howard Crystal wrote, produced, and acted in America’s SweetCosell’s variety show. Crystal also performed as the hearts (2001) and acted in and was executive producer for opening act for musicians, including Billy Joel, Barry Analyze That (2002). Crystal had voice roles in Monsters, Manilow and Neil Sedaka. Inc. (2001), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), Dinotopia: Crystal was cast as Jodie Dallas, the first explicitly Quest for the Ruby Sunstone (2002), and Cars (2006). In homosexual role for a main character on television, in 2010, Crystal played Jerry in Tooth Fairy. Crystal hosted 1977. This character’s portrayal on the new television the Academy Awards show six times during the 1990’s series Soap gave Crystal publicity and led to film opand in 2000 and 2004. portunities, including the lead role in Joan Rivers’s RabCrystal won a Tony Award in 2005 for Seven Hundred bit Test (1978), a film about Lionel Carpenter, the first Sundays (2004), a solo play based on his childhood and pregnant man. Crystal’s second daughter, Lindsay, was his parents. He has hosted the Grammy Awards three born in 1977. During the late 1970’s, Crystal pertimes. Crystal has been nominated for Golden Globe formed in ABC’s SST—Death Flight (1977), the NaAwards, and he has won Emmy, America Comedy, Hasty tional Broadcasting Company’s (NBC) Human Feelings Pudding Man-of-the-Year, MTV Movie, Scopus, and (1978), ABC’s Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (1979), and CableACE Awards. Crystal has a star on the Hollywood NBC’s Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Walk of Fame. Bomb (1980). Crystal is the author of two children’s books, I AlCrystal portrayed the Master of Ceremonies in a sumready Know I Love You (2004) and Grandpa’s Little One mer production of Cabaret (1966) in 1981. On Saturday, (2006). From March 12-14, 2008, marking his sixtieth January 30, 1982, Crystal appeared with comedian Robin birthday, Crystal held a minor league contract with New Williams in the first of five episodes of NBC’s Billy CrysYork Yankees. Crystal is one of the owners of the Arital Comedy Hour. Throughout the early 1980’s, Crystal zona Diamondbacks. guest-starred in several situation comedies; he acted in various television dramas and films; and he toured in Significance nightclubs and on college campuses. He was also a feaCrystal is a familiar face in comedy and is known for tured voice in Animalympics: Winter Games (1980). his signature lines “You look mahvelous” and “I hate
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Jewish Americans when that happens.” His charity work includes Comic Relief Telethons with Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams. Crystal helped support the Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund when he autographed a Harley-Davidson that was auctioned off for the cause. His other charities included the Dream Foundation, which fulfills dreams for adults with terminal illnesses, and the Museum of Tolerance, a Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum, dedicated to promoting education on the Holocaust and to eliminating prejudice. Crystal is a member of the American Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has created a video that promotes the education and research conducted at the institute. Billy Crystal Peace Through Performing Arts Project connects Jewish and Arab students in performing arts workshops that promote peace and understanding. —Cynthia J. W. Svoboda
Cuban, Mark Further Reading Crystal, Billy. Seven Hundred Sundays. New York: Warner Books, 2005. Crystal’s book version of a solo show he produced on his childhood, which included the hardship of the death of his father when Crystal was fifteen years old. Crystal, Billy, and Dick Schaap. Absolutely Mahvelous. New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1986. An autobiography of Crystal’s youth and early career in comedy. Fischler, Marcelle S. “700 Memories of Childhood in Long Beach.” The New York Times, February 27, 2005, p. LI1. This newspaper article provides an overview of Crystal’s childhood years in New York. See also: Albert Brooks; Eddie Cantor; Elliott Gould; Judd Hirsch; Robert Klein; Harold Ramis; Adam Sandler; Ben Stiller.
Mark Cuban Businessman, computer pioneer, and sports team owner Cuban pioneered the transmission of radio broadcasts and videos over the Internet. Since selling his company, he has remained outspoken on Internet, computer, and business issues and prominent as the owner of a professional basketball team. Born: July 31, 1958; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Areas of achievement: Business; sports Early Life Mark Cuban (KEW-buhn) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and he grew up in the nearby suburb of Mt. Lebanon. At an early age, Cuban displayed an interest in and aptitude for sales. When he was twelve years old, in order to earn the money for new sneakers he wanted, he began selling garbage bags to neighbors. He succeeded, Cuban later said, because he saw selling as helping people. He moved on to other products, selling powdered milk and stamps. One year, when a labor strike shut down a major Pittsburgh newspaper, Cuban recruited friends to join him in driving to Ohio, buying copies of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and returning home to sell the papers to people hungry for news. Determined to pursue a business career after graduation from high school, Cuban applied to Indiana University. He chose that school because it was the least expen-
sive of the country’s top ten business programs. At college, he continued running businesses while taking classes. His cleaning job in a store that sold computers exposed him for the first time to personal computers, still in their infancy, and he was intrigued by the machines. His most successful business venture was a bar he purchased in his senior year. Profits from the establishment paid for his schooling. After graduating in 1981, Cuban moved to Dallas, taking a job selling computers. In the course of one sale, he convinced a customer to back him financially in a new business. The company, called MicroSolutions, offered companies help in computerizing. With limited knowledge, Cuban took projects and then studied the situation to learn what needed to be done. The company grew quickly, and in 1990 Cuban sold it to CompuServe, an Internet provider, for almost six million dollars. With his sudden wealth, Cuban moved to Los Angeles. There he launched a venture- capital company that invested in emerging technology businesses. He also traded stocks. Life’s Work After four years, Cuban returned to Dallas. There, he connected with an old friend and Indiana University classmate, lawyer and accountant Todd Wagner. Wagner had an idea for a business that he thought he and Cuban, 255
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Introducing Streaming Content to the Internet When Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner launched AudioNet, the Internet was still young and content primarily was textbased. They saw that the innovative communications medium had the potential to become a new source of entertainment as well as information and that consumers would want streaming audio and video. Cuban had an important insight about this content that drove their business strategy. To attract visitors to the Web site, he believed they needed to provide something new each day. The need for fresh content prompted the pair to negotiate as many licensing agreements as possible. This need also led them to seek rights for sporting contests: There are always new games being played. They were innovators, and since they had no competition, they were able to secure multiyear deals with rights owners and pay low licensing fees. Cuban and Wagner also had foresight. At a time in which dial-up was virtually the only vehicle for Internet access, they negotiated for wireless rights, in case the technology changed, which did happen. Finally, they made sure that those visiting their Web site would always have access to their content by making use of satellite feeds and high-speed lines, using technology to guarantee the delivery of their product.
with his background in computers, could undertake together. The idea came from Wagner’s desire to listen to Indiana University basketball games. That was impossible living in Texas, but Wagner conjectured that the games could be transmitted anywhere by using the Internet. Cuban quickly agreed to join with Wagner, and they founded AudioNet. Starting with a computer, networking equipment, and high-speed Internet access, they approached local radio stations, offering to buy the rights for Internet broadcasting. They also went to universities, asking for the right to broadcast games played by the athletic teams and commencement speeches. Business mushroomed. Within just three and a half years, the pair had signed around nine hundred rights agreements and had to add new employees. The company began streaming video as well as audio signals and changed its name to Broadcast.com. It also moved into a new market, handling business communications such as teleconferences, meetings with shareholders, and other similar events. In 1998, Cuban and Wagner agreed to make an initial stock offering. The first day stocks were available, they opened at $18 a share and closed at $62.75. Believ256
Jewish Americans ing that Internet stocks were overpriced, Cuban wanted to maximize their gain from the company. The partners approached Yahoo and America On Line (AOL), offering to sell their company. Yahoo agreed, buying Broadcast.com for more than six billion dollars of Yahoo stock. More than three hundred employees (90 percent of the Broadcast.com’s workface) became millionaires. Cuban and Wagner became billionaires. To protect their wealth before Yahoo stock took the plunge that Cuban had predicted, they sold the stock. Cuban began enjoying his wealth. He bought a jet, a mansion, and the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team. This purchase was widely criticized; the Mavericks had suffered through many losing seasons. Cuban, though, was a fan and wanted to use his wealth to rebuild the team. Over the next few years, Cuban changed the culture of the Mavericks. Cuban invited fans to e-mail him their thoughts about the team, and he answered each message. He also kept his courtside seat, refusing to distance himself in an owner’s box. He spent money to upgrade the locker room and give the players luxuries, hoping to promote better play with better treatment. New management brought in better players, and the team began to thrive. Cuban’s exuberance courtside and in his blog often brought him into conflict with the National Basketball Association (NBA) commissioner, however, particularly over Cuban’s criticisms of NBA officials. A 2002 complaint netted Cuban a $500,000 fine. Another, in 2006, produced a $200,000 fine. Cuban paid each fine without complaint and typically made a charitable contribution for the same amount. Other owners often expressed displeasure at his behavior, however. Cuban became involved in other sports ventures as well. In 2007, he began investing in mixed martial arts businesses. In 2008, he attempted to purchase the Chicago Cubs, though that effort failed. Cuban has also pursued other businesses. Other than the Mavericks, his main activity since the sale of Broadcast.com has been his efforts to build the reach of HDNet, a high-definition television channel that he and Wagner launched in 2001. Various efforts to ensure content for the channel, including producing a movie, did not produce success, however. In 2008, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Cuban with insider trading in connection with the sale of stock in Mamma.com in 2004. Cuban contested the charges, and in 2009 a New York federal
Jewish Americans judge threw out the suit. The judge ruled that Cuban’s statements and actions did not constitute fraud as described in securities law. The possibility that the SEC would charge Cuban once again, framing the case differently, remained. In 2002, Cuban married Tiffany Stewart, with whom he had had a long relationship. They have two daughters and live in Dallas. Significance Cuban was one of the most successful Internet entrepreneurs of the 1990’s. Along with partner Wagner, he built the first company that focused on streaming audio and video content on the Internet, launching a highly popular use for the Internet and leading the way for countless other businesses. A savvy businessman, Cuban also demonstrated reasonable caution over the value of computer companies during the dot-com boom of the 1990’s. As the owner of a professional sports franchise, he represents a new breed of owner, engaged with his players, willing to challenge league policies, and open to the fans. —Dale Anderson
Cukor, George Further Reading Ericksen, Gregory K. Net Entrepreneurs Only: Ten Entrepreneurs Tell the Stories of Their Success. New York: Wiley, 2000. Through narrative and extensive quotes from Wagner and Cuban, the author discusses the founding and growth of Broadcast.com and the strategic thinking underlying its success. Leonard, Devin. “Mark Cuban May Be a Billionaire, But What He Really Needs Is Respect.” Fortune 156, no. 8 (October 15, 2007): 172-182. The article explores Cuban’s career, including his business ventures from childhood through college, the creation and sale of Broadcast.com, and his subsequent ventures. Orens, Geoff. “Mark Cuban.” In 2001 Current Biography Yearbook. Bronx, N.Y.: H. W. Wilson, 2002. This biographical sketch covers Cuban’s early life and business ventures through the creation and sale of Broadcast.com and his purchase of the Dallas Mavericks. See also: Steve Ballmer; Sergey Brin; Michael Dell; Larry Ellison; Larry Page.
George Cukor Director and filmmaker Cukor, a respected director of Hollywood’s Golden Age, brought a sophisticated veneer and witty dialogue to his films, many of which were based on classic literary sources. Born: July 7, 1899; New York, New York Died: January 24, 1983; Los Angeles, California Also known as: George Dewey Cukor (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Named after Admiral George Dewey, the hero of the Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish-American War (1898), George Cukor (KEW-kor) was born in New York City in 1899. His Jewish parents, who had emigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were Victor Cukor, a member of the legal profession, and Helen; he had one sister. Stage-struck from an early age, Cukor became assistant stage manager for a touring theater company, and in 1919, a couple of years after completing high school, he was working on Broadway as a stage manager. Not long thereafter, his directing career began with a New York
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Cukor, George summer stock company, a position he held during much of the 1920’s; he was company manager as well. By the latter part of the decade he was directing Broadway plays. Life’s Work With the advent of talking pictures the film studios sought to hire people with theater experience. In 1929, Cukor went to Hollywood as a dialogue director with Paramount Studios. His first film directorial job, after a few codirecting stints, came in 1931, and his career was soon well launched with a string of successful films. One director he modeled himself after was the stylish Ernst Lubitsch. Cukor next went to RKO, and with 1932’s A Bill of Divorcement Cukor established a long relationship with Katharine Hepburn, many of whose films he would direct. She described him as fat but energetic and smart with a sharp sense of humor. His biggest hit at RKO was Little Women, and it was there he met producer David O. Selznick. They commenced a professional and a personal relationship that was to last for many years. The son-in-law of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio head Louis B. Mayer, Selznick went to work there, mouthing the famous line that “the son-in-law also rises.” Cukor soon followed him. It was at MGM that Cukor began the most successful phase of his career, directing such classic films as Dinner at Eight (1933), David Copperfield (1935), and Camille
A Director with Class George Cukor’s directorial focus was on character development and on the subtle revelation of emotions. The portrayal of all aspects of a relationship, usually with humor but sometimes deeply dramatic, was a frequent theme of his films. Cukor was so involved when directing a film that he often silently acted out all the parts as the actors performed, complete with gestures. He believed that the written text should dictate the style of a film and often turned to the classics of literature and the stage. Witty dialogue was a hallmark of his films; an emphasis on special effects would not have pleased him. His body of work included musicals, comedies, dramas, romantic melodramas, and even a Western. No matter what the genre, his films always displayed a certain tastefulness. Despite earning the soubriquet of “women’s director,” he drew strong performances from male stars as well. His oeuvre is described as elegant with a touch of class.
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Jewish Americans (1936) with Greta Garbo. It was there that his reputation as a “women’s director” took root, and indeed he directed the all-female cast of The Women in 1939. When he was picked by Selznick to helm the prestigious Gone with the Wind (1939), he was heavily involved in its preproduction but spent only a short time in filming. It was reputed that star Clark Gable believed Cukor was favoring the female stars over him and the director was replaced by Victor Fleming. Cukor did continue privately to coach the film’s female leads, Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland. Cukor and Hepburn again worked together in The Philadelphia Story (1940), which is credited with reviving the actor’s flagging career. After directing military training films during World War II, Cukor returned to Hollywood, where his first major film was Gaslight (1944). Following that triumph he fell into a slump, which lasted a few years, until he directed another series of successful films. Among them was Adam’s Rib (1949) with Judy Holliday, an actor with whom he worked several times. Hepburn and Spencer Tracy costarred, as they did in Cukor’s popular Pat and Mike (1952). His 1950’s career hit its high point with Judy Garland’s powerful performance in A Star Is Born in 1954. Ten years were to pass until his next major success, My Fair Lady, for which he won his only Academy Award. He had been nominated for Best Director five times. Several stars did win Oscars under his direction, among them Ingrid Bergman, Holliday, James Stewart, and Ruth Hussey. My Fair Lady proved to be Cukor’s last successful motion picture. Although he directed a few more, among them his sole western, Heller in Pink Tights (1960), and Travels with My Aunt (1972), his career wound down with the little-seen Rich and Famous in 1981. However, at age eighty-two, he may have been the oldest person ever to direct a major motion picture. In 1976 he was the director of the first American-Russian coproduction, The Blue Bird. Toward the end of her career Hepburn had rejoined him in two made-for-television films. When he was past his directing prime Cukor began receiving awards and honors for his career, including an honorary doctorate, and retrospectives of his films were popular. He was a major player in the social life of Hollywood. Although he was discreet outside the film industry, Cukor was well known for the Sunday parties he hosted for the gay community of Hollywood. Such an event was depicted in Gods and Monsters (1998), the biographical picture about fellow director James Whale. In 1983, Cukor died of a heart attack.
Jewish Americans Significance Cukor did not make an issue of his Hungarian-Jewish roots, but his success on Broadway and in Hollywood demonstrated that a child of immigrants could reach the pinnacle of fame. His best films are considered all-time classics and are frequently screened at festivals and on television. The Cukor “touch” is evident in his work, a quality immediately identifiable as the product of an impeccable director. He had the ability to draw outstanding performances from actors as varied as W. C. Fields and Cary Grant, Marie Dressler and Greta Garbo. —Roy Liebman Further Reading Bernardoni, James. George Cukor: A Critical Study and Filmography. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1985. Very useful for an analysis of Cukor’s oeuvre; not intended to be a full biography. Carey, Gary. Cukor and Company: The Films of George Cukor and His Collaborators. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1972. A relatively brief overview of Cukor’s body of work. Clarens, Carlos. George Cukor. London: Secker and Warburg, 1976. A fairly brief work that was part of the publisher’s Cinema One series. It is the first book written in English about Cukor’s career and is partly based on interviews with him.
Curtis, Jamie Lee Lambert, Gavin. On Cukor. Rev. ed. New York: Rizzoli, 2000. A collection of interviews with and about Cukor. Levy, Emanuel. George Cukor, Master of Elegance: Hollywood’s Legendary Director and His Stars. New York: Morrow, 1994. An excellent, comprehensive biography about Cukor. The author had access to Cukor’s personal papers. Long, Robert E. George Cukor: Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2001. A collection of interviews conducted with Cukor later in his career, part of the Conversations with Filmmakers series. McGilligan, Patrick. George Cukor, a Double Life: A Biography of the Gentleman Director. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Like the Levy biography, McGilligan’s work benefits from his access to Cukor’s papers and thus presents a full picture of the director’s life. Phillips, Gene D. Cukor. New York: Twayne, 1982. Part of Twayne’s Filmmakers series, this resource concentrates mostly on Cukor’s body of work. See also: Cecil B. DeMille; Mark Goodson; Stanley Kramer; Ernst Lubitsch; Joseph L. Mankiewicz; Louis B. Mayer; Otto Preminger; Dore Schary; William Wyler.
Jamie Lee Curtis Actor and writer Curtis, the daughter of actors Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, became known for her work in horror films of the early 1980’s, and in later years she starred in films with John Travolta, Eddie Murphy, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In addition, she is an acclaimed bestselling author of eight children’s books Born: November 22, 1958; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Lady Haden-Guest; “The Scream Queen,” “The Body” Areas of achievement: Entertainment; literature; social issues Early Life Jamie Lee Curtis (JAY-mee lee KUR-tihs) was born in Los Angeles, California, in November, 1958, to parents Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, both actors. Curtis’s pater-
nal grandparents were Jewish Austro-Hungarian immigrants. Her father’s birth name was Bernard Schwartz, which he changed to Tony Curtis for his career in Hollywood; Curtis was a variation of Kurtz, a relative on his mother’s side. Jamie’s grandfather, Emanual Schwartz, was a tailor, and her grandmother, Helen Schwartz, was a shopkeeper. However, Curtis did not grow up with Jewish religion and traditions; in her later life, she came to value and to explore her Jewish heritage. After her parents divorced in 1962, she lived with her mother, her stepfather, Robert Brandt, and her older sister, Kelly, who later became an actor. Curtis has several half brothers and half sisters from her father’s later marriages. Curtis has been described as an introverted young girl. She attended Westlake School and Beverly Hills High School, before graduating in 1976 from Choate Rosemary Hall, a private college preparatory school in 259
Curtis, Jamie Lee Connecticut. She enrolled in the University of the Pacific in California but dropped out to pursue her acting career. Curtis established her early reputation as a professional actor through performances on television and in the horror films of the early 1980’s. In 1977, at age nineteen, Curtis made her debut as a television actor in episodes of Operation Petticoat, Columbo, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, and Quincy, M.D. She continued her television career the following year, 1978, in Charlie’s Angels, The Love Boat, and Buck Rogers in the Twentyfifth Century. That same year she was cast in her first feature film, Halloween (1978), as babysitter Laurie Strode. Curtis earned her nickname Scream Queen through her roles in horror films, including The Fog (1980), Prom Night (1980), Terror Train (1980), Halloween II (1981) and Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982). Life’s Work The next twenty-five years brought many film and television opportunities to Curtis. In 1983, she played
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Jewish Americans Ophelia, a prostitute, in the comedy Trading Places with Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy. Two years later, Curtis took the role of Jesse, a female aerobics instructor, opposite John Travolta, a journalist, in the drama-romance Perfect (1985). The year 1988 brought a comedy-heist film her way in the Academy Award-winning film A Fish Called Wanda. In 1990 her work in the television series Anything but Love brought Curtis a Golden Globe Award. True Lies (1994) rewarded her with a second Golden Globe Award for her film role as Helen Tasker, wife of Harry Tasker, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Curtis added other popular films, such as My Girl (1991), Virus (1999), Freaky Friday (2003), and Christmas with the Kranks (2004) to her credits. In total Curtis would be nominated for more than twenty entertainment awards during her career and win almost half of them. In her forties, Curtis became dependent on pain medication after cosmetic surgery. She admitted to being addicted to alcohol and to drugs, but she embraced a recovery program and became sober in 1999, which she claims as the greatest accomplishment of her life. She has served on the board of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, and she supports Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Teen Line. Curtis expanded her creative endeavors to include writing, and she became a best-selling author of children’s books. She also contributed a chapter for Alan King’s book, Matzo Balls for Breakfast: And Other Memories of Growing Up Jewish (2004). She wrote that she did not grow up with the Jewish faith, although she sometimes attended Bar Mitzvah parties. She described how four life incidents helped her reconnect to her Jewish heritage. The first was when she saw a picture of a sweet young boy holding his hands up in terror during the Holocaust. The second was when her father married a Jewish woman and celebrated in Jewish tradition under the family’s chuppah (canopy).The third was when she watched her sister and her father work with some Hungarian Jews to create the Emanuel Foundation, named for Curtis’s grandfather. This foundation restored the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest in honor of 600,000 Hungarian victims of the Holocaust. The fourth was when Curtis observed the gift her friend Deborah Oppenheimer made for her mother: the documentary, Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, which won an Academy Award. Oppenheimer’s mother was a survivor of the Kindertransport, a rescue operation that moved ten thousand
Jewish Americans mostly Jewish children from Europe to England before the start of World War II. These four life experiences connected Curtis to her Jewish history. Curtis minimized her acting career to spend time being a mother to her two children and a wife to actor Christopher Guest; she became Lady Haden-Guest in 1996 when her husband was named the fifth Baron Haden-Guest upon the death of his father. Curtis worked with various charities and served on community groups, such as the American Red Cross Celebrity Panel, to promote personal emergency preparedness. She offered her voice for ads supporting the Strong American Schools campaign.
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Finding Her Voice as a Writer Actor Jamie Lee Curtis did not plan to become an author of children’s books when she wrote When I Was Little: A Four-Year-Old’s Memoir of Her Youth for her preschool daughter in 1993. However, she worked on a series of stories, sent them to her agent, and a publishing house bought them. In an interview, Curtis said that she found her voice as a writer. As an actor she was always portraying someone else, but as an author she is true to herself. She is more interested in being herself and less interested in pretending to be someone else. Curtis has published eight children’s books with HarperCollins Children’s Books. Today I Feel Silly and Other Moods That Make My Day, published in 1998, stayed on The New York Times best-seller list for nine weeks. In 2008, she published Big Words for Little People. This book addresses how children live in a world of big people and big words such as “respect,” “patience,” “cooperate,” and “considerate.” Curtis explains that all words, whatever the size, can help connect people. She wrote this book to teach these big words to children ages four to eight, or prekindergarten to third grade.
Significance Curtis has been a successful actor in horror, drama, and comedy roles. Among her honors are Golden Globe Awards she received for her portrayals in the 1994 film True Lies and the 1989 television series Anything but Love. She also holds a Saturn Award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films for True Lies; an American Comedy Award for True Lies; and a British Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for A Fish Called Wanda. Curtis successfully navigated the trials of the glamorous Hollywood life, which included parental divorce and substance addiction, to become a successful actor with an established and stable family. She has publicly shared her shortcomings as an addict, inspiring others to overcome their handicaps, and she realized her dream to become an author. She reestablished her life’s priorities to value what matters most: family, friends, and giving to others. —Marylane Wade Koch
Further Reading Curtis, Jamie Lee.“In Her Own Words.” Interview by Robert Epstein. Psychology Today (September/October, 2001). Presents Curtis’s philosophy on self-esteem and self-worth, especially as they relate to young people. Discusses her writing of children’s books. _______.“Jamie Lee Curtis Interview: Starring as Her-
self, Embracing Reality.” Interview by Meg Grant. Reader’s Digest (December, 2004): 90-91. Curtis talks about her addiction to and recovery from drugs and alcohol, and the important changes in her life as mother and author. Griffin, Nancy. “Jamie Lee Curtis Turns 50: The Essential Jamie Lee.” AARP The Magazine 51, no. 3 (May/ June, 2008). Curtis details her family-focused life and her approach to better health as she moves into her fifties. King, Alan. “Four Things: Jamie Lee Curtis.” In Matzo Balls for Breakfast: And Other Memories of Growing Up Jewish. New York: Free Press, 2004. Curtis shares how she came to value and to understand her Jewish heritage. Seeber, Michael. “Jamie Lee Curtis Revealed.” Psychology Today, September/October, 2001. Describes Curtis’s support for various charitable organizations, such as Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and Children Affected by AIDS (CAAF), and discusses her writing and her sobriety. See also: Tony Curtis; Fran Drescher; Carrie Fisher; Goldie Hawn; Winona Ryder; Debra Winger.
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Tony Curtis Actor, writer, and artist Curtis’s ability to play both serious and comedic roles made him one of the best loved actors in Hollywood. He started in film in 1949 and remained a popular figure for more than fifty years. Though best known for acting, Curtis was also a writer and a painter. Born: June 3, 1925; Bronx, New York Died: September 29, 2010; Henderson, Nevada Also known as: Bernard Schwartz (birth name); Bernie Schwartz Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater; art Early Life Tony Curtis (curtihs) was born on June 3, 1925, to Mono (known as Manny) and Helen Schwartz, who had moved to New York from Budapest in hopes of making a better living. Though he had been an amateur actor in his home country, Mono soon realized that he needed a more
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stable income and became a tailor. The family often suffered from poverty, moving from one location to another in the middle of the night when Mono’s tailoring could not pay their bills. Mono was an Orthodox Jew, and he made his sons (Julius and Robert were born after Curtis) maintain the traditional long braids until they were six years old. Curtis’s mother was less strict in regards to their Jewish heritage. Curtis became rebellious in early childhood, fighting as a result of the family’s poverty and his Jewish appearance. It was not until a truant officer took an interest in the boy that Curtis settled down. He joined the Boy Scouts at age twelve, after having stayed at a memorial settlement house, where he learned better behavior. He later attended Seward Park High School but joined the Navy six months before graduation. During his time in the military, he received a leg injury, which resulted in temporary paralysis and an early discharge. Upon returning home, he finished his high school education. One of Curtis’s childhood heroes was actor Cary Grant, and Curtis began his pursuit of acting by using his G.I. Bill to pay for tuition at the Dramatic Workshop in New York. He schooled with other young actors, such as Walter Matthau, Rod Steiger, and Harry Belafonte. Curtis’s theater debut was in a production of Thunder Rock at New York’s 92nd Street Y. Over the next few years, he circulated through a number of small theater groups. A Universal Studio talent scout discovered Curtis in 1948 and offered him a sevenyear contract. He was one of a group of young actors, including two of his regular costars, Rock Hudson and Piper Laurie, who were slated to become the next generation of stars. It was during Curtis’s first season at Universal that his name was changed. Early variations included Jimmy Curtis and Anthony Curtis before it was shortened to Tony Curtis. Life’s Work Curtis’s first film was Criss Cross (1949), which starred Burt Lancaster, but Curtis was not even listed in the credits. Fan interest led to more small parts, and he appeared in three other films that year: City Across the River, The Lady Gambles, and Johnny Stool Pigeon. He was listed in the credits primarily as Anthony Curtis until Winchester ’73 (1950). His first big chance came in 1951 with The Prince Who Was a Thief, costarring Laurie.
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Over the next decade, Curtis became a houseLeading Ladies’ Man hold name as his starring roles multiplied, and his life changed dramatically. He had met and Having appeared or starred in more than 140 films during his begun a relationship with Janet Leigh in 1950, lifetime, it is no surprise that Tony Curtis was paired with a large and they married on June 4, 1951, in Greenwich, number of famous women. From the beginning of his career, when Connecticut. Despite the studio’s desire that he he appeared in films featuring such actors as Yvonne De Carlo remain single to uphold his standing as a sex (Criss Cross in 1949), Barbara Stanwyck (The Lady Gambles in 1949), and Shelley Winters (Johnny Stool Pigeon in 1949), he symbol, the couple became popular with the worked on-screen with some of the major Hollywood femmes gossip columns, and they won a Golden Apple fatales. He later starred with Piper Laurie, Janet Leigh, Marilyn from the Hollywood Women’s Press Club for Monroe, Debbie Reynolds, and Suzanne Pleshette. However, his being the most cooperative couple. Over the folpersonal relationships with women were an integral part of his life lowing years, they starred together in five films, as well. Curtis’s first important relationship to garner headlines Houdini (1953), The Black Shield of Falworth was with leading lady Leigh. The two were married for a little (1954), The Vikings (1958), The Perfect Furmore than ten years and starred together in a number of films. lough (1958), and Who Was That Lady? (1959). Christine Kaufmann, Curtis’s leading lady in the films Taras Bulba Curtis also took on the role of father with the (1962) and Wild and Wonderful (1964), became his second wife. birth of two daughters: Kelly Lee on June 16, His third wife, Leslie Allen, was a well-known model when they 1956, and Jamie Lee on November 22, 1958. married. He had a short affair with starlet Andria Savio in 1984, and the two reportedly were married. However, she later claimed Despite the number of films Curtis appeared the marriage was a publicity ploy. Curtis was officially married in in the 1950’s, critics were often negative durtwo more times. His lovers also reportedly included De Carlo, ing the first decade of his fame. The resulting Monroe, Natalie Wood, and Jaclyn Smith. self-confidence problems led Curtis to seek regular psychiatric help, and he reportedly became superstitious on set. However, his film career was flourishing, and he was able to earn better ing several autobiographies) and into painting (beginroles. He was earning more money per film and finally ning in the 1960’s). He also became an animal activist, gained critical acclaim by the end of the decade. Curtis’s founding the Shiloh Horse Rescue and Sanctuary with filmography grew with roles in many different types of Vandenberg, his fifth wife. On September 29, 2010, films. Films such as Some Like It Hot (1959) with MariCurtis died of cardiac arrest at his home in Henderson, lyn Monroe, Spartacus (1960) with Kirk Douglas and Nevada. Laurence Olivier, and Boeing Boeing (1965) with Jerry Lewis led to stronger roles such as Albert De Salvo in Significance The Boston Strangler (1968). Curtis was one of the most versatile and well-known His personal life changed as well over the next few deactors of his time. His popularity with fans ranked him cades. He and Leigh divorced in 1962; he married Chrisalongside his idol Grant and his contemporaries such tine Kaufmann six months later, on February 8, 1963. as Douglas, Matthau, and Jack Lemmon. Curtis’s roles This marriage produced two more daughters, Alexandra spanned from comedies and Westerns to musicals, swash(1964) and Allegra (1966), but it lasted only five years. bucklers, and dramas. He starred alongside acting legHis third marriage, on April 20, 1968, was to Leslie ends and created unforgettable characters, playing parts Allen. Curtis and Allen had two sons: Benjamin (1973) that ranged from an uncredited dancer with Yvonne De and Nicholas (1971). He was married officially two more Carlo (Criss Cross) to a cross-dresser opposite Monroe times: to Lisa Deutsch (1993-1994) and in 1998 he mar(Some Like It Hot) and a real-life murderer (The Boston ried Jill Vandenberg. Strangler). His patented look was copied by no less a ceCurtis’s lifetime achievement included more than 140 lebrity figure than Elvis Presley, and Curtis’s image apfilms, numerous television series appearances, and voice pears on the sleeve of a Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper’s work for several animated characters (notably the charLonely Hearts Club Band (1967). In his later career, he acter “Stony Curtis” in the cartoon series The Flintstones). appeared in small film parts and produced numerous Curtis also worked as a producer and was featured as a paintings that sold for more than fifty thousand dollars. performer on the sound track for So This Is Paris (1955). — Theresa L. Stowell In his later years, he branched out into writing (generat263
Curtis, Tony Further Reading Curtis, Tony, and Peter Golenbock. American Prince: A Memoir. New York: Harmony Books, 2008. Curtis recounts a variety of aspects of his life in this candid autobiography. It includes information about his early life, his relationships with women, his films, and his paintings. Curtis, Tony, and Barry Paris. Tony Curtis: The Autobiography. New York: William Morrow, 1993. This autobiography covers numerous elements of Curtis’s life but focuses on the behind-the-scenes issues of being a star. Curtis’s sometimes harsh tone comes across in this controversial book. Curtis, Tony, and Mark A. Vieira. The Making of “Some Like It Hot”: My Memories of Marilyn Monroe and the Classic American Movie. Hoboken, N.J.: John
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Jewish Americans Wiley & Sons, 2009. Detailed account of the making of one of Curtis’s most popular films. Curtis shares insight into his costars and the film, with details on his relationship with Monroe. Hunter, Allan. Tony Curtis: The Man and His Movies. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985. This book provides a brief synopsis of Curtis’s life, a list of all his films, and a detailed summary of his major films. Munn, Michael. The Kid from the Bronx: A Biography of Tony Curtis. London: W. H. Allen, 1984. A dramatic retelling of Curtis’s life until the mid-1980’s includes a list of his films, starting with Criss Cross (1949) and continuing through The Scarlett O’Hara War (1980). See also: Jamie Lee Curtis; Kirk Douglas; Dustin Hoffman; Paul Newman; Lee Strasberg.
D Rodney Dangerfield Comedian and actor Dangerfield, a comedian who specialized in selfdeprecating humor, coined the catchphrase, “I don’t get no respect.” Born: November 22, 1921; Babylon, New York Died: October 5, 2004; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Jack Roy; Jacob Cohen (birth name) Area of achievement: Entertainment
tling himself, performed in Las Vegas, and appeared regularly on The Dean Martin Show and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. In 1969, when his wife became too sick to care for their children, he bought a nightclub to be near his family. The Manhattan club, Dangerfield’s, became the setting for a Home Box Office (HBO) show, featuring such comics as Jim Carrey, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jeff Foxworthy. Dangerfield and his wife divorced in 1970. In 1971, he had his first film role in The Projectionist. In 1980, Dangerfield appeared in the comedy film Caddyshack. Dangerfield portrayed Al Czervik, a newly rich Jew who is trying to buy an upscale country club that is segregated and anti-Semitic. Al tells an Asian friend who is entering the club, “I hear this place is restricted, Wang, so don’t tell ’em you’re Jewish, okay?”
Early Life Rodney Dangerfield (DAYN-jur-feeld) was born to Jewish parents in Babylon, New York. His father, Philip Cohen—a vaudeville performer—used the stage name Phil Roy. Using the name Jack Roy, Dangerfield began writing jokes at fifteen. At nineteen, he became a standup comic. Life’s Work Dangerfield married Joyce Indig in 1949; they divorced In 1981, Dangerfield recorded the Grammy Awardin 1962 and remarried in 1963. Their union produced winning album No Respect for Casablanca/PolyGram two children, Brian and Melanie. Dangerfield struggled Records. On a television program he performed “Rapto make money in comedy. To help support his wife and pin’ Rodney”; this performance became one of the first children, he sold aluminum siding and worked as a singmusic videos on MTV. He began appearing in commering waiter and an acrobatic diver. He temporarily left show business. In the early 1960’s, Dangerfield decided to try comedy again. This time he used a different persona to distinguish himself from the other comedians. He used self-deprecating humor, joked about mental depression, and employed the line, “I don’t get no respect.” He took the name Rodney Dangerfield from a character on Jack Benny’s radio show, but his legal name remained Jack Roy. His break came when The Ed Sullivan Show needed a last-minute performer. Dangerfield took the spot and used his pessimistic monologue; his first joke employed the “no respect” gimmick. The middle-aged comic was a hit. He would appear on the show many more times during his career. Reliably employed as a performer, Dangerfield wrote thousands of jokes belitRodney Dangerfield. (AP/Wide World Photos) 265
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From Stage to Television and Film Rodney Dangerfield brought laughter to his audiences, especially with his line “I don’t get no respect.” His jokes fit the classic mold of Jewish humor: laughing to keep from crying and using self-deprecating remarks. Audiences identified with his struggle to succeed in an achievement-oriented society. He was one of the rare comedians of his generation who moved easily from the stage to television and to film. Other comics of his generation did not have that skill. Shecky Greene, Jackie Mason, and Don Rickles had successful stage careers, but their efforts in film and in television were not as lasting as those of Dangerfield. With his bulging eyes, his shapeless body, his nervous tics, and his hangdog expression, Dangerfield became a favorite guest on variety shows and on latenight talk shows. His comic persona made him a popular choice for directors, who worked with him in twenty-eight films. On the big screen, Dangerfield attracted a new, younger audience, especially when he appeared in Caddyshack (1980) and Back to School (1986). His ribald humor always came at his own expense. He noted that his mother did not breast-feed him when he was a baby: “She told me she liked me as a friend.” As a kid, he recounted, he was so ugly that his mother got morning sickness after he was born. Dangerfield’s list of put-downs was endless, but the man who got no respect had a long, respectable, and profitable career.
cials for Miller Lite beer; he would later film advertisements for Arby’s (1980), Wickes Furniture (2000), and GladWare (2002). He accepted starring roles in the films Back to School (1986) and Easy Money (1983). Dangerfield married Joan Child on December 26, 1993. Thirty years his junior, Child, a Mormon, helped him become one of the first entertainers to have a Web site. In 2000, he wrote and starred in the comedy My Five Wives, about a Mormon polygamist. His marriage to Child would endure until his death. Dangerfield had roles in twenty-eight films, including Natural Born Killers (1994). He produced many of them, co-composed many songs, provided a voice in animated films such as Steven Spielberg’s Casper (1997), and even sang in some films. He appeared on more than twenty television shows. Dangerfield was insulted when actor Roddy McDowall, head of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences’ actor section, rejected him for membership in 1995. When fans protested Dangerfield’s exclusion, the academy invited him to join. Dangerfield, however, refused to do so. He did receive recognition from the Smithsonian Institution, which displayed his iconic red tie and white shirt. In 2002, he earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2004, Dangerfield published his 266
autobiography, It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me: A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs. Dangerfield’s health faltered in his later years. He underwent various brain and heart surgeries, and he received treatment for aneurysms. In September, 2004, he went into a coma. On October 5, 2004, Dangerfield died from complications from surgery, just short of his eighty-third birthday. Because “Rodney was a night person,” his wife held an evening butterfly-release ceremony led by actor Farrah Fawcett for his service. Skywriters wrote the word “respect” across the sky in tribute. Pallbearers included Adam Sandler, Michael Bolton, Carrey, and Bob Saget. Honorary pallbearers were George Carlin, Carl Reiner, Chris Rock, Roseanne Barr, and Jerry Stiller. Dangerfield’s widow selected Frank Sinatra’s “Come Fly with Me” as the recessional song because it was playing in Dangerfield’s hospital room when he died. Dangerfield’s headstone reads: “Rodney Dangerfield: There goes the neighborhood.” A DVD set, Rodney Dangerfield: The Ultimate No Respect Collection, was released on December 7, 2004. Many of its clips came from his more than seventy appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
Significance The face, the voice, and the humor of Dangerfield remain easily recognizable on television, in his twentyeight films, in his books, and on his recordings. Dangerfield was a song composer, a scriptwriter, and a singer. His line “I don’t get no respect” remains his trademark. Even though Dangerfield claimed to get no respect, his name appears on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; his white shirt and red tie are a part of the displays of the Smithsonian Institution, and he was the recipient of both the 1981 Grammy Award and the 1995 Lifetime Creative Achievement Award for his comedy. —Anita Price Davis Further Reading Dangerfield, Rodney. It’s Not Easy Bein’Me: A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs. New York: HarperEntertainment, 2004. Dangerfield’s anecdotal autobiography appeared just before his death. The work combines humor and honesty. Cartoons, jokes, and photos appear as sidebars. _______. “Ten Questions: Rodney Dangerfield on Respect, Pot, and Sex at Eighty-Two.” Time 163, no. 2
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(May 17, 2004): 8. Dangerfield, an octogenarian, answers some personal questions, on such topics as his sex life, his depression, and the rocky start to his career as a performer. Epstein, Lawrence J. The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America. New York: Public-
Affairs, 2001. Insightful analysis of Dangerfield’s comedy style. See also: Woody Allen; Jack Benny; Albert Brooks; Lenny Bruce; Larry David; Bette Midler; Carl Reiner.
Larry David Writer, actor, and television producer David created two innovative television programs, Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which his misanthropic humor pokes fun at social conventions and petty injustices. Born: July 2, 1947; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Lawrence Gene David (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Larry David, the younger of two sons of a clothing salesman and a housewife, was born and raised in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He attended the University of Maryland, receiving a bachelor’s degree in history in 1970. After college, he moved back to his parents’apartment in Brooklyn and worked as a bra salesman, paralegal, cabdriver, and private chauffeur. He disliked most of these jobs and had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. He eventually moved to Manhattan and attended acting classes. During a class exercise, he reinterpreted a monologue from a play, which caused his classmates to break into gales of laughter, and he realized that he wanted to make people laugh. Life’s Work David was twenty-seven years old when he began performing stand-up comedy routines in New York City comedy clubs. He told stories about his life, combining reality with fantasy and absurdity. His act was often poorly received by his audiences, who were accustomed to more conventional one-line gags. On some nights when the audience failed to connect with his performance, David would throw his microphone on the floor and storm off the
stage. While many audiences failed to understand his humor, other comedians appreciated the originality of his act. One of these comedians was Jerry Seinfeld, who met David in 1976. The two spent time together, working on each other’s jokes and enjoying their conversations. In addition to performing in comedy clubs, David worked in television. In 1980, he became a staff writer and performer on Fridays, a late-night television pro-
CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM He refuses to sing “Happy Birthday” at a party for his friend’s daughter because he dislikes the song, he is pathologically unable to keep a secret, and he argues with a man in a wheelchair over the use of a handicapped-accessible toilet. He attends a meeting for victims of incest and pretends he was molested as a child. Confronting a traffic jam on his way to Dodger Stadium, he picks up a prostitute so he can qualify for the carpool lane. For Larry David, the protagonist of Curb Your Enthusiasm who is played by the “real” Larry David, a social slight can become the object of obsession, a petty irritant can occasion a major argument, and no racial group, religion, or ethnicity is immune from his politically incorrect remarks. David’s character is a wealthy man with a beautiful wife who should be perfectly happy, but instead he is completely miserable. In short, he is a kvetch, the Yiddish word for a constant complainer who is only happy when he or she is unhappy. David has drawn upon his Jewish background for some of the show’s humor. In one episode, his friend, comedian Richard Lewis, needs a kidney, but David does not want to be the donor. So David pretends to be an Orthodox Jew in order to ingratiate himself with an Orthodox Jew who is an official of a kidney-transplant agency in the hope of getting someone else’s kidney for Lewis. In another episode, David invites his rabbi to attend a dinner at his home, and the rabbi asks if he can bring a “survivor” with him. David naturally assumes the rabbi is talking about a Holocaust survivor, and he arranges for his father’s friend, a Holocaust survivor, to attend the dinner. However, David and his father’s friend are dumbfounded when the rabbi’s guest turns out to be a contestant from the Survivor television series.
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David, Larry gram that aired on American Broadcasting Company (ABC) for two seasons. He was a staff writer for another late-night comedy show on National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Saturday Night Live, during the 1984-1985 season, which was a miserable experience for David. Dick Ebersol, the show’s executive producer, disliked David’s brand of humor and allowed only one of David’s sketches to be performed on the program. David later created and wrote the pilot for Norman’s Corner, a failed situation comedy. He also had small parts in films. By the late 1980’s, however, David was barely making a living from his stand-up act, and his chances of attaining mainstream success seemed dim. Seinfeld was having better luck, and, in the fall of 1988, NBC asked him to create a situation comedy. Seinfeld told David about it, and the two devised a pilot that launched one of the most successful sitcoms in television history. Seinfeld told an interviewer that the two wanted the show “to sound like Larry and me talking.” After the pilot, The Seinfeld Chronicles, was broadcast on July 5, 1989, NBC ordered four episodes for that summer and another thirteen to air the following spring. The show, simply called Seinfeld, followed the lives of four immature baby boomers who were easily irritated by life’s trivialities. David wrote about sixty episodes of the series. Several of the episodes were adaptations of the unperformed sketches he had written for Saturday Night Live, and many of the shows were based on incidents in his life. The character of George Costanza, a bald, bespectacled neurotic who lived with his parents and could not keep a job, was modeled on David himself. Another character, Cosmo Kramer, was based on a neighbor who lived across the hall from David and frequently made unannounced entries into his apartment. Seinfeld became part of NBC’s regular programming in January, 1991, and it eventually became the most popular program on network television. In 1993, David married Laurie Lennard, and the couple had two daughters before separating in 2007. David left Seinfeld in 1996 to write and direct a film, Sour Grapes, which was a critical and commercial flop when it was released in 1998. However, he returned to write and to produce the final episode of Seinfeld, which aired on May 14, 1998. More than seventy million viewers watched the final show in which the four protagonists were imprisoned for breaking a “Good Samaritan” law. According to some estimates, David earned more than $200 million from writing and producing Seinfeld. When the program ended, he returned to stand-up. Comedian Jeff Garlin offered to direct a Home Box Office (HBO) 268
Jewish Americans special for David. The two created Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, a “mockumentary” about the making of an HBO special, in which David played a version of himself—the enormously successful cocreator of Seinfeld, who was performing a nightclub comedy routine. The show featured Garlin as David’s manager, Jeff Greene, who continually gets David into trouble, and actor Cheryl Hines played his long-suffering wife. The special, which was like nothing that had appeared on television before, aired in October, 1999. All of the dialogue was improvised to create what David described as “that cinema-verité thing,” and the use of a handheld camera further contributed to its documentary style. The program was edgier and darker than Seinfeld, with David’s acerbic wit on full display. Curb Your Enthusiasm, a comedy series featuring the same characters that were in the special, broadcast its first episodes on HBO in 2000. In 2009, the show completed its seventh season, and the following year David agreed to write and to produce ten episodes for another season. For each episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, David carefully prepares plot outlines comprising about fifteen scenes. The actors receive few details about the scenes or the characters they play and do not rehearse. Instead, they improvise the scenes on camera. In the seventh season, the show featured a much-publicized reunion of the four actors who starred in Seinfeld. According to the plot, David and Seinfeld worked together to write and to cast a Seinfeld reunion show, and portions of this show-withina-show aired in the final episode. Significance After years of struggling to find an audience, David finally succeeded with the wildly popular Seinfeld and the cult favorite Curb Your Enthusiasm. These inventive programs broadened the subjects that could be covered in television sitcoms, and Curb Your Enthusiasm experimented with an improvisational style of comedy. David’s work continues to be admired by his fellow comedians and comedy writers, and in 2010 he received the Writers Guild of America West’s Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for television writing. —Rebecca Kuzins Further Reading Dolan, Deirdre. Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Book. New York: Gotham, 2006. Provides an episode guide for the first five seasons, interviews with David and some of the other actors, and a description of the improvisation process.
Jewish Americans Kaplan, James “Angry Middle-Aged Man.” The New Yorker, January 19, 2004. A comprehensive profile of David, focusing on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Noonan, David. “The Power of Self-Loathing.” The New York Times Magazine, April 12, 1998, 26. Written before the final episode of Seinfeld was broadcast, this article discusses the genesis of the program and David’s reasons for taking a leave of absence.
Davis, Clive Shales, Tom, and James Andrew Miller. Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. Boston: Little, Brown, 2002. This oral history of the television program includes recollections from David and others about David’s unhappy stint as a staff writer. See also: Woody Allen; Judd Apatow; Rodney Dangerfield; Larry Gelbart; Norman Lear; Jerry Seinfeld.
Clive Davis Business executive, entrepreneur, and philanthropist A lawyer-turned-music industry executive and producer, Davis has a gift for identifying musical talent and developing the careers of renowned artists. Born: April 4, 1932; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Clive Jay Davis (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; entertainment; philanthropy
ified his determination to work hard and to pursue his goals in the face of adversity. Davis was accepted into the New York Bar Association in 1957. He was suspended after pleading guilty to tax evasion and then later reinstated. Davis has four children and several grandchildren. He honors his Jewish faith and family through weekly meals and vacations and through humanitarian efforts and contributions.
Life’s Work Early Life Upon graduation from Harvard University, Davis joined Clive Davis (kliv DAY-vihs) was born to Herman, an a small law firm and remained at the company for two electrical contractor, and Florence in Brooklyn, New years. He then joined the firm of Rosenman, Colin, York, on April 4, 1932. He grew up in Crown Heights, a Kaye, Petschek, and Freund in 1958, serving as an assodiverse working-class neighborhood. Davis received his ciate. education in public schools in Brooklyn. He later attended Davis was offered a position at Columbia Records by New York University (NYU) on a full scholarship. He Harvey Schein, who hired Davis as assistant counsel in graduated magna cum laude from NYU in 1953, earning Phi Beta Kappa. Davis got his law degree from Harvard University in 1956, once again on a full scholarship and graduating magna cum laude. Davis’s parents died within one year of each other while Davis was an undergraduate student. These losses strengthened his sense of family and his desire to succeed. He credits his work ethic and his belief in himself to create success to his upbringing and his Jewish cultural heritage. Davis demonstrated his ambitious nature through his involvement in such activities as student government at NYU. His drive enabled him to maintain the grades necessary to continue receiving the funds to complete his education. This appears to have solidClive Davis. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) 269
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After leaving Columbia Records, Davis continued his career in the music industry. He founded Arista Records in 1974, naming the company after the honor society of the secondary school he attended during his adolescence. Whitney Houston and Barry Manilow were two artists who signed with Arista under Davis’s leadership. Davis formed J Records, named after his middle name Jay, in 2000, and he served as chairman and chief executive officer (CEO). Artists who joined this label include Alicia Keys, Wyclef Jean, and Jennifer Hudson. Davis served as chairman and CEO of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Music Group from 2003 to 2008, and he subsequently was named CEO of Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) North America. In 2008, Davis was given the role of chief creative officer at Sony Music Entertainment Worldwide. Davis has been recognized for his contributions to the music industry throughout his career. Acknowledgments include his induction into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1997 and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. He has won several Grammy Awards and was honored with the Trustee Award in 2000 and the President’s Merit Award in 2009. Davis is known for his annual pre-Grammy Award show parties and his humanitarian efforts, such as the endowment of five million dollars in 2002 for the establishment of the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at New York University. He has supported several causes and been recogA Rock-and-Roll Transformation nized for these efforts by organizations such the Anti-Defamation League (1971) and AmeriWhen Clive Davis joined Columbia Records as an attorney, his can Foundation for AIDS Research (1998). He future as an industry executive was as unpredictable as Columbia’s has also donated to various educational institufuture as a force in the rock-and-roll movement. Davis’s climb up tions and political campaigns, and he is both an the ranks at Columbia and entry into the world of rock music rehonoree and honorary board member of the T. J. sulted in a profitable new direction for the record company. It also provided for the signing of many significant artists, such as ChiMartell Foundation.
1960. Davis immediately demonstrated his savvy: He was given the task of preventing Bob Dylan from voiding his contract, and Davis succeeded, keeping the popular singer at the label. This act impressed Goddard Lieberson, the president at Columbia Records, who subsequently pushed Davis to higher positions. Rising quickly through the ranks at Columbia, Davis was promoted to administrative vice president in 1965 and added the title of general manager in 1966. He was promoted to president in 1967. While at Columbia Records, Davis attended the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. This event was significant in Davis’s career because it awakened him to the potential profitability of integrating rock music into the company and set in motion a plan to pursue new artists and genres. One of the acts at the festival, Big Brother and the Holding Company, included a singer named Janis Joplin. Davis was enthralled with Joplin’s talent and signed the band, his first of many, in 1968. Davis served in the role of president at Columbia Records until he was fired in 1973. Davis was accused of the inappropriate use of company funds on several occasions and accused of tax evasion for money spent on his son’s Bar Mitzvah. Davis was convicted on the tax matter in 1976 and settled the suit with Columbia Records in 1977.
cago, Billy Joel, Carlos Santana, and Aerosmith. Davis built a career at Columbia and in the rock genre by acquiring musicians before they were well known and by delivering recognized performers to the label. He was known for managing most aspects of production, which some felt was overbearing for artists and executives, although many benefited from the resulting hits and profits. At Columbia Records, as with other ventures, Davis maintained his own style of management and followed his instincts while identifying and pursuing opportunities. Although he faced some career challenges, including his dismissal from Columbia, Davis managed to reinvent himself and others. This ability to identify and to evolve with trends impacted not only Columbia’s success but also that of Davis and of such artists as Whitney Houston and Rod Stewart.
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Significance Davis is an influential personality in the music industry. His ability to identify talent and his shrewd business sense provided a combination that enabled him to rise through the ranks while at Columbia Records and continue his successes as he worked on other ventures. Under Davis’s leadership, Columbia established itself as a key player in the rock-and-roll era. Throughout his career, Davis promoted hiphop and rhythm and blues. Davis is heavily involved in many aspects of the music business, including the promotion of artists and songs and the selection of producers to work with talent.
Jewish Americans While some may not care for his brusque management style, many acknowledge his passion for the business and his longevity in producing hits and stars. Although Davis initially did not seek out the music industry when he started his professional life, his instinctive acumen has resulted in an accomplished career spanning fifty years and professional relationships with the industry’s celebrated artists. —Caprice Nelson de Lorm Further Reading Dannen, Frederic. Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business. New York: Times Books, 1990. Covers the stories of many influential music industry figures. Discusses Davis’s various roles throughout his career and touches on his approach to his profession and to the industry. Includes commentary relating to how Davis was viewed by his peers and his way of conducting business. Hilburn, Robert, and Chuck Phillips. “The Relentless Hit
Davis, Sammy, Jr. Man.” Los Angeles Times, December 1, 1996. Traces Davis’s history in the record business, including some elements of his upbringing. This article contains narrative about Davis’s business style, key events during his career, and quotes from Davis. Marmorstein, Gary. The Label: The Story of Columbia Records. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2007. Traces the history of Columbia Records through its leaders and its shifts in musical direction. Includes information relating to Davis’s influence on Columbia’s rock focus and his subsequent firing from the company. Rice, Lewis. “The Record Breaker.” Harvard Law Bulletin, Spring, 2001. An interview with Davis in which he discusses his time at Harvard, elements of his career, and his views on what it takes to be successful in business. See also: Barry Diller; David Geffen; Mel Karmazin; Barry Manilow.
Sammy Davis, Jr. Entertainer, singer, and actor Davis was a versatile entertainer who sang, danced, did remarkable impressions, played several musical instruments, and acted in films, on stage, and in television. He used his immense popularity to break down barriers facing minority entertainers. Born: December 8, 1925; Harlem, New York Died: May 16, 1990; Beverly Hills, California Also known as: Samuel George Davis, Jr. (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music; theater Early Life Sammy Davis, Jr., was born in Harlem on December 8, 1925, to an African American father, Sammy Davis, Sr., and a Puerto Rican mother, Elvera Sanchez, both of whom were vaudeville performers. The parents separated soon after the child’s birth, and the father gained custody of the boy, whom he groomed to perform in his vaudeville troupe. At age five, Davis was a regular performer with the Mastin Troupe, and at age seven he was cast in the musical film Rufus Jones for President (1933). Davis’s formal education was negligible because he
was constantly touring and performing with the Mastin Troupe. By the time he turned eighteen, vaudeville had begun to give way to films, and World War II had started. Davis was drafted and sent to basic training in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where for the first time in his life he faced the kind of racial discrimination his father and uncle had protected him from all during his youth. He had frequent violent encounters with bigots and racists who fought him, and on two occasions his nose was broken in fights. He was eventually transferred to an entertainment regiment where he was treated with more respect. When he returned to civilian life, he rejoined the Mastin Troupe (which had become the Will Mastin Trio because the large vaudeville troupe could no longer be sustained) and became its headliner, with his impressive singing, dancing, and celebrity impersonations. The trio became commercially successful, playing all over the United States. Life’s Work Davis’s popularity led to his making his first solo album for Decca in 1954, Starring Sammy Davis, Jr. Another album, Just for Lovers, which came out in 1955, was also commercially successful, and Davis became a 271
Davis, Sammy, Jr. solo act even though he shared the profits from his work with both his father and his uncle. In 1954, when Davis was driving back to California after a Las Vegas engagement, he had a horrific car accident. His facial bones were fractured, and he lost the sight in his left eye. During his long convalescence, he began to consider Judaism. Though his mother was Roman Catholic and his father Baptist, Davis had never been particularly drawn to either religion. A Jewish chaplain at the hospital engaged him in long conversations, and Davis saw many similarities in the historical and contemporary challenges facing Jews and blacks. The rabbi recommended several books for him to read, and he continued studying Judaism, finally deciding to become a Jew. Although some of his Jewish friends tried to dissuade him from taking on what was essentially another handicap for him, he said he wanted to become a Jew because “Judaism held an honesty and spiritual peace” that he wanted in his life. He continued his career upon his recovery and began making hit singles such as “That Old Black Magic” and “Love Me or Leave Me.” Then in 1956 he starred in Mr. Wonderful, a stage musical based in large part on his own career, which opened on Broadway in March and ran for 383 performances. In 1964, he performed in an updated version of the Clifford Odets play Golden Boy and was nominated for a Tony award. In 1978, he per-
Sammy Davis, Jr. (CBS/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans formed in a revival of the musical Stop the World, I Want to Get Off. He continued performing in nightclubs, casinos, and cabarets, later venturing into films and television. In 1955, he appeared as Fletcher Henderson in the film The Benny Goodman Story. He played a more dramatic role in Anna Lucasta in 1958. He received critical acclaim for his performance as Sportin’ Life in the 1959 film version of Porgy and Bess, with Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge. Other films were made with his friends in the celebrated Rat Pack, Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, and Dean Martin: Ocean’s Eleven (1960), Sergeants Three (1962), and Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964). His last film role was in Tap (1989). As his career became increasingly successful and Davis was hailed by many as the leading entertainer of all time, his personal life was having its ups and downs. He married three times. The first time, in 1958, he married an African American dancer named Loray White under circumstances rumored to have been coerced. He had been romantically involved with a white actor, Kim Novak, whose studio feared negative repercussions to her commercial viability if the interracial romance became known. The marriage to White was relatively sudden and lasted only until 1959. His second marriage was to Swedish actor May Britt in 1961, and they had three children. It lasted until 1968, disintegrating mainly because of Davis’s freewheeling lifestyle and hectic work schedule. His last marriage, in 1970, was to African American dancer Altovise Gore. They adopted a son, and the marriage lasted until Davis’s death in 1990. His health became problematic after years of excesses—drinking, smoking, drug use, late hours, touring, gambling, carousing with the Rat Pack. His 1954 car crash cost him his left eye. Liver and kidney ailments resulting from his drug and alcohol use put him in the hospital for several months, and in 1974 he had a heart attack. He had reconstructive hip surgery in 1985, and then in 1989 he learned he had throat cancer. Radiation treatments put the disease in remission for a while, but he refused surgery because it would have robbed him of his voice. Davis died from complications of throat cancer in 1990. Significance Davis is widely credited for enduring the prejudice, discrimination, and humiliations that affected African American performers so that those who followed did not have to suffer the same indignities. A
Jewish Americans consummate performer, a song stylist, a tap dancer, an impressionist, and a musician, he performed in venues that he insisted relax their long-held discriminatory policies until it gradually became easier for black performers to work and get equitable pay and treatment. Davis broke down racial barriers, supported civil rights and humanitarian causes, and fostered religious tolerance in the entertainment world. Though he often made jokes about it in his act, Davis was entertainment’s only one-eyed Jewish black man. —Jane L. Ball Further Reading Davis, Sammy, Jr., et al. Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965. An autobiography beginning with Davis’s vaudeville childhood, his unpleasant Army experiences, and ending with the birth of his baby with second wife May Britt. Lyman, Darryl. Great Jews in the Performing Arts. Middle Village, N.Y.: Jonathan David, 1999. Historical overview of Jews’ role in the performing arts from earliest to present times, with Davis one of many discussed. Includes black-and-white photos. Oseary, Guy. Jews Who Rock. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000. Discusses the many contributions to rock and roll by more than one hundred top Jewish rockers, including Davis.
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Enduring Popularity as an Entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., overcame many obstacles, racial, social, and physical, starting with the earliest days of his career. He faced the racism of the early mid-twentieth century, which escalated into violent confrontations when he was in the Army; he suffered a broken nose on two occasions from fights with his white comrades. When touring with the Will Mastin Trio, he was regularly humiliated at the hotels and nightclubs where he performed because as soon as he finished performing he was not allowed to linger with the white patrons. When he dated white women and later married one, his black fans accused him of selling out to fit in with his white friends; his white fans were alienated by what they perceived as excessive and obsequious behavior. When he hugged President Richard Nixon in public, there was an uproar from his fans. Nevertheless, in spite of all the negative incidents that dogged him throughout his career, Davis’s popularity as a performer of exceptional versatility never waned. He was always seen as a master entertainer, a man who used his celebrity to break down racial barriers that had for years hindered the careers of minority performers.
Pogrebin, Abigail. Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish. New York: Broadway, 2005. Interviews with well-known artists and other celebrities about the complexities of being Jewish. See also: Milton Berle; George Burns; Billy Crystal; Danny Kaye; Jerry Lewis.
Daniel De Leon Socialist leader De Leon was an influential Marxist theorist and leading figure in the Socialist Labor Party from 1890 until his death in 1914. Born: December 14, 1852; Curaçao, Dutch West Indies Died: May 11, 1914; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Activism; government and politics Early Life Born on the Dutch-owned island of Curaçao in 1852, Daniel De Leon (deh lee-OWN) was the son of Salomon De Leon, a surgeon and official in the Dutch colonial
army, and Sarah Jesurun. Both parents were Sephardic Jews of Spanish and Dutch ancestry. Following the death of De Leon’s father in 1865, his mother took him to live in Germany, where he presumably completed his secondary education. In later years, he told followers that he had graduated from a German gymnasium (secondary school) and then studied medicine at the University of Leiden for two years. No documentary evidence, however, has been found concerning his European studies. Even though the extent of his formal schooling is unclear, there is no question about his acquiring fluency in several languages and his ability to do general research. In 1874, De Leon emigrated to the United States and 273
De Leon, Daniel settled in a Latino community in New York City. After teaching foreign languages and mathematics at a private school in Westchester County, New York, he studied law at Columbia College (now Columbia University), graduating with an LL.B. degree with honors in 1878. He then moved to Brownsville, Texas, where he practiced law for about four years. In 1882, he married Sara Lobo, the daughter of a prosperous Jewish family from the West Indies. The couple had four children, but only one survived. Sara died during childbirth in 1887. Life’s Work In 1883, De Leon won a contest that allowed him to return to New York with an appointment to do research and give lectures on Latin American politics at Columbia. Three years later, he became actively engaged in politics for the first time when he supported Henry George, the famous single-tax reformer, for mayor of New York. In 1888, De Leon was attracted to Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel, Looking Backward (1888), and he joined one of Bellamy’s Nationalist clubs. Soon becoming dissatisfied with the middle-class nature of Bellamy movement, De Leon joined the Knights of Labor, the most notable mass labor organization of the period. His newfound interest in the labor movement and socialism led him to study the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and De Leon was soon converted to their version of “scientific socialism,” which called for a transformation of society based on public ownership of large-scale industries and natural resources. In 1889, De Leon’s appointment at Columbia was not renewed. Scholars disagree about whether nonrenewal was a result of his radical views or his limited academic credentials. In 1890, De Leon jointed the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), a small Marxist organization dominated by German immigrants. Advancing rapidly, he was the party’s candidate for governor of New York in 1891, and the following year he became editor of its newspaper, People, a position he held for the rest of his life. When making a nationwide tour for the Socialist Labor Party in 1891, De Leon made the acquaintance of a Kansas schoolteacher, Bertha Canary, whom he married the following year. The couple had five children, and they lived in a small apartment, the children sleeping on folding cots in the kitchen. De Leon anticipated Vladimir Lenin’s ideas about a disciplined party being necessary to lead workers to victory; in contrast to Lenin, De Leon disdained violence and argued that socialism in America could be achieved through peaceful elections. He strongly disagreed with 274
Jewish Americans moderate socialists who advocated piecemeal reforms as the path to socialism. As the SLP’s ideological leader, De Leon and his allies controlled the party’s agenda and established its firm commitment to orthodox Marxism. Following bitter dissension, a majority of members seceded from the party in 1899, and they formed the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in 1901. Soon thereafter, the SPA became the mainstream socialist organization in the country, and the De Leon’s SLP barely managed to survive. Although never able to convince large numbers of workers to join his crusade, De Leon nevertheless took a keen interest in the U.S. labor movement. He harshly denounced the American Federation of Labor and other nonsocialist unions, accusing them of betraying the working class. In 1895, he was one of the founders of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance (ST and LA), which remained a small union closely allied with the SLP. In 1905, he helped to organize the broader-based Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), but his participation in the IWW was acrimonious and short-lived. De Leon wanted the IWW to support the SLP in political activities, whereas “Big Bill” Haywood and the majority wanted the union to engage in direct action without cooperating with any particular political party. After De Leon was expelled from the IWW in 1908, he helped to establish a rival organization, the Workers’International Union, which never had much success. De Leon was a talented speaker and debater. He was not a prolific writer, although he did publish a large number of newspaper essays. Several of his lectures were published in pamphlets, including Reform or Revolution (1896) and Socialist Reconstruction of Society (1905). Early in the twentieth century he contracted a bacterial infection in his heart muscles. At the time no effective medications existed for the ailment, and he died at the age of sixty-two in 1914. Significance During his lifetime, De Leon was the most prominent leader of left-wing Marxists who refused to support attempts to reform capitalism. His message failed to resonate with large numbers of Americans, and he never had as much influence as more moderate socialists who were willing to compromise and accept whatever reforms were possible. In the early twenty-first century, nevertheless, the Socialist Labor Party continued to praise him as one of the greatest revolutionary leaders and thinkers of all time. —Thomas Tandy Lewis
Jewish Americans Further Reading Chester, Thomas. True Mission: Socialists and the Labor Party Question in the U.S. Sterling, Va.: Pluto Press, 2004. A good introduction to the historical context of De Leon’s career. Coleman, Stephen. Daniel De Leon. Manchester, England: University of Manchester Press, 1990. A favorable biography that covers the life and times of De Leon. De Leon, Daniel. Writings of Daniel DeLeon. St. Petersburg, Fla.: Red and Black, 2008. A collection of his essays with a useful introduction to his life and career. Girard, Frank, and Ben Perry. Socialist Labor Party, 18761991: A Short History. Philadelphia: Livra Books,
Dell, Michael 1991. The interesting story of the left-wing party that De Leon dominated for many years. Reeve, Carl. The Life and Times of Daniel De Leon. New York: AIMS/Humanities Press, 1972. Worthwhile review of De Leon’s life, but not as scholarly or interesting as the later works by Seretan and Coleman. Seretan, L. Glen. Daniel De Leon: The Odyssey of an American Marxist. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979. A comprehensive though critical biography of De Leon. See also: Shulamith Firestone; Emma Goldman; Samuel Gompers; Hannah Solomon; Henrietta Szold; Naomi Wolf.
Michael Dell Businessman and computer entrepreneur With direct-to-market merchandising, Dell built a company that is a leading manufacturer of personal computers and that has outlasted scores of competitors. Born: February 23, 1965; Houston, Texas Also known as: Michael Saul Dell (full name) Area of achievement: Business Early Life Born in Houston, Texas, Michael Dell began his career as an entrepreneur at an early age. At twelve, he took a job washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant to pay for the stamps he collected. Over time, Dell noticed that stamp prices kept rising. Reasoning that the auctioneers who sold stamps charged a fee, Dell sensed an opportunity. On the promise of repaying them, he collected the stamps of many neighbors, prepared a catalog, and placed an ad in a stamp magazine, offering stamps for sale. These resultant sales netted him two thousand dollars. Dell says that the experience taught him the value of direct sales—as he says, “eliminating the middleman.” At sixteen, Dell got a job selling newspaper subscriptions. The newspaper had him contact people with new phone numbers in the hope of adding subscribers. Dell quickly realized that those most likely to subscribe were newlyweds or new home owners. Using public information about newly issued marriage licenses and mortgages, Dell targeted these two groups. His number of subscribers jumped, and he earned eighteen thousand dollars in just one year—enough to buy his first car.
In his teens, Dell became interested in computers. By talking with computer salespeople, looking inside the machines, and reading about them, he learned about all aspects of them. That knowledge grew when his parents bought him his first computer. As he learned more, Dell began helping friends and neighbors by upgrading their computers. Dell’s parents hoped that he would become a doctor, and when he enrolled at the University of Texas, Austin, in 1983, he dutifully focused on a premedical program. At the same time, however, without his parents’ knowledge, he built computers in his dormitory room. At that time, International Business Machines (IBM) computers sold for around three thousand dollars, though the components cost only about seven hundred dollars. Dell was able to build new machines for much less and still make a handsome profit. As Dell became absorbed in his work, his grades slipped. His father chastised him, asking, “What do you want to do with your life?” Dell responded, “I want to compete with IBM.” His parents insisted that Dell stop his computer business, and he agreed. Within weeks, though, he was back making and selling his machines. By the spring, he had sales of eighty thousand dollars a month. His parents agreed to let him leave the university and focus on his business full time. Life’s Work In 1984, Dell formed his first company, PCs Unlimited. By the end of the year, he had six million dollars in 275
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sell computers on the Internet. Over time, though, the company made the Web site an effective extension of the direct-to-buyer, customized business strategy. By 2000, online Michael Dell’s success was built on three strategies: direct sales, sales accounted for eighteen million dollars customization, and low inventory. All were geared toward giving cusin sales each day. tomers a top-quality product for less. At the time he began making The company continued to grow, focusing computers, most PCs were purchased at stores, and skeptics believed always on increasing sales through direct that customers would be unwilling to buy such expensive equipment without seeing it. Dell, determined to cut out the middleman, beselling, lowering costs, and responding to lieved that he could increase sales—and profits—by reaching conmarket trends. As the company entered the sumers directly. It also allowed him to sell his machines at a discount, new millennium, Dell aggressively cut costs giving him a price advantage. and prices in order to gain market share. The Customization was another competitive advantage. Computers strategy hurt competitors and boosted Dell’s sold in stores were already built; consumers had to take the model as sales. By 2001, the company was the largest already assembled. Dell did not build any computers until he had ormanufacturer of PCs in the world. ders on hand. As a result, consumers could specify the components In 2004, Dell stepped down as the chief they wanted. A consumer interested in a larger monitor could choose operating officer of the corporation, giving that; one who wanted a larger-capacity hard drive could choose that that task to Kevin Rollins. Dell remained as option. By customizing, Dell allowed consumers to tailor a machine chairman of the board. Rollins had been the to suit their needs. As part of this strategy, Dell kept his inventory low. He bought de facto chief executive for several years, and components only when he had orders for them. As a result, he did not the two leaders tended to agree on most ishave money tied up in parts sitting on stockroom shelves. This held sues, so the change was not dramatic. The exdown his costs and helped support his discount prices. periment lasted only a few years, however. Dell sales lagged, and, by the end of 2006, Hewlett Packard had surpassed it as the top computer maker. Early in 2007, the board— sales. In the next few years, the company grew so rapidly at Dell’s request—asked Rollins to resign so that Dell that Dell had to move to new quarters half a dozen times. could resume control of company operations. In this period, he introduced another innovation—selling Back in charge, Dell faced several problems. In recomputers through phone sales. To overcome any consponse, he restructured the company, insisted on a new cerns consumers might have, the company began offerfocus on customers’ needs, and agreed to sell Dell coming customers technical support. puters through retail outlets. In a bold move, Dell acThe following year, Dell decided to take his company quired Perot Systems, gaining access to the profitable public. Renamed Dell, Inc., its stock offering produced market of corporate computer services—a change from thirty million dollars in capital, which Dell used to exits original machine-based emphasis. Initial results of pand. Two years later, Inc. magazine named Dell Entrethese actions were favorable, but the long-term prospects preneur of the Year. In 1992, Dell was listed as one of of the company remained unclear. Fortune magazine’s top five hundred companies, and its Dell married Susan Lieberman in 1989, and he and his owner, at twenty-seven, was the youngest executive ever wife had four children. He and his wife set up a foundation to head a company on that list. in 1999 that focuses on improving the health and educaSoon, though, the company faced difficulties. Dell’s tion of urban children. Its chief activities are in the United laptops were inferior to those of competitors and had to States and India. By 2010, the foundation had made $530 be pulled from the market. The decision to sell through million in grants to groups carrying out this work. retailers, as well as directly, also hurt sales. Dell brought experienced managers into the company, and their efSignificance forts succeeded quickly. After Dell, Inc., posted its first Along with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steven quarterly loss ever in 1993, it rebounded to profitability Jobs, Dell is an example of the success that bold entrethe next year and introduced a successful line of new preneurs could enjoy in the early days of the personal laptops. computer industry. Dell has drawn criticism for not being In 1994, Dell became the first computer company to an innovator in technology, but he has been an innovator
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Jewish Americans in marketing. By focusing on a particular selling strategy, rather than on technical innovation, and effectively controlling costs and responding quickly to customers’needs, Dell built his company into one of the world’s largest computer manufacturers in little time. While his company did experience some difficulties, its impressive growth nevertheless turned Dell into an industry giant. Its founder’s success in implementing his vision of competing with large-scale corporations by selling directly serves as a model of the entrepreneurial spirit. —Dale Anderson Further Reading Darlin, Damon. “Dell Chief Is Replaced by Founder.” The New York Times, February 1, 2007. Reports on the decision by Dell’s board to replace Kevin Rollins with Dell as chief operating officer and analyzes the reasons for the move.
DeMille, Cecil B. Dell, Michael, and Catherine Freeman. Direct from Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry. New York: HarperBusiness, 1999. Dell recounts his childhood and the founding of Dell, Inc., and he discusses his business philosophy in this account that covers the company’s growth years. Edwards, Cliff. “Dell’s Extreme Makeover.” Business Week, October 15, 2009. Edwards explores the challenges Dell faced two years after returning to direct his company and the changes he was making in the company’s strategy. Holzner, Steven. How Dell Does It. New York: McGrawHill, 2006. Holzner analyzes the principles underlying Dell’s success in this largely favorable view that covers the period until Rollins was at the company. See also: Sergey Brin; Larry Ellison; Larry Page.
Cecil B. DeMille Film director Among the most influential and powerful filmmakers of the first half of the twentieth century, DeMille was the master of the film spectacle. Born: August 12, 1881; Ashfield, Massachusetts Died: January 21, 1959; Hollywood, California Also known as: Cecil Blount DeMille (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Cecil B. DeMille (SES-uhl bee duh-MIHL) was the second child of Henry Churchill and Matilda Beatrice Samuel DeMille. In his autobiography, the famous director scrupulously records the family history of the deMils from Flanders in 1280 to his day; as an important part of this history, he traces the family’s religious evolution from Roman Catholicism, through Mennonite and Dutch Reformed periods, before finally settling into devout Episcopalianism (his father studied to become an Episcopal priest but was never ordained). Interestingly, although he describes his mother as darkeyed, vivacious, and different from other American girls—his father’s description at the time of their
Cecil B. DeMille. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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DeMille, Cecil B. meeting—her parents’ names are totally omitted. The text contains no historical, ethnic, or religious information about the Samuels. DeMille merely states, without elaboration, that the marriage of his parents was opposed, presumably by the groom’s parents. The basis for the opposition is not revealed, but it may have been because his mother was born in England to a Sephardic Jewish family. She would later convert to her husband’s faith. In his autobiography, DeMille strongly condemns anti-Semitism and writes affectionately of his many Jewish friends and associates, yet he never reveals that his own mother was Jewish. DeMille’s father was a schoolmaster and a play-
Becoming Citizen DeMille Cecil B. DeMille believed that, despite living his entire life on the two coasts, he understood Middle America better than his Hollywood contemporaries, the result of touring the country as a young actor in a road company. He seemed to enjoy the role of the religious, patriotic American businessman as much as that of the flamboyant film director. He learned to fly. He was an officer in a small aviation company, and later in a bank. He held a reserve commission as a major in the Signal Corps. He belonged to the Masonic Grand Lodge of New York. He supported the motion-picture code (which many came to view as censorship). He was an activist Republican. In 1937, the State Republican Committee of California endorsed him to run against Senator William Gibbs McAdoo, but he declined. He supported Senator Robert A. Taft for the Republican nomination for president in 1952. It was his running battle with the unions, however, that inspired some to brand him an archconservative. DeMille was a member of two unions: the American Federation of Radio Artists (AFRA) and the Screen Directors Guild, on whose board he served. In 1944, AFRA notified him that all members were being assessed a small sum to be used in opposing a proposition on the November ballot. DeMille disapproved of the compulsory assessment and refused to pay, even though it was only one dollar. As a result, he was forced off the air, losing his $100,000 a year job as host of the Lux Radio Theater. In 1947, he testified before the Senate Labor Committee in support of the Taft-Hartley Act, an open-shop law strongly opposed by organized labor. Perhaps the two roles he so effectively merged, that of Hollywood impresario and that of solid American citizen, account for his sustained success in his entertainments for the mass audience.
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Jewish Americans wright, who achieved a degree of success through his collaboration with impresario David Belasco. DeMille grew up in a theatrical atmosphere; after his father’s death, his mother and his older brother wrote for the theater. His mother eventually became a theatrical agent. In 1898, DeMille enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. By 1900, he was a professional actor, and later that year he met Constance Adams, a young actor who had just joined his road company. They were married August 16, 1902, and the marriage lasted for fiftysix years. Over the next ten years, the couple acted their way across the United States. DeMille wrote plays, began to direct and to produce, sang in an opera company, and became associated, as his father had been, with Belasco. DeMille eventually began to write books for and direct operettas for Jesse L. Lasky, the vaudeville impresario. In 1913, the two showmen, along with two other partners, smitten with the newest entertainment medium, formed the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. DeMille was director-general. Life’s Work At the age of thirty-two, DeMille, who had spent his boyhood in Pompton, New Jersey, and his theatrical career in New York City, headed west to enter the motionpicture business. The Feature Play Company’s first studio was a rented barn in the village of Hollywood on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The company’s first film was The Squaw Man (1914). It was successful, and by mid1914, the company had contracted to produce thirty films a year. These were distributed by Paramount Pictures Corporation. Eventually, the partners gained control of Paramount’s distribution and later of exhibition rights as well. Having acquired all three components of the motion-picture business, the company grew into the giant Paramount Studio, of which DeMille was a part for most of the rest of his life. He had early associations with Samuel Goldfish (who later changed his name to Goldwyn) and Adolph Zukor, who came to be known as film moguls. Soon, the studio was doing so well that DeMille induced his brother, Bill, a successful playwright, to come to California as a scenarist. In time, the family was reunited when the brothers brought their mother out from New York. Until her death in 1923, she remained active, selling some scenarios to her son’s company. During the years after World War I, DeMille began making pictures with contemporary, sometimes rather daring themes: Forbidden Fruit (1921) and Saturday Night (1922) are examples. In 1923, however, the director found the formula that would assure his fame, the bib-
Jewish Americans lical spectacle with a huge cast, lavish sets, and elaborate special effects. The Ten Commandments was succeeded by ambitious historical and Western films, but DeMille is probably best remembered by both his fans and his detractors for his religious productions. He conceived of a trilogy: 1923’s The Ten Commandments (The Giving of the Law); 1927’s The King of Kings (The Interpretation of the Law); and 1932’s The Sign of the Cross (The Preservation of the Law). The King of Kings, DeMille’s silent life of Christ, played around the world for decades after the introduction of sound. The Sign of the Cross, featuring spectacular scenes in the Colosseum, dealt with Nero’s persecution of the early Christians. DeMille also made The Crusades (1935), Samson and Delilah (1949), and a remake of The Ten Commandments (1956), his last and most ambitious work, filmed largely in Egypt. Ironically, his only Academy Award was received for The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), a circus picture. Some critics accused DeMille of choosing biblical subjects, in part, so that he could film scantily clad dancing girls, lovely ladies in their sumptuous baths, and the dissolute courts of the pagan antagonists. DeMille denied these charges and insisted that, though not a regular churchgoer, he was a lifelong Christian; after his death from heart disease, his funeral was held on January 21, 1959, at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Hollywood. DeMille was always an actor. His silken voice often narrated his epic films, and he was sometimes shown on screen introducing the picture. In the Hollywood film Sunset Boulevard (1950), directed by Billy Wilder, DeMille played himself, and the invocation of his name dramatically concluded the film, when mad Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), who has just murdered Joe Gillis (William Holden), tells “Mr. DeMille” that she is ready for her close-up. Significance Though some critics disparage DeMille’s work as showy and shallow, the popular success of almost all of his seventy films indicates his ability to judge the pub-
DeMille, Cecil B. lic’s taste. He was also an innovator in filmmaking. He is said to be the father of Hollywood, since he was the first director-producer to establish a studio there. He also boasts in his autobiography that, despite the blandishments of Beverly Hills and Bel Air, after his arrival in California in 1913, he never lived anywhere but in Hollywood. He demanded courage from his actors when he introduced wild animals, fires, and live ammunition into some realistic scenes. He was the first director to use a megaphone and led in the use of mood music on the set of a silent film. He was one of the first to use the boom microphone, suspended above the camera shot of a scene. Finally, the riding breeches and knee-high boots he wore on the set, which allowed him to strike a dashing pose, were soon adopted by others as the director’s ensemble. —Patrick Adcock Further Reading Birchard, Robert S. Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. A film historian emphasizes DeMille’s influence on décor, lighting, and cinematography. DeMille, Cecil B. The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1959. DeMille’s version of his life and work. Unfinished at his death, it was edited by Donald Hayne. Fleming, Alice. The Moviemakers. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973. Discusses the contributions of eleven influential filmmakers from Edwin S. Porter (The Great Train Robbery, 1903) to Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968). Chapter 4 is devoted to DeMille. Louvish, Simon. Cecil B. DeMille: A Life in Art. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2008. Explores the contradictions in DeMille’s life and art. See also: George Cukor; Samuel Goldwyn; Joseph L. Mankiewicz; Otto Preminger; Steven Spielberg; Irving Thalberg; William Wyler.
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Alan M. Dershowitz Lawyer, writer, and educator One of the best minds in criminal law, Dershowitz became the youngest professor at Harvard Law School, a rabid champion of constitutional rights, and a fearless defender in high-profile cases. Born: September 1, 1938; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Alan Morton Dershowitz (full name) Areas of achievement: Law; activism Early Life Alan M. Dershowitz (DUR-sho-wihtz) was born on September 1, 1938, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Borough Park. His paternal grandfather was an immigrant from Pilzno, Poland. His father, Harry Dershowitz, was a wholesale clothing store owner, and his mother, Claire Ringel, was a bookkeeper. Both were Orthodox Jews, and Alan Dershowitz’s father was involved heavily in synagogue affairs. Dershowitz had a younger brother, Nathan, who would also become a lawyer specializing in criminal law. Dershowitz’s first job was working in a kosher delicatessen on the lower East Side of Manhattan. He attended Yeshiva University High School, where he often got into heated arguments with his teachers. Maturity as a student came at Brooklyn College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude in 1959 with a B.A. degree. Dershowitz was admitted to Yale University Law School, where he became, in his second year, editor of the Yale Law Journal. He graduated first in his class in 1962, and he was offered a teaching position at Harvard Law School. Dershowitz ultimately accepted the position two years later, but first he served as a law clerk for David Bazelon, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and then as law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court associate justice Arthur Goldberg. By the time Dershowitz joined the Harvard Law School faculty, he had a unique set of experiences. In 1967, he became a full tenured professor; at age twenty-eight, Dershowitz was the youngest professor in the school’s history. That same year he cowrote the standard casebook Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry, and the Law. Although he specialized in criminal law, Dershowitz was compelled to join the American Civil Liberties Union and play a major role when the war in Vietnam 280
raised many constitutional issues regarding free speech. He defended several Harvard students facing suspension for protest activities in the early 1970’s, he defended the well-known antiwar protester Dr. Benjamin Spock, and he helped draft the successful 1972 appeal of William Kunstler’s contempt-of-court conviction during his defense of the Chicago Seven. During the late 1960’s and early 1970’s Dershowitz worked on pornography cases that he believed involved First Amendment issues by defending actors and producers of early pornographic films such as I Am Curious Yellow (1967) and Deep Throat (1972). Life’s Work In 1972, Dershowitz tried his first criminal case. It would be in criminal law that Dershowitz would rise to national fame as the top appellate criminal defense lawyer in the country and the best lawyer of last resort. The case involved a Jewish Defense League extremist, Sheldon Seigel, who was charged with murder in connection with a bombing attack. Dershowitz was able to expose illegal wiretaps and searches to get the charges against his client dismissed on the grounds of unconstitutional government practices. Ten years later, Dershowitz made national headlines with his successful appeal of socialite Claus von Bulow’s 1982 conviction in the attempted murder of his heiress wife by using insulin injections to induce a coma. Dershowitz said that information was withheld from the defense and that a private investigator searched von Bulow’s apartment without a warrant, both of which violated constitutional rights. This, along with new medical evidence, caused the Rhode Island Appeals Court to reverse the conviction in April, 1984, and retry the case. In the new trial, which took place in 1985, Dershowitz was retained as overall strategist. After six weeks, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Dershowitz wrote about his strategy in his book Reversal of Fortune (1986), which was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1990; actor Ron Silver played Dershowitz. Dershowitz had two children by his first wife, Sue Barlach, and gained custody of the children after their 1975 divorce. Elon went on to become a film producer, and Jamin followed in his father’s footsteps as a lawyer. In the mid-1980’s, Dershowitz married his second wife, Carolyn Cohen, a neurologist, and they had a child, Ella. In the early 1990’s, Dershowitz worked on such widely
Jewish Americans followed trials as that of Michael Milken (the junk bond king), Leona Helmsley (the unpopular hotelier who evaded payment of income taxes), televangelist Jim Bakker (who bilked followers of more than $150 million), and boxer Mike Tyson (convicted of rape in February, 1992). In 1995, Dershowtiz served as legal adviser to O. J. Simpson’s main defense lawyer, Robert Shapiro. A sizable segment of the American public went into shock when Simpson was found not guilty of murder. In the meantime, in 1993, Dershowitz was named Harvard Law School’s Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law. Teaching law and handling some of the nation’s most difficult criminal law cases were only some of Dershowitz’s activities. From 1994 to 1996, he hosted a law talk show for WABC; from 2000 to 2001, he served as an anchorman for Court TV. In addition, he has written more than thirty books, including novels and nonfiction, their topics ranging from law to Judaism and the crisis in the Middle East. He has also written more than one hundred articles for the nation’s most prestigious newspapers and periodicals.
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Commitment to Civil Liberties and Constitutional Rights A remarkable legal mind from the start, Alan Dershowitz has had a notable career filled with overwhelming challenges and seemingly impossible victories. However, his great achievement may be the consistency of his focus on preserving civil liberties and constitutional rights. Starting with his defense of free speech rights for anti-Vietnam War protesters and of the rights of early pornographic filmmakers and actors, Dershowitz underlines the point that offensiveness is a small price to pay for freedom of expression. In criminal cases, Dershowitz has used technicalities and procedural aberrations to the fullest to defend his clients, in order to guarantee in the future similar protection for others. By addressing these issues, he criticizes the prosecution’s apathy about the truth and the shortcuts taken to achieve convictions. In 2002, Dershowitz went beyond previous boundaries in exploring law. He argued for animal rights and examined the arbitrary nature of selecting a single species for better treatment than others. He also argued in favor of judicial warrants to torture terrorists in an extreme situation, when the information extracted was necessary to prevent a major act of destruction. Above all a teacher, Dershowitz has sought not related cases but moral clarity about the law.
Significance A brilliant law student and scholar who took a Harvard Law professorship at the very young age of twenty-eight, Dershowitz gained national recognition as a top practicing attorney. His career began with cases involving the free speech of collegiate Vietnam War protesters and the censorship of pornographic films; later, he focused on criminal law. He provided successful defenses in some of the nation’s most publicized criminal cases, winning more than one hundred cases, including thirteen of fifteen appellate court murder and attempted-murder cases. Many cases were taken on as a challenge. About half of them were provided pro bono or at greatly reduced fees. Dershowitz has also gained fame as the author of a large number of books and newspaper and journal articles. He has made many television appearances, usually as an expert commentator on issues of law and foreign policy. Since 1992 he has been heavily quoted on issues relating to Israeli policies, the Palestinian issue, terrorism, and the use of torture, issues about which he is passionate. —Irwin Halfond
Further Reading Dershowitz, Alan. America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation—From the Salem Witches to the Guantanamo Detainees. New York: Grand Central, 2005. A study of major trials that mirrored changes in the development of American society. _______. Letters to a Young Lawyer. New York: Basic Books, 2005. Dershowitz’s views on practicing law, written to a hypothetical young lawyer, examining ethical issues and realities. This work reveals Dershowitz’s brilliance as a teacher. _______. Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age. A comprehensive examination of the play among civil rights, constitutional rights, and human rights, which reveals much about Dershowitz’s belief system as a lawyer. See also: Gloria Allred; Stephen G. Breyer; Roy Cohn; William Kunstler; Judy Sheindlin.
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Neil Diamond Singer, entertainer, and writer Diamond wrote and sang hit songs in the 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s. His concerts during the 1990’s attracted millions of fans, ranking him as one of the five top concert artists of the decade. Born: January 24, 1941; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: The Jewish Elvis; Neil Leslie Diamond (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment Early Life Neil Diamond (NEE-ehl DI-mehnd) was born in Brooklyn, New York, the first of two sons of Akeeba and Rose Rapoport Diamond. Akeeba was a dry-goods merchant of Russian Jewish origins who owned a continually expanding number of neighborhood stores in Brooklyn, and Rose descended from Polish Jewish immigrants. Although he grew up in Brooklyn, Diamond changed schools frequently because his father moved the family to new locations near newly opened stores. Diamond had attended nine schools by the time he was in twelfth grade, and he had had trouble adjusting. As a teenager, Diamond was sent to Surprise Lake Camp, a large Jewish sleep-away camp in Cold Spring, New York. It was here that a performance by the activist
Surmounting the Pop-Rock Divide
folksinger Pete Seeger stimulated Diamond to take up the guitar and practice singing. He joined the school choir at Erasmus High School, where he sang alongside another student named Barbra Streisand. Another family move caused Diamond to transfer to Lincoln High School, where he received his diploma. At Lincoln he participated in the varsity fencing team. His fencing skills earned Diamond a scholarship to attend New York University (NYU). Although undertaking the difficult curriculum of a pre-med student, Diamond devoted most of his efforts to writing songs and trying to get them published. He dropped out of NYU in 1960 and reenrolled a year later in the commerce program. In 1963, he married a schoolteacher, Jaye Posner. The marriage lasted six years and produced two daughters. Diamond’s first job was with a small music-publishing firm where he earned a paltry commission for songs written. He leased his own tiny office nearby in the Brill Building for thirty-five dollars a month. Neil remained at NYU until 1965, when he achieved not a degree but rather his first hit as a songwriter. Jay and the Americans performed his “Sunday and Me.” This was followed by four of Diamond’s songs released by the Monkees, including “I’m a Believer” (which was his first number one chart single) and “A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You.” This began a career-long trend: More than one hundred major singers and groups have recorded Diamond’s songs.
One recognition that for decades eluded Neil Diamond, and many said unfairly, was induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Groups or individuals are qualified for induction twentyfive years after the release of their first record. The first record of a Diamond song was released more than twenty-five years before the founding of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1984. With thirty-seven hit singles, twelve top-ten singles, sixteen top-ten albums, and a career spanning more than four decades, Diamond certainly should have been considered a candidate as soon as he was eligible. However, his credentials were questioned because he may be considered a writer and performer of pop music, which has no place in the hallowed halls of rock and roll. Some said this oversight was being orchestrated by internal politics at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Nevertheless, the facts that Diamond’s songs have been performed by more than a hundred individuals and groups and that his music spans a wide range of styles, exciting millions of fans for more than two generations, indicate that his induction—which finally occurred in 2011—was long overdue.
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Life’s Work Recognition gained Diamond a contract with Bang Records and his first single, “Solitary Man,” became a hit. This was followed in rapid succession by other hits, including “Cherry, Cherry” and “Kentucky Woman.” Having signed a contract with MCA Records in 1970, Diamond moved to Los Angeles. He brought with him Marcia Murphy, his production assistant and new wife. The marriage lasted twentysix years and produced two sons. It also produced history’s eighth-highest divorce settlement as of 2010, with Murphy being awarded $150 million. The three years following the move to Los Angeles were booming for Diamond. Hits such as “Sweet Caroline” and “Cracklin’ Rosie” catapulted him to fame. Diamond’s new album,
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Hot August Night (1972), recorded live at one of ten sold-out performances at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, became an international success and remains a classic. The album gained Diamond a contract with Columbia Records, which agreed to pay him one million dollars in advance for each album produced. His score to the film Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973) hit number two on the Billboard album chart and won him a Grammy Award. Three years later, a new association with producer Robbie Robertson of the group The Band resulted in the album Beautiful Noise, the first for Diamond to reach platinum status. Diamond released a major album every year from 1977 to 1979, producing major hits such as “Forever in Blue Jeans” and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.” Streisand soon became obsessed with the song and recorded it herself. Columbia Records encouraged Diamond and Streisand to record their own duet version, which became an instant and longlasting blockbuster. Diamond also starred in the film The Jazz Singer (1980), a remake of the 1927 original starring Al Jolson. While critics blasted Diamond’s acting ability, the film’s sound track was a great success, selling more than six million copies. Three songs—“Love on the Rocks,” “Hello Again,” and “America”—became top-ten singles. “America” went on to be used on national news to add drama to the return of the American Embassy hosNeil Diamond. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) tages from Iran in 1981 and served as Democratic Party candidate Michael Dukakis’s theme song durselling album in the United States and United Kingdom. ing the presidential election campaign of 1988. It was The album helped make his 2008 tour a tremendous ecoalso used in promotional advertisements for the 2002 nomic success. In addition, the four nights he performed Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. at New York’s Madison Square Garden in August, 2008, During the 1980’s, Diamond’s popularity began to dewere recorded on DVD and released a year later. Copies cline. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame were sold out as quickly as they could be produced. Edits in 1984, but his last hit single was in 1986. It was at this of the concert, aired on television by the Columbia juncture in his career, however, that Diamond began a seBroadcasting System (CBS), topped the ratings, with ries of highly profitable concert tours, both national and more than thirteen million viewers. Although a performinternational, capitalizing on the millions of devoted fans ing artist with a retinue of loyal fans, Diamond remained he had accumulated in the previous decades. In 1999, he a consummate businessman. In 2011, Diamond was fiwas named one of the top-five concert artists of the decade nally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. by Amusement Business Magazine, a status that contributed to his receiving, the following year, the Sammy Cahn Significance Lifetime Achievement Award. While continuing tours in Because his musical works stir common passions, of the early 2000’s Diamond released a new album, Twelve loneliness and connectedness, of joy and despair, and of Songs, in 2004, which rapidly rose to number four on the love’s joy and sorrow, Diamond’s songs have stood the Billboard album chart. Before launching a new U.S. and test of time. The broad range of human emotions he adworld tour, Diamond released a new album in May, 2008. dresses is familiar to all ages and genders and appeals to Home Before Dark rapidly rose to be the number one283
Dichter, Misha all levels of sophistication. Diamond’s lyrics are magnified by the power of his tunes. For concert audiences, brilliant showmanship adds an additional dimension. On the national and international level, Diamond’s large fan base has spanned two generations and shows no signs of declining. —Irwin Halfond Further Reading Bream, Jon. Neil Diamond Is Forever. Minneapolis, Minn.: Voyageur Press, 2009. An overview of Diamond’s career; includes many photographs and memorabilia.
Jewish Americans Jackson, Laura. Neil Diamond: His Life, His Music, His Passion. Toronto, Ont.: ECW Press, 2005. Insightful study of the man and the performer by a best-selling rock and film writer. Wild, David. He Is . . . I Say: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2009. Biographical study containing insights into Diamond’s artistry. See also: Herb Alpert; Burt Bacharach; Bob Dylan; Marvin Hamlisch; Billy Joel; Carole King; Bette Midler; Paul Simon; Barbra Streisand.
Misha Dichter Pianist Dichter, an internationally known concert pianist, brings to his performances the expressiveness and emotional excitement of the great nineteenth century Romantic virtuosos and the probing introspection, formal clarity, and respect for the details of the composer’s score. Born: September 27, 1945; Shanghai, China Area of achievement: Music Early Life Misha Dichter (MEE-sha DIHK-tur) was born on September 27, 1945, in Shanghai, China. His parents were Polish Jews who escaped from Warsaw, just ahead of the invading Nazis. The pair got to Kobe, Japan, with visas from Latvia, but they could not get visas to the United States and, along with three thousand others, were deported to Japanese-controlled Shanghai. There they were confined to a ghetto for stateless refugees, and Dichter was born. The ghetto was liberated in August, 1945, and the family was admitted to the United States at Ellis Island in 1947, with Dichter’s father posing as a rabbi. The family drove to Los Angeles, where they settled; Dichter’s father eventually bought a successful lumber supply company. Dichter recalled his parents were not musical, though he remembers them and their friends singing Russian and Jewish folk songs around the piano. His first piano lessons were given by local teachers, one of whom was a pianist in a local restaurant frequented by Russian immigrants. Dichter admitted that, with this influence, his natural way of playing was wild, like a Gypsy. His early pas284
sion was for the music of Franz Liszt, composer of the Hungarian rhapsodies, with their Gypsy-inspired themes. His musical training became serious when at age twelve he began studying with Aube Tzerko, a pupil of Artur Schnabel. Tzerko put Dichter on a regimen of exercises, etudes, and scales. Dichter also studied composition with Leonard Stein, former pupil and assistant to the German composer and theorist Arnold Schoenberg. To this day, Dichter cannot perform a piece unless he has analyzed it and knows how each note relates to its neighbors and to the whole composition. Dichter at one point thought of being a composer, an idea he quickly gave up. In 1961, he began winning prizes in local competitions and performing concerti with local orchestras. After graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1963, he spent a year at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as an English major. The turning point in Dichter’s musical life came when he attended a two-week master class at UCLA given by the great Russian teacher Rosina Lhévinne, who was the living representative of the great Russian tradition of Romantic pianism. Impressed with Dichter’s playing, Lhévinne invited him to study at the Juilliard School in New York, where Dichter won a scholarship and concerto contests. At Juilliard he met and married the Brazilian pianist Cipa Glazman. Life’s Work Dichter received international acclaim in 1966 when he won the silver medal in the third International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, the competition
Jewish Americans that catapulted Van Cliburn to fame. He launched his career by playing Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 at the Tanglewood Festival in Lennox, Massachusetts, a concert that was broadcast, and in London the following year. Dichter’s playing reconciles the opposed approaches represented by his teachers. His first teacher, Tzerko, taught Dichter, according to the Schnabel method, that deep analysis of music was necessary for proper performance. The Schnabel approach to music was serious, sober, intellectual, and formal, striving to be true to the composer’s intentions as expressed in the musical score. Under Tzerko, Dichter recalled, there was so much emphasis on analysis that he hardly learned any complete pieces. As a result of training in the Tzerko-Schnabel heritage, a core part of Dichter’s repertoire has been the masterpieces of the German classical tradition: Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig von Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. These works lend themselves to the formal, analytic approach. Dichter’s teacher at Juilliard, Lhévinne, taught him musicianship and technique, and she forced him to memorize large amounts of music. She introduced him to the great virtuoso literature and to the importance of conveying to the audience the emotional content of the piece. Dichter is primarily associated with the piano’s nineteenth century virtuoso literature, which accounts for most of his recordings, including Liszt’s nineteen Hungarian rhapsodies. Dichter performs the virtuoso repertoire of Liszt and the Romantics, but he analyzes the music and treats it as seriously as he does that of other composers. Studying the musical form gives Dichter the authority and the freedom to convey both his understanding of and the emotional content of the music. His career almost came to an end when he developed Dupuytren’s contracture, a disfiguring hereditary condition that causes the fingers to curl up and clench in the palm, turning the hands into claws. Dichter had noticed the symptoms in 2005, but by modifying his technique and fingering he had been able to keep playing. In 2007, with an important concert in Chicago ahead in three months, he could no longer play, and he was forced to have surgery. With successful surgery and intense physical therapy, he regained his technique, performed in Chicago, and continued his performing career. Dichter rarely gives private lessons, but he enjoys giving master classes. He is active as a chamber music player,
Dichter, Misha has made numerous recordings, concertizes worldwide, and presents two-piano or four-hand recitals with his wife. In 2006, Dichter and his wife gave the premiere of the first movement of Dmitri Shostakovich’s two-piano version of Symphony No. 13 (Babi Yar) at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. They have recorded the complete piano music for four hands of Mozart. Dichter also writes about music and gives exhibitions of his ink cartoons. Significance Dichter is an internationally recognized pianist, and his playing at its best brings together the two major influences from his early training: the expressiveness and emotional excitement of the great nineteenth century Romantic virtuosos from his Russian teacher Lhévinne and the probing introspection, formal clarity, and respect for the details of the composer’s score from the German classical tradition of Schnabel. —Thomas McGeary Further Reading Gillespie, Anne, and John Gillespie. Notable Twentieth Century Pianists: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995. Account of Dichter’s career with extensive listing of recordings, reviews, and discography. Kreader, Barbara. “Misha Dichter.” Clavier 23, no. 5 (May/June, 1984): 19-22. Extended interview with Dichter, covering his repertory, practicing, and technique. Article is for pianists. Noyle, Linda J., ed. “Misha Dichter.” In Pianists on Playing: Interviews with Twelve Concert Pianists. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1987. Extended interview in which Dichter discusses his approaches to performance, practicing, memorization, and technique. Roethel, Kathryn. “Pianist Plays Again with the Helping Hand.” San Francisco Chronicle, February 15, 2010. An account of Dichter’s successful surgery for and recovery from Dupuytren’s contracture. Silverman, Robert. “Misha Dichter: Unabashed Musical Conservative.” Piano Quarterly, no. 148 (Winter, 1989/1990): 2-24. Extended interview covering repertoire, performance, and technique. Suitable for pianists. See also: Lukas Foss; George Gershwin; Jascha Heifetz; Itzhak Perlman; Isaac Stern; Paul Wittgenstein. 285
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Samuel Dickstein Lithuanian-born New York Supreme Court Justice and U.S. congressional representative from New York Dickstein had a long political career that included service as a congressman in the House of Representatives and as a state supreme court justice. He was influential in the creation of legislation relating to immigration. Born: February 5, 1885; near Vilna, Russian Empire (now near Vilnius, Lithuania) Died: April 22, 1954; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Government and politics; law Early Life Samuel Dickstein (DIHK-stin) was born in Vilna, in the Russian Empire, in 1885, the oldest child of Rabbi Israel Dickstein and Slata Gordon. The family moved to New York when Dickstein was about six years old and settled on the lower East Side of Manhattan, where his father served as a cantor at the Orthodox Norfolk Street Synagogue. Growing up, Dickstein attended the local public schools, and upon graduation he attended the City College of New York with the goal of pursing a career in law. He received his training in law at the New York Law School. He graduated in 1906, and he was admitted to the bar in 1908. Over time he became closely associated with John Ahearn, leader of the Tammany Hall district, and it is partly because of this relationship that Dickstein was appointed to the position of special deputy attorney general for the state of New York, a position he held from 1911 to 1914. He was then elected as a member of the city’s Board of Aldermen in 1917 and as a member of the New York State Legislature in 1919. He served the legislature until 1922. That year, Dickstein ran on the Democratic Party ticket and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he represented New York’s Twelfth District. During much of his time in Congress, Dickstein served as chairman of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. He held his position in the U.S. Congress until 1945, when he resigned, and later he became a state supreme court justice. Life’s Work While serving his first elected position as a state legislator, Dickstein gained national prominence with the sponsorship and passage of the New York State’s first 286
kosher law, later adopted by twenty-two states. He also initiated the state’s Sabbath law, which allowed Jewish merchants to remain open for business on Sunday. In addition, he sponsored legislation on housing and the removal of wooden cars from the city’s elevated train system. Following World War I, he managed the cases of thousands of tenants who had been affected by unfair rent increases. For these cases, he prepared all of his own briefs and argued all of the appeals. When he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, he was appointed to the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. The experience he got from working with New York City’s rapidly increasing immigrant population, when he served as a state legislator, proved to be invaluable for his new position on the committee. He quickly became regarded as the expert on immigration, and in 1931 he became the chairman of the congressional committee. In this position, he became aware of the vast number of immigrants living illegally in the country and of anti-Semitism and antiAmerican literature that had begun circulating in the United States. Because of his personal interest in the matter, Dickstein launched an investigation into neoNazi and Fascist groups in the United States, and his investigation proved to be so significant that, in November of 1933, official hearings of Nazi activities were held by Dickstein’s committee. On the opening day of the seventy-third session of Congress, in January of 1934, Dickstein introduced a resolution calling for a revitalized congressional drive against subversive activities in the country. As a result, the Dickstein Resolution was passed in March of 1934, which resulted in the establishment of the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities. The special committee conducted hearings and investigations; it concluded in 1935 that, while Nazi Germany was giving financial and ideological support to the American Bund, the American Bundists were not in violation of any federal law. From as early as 1937, Dickstein was outspoken about the actions of Adolf Hitler in Germany, and Dickstein proclaimed that the German fuhrer was attempting to start a world war. Dickstein was particularly concerned about the mass killings of Jews throughout Europe at the hands of the Nazis and spoke out publicly and frequently.
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Significance Upon leaving the U.S. Congress, Dickstein was elected to serve as a New York State supreme court justice in 1945, after polling more than half a million votes from the First District. He served in this position until his death in 1954. Dickstein’s national prominence reached its highest level during the mid-1930’s, when he served in Congress and became well recognized as a strong opponent of Nazi activities in Europe. Time after time, he called for punishment for the subversive activities of Nazi supporters in the United States. —Sarah Small
York: Guilford, 2000. The authors show how religious, racial, social, and economic issues are ingrained in America’s history. References to Dickstein are listed in the index. “Justice Dickstein Dies at Age of Sixty-Nine.” The New York Times, April 23, 1954, p. 27. Includes a review of Dickstein’s career in politics. Morrison, David. Heroes, Antiheroes, and the Holocaust: American Jewry and Historical Choice. Jerusalem: Gefen, 1999. This book discusses the efforts made by Dickstein and other Americans to raise national awareness of the Holocaust occurring overseas.
Further Reading Berlet, Chip, and Matthew Nemiroff Lyons. Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New
See also: Bella Abzug; Bernard Baruch; Michael Bloomberg; Ed Koch; Fiorello Henry La Guardia; Henry Morgenthau, Jr.; Bess Myerson; Charles Schumer.
Barry Diller Business executive and entrepreneur Diller, one of America’s most successful entertainment executives, revived the fortunes of ailing film studios with deep cost-cutting and creative thinking. Known as an innovator, he has made a gamble, not yet won, on interactive media. Born: February 2, 1942; San Francisco, California Also known as: Barry Charles Diller (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; entertainment Early Life Barry Diller (DIH-lur), born in San Francisco, California, in 1942 to Michael Diller and Reva Addison, was raised in Beverly Hills. Barry Diller’s prosperous father was engaged in home construction and real estate development. Among the family’s neighbors were such prominent entertainment figures as Danny Thomas and Doris Day. Diller is said to have received something of a Jewish education, but education in general was not his main interest. He boasted that he cut high scho ol classes at least two days a week. Opting not to return to college after only a few months at the University of California, Los Angeles, he began his show business career, as did many of his contemporaries, in the mail room of the influential William Morris talent agency. He progressed to junior agent and then became a full-fledged agent in 1964. Next, still in his mid-twenties, Diller joined the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in
Barry Diller. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Diller, Barry 1966 as an assistant to the vice president of programming.
Jewish Americans and eventually formed the New York-based IAC/InterActive Corporation. He announced that he was stepping down as chief executive officer (CEO) of IAC in 2010. A longtime bachelor who zealously guarded his personal life, Diller married the designer Diane von Furstenberg in 2001 when he was fifty-nine. They had been considered a “couple” for the previous quarter century, although persistent rumors of Diller’s homosexuality have widely circulated for at least as long. He is considered a political progressive and has exerted successful efforts to combat homophobia and prejudice against those with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and to obtain benefits for same-sex domestic partners within the entertainment industry.
Life’s Work Diller was considered to be a young man of ambitions. At ABC he worked his way up to become vice president of feature films and program development. He was considered to be instrumental in programming and producing the popular Movie of the Week, and also he is credited with developing such phenomenally successful television events as Roots and Rich Man, Poor Man. He championed the station’s production of its own miniseries and made-for-television films rather than the purchase of studio-made films. In 1973, Diller was made vice president of prime-time feature films and program development at ABC. A short time later Paramount Pictures pursued Diller, and in 1974 he joined that studio and ultiEntertainment Industry Mover and Shaker mately became the chairman and chief executive officer. Under his aegis, such Relatively few of today’s highly successful executives can be compared highly profitable films as Saturday Night to the tycoons who amassed huge fortunes in the nineteenth and early twenFever (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark tieth centuries by sheer daring and innovative thinking. However, Barry (1981), and Terms of Endearment (1983) Diller can surely be counted in their ranks. He has been involved in many and such popular television series as major projects, including the creation of the Fox Network, the so-called Cheers and Taxi were released. “fourth network.” His business dealings have been described as a combination of risk-taking, tough negotiating, creative thinking, and savvy decision After playing a major role in forming making. Adjectives such as “ruthless,” “intimidating,” and “abrasive” have the Fox Network in the mid-1980’s Diller been applied to him, no doubt based on the great number of people who served as chairman and chief executive have lost their jobs under his cost-cutting regimens or who have been exofficer of the Twentieth Century Fox posed to his volcanic temper and generally unyielding personality. studio for a brief period and then as chief Diller learned the art of the tough deal, first at William Morris, a promiexecutive officer of the Fox Network unnent talent and literary agency, and then at the American Broadcasting til 1992. When he resigned from that Company (ABC), and he is rarely bettered in negotiations. Diller has post, he took away an estimated $140 largely been successful in turning ailing companies into profitable ones. At million. Ever looking for new opportuTwentieth Century-Fox his cost-cutting efforts revived its fortunes from nities, Diller next served as chief execunear-bankruptcy. His stewardship of the Fox Network, owned by tycoon tive officer of the QVC channel (QualRupert Murdoch, was greatly enhanced when he added many affiliate stations and developed some memorable programming, including Married . . . ity, Value, and Convenience) and then as with Children and the long-running animated series The Simpsons. In genchairman and chief executive officer of eral, the programs he initiated were less expensive to produce than those at Silver King Communications, concurother networks. He also brought the struggling Paramount Pictures to profrently with leading the Home Shopping itability for several years in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Network. In 1998, in a complex finanNevertheless, not all of Diller’s attempts at synergy have succeeded. His cial transaction, Diller acquired the USA proposed merger of the QVC network (promoting Quality, Value, and ConNetworks, which owned the Home Shopvenience) and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) foundered. Howping Network and Ticketmaster. He was ever, he always acquires vast amounts of money with each deal, successful also involved in the mortgage business. or not. When asked about his seemingly fearless business dealings Diller It had long been his desire to merge difprovided a memorable quote: “I’ve not conducted my life in the service of ferent forms of media with the Internet’s smallness.” Another, undoubtedly alluding to his reputation, was, “I think difficult is good . . . . There is no rightness involved, only being true to onevast capabilities to create an interactive self.” By adhering to that credo Diller has thrived. media empire. Toward this goal, in 1999. he began acquiring various Internet sites 288
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Significance Diller is a boundary-stretching visionary and one of Hollywood’s smartest and most successful tycoons. He has shown a talent for surrounding himself with and mentoring like-minded people, including Michael Eisner, later head of the Walt Disney Studios. Several other protégés have gone on to great prominence, among them future film studio executives such as Dawn Steel, Don Simpson, Garth Ancier, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Collectively they are known as the Killer Dillers. Entertainment has not been Diller’s only passion. At one time he controlled companies in twenty-six countries, with an estimated twenty-six thousand employees. In keeping with his numerous accomplishments, Diller has amassed great wealth, and in 2010 he was designated as being among the nine hundred richest people in the world, with a net worth of $1.2 billion. He is among the top four hundred of wealthiest Americans, and in 2005 alone he received compensation of $295 million. Despite his somewhat fearsome business reputation Diller is civic-minded and serves on the boards of many corporations and cultural and academic institutions. —Roy Liebman
Martin’s Press, 1990. An unauthorized and apparently balanced look at the launching of the Fox Network. It contains numerous, but sometimes overlong, interviews and some interesting anecdotes about onscreen personalities and Diller’s management style. Knoedelseder, William. The Epic Adventures of Barry Diller. New York: PublicAffairs, 2006. The author, who once worked for Diller, suggests that Diller is akin to an inventor or scientist in his thinking and that he uses his business transactions as a laboratory for his innovative ideas. Mair, George. The Barry Diller Story: The Life and Times of America’s Greatest Entertainment Mogul. New York: Wiley, 1997. The first full biography of Diller focuses almost exclusively on his business dealings, with very little provided about his personal life. It is a sympathetic, and at times almost admiring, account. Tuccille, Jerome. Dillerland: The Story of Media Mogul Barry Diller. New York: Alyson Books, 2009. The author, who has written about other super-moguls such as Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch, takes an insightful and sometimes humorous look at Diller.
Further Reading Block, Alex Ben. Out-Foxed: Marvin Davis, Barry Diller, Rupert Murdoch, Joan Rivers, and the Inside Story of America’s Fourth Television Network. New York: St.
See also: Walter Annenberg; Clive Davis; Michael Eisner; David Geffen; Carl Icahn; Mel Karmazin; Jeffrey Katzenberg; Sumner Redstone.
Jim Dine Artist A post-abstract expressionist artist, Dine used everyday objects as his subject matter and endowed them with artistic significance. Born: June 16, 1935; Cincinnati, Ohio Also known as: James Lewis Dine (full name) Area of achievement: Art Early Life Jim Dine (din) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 16, 1935, to middle-class Jewish parents. His father, who ran a commercial paint and plumbing-supply store, was not artistic. Dine recalled that his mother’s family was artistic, which he attributed to their German Jewish background. Dine’s mother died when he was fifteen, and when his
father remarried, Dine left home and was on his own, first living with close relatives. His early visits to the Cincinnati Art Museum introduced him to the idea that he might become an artist, and he pursued the career fervently. While in high school, he took evening classes at the museum’s Art Academy. After graduating from high school in 1953, he studied at the University of Cincinnati and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston before receiving his B.F.A. from Ohio University in 1957. At first his work was figurative and expressionistic, but while in college he learned about the new modern art scene in New York through the magazine ARTnews. Dine stayed at Ohio University for another year of graduate work. He married Nancy Minto, moved to Long Island in 1958, and earned money teaching art. The fol289
Dine, Jim lowing year the couple moved to New York City. Dine became one of New York’s youthful artists rebelling against abstract expressionism. Within several years, he was earning a livelihood through art. Life’s Work Dine broke into the New York art world with the historic Happenings of 1959-1960, which he pioneered with Claes Oldenburg, George Segal, and Allan Kaprow. In contrast to traditional, well-organized theater, Happenings were chaotic, ritualized events with costumes, movements, sounds, words, lights, and objects that mixed art with the physical space of the audience. Dine saw Happenings as painter’s theater. The Smiling Workman (performed at the Judson Gallery in 1960) integrated real-time drawing, a costume, writing, and action (drinking a bucket of red paint and diving through a canvas). In the early 1960’s, Dine’s artistic output was unified by an obsessive portrayal of familiar, everyday objects, isolating single objects from real life and elevating them into art. Whether in drawings, paintings, sculpture, assemblages, or prints, common objects became symbols with layers of meaning, both for culture at large and personally for the artist. Instantly recognizable in Dine’s output are his signature motifs: robes, ties, shoes, household objects, sinks, showerheads, tools, toothbrushes, skulls, Valentine hearts, Venuses, and Pinocchio. To these everyday objects and icons, Dine gave his unique expressive, personal treatment. The inclusion of common, ordinary objects in art associated Dine with the pop art movement (which included such artists as Roy Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol). However, the emotional involvement, introspection, sensuality, draftsmanship, and expressive quality of his works separated Dine from the impersonal, mechanical, and mass-produced commercial nature of pop art. About the same time, Dine created assemblages, which extended painting into the physical space in front of the canvas by affixing common objects to the canvas. Five Feet of Colorful Tools (1962), for example, contained a row of real tools attached at the top of the canvas. While familiar subject matter gave a sense of unity to his artistic output, Dine was constantly experimenting with the physical material of painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. The physical action of drawing was at the heart of Dine’s art. His drawings are the end product of a seemingly endless process of mutilating the original drawing, which was erased, rubbed, smeared, and scratched. 290
Jewish Americans In 1967, Dine moved to London to get away from the glare of the art world in order to experiment with poetry, printmaking, and book illustration. After returning from London, Dine kept studios in Vermont (from 1971 to 1985), and in Washington, D.C., and New York (beginning in 1986). He set up temporary studios for the purpose of specific print or sculpture projects or exhibitions. Spiritual or religious concerns began to appear in his work in the 1980’s. The Apocalypse: The Revelation of Saint John the Divine (1982), a book of twenty-nine woodcut prints, used the symbolic imagery of the Bible. Later imagery—human skulls, ravens, owls—was influenced by the psychology of Carl Jung. The appearance of hands in The Apocalypse shows them as agents of heaven, associated with the power of God. Dine stated, “I’m still too Jewish to depict the Divine. . . . It’s my Jewishness that says that there are no graven images.” In the 1990’s, a new repertoire of images, from classical sculpture, owls, cats, and apes to trees and flowers, began to dominate his works. Dine always wrote poetry, which he treats as an extension of drawing. His first collection, Welcome Home Lovebirds (1969), combined his poems with doodlelike drawings. Dine’s most ambitious presentation of his poetry is This Goofy Life of Constant Mourning (2004). The poems are written or painted on a fence, chalkboard, walls, paper, bed sheets, or panels. The book consists of photographs of whole poems or details (letters or words), often with objects (fishbowls, plastic skulls, Pinocchio puppets) placed in the scene. Dine has also collaborated on illustrated artist’s books, in which text is combined with graphics and richly textured paper, typography, and binding. Dine’s graphics make a statement far beyond mere illustration of the text. His Biotherm for Bill Berkson (1990) is based on poems by Frank O’Hara. Dine has had numerous exhibitions, visiting positions, and artist-in-residence appointments. Significance Dine is one of the most protean and prolific American artists who turned against the dominance of abstract expressionism in the 1960’s. His work is figurative, but he always treats his subject matter—usually drawn from recognizable familiar, common objects—in a highly personal and expressionistic manner. He avidly explores new ways of using paint, prints, drawing, sculpture, and mixed media for expressive effect. —Thomas McGeary
Jewish Americans Further Reading Carpenter, Elizabeth. Jim Dine Prints, 1985-2000: A Catalogue Raisonné. Minneapolis, Minn.: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2002. Color-illustrated catalog documents Dine’s complete production of prints and artist’s books made from 1985 to 2000. Dine, Jim. This Goofy Life of Constant Mourning. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2004. Book of photographs of poems that are written on fences, chalkboards walls, and other surfaces. Feinberg, Jean E. Jim Dine. New York: Abbeville Press, 1995. A comprehensive biography of Dine and chronological survey of his art career. Gruen, John. The Artist Observed: Twenty-eight Inter-
Djerassi, Carl views with Contemporary Artists. Chicago: A Cappella Books, 1991. Chapter-length interview and personal sketch of Dine. Kirby, Michael. Happenings: An Illustrated Anthology. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1965. A history of the Happening movement with documentation of several of Dine’s Happenings. Livingstone, Marco. Jim Dine: The Alchemy of Images. New York: Monacelli Press, 1998. Richly illustrated survey of the themes and images in Dine’s work, with extensive commentary by Dine. See also: Judy Chicago; Helen Frankenthaler; Alex Katz; Lee Krasner; Larry Rivers; Mark Rothko.
Carl Djerassi Austrian-born scientist Djerassi synthesized the elements that made up the pill, the most widely used oral contraceptive. This discovery separated the act of sex from reproduction, ushering in the sexual revolution of the 1960’s and leading to the emancipation of women. Born: October 29, 1923; Vienna, Austria Areas of achievement: Science and technology; women’s rights Early Life Carl Djerassi (jeh-RA-see) was born on October 29, 1923, the only child of Samuel Djerassi, a Bulgarian physician, and Alice Friedmann, an Austrian dentist. Both parents were unobservant Jews; Djerassi described himself as a “Jewish atheist.” After his parents divorced, he spent most of his time with his mother in Vienna, Austria, and he spent summers with his father in Sofia, Bulgaria. After Adolf Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, Djerassi’s father remarried his mother, so that she and their son could procure Bulgarian passports and emigrate to the United States. In December, 1939, mother and son reached New York City with little money. Djerassi attended Newark Junior College for two semesters, and he wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wife, who forwarded his letter to a foundation that awarded him a scholarship in 1941 to Tarkio College in Missouri. He spent two semesters and a summer at Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio, receiving his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in 1942.
Djerassi became a chemist at CIBA Pharmaceutical Products, in Summit, New Jersey, where he cosynthesized pyribenzamine (tripelennamine), one of the first antihistamines and a popular drug for allergy sufferers. In 1943, he obtained a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin. In his research, he converted the male sex hormone (testosterone) to the female sex hormone (estradiol), which had previously been extracted from large amounts of pregnant mare’s urine. He received his Ph.D. in 1945. He returned to CIBA (1945-1949), resuming his research on antihistamines and steroids. At age twentyfive, he hoped to establish his reputation on research publications and enter academia later. Life’s Work In 1949, George Rosenkranz of Laboratorios Syntex, Mexico City, appointed Djerassi associate director of research to synthesize cortisone from diosgenin, extracted from tubers of the inedible Mexican yam, Dioscorea. Within two years he succeeded. The company next reported a second synthesis, from hecogenin, from the waste products of Agave sisal hemp. In 1951, Syntex was the only firm synthesizing progesterone, the female sex hormone, in large amounts from diosgenin. Within a few months the Upjohn Company succeeded in converting progesterone to cortisone. Syntex became the major supplier of raw material for this synthesis. Because progesterone inhibits ovulation, preventing a pregnant woman from being fertilized again during pregnancy, it was considered nature’s contraceptive. Djerassi 291
Djerassi, Carl synthesized 19-norprogesterone, four to eight times as active as natural progesterone, which was the most effective progestational hormone. He synthesized yet another synthetic progestational hormone and submitted it for biological evaluation, which showed it to be the most potent oral progestin then known. Because Syntex had no pharmaceutical outlets or biological laboratories, Djerassi chose the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company to market it as Norlutin after receiving approval from the Food and Drug Administration in 1957. In 1952, Djerassi became a tenured associate professor at Wayne University (now Wayne State University), in Detroit, Michigan. He became full professor in 1953. During his five years there, he initiated research that he considered his most important chemical contribution— application of physicochemical techniques to characterize and to determine the structures of organic compounds. Djerassi returned to Syntex for a second three-year term as vice president for research. In 1959, he became professor of chemistry at Stanford University, where he later became professor emeritus. He retained his ties to industry, serving in important positions with Syntex, Zoecon, and other firms. Djerassi was interested in natural products obtained from Mexican giant cacti and determined the structures of hundreds of alkaloids, terpenoids, and natural products. He worked on artificial intelligence and the biosynthesis and biological function of sterols and phospholipids in marine animals. He served as mentor to hundreds of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. In 1985, Djerassi embarked on a third career (after his scientific careers in industry and in academe) in creative writing, becoming a novelist, a poet, and a playwright, specializing in “science-in-fiction” as opposed to science fiction. Significance Djerassi’s name is synonymous with the pill, the most widely used oral contraceptive, based on norethindrone, which he synthesized. This discovery separated the act of
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Jewish Americans sex from reproduction, ushering in the sexual revolution of the 1960’s and leading to the emancipation of women. During the “golden age” in pharmaceuticals, the pill’s biological consequences engendered profound changes in society’s religious, political, economic, and cultural attitudes. Djerassi synthesized steroids, antihistamines, alkaloids, antibiotics, anti-inflammatory agents, terpenoids, sponge sterols, and he developed physicochemical techniques. An award-winning scientist, critically acclaimed poet, novelist, autobiographer, and playwright, he originated the genre of “science-in-fiction.” — George B. Kauffman Further Reading Djerassi, Carl. “Steroid Oral Contraceptives.” Science 151, no. 3714 (March 4, 1966): 1055-1061. Review with structural formulas of the history and the chemistry leading to oral steroid contraceptives. _______. From the Lab into the World: A Pill for People, Pets, and Bugs. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1994. Collection of twenty-four essays reflecting Djerassi’s growth from laboratory scientist to articulate spokesman on scientific issues and ways that laboratory developments affect people globally. _______. Steroids Made It Possible. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1990. Autobiography covering Djerassi’s personal and family life and his career, including his commitment to creative writing. _______. The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas’s Horse: The Autobiography of Carl Djerassi. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Autobiography chronicling his personal and scientific life and art collecting. Kauffman, George, and Laurie M. Kauffman. “The Steroid King.” The World and I 7, no. 7 (July, 1992): 311-319. Overview of Djerassi’s research careers in academe and in industry and his career in creative writing, based on an interview with Djerassi and other sources. See also: Paul Berg; Stanley Cohen; Mildred Cohn; Gertrude Belle Elion; Stanley B. Prusiner.
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Doctorow, E. L.
E. L. Doctorow Novelist and educator Doctorow is known for the interplay between fiction and reality in his works, which reveal deeper truths about American history, society, and culture. Born: January 6, 1931; New York, New York Also known as: Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (full name) Areas of achievement: Literature; scholarship Early Life E. L. Doctorow (DAHK-tuh-roh) was born on January 6, 1931, to Russian Jewish parents Rose and David, who were children of immigrants. He grew up in the Bronx, and, like the character Everett in his novel City of God (2000), Doctorow attended the Bronx High School of Science. Unlike most of the mathematically gifted children in the school, Doctorow was drawn to the literary magazine Dynamo, where he published an essay based on his reading of Franz Kafka. In 1952, Doctorow graduated with honors from Kenyon College, an institution where the study of literature was important. At Kenyon, Doctorow studied philosophy and worked with the poet John Crowe Ransom, a proponent of New Criticism. During this time, Doctorow also developed his love of deconstructing narratives and reimagining them, an impulse that some have argued is like the tradition of ancient rabbis and sages who creatively reimagined the stories of the Hebrew Bible through Midrash, the interpretation of biblical narratives. While Doctorow is not religious, this decidedly Jewish literary technique places him in the tradition of Jewish writing. After graduating from Kenyon, Doctorow began graduate studies in English drama at Columbia University, but he was drafted into the United States Army after only a year of course work. He was stationed in Germany and served as a corporal in the Signal Corps until 1955. During this time, he married Helen Setzer, a fellow student at Columbia University, and they had three children— Jenny, Caroline, and Richard—all born before 1960. Doctorow returned to New York after his military service and worked as a senior editor at New American Library from 1959 to 1964, where he assisted authors such as Ayn Rand and Ian Fleming. In 1964, he accepted a position as editor in chief at Dial Press, where he played a role in publishing Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, William Kennedy, and others. In 1969, Doctorow concluded
his editorial work and began writing and teaching on a full-time basis. He held teaching positions at the University of California, Irvine; Yale University Drama School; Princeton University; Sarah Lawrence College; and New York University, where he achieved the Glucksman Chair in American Letters. Life’s Work Between 1960 and 1968, before he left his editorial work to become a full-time writer and professor, Doctorow published three works: Welcome to Hard Times (1960), a tale about the Old West, which was later adapted into a film starring Henry Fonda; Big as Life (1966); and “The Songs of Billy Bathgate,” a short story from which he recycled the protagonist’s name for his later novel, Billy Bathgate (1989), which won the PEN/ Faulkner Award. After Doctorow parted ways with Dial Press in 1969, he took a position as visiting writer at the University of California, Irvine, where he was able to complete his celebrated novel The Book of Daniel (1971), a fictionalized reconsideration of the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 after being convicted of espionage. The novel garnered a lot of attention, propelling Doctorow into the next level of American writers. It was nominated for a National Book Award, as was his 1980 novel Loon Lake. Four years after the publication of The Book of Daniel, which later was adapted for a film
Blending Fact and Fiction Ragtime (1975) and The Book of Daniel (1971) epitomize E. L. Doctorow’s talent for blending historical facts with fictional elements, often blurring the line between the two. This technique has become a hallmark of Doctorow’s writing, but it has also earned him a substantial amount of criticism. In Ragtime, for example, financier J. P. Morgan becomes a character in the narrative, and while Doctorow admitted that the dialogue and the behavior he attributed to Morgan were fictionalized, he also suggested that elements of the imagined narrative can be found in Morgan’s autobiography, which is perhaps a fiction itself. Doctorow’s response to such criticism has been to implicate the reader in the process of fact-finding, suggesting that readers are responsible for reading fiction as fiction rather than as history.
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E. L. Doctorow. (©Barbara Walz)
directed by Sidney Lumet, Doctorow published a novel that became known as one of his masterpieces: Ragtime (1975). It earned numerous awards and was adapted for a film that was nominated for eight Academy Awards. It was made into a Broadway musical in 1998, and that musical was nominated for numerous Tony Awards. Ragtime, one of the best-selling American books of all time, is especially indicative of Doctorow’s tendency to use fiction to reveal the sinister political and cultural undercurrents of American life. In 1986, Doctorow finally received the National Book Award with the publication of World’s Fair. This novel, the central character of which is named Edgar, showcases Doctorow’s ability to blend seamlessly fiction and 294
Jewish Americans reality; many have called the book a hybrid of novel and memoir. Set in the1930’s Bronx of New York, the novel not only questions the line between fact and fiction but also implies that the process of remembering involves creative invention. In 1994, he published The Waterworks, which was less successful than some of his previous novels but which again employed historical fiction to provide a less-tainted vision of late nineteenth century New York City. One interesting component of this novel was the somewhat frequent appearance of ellipses. By incorporating ellipses into the text, Doctorow drew the reader’s attention to the possibility of missing narrative, simultaneously constructing and deconstructing his own story. In 2000, with the publication of City of God, Doctorow continued to make use of spaces, ellipses, fragmented narrative, and multiple narrators. This novel was unique because it dealt directly with theological and cosmological concerns (a major strand of the narrative involves the disappearance of a cross from a church and its mysterious reappearance atop a lower East Side synagogue in New York). It also made creative use of thematic elements that are distinctively Jewish: the Holocaust and Midrash (in the form of the Midrash Jazz Quartet). While Doctorow considered this novel to be one of his masterpieces, many critics found it to be fragmented. Doctorow continued to be concerned with the question of how the universe and personal history bear on each other and how their interaction materializes in the context of contemporary religious, political, cultural, and artistic impulses. These concerns are dealt with specifically in Reporting the Universe, his 2003 collection of essays. He returned to historical fiction in 2005 with the publication of The March, which was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. It was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and nominated for the National Book Award. His return to the historical-fiction genre proved to be a brief hiatus from his larger philosophical concerns, however, to which he returned in 2006 with the publication of Creationists: Selected Essays, 1993-2006. In 2009, he published Homer and Langley. Doctorow continued to publish short fiction and essays in many publications, including The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, The Nation, and The New York Times.
Jewish Americans Significance Doctorow’s consistent literary output is impressive; he has generated one of the most substantial bodies of work of any twentieth century American writer. Beyond his prolific presence in the American literary canon, given the high number of award-winning novels that he has written since 1960, his work in the genre of historical fiction is especially significant. One cannot speak of historical fiction without referencing Doctorow. His writing is important not only to the world of literature and literary studies but also to the realm of history. By drawing the reader’s attention to the interplay between fiction and reality, Doctorow reveals deeper truths about American history, society, and culture. Further Reading Bloom, Harold. E. L. Doctorow. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2002. This collection of essays is suitable for the high school student as well as for the advanced
Donen, Stanley scholar. All of the selected essays flesh out Doctorow’s recurring theme of injustice. Morris, Christopher D., ed. Conversations with E. L. Doctorow. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002. Talks reveal Doctorow’s opinions on the contemporary novel, the moral imperative of fiction, the workings of the publishing industry, and how television and films deal with his works. Siegel, Ben, ed. Critical Essays on E. L. Doctorow. New York: G. K. Hall, 2000. A wide variety of critical essays and scholarly reviews of Doctorow’s work. The approaches of the essays in this collection are diverse and wide-reaching, offering a sense of the breadth of thematic concepts addressed in Doctorow’s work. —Monica Osborne See also: Paul Auster; Saul Bellow; Stanley Elkin; Edna Ferber; Jonathan Safran Foer; Joseph Heller; Tony Kushner; Bernard Malamud; Herman Wouk.
Stanley Donen Film director
Born: April 13, 1924; Columbia, South Carolina Area of achievement: Entertainment
ard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart musical Pal Joey (1940). Star and choreographer Gene Kelly was impressed by Donen’s energy and made him assistant choreographer on Best Foot Forward (1941) the following year and then on Beat the Band (1942). When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) purchased the rights to Best Foot Forward, Donen followed Kelly to Hollywood.
Early Life Stanley Donen (DOH-nihn) was the eldest child of Mordecai, whose parents emigrated from Russia, and Helen, whose parents emigrated from Germany. Donen’s father managed a chain of dress shops in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and the family spent its summers in New York City, where his father’s employer had its headquarters. Donen escaped the loneliness of being a Jew in the South by attending motion pictures and by making home films with an eight-millimeter camera that was a gift from his father. Donen’s life changed in 1933, when he saw his first musical, Flying down to Rio, and began taking dance lessons. He worked at Columbia’s Town Theatre in South Carolina as a teenager, and he left for New York after he graduated from high school in 1940. Donen quickly landed a part in the chorus of the Rich-
Life’s Work With Kelly’s help Donen was signed to a seven-year MGM contract. He was a chorus boy in the film Best Foot Forward (1943), and then, on loan to Columbia Pictures, Donen assisted Kelly in choreographing for Cover Girl (1944). Back at MGM the pair collaborated on Anchors Aweigh (1945), best known for Kelly’s dance with the animated mouse from the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Donen then served as choreographer for eight films, including the Esther Williams musical This Time for Keeps (1947), featuring a water ballet. Donen and Kelly came up with the idea for the baseball musical Take Me out to the Ball Game (1949), for which they codirected Kelly’s numbers and were rewarded by getting to codirect On the Town (1949), which broke ground by leaving the MGM soundstages to film a few scenes on location in New York. The opening “New
Donen directed some of the most famous musicals of the 1940’s and 1950’s. These films helped liberate the musical from its stagebound conventions and are notable for their energy and cinematic beauty.
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Donen, Stanley York, New York” number was shot at several tourist locations, giving a sense of the city’s hectic pace. Some have called this number the first cinematic musical sequence. Rewarded with a new seven-year contract, Donen directed his first solo effort, Royal Wedding (1951), with Fred Astaire’s famous dancing-on-the-ceiling number. After Love Is Better than Ever (1952), a comedy with Elizabeth Taylor, Donen and Kelly codirected Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Starring Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor, the film looks at Hollywood’s painful transition from silent to sound films. After two minor efforts, Fearless Fagan (1952) and Give a Girl a Break (1953), Donen directed his masterpiece, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). The highlight of this musical set on the Oregon frontier is a barnraising number choreographed by Michael Kidd for which Donen exploited the CinemaScope widescreen process to capture the constant movements of the performers. Following another minor film, Deep in My Heart (1954), Donen joined with Kelly to codirect It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), a musical satire of advertising and television starring Kelly. The longtime collaborators had a falling out during this production and never worked together again.
Jewish Americans
Leaving MGM, Donen moved on to Paramount Pictures to make Funny Face (1957), with Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. Funny Face is the most romantic of Donen’s musicals and the first of several films he made in Europe. Donen followed with The Pajama Game (1957), the first of his two adaptations of Broadway musicals. Codirected with George Abbott, the original’s writer-director and the director of three productions in which Donen appeared, The Pajama Game, starring Doris Day, is set in an underwear factory, presented with unusual realism for a musical. Following the service comedy Kiss Them for Me (1957), notable as the first of Donen’s four films starring Cary Grant, the director formed a production company with writer Norman Krasna. Their first effort was the light comedy Indiscreet (1958), starring Grant and Ingrid Bergman. Donen followed with Damn Yankees! (1958), another Broadway adaptation collaboration with Abbott, starring Gwen Verdon and Tab Hunter. Donen then signed with Columbia Pictures and made a string of mild comedies: Once More with Feeling! (1960) and Surprise Package (1960), both with Yul Brynner, and The Grass Is Greener (1960), with Grant, Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, and Jean Simmons. While these bland comedies lacked the energy and visual style of Donen’s musicals, he recovered from this shallow period by making his best nonmusical. Charade (1963), with Grant, HepSINGIN’ IN THE RAIN burn, and Walter Matthau, is a crime comedy influenced by such Alfred Hitchcock films as Stanley Donen’s masterpiece Singin’in the Rain (1952) works on North by Northwest (1959). With constant several levels. In addition to being a brightly packaged entertainshifts among romance, comedy, and action, ment, the film looks back, both nostalgically and satirically, at the Donen demonstrated his sheer professionalbirth of the Hollywood film musical in the early days of sound and ism and his skills as a storyteller. The comdemonstrates how the genre has developed. Arthur Freed, head of the production unit responsible for turning out Metro-Goldwynplex spy thriller Arabesque (1966), with GregMayer (MGM) musicals from 1939 to 1970, was a songwriter at the ory Peck and Sophia Loren, was almost as beginning of the sound era, creating with composer Nacio Herb good. Brown such songs as “Singin’ in the Rain” and “You Are My Lucky These two films illustrate Donen’s matuStar.” Singin’in the Rain expertly uses these and other Freed-Brown rity as a film stylist and his awareness of the songs to help tell the story of how performers adapted to taking picincreasingly sophisticated films of European tures. With Gene Kelly handling the choreography, Donen was refilmmakers. The influence of Ingmar Bergsponsible for the visual style of Singin’ in the Rain. The film’s most man can be seen in the disintegration of the famous scene is Kelly’s performance of the title song in pouring rain marriage of Hepburn and Albert Finney in as Donen shoots his singing and dancing from several angles on a Two for the Road (1967), which fractures time large street set. In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) chose by jumping back and forth among several peSingin’in the Rain as the tenth greatest American film of all time. In 2006, it was named the greatest musical film by AFI, with On the riods in the characters’ lives. Written by and Town (1949) nineteenth and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Betwenty-first. A 2002 Sight and Sound poll of critics and filmmakers dazzled (1967) is a lively satire of sex, relilisted Singin’ in the Rain as the tenth greatest film of all time. gion, and fame and the last of Donen’s better films.
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Jewish Americans Donen went into a bit of a decline after Bedazzled. A gay couple, portrayed by Richard Burton and Rex Harrison, mugged their way through Staircase (1969). Except for Bob Fosse’s interpretation of a snake, The Little Prince (1974) was a lifeless musical adaptation of the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry novel. The Prohibition-era comedy Lucky Lady (1975) was an uninspired teaming of Gene Hackman, Liza Minnelli, and Burt Reynolds. The best of Donen’s latter films, Movie Movie (1978), starring George C. Scott, is a spoof of 1930’s musicals and melodramas. Saturn 3 (1980), a science-fiction film with Kirk Douglas, is generally considered Donen’s worst effort, though it did inspire screenwriter Martin Amis to write one of his best novels, Money (1984), which satirizes the egos and the insecurities of film stars. Blame It on Rio (1984), Donen’s final theatrical film, finds Michael Caine falling for a much younger woman. The father of three sons, Donen was divorced five times. Significance Donen was one of the most productive directors of his era, making sixteen films from 1951 to 1960. Along with Vincente Minnelli, Donen is considered a master of the musical film. Though Donen was nominated for Directors Guild of America Awards for Singin’ in the Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Funny Face, Damn Yankees!, and Two for the Road, he was never nominated for an Academy Award. In 1998, he received an honorary
Douglas, Kirk Academy Award for the body of his work. Charade, Arabesque, and Two for the Road demonstrated that his cinematic skills could be applied to nonmusical subjects. —Michael Adams Further Reading Casper, Joseph Andrew. Stanley Donen. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1983. Detailed analysis of all films through Saturn 3 includes comments about each musical number. Chumo, Peter N. “Dance, Flexibility, and the Renewal of Genre in Singin’in the Rain.” Cinema Journal 36 (Autumn, 1996): 39-54. Explains how Donen’s film is an art musical examining traditions of the musical genre. Hess, Earl J., and Pratibha A. Dabholkar. “Singin’ in the Rain”: The Making of an American Masterpiece. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009. History of the film production and its legacy. Silverman, Stephen M. Dancing on the Ceiling: Stanley Donen and His Movies. New York: Knopf, 1996. Definitive biography based in part on interviews with the director. Wollen, Peter. Singin’ in the Rain. London: BFI, 1992. Places the film in the context of its time and other MGM musicals. See also: George Cukor; Cecil B. DeMille; Stanley Kramer; Ernst Lubitsch; Sidney Lumet; Jerome Robbins.
Kirk Douglas Actor and author A powerful actor, Douglas also became a director and a producer. His courageous actions during the Senator Joseph McCarthy era put an end to the Hollywood blacklist. Born: December 9, 1916; Amsterdam, New York Also known as: Izzy Demsky; Isadore Demsky; Issur Danielovitch (birth name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Kirk Douglas (DUHG-lihs) was born Issur Danielovitch on December 9, 1916, in Amsterdam, New York, to Herschel Danielovitch and Bryna Sanglel. His birth name was Americanized to Isadore Demsky when he went to elementary school.
Douglas was the only son of seven children; he had three older sisters and three younger sisters. His father worked as a ragman, driving a horse and wagon through town and collecting rags, metal, and junk. His father was rarely home, and Douglas’s relationship with his father was never close. Raised as an Orthodox Jew, Douglas attended Hebrew school in the afternoons after regular school. From the time he was in kindergarten, Douglas wanted to be an actor. A high school English teacher introduced him to poetry and encouraged him to become well educated. At her urging, he sent off for college and drama school catalogs. Douglas graduated from Wilbur H. Lynch High School on June 27, 1934, in a class of 322 students. Immediately after graduation, Douglas went to work as a janitor. He held various unskilled jobs, saving 297
Douglas, Kirk money for his college education. In the fall of 1935, he enrolled at St. Lawrence University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in English and graduated on June 12, 1939. Douglas then went to New York City, where he briefly worked at the Greenwich Settlement House, putting on plays with the immigrant children in return for room and board. While in New York, he legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas and enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on a scholarship. During his time in the academy’s two-year program, Douglas met his future wife, Diana Dill. After graduating from the academy, Douglas landed a role in the play Spring Again (1941) and a bit part in Tri sestry (1901; The Three Sisters, 1920). Douglas joined the Navy during World War II and served aboard ship as a communications officer. Douglas and Dill were married on November 2, 1943, by a Navy chaplain. In June, 1944, Douglas was honorably discharged. By this time the couple was expecting their first child, Michael. A second
Kirk Douglas. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans child, Joel, soon followed. The couple divorced in February, 1950. Life’s Work After his discharge from the Navy, Douglas began to get acting jobs in New York City, including in the plays Kiss and Tell (1943) and The Wind Is Ninety (1945). In 1945, Douglas was approached by producer Hal Wallis about taking a role in a film, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). After his film debut, Douglas returned to New York to act in Woman Bites Dog (1946), but the play closed within a month. Back in Los Angeles, Douglas picked up film roles in Out of the Past (1947) and I Walk Alone (1948). From 1948 to 1952, Douglas did some radio work in dramas and series, including The Prudential Family Hour of Stars and Suspense. In 1949, he made Champion, a film about a boxer, which propelled him into stardom and landed him his first Academy Award nomination. Douglas then signed a contract with Warner Bros. Studio, where he made several films, including Along the Great Divide (1951), which was his first Western film, and The Big Trees (1952), which was the last film he made for Warner Bros. Douglas played the role of sailor Ned Land in Walt Disney’s first live-action film, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1954). While filming it, Douglas married his second wife, Anne Buydens, on May 29, 1954. The couple had two children, Peter Vincent and Eric. In 1955, Douglas formed his own production company and named it Bryna Productions in honor of his mother. At that time, it was unusual for an actor to be involved in production or in directing. Nevertheless, Douglas acted, directed, and produced; Bryna’s first film, The Indian Fighter, was made in 1955, and it starred Douglas. Bryna Productions was also active in television, producing several series. Douglas made Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960), which are perhaps the bestknown films of his career. Spartacus was also Douglas’s first film as a producer. In the 1970’s, he began directing some of his own films, starting with Posse (1975). In 1963, Douglas went to Colombia to represent the United States at a film festival. Between 1964 and 1966, he and his wife traveled abroad as goodwill ambassadors on behalf of the State Department and the United States Information
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Agency, visiting the Far East, Europe, the The End of the Hollywood Blacklist Middle East, and the Iron Curtain countries of Eastern Europe. Kirk Douglas put an end to the Hollywood blacklist. In 1947, the In 1981, Douglas received the Presidential House Committee on Un-American Activities had begun questionMedal of Freedom for his public service efing people about their purported involvement with the American Communist Party. Film studios quickly caved in to political pressure forts, followed by the Jefferson Award in 1983. and refused to hire anyone who was suspected of being a CommuHe is a Chevalier in the French Legion of nist. Many writers and other entertainment-industry workers lost Honor. He received the American Cinema their jobs; others used false names in order to keep working. Award in 1987, the German Golden Kamera Douglas hired screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who had been blackAward in 1988, the National Board of Relisted, to write the screenplay for Spartacus, based on the book by view’s Career Achievement Award in 1989, Howard Fast. Trumbo wrote the film script using his pen name, Sam and an honorary Academy Award in 1995. In Jackson. When he was nearly finished with the film’s production, 1999, he was given the American Film InstiKirk met with his producer, Eddie Lewis, and his director, Stanley tute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Kubrick, to discuss what name should go on the film credits for the Douglas’s autobiography, The Ragman’s screenwriter. Disgusted by the blacklist, Kirk decided to put the Son, was published in 1988, and it was folname Dalton Trumbo on the film. Although many people in the film industry thought the decision was reckless, Douglas believed that it lowed by three other nonfiction books, two was the only honorable thing to do. The Hollywood blacklist was children’s books, and three novels. In 1991, he broken, and Douglas had been the one to break it. survived a collision between his helicopter and a small plane. Recovering from the accident, he kindled a renewed interest in Judaism and began to study the Talmud and the Torah Further Reading again. A minor stroke in 1996 left him without the ability Douglas, Kirk. The Ragman’s Son: An Autobiography. to speak for some time, but Douglas fully recovered. He New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. Douglas writes is involved in civic and community affairs. about his life from early childhood to the mid-1980’s. Includes an extensive index. Significance _______. Climbing the Mountain: My Search for MeanDouglas is one of the most widely recognized screen ing. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Douglas actors of the twentieth century. During his career, spancontinues his autobiography, musing about several ning more than sixty years, he appeared in more than serious accidents that encouraged him to renew his eighty films and nine plays. Douglas brought a great deal faith in Judaism. of energy and strength to the characters that he portrayed, _______. Let’s Face It: Ninety Years of Living, Loving, who were often powerfully driven men in difficult cirand Learning. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, cumstances. Douglas also worked as a director and a pro2007. Douglas reminisces about his family, friends, ducer, adding his creative energies to the filmmaking and life events, reflecting on how important his faith experience. Douglas opposed the work of the House has become to him over time. Committee on Un-American Activities, which sought to Munn, Michael. Kirk Douglas: The Man, the Actor. New find Communists and other subversives, especially in the York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985. Author, actor, and film Hollywood community. Douglas defied the blacklist, on critic Munn’s biography of Douglas, from his childwhich the names of suspected Communists were kept, hood to his rise to the top. and used Dalton Trumbo’s real name on the film credits Thomas, Tony. The Films of Kirk Douglas. New York: for Spartacus. This act brought an end to the Hollywood Citadel Press, 2000. Film biography that includes cast blacklist. listings and plot descriptions of Douglas’s films. In 1964, Douglas and his wife established the Douglas Foundation, a philanthropic institution dedicated to the See also: Lauren Bacall; Tony Curtis; Stanley Donen; idea of helping people who cannot help themselves. Its Stanley Kramer; Peter Lorre; Lee Strasberg; Sam causes are educational and medical research. Wanamaker; William Wyler. —Karen S. Garvin
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Jewish Americans
Fran Drescher Actor After a long apprenticeship playing character parts, Drescher found full-fledged stardom with her lead role in the 1990’s situation comedy The Nanny. Known for her perky personality and over-the-top humor, she used her celebrity to advocate for women’s health issues. Born: September 30, 1957; Flushing, Queens, New York Also known as: Francine Joy Drescher (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Fran Drescher (DREH-shehr) was born and raised in New York City. Her father, Morton, was a naval systems analyst, and her mother, Sylvia, was a bridal consultant.
Fran Drescher. (WireImage/Getty Images)
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Drescher has an older sister, Nadine. The family was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Growing up in a subculture that reflected similar origins, Drescher picked up a speech pattern characterized by nasal tones and a “New Yawk” accent with Yiddish expressions, which later became her trademark. Ambitious, Drescher, at Hillcrest High School, performed in Trfiades (415 b.c.e.; The Trojan Women, 1782) and Our Town (1938) and entered a local pageant for Miss New York Teenager. Winning second place in the contest, she used the title to spark interest at talent agencies. In high school, she met Peter Marc Jacobson, whose theatrical ambitions matched her own. They became friends and partners in marriage, a relationship that would last for years. Drescher and Jacobson attended Queens College, but, finding the drama programs hard to get into, they dropped out and enrolled in the Ultissima Beauty Institute to gain an easily marketable skill. Meanwhile, both were going to auditions. After doing some commercials, Drescher garnered two film roles: a short appearance with John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and a role opposite Jay Leno in American Hot Wax (1978). Life’s Work American Hot Wax was shot in Los Angeles. Drescher and Jacobson moved west for it, and afterward they decided to stay in California to jump-start their careers in entertainment. As a team, the two were indefatigable in coming up with concepts and pilot scripts, especially for television. Each also auditioned for film and television roles, and they appeared in many commercials. Beginning in 1978, Drescher acted in an impressive number of films and television series. For the most part, these were second-tier productions, but they did bring her a certain amount of recognition and experience. In the 1974 cult classic film This Is Spinal Tap, a satirical take on a fictional rock band, Drescher appeared as Bobbi Flekman in two key scenes. She won Esquire magazine’s Five Minute Oscar Award for short performances. Her roles in two short-lived television series, Charmed Lives (1986) and Princesses (1991), established her
Jewish Americans
Drescher, Fran
unique persona as a brash and bouncy New THE NANNY as Wish Fulfillment Yorker. A major career turning point came when Fran Drescher’s identification with The Nanny goes far beyond Drescher found herself seated next to Jeff Saganit being the actor’s most famous role. The show’s concept was cresky, president of the Columbia Broadcasting ated by Drescher and her then-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson, as a vehicle for her. It was sold to CBS as they envisioned it, and System (CBS), on a nine-hour flight to Paris. Drescher wrote and/or produced many of the episodes. The story As described in her autobiography, Enter Whinof a brash young cosmetic saleswoman who accidentally ends up ing (1995), this was her “seize the day” moas a nanny to the children of a blue-blood British Broadway proment. He had seen her in Princesses and reducer, it was sold first as a variant of The Sound of Music (1959). marked that the role did not do her justice. However, most scenes are played largely for laughs rather than for Drescher said that she and her husband had sentimentality (although the latter quality is never far below the been working on scripts that did showcase her surface), and the prevalence of pratfalls and goofy antics are remitalents. Before the flight ended she had exniscent of I Love Lucy. tracted a promise from Sagansky to view one of On another level, the series’ story arc can be envisioned as a their pilots. This was the genesis of Drescher’s Cinderella story in which the little Jewish girl from Queens ultimost successful role, as The Nanny. As a capsule mately gets her man. The show’s Fran is upfront about wanting to marry, and while her various dates account for many funny epidescription, she and Jacobson wrote: “It’s like sodes, those around them see that Fran and her employer Maxwell the Sound of Music except . . . ” and Tim Flack, belong together long before either of them realize it. (They finally CBS’s head of comedy development, added do marry in the fifth season, tossing a number of new plot direc“Fran Drescher is the nanny from hell.” All the tions into the story mix.) Backing up this fantasy fulfillment theme studio brass, from Sagansky down, bought into are visual clues that rivet the viewer’s attention. For example, the the idea. There was some worry that “middle short skirts and flamboyant styles that Fran sports are over-the-top Americans” might not identify with the New versions of clothes that Drescher wears. Fran Fine, like Cinderella, York-based comedy, but that fear was groundwins out with her basic virtues of honesty and caring, as opposed to less. Although not an instant hit, The Nanny her rival, C. C., who also has designs on Maxwell. Life may not rapidly gained an enthusiastic audience and, by have entirely followed a fairy-tale script for Drescher, but she will its second year, was drawing 12.5 million viewbe remembered for her loving and optimistic nanny. ers a night. It ran from 1993 to 1999 and was still popular during its final season. The show won an Emmy Award and was consistently enthusiastic supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton’s 2008 nominated for other awards. campaign for the U.S. presidency. Beginning in 1996, however, Drescher was battered After The Nanny’s success, Drescher was a highby a succession of major life changes. Her seventeenprofile celebrity, and she acted in a variety of projects in year marriage to Jacobson was breaking up. Although the 2000’s, including a two-year run in a television situathe couple strove to work together on the show, CBS tion comedy, Living with Fran (2005-2007), and a stage abruptly canceled The Nanny after its sixth successful play, Some Girls (2005). Drescher, maybe less frenetic year. Drescher’s much-loved dog, Chester, was in failing than before, retains her trademark optimism and candor. health. For two years she suffered mysterious medical symptoms, visiting eight different doctors before the Significance ninth gave her an accurate diagnosis of uterine cancer. Although Drescher is not the first entertainer to use a Drescher was shocked and fearful. She underwent a Jewish cultural identity as a mainspring of a comedic hysterectomy and the following year went through a rocky persona, her success in using it to build a mass audience but ultimately successful treatment. These experiences for a situation comedy is unparalleled. When CBS execled to her writing a second book, Cancer Schmancer utives wanted to make Fran Fine, the nanny, an Italian (2002), and setting up an organization of the same name, American for better audience identification, Drescher indedicated to educating women on the importance of sisted that the character should remain Jewish, because early cancer detection. In 2008, she was appointed a pubthe rapid responses she needed for sitcom gags would lic diplomacy envoy by the U.S. State Department, and come more spontaneously. She was right. In fact, the she made several overseas trips in support of women’s New York Jewish milieu of Fran Fine’s family and health issues and patient empowerment. Drescher was an 301
Dreyfuss, Richard friends seemed to provide just the right touch of exoticism for the presumably “Middle American” audience. Drescher often based episodes on funny events drawn from her family lore, and, of course, relatives’ peculiarities have universal appeal. Drescher and Jacobson had a genius for presentation—working out the concepts for a show that would appeal to network decision makers. Typically, actors write or produce shows or films only when they have a fair number of performance credits. This team did so from the beginning, and it worked. Drescher had a gift for knowing what would suit her style. The format of an ensemble comedy built around her character was a winner. Her naïve openness and her willingness to take jokes “over the top” helped immensely, endearing her to audiences and making her popular as a talk-show guest. —Emily Alward
Jewish Americans Further Reading Drescher, Fran. Cancer Schmancer. New York: Warner Books, Inc., 2002. An account of the actor’s cancer surgery and recovery. Notably frank about symptoms, but Drescher’s sense of humor comes through. _______. Enter Whining. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Lighthearted autobiography, studded with photos and celebrity cameos and showcasing Drescher’s unique talent for humorous takes on situations. Zurawik, David. The Jews of Prime Time. Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 2003. Examines The Nanny as a welcome exception to the dearth of characters with a Jewish identity on entertainment television. See also: Bea Arthur; Roseanne Barr; Fanny Brice; Bette Midler.
Richard Dreyfuss Actor Dreyfuss is an Academy Award-winning actor whose portrayal of regular guys as well as smart-mouthed wiseacres demonstrated his versatility. Born: October 29, 1947; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Richard Stephen Dreyfuss (full name) Areas of achievement: Theater; entertainment; activism Early Life Richard Dreyfuss (DRI-fuhs) is the second of three children of Norman, an attorney and later a restaurateur, and Geraldine, a homemaker and an activist. The family lived in Brooklyn until relocating in 1950 to Bayside in Queens. In February, 1956, the Dreyfuss’s decided to sell everything and relocate the family to Europe. After about six months, with almost all their money gone, the family returned home and relocated to Los Angeles. Dreyfuss’s first experience on stage was in various Hebrew School productions. As a freshman at Beverly Hills High School, he became interested in film. While still in high school, Dreyfuss began to act professionally at the Gallery Theatre in Los Angeles. Following high school graduation, he enrolled at San Fernando Valley State College, intending to major in drama. Conflict with a professor resulted in Dreyfuss changing his major to political science, appro302
priate for the son of an activist mother and a father reputed to have been a socialist. When Dreyfuss was drafted, the Vietnam War was raging. Against the war, Dreyfuss applied for conscientious objector status. At his hearing in 1967, later described by Dreyfuss as terrifying, he convinced the board of his sincerity and was required to serve two years of alternative service as a file clerk on the midnight shift at Los Angeles County General Hospital. He also was required to drop out of school. During this time, Dreyfuss was also acting, playing various minor roles on television, specializing in the neurotic, nerdy type. Then he changed his stereotype to “young psychopath,” nabbing parts in Mod Squad and Judd for the Defense. Other television shows in which he appeared in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s included Peyton Place, Room 222, and The Big Valley. His first work in film was one line in The Graduate (1967). He also had small parts in The Young Runaways (1968) and Hello Down There (1969). Dreyfuss relocated to New York to play Stanley in Julius Epstein’s play But, Seriously . . . (1969), which closed after two days. In the summer of 1969, Dreyfuss joined a theater company in Los Angeles, and in 1971 he was back in New York in two, short-lived Off-Broadway shows. Dreyfuss returned to Los Angeles, joined the Center Theater Group, and in 1972 played Dudley in a touring production of William
Jewish Americans Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life (1939), starring Henry Fonda. In film, his portrayal of Baby Face Nelson in the film Dillinger (1973) received strong reviews. His next good role was playing Curt Henderson, the witty but nervous intellectual in American Graffiti (1973). Critics praised his work, and Dreyfuss received his first starring role in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974). Playing an aggressive, money-grubbing Jew, Dreyfuss was both praised and condemned. Those who praised saw his portrayal of the main character as incisive and with just enough innocence to allow the audience to feel sorry for him. The critics saw the abrasive actions of Kravitz as playing into negative Jewish stereotypes.
Dreyfuss, Richard inexperienced public defender in Nuts (1987), and an actor turned dictator in Moon over Parador (1988). Success in these roles and his strong work ethic revised his image in Hollywood. His depiction of the anal psychiatrist in What About Bob (1991) was a perfect counterpart to Bill Murray’s portrayal of Bob, his neurotic patient. Other roles followed, some small but important parts, such as Senator Rumsen in The American President (1994). One of his best roles was as the music teacher in Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995). Playing Glenn Holland, who had tried for thirty years to compose his symphony but was continually interrupted by commitments to his students and his family, Dreyfuss was nominated for an Academy Award. His work on the film prompted his interest in teaching of the arts in public schools, and, with the film’s director Stephen Herek, he founded Mr. Holland’s Foundation, to raise funds and support for music education. In addition to roles in film, Dreyfuss has acted in Broadway productions. His role in the 1992 production of Ariel Dorfman’s play Death and the Maiden, a critique of Chilean politics, demonstrated Dreyfuss’s continuing interest in politics. He has worked as a producer, and he cowrote a novel with science-fiction author Harry Turtledove. The Two Georges (1995) is a what-if detective story, combining Dreyfuss’s interests in politics and in history. The alternative-history story concerns the theft and recovery of a painting that symbolizes the continuing union of North America and Britain. The premise is there had never been a separation between the United
Life’s Work Dreyfuss’s next major role was playing an ichthyologist in Jaws (1975). He turned down the part three times before consenting to play Matt Hooper. Not happy at being on location in Martha’s Vineyard and concerned that the film would be “the turkey of the year,” Dreyfuss accepted the part. The film was a resounding success, and Dreyfuss, according to some critics, stole the show with his “cheeky charm.” Strong roles followed. Dreyfus played the obsessed lineman Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1976) and the actor Elliot Garfield in The Goodbye Girl (1977), winning an Academy Award. Then Dreyfuss had a series of films that were not memorable; he developed a reputation for being difficult on the set and having an addiction to drugs. In 1982, he crashed his car into a tree, and police found cocaine and Percodan painkillers in the vehicle. Dreyfuss was arrested for possession of illegal drugs and ordered to court-appointed rehabilitation. After three months of rehabilitation, he met Jeramie Rain, a television producer and writer. They married two months later, in March, 1983, and had three children. Rain contracted lupus and their second child was born with cancer in one of his eyes. Despite these personal problems, Dreyfuss conquered his addictions and worked to resurrect his career by accepting a variety of parts. He played an uptight businessman in Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), an aluminum siding con man in Tin Men (1987), an Richard Dreyfuss. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Dreyfuss, Richard States and England, and to ransom the painting, the Sons of Liberty, a terrorist group, demands American independence from Britain. The book was nominated for the Sidewise Award for Alternative History. In 2001 and 2002, Dreyfuss played the title character in the critically acclaimed short-lived television drama The Education of Max Bickford. Dreyfuss has continued to act and to be involved in political issues. His interest in history resulted in a nationwide campaign to encourage the teaching of American history in American primary schools. Dreyfuss divorced Rain in 1995. In 1999, he married accountant Janelle Lacey; they divorced in 2005. He married Svetlana Erokhin on March 16, 2006. Significance Dreyfuss is not a tall, dark, and handsome leading man or a romantic lead. He is noted for his adept characterizations of guys who range from uptight neurotics to wisecracking charmers. Dreyfuss also demonstrated a fierce determination to first become a star and then to resurrect the career he had destroyed by abusing drugs. Not afraid to take a chance on a variety of roles, Dreyfuss can pull his weight as a lead actor and in a supporting role. —Marcia B. Dinneen Further Reading Dreifus, Claudia. “Richard Dreyfuss.” Progressive, May, 1993, 32-36. An interview with Dreyfuss that comments on his life as an activist and includes information on his acting career.
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THE GOODBYE GIRL Richard Dreyfuss’s role as Elliot Garfield in The Goodbye Girl (1977) might have echoed his own struggles to create a career in acting. In the film, based on Neil Simon’s screenplay, Garfield has been working as an actor in Chicago and relocates to New York City, where he is offered the role of Richard in William Shakespeare’s Richard III (1592-1593) in an Off-Broadway production. He has learned the part, practiced walking as a “crookback,” and is then informed by the director that he is to play Richard as a “flaming homosexual.” Garfield meets a woman, played by Marsha Mason, who has been dumped by her previous lover, and they share her apartment. Dreyfuss is able to show his funny, sensitive side with Mason’s character and his despair over having to act the role of Richard in a way that is totally bizarre. The film was funny, sad, and sincere. Dreyfuss won an Academy Award for his performance and was, at twenty-nine, the youngest actor to win the award at that time.
Kahn, Joseph P. “The Education of Richard Dreyfuss: He No Longer Cares to Be a Film Star.” The Boston Globe, February 7, 2007, p. F1. Discusses Dreyfuss as an actor-activist. Klemesrud, Judy. “Richard Dreyfuss Has Already Written His Oscar Speech.” The New York Times, October 27, 1974, p. 143. An article full of details on Dreyfuss’ s life and acting experiences. Ryan, James. “The Comeback Kid Tries Again.” The New York Times, January 14, 1996, p. H11. Discusses Dreyfuss’s roles in some of his well-known films. See also: Alan Arkin; Matthew Broderick; Billy Crystal; Neil Simon; Steven Spielberg.
Jewish Americans
Drudge, Matt
Matt Drudge Journalist Drudge was a pioneer in Internet blogging, and his Web site, www.drudgereport.com, struck a phenomenal chord with readers and changed the landscape of Internet journalism. Born: October 27, 1966; Takoma Park, Maryland Also known as: Matthew Nathan Drudge (full name) Areas of achievement: Journalism; entertainment
with a genuine love of breaking news and an innate sense of how to ferret out stories. He has always had a flair for the dramatic, and he usually wears his signature fedora, the hat worn by reporters in the old black-and-white films, often with a press pass stuck in the band. Life’s Work Drudge has been called the world’s most influential journalist, a hack reporter, and everything in between. Known as a political conservative, he claims he is actually more libertarian, and he has made a career of his crusade in favor of smaller government and a less invasion into the privacy of American citizens. He founded the Drudge Report, his online blog, in 1994. As an independent blogger without the constraints of working for a large corporation, Drudge takes chances and often scoops the mainstream media. He was the first to break the story of President Clinton’s inappropriate sexual behavior with Monica Lewinsky, a young White House intern. Others had the story but had chosen not to release the information. Drudge harnessed the vast power of the Internet to play a role in the defeat of presidential hopefuls Al Gore and John Kerry, by reporting on the irregular fund-raising attempts by the former and by tapping into the military colleagues who thought the latter unfit for the na-
Early Life Matt Drudge (druhj) was born in 1966 in Takoma Park, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. He is an only child. His father, Robert, is a retired social worker; his mother once worked as a staff attorney for Senator Edward M. Kennedy and later worked in Bill Clinton’s White House. She reportedly suffers from periodic bouts of schizophrenia, and she has used a variety of first names. She took the Drudge name when she married Robert but changed it to Star after the couple divorced. Unmotivated during his early years, Drudge bounced back and forth between his divorced parents. He jokes that he failed his Bar Mitzvah, but he blames the upheaval surrounding his parents’ split for his failure to have the traditional Jewish rite of passage. He grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he graduated from Montgomery Blair High School, but just barely. After that, he held a variety of dead-end jobs, including newspaper delivery and cashiering in a Seven-Eleven store before finding his The Public’s Right to Know niche in electronic media. Drudge was always fascinated with news, Matt Drudge was first to report the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky particularly when it included gossip about scandal that resulted in the president’s impeachment. As a right-leaning those in political power. While living in news reporter, Drudge’s motivation was no doubt colored by his personal politics, but he still held a strong conviction that the American Los Angeles, he worked in the Columbia people have a right to know of their leaders’ failings. Even more imporStudios gift shop, which fueled his fascinatant, he felt that the left-leaning media were deliberately withholding tion with celebrity gossip. Soon after he the story out of deference to the president. That was the bigger story and started his blog, an unidentified source told the one he wanted to tell. That did not win him any friends in the White him Jerry Seinfeld had demanded an unHouse, as evidenced by the president mispronouncing Drudge’s name precedented one million dollars per episode as Sludge. to continue filming his popular situation Drudge’s career skyrocketed, with his blog getting millions of hits a comedy Seinfeld. It was one of Drudge’s day. Those reading his postings include highly placed government offiearly scoops, which turned out to be inaccials, business leaders, those working in other media outlets, and those curate. Nevertheless, it garnered a lot of atwho are simply curious about what they are not reading in other sources. tention, and people started taking the blog Drudge is a controversial figure, both lauded and vilified, but people on both sides of the fence want to know about what he is talking. Drudge is seriously. on a personal crusade to make sure they are not disappointed. What he lacked in formal education and credentials, Drudge more than made up for
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Drudge, Matt tion’s highest office. He also punctured Kerry’s boast of being a recipient of three Purple Hearts by reporting that the injuries sustained were of the type that required little more than Band-Aids. Detractors accuse Drudge of sensationalism and note that some of his stories are incomplete or downright inaccurate. Defenders reply that his overall track record holds up to scrutiny and that major news stories in the traditional media nearly always become more complicated as more information is released. The competitive nature of the news business makes it all too easy to report events before all the facts are available. When Drudge goes out on a limb, he risks only his own reputation, not that of a corporate entity as Dan Rather did during the 2004 presidential election. When Rather was unable to substantiate allegations he made against President George W. Bush, he was forced out of his Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) television news anchor position for the lapse in professional integrity. Drudge scans scores of publications and constantly plays multiple televisions, all tuned to a different channel, always looking for a new story or a fresh spin on an old one. Drudge can find the meat of a story buried in the trivial. He’s been known to get scoops from informants who find them in the subject’s office wastebasket. Some informants work in high-level government offices. An associate on the West Coast monitors the news while Drudge sleeps. Along with his blog, Drudge has written a book, The Drudge Manifesto (2000), had a talk-radio show, and had a news segment on the Fox News Network. His work in radio and television were short-lived, and he soon returned to what he does best: blogging. Drudge lives and works in a luxurious Miami condominium, where he zealously guards his privacy. That privacy extends to his religion as well. He still refers to himself as Jewish, but it’s unknown to what extent he
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Jewish Americans practices the faith. Despite his reclusive tendencies, he craves attention for his work, and he could be described as a workaholic. Significance Drudge was one of the first to understand fully the almost unlimited power of blogging and how to utilize that medium to spread news and his views. While newspaper readership is steadily declining, an ever-increasing number of people turn to the World Wide Web for information. There’s a growing distrust of the traditional media, as many people are convinced that, with a few exceptions, it is dominated by the liberal viewpoint. Drudge has a conservative spin, so they turn to him for the other side. In no other venue could an untrained and unknown reporter have had the enormous impact Drudge enjoys. It’s been said that he has the power to influence the outcome of an election. Love him or hate him, he is a force to be reckoned with. —Norma Lewis Further Reading Davis, Richard. Typing Politics: The Role of the Blog in American Politics. New York: Oxford Press, USA, 2009. A look at the political blog, utilized by many and mastered by Drudge. Drudge, Matt. The Drudge Manifesto. New York: Penguin Group USA, 2000. An account of the motivations and opinions of the controversial writer written by the man himself, giving insight into what makes him tick. Pole, Antoinette. Blogging the Political: Political Participation in a Networked Society. Florence, Ky.: Taylor and Francis, 2009. Detailed information on how blogs shape the political process and engage readers. See also: Carl Bernstein; Susan Faludi; Studs Terkel; Walter Winchell.
Jewish Americans
Dworkin, Andrea
Andrea Dworkin Feminist, activist, and writer Dworkin wrote many classic feminist texts that illustrate the suppression of women, and she was a fierce critic of the pornography industry. Born: September 26, 1946; Camden, New Jersey Died: April 9, 2005; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Andrea Rita Dworkin (full name) Areas of achievement: Women’s rights; activism Early Life Andrea Dworkin (AN-dree-ah DWOHR-kihn) was born in Camden, New Jersey, to Sylvia Spiegel, a child of Hungarian immigrants, and Harry Dworkin, the grandson of a Russian Jew who fled Russia to escape military service. At age ten, Dworkin and her family moved from the diverse city of Camden to Cherry Hill Township, where she felt isolated not only by her Jewish heritage but also by her precocious nature. After refusing to sing “Silent Night” in a school pageant because of separation of church and state, Dworkin was sequestered by a teacher in an empty room as reprimand. This experience of isolation fueled Dworkin’s determination to stand up for her beliefs and for the rights of others. In 1964, Dworkin attended Bennington College in Vermont, where she studied literature and philosophy. It was during this time that Dworkin became a political activist, protesting against the Vietnam War. In February, 1965, Dworkin was arrested during a protest and sent to the Women’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village, where she was subjected to a brutal physical examination. With the help of a friend, Dworkin launched a letter-writing campaign about her experience to prominent New York newspapers. Her campaign paid off, resulting in a grand jury investigation that eventually prompted the closing of the facility. Because of the stress of the trial, Dworkin left for Crete, where she wrote and published a book of prose poems titled Child (1966). She eventually returned to Bennington College to finish her degree. During that time, Dworkin continued protesting against the war in Vietnam, but she also got involved in feminist politics, campaigning for contraception on campus and the legalization of abortion. After graduation, Dworkin moved to the Neth-
erlands, where she married a Dutch political radical, who became violently abusive. Ricki Abrams helped Dworkin escape the abusive marriage by giving her asylum. Abrams introduced Dworkin to feminist literature, leading to their collaboration on Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality (1974), which would become Dworkin’s first work on sexual violence and male dominance. In Woman Hating, Dworkin explores the power relationships that manifest in societal ideas of sexuality and how those relationships are enforced in everyday life. Life’s Work Upon her return to New York, Dworkin quickly became an active feminist, participating in demonstrations for lesbian rights, in campaigns against violence against women, and in consciousness-raising groups. Gaining prominence as a writer and an orator, Dworkin was chosen to address the first Take Back the Night March in
Pornography Civil Rights Ordinance Andrea Dworkin is best known for her outspoken criticism of the pornography industry. While she devoted a large part of her writing in protest of pornography, she acted to bring an end to the entire industry through local government restrictions. In 1980, Dworkin and other feminists held a press conference in which Linda Marchiano went public with the abuse she suffered at the hands of the pornography industry. Dworkin sought to bring a civil suit for Marchiano but discovered that the current law would not protect her. With the help of Yale law professor Catherine MacKinnon, Dworkin drafted a model civil rights ordinance for the city of Minneapolis that would allow women to sue producers and distributors of pornography for damages in cases of abuse. Through this law, Dworkin sought to greatly weaken the pornography industry through civil rights litigation. The law was passed twice by the Minneapolis City Council but vetoed by the city’s mayor, Don Fraser. In 1983, Indianapolis, Indiana, passed the ordinance. However, that same year the American Publishers Association and the American Booksellers Association appealed and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the law on the grounds of free speech infringement. While Dworkin did not succeed in passing the law to combat the pornography industry, she did succeed in publicizing the connection between pornography and violence and in suggesting possible legal avenues for women who were victims of sexual abuse.
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Dworkin, Andrea 1978 in San Francisco, during which three thousand women marched through the red light district in protest of rape and pornography. In 1980, Dworkin became a champion for the antipornography movement when she asked feminist Catherine MacKinnon for help in a civil rights suit for Linda Marchiano, who had been coerced by her ex-husband into making pornographic films. Unable to help Marchiano because of legal limitations, MacKinnon and Dworkin drafted a city ordinance in 1983. The ordinance not only defined pornography as sex discrimination but also allowed women who had been harmed by pornography to sue the producers and the distributors for damages in civil court. While several cities passed the ordinance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional on the premise of free speech. At the same time that Dworkin was writing and campaigning for the antipornography civil rights ordinance, she published Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981). In the book, Dworkin declared that women cannot be free until the world is free of pornography because the production and consumption of pornography incites violence against women. In 1987, Dworkin published what is perhaps her most radical book, Intercourse. In this book, Dworkin uses the same theoretical framework she applies to pornography, asserting that because the sexual subordination in pornography exists in heterosexual intercourse, all heterosexual intercourse is demeaning to women. Opponents of Dworkin vilified her for this idea, claiming that she believed all sex was rape. In her time, Dworkin published eleven nonfiction works in addition to many essays, poems, and fiction works. One book in particular, Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women’s Liberation (2000), was directly influenced by her Jewish heritage. In it she compares the oppression of women to the persecution of the Jews and the women’s liberation movement to the Zionist movements. Dworkin compared women’s position in society to that of the Jews, claiming that both groups were victims of men’s violence. In 1998, Dworkin married her life partner and fellow activist John Stoltenberg, author of Refusing to Be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice (1989). Dworkin’s last years were spent in fragile health because of osteoarthritis in her knees. Stoltenberg blamed Dworkin’s deteriorating health on the writing of Scapegoat, which had been emotionally and physically demanding. Dworkin blamed her failing health on a sexual assault she experienced in Paris in 1999. On April 9, 2005, Dworkin 308
Jewish Americans died in her Washington, D.C., home from acute myocarditis. Significance Dworkin was a renowned and notorious radical feminist. Her theories on sex and pornography were rejected by many, prompting harsh criticism that was often directed against her character. Furthermore, her radical ideas often polarized second wave feminists, those who were fighting for rights in the workplace and reproductive rights. Feminists supporting freedom of speech and sex-positivism criticized Dworkin for promoting censorship and negative ideas about sexuality. In spite of these attacks, Dworkin stood by her theories, refusing to waver in her fight to draw attention to the injustice of sexual violence. While controversial, Dworkin’s theories and works succeeded in generating a nationwide dialogue about pornography, sex, and power. In addition to creating a national dialogue, Dworkin played an important role in shaping feminist theory. Her theories on sex and power are taught in women’s and gender studies classrooms across the nation, giving a new generation of feminists a framework with which to critically analyze the politics of sexuality. —Erin Elizabeth Parrish Further Reading Dworkin, Andrea. Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Chronicles the personal side of Dworkin’s career as an activist and a writer. _______. Intercourse. New York: Free Press, 1987. Perhaps Dworkin’s most controversial book, this offers readers insights into her theories about the politics of sex. _______. Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women’s Liberation. New York: Free Press, 2000. Dworkin’s only book to strongly focus on Jewish issues, this offers readers insight to her views on anti-Semitism and Zionism and their similarities to sexism and the women’s movement. Dworkin, Andrea, and Catherine A. MacKinnon. In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997. A transcript of oral testimony given by victims of pornography. Includes an introduction by Dworkin. This is an important document of Dworkin’s activism. See also: Mary Antin; Susan Brownmiller; Betty Friedan; Gloria Steinem; Naomi Wolf.
Jewish Americans
Dylan, Bob
Bob Dylan Musician and singer Dylan, one of the most acclaimed American folksingers and songwriters of the early 1960’s, embraced rock and roll in 1965, adding sophisticated lyrics to the simple beat. Born: May 24, 1941; Duluth, Minnesota Also known as: Blind Boy Grunt; Elston Gun; Lucky Wilbury; Boo Wilbury; Robert Allen Zimmerman (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; literature Early Life Bob Dylan (DIHL-uhn) was born Robert Allen Zimmerman, the elder of two sons of Albert Zimmerman and Beatrice Stone Zimmerman, both second-generation Americans. Soon afterward the family moved from Duluth to Hibbing in Minnesota’s northern iron-mining region, where Albert opened an appliance store. Dylan grew up listening to country-music singers such as Hank Williams and blues performers such as Muddy Waters. Both styles would influence Dylan’s music, as would rock and roll. Inspired particularly by Little Richard, Dylan learned to play the guitar and the piano and formed the first of several groups that performed at high school dances and talent shows. His father disapproved of Dylan’s musical ambitions, and the young man saw himself as an outsider and identified with the characters played in films by James Dean. He enrolled in the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1959 but later claimed never to have attended a class. Instead, he became attracted by the burgeoning folkmusic scene in Minneapolis and spent most of his time learning traditional folk tunes and talking to the local bohemians. After discovering the music of Woody Guthrie and reading the musician’s autobiography, Bound for Glory (1943), he knew what he wanted to do. With his new name, reportedly inspired by poet Dylan Thomas, he moved to New York City in 1961 and visited Guthrie, who suffered from Huntington’s chorea, in a hospital in Morristown, New Jersey. During this period, Dylan never mentioned his real name or his Jewish heritage. Life’s Work Accompanying himself on guitar and harmonica, Dylan began performing for free in Greenwich Village clubs. He soon began writing new songs, including “Song to
Woody.” Praise for a Dylan performance by Robert Shelton in The New York Times attracted the interest of Columbia Records producer John Hammond, whose discoveries included Billie Holiday. His first Columbia album, Bob Dylan (1962), a mixture of new and traditional folk songs, got good reviews but sold poorly. Then The Freewheelin’Bob Dylan (1963) established him as one of the major forces in American folk music. Such songs as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” about racial bigotry and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” taken to be a warning about nuclear war, brought Dylan acclaim as the spokesman of his generation. Many of his songs were recorded by other folk acts, such as Joan Baez, with whom he became romantically involved, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and later by rock groups such as the Byrds. After The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1964), crammed
Bob Dylan. (Sony BMG Music Entertaiment/Getty Images)
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with political songs, Dylan began to move toward more personal music with Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), featuring songs such as “All I Really Want to Do,” about the pains of love. Following the acoustic folk music of Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Dylan alienated many of his fans by returning to his rock-and-roll roots. With Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966), Dylan, inspired in part by the Beatles, switched to electric guitar and acquired a backup rock band. The excitement and controversy of this period are perfectly captured in two documentaries: D. A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (1967) and Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005). Dylan married Sarah Lowndes in 1965 and settled in Woodstock, New York, where they raised five children before divorcing in 1977. Their son Jakob Dylan was to become a successful singer. In 1966 Dylan lost control of his motorcycle near Woodstock and suffered a broken neck, leading to months of recuperation. He rebounded with two well-received country-rock albums, John Wesley Harding (1967) and Nashville Skyline (1969). After a period of less successful albums and the first, in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), of a handful of acting appearances, Dylan delivered one of his best records, Blood on the Tracks (1975). Most of Dylan’s recordings over the next two decades were less well received, and many critics and fans considered him finished. He became a fundamentalist Christian in 1979 and sang about his new beliefs in such songs as “Gotta Serve Somebody.” He soon returned to more
secular music. Dylan made a surprising comeback when three consecutive recordings, Time Out of Mind (1997), Love and Theft (2001), and Modern Times (2006), were hailed as being among his best work. He also won an Academy Award for writing “Things Have Changed” for Wonder Boys (2000). In 1988, at a recording session in Dylan’s home studio, Dylan, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, and Tom Petty contributed background to a new song by George Harrison. The collaboration was so successful that Harrison’s record label would not bury it on the B-side, and the musicians decided to create an album in their guise as the Traveling Wilburys, complete with fictitious names for members. The resulting album, Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1, was released in 1988 and won a Grammy Award in 1989. Dylan has been one of the most accessible of music legends. In 1988, he began the Never Ending Tour, giving about one hundred performances a year around the world in both large and small venues. The notoriously reticent Dylan offered more surprises by writing a partial autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One (2004); by hosting Theme Time Radio Hour on XM Satellite Radio, a celebration of classic and obscure American music, beginning in 2006; and by issuing the holiday album Christmas in the Heart (2009). While he has told interviewers he follows no organized religion, Dylan has visited Israel frequently and has been active in the Orthodox Jewish outreach movement Chabad.
Embracing Rock and Roll The most controversial event of Bob Dylan’s career occurred at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. Instead of performing the acoustic folk music he had entertained the crowd with in the two previous years, Dylan took the stage accompanied by an electric band and performed a rocking version of “Maggie’s Farm.” Many in the audience booed throughout Dylan’s three numbers. Folksinger Pete Seeger reportedly became so outraged that he tried to cut the musicians’ cables with an ax. Similar hostility greeted Dylan at a concert soon afterward in Forest Hills, New York, and during a subsequent tour of the United Kingdom, with audience members shouting “Judas!” and “Traitor!” (alluding to Dylan’s evident betrayal of the folk-music revival that he, in large part, had helped to popularize). He wanted to break away from the pigeonhole into which the folk-music community had placed him. Never one to feel comfortable as part of a group, by going electric he asserted his individuality and his need for the freedom to be whatever he wanted to be.
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Significance Dylan was the most widely discussed musician of his time, becoming the first American songwriter to be taken seriously as a poet. Many songs resemble the stream-ofconsciousness style of such Beat writers as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, a close Dylan friend, full of references to popular culture and the events of the day. Equally adept at social commentary and love songs, Dylan also exhibited considerable range, from the allusive imagery of “Like a Rolling Stone,” considered by many to be the greatest rock song, to the relative simplicity of such ballads as “Just Like a Woman.” Throughout his long career Dylan has been a rebel, disregarding the expectations of others. His songs have demonstrated an almost archival interest in the variety of American music. Though thought of primarily as a folk
Jewish Americans and rock musician, Dylan has explored country, blues, jazz, ragtime, and Tin Pan Alley melodies. No major rock songwriter has been as productive, with more than four hundred songs written through 2009. The moods of these songs are varied, ranging from bitter cynicism, about everything from politics to love, to tenderness and even hopefulness. His distinctive nasal whine has encouraged many with unconventional voices to become singers. The increasingly wide variety of the subjects of his songs has given others the courage to try anything in their music. The hundreds of performers influenced by Dylan include John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Bruce Springsteen. While never as commercially successful as many of his peers during any given period, Dylan has outlasted most while continuing to seek new musical challenges. —Michael Adams Further Reading Cott, Jonathan, ed. Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews. New York: Wenner, 2006. Transcripts of two radio in-
Dylan, Bob terviews from 1962 to 1963 and twenty-nine interviews published between 1964 and 2004. Interviewers include Sam Shepard and Studs Terkel. Dettmar, Kevin J. H., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Essays about Dylan’s themes and individual albums. Dylan, Bob. Chronicles: Volume One. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004. Impressionistic autobiography emphasizing Dylan’s early days in New York. Ricks, Christopher. Dylan’s Visions of Sin. New York: Ecco, 2004. An academic considers Dylan a poet, comparing him to John Keats, T. S. Eliot, and others. Rogovoy, Seth. Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet. New York: Scribner, 2009. Discusses Dylan’s Jewish heritage and the influence of Judaism on his work. Vernezze, Peter, and Carl Porter, eds. Bob Dylan and Philosophy. Chicago: Open Court, 2005. Eighteen essays examine Dylan’s ethical, political, and religious views. See also: Leonard Cohen; Neil Diamond; Billy Joel; Lenny Kravitz; Lou Reed; Paul Simon.
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E Gerald M. Edelman Scientist By sequencing the 1,330 amino acids that make up the structure of antibody molecules, Edelman determined the overall structure of the molecules and provided an understanding of how antibodies function in the immune response. Born: July 1, 1929; Queens, New York Also known as: Gerald Maurice Edelman (full name) Areas of achievement: Medicine; science and technology
medical practitioner in a station hospital near Paris, France. During this period, he became interested in the study of immunoglobulins (antibodies), in part by accident. Fighting boredom while stationed in France, Edelman read an immunology book and realized little was known about the structure of antibodies. Following his discharge in 1957, Edelman enrolled at the Rockefeller Institute in New York to continue graduate work in the field of immunology, working in the laboratory of Henry Kunkel. Kunkel had observed that highly elevated con-
Early Life Gerald M. Edelman (JEHR-ohld AY-dehl-mehn) was born in 1929 to Edward and Anna Freedman Edelman in the borough of Queens. Edelman’s father was a practicing physician. Edelman’s initial interests were the violin and concert music, and for a time he trained under violinist Albert Meiff. Edelman retained his interest in classical music throughout his life, even though his career interests changed. Musical talent ran in the family: Edelman’s daughter, Judith Edelman, became a noted bluegrass singer and lyricist. Following a public school education and graduation from a local high school, Edelman enrolled at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, graduating magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1950. That same year he married Maxine Morrison. They would have two sons and a daughter. Edelman entered medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a medical degree in 1954. Edelman also received the Dr. Spencer Morris Prize, awarded to the graduating student with the most outstanding academic record. The following year he became a house officer at Massachusetts General Hospital while practicing internal medicine. Life’s Work Following the completion of his medical education, Edelman enlisted in the United States Army Medical Corps at the rank of captain, serving as 312
Gerald M. Edelman. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Jewish Americans centrations of immunoglobulins were found in the blood serum of patients with multiple myeloma, a discovery that provided a source of antibody for Edelman’s subsequent work. Edelman’s graduate work addressed the structure of immunoglobulins, demonstrating that such molecules could be denatured and fragmented using appropriate reagents, allowing them to be more easily characterized. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1960 in physical chemistry, Edelman remained at the Rockefeller Institute as an assistant professor and assistant dean of graduate studies, eventually becoming a full professor. In 1961, Edelman and a colleague discovered that by using a technique to chemically reduce immunoglobulins, they could separate the immunoglobulin proteins into two distinct sizes, subsequently called heavy and light chains. Since Kunkel had previously shown patients with multiple myeloma produce large quantities of pure immunoglobulins, Edelman had both a source and a methodology for analysis of these molecules. Edelman sequenced a number of myeloma proteins, demonstrating that both the heavy and the light immunoglobulin chains consist of a constant region, which is largely identical within the class of antibody, and a unique variable portion, which determines the attachment site for the immunoglobulin. The scientists ultimately sequenced some thirteen hundred amino acids that made up the structures of the immunoglobulin molecules, the largest proteins to be sequenced up to the time. Edelman published most of this work by 1970, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Rodney Porter in 1972. Edelman continued his work in immunology for several years after receiving the Nobel Prize, but he moved gradually into the field of embryonic development, with emphasis on development of the brain and nervous system. Edelman believed the layering of brain cells is analogous to the adaptation of the immune system, relying on cell-cell interactions and the production of specific cell receptors called cell-adhesion molecules. The selection process gave rise to Edelman’s theory of “Neural Darwinism,” the process by which networks in the brain undergo selection and adaptation during development. To help promote the study of brain development, Edelman founded the Neurosciences Institute in 1981 as a separate portion of Rockefeller University. In 1992, Edelman joined the Scripps Institute in Cali-
Edelman, Gerald M. fornia as professor and chairman of neurobiology. Edelman has been the recipient of numerous awards during his career, including the Eli Lilly Award from the American Chemical Society, and he has been honored as a Vincent Astor Distinguished Professor at Rockefeller University. He has written numerous books and more than five hundred professional publications. Significance Edelman’s work, in association with that of other biochemists in the field of immunology such as Porter, was critical to the understanding of antibody structure and function, namely that the molecule consisted of two identical large or heavy chains and two identical smaller or lighter chains. His determination of the amino acid sequence of antibody demonstrated each chain consisted of a constant region, identical within the class of antibody, and a variable portion, which determined the target to which it would be bound. Edelman’s work ultimately helped provide a solution to the problem of how an organism could potentially produce such molecules against a seemingly infinite number of foreign proteins; antibodies are not encoded by a single gene but represent the combination of multiple genes, each of which undergoes random internal recombination prior to expression. — Richard Adler Further Reading Edelman, Gerald. “Antibody Structure and Molecular Immunology.” Science 180, no. 4088 (May 25, 1973): 830-840. The author’s Nobel lecture, providing insight and implications for his work. ______. Second Nature: Brain Science and Human Knowledge. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006. Applying his later research, Edelman discusses brain functions and speculates on the origin of human consciousness. Szent-Göyrgyi, et al. Scientific American Presents: Nobel Prize Winners on Medicine. New York: Kaplan, 2009. A collection of articles by scientists who describe their work that led to winning the Nobel Prize. Edelman is one of sixteen highlighted. See also: Richard Axel; Michael Brown; Stanley Cohen; Paul Greengard; Stanley B. Prusiner; Harold E. Varmus.
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Morris Michael Edelstein Polish-born politician Edelstein was a congressman noted for a dramatic and impassioned opposition to anti-Semite John Rankin, who claimed a Jewish conspiracy was pressuring the United States into entering World War II. Born: February 5, 1888; Meseritz, Prussia, Germany (now Miòdzyrzec Podlaski, Poland) Died: June 4, 1941; Washington, D.C. Area of achievement: Government and politics Early Life Morris Michael Edelstein (EHD-ihl-stin) was born to Jewish parents on February 5, 1888, in Meseritz, Prussia. His family immigrated to New York City when Edelstein was only three years old. As a child he attended public school in the city, then enrolled at Cooper Union College. Remaining in New York, he earned a degree in law from the Brooklyn Law School of St. Lawrence University in 1909, he passed the bar exam in 1910, and he began practicing in New York City. Life’s Work In 1940, Edelstein was elected as the congressional representative of the lower East Side of New York City, which was a hub for immigrants, particularly Jews. It had the greatest concentration of Jewish immigrants—as well as Jewish-owned institutions, stores, and publications—in the United States. Edelstein’s opponents in Washington were many, including such anti-Semitic congressmen as John Rankin of Mississippi, Gerald Nye of North Dakota, and Burton Wheeler of Montana, who were affiliated with the isolationist America First Committee. Rankin in particular was an infamous bigot who spoke against interventionism in violent terms and used racial slurs while Congress was in session. He was not alone in his anti-Semitic opposition to interventionism: Wheeler gave a speech attacking Jewish film moguls for supposedly creating prowar propaganda, and Nye joined him in condemning Hollywood’s “dangerous” and “vicious” influence. Many of Edelstein’s constituents feared that the racism present in Congress was a sign that the U.S. government might prove no less prejudiced than that of Nazi Germany. Several well-known Americans, including aviator Charles Lindbergh, accused Jews of agitating to draw the United States into the war. In April, 1941, Rankin smeared columnist Walter 314
Lippmann as an “international Jew.” Later that year, Rankin gave a speech before Congress, claiming that a rally in support of the war, which had taken place in the financial district of New York, was staged by “international Jewish brethren.” According to Rankin, Jewish businessmen did not want the war to end before the United States got involved. Edelstein quickly pointed out that no Jews had been involved in the rally and that few individuals in the financial district were Jewish. He launched into a speech defending the rights of Jewish citizens, which is quoted in the book The Congressional Minyan: “it is unfair and I say it is un-American. . . . All men are created equal, regardless of race, creed, or color; and whatever a man be, Jew or Gentile, he may think what he deems fit.” After this passionate speech, Edelstein stumbled while walking back to his seat and was assisted by his colleagues, who brought him outside the chamber. Edelstein suffered a major heart attack and died on the spot, in the cloakroom of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington. Edelstein’s funeral was attended by fifteen thousand people. He was buried at Mt. Zion Cemetery in Masbeth, Queens, New York. Significance Edelstein’s death shocked both Congress and his constituents. According to the scholar Edward Shapiro, the incident heightened Jewish awareness of the discrimination they faced from the American public, many of whom supported limiting the number of Jews allowed to immigrate and enter the workplace. Congressman Adolph Sabath, the dean of the U.S. House of Representatives (the longest continuously serving member at the time), described Edelstein’s speech as “one of the most dramatic as well as most significant utterances ever made by a Jew in Congress.” While Edelstein’s speech succeeded in drawing attention to the hypocrisy of antiSemitic politicians, it did not resolve the debate between intervention and isolation, which would remain unsettled until the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. —C. Breault Further Reading Shapiro, Edward. “World War II and American Jewish Identity.” Modern Judaism 10, no. 1 (February, 1990): 65-84. A readable scholarly article, containing a de-
Jewish Americans tailed description of the context of Edelstein’s final speech before Congress. Stone, Kurt. The Congressional Minyan: The Jews of Capitol Hill. New York: Ktav, 2000. A highly informative book about Jewish members of Congress, with
Einstein, Albert a significant entry describing Edelstein’s time as a New York congressman. See also: Bella Abzug; Ed Koch; Fiorello Henry La Guardia; Henry Morgenthau, Jr.; Charles Schumer.
Albert Einstein German-born scientist One of the greatest scientific minds in history, Einstein revised classical notions of matter, energy, light, gravity, time, and space. His equations gave rise to the two most important advances of modern physics, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Born: March 14, 1879; Ulm, Württemberg, Germany Died: April 18, 1955; Princeton, New Jersey Areas of achievement: Science and technology; social issues
amination scores of any of the Polytechnic graduates. In 1903, he married Mileva Mari6, who had also been a student at the Polytechnic Institute; they would have three children. Unable to obtain an academic position, Einstein became a clerk in the Swiss patent office, which allowed him time to contemplate scientific questions. In 1905, he was awarded his Ph.D. in physics. Life’s Work In a burst of scientific brilliance that is paralleled in the history of physics only by Newton’s discoveries in the year 1666, Einstein published five papers in 1905 that transformed modern science. His March paper solved the riddle of the photoelectric effect by proposing the quantum photon theory of light. His April and May papers advanced the theory of the atom, solving the mystery of Brownian motion. His June paper proposed the
Early Life Albert Einstein (IN-stin) was born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1879. His father, Hermann, was a businessman; his mother, Paulina Koch, came from a wealthy family that provided financial assistance to the Einsteins as needed. Einstein showed interest in geometry and in mechanical and magnetic objects. Undoubtedly these early preoccupations, similar to those of Sir Isaac Newton at a young age two hundred years earlier, were important factors in preparing the minds of Newton and Einstein for the great conceptual breakthroughs they would make as adults. Einstein also studied the violin, which would become his lifelong hobby. His family was not observant, and Einstein, skeptical of the tenets of traditional Judaism, decided against a Bar Mitzvah when he was thirteen. He also found the authoritarian German gymnasium system of education stifling. In 1895, he finished high school in Aarau, Switzerland and then graduated from the Zurich Polytechnic Institute. Although he had been fascinated by the paradoxes of modern physics since his teenage years, he did not excel as a student. In 1900, he graduated with the lowest exAlbert Einstein. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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which held a vitriolic meeting in Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall on August 24, 1920. The Nobel Laureate Philipp Lenard advocated for a GerThe summit of Albert Einstein’s scientific achievements was manic science untainted by Jewish influence. his theory of relativity. It is one of the pivotal intellectual concepEven a little-known rabble-rouser picked up on tions of humankind, revising fundamental principles of space, time, and gravity. Einstein had a great appreciation for the physithe controversy, complaining in a January 3, cists who preceded him, and his theory can be seen as systematiz1921, article in the Volkischer Beobachter newsing Galileo Galilei’s relativity of motion, Isaac Newton’s gravitapaper that “[s]cience, once our greatest pride, is tional theories, Ernst Mach’s inertial principle, the tensor analysis today being taught by Hebrews.” The author of of Carl Gauss and Bernhard Riemann, and the electromagnetic that article: Adolf Hitler. field equations of Hendrik Lorentz and James Maxwell. Einstein In 1919, Einstein and his wife divorced, and formulated the theory in two parts: special and general relativity. Einstein later married his cousin Elsa. In the His special theory of relativity described uniform motion in an inspring of 1921, Einstein took a two-month tour ertial system without reference to a gravitational field. His general of the United States, where he was celebrated as theory of relativity accounted for gravity not as a force, as cona great physicist and a hero of modern Judaism. ceived by Newton, but as the geometrical curvature of space-time However, his visit aggravated a tension in the by the presence of matter. As Newton’s breakthrough on gravity is traditionally attributed to his observation of a falling apple, EinJewish establishment. On the one side were Eustein attributed his insights to imagining an object seeming to fall ropean Zionists, such as Chaim Weizmann, who in a nongravitational field due to mechanical acceleration. Einstein accompanied Einstein to raise funds for the called this concept—the principle of equivalence of gravity and acplanned Hebrew University of Jerusalem; on the celeration—the happiest thought of his life. The theory of relativother side were leaders of American Jewry, such ity was confirmed by calculations of the Perihelion precession of as Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Mercury and the curvature of light due to the sun’s gravitational Baruch, and the Guggenheim family, who emfield. Einstein’s theory of relativity is a bedrock of modern physics, phasized success and even assimilation in the essential to understanding gravity and the effects of mass on the United States. Amid the rancor, Einstein tried to space-time continuum. stay aloof. He came away from the trip more deeply committed to a Jewish homeland and also impressed with the enthusiasm of Americans. special theory of relativity, postulating that while motion Where Einstein had once been the scientific revoluis relative to an observer’s frame of reference, that is, the tionary, he became ambivalent about making startling observer’s position and velocity, the speed of light is the discoveries in quantum physics. Einstein was alarmed by same, regardless of the direction or velocity of either the challenges that quantum mechanics posed to notions its source or its observers. To reconcile this paradox, of causality and the determinate nature of the universe. A Einstein reevaluated traditional notions of space and spiritual man, Einstein found repugnant any theory of time. His fifth paper, in September, proposed the equivaphysics that seemed to deny a rational, orderly conceplence of matter and energy according to the famous fortion of the universe. mula E = mc2, paving the way for the later development With the ominous rise of Nazi power, Einstein and his of atomic energy and weapons. It took the world several second wife immigrated to the United States in October, years to realize that in these papers, an obscure clerk 1933, where Einstein accepted a position at the Institute from the Swiss patent office had revised Newtonian for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The newly physics. Einstein was rewarded with prestigious profesinstalled Nazi regime reacted angrily. Einstein’s works sorships in Germany and the Nobel Prize in Physics. In were included in a book burning, and his bank accounts 1916, Einstein published his greatest achievement, the were confiscated. Nazi aggression caused Einstein to regeneral theory of relativity, incorporating gravity into a think his commitment to absolute pacifism. In 1939, he four-dimensional model of space-time. When observacowrote letters to President Franklin Roosevelt, advising tions during a 1919 solar eclipse confirmed his theories, him of the possibilities of developing an atomic bomb. In he became world famous. In Germany, however, Einstein the postwar period, Einstein strove to formulate a unified was exposed to increasing anti-Semitism. Paul Weyland, theory of relativity, electromagnetism, and particle physa German nationalist, organized the Study Group of Gerics. Although he never achieved this objective, he pioman Scientists for the Preservation of Pure Science, neered efforts to find a unified field theory. He became
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Jewish Americans outspoken in favor of internationalism, pacifism, and his bond with the Jewish people. He spoke in favor of equal rights for African Americans, and he advocated nuclear disarmament. He favored a Jewish homeland in Palestine and insisted that Jews and Arabs be treated equally; he cosigned a December 4, 1948, letter to The New York Times, denouncing the U.S. speaking tour of Israeli militia leader Menachem Begin for his violent and ultranationalist methods. Einstein retained his bond to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, serving on its board and donating his collected papers to the university. In 1952, he declined the presidency of Israel. He died of heart failure in 1955. Significance One of the greatest scientific minds in history, Einstein revised classical notions of matter, energy, light, gravity, time, and space. His equations gave rise to the two most important advances of modern physics, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, foreshadowing modern discoveries of an expanding universe, gravitational lensing, displacement of spectral lines, and black holes. Einstein has become an iconic figure throughout the world representing scientific progress and genius. In addition, Einstein promoted peace, internationalism, and civil rights. A theoretical scientist on the level of Newton, and a humane and advanced social thinker, Einstein is one of the most significant figures of modern history. —Howard Bromberg
Einstein, Edwin Further Reading Cropper, William. “Adventure in Thought: Albert Einstein.” In Great Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Insightful chapter puts Einstein’s science in the context of physicists who preceded and followed him. Isaacson, Walter. Albert Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007. Fulllength biography based on Einstein papers released in 2006. _______. “How Einstein Divided America’s Jews.” The Atlantic 304, no. 5 (December, 2009): 70-74. Indepth account of Einstein’s 1921 trip to the United States, which the author asserts strengthened his support of Zionism. Jerome, Fred. Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2009. Controversially argues that Einstein’s support for Israel as a home for the Jewish people is a myth. Speregen, Devra. Albert Einstein: The Jewish Man Behind the Theory. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2006. A young-adult book emphasizing Einstein’s Jewish roots and his commitment to Israel. See also: Richard P. Feynman; J. Robert Oppenheimer; Carl Sagan; Edward Teller.
Edwin Einstein Politician, investor, and member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1879-1881) A politician and investor who once served in the U.S. House of Representatives and ran for mayor of New York City, Einstein worked with investment companies, becoming president or director of several organizations. Born: November 18, 1842; Cincinnati, Ohio Died: January 24, 1905; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Government and politics; business Early Life Edwin Einstein (IN-stin) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1842. Despite spending his early years in the
Midwest, Einstein moved across the country to New York City with his parents when he was only four years old. When he grew up, he worked as a store clerk and studied at the College of the City of New York. The college, associated with the City University of New York, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the city. After city college, Einstein attended Union College in Schenectady, a city in the eastern portion of New York. Unlike the public institution Einstein had attended in New York City, Union College was a private liberal arts college. Even with all his time spent studying at the university level, Einstein still did not graduate from Union College. He left academics to work in the manufacturing business for a time. 317
Einstein, Edwin Life’s Work In 1879, at the age of thirty-six, Einstein became involved in the political scene in New York City. His first attempts at becoming a politician did not last long. He was elected as a Republican congressman and served in the Forty-sixth Congress from 1879 to 1881—just one term. However, it is notable that Einstein’s election represented one of the only times a Republican was elected in the Seventh District of New York in that time period. Einstein’s win in the district was the first time in eight terms that a Republican had been elected in the area. George Briggs, a former Whig Party member, had been the last, serving from 1859 to 1861. Einstein’s term was followed by another long Republican drought. Eight Democrats took over the seat after Einstein’s term was completed before Republican Montague Lesser gained the seat in 1903. After serving as a representative, Einstein was not a candidate for renomination. He had an unsuccessful attempt at gaining political power in the area, running for mayor of New York City against Thomas Gilroy in 1892. Gilroy so trounced Einstein in the race for votes that, in one district on the lower East Side, almost four hundred votes went to Gilroy while the other candidate—not confirmed to be Einstein—received a mere three votes. Gilroy’s term, however, was not long-lived. He served as mayor only from 1893 to 1894. Einstein did enjoy time spent being a dock commissioner in the city in 1895. His lack of success in politics was contrasted by his success in the mercantile market, investment companies, and wool factories. For example, only five years after joining a banking house, he became a member of the firm. Einstein died on January 24, 1905, only about fifteen years after his unsuccessful run for New York City mayor. Around 4 p.m., while in his apartment, he started complaining of trouble with his heart, and he died an hour later from heart failure. He was buried in Shearith Israel Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
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Jewish Americans Significance While Einstein did not have a profound impact on political and managerial history, his presence did not go unnoticed by New York City. When he died, Einstein was president of the New River Mineral Company, director of the Alabama Mineral Land Company and the Raritan Woolen Mills, and a trustee of the Texas Pacific Land Trust. Even if his political success was limited, he was well-respected by several investment companies. While a 1905 obituary from The New York Times highlighted his failed attempt at becoming mayor, it was Einstein’s work with investment and mercantile companies where he truly shined. Still, Einstein’s accomplishments were certainly noticed by city officials, who offered him the job of dock commissioner even after his huge mayoral defeat. — Jill E. Disis Further Reading “Dock Board Reorganized; Edwin Einstein Made a Commissioner by Mayor Strong.” The New York Times, March 24, 1895. A brief newspaper announcing Einstein’s appointment as dock commissioner, which is described as both “a surprise to the politicians” and “a surprise to Mr. Einstein.” “Edwin Einstein Dead: Collapsed from Heart Trouble— Once Ran for Mayor.” The New York Times, January 25, 1905. A short obituary about Einstein and his life, with a summary of his accomplishments. “Einstein, Edwin.” In Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Lanham, Md.: Bernan, 2000. A brief article with information about Einstein’s life. Contains what is probably the most descriptive accounts of his life, including some information on his early accomplishments. Lists the dates of several of Einstein’s professions. See also: Bernard Baruch; Judah Benjamin; Benjamin N. Cardozo; Samuel Dickstein; Morris Michael Edelstein; Mordecai M. Noah.
Jewish Americans
Eisenstaedt, Alfred
Alfred Eisenstaedt Polish-born photographer and journalist Often called the father of photojournalism, Eisenstaedt was a prolific and gifted photographer who captured the storytelling moment in his photos. As a principal photographer for Life magazine, he shot the photography for ninety-two Life covers in his fifty-year career. Born: December 6, 1898; Dirschau, West Prussia, Germany (now Tczew, Poland) Died: August 23, 1995; Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts Areas of achievement: Photography; journalism Early Life Alfred Eisenstaedt (I-zuhn-shtat) was born on December 6, 1898, to Joseph Eisenstaedt, a successful retailer, and Regina Schoen. When Alfred Eisenstaedt was eight years old, his family moved to Berlin. Eisenstaedt and his two brothers attended school in Germany and, like those in most affluent Jewish families, considered themselves German (until Adolf Hitler assumed power). At age fourteen, Eisenstaedt received as a gift from his uncle his first camera, an Eastman Kodak No. 3 folding camera, and he avidly took up photography as a hobby. His university studies were halted at age seventeen during World War I. Eisenstaedt served in the German army until April, 1918, when he was discharged because of shrapnel wounds in both legs. These injuries required him to use crutches and a cane for a full year as he recovered. During this time, he returned to his family home in Berlin and took a job as a button and belt salesman. Finding the job dull, he once again took up photography as a hobby. It soon became a passion, and he learned about developing film and enlarging photos. In the mid-1920’s he became intrigued with the work of Erich Salomon, who used a new type of camera to snap spontaneous shots of European dignitaries. In the early 1930’s, Eisenstaedt was able to collaborate with Salomon on several assignments, an experience that greatly influenced Eisenstaedt’s photography. Life’s Work In 1929, Eisenstaedt sold his first photograph to a German magazine. While on vacation, he had taken a photo of a woman playing tennis because
he was intrigued by the way her shadow stretched across the lawn. Soon after this sale, he began freelancing for the Berlin office of Pacific and Atlantic Photo (which later became part of the Associated Press). Eisenstaedt’s first assignment as a professional freelancer for Pacific and Atlantic was the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, on December 3, 1929. Eisenstaedt took a photo of prize laureate Thomas Mann. This launched his role as a documentary photographer who favored natural lighting; during the next six years he became known for capturing the significant moments and figures in history, including the rise of Hitler and a series on Ethiopia before the invasion by Italy’s leader Benito Mussolini. By the mid-1930’s he had purchased a Leica thirty-five-millimeter camera, which allowed him to take photos without the subject’s awareness. One such photo captured Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, in an unguarded moment while
Father of Photojournalism Alfred Eisenstaedt viewed the camera as a tool to record his observations. His skill at capturing key moments and significant details of the subject’s personality developed out of patience and of his easygoing personality. He claimed he had an ability to put people at ease because he did not push them around and they did not take him seriously because of his short stature (he was barely over five feet tall) and minimal equipment. He moved unobtrusively and worked to befriend rather than to alienate his subjects. His early photos were taken with a cumbersome Zeiss Ideal camera, which used glass plate negatives and required a tripod and a lot of patience. For most of his career, he used a small and lightweight thirty-five-millimeter Leica camera and carried only spare film and a light meter. He preferred to use natural light whenever possible, and he waited patiently for the exact moment to snap his photo. This approach—which produced a companionable vision that made viewers feel they were in the midst of the event— became Eisenstaedt’s trademark. This intimate glimpse was exactly what Henry Luce hoped to achieve with Life magazine. When Eisenstaedt commented on his photographs, the photo essay was born. The editors of Life, along with Eisenstaedt and the three other founding photographers, developed the photo essay—a series of photos with comments on essential details to capture the experience. Eisenstaedt’s achievement was the powerful story conveyed by just one of his photos. Each photo told a complete story.
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Alfred Eisenstadt. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
awaiting the start of a League of Nations session in September, 1933. In 1935, Eisenstaedt fled the political situation in Europe and immigrated to the United States. He settled in New York City and immediately began freelancing for Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and Town and Country. By April, 1936, Life magazine publisher Henry Luce invited Eisenstaedt to become one of four photographers for the new magazine. (The others were Margaret BourkeWhite, Thomas McAvoy, and Peter Stackpole.) Since he was not yet a citizen, he spent the war years covering assignments on the home front. He took well to the task of uplifting the American spirit with photos showing Americans going to school, to college, and to war or partaking in pastimes such as skiing, tennis, and filmgoing. Even after being naturalized in 1942, Eisenstaedt preferred assignments covering America and Americans over foreign assignments. His most famous photograph captures well the American spirit he favored. Taken on August 14, 1945, “V.J. Day at Times Square, New York City” depicts the exu320
Jewish Americans berant celebration of the U.S. victory over Japan as a sailor kisses a young nurse in full embrace. He later described that he had seen a white blur at the edge of his camera’s viewfinder as he snapped photos of the festivities, and he immediately zeroed in on it to capture this photo. It reveals much about the spirit of the moment, yet it exposes little of the photographer behind the lens. This is exactly what made Eisenstaedt a notable photojournalist: the moment itself is the essential element in his photographs. At age fifty, Eisenstaedt married Alma Kathy Kaye, a young South African. The couple had no children. His wife died in 1972, which was also the year Life ceased publication for six years. During this time, his sister-in-law, Lucy Kaye, helped Eisenstaedt report daily to the Time-Life building, which was only a few blocks from his home. He worked on several books, compiling and commenting on his photographs, and he took occasional assignments for Time magazine. His chief focus at this time was on portraits of authors, film stars, and political and other notable figures. In addition, he captured the pleasure and the pain of less-notable people. He worked until his death, caused by a heart attack, while on Martha’s Vineyard, a favorite vacation spot, in 1995. Significance Eisenstaedt perfected techniques to capture the spontaneous moment, the humanity beneath the news story, and his photographs have proved to be some of the most enduring in modern journalism. He kept his equipment to a minimum by using natural lighting whenever possible, and he carried one small camera (usually a thirty-fivemillimeter Leica), which allowed him to move unobtrusively as he captured the faces of people in the crowd. He often described viewing the world as if he were looking through a camera lens, from wide angle to telephoto, and clicking the image as instinctively as blinking his eyes. From the awed faces of children at a puppet show and the poignant farewells of American soldiers and their sweethearts, to diplomats, world leaders, and the rich and famous, Eisenstaedt recorded his observations with the skill of a poet, describing the essence of the moment in a photograph. Each image displays something more than the subject. It sensitively reveals the significance of the particular moment or event, about the people or the life depicted. —Lisa A. Wroble
Jewish Americans Further Reading Eisenstaedt, Alfred. Eisenstaedt on Eisenstaedt: A SelfPortrait. New York: Abbeville Press, 1985. More than one hundred photographs, covering sixty years, offer a window into history. Eisenstaedt tells the story behind each photograph. _______. Eisenstaedt’s Guide to Photography. New York: Penguin Group, 1981. This primer on photography reveals clues to the man behind the camera. While Eisenstaedt shares how he made each photo, the reader learns about how to take a strong photo and about the art of “vision” in photography. Foote, Timothy. “Travels with Alfred: On Assignment with One of the World’s Great Photographers.” Amer-
Eisner, Michael ican Scholar 74, no. 14 (Autumn, 2005): 114-118. Compares two assignments the pair covered together and discusses how the author came to understand Eisenstaedt’s quiet, observant style of work. Loengard, John. Life Photographers: What They Saw. Edited by Amelia Weiss. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998. Interviews forty-four members of the Life magazine staff, including Eisenstaedt, who helped make the publication a breakthrough success. They reveal adventures and mishaps in covering assignments that resulted in art. See also: Margaret Bourke-White; Robert Capa; Irving Penn; Alfred Stieglitz.
Michael Eisner Business executive Eisner revived a stagnating Walt Disney Company and turned it into a major force in the entertainment industry. Born: March 7, 1942; Mount Kisco, New York Also known as: Michael Dammann Eisner (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment
first television special (Feelin’Groovy at Marine World). In 1971, Eisner was promoted to ABC’s vice president of daytime programming, in charge of soap operas such as All My Children and One Life to Live. At about that time, Eisner met and married Jane Breckenridge, with whom he had three sons: Breck, Eric, and Anders. In 1976, Eisner became senior vice president for prime time production and development at ABC, where he worked on Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Family Ties, Barney Miller, Starsky and Hutch, and Welcome Back, Kotter. When Diller became chairman of the board of Paramount Pictures, he brought Eisner with him to be president and chief executive officer of the film division. Eisner was involved in the production of such hits as Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978), Heaven Can Wait (1978), Ordinary People (1980), Airplane! (1980),
Early Life Michael Eisner (IZ-nur) was born in Mount Kisco, New York, on March 7, 1942, to Lester Eisner, Jr., an attorney, and Margaret Dammann. Eisner was raised on Manhattan’s Park Avenue and attended the AllenStevenson School through ninth grade and finished at the Lawrenceville School. Enrolling in Denison University as a premed student, Eisner found his interests piqued by literature and theater, and he graduated in 1964 with a bachelor of arts deWhen You Wish upon a Star gree in English. As a student, Eisner worked summers as Though focused on business, Michael Eisner bought into cuttinga page at the National Broadcasting Comedge technologies because he could see the wonderment inherent in pany (NBC). After graduation he returned to their capabilities. That wonder was the coin of successful endeavors. NBC, but he soon moved to the Columbia With the entertainment world in continuous flux—a flux that would Broadcasting System (CBS), where he slotconstantly need change in order to keep fresh—he took giant strides to place Disney, and later his own companies, in position to be social and ted commercials for children’s programs. economic engines in the twenty-first century and beyond. “Striving Barry Diller, then at the American Broadfor magic,” he literally created his own magic, with twenty plus years casting Company (ABC), noticed Eisner and of success testifying to his vision. hired him to assist ABC’s national programming director. In 1967, Eisner produced his
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Eisner, Michael The Elephant Man (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), Terms of Endearment (1983), Trading Places (1983), Flashdance (1983), Footloose (1984), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), and three Star Trek films: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). Life’s Work In 1984, Eisner became chairman and chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Company, where he would make a lasting mark on the entertainment world. Disney, whose long-standing mainstays were its animated films, theme parks, and film-based merchandise, had floundered since the death of its founder, Walt Disney. Eisner soon changed that. As Eisner said, “The striving for per-
Michael Eisner. (George Rose/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans fection will put you out of business; the striving for magic makes your business.” So began a ride helmed by Eisner that brought Disney to the top of the entertainment field. Films such as Down and out in Beverly Hills (1986) and Three Men and a Baby (1987) grossed higher domestic revenues for Disney than ever before. New animated features—The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994)—were all major successes. Eisner acquired the independent film company Miramax, and its Good Will Hunting (1997) and Shakespeare in Love (1998), major critical and commercial hits, rewarded his decision. Eisner also established Walt Disney Theatrical Productions, which created Broadway shows such as Beauty and the Beast (1994), The Lion King (1997), and Aida (2000). Eisner also developed ancillary economic engines, such as Disney Cruise Lines. During his tenure, Disney increased 3,200 percent in value. After Disney president Frank Wells was killed in a tragic aircraft accident, Eisner did not promote studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg to head the company. Katzenberg departed, with a nasty lawsuit and a massive company payout. The situation deteriorated when Eisner hired as Katzenberg’s replacement Michael Ovitz, who proved to be unfit for the job. When Eisner discovered the error of that decision, another lawsuit and another massive payout were necessary to remove Ovitz. Eisner’s shiny public image began to tarnish. In 1995, Eisner acquired Capital Cities, owners of ABC television, making Disney one of the most significant players in the communications and entertainment industry. He also partnered with Pixar to develop technologically advanced animated films such as Toy Story (1995), Monsters, Inc. (2001), and Finding Nemo (2003), all blockbusters. When Steve Jobs, founder of Pixar, decided not to renew his contract with Disney, stockholders, already infuriated by the Katzenberg-Ovitz debacles and declining ABC revenues, demanded a change in leadership. In 2005, Eisner stepped down as chief executive officer of the company. Eisner, once one of the most highly paid chief executive officers in the United States, left his job with a healthy bank account. He founded the Tornante Company to develop business entities in media and entertainment, such as Team Baby
Jewish Americans Entertainment and the Veoh Network. Eisner also acquired the Topps Company, a maker of bubblegum and candy and a leader in the trading card business, which is touted as a tie-in to cable sports ventures. He also created his own cable television program, Conversations with Michael Eisner. In March, 2007, the Tornante Company founded Vuguru, a production studio that produces and distributes streaming videos for social networks on computers, cell phones, and other devices. Significance Eisner recognized that creative top executives were necessary to foster his company’s growth. By surrounding himself with experienced people and interconnecting all of Disney’s projects, he increased the company’s bottom line. He built one of the most powerful and profitable entertainment entities in the world. “At Disney, it is our conviction that synergy can be the single most important contributor to profit and growth in a creatively driven company,” he said. “It is simply this: when you embrace a new idea, a new business, a new product, a new film or television show, whatever—you have to make sure that everyone throughout the company knows about it early enough so that every segment of the business can promote or exploit its potential in every other possible market, product, context.” By turning the staid Disney brand into a tightly woven net of affiliated products with which to saturate different segments of the entertainment industry, Eisner was instrumental in creating a mega-company of international proportions. He satisfied the thirst for family-oriented diversions, with films, music, theatricals, vacation packages, amusement parks, cruises, radio and television programs, and a host of other products. —Jeanette Friedman
Elfman, Danny Further Reading Baghai, Mehrdad, Stephen Coley, and David White. The Alchemy of Growth: Practical Insights for Building the Enduring Enterprise. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books, 2000. Consultants evaluate the facets of business that propel companies forward using case studies of companies for which they have worked. Includes several references to Eisner. Baker, Cory M. “Michael Eisner: Striving for Magic.” Lifestyles 31, no. 85 (2003): 6-8. An interview with little in the way of analysis and critique but with useful biographical information. Barnes, Brooks. “The Very Model of a Modern Media Mogul.” The New York Times, March 3, 2008. Brooks examines the world of Eisner, post-Disney, as he continues to be active in the modern media world. Bryman, Alan. Disney and His Worlds. London: Routledge, 1995. An overview of what happened to his company after Walt Disney died. The book examines its movement from the amusement park world into other aspects of the entertainment industry. Compaine, Benjamin M., and Douglas Gomery. Who Owns the Media? Competition and Concentration in the Mass Media Industry. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000. An examination of the major players in the media industry, the march of technology, and technology’s impact on the industry. Krämer, Peter. “Entering the Magic Kingdom: The Walt Disney Company, The Lion King, and the Limitations of Criticism.” Film Studies 2 (2000): 44. An examination of the Disney universe, its claim to the mantle of “family entertainment,” and the elements of the Disney brand. Critiques The Lion King. See also: David Geffen; Jeffrey Katzenberg; Louis B. Mayer; Steven Spielberg; Irving Thalberg.
Danny Elfman Composer, musician, and singer A multitalented musician, Elfman is a recording artist with a Top 40 hit, a composer for film scores with a Grammy Award, and a creator of musical themes for television programming with an Emmy Award. Born: May 29, 1953; Amarillo, Texas Also known as: Daniel Robert Elfman (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment
Early Life Danny Elfman (EHLF-mihn) was born to Milton, a teacher, and Blossom, a teacher and a writer of books for young adults. Both of his parents were Jewish, but Elfman’s family was secular. Although Elfman is not religious, he relates to his Jewish heritage through music, notably to Russian and Eastern European composers, a reflection of his Russian and Polish heritage. The influ323
Elfman, Danny ences of some of his favorite composers, such as Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, can be heard in his works. While he was growing up, he was exposed to symphonies and classic film scores. He watched films many times if he liked them, and he recognized, even at a young age, how important a film score was in enhancing the mood of a film. Elfman saw the score as another character. He was influenced heavily by the film scores of Bernard Herrmann. Elfman played violin in high school, but he never received any formal musical training. He dropped out of high school and performed overseas with his brother’s musical theater group, for which he played the conga drums. His brother, upon returning to the United States in 1971, formed a performance group that he called the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. He invited Elfman to perform with them. The group gave street performances and eventually moved to the stage. After eight years, his brother left the group to become a filmmaker, and the remaining members of the group became known as Oingo Boingo. Life’s Work Elfman was the lead singer for Oingo Boingo, and he learned to play most of the instruments in the band. The members of Oingo Boingo performed the music for the film The Forbidden Zone (1982), directed by Elfman’s brother, Richard. The film was also Elfman’s first film score. Elfman had learned to compose music by transposing the works of Duke Ellington. Comedian Paul Reubens, whose comic persona is Pee-wee Herman, saw the film, liked the score, and asked Elfman to compose for his film, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985). Elfman was nervous at first, since it would be his first orchestra score, but it was well received. Elfman envisions what a director is trying to get across to an audience before he writes the score. He drew on influences from Herrmann and Nino Rota, an Italian composer who wrote for the films of Federico Fellini, to get what he felt was the correct feel for the film. He loved the artistic freedom that scoring gave him. The film was directed by Tim Burton, who had been an Oingo Boingo fan, and the two started a long string of fruitful collaborations. The next film he worked with Burton on was Beetlejuice (1988), which many consider to be one of Elfman’s finest works. The film epitomized his alternately quirky and gloomy style. Elfman did a contemporary score for the film Midnight Run in 1988 which was a departure from his usual musical style of dark tones. He collaborated with Burton again in 1989 for the film Batman, which brought him back to the alienated main character and the gloomy 324
Jewish Americans themes with which he enjoys working. The film earned him his first Emmy nomination and win for best instrumental composition. The award opened doors for Elfman, who had experienced some discrimination in the industry because of his lack of formal musical training. Critics received the score of Batman well, and it was noted that it could stand on its own. Over the years, Elfman chose not to work as a composer-for-hire and instead picked directors with whom he would like to work. He has worked steadily, doing the voice acting for the lead character Jack Skellington and the score for Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Elfman also branched into writing themes for television. In 1990, he was nominated for an Emmy Award for his theme for The Simpsons. He won an Emmy Award for outstanding main title theme music in 2005 for Desperate Housewives. He constantly experiments with new styles and has composed for video games and a classical composition, Serenada Schizophrana (2005). Significance Despite the fact that he is a self-trained musician and still experiences prejudice for that fact, Elfman has left an indelible mark on the film and recording industry. He has scored nearly sixty films, winning one Grammy Award in the process, receiving numerous other Grammy nominations, and earning four Academy Award nominations. Some of his sound tracks have sold well on their own, even though the films he scored them for failed at the box office. He has also created themes for more than ten television series, winning one Emmy Award for his work. He has released sixteen albums and had a Top 40 hit and a gold album with his band, Oingo Boingo. Elfman has worked steadily in film and television through the years and received more than seventy award nominations, taking the winner’s spot more than thirty times. He is a highly sought-after composer who has held true to his principles and produced some of the most memorable compositions for the entertainment industry in the modern era. —James J. Heiney Further Reading Burton, Tim, and Mark Salisbury. Burton on Burton. London: Faber & Faber, 2006. Contains anecdotes about Elfman’s work with Burton, a frequent collaborator. Davis, Richard. Complete Guide to Film Scoring: The Art and Business of Writing Music for Films and TV. Boston: Berklee Press, 1999. A resource for writing
Jewish Americans music for film and television. Includes interviews with some of top scoring professionals. Rona, Jeffrey C. The Reel World: Scoring for Pictures. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 2000. Insider views on creating music for film and television. Cov-
Elion, Gertrude Belle ers art, technology, techniques, and the business side of the industry. See also: Elmer Bernstein; Leonard Bernstein; Philip Glass; Bernard Herrmann; Randy Newman.
Gertrude Belle Elion Biochemist Elion set the standard for the development of drugs, using a logical rather than trial-and-error method. A Nobel Prize winner, Elion developed medications that were effective in battling viruses and cancer and in aiding the success of organ transplants. Born: January 23, 1918; New York, New York Died: February 21, 1999; Chapel Hill, North Carolina Also known as: Trudy Elion Areas of achievement: Medicine; science and technology Early Life Gertrude Belle Elion (GUR-trewd behl EHL-ee-ohn) was born to Robert and Clara Cohen Elion. Her mother immigrated to the United States from what is now Poland at age fourteen. Her father emigrated from Lithuania at age twelve. He came from a line of rabbis that could be traced back for twelve hundred years. He worked in a drugstore until he graduated from the New York City College of Dentistry. For Elion’s first seven years, the family lived in an apartment adjoining her father’s dental office. When Elion was three, her grandfather immigrated from Russia; he and Elion became close. When Elion was six, her brother, Herbert, was born, and, soon afterward, the family moved to the Bronx. Elion attended public school and did well academically in many subjects. By skipping two grades, she graduated at age fifteen. That summer, her beloved grandfather died of cancer. She had a desire to cure that horrible disease, so she chose to major in chemistry at Hunter College. Graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1937, Elion applied to fifteen universities. None offered her the necessary financial aid, and jobs were hard to find. She spent six months in secretarial school, and then she taught biochemistry for three months at the New York Hospital School of Nursing. Not finding another job, she volunteered to work for a chemist without pay to get experience. When she quit, after a year and a half, she was getting $20 a week and had saved $450.
Her savings paid for one year in graduate school at New York University. She earned money for meals and cab fare by working half time as a doctor’s receptionist. After finishing her class work, she taught school as a substitute teacher; her research had to be done at night and on weekends. She received her master’s degree in chemistry in 1941. She met the love of her life, Leonard Canter, after college. They were planning to marry, but he died of a bacterial infection in 1941.This was a second loved one Elion had lost to disease. She never married.
Gertrude Belle Elion. (©The Nobel Foundation)
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graduate school at night at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. In 1946, she was told that she had to quit her job and attend full time. She loved Research scientist George Hitchings wanted to produce drugs her job too much to quit. The positive results in by a logical method, instead of the trial-and-error method used by 1950 helped her to understand that she could do most scientists. He reasoned that bacteria, tumors, and protozoa what she wanted without a Ph.D. However, her had to use a large amount of the compounds in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to reproduce so rapidly. If a compound was similar promising results did not protect her from tragenough to trick the disease cells into using it but different enough edy. In 1956, Elion’s mother died of cervical not to make new DNA, a new generation of dangerous cells would cancer. Like the death of her grandfather and not be produced, and the patient would get well. Gertrude Belle her fiancé, the death of her mother caused her to Elion, who worked closely with Hitchings, developed and refined work more hours to develop new drugs. In 1952, the concept into the method that is the standard of drug discovery Elion produced pyrimethamine (Daraprim), a today. Elion would produce a drug and study its effects on a disease treatment for malaria. In the late 1950’s, trimethcell. If the drug was effective in stopping growth of the cell, she oprim (Proloprim, Trimpex) was produced to then studied why the growth had stopped. The metabolism of a treat bacterial infections. Another drug, azathidrug in the body was another study. If she could find how it worked, oprine (Imuran), suppressed the immune sysshe could design a similar drug to do more. In one study, she found tem and allowed kidney and heart transplants. that a drug was destroyed by the body. By adding a protective drug, she made the original drug more effective. Elion used each result as Allopurinol (Zyloprim) was developed in 1963. a tool to find the next advance. Her method replaced the trial-andIt suppresses the production of uric acid, the error method that had been used until that time. cause of gout, and is an effective treatment for leishmaniasis disease and for Chagas disease. When Hitchings retired in 1967, Elion was made head of the department of experimental Life’s Work therapy. Her first honorary doctorate was awarded by In 1942, so many men had entered the armed services George Washington University in 1969. Burroughs to serve in World War II that Elion got a job usually reWellcome moved to Research Triangle Park in North served for men in a laboratory. She first worked for A&P Carolina in 1970, and in 1995 the research group had Grocery, where she learned about instrumentation in grown to fifteen hundred people and merged with Glaxo. testing food products. In 1944, she interviewed at BurIn North Carolina, Elion focused her research on attackroughs Wellcome with George Hitchings. He was fasciing viruses. In 1977, she produced acyclovir (Zovirax), nated with her intelligence and her enthusiasm, and he which is effective against viral infections. Elion retired to hired Elion. She worked for the company for thirty-nine be a consultant and a part of the research faculty at Duke years. University and the University of North Carolina in 1983. Hitchings had a plan to develop drugs to cure diseases. In 1984, her former laboratory developed azidothymiEach member of the research group took a set of comdine (AZT) using her methods. It was the first effecpounds to make and to test. Elion was given the purines. tive treatment for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome She began to make compounds similar to the purines, (AIDS). Among the many awards given to Elion, in 1988 which were then tested to see how the compounds affected she and Hitchings were awarded the Nobel Prize. On the growth of the disease cells. Elion worked long hours. February 21, 1999, Elion collapsed during a walk and She also wanted to know how the compounds worked in died that evening. the body. She suggested that they study the metabolism of the compounds. The first major breakthrough came in Significance 1950. She developed diaminopurine, which was effecElion developed the method of research and the meditive against cancer; however, it caused vomiting. After cines to treat malaria, leukemia, gout, meningitis, septitrying more than one hundred purine compounds, she cemia, bacterial infections, and viral herpes. Organ transmade 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP), which was effective but plants are possible because she developed a drug to only temporarily. It was discovered that a combination of suppress the immune system. She also produced a drug, 6-MP or another of Elion’s compounds, thioguanine, ayclovir, to protect patients with damaged immune syscombined with other drugs would produce remission of tems from herpes viral infection. Acyclovir (Zovirax) is leukemia in children. From 1944 to 1946, Elion attended effective against shingles, herpes encephalitis, Epstein-
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Jewish Americans Barr virus, and mouth and genital herpes sores. Before 6-MP and thioguanine, half of the children with leukemia died in less than four months. With 6-MP and thioguanine, eighty percent of cases are completely cured. Her effect is worldwide. Leishmaniasis disease occurs in the Middle East and North Africa, and Chagas disease is spread by insect bite and occurs in Central and South America. Her pioneering research methods have saved thousands of lives. —C. Alton Hassell Further Reading MacBane-Stephens, Jennifer. Gertrude Elion: Nobel Prize Winner in Physiology and Medicine. New York: Rosen, 2004. Written for a high-school audience, this short book is full of facts and details. Mcgrayne, Sharon Bertsch. “Gertrude Elion.” In Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries. Rev. ed. Secaucus, N.J.:
Elkin, Stanley Carol, 1998. Describes Elion’s life and the ideas that drove her. Mattern, Joanne. Gertrude Elion and the Development of Revolutionary Medications. Hockessin, Del.: Mitchell Lane, 2005. Written for an elementary or junior high audience; chronicles Elion’s career, discoveries, and obstacles overcome. St. Pierre, Stephanie. Gertrude Elion: Master Chemist. Vero Beach, Fla.: Rourke Enterprises, 1993. Biography written upon Elion’s induction as the first woman in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991. Slater, Elinor, and Robert Slater. Great Jewish Women. Middle Village, N.Y.: Jonathan David, 1994. The Slaters have written on many Jewish topics. See also: Michael Brown; Stanley Cohen; Paul Greengard; Stanley B. Prusiner; Harold E. Varmus; Rosalyn Yalow.
Stanley Elkin Writer and educator Elkin wrote in many genres, from novels to literary criticism and cultural commentary, and he is noted for his painstaking care with style and language. Born: May 11, 1930; Brooklyn, New York Died: May 31, 1995; St. Louis, Missouri Also known as: Stanley Lawrence Elkin (full name) Areas of achievement: Literature; education Early Life Stanley Elkin (EHL-kehn) was born in New York City but lived most of his youth in the Chicago area. His father was a traveling salesman, and his gift for rhetoric, which he used in making his sales pitches, greatly impressed his son, who remembered his father as a great storyteller. Some critics believe that Elkin’s high regard for his father and for his father’s business acumen is reflected in some of the characters in his fiction. During his youth, Elkin’s family spent much of each summer at a resort community in New Jersey, where many Jewish families came to get away from the urban environments of New York City and of cities in New Jersey. This environment is reflected in Elkin’s novel The Rabbi of Lud, published in 1987. Elkin had his Bar Mitzvah in New York City in July, 1943, during one of these sojourns in the East. His
parents belonged to a synagogue in south Chicago but did not attend regularly, and Elkin was not an observant Jew. Elkin attended undergraduate and graduate school at the University of Illinois, where he first studied journalism and planned to major in that field. However, on the advice of one of his composition instructors, he decided to major in English. While in college, he wrote for the Illini Writer, the university’s undergraduate literary journal. His first published story, “The Dying,” appeared in that journal in September, 1950. He received his bachelor’s degree from Illinois in 1952 and a master’s degree the following year. He continued on toward the doctorate, but his graduate work was disrupted by service in the U.S. Army from 1955 to 1957. While in graduate school, he worked as a manuscript reader for Accent magazine, which also published some of his early stories. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1961. His doctoral dissertation was entitled “Religious Themes and Symbolism in the Novels of William Faulkner.” While completing his doctorate, he was hired to teach at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Except for brief leaves of absence and stints as a visiting professor at other institutions, he spent his entire career at Washington University. 327
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teach, even after being confined to a wheelchair shortly before his death. Mortality was always a significant theme in his writing but took on greater significance in his later writing. In his novel The Franchiser, published in 1976, the main character suffers from multiple sclerosis, and Elkin used the disease as a metaphor to describe the crumbling state of America’s economy and energy policies. Elkin has been called a “black humorist,” a satirist, a Jewish ethnic writer, and a modern realist. He generally rejected all attempts at labeling him, although he did admit his early writings were in the realist school. Elkin once told an interviewer that he resented being labeled a “Jewish writer,” but, at the same time, he was offended when he was left out of anthologies of Jewish fiction (as he generally was). The esteem with which Elkin was regarded by his fellow writers is reflected in the numerous interviews with him that were published in literary journals and book-length collections and the number of his stories that are anthologized in fiction collections. “The Bailbondsman,” a novella published in Elkin’s collection Searches and Seizures in 1973, was made into a movie entitled Alex and the Gypsy (1976), starring Jack Lemmon. In 1983, Elkin became the Merle King Professor of Modern Letters at Washington University. This endowed professorship released him from much routine teaching and allowed him to focus more time on his writing. Four of his books were nominated for National Book Awards. His novel George Mills, published in 1982, and the posthumously published Mrs. Ted Bliss (1995) both received National Book Novelist and Craftsman Critics Circle Awards. Four years after Elkin’s death from heart failure, Washington UniverStanley Elkin wrote in a variety of genres, including short stories, sity established an endowed professorship in screenplays, critical essays, and novellas, and he taught literature Elkin’s honor. and writing at several universities and at many writers’ workshops.
Life’s Work After finishing his doctorate, Elkin found that the teaching load as a full-time professor left him little time for pursuing his own writing career. His mother offered to match his university salary for a year and to provide traveling expenses. This allowed Elkin to take a leave of absence and to spend a year in Rome and London, during which he finished his first novel, Boswell: A Modern Comedy, which was published in 1964. The book received a prize for humor from the influential Paris Review but met with mixed reviews from critics. Over the course of his career, Elkin published ten novels, numerous short stories, two collections of novellas, and many essays of literary criticism and cultural commentary. He was made a full professor at Washington University in 1969. He frequently taught at the prestigious Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. Elkin noted that the writers who influenced him included Henry James, Herman Melville, and William Faulkner. He also recalled benefiting greatly from taking a course from the poet Randall Jarrell, who taught one year at Illinois during Elkin’s undergraduate days. Among his contemporaries, he suggested he was most influenced by Saul Bellow and William Gass, who became his personal friends; Gass was also a colleague at Washington University. Elkin suffered a heart attack in 1968 and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1972. While the muscle-wasting disease took a heavy toll and he was increasingly disabled, he continued to
However, it is probably as a novelist who took painstaking care with style and language that he will be best remembered. Sometimes criticized for failing to devote enough attention to form or plot, Elkin seemed to revel in the language and dialogue of his characters. Instead of dialogue advancing the plot or storyline, his plots seemed to exist to give the characters a platform from which to speak. A true “writer’s writer,” Elkin was well received by serious critics, teachers, and students of writing and by other fiction writers, but his books did not attract wide attention from the general reading public. While Elkin strenuously rejected all efforts to label him as a particular type of writer, critics generally spoke positively about his attention to language, style, and rhetoric. After he had established himself as a fiction writer and a noted teacher of writing, he was increasingly sought out by magazines and journals for essays commenting on American life in general, rather than simply literary criticism.
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Significance Elkin was often called an “academic writer,” not only because he was a university professor of writing and a novelist but also because the fiction and nonfiction essays he wrote were appreciated primarily by other writers and those who taught writing and American literature. While his works were widely taught in colleges and universities, and often anthologized in classroom readers, commercial success among the general public eluded him. His novels achieved generally positive critical acclaim, especially for his careful attention to language and rhetoric. As a professor of writ-
Jewish Americans ing at Washington University for more than thirty years and at numerous writers’ conferences and as a visiting professor at other institutions, he had a wide-ranging impact on many later writers. —Mark S. Joy Further Reading Bailey, Peter Joseph. Reading Stanley Elkin. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Bailey wrote a doctoral dissertation on Elkin’s fiction, focusing on his use of pattern and perception; this work enlarges and updates that study. Dougherty, David C. Shouting Down the Silence: A Biography of Stanley Elkin. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010. A full-length biography of Elkin, by a scholar who knew him personally and has researched the author for more than two decades. _______. Stanley Elkin. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Primarily a survey of the literary criticism of Elkin’s writ-
Ellis, Albert ings, the book also includes a biographical sketch of Elkin. Elkin, Stanley. Early Elkin. Flint, Mich.: Baumberger Books, 1982. A collection of several of Elkin’s early stories and a brief “reading memoir” about what he read as a young man; includes some autobiographical details. _______. Pieces of Soap. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. An eclectic collection of thirty essays on a variety of topics, with some autobiographical content. Vendler, Helen. “Stanley Elkin Revisited: Reflections and Reminiscences.” New England Review 27, no. 4 (Fall, 2006): 57-59. Vendler, an American poetry critic and professor at Harvard University, shares recollections of her friendship with Elkin. See also: Saul Bellow; E. L. Doctorow; Joseph Heller; Bernard Malamud; Philip Roth; Leon Uris.
Albert Ellis Psychologist One of the early leaders of the “cognitive revolution” in psychology, Ellis began an influential school of psychotherapy, rational emotive cognitive therapy, which emphasized the role of conscious thought and attitudes. Born: September 27, 1913; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Died: July 24, 2007; New York, New York Area of achievement: Psychology Early Life Born into a Jewish family in Pittsburgh, Albert Ellis (AL-burt EHL-ihs) was the eldest of three children. His father, a businessman, often was away on business trips and remained emotionally distant from his children. In his autobiography, Ellis described his mother as a selfabsorbed woman with a manic-depressive disorder. Because of her illness, Ellis took responsibility for raising his two sisters. Suffering from numerous health problems throughout his life, he was hospitalized at least eight times by the age of seven. During his adolescence, he was extremely shy around women, and at the age of nineteen he forced himself to talk to one hundred women. Although he did not get any dates, he reported that the experience desensitized him to his fear of rejection by women.
In 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, he graduated from the City University of New York with a degree in business. He worked for a short time in business, and then he attempted to earn a livelihood as a writer of fiction, without much success. After having successful experiences as a lay counselor, Ellis began a graduate program in clinical psychology at Columbia University in 1942. Completing his M.A. the following year, he began a private practice while also pursuing a Ph.D., which he completed in 1947. By this time he had already published a few articles on the validity of personality tests, but there were no indications that he would become a successful writer. Life’s Work When Ellis began his career as a psychotherapist, most practitioners were committed to one of the schools of psychoanalysis, all of which emphasized unconscious motivations and assumed that most psychological disorders resulted from traumatic experiences, usually during one’s youth. Ellis initially attempted to utilize most of the ideas of classical psychoanalysis, as proposed by Sigmund Freud, and after completing his Ph.D., Ellis underwent a personal analysis and training program under Richard Hulbeck. Always an eclectic and independent thinker, 329
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for Rational Living (later called the Albert Ellis Institute), which had the dual goal of providing therapeutic services and From the beginning of his career, Albert Ellis had libertarian, hedonisof training therapists in RT. The next year, tic views on human sexuality, and his work with sex researcher Alfred he explained his therapeutic approach in Kinsey reinforced these values. Ellis’s early books, including The Folklore of Sex (1951) and Sex Without Guilt (1958), asserted that restrictions a paper delivered at the American Psyon sexual expression are often unnecessary and harmful to a person’s chological Association. At the time few emotional health. While advocating responsible behavior, such as avoidpsychotherapists were ready for such an ing disease, he saw no need for self-denial so long as sexual activity was emphasis on cognition, and his paper elicnonviolent and among consenting adults. During the time when his early ited a negative reaction from most profesworks on sexuality appeared, American attitudes were changing rapidly, sionals, who were usually committed to as seen in court decisions, the publication of Playboy magazine, and the either psychoanalysis or behaviorism. By wide availability of contraceptives. Although many were involved in fothe 1970’s, however, the “cognitive revomenting the sexual revolution in America, Ellis is widely recognized as lution” was transforming the discipline, one of the major founders of the movement. making Ellis’s emphasis on attitudes apEllis’s ideas about homosexuality were somewhat ambivalent. His pear mainstream. The American Psychobook, Homosexuality: Its Causes and Cure (1965), viewed homosexuality as a mental disorder, as did the American Psychiatric Association at logical Association presented him with the time. In his view, most gay men had chosen an “abnormal” sexual orian award for “distinguished professional entation because of their timidity in relating to women. He insisted, nevcontributions” in 1985. ertheless, that homosexual practices were not inherently good or evil, and Throughout his long career, Ellis conhe consistently advocated an end to punishment for gay and lesbian betinued to make changes in his psychohavior. He also wrote the introduction to Donald Webster Cory’s The Hological theories and techniques. In the mosexual in America (1951), the first major book calling for gay liberamid-1990’s he changed the name of his tion. In 2001, Ellis published a revision of Sex Without Guilt, which took a approach to rational-emotive therapy much more liberal view than had his earlier works. (RET), which highlighted the interaction between the cognitive and affective domains, and years later he changed the Ellis borrowed theories from a variety of psychologists, label to rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT), including Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich thereby explicitly recognizing the importance of observFromm, and Alfred Adler. His point of view was also inable behavior in therapeutic endeavors. fluenced by a variety of philosophers, particularly ArisIn addition to his work in psychology, Ellis was firmly totle, Marcus Aurelius, and Alfred Korzybski. committed to the philosophy of secular humanism, asBy the early 1950’s, Ellis had concluded that psychoserting in his writings and debates that religious beliefs analysis was ineffective in treating psychological disortended to be irrational and to cause a great deal of distress ders, and he began to develop a more direct approach that and unhappiness. In 1971, he was named Humanist of concentrated on helping clients to develop rational and the Year by the American Humanist Association. Howpositive attitudes, with more emphasis on their current ever, he drew a distinction between his psychological thinking than on their recovered memories about events theories and REBT, acknowledging that some religiously that had occurred in the past. By 1955, he had developed devout persons made successful psychotherapists. Bea systematic paradigm, called rational therapy (RT), coming increasingly tolerant of religious beliefs in later which assumed that many psychological problems were years, he came to recognize that such beliefs provided a caused by unreasonable and self-defeating ways of thinksense of meaning and purpose for many people, although ing. According to the RT approach, the therapist should he continued to denounce dogmatic, rigid, and intolerant not simply listen passively to clients. Rather the therapist forms of religiosity. Rejecting the label “agnostic,” he should help clients to recognize how self-condemnation called himself a “probabilistic atheist.” While admitting and negative thoughts promote depression and other psythat he could not be entirely certain about the nonexischological problems. tence of a god, he argued that the probability that one exIn 1957, Ellis outlined his ideas in a book, How to Live isted was so small that it was not worth anyone’s serious with a Neurotic, written for the general public, and in attention. 1959 he founded a nonprofit organization, the Institute Ellis’s teachings about ways to live with adversities
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Jewish Americans without self-pity were in part based on his own experiences. He was acquainted with physical ailments from an early age, and from the age of forty until his death he suffered from diabetes. In 2004, his large intestine was removed, and after being nursed to health by Debbie Joffe, whom he later married, he returned to work for a short period of time. In 2005, Ellis and the board of the Albert Ellis Institute had a bitter dispute about management policies, and after the board removed him from all professional duties, he sued and won reinstatement. In 2006, however, he suffered from pneumonia and spent most of the next year in hospitals and nursing homes. Shortly before his ninetyfourth birthday in 2007, he died from multiple causes. Significance Ellis is one of a handful of psychologists responsible for the cognitive revolution in psychological therapy and research, which focuses on conscious thought processes. An extremely prolific writer, he wrote and cowrote more than seventy books and some eight hundred articles. In a 1982 survey of professional psychologists in the United States and Canada, Ellis was ranked as the second most influential psychotherapist in history (behind Carl Rogers and ahead of Sigmund Freud). — Thomas Tandy Lewis Further Reading Corsini, Raymond, and Danny Wedding, eds. Current Psychotherapies. 8th ed. New York: Cengage Learn-
Ellison, Harlan ing, 2007. Analyses of major therapies, including Ellis’s summary of REBT. David, Daniel, Stephen Lynn, and Albert Ellis, eds. Rational and Irrational Beliefs: Research, Theory, and Clinical Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Collection of essays about the role of cognition in psychotherapy, by authors with a variety of viewpoints. Dobson, Keith, ed. Handbook of Cognitive Behavioral Therapies. New York: Guilford Press, 2010. Summaries of the alternative approaches, dedicated to Ellis, who is called a “titan in the field of psychotherapy.” Ellis, Albert. All Out! An Autobiography. New York: Prometheus, 2010. Candid account of various phases of Ellis’s life, including his emotional problems, love life, career, and ideas. Norcross, John C., and Marvin Goldfried, eds. Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Collection of essays about REBT and other therapies that utilize a combination of theories and techniques. Velten, Emmett, ed. Under the Influence: Reflections of Albert Ellis in the Work of Others. Tucson, Ariz.: Sharp Press, 2007. Collection of essays by prominent psychologists discussing the sources of Ellis’s ideas and their place in psychotherapy. See also: Daniel Bell; Franz Boas; Paul Joseph Cohen; Jerome Karle.
Harlan Ellison Writer A versatile writer in fiction of all genres and nonfiction, Ellison is noted for his award-winning science-fiction short stories. Born: May 27, 1934; Cleveland, Ohio Also known as: Cordwainer Bird; Cheech Beldone (pseudonyms); Harlan Jay Ellison (full name) Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Harlan Ellison (HAR-luhn EL-ih-suhn) was born on May 27, 1934, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Louis and Serita Ellison. Harlan Ellison’s family moved to Painesville, where he grew up as the only Jewish child and the smallest in his class. He was bullied and he was the victim of acts of anti-Semitism: At one point, while he was out of
town with his family, neighbors had his dog put to sleep. He later used these experiences as topics for stories and essays, including one fantasy revenge piece. Ellison often ran away from home and worked in a variety of odd jobs, including a three-month stint in the circus when he was thirteen. His father died from a heart attack when Ellison was fifteen. In 1953, Ellison began studies at Ohio State University (OSU), and eighteen months later he was expelled because of a disagreement with an English professor, who had questioned Ellison’s abilities as a writer. Ellison left OSU and went to New York City to become a fulltime writer, and he published 150 stories over the next two years. He wrote journalistic pieces and fiction in a variety of genres. He sent the professor a copy of each of his published stories. The science-fiction community 331
Ellison, Harlan fully embraced Ellison’s writing, even though he balked at the label of science-fiction writer. He saw most of the contemporary science-fiction writers as limited in writing talent and did not hesitate to express his opinion. He prefers to describe his works as “magic realism.” Ellison married in 1956. Shortly after, he began journalistic pieces about street gangs. In order to research the topic, he joined a street gang under the assumed name of Cheech Beldone. He used incidents from this experience in his future works and in his memoir. Ellison was drafted into the Army and served from 1957 to 1959. He divorced in 1959 and returned to New York City in 1960. Life’s Work Ellison’s works are noted for being open and honest. He commonly uses violence and gore in his stories, although those elements are not for shock value but for highlighting the theme. Ellison developed a highly personal writing style that allows him to express his opinion, even in his fictional works. His view of the future of the human race is grim, and he portrays the universe as uncaring and occasionally cruel. He does not foresee that technology will save mankind. “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967), which won a Hugo Award for science-fiction writing, is a dystopian view of the future where an all-powerful computer leaves five humans alive
DANGEROUS VISIONS Harlan Ellison has won many awards, but one of his most important contributions has been the anthology Dangerous Visions (1967, 2002). Ellison assembled the works of some of the finest writers in the science-fiction genre and created a critically acclaimed work that won a Hugo Award in 1968. The stories he selected were controversial and experimental, and the sex and violence prominently used in the stories changed the way that the public viewed science fiction and prompted an evolution in science-fiction writing style. It ushered in a “new wave” of science fiction, even though Ellison had a distaste for the label. Ellison wrote introductions for the stories in Dangerous Visions that influence the way a story is read and point to his interpretation of the work, and authors added an afterword to each story. The combination of the introductions and afterwords was an innovative format for an anthology. The book’s impact was so profound that Ellison received a special citation for editing it at the Twenty-sixth World Science Fiction Convention.
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Jewish Americans to torture through the rest of eternity. Ellison was heralded as one of the “new wave” masters of science fiction, despite the fact that he wrote more mystery and mainstream works than science fiction. Another theme that Ellison commonly visits is rebellion even in the face of overwhelming odds. The short story “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman” (1965) deals with a person who rebels against a repressive society, even though it will cut short his life. This won a Nebula Award and a Hugo Award for best short story. It remains one of the most reprinted short stories in English in any genre. Ellison edited the collection Dangerous Visions (1967, 2002), which featured the works of some of the most notable science-fiction writers of the time. Both it and its sequel, Again, Dangerous Visions (1972), were highly acclaimed by critics. Ellison personalized each story with an introduction. The multitalented Ellison also made a name for himself as a television writer. He sold scripts to sciencefiction shows such as The Outer Limits and Star Trek. He also wrote screenplays for more mainstream shows such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. His talent was evident and he won two best original teleplay awards for “The City on the Edge of Forever” (Star Trek) and “Demon with a Glass Hand” (The Outer Limits). Ellison was highly dissatisfied with the rewriting of his original script for “The City on the Edge of Forever,” but it is considered to be one of the finest of the original Star Trek episodes and won a Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation in 1968. Ellison elected to keep his name on the episode credits despite his tendency to have his name changed to “Cordwainer Bird” in the credits when he does not approve of the final result. Ever the contrarian, Ellison wrote a column for the Los Angeles Free Press that discussed the dangers of television, deploring the “dumbing down” of viewers and the degradation of culture. Ellison’s story “A Boy and His Dog,” written in 1969, was made into a movie in 1975. “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” was made into a well-received video game that he helped to develop. He also served as a creative consultant to the 1980 version of The Twilight Zone series and the award-winning Babylon 5. He wrote a shortlived, award-winning television series, The Starlost, in 1973. Ellison was named grand master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2006. Significance Ellison’s works have an astounding breadth and depth. He has written more than seventeen hundred stories and
Jewish Americans written or edited more than seventy books. He is accomplished in various fiction genres, and he has written nonfiction pieces, winning the Silver Pen for Journalism in 1988. He has been a writer and a creative consultant for award-winning television shows. Although controversial, confrontational, and often experimental, his works are so compelling that he has maintained a high readership. He has also earned the respect of his peers, even though his strong opinions and his abrasive behavior have alienated some of them. He is one of the top short-story writers, with more than forty awards (among them seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards) to his credit in this genre. He has also received awards in other genres as well, including for mystery (the Edgar Allan Poe Award) and for horror (the Bram Stoker Award). He was also awarded the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 1996. —James J. Heiney
Ellison, Larry Further Reading Bould, Mark. The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction. London: Routledge, 2009. A broad overview of the genre, including, history, theory, issues, and more. Discusses Ellison as well as other authors. Ellison, Harlan. Dangerous Visions. New York: Berkley, 1972. Ellison’s classic anthology, originally published in 1967, showcases his unique introductions and edgy selections of stories for the period. _______, et al. The Essential Ellison: A Fifty-Year Retrospective. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Morpheus International, 2001. Some of the best examples of Ellison’s work, showing how his writing matured over time. See also: Isaac Asimov; Paddy Chayefsky; Rod Serling; William Shatner.
Larry Ellison Entrepreneur and philanthropist Ellison created Oracle, a company that became a leader in database management software. Born: August 17, 1944; Bronx, New York Also known as: Lawrence Joseph Ellison (full name) Areas of achievement: Science and technology; business; philanthropy Early Life Larry Ellison (EHL-ih-sihn) was born on August 17, 1944, to a nineteen-year-old single mother named Florence Spillman. When he was nine months old, Ellison contracted a severe case of pneumonia, prompting his mother to send him to live with her aunt and uncle, Lillian and Louis Ellison of Chicago. The couple, Russian Jewish immigrants, welcomed the child into their family. Ellison’s adoptive father was from the Crimea, who adopted the name Ellison to honor his entry point into the United States, Ellis Island. He achieved relatively quick wealth in Chicago real estate, but he lost it all during the Great Depression. He became a government accountant, though his financial losses made him distant, demanding, and cold. This contrasted sharply with Ellison’s adoptive mother, a homemaker who was warm and sincere.
Larry Ellison grew up in a working-class apartment building in a Chicago South Shore Jewish neighborhood. His embittered adoptive father criticized Ellison harshly, and when, at age twelve, Ellison learned of his adoption, he became more independent and tough-minded. Ellison excelled at math and science in elementary school, and he aspired to be a doctor. However, he was perceived to be unbridled under authority. Ellison attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for two years, quitting when his adoptive mother died of cancer. Later he attended a semester at the University of Chicago, but he never graduated. Life’s Work Ellison moved to California’s Silicon Valley in 1966, and over the next eight years he had various jobs in computer technology. While working at Ampex, Ellison teamed with Robert Miner and Edward Oates to write a database program for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They named the program Oracle. Ellison moved on to Precision Instruments (later named Omex), then formed Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in 1977 with his friends Miner and Oates. They won a $400,000 database programming contract at a third of the price of the lowest bid; Ellison put up just two thousand dollars to front the business. 333
Ellison, Larry SDL became Relational Software Inc. (RSI) in 1979, and later it was renamed Oracle after the flagship program. Ellison owned 60 percent of the company, and Miner and Oates each owned 20 percent. Oracle beat all competitors to market by two years with its database model, a product that could be used across a broad range of hardware and software systems. Oracle became profitable by 1982, with explosive growth to follow. As computing took hold of the world in the early 1980’s, businesses scrambled to manage data, and Oracle outsold all its competitors. The company went public in 1986, and it ended the 1980’s as the top name in database management systems. Ellison accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars during the 1980’s. After a brief stumble in 1990, the company continued its monster growth. Ellison came under fire for his company’s aggressive sales and marketing tactics and his increasingly lavish lifestyle. Oracle added one billion dollars in sales annually each year from 1992 to 1998, and Ellison became noted for his extravagance; he bought exotic cars, yachts, private jets, and fighter jets. He spent ten years building an estimated two-hundred-million-dollar twenty-three-acre estate based on Japanese medieval architecture.
Larry Ellison. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Jewish Americans Ellison has always been a calculated risk taker in business and in his personal life. His thirst for adventure has taken him all over the world, flying, sailing, exploring, and climbing mountains. He’s a licensed instrumentrated pilot and an accomplished sailor. During the harrowing Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race in 1998, a strong storm ravaged the racing fleet; five boats sank and six sailors lost their lives. Ellison’s yacht, the eighty-foot Sayonara, and its crew escaped the storm’s wrath to win the race. Nevertheless, the experience caused Ellison to swear off sailing races. Although he no longer competes, he has become the second largest investor in BMW Oracle Racing, a perennial challenger for the America’s Cup. Ellison’s love of the ocean extends beyond sailing to high-end yachting. Ellison co-owns, with David Geffen, music and entertainment mogul, one of the largest private yachts in the world. Rising Sun is a 452-foot super yacht that was launched in 2004. Ellison has also learned more about his Jewish heritage and even has met his birth mother. He has become closer to Judaism and Israeli affairs. Although Oracle has a presence in Israel, Ellison did not visit until 2007. When he went to Israel, he pledged $500,000 in aid to the Israeli border town of Sderot to fortify a community center after meeting the children and realizing they felt unsafe. Significance Ellison is a pioneer in the computer software industry, and he has made a tremendous impact on global business information management. He created a personal fortune rivaled by few. His inventions and business practices will be studied for generations, and his fortune, which is valued at tens of billions of dollars, and his eccentric lifestyle garner interest. Ellison, in 2000, was the richest person in the world, with a net worth reportedly exceeding sixty billion dollars. He has been married four times and has five children. He has tried hard to separate his personal and his business personas and worked to be a better father than Louis was to him. He has begun to embrace his Jewish heritage, contributing more to Jewish causes. His creation, fostering, and funding of the Ellison Medical Foundation, a facility doing research on the fundamental biology underlying the diseases of aging, has even
Jewish Americans been criticized as being a means to give Ellison early access to treatments to extend his own life. Regardless of his tremendous charitable and philanthropic deeds, Ellison will be known widely for his software and business acumen and his extravagant lifestyle. —Jonathan E. Dinneen
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Ellison Medical Foundation Billionaire Oracle founder and chief executive officer Larry Ellison’s business achievements are widely chronicled. However, there has been little mention of the Ellison Medical Foundation (EMF), which Ellison founded in 1998, teaming with his friend, Dr. Joshua Lederberg, to fund top scientists in the biological study of aging. These studies include several focused on such diseases as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and cancer. Ellison is the sole support of the foundation, and he has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars. A science and health buff, Ellison attended a weekend seminar on the Human Genome Project at Stanford University in 1992, and he was mesmerized by Lederberg. Eloquent and intelligent, Lederberg, the former president of Rockefeller University in New York and who shared the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1958 at age thirty-three, won over Ellison immediately with his views. Ellison, who lost his adoptive mother to cancer and who had a brother-in-law with Parkinson’s disease, has a passion for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Therefore, EMF conducts research in the basic biological sciences relevant to understanding lifespan development processes and age-related diseases and disabilities. Oracle changed how the world manages and stores data, but the EMF might be Ellison’s greatest achievement as it succeeds in sustaining and preserving human life.
Further Reading Southwick, Karen. Everyone Else Must Fail: The Unvarnished Truth About Oracle and Larry Ellison. New York: Crown, 2003. Portrays Ellison as an evil genius. Southwick, a technology writer, recognizes Ellison’s innovation and genius but underscores his ruthless and controversial business tactics. Stone, Florence. The Oracle of Oracle: The Story of Volatile CEO Larry Ellison and the Strategies Behind His Company’s Phenomenal Success. New York: AMACOM Books, 2002. A quick history of Oracle and a review of the core business strategies Ellison enacted throughout the company. Symonds, Matthew. Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003. An inside look at Ellison’s personal and business life by an experienced business writer. Contains commentary by Ellison. Wilson, Mike. The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. A behind-
the-scenes look at how Ellison started Oracle and turned it into a global leader. The author, an investigative reporter, had access to Ellison, current and former employees, and many others, leading to an interesting portrayal of Ellison. See also: Sergey Brin; Michael Dell; Carl Icahn; Larry Page.
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Rahm Emanuel Politician As a political fund-raiser, a member of the Clinton administration, and a U.S. congressman, Emanuel has shaped Democratic politics. As President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Emanuel played an important role in policy making at the national level. Born: November 29, 1959; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: Rahm Israel Emanuel (full name) Area of achievement: Government and politics Early Life Rahm Emanuel (rahm ee-MAN-yew-ehl) was born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 29, 1959. His parents, Benjamin and Martha, raised Emanuel in a Conservative Jewish home. Emanuel is the second of three boys and has an adopted sister. The Emanuel family had close ties to Israel and political activism. Benjamin, a pediatrician, was born there, had been active in the pre-Israel underground, and belonged to Irgun, a Zionist organization that fought for the establishment of the state of Israel (and later gave rise to
Passing Health Care Reform Although Rahm Emanuel initially opposed pursuing health care reform in the first few years of the Barack Obama administration, his efforts were critical to passing the bill. Emanuel had been one of the leaders of the failed effort at reform during the Clinton administration, and he learned from his experience that pursuing major reform legislation too early and without the support of members of Congress could be disastrous for a new president. In the first few months of the Obama administration, Emanuel argued that a more incremental approach to health care reform, through a series of narrowly focused bills, would be the best political strategy. However, when Obama decided to move forward with the reform effort, Emanuel became one of the administration’s most important negotiators, advocating what reform could gain passage through the legislative process, including a change in strategy on proposals for a “public option” for health insurance. This weighing of ideological goals and of pragmatic political considerations has often led conservative critics to claim Emanuel is too partisan and liberal critics to claim he is too willing to compromise core principles. But, in the end, it was Emanuel’s masterful effort to achieve whatever reform was possible that led to the successful conclusion of the health reform process.
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the conservative Likud Party). Emanuel’s mother was an X-ray technician and an activist in the Civil Rights movement. Emanuel accompanied her on a march organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Cicero, Illinois. Young Emanuel often visited Israel to attend summer youth camps, and later he became a civilian volunteer in the Israeli Defense Forces during the first Gulf War in 1991. Emanuel attended the Conservative Jewish Anshe Emet Day School. After his family moved to Wilmette, a middle-class suburb of Chicago, he went to the New Trier High School, where he displayed so much skill in dance he was offered a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet School. He declined, and instead he attended Sarah Lawrence College, where he graduated in 1981. During his college years, he became active in Ralph Nader’s consumer rights organization, Common Cause, and worked on a congressional campaign. Emanuel furthered his education at Northwestern University, where he earned a master’s degree in speech and communication in 1985. While working on his master’s degree, Emanuel became involved in politics professionally when he was hired as a spokesperson for the Illinois Public Action Council, an organization affiliated with Nader. In 1982, Emmanuel’s work brought him into contact with David Axelrod, then a reporter and later a member of President Barack Obama’s inner circle of advisers. The two became friends in 1984, when Emanuel worked as a fund-raiser for Paul Simon’s successful U.S. Senate campaign, which Axelrod managed. During this period, Emanuel married Amy Rule, a Wharton graduate with a master’s degree in business administration. The couple had three children. His fund-raising skills on the Simon campaign gained Emanuel notoriety in Democratic Party circles. By 1988, Emanuel was a senior staff member of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), a committee in the House of Representatives that works to support Democratic candidates and helped Richard M. Daley raise money for his mayoral campaigns in 1989 and 1991. Life’s Work Emanuel’s record led to an offer to become chief fund-raiser for Bill Clinton’s victorious 1992 presidential campaign, moving Emanuel to the national political stage for the first time. He was ap-
Jewish Americans pointed political director for the new administration. He was removed in 1993 and given the position of deputy communications director and senior adviser to the president for policy and strategy. Emanuel’s biggest challenge came when he was selected to help lead the effort to pass health care reform, an effort that eventually failed. As the Clinton presidency came to an end, Emanuel decided to return to Chicago, and he began working in investment banking, a lucrative career that netted him eighteen million dollars and the financial security he believed he needed to return to politics. In 2002, Emanuel ran for a seat in the House of Representatives from the Fifth Congressional District of Illinois when Rod Blagojevich declined to run for reelection. After a difficult primary fight, Emanuel easily defeated his Republican opponent, Mark Augusti, and was sworn into office at the beginning of 2003. Emanuel quickly gained the respect of his Democratic colleagues for his efforts at fund-raising and recruiting of new candidates. He also served on the House Financial Services Committee and was a vocal supporter of the Iraq War. In 2006, Emanuel’s reputation for hard work, aggressiveness, and political success led to his being appointed chair of the DCCC. His fund-raising and campaigning efforts that year helped propel the Democrats to gain thirty seats in the House during the 2006 midterm elections, giving them control over the House for the first time in twelve years. As a reward, Emanuel was elected chair of the Democratic Caucus and seemed on track to become Speaker of the House. He was easily reelected to his House seat in 2008. The election of Barack Obama to the presidency that year changed those plans. President-elect Obama persuaded Emanuel to leave the House of Representatives and to become the new administration’s chief of staff, controlling who gains access to the president. The appointment meant that the president would have an experienced Washington insider within his West Wing, who knew how to work with Congress. Emanuel’s approach to lawmaking was characterized as pragmatic, which means he sought proposals that had enough support to achieve passage rather than pursuing ideological goals that lacked the votes needed for success. Emanuel’s appointment was not without controversy, however, especially from those groups concerned about his strong support for Israel. However, others argued that Emanuel’s presence has kept the Israeli government from failing to engage in the Middle East peace process meaningfully. Emanuel was perceived as a powerful chief of staff; he
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Rahm Emanuel. (Roll Call/Getty Images)
had twice-daily private meetings with the president, who sometimes, but not always, followed Emanuel’s advice. For example, Emanuel privately argued against aggressively pursuing health care reform so early in the administration, but Obama insisted on moving forward; once the decision was made, however, Emanuel fully supported the administration’s position, working diligently to achieve success. Emanuel’s efforts on behalf of the administration led him to lobby members of Congress for support and to have influence over major policy decisions. In October, 2010, Emanuel resigned from his White House position to run for the mayor of Chicago. Significance Emanuel redefined the office of chief of staff, making it one of the most powerful positions in the White House. As a result, his influence within the Democratic Party, Congress, and the Executive Branch was far reaching. His efforts to shape public policy were reflected in economic stimulus legislation, health care reform, and even foreign policy. Few chiefs of staff have wielded so much 337
Ephron, Nora power, and Emanuel’s reputation for energy and toughness made him a formidable member of the Obama administration. Furthermore, his success as chair of the DCCC has remained a blueprint for winning elections and fund-raising for both political parties. —David Smailes Further Reading Bendavid, Naftali. The Thumpin’: How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Finally Ended the Republican Revolution. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2007. An excellent account of Emanuel’s efforts as DCCC chair to regain Democratic control of the House of Representatives. Emanuel, Rahm, and Bruce Reed. The Plan. New York: PublicAffairs, 2006. Although cowritten with another
Jewish Americans Clinton adviser, this book gives the reader a firm grasp on Emanuel’s policy positions, including his call for national service. Schlesinger, Robert. “Rahm Emanuel’s Vision: Democrats Aim for a House Majority in 2006.” Campaigns and Elections 26, no. 5 (June, 2005): 17-20. A description of Emanuel’s work for the DCCC, including his tendency to focus on tasks and pursue his goals with aggressiveness. Smalley, Suzanne, and Evan Thomas. “Come, O Come, Emanuel.” Newsweek 115, no. 15 (April 2008): 32. A brief but thorough description of Emanuel’s role within the Obama administration. See also: Bernard Baruch; Abraham Beame; Henry Kissinger; Lewis Libby; Robert B. Reich.
Nora Ephron Writer Ephron worked as a journalist and a novelist. She was drawn to Hollywood to be a screenwriter, a film director, and a producer, and her most popular films are updated versions of the classic romantic comedies. Born: May 19, 1941; New York, New York Also known as: Nora Louise Ephron (full name) Areas of achievement: Journalism; entertainment; literature Early Life Nora Ephron (NOHR-uh EH-frawn) was born in New York City into a family of secular Jews. The firstborn child of playwrights Henry and Phoebe Ephron, Ephron was followed by three sisters, Delia, Hallie, and Amy, all writers. Three years following Ephron’s birth, the family moved to California, and her parents became screenwriters. As a result, Ephron grew up in Hollywood, where her parents entertained famous and creative people. She honed her wit, her sense of humor, and her storytelling skills at the family dinner table. As a student at Beverly Hills High School, Ephron began her career in journalism as the editor of the school newspaper. In 1962, she graduated from Wellesley College, where she also edited the school paper. Ephron would later criticize the stereotypical and conventional nature of Wellesley and the low expectations the college projected for its students, all female. A political science 338
Nora Ephron. (George Rose/Getty Images)
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major, she served as a White House intern durRomantic Comedy with a Feminist Slant ing the John F. Kennedy administration. After graduating from college, Ephron beNora Ephron is best known for her work in romantic comedy. Her gan reporting for the New York Post, and she remost popular films include When Harry Met Sally. . . (1989), Sleepmained there until 1968. In 1967, she married less in Seattle (1993), and You’ve Got Mail (1998), all starring Meg Ryan. Often reworking material from the past, Ephron combines the writer Dan Greenburg. After marriage, she left nostalgic sense of romance represented in classic films with the reporting and earned a living as a freelance practical concerns of contemporary workingwomen. Although her writer, publishing in such major women’s magfemale protagonists have careers, they have not forsaken relationazines as Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, ships with men. General audiences appreciate a dose of glamour and McCall’s. She published her first collecwith their realism. She also updates the stories with current technoltion of essays, Wallflower at the Orgy, in ogy, for example, with the use of the call-in radio talk show in Sleep1970. Between 1972 and 1976, she worked less in Seattle and of e-mail in You’ve Got Mail. Although she enjoys for both Esquire magazine and New York Maga sense of control, Ephron is adept at collaboration. In an interview, azine, serving as columnist and editor. Her Ephron comments on the collaborative nature of filmmaking and second collection of essays, Crazy Salad, was notes that the culminating marriage of Harry and Sally was not her published in 1975. idea, because she did not think it a realistic ending. However, unlike most real-life stories, her romantic comedies have happy endings, Ephron married her second husband, Carl which are popular with large audiences. Bernstein, a journalist known for his reporting of the Watergate scandal of the Richard Nixon White House, in 1976. The marriage ended because of Bernstein’s infidelity with Margafilm, directed by Rob Reiner and starring Billy Crystal ret Jay, daughter of the British prime minister and wife to and Meg Ryan, chronicles the twelve-year relationship a British ambassador to the United States. At the time, between Harry and Sally, two New Yorkers who marry at Ephron was pregnant with the couple’s second child, film’s end. Early in the relationship, Harry remarks to Max. Their first son, Jacob, was still an infant. Ephron Sally that friendship between men and women is imposdocumented the experience in her thinly veiled autobiosible. Sally’s most memorable scene involves illustrating graphical novel, Heartburn, published in 1983, and later a fake orgasm at a restaurant; after which another patron filmed with Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. (played by Reiner’s mother) says to a waitress, “I’ll have Ephron’s third collection of essays, Scribble Scribble, what she’s having.” The film popularized the terms “highwas published in 1978. After her second divorce, she maintenance” and “transitional person.” Ephron’s script turned to screenwriting in order to support her two sons. won best original screenplay from the British Academy In 1987, she married her third husband, Nicholas Pileggi, of Film and Television Arts. also a writer. Ephron was nominated for an Academy Award a third time for her screenplay for 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle. Life’s Work She also directed the film, which stars Tom Hanks and Although she had initially avoided screenwriting as Ryan, who play Sam and Annie. Sam’s son, Jonah, calls an act of rebellion against her alcoholic parents, Ephron a radio talk show on Christmas Eve, worried about his facapitulated after her divorce from Bernstein. As the sinther, who is not recovering from the loss of Jonah’s gle mother of two young children, she decided that workmother. Annie, who is engaged to Walter, hears the proing in film not only would allow her to work from home gram and develops an interest in Sam. The couple meet at but also would be more lucrative. Her first project was the top of the Empire State Building but not until the end the screenplay for Silkwood (1983), coauthored with Alof the film, which is permeated with references to the ice Arlen. The screenplay was nominated for an AcadHollywood classic An Affair to Remember (1957). emy Award. Her next project was to adapt her best-sellEphron’s next film, Mixed Nuts (1994), a comedy ing novel, Heartburn, which appeared on the screen in with Steve Martin, which she directed and cowrote with 1986 to modest success. her sister, Delia Ephron, was not successful. It was folOne of Ephron’s most successful films, When Harry lowed by Michael (1996), starring John Travolta, who Met Sally . . . (1989), earned her a second Academy plays an earthly angel. Ephron returned to romantic comAward nomination for Best Original Screenplay and edy in 1998 with You’ve Got Mail, a film that reunited marked her entry into the genre of romantic comedy. The 339
Epstein, Theo Hanks and Ryan, who play Joe Fox and Kathleen Kennedy, two rival bookstore owners who meet online and fall in love, not knowing each other’s true identity. This film is a remake of The Shop Around the Corner (1940), which had also been remade into In the Good Old Summertime (1949). Ephron again cowrote the script with her sister, Delia, and Ephron produced and directed the film. One of Ephron’s less successful romantic comedies was Bewitched, with Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman, produced in 2005. The film is a postmodern version of the 1960’s television series. It lost money at the box office. Returning to her journalistic roots, Ephron published a collection of essays, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, in 2006. The collection was a best seller. Julie and Julia, which Ephron wrote and directed, was released in 2009 and was based on the blog and novel of Julie Powell and the memoir of chef Julia Child. Significance Although educated in the early 1960’s at Wellesley, a women’s college that prepared its students for marriage first and for careers second, Ephron has been one of the few women successfully to navigate Hollywood, working as screenwriter, producer, and director of blockbuster films. She has also produced articulate journalism, covering both politics and popular culture, at the same time infusing her work with humor, a feminist slant, and her unique personal voice. The daughter of a powerful work-
Jewish Americans ing mother, Ephron managed to balance family and career, adjusting the direction of her employment to the practical needs of her children. —Nettie Farris Further Reading Frascella, Lawrence. “Nora Ephron.” Rolling Stone, July 8, 1993, 73-75. Interview with Ephron following the release of Sleepless in Seattle. Hurd, Mary G. Women Directors and Their Films. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2007. Summarizes Ephron’s work in film, most specifically as a director. Kingston, Anne. “Nora Ephron: A Conversation with Anne Kingston.” Maclean’s 122, nos. 29/30 (August 3, 2009): 14-15. Interview following the release of Julie and Julia, Ephron’s second film with actor Meryl Streep. Levy, Ariel. “Nora Knows What to Do.” New Yorker 85, no. 20 (July 6, 2009): 60. A detailed profile of Ephron published after the release of Julie and Julia. Includes interview material from Ephron’s sister, Delia Ephron, and her husband, Nick Pileggi. McCreadie, Marsha. Women Who Write the Movies; From Frances Marion to Nora Ephron. New York: Carol, 1994. Largely a gender study, with references to Ephron sprinkled throughout and much of the final chapter devoted to Ephron’s screenwriting career. See also: Judy Blume; Moss Hart; Erica Jong; Fran Lebowitz; Dorothy Parker.
Theo Epstein Business executive The general manager (GM) of the Boston Red Sox, Epstein was the architect of the team that won the World Series in 2004, ending an eighty-six-year championship drought, and in 2007. Growing up in the shadow of Boston’s Fenway Park, he worked his way through three organizations to become the youngest GM in baseball history at the age of twenty-eight. Born: December 29, 1973; New York, New York Also known as: Theo Nathan Epstein (full name) Areas of achievement: Sports; business Early Life Theo Epstein (THEE-oh EHP-steen) was born in New York City on December 29, 1973, to Leslie and 340
Irene Epstein. The family moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1978, when Epstein’s father, a Rhodes Scholar, a novelist, and a professor at Queens College, accepted a job at Boston University to run the creative writing department. His mother opened a boutique in Brookline. Theo has an older sister, Anya, and a twin brother, Paul. Born into a family of intellectuals, the children were required to read books one minute per one minute of watching television. Epstein later figured he could lock himself in his room, loudly turn the pages, and watch his beloved Boston Red Sox. He went to Brookline High School, did well academically, and played soccer. He was on the baseball team for four years; his senior season was on the varsity team. A reserve middle-infield
Jewish Americans player, he understood the game better than anyone. The Brookline High Warriors played their games just three quarters of a mile from Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. Epstein scored in the high 1440’s on his Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) and headed off to Yale University in Connecticut. He started out as a psychology major, and he switched to political science, then philosophy, before graduating in 1995 with a degree in American studies. He liked the freedom of the American studies major, which allowed him to keep his focus on sports, because he was also the sports editor of the Yale Daily News.
Epstein, Theo greatest comeback in baseball history. Epstein was regarded as one of the best general managers in baseball, and the city of Boston held a parade on land and sea, to which more than three million people came to cheer the victors. The 2005 Red Sox made the playoffs, but the real story of the season was Epstein’s pending contract expiration. The day after the season ended, John Henry, Red Sox principal owner, approached Epstein with a new contract offer. Epstein had grown close to Henry, as the relationship between Epstein and Lucchino had disintegrated throughout the season. Lucchino took in Epstein as a young kid and still, in many ways, treated him like a kid. This, however, was the young man who built the team that won the World Series. The press coverage was relentless and leaks to the press further soured feelings, especially after Epstein read a critical Boston Globe column rife with leaked information. Epstein walked away from his job as the GM of the Boston Red Sox on October 31, sneaking out of Fenway Park wearing a gorilla costume to avoid the press. The reported deal Epstein rejected was for a term of three years at $1.5 million annually. Epstein returned to the Red Sox on January 24, 2006,
Life’s Work Epstein dreamed of a career in baseball management, and, after writing letters to nearly every Major League Baseball team, he got an opportunity with the Baltimore Orioles as a media relations intern. He spent three summers with the Orioles, meeting Larry Lucchino, a lawyer, fellow Yale graduate, and the president and chief executive officer of the Orioles. Lucchino later took a job with the San Diego Padres, and Epstein followed after graduating from Yale. He worked in media relations and took classes at the University of San Diego, where he earned his juris doctor. In 1998, Epstein became a baseball operations assistant and, after passing the California bar exam in 1999, was offered a Reversing the Curse job at a Los Angeles law firm. Epstein chose to follow his dream and stick with baseball, beThe Curse of the Bambino began on January 3, 1920, when coming the baseball operations director for the pitcher/outfielder George Herman “Babe” Ruth was sold to the Padres just one year later. New York Yankees by Red Sox owner Harry Frazee for $125,000 In 2002, Lucchino left the Padres to join a to finance his new musical, No, No, Nanette (1925). The Red Sox group to purchase the Boston Red Sox. After had won four World Series championships between 1912 and 1918, and the Yankees were an average team. In the eighty-six the season, Epstein, who was making a name years following the sale, the Yankees won twenty-six world chamfor himself, was being courted by the Toronto pionships, while the Red Sox won zero. Many believed the franBlue Jays for an assistant general manager (GM) chise to be cursed. job, yet he was still hoping for a call from BosTheo Epstein grew up knowing about the curse, and he was deton. In November, Epstein got the call, and at termined to field a team to break the curse. He took over a team that the age of twenty-eight, he became the younmissed the playoffs in 2002, and his deft player acquisition, analygest GM in Major League Baseball history. He sis, and development abilities paid immediate dividends. Epstein was back home, and the eyes of Red Sox Nation made a shrewd move in midsummer 2004, trading a fan favorite were fixed on him to help them heal eighty-five and all-star shortstop out of town. The three players Epstein years of misery. brought in at the trade deadline ignited the team and propelled it The Red Sox became immediately successinto the playoffs. The team was able to vanquish the hated Yankees as it set about reversing the curse. ful under Epstein. He understood the pressure In 2004, just two seasons after coming home to Boston, Epstein players experienced in Boston, and he knew the built the first team in eighty-six years to win the World Series. Bostype of player who would succeed in Fenway ton won the championship again in 2007 after more maneuvering Park. His 2003 team made the playoffs, and his by the young GM who grew up in the shadow of Fenway Park. 2004 team won the World Series after beating their archrival, the New York Yankees, in the
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Estrich, Susan as general manager, with the new title of executive vice president, much more control and less oversight, and a reported $2.5 million annually. He and Lucchino resumed a decent working relationship, but it was clear feelings were hurt and Epstein was his own man now. Epstein continued to build strongly competitive teams, and the 2007 Red Sox won the World Series again, thanks to the deft maneuvering of players orchestrated by Epstein. After the 2008 season, Epstein announced that his contract with the Red Sox was again extended. No terms were available. While in Boston, Epstein began playing rhythm guitar, mostly for fun and charity, and is regularly seen on the rock music scene as a fan or an artist. On January 1, 2007, Epstein married Marie Whitney, a volunteer charity worker, on Henry’s yacht in St. Thomas. Epstein and Marie welcomed their first child, Jack, on December 12, 2007. Significance Epstein’s life can be summed up to the famous words written by his grandfather and great uncle for the film Casablanca (1942): “Here’s looking at you, kid.” At twenty-eight years old, Epstein took over the reins of the second most popular baseball team in the world, and in two years he was able to end an eighty-six-year championship drought, quench the insatiable thirst to win of Red Sox fans, and be a hero in Boston for life. Epstein, arguably the second most famous Brookline citizen following President John F. Kennedy, told his friends in high school that he would be the GM of the Red
Jewish Americans Sox—and he fulfilled that destiny. He forever has a place in the hearts of Red Sox fans, and he inspired a new breed of young and intelligent sports executives. —Jonathan E. Dinneen Further Reading Frascella, John. Theology: How a Boy Wonder Led the Red Sox to the Promised Land. New York: Cambridge House Press, 2009. This book explores Epstein’s rapid rise to the top, his managerial skills, and his cutting-edge methods for evaluating players and running a professional baseball franchise. Goldman, Steve. Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning. New York: Workman, 2005. An analytical view of what made the 2004 Red Sox different from all the failed clubs that came before it. Mnookin, Seth. Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006. A well-written tale about how the organization coalesced to finally bring the Red Sox Nation its first world championship since 1918. Shaughnessy, Dan. Reversing the Curse: Inside the 2004 Boston Red Sox. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Local Boston sportswriter chronicles the Boston Red Sox 2004 season, culminating with their winning the World Series after eighty-six years of trying. See also: Red Auerbach; Moe Berg; Sandy Koufax; Bud Selig; Kevin Youkilis.
Susan Estrich Lawyer, journalist, and political consultant Estrich was the first female editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review and the first woman to run a major presidential campaign (that of Michael Dukakis, 1988). Born: December 16, 1952; Lynn, Massachusetts Also known as: Susan Rachel Estrich (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; law; journalism Early Life Susan Estrich (EHS-trihch) was raised in Marblehead, Massachusetts. She attended nine years of religious 342
school and celebrated her Bat Mitzvah at a Conservative synagogue; she also served as B’nai B’rith Youth Organization regional president. From an early age Estrich was driven to excel as a way of coping with a difficult home life. In 1974, she graduated from Wellesley College, where she made Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude. Estrich entered Harvard Law School, and in 1976 she became the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief and president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduating magna cum laude, she clerked first for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and then for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. She served as special
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assistant to Senator Edward M. Kennedy and staff counsel and special assistant to the chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. She joined Kennedy’s 1980 presidential campaign as deputy national issues director. In 1981, she was appointed to the faculty of Harvard Law School, receiving tenure in 1986. Soon afterward she married Martin Kaplan, a Disney Studios executive, and moved to Los Angeles, becoming the Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Estrich and Kaplan had two children, Isabel and James, and later divorced. Life’s Work In 1984, Estrich was a member of the Democratic National Committee and was named executive director of its National Platform Committee that year; she also worked as a senior policy adviser to the Walter Mondale-Geraldine Ferraro presidential campaign. In 1987, she catapulted to national prominence when Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis chose her as his campaign director. Despite Dukakis’s defeat, Estrich’s position as a Democratic insider solidified. Beginning in the 1990’s she was a sought-after political pundit, eventually becoming one of the Fox News channel’s liberal voices, with regular appearances on Hannity and Colmes and other programs. At that time, she contributed two books to the political and cultural wars: The Case for Hillary Clinton (2005), Susan Estrich. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) in support of Clinton’s presidential candidacy; and Soulless: Ann Coulter and the Right-Wing Church updated restatement of the classic feminist argument that of Hate (2006). the workplace inherently favors men by making it diffiEstrich first focused her legal expertise on the crimicult for women to participate fully while also raising nal justice system, cowriting Dangerous Offenders: The children. In 2005, she drew heavy criticism from both Elusive Target of Justice (1984), a critique of how the left and right for criticizing Los Angeles Times editorial courts deal with the most violent criminals. While she page editor Michael Kinsley for the absence of female later followed this up with Getting Away with Murder: op-ed writers. Ironically, however, the book that made How Politics Is Destroying the Criminal Justice System her name in the popular media was Making the Case for (1998), her primary focus has been feminist issues. Yourself: A Diet Book for Smart Women (1998), written Drawing on her own experience as a rape victim, she after she developed a method for controlling her own published Real Rape (1987), calling for radical change in weight. the legal system’s conceptualization of and response to rape. The system’s approach to the crime of rape, she arSignificance gued, was unfairly and unrealistically based on a male Estrich is a synagogue member, but her professional model of forcible resistance to force, with the result that Jewish involvement has been limited to a term on the U.S. rape victims who could not show physical injury inHolocaust Memorial Council. Her significance is as a curred through resisting were not taken seriously by the feminist legal scholar and a political pundit. Her two notajustice system. In Sex and Power (2000), she offered an 343
Estrich, Susan ble firsts—at the Harvard Law Review and in the Dukakis campaign—were milestones of women’s achievements. She uses her media prominence, which confers on her minor celebrity status, to advance the cause of feminism. Her law review articles on rape and sexual harassment in the workplace are important and frequently cited contributions to feminist legal scholarship. —Joan S. Friedman Further Reading Estrich, Susan. The Case for Hillary Clinton. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2006. Estrich, a longtime political ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, wrote this book before Hillary Clinton formally announced her candidacy for the presidency. _______. Getting Away with Murder: How Politics Is Destroying the Criminal Justice System. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. Reviewers praised its insightful, liberal, and tough-minded criticism. _______. “Rape.” Yale Law Journal 95 (May, 1986): 1087. In this lengthy article the author offers an academic critique of the justice system’s conceptualization and treatment of the crime of rape.
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Jewish Americans _______. Real Rape. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. The author’s adaptation of the previous entry, written for the general reading public. _______. Sex and Power. With a new introduction. New York: Riverhead Books, 2001. Estrich’s restatement of the case for genuinely equal opportunity in the workplace focuses on the elite professional workplace. _______. “Sex at Work.” Stanford Law Review 43 (April, 1991): 813. A significant treatment of sexual harassment in the workplace. _______. Soulless: Ann Coulter and the Right-Wing Church of Hate. New York: ReganBooks, 2006. Estrich’s contribution to the left-right political battles, intensified by prior ad hominem attacks on her by Coulter. Kurtz, Howard. “For One Ed, Strong Op: Susan Estrich Addresses the Male.” The Washington Post, March 7, 2005. Column addresses Estrich’s campaign to get more female writers placed on newspaper op-ed pages. See also: Susan Brownmiller; Andrea Dworkin; Betty Friedan; Gloria Steinem; Naomi Wolf.
Great Lives from History
Category Index List of Categories Activists and Social Reformers . . . . . . . . . . III Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III Architects and Designers . . . . IV Artists and Art Collectors. . . . IV Athletes and Coaches . . . . . . IV Business Executives . . . . . . IV Cartoonists . . . . . . . . . . . IV Comedians and Satirists . . . . IV Composers and Songwriters . . . V Conductors and Bandleaders . . . V Criminals . . . . . . . . . . . . V Critics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V Dancers and Choreographers. . . V Directors . . . . . . . . . . . . . V Economists . . . . . . . . . . . V
Educators and Scholars . . . . . VI Entrepreneurs . . . . . . . . . . VI Fashion Designers . . . . . . . VI Feminists . . . . . . . . . . . . VI Historians . . . . . . . . . . . . VI Journalists and Broadcasters . . . . . . . . . VI Lawyers and Judges . . . . . . VI Magicians . . . . . . . . . . . . VI Mathematicians . . . . . . . . . VI Military Leaders and Soldiers . . . . . . . . . . . VI Musicians . . . . . . . . . . . VII Philanthropists . . . . . . . . . VII Philosophers . . . . . . . . . . VII Photographers . . . . . . . . . VII
Playwrights . . . . . . . . . . VII Poets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII Politicians and Government Officials. . . . VII Producers . . . . . . . . . . . VII Psychologists . . . . . . . . . VIII Publishers . . . . . . . . . . . VIII Religious Leaders . . . . . . . VIII Scientists and Inventors . . . . VIII Screenwriters . . . . . . . . . VIII Singers . . . . . . . . . . . . VIII Sociologists and Anthropologists . . . . . . VIII Supreme Court Justices . . . . VIII Women . . . . . . . . . . . . VIII Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX
Activists and Social Reformers Felix Adler, 10 Saul Alinsky, 28 Ed Asner, 63 Susan Brownmiller, 185 Daniel De Leon, 273 Andrea Dworkin, 307 Paul Michael Glaser, 436 Emma Goldman, 457 Samuel Gompers, 468 Sidney Hillman, 545 Abbie Hoffman, 551 Larry Kramer, 644 Gerda Lerner, 716 Harvey Milk, 813 Bess Myerson, 829 Maud Nathan, 831 Ernestine Rose, 972 Jerry Rubin, 992 Hannah Solomon, 1115 Henrietta Szold, 1182 Lillian D. Wald, 1220
Actors Stella Adler, 16 Alan Arkin, 51 Bea Arthur, 56 Ed Asner, 63 Lauren Bacall, 74 Theda Bara, 82 Roseanne Barr, 86 Milton Berle, 110 Theodore Bikel, 127 Jack Black, 129 Fanny Brice, 166 Matthew Broderick, 170 Adrien Brody, 174 George Burns, 199 James Caan, 203 Eddie Cantor, 211 Billy Crystal, 253 Jamie Lee Curtis, 259, 262 Rodney Dangerfield, 265 Larry David, 267 Sammy Davis, Jr., 271 Kirk Douglas, 297 Fran Drescher, 300 Richard Dreyfuss, 302
Peter Falk, 348 Fyvush Finkel, 368 Carrie Fisher, 376 Paul Michael Glaser, 436 Jeff Goldblum, 450 Elliott Gould, 477 Charles Grodin, 493 Monty Hall, 505 Goldie Hawn, 519 Judd Hirsch, 547 Dustin Hoffman, 553 Amy Irving, 569 Al Jolson, 577 Danny Kaye, 607 Harvey Keitel, 612 Alan King, 617 Robert Klein, 628 Shia LaBeouf, 673 Ricki Lake, 679 Hedy Lamarr, 680 Richard Lewis, 728 Peter Lorre, 750 Groucho Marx, 784 Marlee Matlin, 790 Walter Matthau, 792
III
Jewish Americans Elaine May, 794 Bette Midler, 811 Paul Muni, 827 Paul Newman, 842 Leonard Nimoy, 849 Sarah Jessica Parker, 880 Mandy Patinkin, 882 Molly Picon, 894 Natalie Portman, 900 Gilda Radner, 917 Harold Ramis, 920 Carl Reiner, 935, 937 Winona Ryder, 1003 Adam Sandler, 1030 William Shatner, 1068 Alicia Silverstone, 1096 Ben Stiller, 1162 Lee Strasberg, 1167 Sam Wanamaker, 1229 Cornel Wilde, 1258 Gene Wilder, 1263 Debra Winger, 1268 Henry Winkler, 1269 Architects and Designers Dankmar Adler, 9 Gregory Ain, 18 Marcel Breuer, 162 Frank Gehry, 418 Louis I. Kahn, 584 Paul László, 692 Daniel Libeskind, 735 Richard Meier, 799 Robert Moses, 825 Richard Neutra, 836 Rudolph Schindler, 1041 Artists and Art Collectors Judy Chicago, 224 Jim Dine, 289 Jules Feiffer, 354 Helen Frankenthaler, 396 Milton Glaser, 434 Adolph Gottlieb, 476 Peggy Guggenheim, 498 Philip Guston, 501 Eva Hesse, 544 Al Hirschfeld, 549 Alex Katz, 599 Jack Kirby, 624
Lee Krasner, 649 Barbara Kruger, 655 Ibram Lassaw, 690 Sol LeWitt, 729 Roy Lichtenstein, 737 Louise Nevelson, 839 Barnett Newman, 841 Larry Rivers, 962 Mark Rothko, 988 Maurice Sendak, 1062 Ben Shahn, 1066 Leo Stein, 1147 Arthur Szyk, 1183 Athletes and Coaches Senda Berenson Abbott, 1 Red Auerbach, 65 Max Baer, 78 Moe Berg, 103 Larry Brown, 182 Benny Friedman, 404 Hank Greenberg, 486 Nat Holman, 557 Sarah Hughes, 564 Syd Koff, 635 Sandy Koufax, 642 Jason Lezak, 731 Sid Luckman, 754 Renée Richards, 949 Barney Ross, 982 Mark Spitz, 1138 Kerri Strug, 1176 Dara Torres, 1197 Kevin Youkilis, 1298 Business Executives Walter Annenberg, 40 Steve Ballmer, 80 Bernard Baruch, 89 Carl Byoir, 201 Mark Cuban, 255 Clive Davis, 269 Michael Dell, 275 Barry Diller, 287 Edwin Einstein, 317 Michael Eisner, 321 Larry Ellison, 333 Theo Epstein, 340 Max Factor, 345 David Geffen, 416 IV
Marcus Goldman, 459 Samuel Goldwyn, 465 Meyer Guggenheim, 496 Leona Helmsley, 529 Carl Icahn, 567 Mel Karmazin, 596 Jeffrey Katzenberg, 600 Jerome Kohlberg, Jr., 636 Carl Laemmle, 674 Edwin Herbert Land, 684 Herbert Lehman, 707 Marcus Loew, 746 Louis B. Mayer, 797 Michael Milken, 815 William S. Paley, 875 Jay A. Pritzker, 913 Sumner Redstone, 925 Julius Rosenwald, 981 Helena Rubinstein, 999 Haym Salomon, 1026 David Sarnoff, 1033 Dore Schary, 1035 Bud Selig, 1059 George Soros, 1125 Arthur Hays Sulzberger, 1180 Irving Thalberg, 1192 Felix M. Warburg, 1231 Warner brothers, 1233 Lew Wasserman, 1235 Adolph Zukor, 1304 Cartoonists Al Capp, 214 Jules Feiffer, 354 Rube Goldberg, 447 Art Spiegelman, 1132 Arthur Szyk, 1183 Comedians and Satirists Woody Allen, 31 Roseanne Barr, 86 Jack Benny, 99 Milton Berle, 110 Victor Borge, 152 Albert Brooks, 175, 177 Lenny Bruce, 187 Art Buchwald, 195 Sid Caesar, 204 Billy Crystal, 253 Rodney Dangerfield, 265
Category Index Al Franken, 394 Larry Gelbart, 421 Andy Kaufman, 602 Alan King, 617 Robert Klein, 628 Tom Lehrer, 709 Jerry Lewis, 725, 728 Groucho Marx, 784 Elaine May, 794 Mike Nichols, 847 Don Rickles, 951 Joan Rivers, 960 Mort Sahl, 1018 Adam Sandler, 1030 Jerry Seinfeld, 1055 Sarah Silverman, 1093 Howard Stern, 1150 Jon Stewart, 1154 Henny Youngman, 1300 Composers and Songwriters Samuel H. Adler, 14 Herb Alpert, 36 Harold Arlen, 53 Burt Bacharach, 76 Irving Berlin, 112 Elmer Bernstein, 119, 121 Sammy Cahn, 208 Leonard Cohen, 230 Betty Comden, 244 Aaron Copland, 246 Neil Diamond, 282 Bob Dylan, 309 Danny Elfman, 323 Irving Fine, 367 Arthur Freed, 400 Kinky Friedman, 407 George Gershwin, 423, 426 Philip Glass, 439 Adolph Green, 484 Marvin Hamlisch, 507 Yip Harburg, 511 Lorenz Hart, 513 Jerry Herman, 536 Bernard Herrmann, 538 Jerome Kern, 614 Carole King, 619 Tom Lehrer, 709 Frederick Loewe, 747 Barry Manilow, 772
Randy Newman, 845 Shulamit Ran, 922 Lou Reed, 928 Steve Reich, 933 Richard Rodgers, 968 Sigmund Romberg, 970 Arnold Schoenberg, 1043 Sholom Secunda, 1054 Carly Simon, 1100, 1106 Stephen Sondheim, 1118 Jule Styne, 1178 Kurt Weill, 1244 Conductors and Bandleaders Leonard Bernstein, 121 Aaron Copland, 246 Lukas Foss, 387 Boris Goldovsky, 461 Benny Goodman, 470 Marvin Hamlisch, 507 Lorin Maazel, 759 André Previn, 908 Artie Shaw, 1070 Criminals David Berkowitz, 107 Ivan Boesky, 148 Louis Buchalter, 193, 194 Mickey Cohen, 232 Meyer Lansky, 688 Michael Milken, 815 Jackie Presser, 907 Abraham Reles, 941 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, 977 Arnold Rothstein, 990 Dutch Schultz, 1047 Bugsy Siegel, 1087 Eliot Spitzer, 1141 Abner Zwillman, 1307 Critics M. H. Abrams, 5 Harold Bloom, 135 Stanley Fish, 374 Irving Howe, 562 Pauline Kael, 582 Alfred Kazin, 610 Elaine C. Showalter, 1082 Susan Sontag, 1120 Lionel Trilling, 1203 V
Dancers and Choreographers Sammy Davis, Jr., 271 Eliot Feld, 361 Jerome Robbins, 964 Anna Sokolow, 1110 Directors J. J. Abrams, 2 Woody Allen, 31 Judd Apatow, 45 Peter Bogdanovich, 145 Albert Brooks, 175, 177 Joel and Ethan Coen, 228 George Cukor, 257 Cecil B. DeMille, 277 Stanley Donen, 295 Stanley Kramer, 646 Stanley Kubrick, 657 Barry Levinson, 721 Ernst Lubitsch, 752 Sidney Lumet, 756 Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 774 Michael Mann, 777 Mike Nichols, 847 Arthur Penn, 886 Sydney Pollack, 897 Otto Preminger, 904 Rob Reiner, 937 Steven Spielberg, 1134 Ben Stiller, 1162 Billy Wilder, 1260 Frederick Wiseman, 1280 William Wyler, 1291 Economists George Akerlof, 20 Kenneth Arrow, 55 Ben Bernanke, 115 Arthur Burns, 197 Milton Friedman, 409 Alan Greenspan, 491 Paul Krugman, 656 Harry Markowitz, 782 Eric Maskin, 787 Robert B. Reich, 930 Robert Rubin, 994 Jeffrey D. Sachs, 1008 Paul Samuelson, 1028 Herbert Simon, 1102
Jewish Americans Herbert Stein, 1145 Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1159 Harry Dexter White, 1254 Educators and Scholars Senda Berenson Abbott, 1 M. H. Abrams, 5 Allan Bloom, 133, 135 Noam Chomsky, 226 Stanley Fish, 374 Abraham Flexner, 380 Nathan Glazer, 442 Will Herberg, 534 Horace Kallen, 588 Gerda Lerner, 716 Ruth Rubin, 996 Elaine C. Showalter, 1082 Henrietta Szold, 1182 Laurence Tribe, 1200 Lionel Trilling, 1203 Lillian D. Wald, 1220 Immanuel Wallerstein, 1225 Louis Wirth, 1273 Entrepreneurs Madame Alexander, 23 Steve Ballmer, 80 Michael Bloomberg, 139 Sergey Brin, 168 Michael Dell, 275 Barry Diller, 287 Larry Ellison, 333 Max Factor, 345 Estée Lauder, 693 Larry Page, 871 Helena Rubinstein, 999 Shubert brothers, 1084 Isidor Straus, 1169 Levi Strauss, 1171 Fashion Designers Kenneth Cole, 242 Donna Karan, 592 Ralph Lauren, 696 Pauline Trigère, 1202 Feminists Gloria Allred, 34 Susan Brownmiller, 185
Judy Chicago, 224 Andrea Dworkin, 307 Lillian Faderman, 346 Shulamith Firestone, 372 Betty Friedan, 402 Emma Goldman, 457 Erica Jong, 579 Maud Nathan, 831 Tillie Olsen, 861 Adrienne Rich, 947 Ernestine Rose, 972 Elaine C. Showalter, 1082 Susan Sontag, 1120 Gloria Steinem, 1148 Naomi Wolf, 1283 Historians Salo Baron, 84 Daniel J. Boorstin, 150 Robert William Fogel, 383 Peter Gay, 414 Oscar Handlin, 510 Aaron Lansky, 686 Gerda Lerner, 716 Moses Rischin, 956 Studs Terkel, 1190 Barbara W. Tuchman, 1206 Journalists and Broadcasters Julius Ochs Adler, 12 Mel Allen, 29 Carl Bernstein, 117 Wolf Blitzer, 130 Margaret Bourke-White, 154 Art Buchwald, 195 Abraham Cahan, 207 Robert Capa, 213 Howard Cosell, 250 Matt Drudge, 305 Alfred Eisenstaedt, 319 Susan Faludi, 350 Dorothy Fuldheim, 411 David Halberstam, 503 Nat Hentoff, 533 Seymour M. Hersh, 540 Marvin Kalb, 586 Larry King, 621 Ted Koppel, 639 William Kristol, 653 VI
Walter Lippmann, 742 Seth Lipsky, 744 Al Michaels, 809 Arthur D. Morse, 824 Mordecai M. Noah, 852 Daniel Pearl, 885 Norman Podhoretz, 896 Morley Safer, 1010 William Safire, 1013 Daniel Schorr, 1046 Sime Silverman, 1095 I. F. Stone, 1164 Abigail Van Buren, 1215 Mike Wallace, 1222 Barbara Walters, 1226 Walter Winchell, 1265 Lawyers and Judges Gloria Allred, 34 Louis D. Brandeis, 160 Stephen G. Breyer, 164 Benjamin N. Cardozo, 216 Roy Cohn, 240 Alan M. Dershowitz, 280 Susan Estrich, 342 Abe Fortas, 384 Felix Frankfurter, 398 Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 431 Arthur J. Goldberg, 446 William Kunstler, 665 Judy Sheindlin, 1075 Magicians David Copperfield, 248 Harry Houdini, 560 Ricky Jay, 573 Mathematicians Paul Joseph Cohen, 234 Emmy Noether, 854 Abraham Robinson, 966 Military Leaders and Soldiers Julius Ochs Adler, 12 Jeremy Michael Boorda, 149 Leopold Karpeles, 597 Uriah P. Levy, 723 Mickey Marcus, 779
Category Index Hyman G. Rickover, 954 Maurice Rose, 975 Tibor Rubin, 997 Edward S. Salomon, 1025 Mordecai Sheftall, 1073 Musicians Herb Alpert, 36 Victor Borge, 152 Misha Dichter, 284 Lukas Foss, 387 Boris Goldovsky, 461 Benny Goodman, 470 Jascha Heifetz, 523 Itzhak Perlman, 892 André Previn, 908 Lou Reed, 928 David Lee Roth, 984 Artie Shaw, 1070 Gene Simmons, 1098 Isaac Stern, 1152 Paul Wittgenstein, 1281 Philanthropists Rebecca Gratz, 482 Meyer Guggenheim, 496 Carl Icahn, 567 Jerome Kohlberg, Jr., 636 Jerry Lewis, 725 Michael Milken, 815 George Soros, 1125 Joel Spingarn, 1137 Isidor Straus, 1169 Felix M. Warburg, 1231 Philosophers Bruno Bettelheim, 125 Allan Bloom, 133 Noam Chomsky, 226 Abraham Joshua Heschel, 542 Horace Kallen, 588 Ayn Rand, 923 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, 1116 Photographers Diane Arbus, 47 Richard Avedon, 70 Margaret Bourke-White, 154
Robert Capa, 213 Alfred Eisenstaedt, 319 Robert Frank, 393 Nan Goldin, 455 Barbara Kruger, 655 Annie Leibovitz, 711 Man Ray, 769 Irving Penn, 889 Herb Ritts, 958 Cindy Sherman, 1078 Alfred Stieglitz, 1156 Weegee, 1242 Garry Winogrand, 1272 Playwrights S. N. Behrman, 92 Paddy Chayefsky, 222 Jules Feiffer, 354 Bruce Jay Friedman, 406 Larry Gelbart, 421 Adolph Green, 484 Lorenz Hart, 513, 515 Ben Hecht, 521 Lillian Hellman, 527 George S. Kaufman, 605 Larry Kramer, 644 Tony Kushner, 670 Alan Jay Lerner, 713 David Mamet, 767 Arthur Miller, 817 Clifford Odets, 858 Neil Simon, 1103 Wendy Wasserstein, 1238 Poets Joseph Brodsky, 172 Allen Ginsberg, 428 Louise Glück, 444 Maxine Kumin, 660 Stanley Kunitz, 662 Emma Lazarus, 698 Philip Levine, 719 Howard Nemerov, 832 Dorothy Parker, 877 Adrienne Rich, 947 Muriel Rukeyser, 1001 Delmore Schwartz, 1052 Mark Strand, 1165 Louis Untermeyer, 1211 Louis Zukofsky, 1303 VII
Politicians and Government Officials Bella Abzug, 6 Abraham Beame, 90 Judah Benjamin, 97 Ben Bernanke, 115 Sol Bloom, 137 Michael Bloomberg, 139 Barbara Boxer, 158 Emanuel Celler, 219 William S. Cohen, 237 Samuel Dickstein, 286 Morris Michael Edelstein, 314 Edwin Einstein, 317 Rahm Emanuel, 336 Russ Feingold, 356 Dianne Feinstein, 358 Barney Frank, 389 Al Franken, 394 Barry Goldwater, 463 Alan Greenspan, 491 Jacob K. Javits, 571 Henry Kissinger, 625 Ed Koch, 632 Fiorello Henry La Guardia, 677 Lewis Libby, 732 Joe Lieberman, 739 Golda Meir, 801 Ruth Messinger, 805 Howard Metzenbaum, 807 Harvey Milk, 813 Henry Morgenthau, Jr., 819, 822 Bess Myerson, 829 Ed Rendell, 942 Abraham A. Ribicoff, 945 Samuel I. Rosenman, 979 Edward S. Salomon, 1025 Charles Schumer, 1050 Stephen J. Solarz, 1113 Arlen Specter, 1127 Henry Waxman, 1240 Paul Wellstone, 1250 Harry Dexter White, 1254 Paul Wolfowitz, 1285 Producers Jerry Bruckheimer, 189 Larry David, 267 Clive Davis, 269 Arthur Freed, 400
Jewish Americans Samuel Goldwyn, 465 Mark Goodson, 473 Carl Laemmle, 674 Norman Lear, 700 Sydney Pollack, 897 Shubert brothers, 1084 Aaron Spelling, 1130 Steven Spielberg, 1134 Irving Thalberg, 1192 Psychologists Bruno Bettelheim, 125 Joyce Brothers, 180 Jerome Bruner, 191 Albert Ellis, 329 Publishers Walter Annenberg, 40 Alfred A. Knopf, 630 Dorothy Schiff, 1040 Religious Leaders Henry Berkowitz, 108 Moshe Feinstein, 360 Louis Finkelstein, 370 Robert Gordis, 475 Irving Greenberg, 488 Abraham Joshua Heschel, 542 Mordecai Kaplan, 591 Harold S. Kushner, 668 Norman Lamm, 683 Isaac Leeser, 705 Judah Leon Magnes, 760 Henry Pereira Mendes, 804 Jacob Neusner, 835 Sally J. Priesand, 911 Solomon Schechter, 1037 Gershom Mendes Seixas, 1058 Abba Hillel Silver, 1092 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, 1116 Marc H. Tanenbaum, 1186 Isaac Mayer Wise, 1275, 1277 Scientists and Inventors Richard Axel, 72 Seymour Benzer, 101 Paul Berg, 105 Hans Albrecht Bethe, 124
Michael S. Brown, 183 Stanley Cohen, 235 Mildred Cohn, 238 Carl Djerassi, 291 Gerald M. Edelman, 312 Albert Einstein, 315 Gertrude Belle Elion, 325 Richard P. Feynman, 365 Donald A. Glaser, 433 Sheldon L. Glashow, 437 Maurice Goldhaber, 452 Daniel S. Goldin, 454 Stephen Jay Gould, 480 Paul Greengard, 489 David Gross, 495 Herbert A. Hauptman, 517 Roald Hoffmann, 555 H. Robert Horvitz, 558 Jerome Karle, 594 Walter Kohn, 638 Ray Kurzweil, 666 Edwin Herbert Land, 684 Leon M. Lederman, 704 Rudolph A. Marcus, 780 J. Robert Oppenheimer, 863 Stanley B. Prusiner, 914 Isidor Isaac Rabi, 916 Frederick Reines, 939 Judith Resnik, 944 Irwin Rose, 974 Albert Sabin, 1006 Carl Sagan, 1015 Jonas Salk, 1022 Béla Schick, 1039 Edward Teller, 1187 Harold E. Varmus, 1218 Steven Weinberg, 1246 Rosalyn Yalow, 1294 Screenwriters J. J. Abrams, 2 Jules Feiffer, 354 Larry Gelbart, 421 Barry Levinson, 721 Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 774 Elaine May, 794 Dore Schary, 1035 Aaron Sorkin, 1123 Matthew Weiner, 1248 VIII
Singers Theodore Bikel, 127 Leonard Cohen, 230 Sammy Davis, Jr., 271 Neil Diamond, 282 Bob Dylan, 309 Danny Elfman, 323 Eddie Fisher, 378 Kinky Friedman, 407 Art Garfunkel, 413 Billy Joel, 574 Al Jolson, 577 Carole King, 619 Lenny Kravitz, 651 Tom Lehrer, 709 Barry Manilow, 772 Matisyahu, 788 Bette Midler, 811 Phil Ochs, 857 Mandy Patinkin, 882 Ruth Rubin, 996 Sholom Secunda, 1054 Dinah Shore, 1080 Beverly Sills, 1089 Carly Simon, 1100, 1106 Barbra Streisand, 1174 Mel Tormé, 1195 Sophie Tucker, 1208 Sociologists and Anthropologists Daniel Bell, 93 Franz Boas, 143 Nathan Glazer, 442 Will Herberg, 534 Immanuel Wallerstein, 1225 Louis Wirth, 1273 Supreme Court Justices Louis D. Brandeis, 160 Stephen G. Breyer, 164 Benjamin N. Cardozo, 216 Abe Fortas, 384 Felix Frankfurter, 398 Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 431 Arthur J. Goldberg, 446 Women Senda Berenson Abbott, 1 Bella Abzug, 6
Category Index Stella Adler, 16 Madame Alexander, 23 Gloria Allred, 34 Mary Antin, 43 Diane Arbus, 47 Hannah Arendt, 49 Bea Arthur, 56 Lauren Bacall, 74 Theda Bara, 82 Roseanne Barr, 86 Judy Blume, 141 Margaret Bourke-White, 154 Jane Bowles, 156 Barbara Boxer, 158 Fanny Brice, 166 Joyce Brothers, 180 Susan Brownmiller, 185 Hortense Calisher, 210 Judy Chicago, 224 Mildred Cohn, 238 Betty Comden, 244 Jamie Lee Curtis, 259 Fran Drescher, 300 Andrea Dworkin, 307 Gertrude Belle Elion, 325 Nora Ephron, 338 Susan Estrich, 342 Lillian Faderman, 346 Susan Faludi, 350 Dianne Feinstein, 358 Edna Ferber, 363 Shulamith Firestone, 372 Carrie Fisher, 376 Helen Frankenthaler, 396 Betty Friedan, 402 Dorothy Fuldheim, 411 Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 431 Louise Glück, 444 Nan Goldin, 455 Emma Goldman, 457 Rebecca Gratz, 482 Peggy Guggenheim, 498 Goldie Hawn, 519 Lillian Hellman, 527 Leona Helmsley, 529 Eva Hesse, 544 Sarah Hughes, 564 Amy Irving, 569 Erica Jong, 579 Pauline Kael, 582
Donna Karan, 592 Carole King, 619 Syd Koff, 635 Lee Krasner, 649 Barbara Kruger, 655 Maxine Kumin, 660 Ricki Lake, 679 Hedy Lamarr, 680 Estée Lauder, 693 Emma Lazarus, 698 Fran Lebowitz, 702 Annie Leibovitz, 711 Gerda Lerner, 716 Marlee Matlin, 790 Elaine May, 794 Golda Meir, 801 Ruth Messinger, 805 Bette Midler, 811 Bess Myerson, 829 Maud Nathan, 831 Louise Nevelson, 839 Emmy Noether, 854 Tillie Olsen, 861 Suze Orman, 865 Cynthia Ozick, 868 Grace Paley, 872 Dorothy Parker, 877, 880 Molly Picon, 894 Natalie Portman, 900 Sally J. Priesand, 911 Gilda Radner, 917 Shulamit Ran, 922 Ayn Rand, 923 Judith Resnik, 944 Adrienne Rich, 947 Renée Richards, 949 Joan Rivers, 960 Ernestine Rose, 972 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, 977 Ruth Rubin, 996 Helena Rubinstein, 999 Muriel Rukeyser, 1001 Winona Ryder, 1003 Dorothy Schiff, 1040 Judy Sheindlin, 1075 Cindy Sherman, 1078 Dinah Shore, 1080 Elaine C. Showalter, 1082 Beverly Sills, 1089 IX
Sarah Silverman, 1093 Alicia Silverstone, 1096 Carly Simon, 1100 Anna Sokolow, 1110 Hannah Solomon, 1115 Susan Sontag, 1120 Gertrude Stein, 1143 Gloria Steinem, 1148 Barbra Streisand, 1174 Kerri Strug, 1176 Henrietta Szold, 1182 Dara Torres, 1197 Pauline Trigère, 1202 Barbara W. Tuchman, 1206 Sophie Tucker, 1208 Abigail Van Buren, 1215 Lillian D. Wald, 1220 Barbara Walters, 1226 Wendy Wasserstein, 1238 Debra Winger, 1268 Naomi Wolf, 1283 Rosalyn Yalow, 1294 Anzia Yezierska, 1296 Writers Sholom Aleichem, 21 Nelson Algren, 25 Mary Antin, 43 Hannah Arendt, 49 Sholem Asch, 59 Isaac Asimov, 60 Paul Auster, 67 Saul Bellow, 95 Judy Blume, 141 Jane Bowles, 156 Joseph Brodsky, 172 Albert Brooks, 175 Susan Brownmiller, 185 Hortense Calisher, 210 Michael Chabon, 220 Paddy Chayefsky, 222 Larry David, 267 E. L. Doctorow, 293 Andrea Dworkin, 307 Stanley Elkin, 327 Harlan Ellison, 331 Nora Ephron, 338 Howard Fast, 353 Edna Ferber, 363 Shulamith Firestone, 372
Jewish Americans Carrie Fisher, 376 Jonathan Safran Foer, 381 Betty Friedan, 402 Bruce Jay Friedman, 406, 407 Joseph Heller, 524 Mark Helprin, 531 Erica Jong, 579 Justin Kaplan, 589 Larry Kramer, 644 Fran Lebowitz, 702 Jonathan Lethem, 718
Norman Mailer, 762 Bernard Malamud, 765 Tillie Olsen, 861 Suze Orman, 865 Cynthia Ozick, 868 Grace Paley, 872 S. J. Perelman, 890 Chaim Potok, 902 Ayn Rand, 923 Philip Roth, 985 Carl Sagan, 1015 J. D. Salinger, 1020
X
Maurice Sendak, 1062 Rod Serling, 1064 Sidney Sheldon, 1076 Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1108 Susan Sontag, 1120 Gertrude Stein, 1143 Leon Uris, 1212 Nathanael West, 1252 Elie Wiesel, 1256 Naomi Wolf, 1283 Herman Wouk, 1288 Anzia Yezierska, 1296
Great Lives from History
Great Lives from History
Volume 2 Max Factor – Hedy Lamarr
Editor
Dr. Rafael Medoff The David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Washington, D.C.
Salem Press Pasadena, California
Hackensack, New Jersey
Editor in Chief: Dawn P. Dawson Editorial Director: Christina J. Moose Photo Editor: Cynthia Breslin Beres Development Editor: Tracy Irons-Georges Research Supervisor: Jeffry Jensen Manuscript Editor: Constance Pollock Production Editor: Joyce I. Buchea Acquisitions Manager: Mark Rehn Graphics and Design: James Hutson Administrative Assistant: Paul Tifford, Jr. Layout: Mary Overell
Cover photos (pictured left to right, from top left): Henry Kissinger (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images); Paul Newman (©CinemaPhoto/CORBIS); Lauren Bacall (©Sunset Boulevard/CORBIS); Woody Allen (CBS/Getty Images); Sammy Davis, Jr. (Redferns/Getty Images); Sandy Koufax (Getty Images)
Copyright © 2011, by Salem Press, a Division of EBSCO Publishing, Inc. All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews or in the copying of images deemed to be freely licensed or in the public domain. For information address the publisher, Salem Press, at
[email protected]. ∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-1992 (R1997).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Great lives from history Jewish Americans / Rafael Medoff, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58765-741-2 (set : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-742-9 (vol. 1 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-743-6 (vol. 2 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-744-3 (vol. 3 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-745-0 (vol. 4 : alk. paper) 1. Jews—United States—Biography. 2. Jews—Canada—Biography. 3. Jews—United States— History. 4. Jews—Canada—History. I. Medoff, Rafael, 1959E184.37.A137 2011 973′.04924—dc22 2011003492
printed in canada
Contents Key to Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxvii Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxix Max Factor . . . . . . Lillian Faderman . . . Peter Falk. . . . . . . Susan Faludi . . . . . Howard Fast . . . . . Jules Feiffer . . . . . Russ Feingold . . . . Dianne Feinstein . . . Moshe Feinstein . . . Eliot Feld . . . . . . . Edna Ferber . . . . . Richard P. Feynman . Irving Fine . . . . . . Fyvush Finkel . . . . Louis Finkelstein . . . Shulamith Firestone . Stanley Fish . . . . . Carrie Fisher . . . . . Eddie Fisher . . . . . Abraham Flexner. . . Jonathan Safran Foer . Robert William Fogel Abe Fortas . . . . . . Lukas Foss . . . . . . Barney Frank . . . . . Leo Frank . . . . . . Robert Frank . . . . . Al Franken . . . . . . Helen Frankenthaler . Felix Frankfurter . . . Arthur Freed . . . . . Betty Friedan . . . . . Benny Friedman . . . Bruce Jay Friedman . Kinky Friedman . . . Milton Friedman . . . Dorothy Fuldheim . .
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345 346 348 350 353 354 356 358 360 361 363 365 367 368 370 372 374 376 378 380 381 383 384 387 389 391 393 394 396 398 400 402 404 406 407 409 411
George Gershwin. . . Ira Gershwin . . . . . Allen Ginsberg . . . . Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Donald A. Glaser. . . Milton Glaser. . . . . Paul Michael Glaser . Sheldon L. Glashow . Philip Glass . . . . . Nathan Glazer . . . . Louise Glück . . . . . Arthur J. Goldberg . . Rube Goldberg . . . . Jeff Goldblum . . . . Maurice Goldhaber. . Daniel S. Goldin . . . Nan Goldin . . . . . . Emma Goldman . . . Marcus Goldman . . . Boris Goldovsky . . . Barry Goldwater . . . Samuel Goldwyn . . . Samuel Gompers . . . Benny Goodman . . . Mark Goodson . . . . Robert Gordis . . . . Adolph Gottlieb . . . Elliott Gould . . . . . Stephen Jay Gould . . Rebecca Gratz . . . . Adolph Green . . . . Hank Greenberg . . . Irving Greenberg . . . Paul Greengard . . . . Alan Greenspan . . . Charles Grodin . . . . David Gross . . . . . Meyer Guggenheim . Peggy Guggenheim . Philip Guston. . . . .
Art Garfunkel Peter Gay . . . David Geffen . Frank Gehry . Larry Gelbart .
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David Halberstam Monty Hall . . . . Marvin Hamlisch. Oscar Handlin . . Yip Harburg . . .
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423 426 428 431 433 434 436 437 439 442 444 446 447 450 452 454 455 457 459 461 463 465 468 470 473 475 476 477 480 482 484 486 488 489 491 493 495 496 498 501
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503 505 507 510 511
Jewish Americans Lorenz Hart . . . . . . . Moss Hart . . . . . . . . Herbert A. Hauptman . . Goldie Hawn . . . . . . . Ben Hecht . . . . . . . . Jascha Heifetz . . . . . . Joseph Heller . . . . . . . Lillian Hellman. . . . . . Leona Helmsley . . . . . Mark Helprin . . . . . . . Nat Hentoff. . . . . . . . Will Herberg . . . . . . . Jerry Herman . . . . . . . Bernard Herrmann . . . . Seymour M. Hersh . . . . Abraham Joshua Heschel Eva Hesse . . . . . . . . Sidney Hillman. . . . . . Judd Hirsch. . . . . . . . Al Hirschfeld . . . . . . . Abbie Hoffman. . . . . . Dustin Hoffman . . . . . Roald Hoffmann . . . . . Nat Holman . . . . . . . H. Robert Horvitz . . . . Harry Houdini . . . . . . Irving Howe . . . . . . . Sarah Hughes. . . . . . .
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513 515 517 519 521 523 524 527 529 531 533 534 536 538 540 542 544 545 547 549 551 553 555 557 558 560 562 564
Mel Karmazin . . . . Leopold Karpeles . . Alex Katz. . . . . . . Jeffrey Katzenberg . . Andy Kaufman . . . . George S. Kaufman . Danny Kaye . . . . . Alfred Kazin . . . . . Harvey Keitel. . . . . Jerome Kern . . . . . Alan King . . . . . . Carole King . . . . . Larry King . . . . . . Jack Kirby . . . . . . Henry Kissinger . . . Robert Klein . . . . . Alfred A. Knopf . . . Ed Koch . . . . . . . Syd Koff . . . . . . . Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. . Walter Kohn . . . . . Ted Koppel . . . . . . Sandy Koufax . . . . Larry Kramer. . . . . Stanley Kramer. . . . Lee Krasner . . . . . Lenny Kravitz . . . . William Kristol. . . . Barbara Kruger . . . . Paul Krugman . . . . Stanley Kubrick . . . Maxine Kumin . . . . Stanley Kunitz . . . . William Kunstler . . . Ray Kurzweil. . . . . Harold S. Kushner . . Tony Kushner . . . .
Carl Icahn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567 Amy Irving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569 Jacob K. Javits Ricky Jay . . . Billy Joel . . . Al Jolson . . . Erica Jong . .
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571 573 574 577 579
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Category Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIII
xxxvi
Key to Pronunciation Many of the names of personages covered in Great Lives from History: Jewish Americans may be unfamiliar to students and general readers. For all names, guidelines to pronunciation have been provided upon first mention of the name in each essay. These guidelines do not purport to achieve the subtleties of the languages in question but will offer readers a rough equivalent of how English speakers may approximate the proper pronunciation.
Vowel Sounds Symbol Spelled (Pronounced) a answer (AN-suhr), laugh (laf), sample (SAM-puhl), that (that) ah father (FAH-thur), hospital (HAHS-pih-tuhl) aw awful (AW-fuhl), caught (kawt) ay blaze (blayz), fade (fayd), waiter (WAYT-ur), weigh (way) eh bed (behd), head (hehd), said (sehd) ee believe (bee-LEEV), cedar (SEE-dur), leader (LEED-ur), liter (LEE-tur) ew boot (bewt), lose (lewz) i buy (bi), height (hit), lie (li), surprise (sur-PRIZ) ih bitter (BIH-tur), pill (pihl) o cotton (KO-tuhn), hot (hot) oh below (bee-LOH), coat (koht), note (noht), wholesome (HOHL-suhm) oo good (good), look (look) ow couch (kowch), how (how) oy boy (boy), coin (koyn) uh about (uh-BOWT), butter (BUH-tuhr), enough (ee-NUHF), other (UH-thur)
Consonant Sounds Symbol Spelled (Pronounced) ch beach (beech), chimp (chihmp) g beg (behg), disguise (dihs-GIZ), get (geht) j digit (DIH-juht), edge (ehj), jet (jeht) k cat (kat), kitten (KIH-tuhn), hex (hehks) s cellar (SEHL-ur), save (sayv), scent (sehnt) sh champagne (sham-PAYN), issue (IH-shew), shop (shop) ur birth (burth), disturb (dihs-TURB), earth (urth), letter (LEH-tur) y useful (YEWS-fuhl), young (yuhng) z business (BIHZ-nehs), zest (zehst) zh vision (VIH-zhuhn)
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Complete List of Contents Volume 1 Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Publisher’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Editor’s Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Key to Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
Lauren Bacall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Burt Bacharach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Max Baer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Steve Ballmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Theda Bara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Salo Baron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Roseanne Barr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Bernard Baruch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Abraham Beame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 S. N. Behrman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Daniel Bell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Saul Bellow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Judah Benjamin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Jack Benny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Seymour Benzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Moe Berg. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Paul Berg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 David Berkowitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Henry Berkowitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Milton Berle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Irving Berlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Ben Bernanke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Carl Bernstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Elmer Bernstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Leonard Bernstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Hans Albrecht Bethe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Bruno Bettelheim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Theodore Bikel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Jack Black . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Wolf Blitzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Allan Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Harold Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Sol Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Michael Bloomberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Judy Blume. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Franz Boas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Peter Bogdanovich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Ivan Boesky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Jeremy Michael Boorda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Daniel J. Boorstin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Victor Borge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Margaret Bourke-White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Jane Bowles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Senda Berenson Abbott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 J. J. Abrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 M. H. Abrams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Bella Abzug. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Dankmar Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Felix Adler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Julius Ochs Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Samuel H. Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Stella Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Gregory Ain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 George Akerlof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Sholom Aleichem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Madame Alexander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Nelson Algren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Saul Alinsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Mel Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Woody Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Gloria Allred . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Herb Alpert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Lyle Alzado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Walter Annenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Mary Antin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Judd Apatow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Diane Arbus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Hannah Arendt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Alan Arkin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Harold Arlen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Kenneth Arrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Bea Arthur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Sholem Asch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Isaac Asimov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Ed Asner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Red Auerbach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Paul Auster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Richard Avedon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Richard Axel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 xxxix
Jewish Americans Barbara Boxer . . . Louis D. Brandeis . Marcel Breuer . . . Stephen G. Breyer . Fanny Brice . . . . Sergey Brin. . . . . Matthew Broderick. Joseph Brodsky . . Adrien Brody. . . . Albert Brooks . . . Mel Brooks. . . . . Joyce Brothers . . . Larry Brown . . . . Michael S. Brown . Susan Brownmiller . Lenny Bruce . . . . Jerry Bruckheimer . Jerome Bruner . . . Louis Buchalter . . Art Buchwald . . . Arthur Burns . . . . George Burns. . . . Carl Byoir . . . . .
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158 160 162 164 166 168 170 172 174 175 177 180 182 183 185 187 189 191 193 195 197 199 201
James Caan. . . . . . Sid Caesar . . . . . . Abraham Cahan . . . Sammy Cahn . . . . . Hortense Calisher . . Eddie Cantor . . . . . Robert Capa . . . . . Al Capp . . . . . . . Benjamin N. Cardozo Emanuel Celler . . . . Michael Chabon . . . Paddy Chayefsky . . . Judy Chicago . . . . . Noam Chomsky . . . Joel and Ethan Coen . Leonard Cohen . . . . Mickey Cohen . . . . Paul Joseph Cohen . . Stanley Cohen . . . . William S. Cohen . . Mildred Cohn . . . . Roy Cohn. . . . . . . Kenneth Cole. . . . . Betty Comden . . . . Aaron Copland . . . .
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203 204 207 208 210 211 213 214 216 219 220 222 224 226 228 230 232 234 235 237 238 240 242 244 246
David Copperfield Howard Cosell . . Billy Crystal . . . Mark Cuban . . . George Cukor . . Jamie Lee Curtis . Tony Curtis . . . .
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248 250 253 255 257 259 262
Rodney Dangerfield Larry David . . . . Clive Davis . . . . . Sammy Davis, Jr.. . Daniel De Leon . . Michael Dell . . . . Cecil B. DeMille . . Alan M. Dershowitz Neil Diamond . . . Misha Dichter . . . Samuel Dickstein. . Barry Diller . . . . Jim Dine . . . . . . Carl Djerassi . . . . E. L. Doctorow . . . Stanley Donen . . . Kirk Douglas . . . . Fran Drescher . . . Richard Dreyfuss. . Matt Drudge . . . . Andrea Dworkin . . Bob Dylan . . . . .
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265 267 269 271 273 275 277 280 282 284 286 287 289 291 293 295 297 300 302 305 307 309
Gerald M. Edelman . . . Morris Michael Edelstein Albert Einstein . . . . . . Edwin Einstein . . . . . . Alfred Eisenstaedt . . . . Michael Eisner . . . . . . Danny Elfman . . . . . . Gertrude Belle Elion . . . Stanley Elkin . . . . . . . Albert Ellis . . . . . . . . Harlan Ellison . . . . . . Larry Ellison . . . . . . . Rahm Emanuel . . . . . . Nora Ephron . . . . . . . Theo Epstein . . . . . . . Susan Estrich . . . . . . .
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312 314 315 317 319 321 323 325 327 329 331 333 336 338 340 342
Category Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III xl
Complete List of Contents
Volume 2 Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxv Key to Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxvii Max Factor . . . . . . Lillian Faderman . . . Peter Falk. . . . . . . Susan Faludi . . . . . Howard Fast . . . . . Jules Feiffer . . . . . Russ Feingold . . . . Dianne Feinstein . . . Moshe Feinstein . . . Eliot Feld . . . . . . . Edna Ferber . . . . . Richard P. Feynman . Irving Fine . . . . . . Fyvush Finkel . . . . Louis Finkelstein . . . Shulamith Firestone . Stanley Fish . . . . . Carrie Fisher . . . . . Eddie Fisher . . . . . Abraham Flexner. . . Jonathan Safran Foer . Robert William Fogel Abe Fortas . . . . . . Lukas Foss . . . . . . Barney Frank . . . . . Leo Frank . . . . . . Robert Frank . . . . . Al Franken . . . . . . Helen Frankenthaler . Felix Frankfurter . . . Arthur Freed . . . . . Betty Friedan . . . . . Benny Friedman . . . Bruce Jay Friedman . Kinky Friedman . . . Milton Friedman . . . Dorothy Fuldheim . .
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345 346 348 350 353 354 356 358 360 361 363 365 367 368 370 372 374 376 378 380 381 383 384 387 389 391 393 394 396 398 400 402 404 406 407 409 411
George Gershwin. . . Ira Gershwin . . . . . Allen Ginsberg . . . . Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Donald A. Glaser. . . Milton Glaser. . . . . Paul Michael Glaser . Sheldon L. Glashow . Philip Glass . . . . . Nathan Glazer . . . . Louise Glück . . . . . Arthur J. Goldberg . . Rube Goldberg . . . . Jeff Goldblum . . . . Maurice Goldhaber. . Daniel S. Goldin . . . Nan Goldin . . . . . . Emma Goldman . . . Marcus Goldman . . . Boris Goldovsky . . . Barry Goldwater . . . Samuel Goldwyn . . . Samuel Gompers . . . Benny Goodman . . . Mark Goodson . . . . Robert Gordis . . . . Adolph Gottlieb . . . Elliott Gould . . . . . Stephen Jay Gould . . Rebecca Gratz . . . . Adolph Green . . . . Hank Greenberg . . . Irving Greenberg . . . Paul Greengard . . . . Alan Greenspan . . . Charles Grodin . . . . David Gross . . . . . Meyer Guggenheim . Peggy Guggenheim . Philip Guston. . . . .
Art Garfunkel Peter Gay . . . David Geffen . Frank Gehry . Larry Gelbart .
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413 414 416 418 421
David Halberstam Monty Hall . . . . Marvin Hamlisch. Oscar Handlin . . Yip Harburg . . .
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423 426 428 431 433 434 436 437 439 442 444 446 447 450 452 454 455 457 459 461 463 465 468 470 473 475 476 477 480 482 484 486 488 489 491 493 495 496 498 501
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503 505 507 510 511
Jewish Americans Lorenz Hart . . . . . . . Moss Hart . . . . . . . . Herbert A. Hauptman . . Goldie Hawn . . . . . . . Ben Hecht . . . . . . . . Jascha Heifetz . . . . . . Joseph Heller . . . . . . . Lillian Hellman. . . . . . Leona Helmsley . . . . . Mark Helprin . . . . . . . Nat Hentoff. . . . . . . . Will Herberg . . . . . . . Jerry Herman . . . . . . . Bernard Herrmann . . . . Seymour M. Hersh . . . . Abraham Joshua Heschel Eva Hesse . . . . . . . . Sidney Hillman. . . . . . Judd Hirsch. . . . . . . . Al Hirschfeld . . . . . . . Abbie Hoffman. . . . . . Dustin Hoffman . . . . . Roald Hoffmann . . . . . Nat Holman . . . . . . . H. Robert Horvitz . . . . Harry Houdini . . . . . . Irving Howe . . . . . . . Sarah Hughes. . . . . . .
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513 515 517 519 521 523 524 527 529 531 533 534 536 538 540 542 544 545 547 549 551 553 555 557 558 560 562 564
Mel Karmazin . . . . Leopold Karpeles . . Alex Katz. . . . . . . Jeffrey Katzenberg . . Andy Kaufman . . . . George S. Kaufman . Danny Kaye . . . . . Alfred Kazin . . . . . Harvey Keitel. . . . . Jerome Kern . . . . . Alan King . . . . . . Carole King . . . . . Larry King . . . . . . Jack Kirby . . . . . . Henry Kissinger . . . Robert Klein . . . . . Alfred A. Knopf . . . Ed Koch . . . . . . . Syd Koff . . . . . . . Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. . Walter Kohn . . . . . Ted Koppel . . . . . . Sandy Koufax . . . . Larry Kramer. . . . . Stanley Kramer. . . . Lee Krasner . . . . . Lenny Kravitz . . . . William Kristol. . . . Barbara Kruger . . . . Paul Krugman . . . . Stanley Kubrick . . . Maxine Kumin . . . . Stanley Kunitz . . . . William Kunstler . . . Ray Kurzweil. . . . . Harold S. Kushner . . Tony Kushner . . . .
Carl Icahn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567 Amy Irving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569 Jacob K. Javits Ricky Jay . . . Billy Joel . . . Al Jolson . . . Erica Jong . .
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571 573 574 577 579
Pauline Kael . . . Louis I. Kahn. . . Marvin Kalb . . . Horace Kallen . . Justin Kaplan . . . Mordecai Kaplan . Donna Karan . . . Jerome Karle . . .
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582 584 586 588 589 591 592 594
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596 597 599 600 602 605 607 610 612 614 617 619 621 624 625 628 630 632 635 636 638 639 642 644 646 649 651 653 655 656 657 660 662 665 666 668 670
Shia LaBeouf. . . . . . . . Carl Laemmle . . . . . . . Fiorello Henry La Guardia . Ricki Lake . . . . . . . . . Hedy Lamarr . . . . . . . .
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673 674 677 679 680
Category Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIII
xlii
Complete List of Contents
Volume 3 Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . liii Key to Pronunciation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lv Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . lvii Norman Lamm . . . Edwin Herbert Land Aaron Lansky . . . Meyer Lansky . . . Ibram Lassaw . . . Paul László . . . . . Estée Lauder . . . . Ralph Lauren . . . . Emma Lazarus . . . Norman Lear . . . . Fran Lebowitz . . . Leon M. Lederman . Isaac Leeser . . . . Herbert Lehman . . Tom Lehrer . . . . . Annie Leibovitz . . Alan Jay Lerner . . Gerda Lerner . . . . Jonathan Lethem . . Philip Levine . . . . Barry Levinson . . . Uriah P. Levy. . . . Jerry Lewis . . . . . Richard Lewis . . . Sol LeWitt . . . . . Jason Lezak . . . . Lewis Libby . . . . Daniel Libeskind . . Roy Lichtenstein . . Joe Lieberman . . . Walter Lippmann . . Seth Lipsky. . . . . Marcus Loew. . . . Frederick Loewe . . Peter Lorre . . . . . Ernst Lubitsch . . . Sid Luckman . . . . Sidney Lumet . . .
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683 684 686 688 690 692 693 696 698 700 702 704 705 707 709 711 713 716 718 719 721 723 725 728 729 731 732 735 737 739 742 744 746 747 750 752 754 756
Lorin Maazel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 759 Judah Leon Magnes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 760 Norman Mailer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 762 xliii
Bernard Malamud . . . David Mamet. . . . . . Man Ray . . . . . . . . Barry Manilow . . . . . Joseph L. Mankiewicz . Michael Mann . . . . . Mickey Marcus. . . . . Rudolph A. Marcus . . Harry Markowitz . . . . Groucho Marx . . . . . Eric Maskin . . . . . . Matisyahu . . . . . . . Marlee Matlin . . . . . Walter Matthau . . . . . Elaine May . . . . . . . Louis B. Mayer. . . . . Richard Meier . . . . . Golda Meir . . . . . . . Henry Pereira Mendes . Ruth Messinger . . . . Howard Metzenbaum . Al Michaels . . . . . . Bette Midler . . . . . . Harvey Milk . . . . . . Michael Milken . . . . Arthur Miller . . . . . . Henry Morgenthau, Jr. . Henry Morgenthau, Sr. . Arthur D. Morse . . . . Robert Moses. . . . . . Paul Muni . . . . . . . Bess Myerson . . . . .
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765 767 769 772 774 777 779 780 782 784 787 788 790 792 794 797 799 801 804 805 807 809 811 813 815 817 819 822 824 825 827 829
Maud Nathan . . . . Howard Nemerov . Jacob Neusner . . . Richard Neutra . . . Louise Nevelson . . Barnett Newman . . Paul Newman . . . Randy Newman . . Mike Nichols . . . . Leonard Nimoy . . Mordecai M. Noah . Emmy Noether . . .
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831 832 835 836 839 841 842 845 847 849 852 854
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Jewish Americans Phil Ochs . . . . . . . . Clifford Odets . . . . . Tillie Olsen . . . . . . . J. Robert Oppenheimer. Suze Orman . . . . . . Cynthia Ozick . . . . .
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857 858 861 863 865 868
Larry Page . . . . . Grace Paley. . . . . William S. Paley . . Dorothy Parker . . . Sarah Jessica Parker Mandy Patinkin . . Daniel Pearl . . . . Arthur Penn . . . . Irving Penn . . . . . S. J. Perelman . . . Itzhak Perlman . . . Molly Picon . . . . Norman Podhoretz . Sydney Pollack . . . Natalie Portman . . Chaim Potok . . . . Otto Preminger . . . Jackie Presser . . . André Previn . . . . Sally J. Priesand . . Jay A. Pritzker . . . Stanley B. Prusiner .
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871 872 875 877 880 882 885 886 889 890 892 894 896 897 900 902 904 907 908 911 913 914
Isidor Isaac Rabi . . . Gilda Radner . . . . . Harold Ramis. . . . . Shulamit Ran . . . . . Ayn Rand. . . . . . . Sumner Redstone. . . Lou Reed . . . . . . . Robert B. Reich . . . Steve Reich. . . . . . Carl Reiner . . . . . . Rob Reiner . . . . . . Frederick Reines . . . Abraham Reles . . . . Ed Rendell . . . . . . Judith Resnik . . . . . Abraham A. Ribicoff . Adrienne Rich . . . .
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916 917 920 922 923 925 928 930 933 935 937 939 941 942 944 945 947
Renée Richards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 949 Don Rickles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 951 Hyman G. Rickover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 954 Moses Rischin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 956 Herb Ritts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 958 Joan Rivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 960 Larry Rivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 962 Jerome Robbins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 964 Abraham Robinson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 966 Richard Rodgers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 968 Sigmund Romberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 970 Ernestine Rose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 972 Irwin Rose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 974 Maurice Rose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 975 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . 977 Samuel I. Rosenman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 979 Julius Rosenwald. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 981 Barney Ross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 982 David Lee Roth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 984 Philip Roth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 985 Mark Rothko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 988 Arnold Rothstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990 Jerry Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 992 Robert Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 994 Ruth Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 996 Tibor Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 997 Helena Rubinstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 999 Muriel Rukeyser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1001 Winona Ryder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1003 Albert Sabin. . . . . Jeffrey D. Sachs. . . Morley Safer . . . . William Safire. . . . Carl Sagan . . . . . Mort Sahl . . . . . . J. D. Salinger . . . . Jonas Salk. . . . . . Edward S. Salomon . Haym Salomon . . . Paul Samuelson . . . Adam Sandler. . . . David Sarnoff . . . . Dore Schary. . . . . Solomon Schechter .
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1006 1008 1010 1013 1015 1018 1020 1022 1025 1026 1028 1030 1033 1035 1037
Category Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXIII
xliv
Complete List of Contents
Volume 4 Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lxxi Key to Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lxxiii Complete List of Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . lxxv Béla Schick . . . . . . . Dorothy Schiff . . . . . Rudolph Schindler . . . Arnold Schoenberg . . . Daniel Schorr . . . . . . Dutch Schultz . . . . . . Charles Schumer . . . . Delmore Schwartz . . . Sholom Secunda . . . . Jerry Seinfeld . . . . . . Gershom Mendes Seixas Bud Selig . . . . . . . . Maurice Sendak. . . . . Rod Serling . . . . . . . Ben Shahn . . . . . . . William Shatner. . . . . Artie Shaw . . . . . . . Mordecai Sheftall . . . . Judy Sheindlin . . . . . Sidney Sheldon . . . . . Cindy Sherman . . . . . Dinah Shore. . . . . . . Elaine C. Showalter . . . Shubert brothers . . . . Bugsy Siegel . . . . . . Beverly Sills . . . . . . Abba Hillel Silver. . . . Sarah Silverman . . . . Sime Silverman . . . . . Alicia Silverstone . . . . Gene Simmons . . . . . Carly Simon. . . . . . . Herbert Simon . . . . . Neil Simon . . . . . . . Paul Simon . . . . . . . Isaac Bashevis Singer . . Anna Sokolow . . . . . Stephen J. Solarz . . . . Hannah Solomon . . . . Joseph B. Soloveitchik . Stephen Sondheim . . . Susan Sontag . . . . . .
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1039 1040 1041 1043 1046 1047 1050 1052 1054 1055 1058 1059 1062 1064 1066 1068 1070 1073 1075 1076 1078 1080 1082 1084 1087 1089 1092 1093 1095 1096 1098 1100 1102 1103 1106 1108 1110 1113 1115 1116 1118 1120
Aaron Sorkin . . . . . . George Soros . . . . . . Arlen Specter . . . . . . Aaron Spelling . . . . . Art Spiegelman . . . . . Steven Spielberg . . . . Joel Spingarn . . . . . . Mark Spitz . . . . . . . Eliot Spitzer. . . . . . . Gertrude Stein . . . . . Herbert Stein . . . . . . Leo Stein . . . . . . . . Gloria Steinem . . . . . Howard Stern . . . . . . Isaac Stern . . . . . . . Jon Stewart . . . . . . . Alfred Stieglitz . . . . . Joseph E. Stiglitz . . . . Ben Stiller. . . . . . . . I. F. Stone . . . . . . . . Mark Strand. . . . . . . Lee Strasberg . . . . . . Isidor Straus. . . . . . . Levi Strauss . . . . . . . Barbra Streisand . . . . Kerri Strug . . . . . . . Jule Styne . . . . . . . . Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Henrietta Szold . . . . . Arthur Szyk . . . . . . .
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1123 1125 1127 1130 1132 1134 1137 1138 1141 1143 1145 1147 1148 1150 1152 1154 1156 1159 1162 1164 1165 1167 1169 1171 1174 1176 1178 1180 1182 1183
Marc H. Tanenbaum Edward Teller . . . . Studs Terkel. . . . . Irving Thalberg . . . Mel Tormé . . . . . Dara Torres . . . . . Laurence Tribe . . . Pauline Trigère . . . Lionel Trilling . . . Barbara W. Tuchman Sophie Tucker. . . .
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1186 1187 1190 1192 1195 1197 1200 1202 1203 1206 1208
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Louis Untermeyer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1211 Leon Uris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1212
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Jewish Americans Abigail Van Buren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1215 Harold E. Varmus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1218 Lillian D. Wald . . . . Mike Wallace . . . . . Immanuel Wallerstein. Barbara Walters . . . . Sam Wanamaker . . . Felix M. Warburg . . . Warner brothers . . . . Lew Wasserman. . . . Wendy Wasserstein . . Henry Waxman . . . . Weegee . . . . . . . . Kurt Weill . . . . . . . Steven Weinberg . . . Matthew Weiner . . . Paul Wellstone . . . . Nathanael West . . . . Harry Dexter White . . Elie Wiesel . . . . . . Cornel Wilde . . . . . Billy Wilder . . . . . . Gene Wilder . . . . . Walter Winchell. . . . Debra Winger . . . . . Henry Winkler . . . . Garry Winogrand . . . Louis Wirth . . . . . . Isaac Mayer Wise . . . Stephen Samuel Wise .
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XXXIII . . XLI . XLIII . XLIX
Great Lives from History
F Max Factor Russian-born cosmetician and businessman The son of a rabbi, Factor rose from humble beginnings in a small Eastern European town to create a global cosmetics empire bearing his Americanized name, which became synonymous with Hollywood glamour. Born: 1877; Uód., Russian Empire (now in Poland) Died: August 30, 1938; Beverly Hills, California Also known as: Max Factor, Sr.; Maximilian Faktorowicz (birth name) Areas of achievement: Business; entertainment Early Life Max Factor (FAK-tur) was born one of ten children of a rabbi, and his family was unable to afford formal education for him. At age eight, he was apprenticed to a local dentist-pharmacist and a wig maker to learn the trades. At the time, pharmacists supplied health and beauty products. It was during this time that Factor first developed his lifelong fascination with the human face. Factor learned quickly, and, as an adult, he opened his own cosmetics store in Ryazan (near Moscow), selling handmade creams, fragrances, rouge, and wigs. He became so well known for his work with a traveling theatrical troupe that soon he became the official wig and face-paint designer for the Imperial Grand Opera, the Russian czar’s Royal Ballet, and even the members of the Russian royal family. Life’s Work In 1904, Factor, his wife, and children fled Czar Nicholas II’s Jewish pogroms and moved to the United States. Arriving at Ellis Island with less than four hundred dollars, Factor found his last name simplified by immigration officials to Factor. The Factors moved from New York to St. Louis, Missouri, where Factor rented a concession stand at the 1904 World’s Fair. The unique skin cream, makeup, perfume, and hair goods that he sold under his newly Americanized name attracted the attention of actors. As his rep-
utation grew, Factor moved once more in 1908, this time to the theater district of Los Angeles. It was in this location that Factor opened the iconic Max Factor Beauty Salon, in the hope of supplying wigs and cosmetics to the newly established Hollywood film community. Eventually, Rita Hayworth, Katharine Hepburn, Jean Harlow, and other Hollywood luminaries would become Max Factor Salon regulars. When Factor arrived in Los Angeles, the only form of makeup in use in films was that which had been in use on the stage for years: greasepaint, in stick form. The problem with using greasepaint in black-and-white films was that it was too thick and looked artificial on screen. However, the studios did not have a satisfactory substitute. In 1914, Factor invented a breakthrough in makeup products, the first of many that would come to be known globally. This initial invention, a thinner, translucent greasepaint in cream form, was designed specifically as a makeup for use in films. This new greasepaint, available in twelve shades, did not crack, was flexible and light, and became the Hollywood standard cosmetic. Factor called his product “makeup”—as in the verb “to make up
Max Factor. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Faderman, Lillian one’s face.” Factor’s new makeup transformed the film industry. He layered hues and shades of colors of eye makeup and lipstick according to his Color Harmony Principle (which matches shades of makeup to skin tone). Factor is also credited with creating the “Clara Bow pout,” “Bette Davis eyes,” and “Joan Crawford lips” that were the actors’ trademarks. By 1927, demand had increased to the point where Factor was able to begin mass-marketing his namesake line—consisting of wigs, false eyelashes, cosmetics, and perfume—to consumers, in the belief that all women should have the opportunity to look like the stars. Factor even invented color harmony charts that enabled housewives across the country to “get that Hollywood look.” Thus, the cosmetics industry was born. Factor’s brand soon gained global recognition, as Hollywood clients such as Hedy Lamarr also agreed to appear in magazine ads to market his cosmetics. His innovations did not end there. In addition to Pan-Cake makeup, which Factor patented in 1937, he is credited with inventing concealer, lip gloss, wand mascara (as opposed to cake mascara), colored eyeshadows, and eyebrow pencils, as well as realistic fake blood (for films) in a range of colors. Factor died of heart failure in 1938 in Beverly Hills, California. He was posthumously awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry. He was even mentioned in the unforgettable Johnny Mercer-Richard A. Whiting song, “Hooray for Hollywood”: To be an actor See Mr. Factor He’ll make your pucker look good!
Jewish Americans Significance Factor’s eye for beauty and groundbreaking cosmetic inventions revolutionized the motion-picture industry. Thanks to him, Hollywood glamour is accessible to every woman, and his innovative spirit lives on in the cosmetics brand known for high-quality, trendsetting products. —Sarah Cristal Further Reading Basten, Fred E. Max Factor: The Man Who Changed the Faces of the World. New York: Arcade, 2008. Traces the development of what became a multibillion-dollar industry, cosmetics, and how Factor navigated the Hollywood world to make cosmetics work for everyday consumers. Basten, Fred E., Robert Salvatore, and Paul A. Kaufman. Max Factor’s Hollywood: Glamour, Movies, Makeup. Santa Monica, Calif.: General, 1995. Features two hundred rare photographs from the Max Factor Museum; chronicle of Factor’s career includes beauty tips and a survey of the great beauties of the century. Fulcini, Joseph J., and Suzy Fulcini. “Max Factor.” In Entrepreneurs: The Men and Women Behind Famous Brand Names and How They Made It. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1985. Brief profile of Factor; includes index and annotated bibliography. See also: Lauren Bacall; Hedy Lamarr; Estée Lauder; Helena Rubinstein.
Lillian Faderman Scholar and feminist Faderman is internationally recognized as a pioneering scholar in lesbian history and literature. Born: July 18, 1940; Bronx, New York Area of achievement: Scholarship Early Life The childhood of Lillian Faderman (LIHL-ee-uhn FAY-dur-muhn) was dysfunctional and haunted. Her grandparents sent her mother, Mary, and her aunt, Rae, to the United States in 1923 in the hope that they would work and find husbands who could afford to bring the 346
family from Latvia. The sisters became garment workers, but Mary fell in love with a man who refused to marry her. She had two abortions at his insistence; she carried her third pregnancy to term, lost her paternity suit, and then took up with the man again—who refused to meet or acknowledge his daughter—when Faderman was five. The annihilation of her family in the Holocaust caused Mary years of mental instability, and Faderman grew up determined to take care of her mother by becoming a successful actor. The three moved to East Los Angeles in 1948, living among poor Jews, Latinos, and blacks. Both
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sisters eventually married—Rae, hapCreating a Paradigm of Lesbian History pily—and young Faderman bartered office work for acting classes, displayIn Surpassing the Love of Men (1981), Lillian Faderman created a paraing considerable talent and developdigm within which to study lesbian history. Finding that romantic relationing a passionate crush on her female ships between women were common prior to the twentieth century and were, teacher. At fourteen, Faderman posed in fact, condoned by society, she asked how it was that such relationships for nude photo shoots, and at fifteen were regarded so negatively in the twentieth century. She concluded that the late-Victorian sexologists were to blame. Prior to their time, she argued, there she had her nose fixed in the hope of was no assumption that romantic love and genital sex were necessarily furthering her chances in Hollywood. linked. In an era when it was generally accepted that women lacked sexual When she was sixteen, a gay male passion, it was easy for women to enter into passionate relationships with friend took Faderman to a lesbian bar. each other that were romantic in every way except genital contact but that did She later wrote, “It was as if I was not challenge or threaten their relationships with men or their subordinate looking through a brilliant prism that status. In the nineteenth century, however, an increasing number of women reflected all the parts of my life with desired to live independently, obtain education, have careers—in other absolute clarity and brought them towords, to claim “male” prerogatives. The sexologists, argued Faderman, regether, wondrously, into one intelligiinforced social controls on women by offering a new explanation of sexuality ble whole.” in which assertive, independent women were seen as “inverts,” an unnatural A passionate first affair, a difficult third sex. The result was that relationships between women became suspect, and any independent woman was suspected of being a lesbian. While other second one, a narrow brush with gayscholars have taken issue with aspects of Faderman’s thesis, especially her baiting police, even narrower brushes assertion of the nonsexual nature of most premodern relationships between with sexually abusive men, and the rewomen, the paradigm endures. alization that she was not going to be a film star led Faderman to reexamine her wild life. She was fortunate to encounter a volunteer therapist who acwas an anthology of writing by minorities, and her seccepted her lesbian identity and advised her that she ond was an anthology of Chicano writing. As the child of would need a job if she intended to be an independent immigrants, she developed an interest in the Hmong woman, and that a job required education. Turning away community in Fresno; out of this came I Begin My Life from truancy and failing grades, Faderman became an All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Exhonor student. In her senior year of high school she enperience (1998). tered into a marriage of convenience with a thirty-fourHowever, the bulk of her writing has focused on lesyear-old gay acquaintance. Her mother and aunt were bian (and gay) history and literature, beginning with Surthrilled; after their years of struggling and poverty, their passing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love beloved child had a prosperous and cultured Jewish doctor Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (of psychology) for a husband. The doctor, however, was (1981), written because she wanted to contextualize her an alcoholic, and the marriage ended after six months. own relationships with women. It made Faderman’s reputation as the pioneering scholar of lesbian studies. The Life’s Work book also drew criticism. In the scholarly debate beFaderman attended the University of California at Los tween essentialists, who argue that sexual orientation is Angeles (UCLA) and at Berkeley, supporting herself as a primarily biological in origin, and social constructionstripper while earning a B.A. in English. She returned to ists, who argue that it is flexible and shaped by environUCLA for a Ph.D. in English. Though a top student, she ment, Faderman’s book came down squarely in the latter was steered, as a woman, to a job at Fresno State College camp. Her view is that essentialism does not adequately while male classmates went to Ivy League positions. At explain the complexity of sexuality, and that in an ideal Fresno State she was a popular teacher and won her male world everyone would be bisexual, which reflected her colleagues’ esteem. When feminism gained legitimacy own youthful experience, as revealed in her 2003 memin the 1970’s, she took the lead in creating a women’s oir, Naked in the Promised Land. Her next book, Scotch studies program on campus. Verdict (1983), was a study of the 1810 trial on which Her academic career grew out of her life. Though her Lillian Hellman based her play The Children’s Hour dissertation was on Victorian literature, her first book 347
Falk, Peter (1934), from which Faderman had performed a dramatic monologue as a child. This was followed by Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America (1991), To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America—A History (1998), and Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians (2006). In Faderman’s memoir Jewishness is clearly an important element of her identity, but she never addresses its meaning for her. Her mother and aunt’s Jewishness was typical of many immigrants: Yiddish spoken at home, kosher meat eaten at home, Shabbat candles and dinners, Orthodox shul on the High Holy Days. Rae appears to have been pious in her own way—keeping a kosher home at least after her marriage, insisting that her niece obtain a Jewish divorce from her husband (though the supposedly Orthodox rabbi who issued it did not act in accordance with Jewish law), and sending her niece off with a Hebrew blessing. Jewishness for Faderman appears to be, above all, about family—specifically, about the need to produce a new generation to ease her mother’s and her aunt’s grief and guilt over their murdered family. In 1975, tenured and secure in a relationship with Phyllis Irwin, a (non-Jewish) music professor, she took the then-radical step of conceiving through artificial insemination. In keeping with tradition and her mother’s and aunt’s deep desire, she named the baby Avrom, after her grandfather. The memoir includes side-by-side photos of her with young Avrom— lighting Hanukkah candles and sitting by a Christmas tree. Significance Faderman’s contribution to the fields of lesbian history and literature is monumental. She said that she be-
Jewish Americans gan writing lesbian history in order to give younger women the “usable past” she never had. Indeed, all of her books are meticulously researched, but written in an accessible style for the nonspecialist reader. In giving lesbians a past, she has also laid out the proof that romantic relationships between women are not new, and that famous and respected historical figures had such relationships, despite the desire of some people to deny that fact. —Joan S. Friedman Further Reading Faderman, Lillian. Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. This frank and sometimes shocking memoir covers the period up to her mother’s death in 1979. _______, ed. Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. New York: Viking, 1994. An anthology of stories, essays, and poems by men and women on lesbians from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. One half of the book is writing by men about women who love women; the other half shows how women viewed themselves, both in fantasy and in reality. Tyrkus, Michael J., and Jewelle Gomez, eds. “Lillian Faderman.” In Gay and Lesbian Biography. New York: St. James Press, 1997. Longer reference article includes more discussion of Faderman’s scholarship. See also: Allan Bloom; Peter Gay; Gerda Lerner; Susan Sontag; Gertrude Stein; Lionel Trilling; Barbara W. Tuchman.
Peter Falk Actor, producer, and director Falk created the memorable, rumpled detective Lieutenant Columbo in a long-running television series. Born: September 16, 1927; New York, New York Also known as: Peter Michael Falk (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Peter Falk (fawlk) was the son of Jewish parents, Michael and Madeline, both of Eastern European origin. 348
Falk’s father ran a dry goods store, and his mother was the accountant and buyer. They settled in Ossining, Westchester County, outside New York, where Falk attended high school. A bout of cancer at three years old left Falk with only one eye, but this did not interfere with his sports activities at high school. He was a popular student, and he had his first acting experience there. Falk graduated in 1945 and then briefly attended Hamilton College, but he was disappointed in it. He could not be drafted because of his eye, so he decided to join the mercantile marine. After a year he returned to
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Hamilton, then transferred to the University of Wisconsin. After that he returned to New York City, completing his undergraduate education at the New School for Social Research, a leftward-leaning institution, in 1951. By his own admission, he had no idea that he would become an actor. After graduation, he went to work in Eastern Europe for six months, then enrolled in a master’s program in public administration. On completion of this program in 1954, he found that all federal jobs were barred to him because of his previous left-wing associations. Instead, he took a job with the state of Connecticut in Hartford. Falk realized that an office job was not for him, especially when he took up amateur acting. A summer school class for actors with Eva Le Gallienne propelled him to resign his job and to commit himself to professional acting. Le Gallienne recommended him to the William Morris Agency in New York, and Falk moved to Greenwich Village in 1956. He acted in Off-Broadway productions—his best part was as bartender in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (1946)—but he quickly graduated to Broadway. His first film role was in 1958, in Wind Across the Everglades, when he stepped up from thirty dollars to five hundred dollars a week. This brought him several gangster roles, leading to Murder, Inc., in 1960, where he was in a supporting role to the charPeter Falk. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) acter of killer Abraham Reles. Falk drew good reviews, though he already felt the danger of getting typecast. That year he married Alyce Mayo, a longfrustrated by poor scripts and sometimes rewrote them time friend from college. They adopted two daughters himself. before divorcing in 1976. The 1970’s brought him comic roles, in films such as In 1961, the Falks decided to move to Hollywood, afHusbands (1970) and Murder by Death (1976). Howter the major television companies had relocated from ever, television began to provide more substantial opporNew York to California. Falk was fortunate enough to attunities. He starred in the Columbia Broadcasting Systract Frank Capra’s notice, acting in his production of tem’s (CBS) Trials of O’Brien, that ran 1965-1966, in Pocketful of Miracles (1961). Falk received two Acadwhich he played a lawyer. The National Broadcasting emy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor, and Company (NBC) then did a couple of pilots about a dehis career seemed set. tective, Lieutenant Columbo, based on an earlier character. Prescription: Murder appeared in 1968, and Ransom Life’s Work for a Dead Man in 1971. The latter was produced by a The 1960’s led to roles in such films as It’s a Mad, young Steven Spielberg and can rightly be seen as exhibMad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Robin and the Seven iting the pattern for his future. Hoods (1964), and The Great Race (1965), in which he Falk created a down-at-heels character far removed showed he could also play comedy. The war epic Anzio from the spit-shined Los Angeles police department im(1968) found him in Italy, already aware his film career age, with his beat-up trench coat and car, his pockwas stalled and he was not stretching his talent. He was 349
Faludi, Susan ets stuffed full of notes. Falk loved the challenge of reversing the typical detective format of slowly discovering the identity of the murderer to keeping the audience interested in how the detective cleverly nails the criminal. The Columbo series was split. The regular series ran from 1971 to 1978 and then came a series of television films in a franchise system, for which Falk was executive producer, from 1989 to 2003. There were sixty-eight Columbo episodes. At the height of production five to six episodes were made per year, each taking an average of three weeks. The series was an instant success, partly because of Falk’s ability to get first-class actors, such as Faye Dunaway, Donald Pleasence, and Julie Harris, to appear. Typically, such actors would play sophisticated characters whose composure Colombo would slowly undermine. During this time, Falk remarried, to actor Shera Lynn Danese, in 1977. He refused to let the Columbo series dominate his life, continuing in film roles, such as Mikey and Nicky (1976) and The Brink’s Job (1978), the latter another gangster film. He enjoyed working with offbeat directors, especially Elaine May, John Cassavetes, and the German Wim Wenders. After the Columbo series, Falk continued to appear in films and briefly went back to Broadway to play The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971), a smash-hit. Numerous television episodes completed his extremely active career that went on till 2008, when he became too incapacitated to work.
Jewish Americans Significance Falk’s significance is undoubtedly associated with the iconic detective Lieutenant Columbo. Falk’s creation of a unique and intelligent detective stands in the tradition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. For the television series, Falk gathered around him first-class directors and actors, which raised the standards of the detective series to new heights. Falk was an actor from humble origins, with little formal training, creating a character not unlike himself in his perfectionist searching after detail. He was able to combine a deceptive eccentricity with a sharp sense of commercial and artistic viability. —David Barratt Further Reading Carney, Raymond. The Films of John Cassavetes. Cambridge. Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Falk and Cassavetes were close friends, and Falk appeared in a number of his films. Falk, Peter. Just One More Thing: Stories from My Life. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2006. A series of fairly disconnected memories, which nevertheless give insight into Falk as a person. Fantle, David, and Tom Johnson. Twenty-five Years of Celebrity Interviews. Oregon, Wis.: Badger Books, 2004. Fascinating insights from Falk in his interview. See also: Woody Allen; Richard Lewis; Sarah Jessica Parker; Harold Ramis; Jerry Seinfeld; Aaron Spelling.
Susan Faludi Journalist and feminist Faludi, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is best known for her reporting on and critique of gender portrayal in American media. Her widely recognized book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991), explores women’s roles in society and the media’s attack on feminism. Born: April 18, 1959; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Journalism; women’s rights Early Life Susan Faludi (fah-LEW-dee) was born in 1959 to Steven Faludi, a photographer, and Marilyn Lanning Faludi, a writer and an editor. Susan Faludi’s parents no doubt in350
fluenced her propensity for outspokenness and telling the truth. Faludi’s father, a Hungarian Jew who hid in a cellar with his family during the Holocaust, shared with her his love of woodworking, chemistry, and other uncommon activities for a young girl. Furthermore, her father spoke with his daughter about advanced topics and issues such as the function of the Federal Reserve Board. However, while Faludi’s father was progressive in his daughter’s upbringing, he reserved traditional gender roles for his wife. Faludi’s mother lived a traditional marital role for many years, but her frustration with its limitations led her to divorce her husband. Faludi credits her mother’s experience as illuminating her understanding of the limiting power of gender roles.
Jewish Americans Faludi showed signs of a talent for journalism in fifth grade when she conducted a survey of her peers on their views of the war in Vietnam, the legalization of abortion, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Perhaps foreshadowing the controversy her later works would create, the survey gained attention from leaders of the local John Birch Society, a conservative organization, who accused Faludi of inciting communism. Nevertheless, this early experience did not diminish Faludi’s attraction to journalism. In high school, as editor of the school’s newspaper, she wrote articles about the separation of church and state, and these put a halt to Christian meetings on the school’s campus. Faludi attended Harvard University on a scholarship, and she became managing editor of the Harvard Crimson. When she wrote about sexual harassment on campus, it resulted in the reprimand of a Harvard professor. In 1981, Faludi graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and received an Oliver Dabney History Award for her senior thesis. After graduation, Faludi went to work at The New York Times, The Miami Herald, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and West Magazine, and she became a contributor to Mother Jones, Ms., and California Business. Life’s Work In 1990, while working as a staff writer for the San Francisco bureau of The Wall Street Journal, Faludi wrote an article about the leveraged buyout of Safeway Stores, which resulted in a massive layoff of Safeway employees. The Pulitzer Prize jury was impressed with her ability to report on such a complex topic, and Faludi was awarded the prize for explanatory journalism in 1991. In 1986, Newsweek published a marriage study stating that a college-educated, thirty-year-old woman had a 20 percent chance of getting married; at thirty-five years old, the woman’s chances dropped to 5 percent; and, at age forty, she had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married. Skeptical of this research, Faludi took time off from her job at West Magazine to look into the study. After contacting the U.S. Census Bureau, Faludi found that the researcher’s methodology and conclusions were questionable. Yet, the media ignored her findings, leading Faludi to write Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991). In Backlash, Faludi not only exposes the myths
Faludi, Susan the American media and the antifeminist icons used to create a backlash against feminism in the 1980’s but also uncovers the repercussions this backlash had for American women. Faludi makes this argument by refuting popular statistical research about the devastating effects of women’s liberation, examining the ways popular culture promoted a feminist backlash through press trends, and the political climate of the 1980’s. Following its publication in 1991, Backlash climbed the best-seller list and won a National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction in 1992. While wildly popular, Backlash was also heavily criticized. Common critiques included skepticism of her sources and the assertion that Faludi believed women were unable to take control of their own lives, allowing the media to influence their decisions. Her findings in Backlash led Faludi to wonder why
Susan Faludi. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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male resistance to feminism was so Uncovering a Backlash on American Women strong. As a result, she spent six years asking men to answer this question. Susan Faludi is best known for her book Backlash: The Undeclared War This research led her to refocus her reAgainst American Women (1991). Inspired by a marriage study concluding search on the limiting and emotionally that a forty-year-old, college-educated woman was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to be married, Faludi wrote Backlash to unveil the ways the damaging effects cultural standards of media, popular culture, and politics in the 1980’s sought to turn back masculinity have on men. The result women’s liberation. Backlash changed the way many Americans thought of her research was Stiffed: The Beabout women’s equality by refuting popular myths about women. Faludi trayal of the American Man (1999). points out that while the media perpetrate the idea that feminism has made Stiffed recounts the experiences of men women unhappy, it is actually the lack of full equality that is the cause of their from different backgrounds and ocunhappiness. Through an in-depth look at the inequalities women face, cupations who feel emasculated in a Faludi reveals the truth of the gender pay gap, the paucity of child care and world where traditional views of masfamily leave policies, the dichotomy of balancing a career and a family, and culinity are changing. Faludi identidomestic violence and sexual assault. Her analysis of the feminist backlash fies these feelings as a symptom of not only changed the way many people listened to and read media reports capitalism, which has made it difficult about women but also exposed the fact that women’s equality was not achieved in the 1970’s. for working-class men to sufficiently support their families. Faludi’s conclusion from her findings in Backlash and Stiffed is that both Further Reading men and women must refuse to allow American culChin, Paula. “Male-ady.” People 53, no. 6 (October, ture and media to define and dictate their lives and soci1999): 143-146. Interview with Faludi about her book, etal status. Her interest in gender roles inspired her to Stiffed. Faludi discusses her interest in writing about write another book on the media’s treatment of men and men and provides solutions to ending gender stereowomen. The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 typing. America (2007) examines the reactionary return to traConniff, Ruth. “Susan Faludi.” Progressive 57, no. 6 ditional gender and familial roles provoked by the Sep(June, 1993): 35-40. An in-depth interview with Faludi tember 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on American soil. about feminism, sexual harassment, her relationship Faludi points out the media played a large role in prowith her mother, and the impact Backlash had on her moting these ideas through its depiction of men as prolife. tectors and women as fragile creatures in the wake of Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against the attacks. American Women. 15th anniversary ed. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006. Faludi’s book contains her Significance reasons for writing about gender issues. This edition Faludi’s ability to speak up in the face of controversy includes a preface in which she explores the current contributes to the ongoing conversation on gender roles gender climate. in American society. Her commentary on how the media _____. Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. New and the political climate impose gender roles provides York: William Morrow, 1999. Provides readers inreaders with a fresh perspective on how culture influsight into Faludi’s views on gender roles and their tie ences their everyday lives. Faludi’s focus on gender to the American economy. brings a feminist perspective to everyday Americans. In _______. The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Postan era when feminist theory is often reserved for aca9/11 America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007. demics, Faludi is critical of academic feminism, which Provides readers with more current examples of she believes to be elitist and inaccessible to nonacademic Faludi’s perceptions on gender, the American media, individuals. Yet, Faludi’s journalism, free of jargon and and terrorism. terminology, allows readers to critically analyze gender with a feminist perspective, keeping feminism in the See also: Mary Antin; Susan Brownmiller; Betty public eye. Friedan; Gloria Steinem; Naomi Wolf. — Erin Elizabeth Parrish 352
Jewish Americans
Fast, Howard
Howard Fast Novelist and activist Fast is noted for his fiction that focuses on American history and for his celebration of historic underdogs, including Spartacus, the slave leader in ancient Rome, and the Maccabees in ancient Israel. Born: November 11, 1914; New York, New York Died: March 12, 2003; Old Greenwich, Connecticut Also known as: E. V. Cunningham; Walter Ericson; Howard Melvin Fast (full name) Areas of achievement: Literature; activism; social issues Early Life Howard Fast was the fourth of five children born to Barney Fast and Ida Miller, Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and Lithuania, respectively. Howard Fast’s mother died when Fast was only eight, and his father was often out of work and absent. By the age of ten, Fast was taking odd jobs to help support the family. He did well in school and was a voracious reader, and he decided at the age of fifteen to become a writer. He also became interested in Marxism. Although of Jewish heritage, Fast experienced little of Jewish religion or culture in his upbringing. The family did not attend synagogue or keep kosher, and Fast did not speak Yiddish. His main sense of being Jewish came from being attacked by Irish and Italian boys who called him a Christ-killer. After completing high school, Fast attended the National Academy School of Fine Arts, so that he could illustrate his writings, but he left after little more than a year. He continued to write, and in 1931 he published a short story in the science-fiction magazine Amazing Stories. Two years later, when he was only eighteen, he published his first novel, Two Valleys (1933). Life’s Work Fast found his true métier at the end of the 1930’s, with a series of novels set during the American Revolutionary War, culminating in the highly acclaimed Citizen Tom Paine (1943), about the revolutionary pamphleteer. He also won acclaim for Freedom Road (1944), the story of a freed slave during the Reconstruction era. During World War II, Fast worked for the Office of War Information, writing news reports for the Voice of America. In 1944, after years of involvement in left-wing causes, he joined the Communist Party. After the war he
was summoned before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities and jailed for three months for refusing to name other Communists. He also found himself blacklisted, unable to find a publisher for his new novel, Spartacus. He published it successfully himself, however, in 1951, and in 1960 it was made into a motion picture starring Kirk Douglas. During the postwar period, Fast worked on various left-wing campaigns, including the 1948 presidential election campaign of Henry Wallace. In 1952, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress on the American Labor Party ticket. He also wrote regularly for the Communist paper, The Daily Worker, and won the Stalin Peace Prize in 1954. In 1948, the year of the creation of the state of Israel, Fast published My Glorious Brothers about the revolt of the Maccabees in ancient Israel, but he was criticized by fellow Communists for promoting Jewish nationalism instead of class struggle. Similar criticisms over the next few years, along with the revelations of the crimes of Joseph Stalin, led Fast to leave the Communist Party in 1957. After this, his writings became less politically committed, though he still dealt with social and political issues. In the 1970’s, Fast began publishing a sweeping family saga of five novels, beginning with The Immigrants (1977), which later became a television miniseries. He continued to write stories about the Revolutionary War, and also he wrote widely on topics from Zen Buddhism to Jane Austen. Under the pseudonyms Walter Ericson and E. V. Cunningham, he wrote mystery novels and thrillers, along with a series of novels about strong, independent women. By the time of his death he had published more than eighty books. Significance Fast is generally celebrated for his ability to bring past eras alive in his historical fiction, most of all the era of the Revolutionary War. Especially in his early works he is notable for portraying struggling underdogs who fight back against oppressive authority. A strong thread of American patriotism runs through Fast’s works. His Jewish background plays a secondary role, but he did portray many Jewish characters, and he said that Freedom Road, about black slavery, was inspired in part by his experience of anti-Semitism. Some commentators add that Fast’s interest in social justice may have stemmed in part from his Jewish background. 353
Feiffer, Jules Fast has been neglected by academic literary critics, perhaps because of his politics at the beginning of his career or because in later years he came to be seen as a popular writer lacking in seriousness. However, some of his Revolutionary War novels have come to be used in schools or made into documentaries, and some of his early works, notably Citizen Tom Paine and Spartacus, remain well-respected. —Sheldon Goldfarb Further Reading Fast, Howard. Being Red. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. A lively memoir of Fast’s time in the Communist Party and his work for the Office of War Information. Kodat, Catherine Gunther. “‘I’m Spartacus!’” In A Companion to Narrative Theory, edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005. Discusses Spartacus as portrayed by Fast and others. Criticizes Fast’s novel for homophobia.
Jewish Americans Macdonald, Andrew. Howard Fast: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996. Includes a biographical sketch and detailed analysis of several of Fast’s novels. Tends to Freudian analysis, but also presents alternative viewpoints. Malamud, Margaret. “Cold War Romans.” Arion 14, no. 3 (2007): 121-153. Discusses Fast’s Spartacus and the movie based on it; also provides biographical material on Fast. Sees his novel as a searing indictment of American capitalism. Wald, Alan M. “The Legacy of Howard Fast.” In The Responsibility of Intellectuals: Selected Essays on Marxist Traditions in Cultural Commitment. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1992. Criticizes Fast for being too much like a soap-opera writer and says that even in his Communist days he was not truly radical. See also: Saul Bellow; E. L. Doctorow; Joseph Heller; Norman Mailer; Philip Roth; Sidney Sheldon; Leon Uris; Herman Wouk.
Jules Feiffer Artist, playwright, and writer Feiffer has spent sixty years cartooning and writing about America’s social issues with biting satire. Born: January, 26, 1929; New York, New York Also known as: Jules Ralph Feiffer (full name) Areas of achievement: Art; social issues; theater Early Life Jules Feiffer (jewls FIF-ur) was born in New York City and raised in a neighborhood that he described as beneath a slum. Always feeling like an outsider because of his small size, his poverty, and his combative relationship with his mother, the young Feiffer drew cartoons to impress other children. Inspired by Jewish cartoonists such as Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and Al Capp, Feiffer felt that being a cartoonist was his only option. He began as an intern for The Spirit’s Will Eisner at the age of seventeen, when Feiffer did not have enough credits to go to college. Eisner was impressed with Feiffer’s writing and allowed him to write his own strip, Clifford. Feiffer was drafted into the Army during the Korean War in the 1950’s. The Army, Feiffer believed, was the most hypocritical and abusive authority he had yet encountered, and his experiences convinced him to do something that he had thought about for years: use his 354
Jules Feiffer. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Jewish Americans cartoons to speak his mind. Feiffer knew early on that nobody wanted to listen to whining, so his first comic, Munro, was a satire. It depicted a four-year-old who was drafted and treated like any other soldier. Upon being discharged, Feiffer discovered publishers were unwilling to accept anything critical of the Army, and Munro would not be published until Feiffer was already famous. During the mid-1950’s, Feiffer was inspired by the cartoonist Walt Kelly, who addressed politics in his strip, Pogo. Feiffer aimed to create a strip completely devoted to satire of a broad range of topics, but there was no interest in that at the time. Other artists and writers also believed that intellectual activity was being stifled, and a group of independentminded journalists founded the newspaper The Village Voice in 1955. Feiffer introduced himself to the Voice editors in 1956, and he so impressed them that he had a comic strip running later that same year. First calling his comic Sick, Sick, Sick, and later changing it to Feiffer, Feiffer was quick to establish his own style. He drew with sharpened wooden dowel sticks dipped in ink to give his lines a fluid feel, and he used the strip to explore the inner monologues of his characters. Nothing like it had been seen before, but the time had come for a revolution in social media. Life’s Work Feiffer continued cartooning for The Village Voice until 1997. In that time he would attack what he called the “radical middle.” These were the old-fashioned liberals who called Martin Luther King, Jr., an extremist and supported the Vietnam War. In Feiffer, they are portrayed as simultaneously supporting a position and its exact opposite, leading to a dislike for any effective action toward anything. However, Feiffer is a self-described leftist, and his contempt for liberals only goes as far as their capitulations to the right. Feiffer’s views were strongly integrationist and antiwar, but he was wary of dissent being coopted or insincere. As time went on, Feiffer branched into other territories. He preferred to write plays because he felt they gave him a sense of control and intimacy with his audience. Feiffer’s play Little Murders (1967), which was later adapted to the big screen in 1971 with Elliott Gould starring, depicted the effect of senseless violence on a family, at a time when inner-city violence was beginning to proliferate. In 1971, the film Carnal Knowledge, about two men and their sex lives with women, with a script by Feiffer, was released. Feiffer also wrote the screenplay to the Robert Altman-directed Popeye (1980). In addition
Feiffer, Jules
THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH Enduring and widely distributed, the artwork Jules Feiffer created for Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth has become iconic. Juster consulted with Feiffer as Juster wrote the book, and the collaborators planned the illustrations. The Phantom Tollbooth tells the story of Milo, a boy who cannot find beauty in the world. In that regard, he is like the timid and pitiful characters of Feiffer’s comics. One day, Milo is sent a mysterious tollbooth, and when he drives through he finds he is on a highly allegorical journey to the Kingdom of Wisdom, ruled by the rival King of Words and King of Numbers. It is Milo’s task to find the Princess of Rhyme and the Princess of Reason, without whom the kingdom is falling apart. As Milo travels through the fantasy world, he confronts a number of enemies and such dangers as “jumping to conclusions” and “being stuck in the doldrums.” He also meets friends who teach him virtues and strange characters who teach him educational concepts. At the conclusion of his adventure, Milo discovers that there is good in the world. Clearly, Feiffer can see the good in the world through the eyes of children. Throughout the text, Feiffer’s illustrations are often key to understanding the action and transmitting the story’s comedic tone. The Phantom Tollbooth became a classic, on the strength of its prose and its perfect marriage with Feiffer’s illustrations.
to all this original work, Feiffer wrote the screenplay for an animated adaptation of Munro in 1960. The plays Feiffer created in the 1960’s and 1970’s were his attempt to contemplate something he believed had gone wrong in America. In a Feiffer strip in the first week of 1964, Feiffer praised John F. Kennedy, the U.S. president who was assassinated in 1963, as someone who was opening up after the intellectual thaw of the 1950’s. In 1965, Feiffer published the celebrated essay “The Great Comic Book Heroes,” in which he explained the importance of the work he had admired in his childhood. However, when his marriage began to fall apart and Feiffer began to perceive that change in society was not leading to progress, he shifted focus. Since the mid-1990’s, Feiffer has written and illustrated children’s books. Feiffer had some experience with entertaining children. He had illustrated Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth in 1961. The first children’s book Feiffer wrote and illustrated was The Man in the Ceiling (1993). Telling the story of a boy who wants 355
Feingold, Russ to be a cartoonist but has no support, the book continues Feiffer’s theme of isolation touched on in his comics, but the book was well received by critics. A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears (1995) was a surreal adventure in which the hero, Prince Roger, set out on a quest to learn responsibility. Meanwhile (1997) and I’m Not Bobby (2001) continued Feiffer’s insightful and dark humor for the four- to eight-year-old demographic, and he illustrated the book Henry, the Dog with No Tail (2007), written by his daughter, Kate. When asked why he switched over to writing for children, Feiffer stated he was inspired by his own children, and writing for a new generation helps keep his optimism alive. Feiffer’s memoir, Backing into Forward, was published in 2010. Significance Feiffer has had a powerful influence over cartoonists who followed him. The author of the comic strip This Modern World, Tom Tomorrow, has praised Feiffer, and so has Matt Groening, creator of Life in Hell, The Simpsons, and Futurama. Art Spiegelman, the Jewish cartoonist who created the Holocaust biographical-graphic novel Maus (1986, 1991), said Feiffer made graphic novels possible. The Village Voice owes some of its popularity to Feiffer; in 2008, he was invited back to the newspaper to create a whole page. Perhaps one of Feiffer’s strangest legacies is the Jewish Mother. Feiffer began lampooning his mother in 1958. Although he would never admit it to her, she was the inspiration for the ma-
Jewish Americans nipulative, endlessly compliment-craving, domineering old women who would appear throughout his works. These appearances long predate the Woody Allen and Philip Roth works of the late 1960’s and 1970’s that would depict mature Jewish women in a similar way. Feiffer, at least, always credited his mother with stoking his appreciation for the arts. — Jacob Davis Further Reading Feiffer, Jules. Backing into Forward. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2010. These are Feiffer’s memoirs, including accounts of his childhood and his experiences with cartooning. The cover contains blurbs of praise from Art Speigelman and other cartoonists. _______. Explainers. Seattle, Wash.: Fantagraphics, 2007. A complete collection of Feiffer’s The Village Voice cartoons from the first one in 1956 until the last strip of 1966. A foreword by Gary Groth provides context and scholarly analysis. Juster, Norton. The Phantom Tollbooth. New York: Yearling, 1961. One of the first books Feiffer illustrated, it is regarded as a children’s classic. Stossel, Sage. “A Conversation with Jules Feiffer.” The Atlantic (March 19, 2010). Stossel, a cartoonist, interviews Feiffer and questions him on his cartooning. See also: Al Capp; Rube Goldberg; Roy Lichtenstein; Ben Shahn.
Russ Feingold Politician Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, Feingold earned a reputation as a political maverick. While in the Senate he attacked “pork barrel” politics. He was the cosponsor of the McCain-Feingold bill, designed to reduce the influence of special interests in American politics. Born: March 2, 1953; Janesville, Wisconsin Also known as: Russell Dana Feingold (full name) Area of achievement: Government and politics Early Life Russ Feingold (FIN-gohld) was born in Janesville, a community in southeastern Wisconsin, the third of four children. His grandparents were Russian Jewish immi356
grants who settled in Janesville in 1917. Russ’s father, Leon, began practicing law in Janesville in 1937. He and Sylvia Binstock were married in 1940. The family was involved in Wisconsin politics, adhering strongly to the ideals of the Progressive movement. This movement emphasized a significant role for government in American society and the importance of avoiding waste and fraud in government. As a child, Feingold and his family attended Temple Beth El in Madison, the state capital. His sister became the first female rabbi in Wisconsin. After graduating from high school in Janesville, Feingold attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison. There he established a stellar academic record and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He also earned a Rhodes Scholar-
Jewish Americans ship to study in England. After returning to the United States, he married Sue Levine (they subsequently divorced) and attended Harvard Law School, graduating with honors in 1979. Feingold then returned to Wisconsin to practice law in Madison. A few years later, at the age of twenty-nine, he ran for the state senate and won, defeating an incumbent Republican by thirty-one votes. While in the state legislature, Feingold began planning to run for national office. When he declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 1992, his chances of getting the Democratic Party’s nomination were considered slim. However, while the two leading candidates spent vast amounts of money “slinging mud” at each other, Feingold ran a folksy, low-budget campaign. In the end, he easily won the nomination. He went on to beat the Republican incumbent by a healthy margin, although the latter outspent him three to one. Feingold was thirtynine when he reached the U.S. Senate. Life’s Work A major concern of Feingold has been the potential corrupting influence of “big money” in American politics. From a personal standpoint, he adopted the policy of not accepting gifts of any kind from lobbyists, even though he was perhaps the least well-to-do member of the Senate. He also refused large campaign contributions, especially those from political action groups. In his first reelection campaign, he promised to limit his spending, even though his opponent did not limit himself. Feingold won this election by a relatively small margin. On the other hand, he easily won reelection in 2004. Probably the most important legislation associated with Feingold is the McCain-Feingold Act, passed in 2002. Crafted with Senator John McCain, this law sought to reduce the influence of “soft money” by prohibiting national political parties from raising or spending funds not subject to federal limits and by limiting the use of “issue advocacy advertisements.” For their work on this legislation, Feingold and McCain received the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage award. Feingold has been a vocal opponent of “pork barrel” politics, the practice of supporting projects that primarily benefit a local area. He often voted against bills that contained, in his view, too much “pork.” These practices have not always endeared him to his colleagues, many of whom view him as being a mav-
Feingold, Russ erick who does not always toe the party line. Feingold’s view is that he will vote for what is right, even though it may not fit the desires of his colleagues. For instance, during the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton in 19981999, Feingold was the only Democrat to vote to continue the trial at one of its critical points (though he ultimately voted against impeaching the president). Feingold has been an opponent of American military engagement in Iraq, and he voted against the resolution supporting the invasion of that country. He was the first senator to introduce legislation to prohibit further funding of the war. Feingold has been a strong advocate of civil liberties, one reason that he was the only senator to vote against the USA Patriot Act, passed shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center. He has been a strong opponent of the death penalty. However, unlike many legislators who
Russ Feingold. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Feinstein, Dianne take liberal positions on most issues, Feingold is often an opponent of gun-control legislation. While he was voting his conscience, Feingold did not ignore his Wisconsin constituents. Early in his career he promised to visit each of Wisconsin’s seventy-two counties at least once a year, to conduct “listening sessions.” He kept this promise, and, by doing so, strengthened his ties with his constituents. In 2006, Feingold entertained the idea of running for president, though he quickly abandoned it. In 2010, however, he lost his reelection bid. Significance Feingold is, like his political hero “Fighting Bob LaFollette,” an example of how a political figure can gain prominence without seriously compromising his ideals. He has taken what many consider unpopular stands on important issues, and he has been willing to ask uncomfortable questions, especially about the unhealthy role money can play in the American political system. While his unwillingness to play the political game may have at
Jewish Americans times limited his effectiveness in the Senate, his example is one many find appealing. —David M. Jones Further Reading Drew, Elizabeth. Citizen McCain. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002. While the book focuses on McCain, it discusses in detail the problems he and Feingold encountered in trying to pass reform legislation. Horwitt, Sanford D. Feingold: A New Democratic Party. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007. A sympathetic biography of the senator, one that sees him as a model for reform Democrats. It also emphasizes Feingold’s Progressive roots. Rothschild, Matthew. “The Progressive Interview: Russ Feingold.” The Progressive 66, no. 5 (May, 2002): 2934. Covers a range of the senator’s views on issues, politics, and his future. See also: Barbara Boxer; Dianne Feinstein; Al Franken; Jacob K. Javits; Abraham A. Ribicoff.
Dianne Feinstein Lawyer and politician Feinstein was the first woman mayor of San Francisco and the first woman senator from California. Born: June 22, 1933; San Francisco, California Also known as: Dianne Emiel Goldman (birth name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; social issues Early Life Dianne Feinstein (FIN-stin) was born to Betty Rosenburg, a former model, and Leon Goldman, a surgeon, the first Jew with a tenured appointment as a physician at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. Her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland, and her maternal grandparents were Russian and practiced the Russian Orthodox faith. Feinstein has two sisters, Lynne Kennedy and Yvonne Banks. While receiving a Catholic education at the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School, she also attended Hebrew school. At the age of thirteen, she was confirmed in the Jewish faith. She received a baccalaureate degree in history at Stanford University in 1955. While attending 358
Stanford, she appeared on television, modeling clothes for her uncle, Morris Goldman, a clothing manufacturer. While giving a speech in her campaign for student body vice president, a heckler at a fraternity house carried her to the shower and turned on the water. After winning, she exercised power by denying the fraternity to hold an overnight party after a football game. Feinsten’s first job after graduation was in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office, where she met Jack Berman. They married in 1956, and their daughter Katherine was born in 1957. Berman, whom she divorced in 1959, was the first of her three husbands. In 1962, she married neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein, but he died in 1978. In 1980, she married investment banker Richard C. Blum. Her assets were secured in a blind trust, separate from her husband’s. Feinstein became involved in politics in 1961, championing California’s fair housing law, which was eventually adopted in 1963. She accepted a gubernatorial appointment as a member of the state women’s parole board from 1960 to 1966. In 1969, Feinstein won election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. For most of her tenure, she was
Jewish Americans
Feinstein, Dianne
president of the board, a position awarded to the highest vote-getter. She unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 1971 and 1975. When Mayor George Moscone was assassinated in 1978, she became acting mayor and was elected to full terms as mayor in 1979 and 1983. In 1990, she unsuccessfully ran for governor of California against Pete Wilson, who resigned as U.S. senator to seek the state’s top office. Feinstein then ran and won election in 1992 to the seat vacated by Wilson. She was reelected in 1994, 2000, and 2006. Life’s Work Feinstein’s first major action as mayor of San Francisco was to obtain federal funds to rebuild the city’s cable cars, which were in serious disreDianne Feinstein. (AP/Wide World Photos) pair. The entire system, shut down in 1982, reopened in 1984 for the DemIn 2005, she introduced legislation to water down the ocratic National Convention. She also approved more Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows American residents high-rise building construction in the city. Gay rights adto sue foreigners for human rights violations committed vocates were displeased when she failed to march in the abroad. In 2006, she was the main Democratic sponsor of city’s gay rights parade and vetoed domestic partner legthe Flag Desecration Amendment, which would crimiislation in 1983. nalize desecration of the American flag. In 1984, Feinstein advocated a ban on handguns in the city, prompting a recall campaign that she survived. NevSignificance ertheless, it was later revealed that she was carrying a While mayor, Feinstein was under consideration as a concealed weapon at the time for personal protection. candidate for vice president in 1984, when Democratic While in Congress, she successfully gained inclusion of candidate Walter Mondale selected Geraldine Ferraro ina ten-year ban on semiautomatic assault weapons in the stead. Feinstein was voted the most effective mayor in Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of the United States in 1987 by the publication City and 1994, though the ban expired in 2005. State. She chaired the Senate Rules Committee from On environmental issues, she obtained support for 2007 to 2009, became the chair of the Senate Select passage of the California Desert Protection Act of 1994, Committee on Intelligence in 2009, and served as miswhich set aside nearly eight million acres for parks and tress of ceremonies for the inauguration of President wilderness areas. She was also successful in the adoption Barack Obama. The Congressional Quarterly has rated of the Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage Wilher among the top five “centrists” in Congress. Feinstein derness Act of 2006, which protected some 275,000 is one of the most powerful women in the United States, acres as wilderness areas. However, she opposed the inhaving been the first woman mayor of San Francisco and stallation of solar panels on desert land as unaesthetic. the first woman senator from California. Feinstein cosponsored the Patriot Act in 2001 and —Michael Haas voted for the Iraq War in 2002, even though she was aware that there was no conclusive evidence that Saddam Further Reading Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. In Brody, Seymour. “Dianne Feinstein: United States Sena2007, she supported a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. tor from California.” In Jewish Heroes and Heroines troops from Iraq. 359
Feinstein, Moshe of America. Hollywood, Fla.: Lifetime Books, 1996. An illustrated biography. Roberts, Jerry. Dianne Feinstein: Never Let Them See You Cry. New York: HarperCollins West, 1994. A political editor from the San Francisco Chronicle profiles Feinstein and her amazing political career. Slater, Robert, and Elinor Slater. Great Jewish Women.
Jewish Americans Middle Village, N.Y.: Jonathan David, 2004. The essay on Feinstein claims that she is one of the few Jewish women to have a significant impact on politics. See also: Bella Abzug; Barbara Boxer; Betty Friedan; Harvey Milk.
Moshe Feinstein Russian-born rabbi, religious leader, and theologian With his extensive knowledge of the Torah, the Talmud, and halacha, Feinstein served Orthodox Judaism as a posek (authority) on the law, giving opinions on a broad spectrum of issues.
be safer elsewhere. After several years of working to obtain papers to immigrate to the United States, Feinstein and his family finally received authorization to do so in 1937.
Born: March 3, 1895; Uzda, near Minsk, Russian Empire (now in Belarus) Died: March 23, 1986; New York, New York Also known as: Rav Moshe; Reb Moshe; “the Great One of the generation” Area of achievement: Religion and theology
Life’s Work Upon arriving in the United States, the family first settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where Feinstein held a position as a lecturer on the Talmud (writings composing Jewish civil and religious law) at the yeshiva of Rabbi Yehudah Levenberg. However, Feinstein was not really content in Cleveland, and after a short period of time he moved, with the help of Rabbi Israel Rosenberg, to New York City’s lower East Side. In 1938, upon the death of Rabbi Yoseph Adler, the leader of the Mesvita Tiferet Jerusalem yeshiva located on the lower East Side, Feinstein was chosen to replace him as head of the yeshiva. Feinstein held the position for almost fifty years. He also established a branch of the yeshiva in Staten Island, New York. Feinstein was intensely dedicated to his work as a teacher, a scholar, and a student of the Talmud and of halacha (Jewish religious law). He was a follower of Orthodox Judaism, but within the confines of Orthodox doctrine he espoused a tolerant and liberal attitude. Feinstein possessed an extensive and in-depth knowledge of Judaism, was an expert on both the Torah and the Talmud, and had an exceptional ability to analyze questions related to Jewish law and religion. As a result, by the mid-1940’s, he was regarded as a major American authority on the Talmud. During the 1950’s, his reputation as an authority on the Jewish religion continued to grow, and he was viewed as one of the most significant scholars of halacha in the world. Feinstein did not shy away from giving opinions on controversial issues in the fields of science, technology, and medicine. He wrote almost two thousand responses, expressing his opinion on a wide variety of issues in respect to Jewish law. These were col-
Early Life Moshe Feinstein (MOH-sheh FIN-stin) was born in Uzda, near Minsk, in the Russian Empire, on March 3, 1895. His parents were Rabbi David Feinstein and Feige Gittel. Moshe Feinstein’s father was particularly concerned about providing the best possible Jewish education for his son. Therefore, Feinstein received his first education from his father and from tutors. Even before Feinstein was of elementary school age, his father had taught him all of the Chumash, or Torah (Pentateuch, or first five books of the Old Testament). In order for him to receive more personal attention, his father arranged to subsidize a teacher, so that the group of students taught by the teacher could be limited to five instead of the customary ten. At the age of twelve, Feinstein began attending yeshivas, or schools, first at Slutzk and later at Shklov. At the schools he had the opportunity to study with Rabbi Isser Zelman Meltzer and Pesach Prushkin. In 1916, Feinstein was ordained a rabbi, and in 1921 he became the rabbi of Luban, Russia. In 1922, he married Sima Kustenovich. While living in Luban, the couple had three children, Faye Gittel, Shifra, and David; a fourth child, Reuven, was born in the United States. The ever-increasing anti-Jewish sentiment of the communist government convinced Feinstein that his family would 360
Jewish Americans lected in his Igrot Moshe (1959) series. He also wrote commentaries on the Talmud and collected them in his Dibrot Moshe (1983). In addition to his scholarly work and role as a posek (authority) on Jewish texts and law, Feinstein played an active role in the organizations of the American Jewish community. He served as chairman of Moetzet Gedolei Ha-Torah of the Agudath Israel of America from 1960 until the time of his death. He was president of the Union of American Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada. Feinstein was also a member of the Rabbinical Administrative Board of Torah u’ Mesorah, National Society of Hebrew Day Schools. As a leader both in the American Jewish community and in worldwide Judaism, Feinstein took a particular interest in developments in Israel and played an important role in 1953 in the founding of, and later in the direction of, the Chinuch Atzmai, an alternative school system in Israel for the children of Orthodox Jews. Feinstein died at the age of ninety-one on March 23, 1986, in New York City. His funeral brought out almost 150,000 mourners. His body was taken to Israel for burial. Significance Feinstein was so revered and admired by the Jewish community that he was often called “the Great One of the generation.” He was highly respected even by those who disagreed with his opinions. Feinstein adjucated all ques-
Feld, Eliot tions presented to him, from those as personal as should a blind man be allowed to take his guide dog into the synagogue to those as controversial as medical ethics. Feinstein’s application of his knowledge of Jewish law to questions arising from new scientific discoveries and technological and medical advancements gave Judaism a significant impact on the modern world. —Shawncey Webb Further Reading Finkelman, Shimon, and Nosson Scherman. Reb Moshe: The Life and Ideals of Hagaon Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Mesorah, 1986. Good biography of Feinstein. Recounts his life and examines his beliefs and guiding principles. Raphael, Marc Lee. Judaism in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Good for an overview of Judaism and for understanding the milieu in which Feinstein worked. Includes glossary and selected further readings. Zemer, Moshe, and Justice Haim Cohen. Evolving Halakhak: A Progressive Approach to Traditional Jewish Law. Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 2003. A thorough investigation of Jewish law. Chapter 27 presents a critique of Feinstein’s rulings. See also: Louis Finkelstein; Harold S. Kushner; Norman Lamm; Sally J. Priesand; Isaac Mayer Wise.
Eliot Feld Dancer and choreographer A dancer and choreographer, Feld is recognized for his contributions to dance, especially for his ability to enhance classical ballet with more modern movements. Born: July 5, 1942; Brooklyn, New York Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life From a young age, Eliot Feld (EHL-lee-uht fehld) had the desire to dance. He begged his mother to let him take classes, and she finally relented when he was twelve years old. He began his training at the School of American Ballet, where it became apparent to Feld’s family that dancing was more than just a hobby for him. His first performance, at age twelve, was with the New York City Ballet in the role of the Child Prince in George Balan-
chine’s production of The Nutcracker. Feld later trained at the High School for the Performing Arts, where he continually alternated between the classical ballet and modern dance departments because of his strong interest in both styles. His appreciation for both and his desire to blend the best of both shine through in his later choreography. His professional debut came when he was just sixteen years old, when he performed in Jerome Robbins’s production of West Side Story (1957), which ran on Broadway. Feld also appeared in the 1961 film, playing the role of Baby John. His career on Broadway extended to performances in the shows I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1962) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). In 1953, Feld joined the American Ballet Theater and became a soloist in just two years. Robbins, who proved 361
Feld, Eliot to be one of Feld’s great mentors, convinced Lucia Chase, the company’s artistic director, to give Feld the opportunity to choreograph his first ballet. She agreed, and in 1967 Feld’s Harbinger debuted. The ballet was met with rave reviews from critics and audiences, and many declared Feld to be a beacon of hope for classical ballet in the world of contemporary dance. Life’s Work Just two months after the premiere of Harbinger, Feld’s second ballet, At Midnight, made its debut. Like its predecessor, At Midnight received strong reviews and tremendous praise from critics. Feld was celebrated for his fresh and original choreography that managed to remain loyal to the movements of classical ballet. In the following years, he choreographed two other ballets, Meadowlark, which premiered in 1968, and Intermezzo, which premiered in 1969. Despite his success at the American Ballet Theater, Feld chose to leave the company after only a few years because he disliked the rigid hierarchy prominent in large ballet companies. With his choreography, Feld wanted to move the company’s artistic design in a forward-looking direction, but his sentiments were not shared by directors of the company, and so he decided to leave. After leaving the American Ballet Theater, Feld formed the American Ballet Company in 1969. The company performed Feld’s Harbinger, which became its signature piece, along with At Midnight, Meadowlark, and Intermezzo. The company also performed Pagan Spring, a ballet Feld choreographed for the Winnipeg Ballet Company of Canada during a period of freelance work after he left the American Ballet Theater. During the next three seasons, the American Ballet Company performed six other ballets choreographed by Feld, but eventually the company was forced to disband because of insufficient funding and a lack of bookings. For a few years following the closing of the American Ballet Company, Feld did freelance work before a second company was born in 1974, thanks to assistance from New York Shakespeare Festival producer Joseph Papp. The new company was christened the Eliot Feld Ballet, and it is a classically based ballet company that follows the lines of modern dance. Needing a place to perform, the company purchased and renovated the Joyce Theater, a venue in midtown Manhattan; the company has performed there since 1982. Feld also founded the
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Jewish Americans New Ballet School in 1978, a free ballet academy for New York’s public school students. It provides children who live in the inner city who are interested in dance the opportunity to train. Over the years, the name of the company changed from the Eliot Feld Ballet to the Ballet Tech Company and School. In 2003, Ballet Tech’s professional company was disbanded as a result of economic pressures, but the organization continues to enroll and train students and to produce ballets choreographed by Feld. Significance Since 1967, Feld has choreographed 143 ballets and become one of the most respected contemporary choreographers. He is recognized for his ability to create fresh and modern pieces while remaining true to the principles of classical ballet. Feld has received many honors and awards, and among them are a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969), the Dance Magazine Award (1990), and an honorary doctorate degree from the Juilliard School (1991). —Sarah Small Further Reading Bremser, Martha, and Lorna Sanders, eds. Fifty Contemporary Choreographers. London: Routledge, 1999. Covers a wide range of dance masters, including Feld. Hodgson, Moira, and Thomas Victor. Quintet: Five American Dance Companies. New York: Morrow, 1976. Includes an in-depth profile of Feld’s Ballet Tech Company and School. Robertson, Allen, and Donald Hutera. The Dance Handbook. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. Provides thumbnail biography of Feld and his company and school. Rogosin, Elinor. The Dance Makers. New York: Walker, 1980. In these conversations with American choreographers, Feld explains his philosophy of dance. Siegel, Marcia B. The Shapes of Change: Images of American Dance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979. Perceptive essays that describe some of Feld’s earlier ballets. _______. Watching the Dance Go By. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Essays provide Siegel’s observations on Feld’s ballets. Includes photographs, illustrations, and index. See also: Sammy Davis, Jr.; Goldie Hawn; Jerome Robbins.
Jewish Americans
Ferber, Edna
Edna Ferber Novelist and playwright Ferber wrote a prodigious number of award-winning novels, short stories, plays and screenplays, and autobiographies. Her female protagonists reflected her own life—as a strong and racially tolerant feminist. Born: August 15, 1885; Kalamazoo, Michigan Died: April 16, 1968; New York, New York Also known as: Edna Jessica Ferber (full name) Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Edna Jessica Ferber (FUR-bur) was the daughter of Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper Jacob Ferber and Julia Neumann. Ferber’s family moved from Chicago to Ottumwa, Iowa, and in 1897 to Appleton, Wisconsin, where they ran a general store called My Store. Ferber called Appleton “serene” and one of America’s best small towns. Although Appleton’s Jewish population was in the minority, the town claimed a substantial number of Jewish residents. The family adhered to Jewish customs, and Ferber grew up respecting her heritage and faith. Ferber was a good student and participated in drama activities. She hoped to attend the University of Wisconsin upon graduation and to become an actor. When her father became blind, however, Ferber had to relinquish these goals. The articles Ferber wrote for her high school newspaper impressed the editor of the Appleton Daily Crescent. Upon Ferber’s graduation (1902), he hired the seventeen-year-old immediately as a full-time reporter for the newspaper. A female reporter was rare at the time. Ferber lost her job in 1904. In her autobiography A Peculiar Treasure (1939), Ferber admitted that her “embellished” style of writing held no appeal to a newspaper that published facts, not fiction. After being fired, Ferber found work writing policecourt news at the Milwaukee Journal from 1905 to 1908. Suffering from anemia and working hard to prove herself, Ferber collapsed from exhaustion. While recuperating, Ferber wrote her first published short story, “The Homely Heroine,” for Everybody’s Magazine in 1910. The magazine published other Ferber stories; the public began recognizing the character Emma McChesney—the feisty, divorced, undergarment salesclerk who appears in many of Ferber’s works. During her physical recovery, Ferber worked also on a novel; she discarded the manuscript, however, because
she was dissatisfied with it. Ferber’s mother salvaged the book, and Ferber’s first novel titled Dawn O’Hara: The Girl Who Laughed appeared in print in 1911. The main character is a strong female, a Milwaukee newswoman. Ferber moved in 1912 to New York, where she would live for the remainder of her life. Life’s Work With George V. Hobart, Ferber created Our Mrs. McChesney, a stage version of her McChesney stories. Ethel Barrymore performed in the 1915 production, a favorite with Barrymore. Metro Studios filmed the work in 1918. After her two unsuccessful 1920 productions, Ferber and George S. Kaufman wrote the successful plays Minick (1924), The Royal Family (1927), Dinner at Eight (1932), Stage Door (1936), The Land Is Bright (1941), and Bravo! (1948). In 1930 Paramount filmed The Royal Family; Warner Bros. filmed her short story
Edna Ferber. (Library of Congress)
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and the Klondike. Giant (1950), a novel about Texas, explored oil fortunes and racism in midcentury. Warner Bros. filmed Giant in 1956 and Edna Ferber and her work are noted for endurance in print and again in 1996; director George Stevens won an in media. Like her female protagonists, Ferber presented herself as Academy Award for his work. The popular a strong woman unafraid to express her beliefs—religious or othfilm Giant starred Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Huderwise. Ferber’s writings with their strong female protagonists and son, and James Dean, who died during the multiracial characters have remained popular through the years. Screenplays based on Ferber’s works attest to her popularity with filming. viewers and readers alike. Films, film remakes, and even DVD verFerber made five trips to Alaska for research sions of her writings are still pertinent decades after their original while she was writing Ice Palace (1958). She production. In 2009, a musical adaptation of Ferber’s 1952 novel described the land from its exploration to its Giant opened at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia. struggle for statehood. Warner Bros. filmed it in 1960. Ferber experienced painful health problems during her later years. She developed tic dou“Old Man Minick” as The Expert (1932) and based its loureux, an extremely painful condition that results in a film No Place to Go (1939) on Ferber’s play Minick. severe, stabbing face pain with unknown cause. Ferber’s Other films based on her works were No Woman Knows death at eighty was caused by cancer. (1921), Classified (1925), Gigolo (1926), Mother Knows Best (1928), and The Home Girl (1928). Significance Ferber’s novel The Girls (1921) traced three generaFerber wrote more than thirty-five novels, short-story tions of single women: a niece, an aunt, and a great-aunt. collections, plays and screenplays, and autobiographies. How the three females handled society’s restrictions on Her strong, independent female protagonists and her unmarried women was important to Ferber because she— multiracial characters portrayed productive, satisfied lives like these characters—never married. in a society where power often resided primarily in white So Big (1924) won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, makmen. ing Ferber the first Jew and fourth woman to win that In her autobiographies—A Peculiar Treasure and A award. Selina DeJong—a strong widow who rescues her Kind of Magic (1963)—Ferber matter-of-factly recogfailing farm—is its main character. Warner Bros. filmed nized the discrimination that women, other nationalities, So Big (1932) and a 1953 remake with Jane Wyman. and members of the Jewish religion face. She included After So Big came Ferber’s novel Show Boat (1926). some real-life examples—not to elicit sympathy but to For research, Ferber resided for several months on a suggest alternatives. Ferber was candid about her reliNorth Carolina riverboat. Universal released versions of gious faith, supportive of others, and true to her beliefs— Show Boat in 1927, 1929, and 1936; Metro-Goldwyneven when facing opposition. Ferber was a staunch femiMayer (MGM) filmed it as Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) nist who encouraged racial tolerance—much like the and as the 1951 musical Show Boat. Ferber, Jerome strong female protagonists portrayed in her work. Kern, and Oscar Hammerstein II collaborated on musical —Anita Price Davis versions. Ferber’s Cimarron (1930) used Oklahoma and the 1889 Land Rush as its setting. Radio-Keith-Orpheum Further Reading (RKO) in 1931 and MGM in 1960 produced film verAnderson, Greta. More than Petticoats: Remarkable Wissions. consin Women. Guilford, Conn.: TwoDot, 2004. FerFerber wrote her first autobiography, A Peculiar Treaber and Golda Meir are the best known of the twelve sure, when Jews in Europe faced discrimination; she acWisconsin women highlighted in this collective biogknowledged these difficulties for her family and friends. raphy. She was open about her religious beliefs and her obserFerber, Edna. A Kind of Magic. Garden City, N.Y.: vance of Jewish rites and celebrations. Doubleday, 1963. Ferber’s autobiography indicates Ferber’s works included Saratoga Trunk, featuring a the discrimination she faced because of her sex and Creole woman and a Texas cowboy. Warner Bros. filmed her religion; she even includes some “hate” letters she Saratoga (1945), and it appeared as a Broadway musical received. Her overall tone, however, is optimistic. (1959). Ferber set her novel Great Son (1945) in Seattle ______. A Peculiar Treasure. Garden City, N.Y.: Double-
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Jewish Americans day, 1939. Reprinted many times and originally written before World War II, Ferber’s first autobiography expresses concern for Jews facing discrimination in Europe and elsewhere. Her nonsexist, nonracist, nondiscriminatory attitudes were evident. Meade, Marion. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2004. Interweaves the lives of Ferber, Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Edna St. Vincent Millay; the men in their lives; and the new model they set for women during the jazz era. Roop, Connie, and Peter Roop. Hometown Histories,
Feynman, Richard P. 1900-2000. Appleton, Wis.: Appleton Area School District, 2009. Ferber is one of eleven featured Appleton residents in this collective biography. Smyth, J. E. Edna Ferber’s Hollywood: American Fictions of Gender, Race, and History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. This exploration of four decades of the relationships among Ferber and Hollywood personalities presents strong women and multiracial views—controversial topics at the time. See also: George S. Kaufman; Jerome Kern; Dorothy Parker.
Richard P. Feynman Scientist and educator Nobel Prize winner Feynman was a groundbreaking physicist who helped to combine classical electrodynamics and quantum physics into a theory that guided the formation of modern physics.
Born: May 11, 1918; Far Rockaway, New York Died: February 15, 1988; Los Angeles, California Also known as: The Great Explainer; Richard Phillips Feynman (full name) Areas of achievement: Science and technology; education Early Life Richard P. Feynman (FIN-man) was born on May 11, 1918, in Far Rockaway, New York. His father, Melville, was originally from Minsk and worked as a sales manager. He influenced Feynman greatly by teaching him to question everything. Feynman’s mother Lucille, a homemaker, helped to mold the sense of humor for which he is noted. His parents were of Russian and Polish descent and Jewish, although not devout. He had a brother, Henry, who died as an infant, and a sister, Joan, who also went on to become a physicist. Feynman showed a talent for electronics and engineering early. He tore apart radios and repaired electronics from a young age. He also was remarkably gifted in mathematics. Feynman learned both integral and differential calculus by the time he was fifteen. He experimented with math and reinvented mathematical topics that he had not yet learned. He was an honor student in high school and won the New York University Math
Championship in his senior year. His final score was so far ahead of the rest of the field that the judges were openly amazed. After high school, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While still an undergraduate, he took a graduate-level course in physics and published an article in Physical Review. He received his bachelor’s degree with honors in 1939, and he was named a Putnam Fellow, which means he was one of the top five scorers in a mathematics competition for colleges in United States and Canada. Feynman earned a perfect score in mathematics and physics on the entrance exams for Princeton—a feat never before accomplished. He did experience some trouble with admission because of his Jewish heritage, even though he never had, and never would, practice his faith. Feynman’s first seminar was attended by such luminaries in physics as Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and John von Neumann. Feynman’s Ph.D. thesis explored the relationship between quantum mechanics and classic electrodynamics and laid the groundwork for his future Nobel Prize. His mathematical solutions applied to different aspects of physics were seen as an important step in the development of physics. He received his Ph.D. in 1942 and married his high school sweetheart, Arline. Life’s Work While at Princeton, Feynman was asked to work on the Manhattan Project, the U.S. effort to develop the atomic bomb. He reluctantly agreed since to do nothing might have meant that Nazi Germany could develop the weapon first. He worked in the theory division and 365
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promised a milder climate than that of New York. He married a second time in 1952, although the marriage was short-lived. At Caltech, he constantly strove to take complex issues in physics and make them understandable at a lay person’s level. His ability to accomplish this would earn him the nickname “The Great Explainer.” Memorization of facts with no discovery through experiment was abhorrent to him, a position he strongly advocated. Feynman married Gwyneth Howard in 1960, and she stayed with him until his death. They had a son and a daughter. Caltech made Feynman an excellent educator and was fruitful for his research. He did research on the behavior of super-cooled helium, which allowed physicists to see quantum behavior on an observable level, and he developed a model for weak decay. He also developed Feynman diagrams, which can be used to note and calculate the interactions between particles in space time. Feynman also rewrote the undergraduate physics program at Caltech, known as the Feynman Lectures on Physics (1963), which led many to rank him as one of the greatest teachers of physics. The book sold millions of copies. His memoir, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985), spent fourteen weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. Feynman helped to develop the first massively parallel computer, and in 1986 he served on the presidential commission to determine the cause of the Challenger space shuttle explosion. Despite having been diagnosed with cancer, he persevered and found the design flaw in the rubber rings used in the joints of the fuel boosters. He died in Los The Nobel Prize in Physics Angeles on February 15, 1988, from complications from his disease. Until the development of the quantum electrodynamics theory
helped develop the formula to determine the yield of a fission bomb. Feynman’s sense of humor came into play during the secluded stay at Los Alamos. He picked the locks of other scientists’ filing cabinets and left notes, leading some to believe that there was a spy in their midst. He also went to an isolated section of the mesa to pound a drum, creating a rumor about an Indian drummer nicknamed “Injun Joe.” His wife Arline died from tuberculosis a month before the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb, at which he was present. Another of his important contributions at Los Alamos was discovering how to calculate how close a mass was to criticality, that is, the point where fissionable material can sustain a chain reaction by itself. This helped establish safety procedures for storing fissile materials. After he saw the devastation at Hiroshima, he expressed regret at not having left the project when Germany was defeated. After the war, Feynman turned down an offer from the Institute for Advanced Study despite the prestige of the position. He instead went to Cornell University, where he taught theoretical physics from 1945 to 1950. He experienced a bout of depression after the bombing of Hiroshima and worked on solving physics problems to relax rather than to further research. He developed an explanation for a balancing, spinning dish that would later feature in his Nobel Prize work. Other universities offered him professorships, and eventually he accepted one from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), which
(QED), physics had been plagued by the inexact nature of the calculations used in electrodynamic and quantum physics. Calculations could be made, but the mathematics was forced and the equations often arrived at spurious or infinite values. Richard P. Feynman got rid of the infinite values by using a sum of all possibilities to arrive at a consistent, definite value for the calculations. He laid the groundwork over the course of years, combining works from his thesis and calculations made about the forces of a spinning plate made during his depression over the Hiroshima bombing. He shared the award with Julian S. Schwinger and Shin-ichiro Tomonaga, who had both developed similar theories at nearly the same time. Feynman’s calculations contained the most breadth and, more importantly, introduced the Feynman diagram, which is still used in physics as an aid in notation and calculation at a quantum level. The combined theories served as a model for all subsequent field theories. QED is one of the most successful theories in modern science and has been used in many fields.
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Significance Feynman was a groundbreaking physicist who helped to usher in the modern age of physics. He helped to develop the atomic bomb and solved the mathematics problems that united the disparate elements of quantum and electrodynamic physics. He won a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum electrodynamics, and he also received the Albert Einstein Award (1954) and the Lawrence Award (1962). He developed Feynman diagrams, which physicists use as a tool to track particle interactions. He was a top-notch educator who inspired his students to learn through experiment and experience—what he considered
Jewish Americans to be the true ideals of science. His unique personality and strong drive to question everything brought physics to the attention of the public instead of keeping it sequestered in a research lab. His mathematics and physics breakthroughs are used to this day. He is one of the most influential physicists of the post-World War II era. —James J. Heiney Further Reading Feynman, Richard Phillips, and Laurie M. Brown. Feynman’s Thesis: A New Approach to Quantum Theory. Singapore: World Scientific, 2005. Describes the development of Feynman’s thesis and explains the thought process that led to his groundbreaking theories.
Fine, Irving Feynman, Richard Phillips, Ralph Leighton, and Edward Hutchings. “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character. New York: W. W. Norton, 1985. A series of anecdotes relating Feynman’s life in his own words. His views on learning through understanding and questioning everything come through the humor. Gleick, James. Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992. Biography of Feynman covering his scientific achievements and his personality. See also: Hans Albrecht Bethe; Albert Einstein; Donald Glaser; Sheldon L. Glashow; David Gross; Walter Kohn; Frederick Reines.
Irving Fine Musician Fine’s musical work was influenced by neoclassicism, demonstrated in his Symphony 1962, his string orchestras, his chorales, and his violin quartet. Born: December 3, 1914; Boston, Massachusetts Died: August 23, 1962; Natick, Massachusetts Also known as: Irving Gifford Fine (full name) Area of achievement: Music Early Life Irving Fine (UR-vihng fin) was born on December 3, 1914, in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the eldest of three children, and his younger sisters were Audrey and Barbara. From childhood, Fine had always been interested in music. He not only expressed an intense fascination with music but also a profound talent for it. He picked up piano at the age of five and often practiced five or six hours a day on the family’s upright, later upgraded to a Steinway grand piano, which the family bought mostly for Fine’s use. He took lessons at the East Boston Music Center, and he had perfect pitch, which certainly showed in his exemplary musical abilities. Fine’s family life was somewhat dysfunctional, and his father, George, did not support his son’s ambitions to find a career in music. Having had an unsuccessful career as a lawyer, George did not have much sympathy for arts and music. Fine’s mother, Charlotte, was a housewife who tried to support Fine’s talents, but she would often be challenged by her husband.
Fine pressed on with his ambitions, often playing classical music, which was his strength. However, he did venture into pop and jazz pieces. His sister Barbara, who also played piano, was impressed by his ability to play pop songs in a classical style. Despite his talent, Fine did not begin composing his own music until 1933, when he entered Harvard University. At Harvard Fine received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees under the tutelage of famed musical composer Walter Piston, who was also a mentor for such famed composers as Leonard Bernstein, Leroy Anderson, and Elliot Carter. Life’s Work Fine’s musical career soared after his graduation from Harvard. He worked as a pianist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and taught music at Harvard from 1939 to 1950, during which time he developed close friendships with other composers, such as Bernstein and Igor Stravinsky. After his stint at Harvard, Fine taught at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where he founded its School of Creative Arts. Fine’s time spent at Harvard and Brandeis paid off immensely. During these years, Fine wrote some of his most compelling work, including a violin sonata and a string quartet, which was praised by critics. In 1955, he wrote a lament for string orchestra called Serious Song, which earned Fine accolades from friends such as Bernstein. During these years of composing and teaching, Fine 367
Finkel, Fyvush was also a distinguished member of a group called the Boston Six, a group of close friends and highly talented composers, such as Bernstein, Arthur Berger, Aaron Copland, Harold Shapero, and Lukas Foss. In 1960, only a couple years before his death, Fine began to work on one of his most ambitious projects, a symphony. This piece, called simply Symphony 1962, combined different influences, from neoclassical works to serial techniques. In the spring of 1962, Fine’s work premiered at Boston’s Symphony Hall to positive reviews from critics. In August of that same year, Fine received an opportunity to conduct the symphony himself. He managed to make it through the performance without any problems. However, a few days later, he began to experience extreme pain and severe headaches. On August 23, just days after conducting Symphony 1962, he died from a massive coronary. Significance While Fine’s life did not last long—he was only fortyseven at the time of his death—he left a lasting impact on the music world. His ability to combine neoclassical, serial, and Romantic musical elements to create his unique brand of classical music was lauded by contemporaries, critics, and other composers around the world. His string orchestras and chorale works remain part of several musical groups’ repertoire. Fine’s legacy has also been honored by the institution at which he worked. In 2006, Brandeis University formed
Jewish Americans in his honor the Irving Fine Society, which is home to musical groups that perform not only Fine’s works but also the works of the outstanding composers of the twentieth century. Brandeis also named a professorship after Fine. His influence continues through many of his students, such as Gustav Ciamaga and Richard Wernick, who have proved themselves talented composers as well. — Jill E. Disis Further Reading Fine, Irving. Music for Orchestra. Edited by Joel Spiegelman. London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1999. This is a collection of sheet music transcribed from Irving’s work, primarily for orchestra. _______. Symphony (1962). London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1962. One of Irving’s most famous works, written for orchestra. Ramey, Phillip. Irving Fine: An American Composer in His Time. Hillsdale, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 2005. More than three hundred pages of stories and information about the life of Fine and his development into a composer. This book includes detailed anecdotes from Fine and his family that paint a descriptive portrait of the man who wrote many classic compositions. See also: Leonard Bernstein; Aaron Copland; Lukas Foss; Philip Glass; Itzhak Perlman; André Previn; Isaac Stern; Kurt Weill.
Fyvush Finkel Actor Finkel began acting in Yiddish theater productions at the age nine. In 1965, he got his first role on Broadway in Fiddler on the Roof (1964), and he went on to act in numerous films and television shows. Born: October 9, 1922; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Philip Finkel (birth name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Fyvush Finkel (FI-voosh FIHNK-uhl) was born with the help of a midwife in his parents’ house in Brooklyn on October 9, 1922. His given name is Philip, but he adopted the Yiddish version, Fyvush, as his stage name. Finkel was the third of four sons born to Harry and Mary 368
Finkel. Harry, a Jewish immigrant from Warsaw, Poland, was a tailor; Mary, from Minsk, Russia, was a housewife. Finkel began his acting career at the age of nine, performing in Yiddish theater productions. Yiddish theater started in America in the early 1880’s. The actors toured major cities performing Jewish plays and adapted works by William Shakespeare and other classic writers. The shows addressed issues of being an immigrant, the generational conflicts between the immigrants and their American-born children, and presented traditional Jewish values. More than a dozen Yiddish theaters existed in New York City, and more than two hundred companies traveled the country between 1890 and 1940. Finkel played children’s parts until age fourteen or fif-
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teen, when his voice changed. At that point, he attended a vocational high school to learn a trade. He studied to be a furrier, a craftsman who dresses, designs, cleans, and repairs furs. Around age seventeen, Finkel performed at various theaters throughout the Borscht Belt, a collection of summer resorts in New York’s Catskill Mountains. After graduating from high school, Finkel moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he took a job in a Jewish stock company theater. He stayed with the company for nine and a half months. Finkel credits this experience with helping him become an adult actor. Life’s Work After leaving Pittsburgh, Finkel continued his Yiddish theater career in Cleveland, Ohio. Finkel married Gertrude (Trudi) Lieberman in March, 1947. Their son Ian was born the following year. Their second child, Elliot, was born in 1953. Finkel worked solely in Yiddish theater until the 1960’s, when its popularity began to fade. In 1965, at the age of forty-three, he got his first role in American theater on Broadway playing Mordcha, the innkeeper in Fyvush Finkel. (AP/Wide World Photos) Fiddler on the Roof (1964). The show ran on Broadway until 1972. In the revival in 1981, eighty-five, Finkel was in David Ives’s play New JerusaFinkel played the butcher, Lazar Wolf. He later played lem (2008). The play is about the banishment of philosothe lead role of Tevye for twelve years with the national pher Baruch Spinoza from Amsterdam’s Jewish commutouring company. Finkel had the lead for five years in nity in 1656. Finkel’s wife died on December 31, 2008. an Off-Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors They had been married for sixty-one years. He continues (2003). Finkel also began appearing in films and televito act in films: The Urn (2008), A Serious Man (2009), sion shows. He is probably best known for his role on Daand The Other Men in Black (2010) about the Hasidic vid E. Kelley’s televised drama Picket Fences (1992movement’s history and impact on Jewish culture. 1996). Finkel played the small town’s defense attorney, Douglas Wambaugh. He won an Emmy Award in 1994 Significance for the role. After the cancellation of Picket Fences, Finkel is best known for playing cranky old Jewish Finkel played a history teacher on Boston Public. men, which has been criticized by some for promoting In 1991, he was featured in Off-Broadway’s Finkel’s stereotypes, but this does not bother him. During his YidFollies, songs and comedy sketches from Yiddish thedish theater career, his father advised him to ignore critater. A few years later, he appeared in Fyvush Finkel— ics, because the audience loved him, and that was all that From Second Avenue to Broadway, which combined mattered. Finkel has been an actor for more than seventy Yiddish acts with songs and stories from his years spent years, performing in Yiddish theater, on Broadway, in on Broadway. His sons Ian, a xylophonist, and Elliot, a films, and on television. He has also released a number of pianist and conductor, and his grandson Abbot, a drumalbums, of original and well-known songs. Finkel remer, performed with him. In 1997, Finkel received a star ceived a star on the Yiddish walk of fame at the age of on the Yiddish walk of fame on Second Avenue in New seventy-five. York City. When he is not performing in plays, the family —Jennifer L. Campbell tours the country with their act. In 2008, at the age of 369
Finkelstein, Louis Further Reading Lifson, David S. The Yiddish Theater in America. New York: Thomas Yoselof, 1965. A detailed overview of all aspects of Yiddish theater, including sections on writers, actors, plays, drama clubs, theaters, and typical audiences. Also contains an extensive bibliography and photographs. Lovece, Frank. “Fast Chat with Fyvush Finkel.” Newsday, January 5, 2008. Article places Finkel within the tradition of Yiddish theater. Schechter, Joel. Messiahs of 1933: How American Yid-
Jewish Americans dish Theatre Survived Adversity Through Satire. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008. Investigates the connections among Yiddish theater, Jewish radicalism, and popular cultures. The author describes common plays of the era and their meanings. He also compares American Yiddish theater to the movements in England and the Soviet Union. See also: Woody Allen; Alan Arkin; Jack Benny; Fanny Brice; Albert Brooks; Danny Kaye; Walter Matthau.
Louis Finkelstein Rabbi, religious leader, scholar Overseeing one of the most tumultuous periods in Jewish American history, Louis Finkelstein, a rabbi, was long a leader of the Conservative movement. Interested in reminding Jews of their scholarly heritage, he became a prolific writer on a variety of Jewish subjects. Born: June 14, 1895; Cincinnati, Ohio Died: November 29, 1991; New York, New York Also known as: Dr. Louis Finkelstein Area of achievement: Religion and theology Early Life Finkelstein (FIHNK-ehl-stin) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to an immigrant Lithuanian rabbi, Simon, and his wife, Hannah. The family moved when Finkelstein was young to the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, which was then a major Jewish settlement. So many Jewish congregations existed in Brownsville that it was called the American Jerusalem, and Finkelstein’s father was the minister of one of its most devout synagogues. Finkelstein was raised in a strongly Orthodox tradition. He awoke every day, hours before dawn, to study the Torah, a practice he would continue all his life. He learned about the great Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages Maimonides, whom Finkelstein came to respect greatly, and he read the Talmud. The unique environment of Brownsville had a strong effect on the future rabbi. Brownsville had arisen from empty land in only a few years in the late nineteenth century, and the Jewish immigrants from Europe were the first inhabitants. Heavily industrialized, the area was made up of small apartments, and those who settled there mostly worked in the garment industry. The Jewish com370
munity of Brownsville was isolated from the German Jews of the rest of New York, and at the same time it faced many of the same industrial-age problems. Margaret Sanger opened the first birth-control clinic in Brownsville in 1916, and the labor movement took a socialist character. English was rarely spoken in private; instead debates over religious and secular teachings took place in Yiddish and in Russian. There were many secular debates over Zionism, revolution, and labor in Brownsville. The young Finkelstein was bothered by all this secularism, and he became passionate at an early age about returning Jews to the synagogue. As a child, he would create study groups and give speeches to other children. He graduated from the City College of New York and Columbia University. At the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), he impressed his teachers, especially Solomon Schechter, with his knowledge of Torah. Finkelstein became rabbi of Congregation Kehillath Israel in 1919 and married Carmel Bentwich in 1922. Throughout his ministry, the problem of how to reengage assimilated Jews puzzled him, and he rejoined the JTS to look for answers. Life’s Work At the JTS, Finkelstein pursued his scholarly interests in Jewish history. While he grappled with contemporary problems, his historical research went far back in time. In 1924, Finkelstein published Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages. His investigation used primary sources and documented major legislation from the medieval synods. That same year Finkelstein became the Solomon Schechter Lecturer in Theology. Schechter had died in 1915, after having been president of the theological seminary, a post Finkelstein would one day inherit. Working
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seminary’s Institute for Religious Social Studies. He exthis job, Finkelstein wrote an analysis of the great rabbi David Kimchi’s commentaries on Isaiah. Kimchi was a tended this work to cowriting Faith for Today (1941) and medieval French grammarian who came from a family of Religions of Democracy (1941). Honoring Finkelstein’s distinguished rabbis, and Finkelstein was no doubt fascholarship, the seminary made him the first chancellor in miliar with him from his research on medieval Judaism. 1951, allowing him to do more study than administrative RaDaK, as Kimchi had been known, was popular with work. His editing of The Jews: Their History, Culture, both Jews and Christians, and this may have influenced and Religion (1949) was a triumph that united his wish to Finkelstein to seek closer relations with Christians. both study and reach out to Christians. The book was a In 1931, Finkelstein joined the administrative staff massive three-volume work written by Jews and Chrisof the JTS, and in 1934 he became the assistant to the tians. Finkelstein continued his scholarly work even after president. In this role, Finkelstein wrote his Commenretiring in 1972. He died of Parkinson’s disease in 1991. tary on Deuteronomy in 1936 and 1937. With the second part of his commentary came his elevation to provost. Significance In 1936, Finkelstein published his biographical work: Finkelstein’s long scholarly career contributed to the Akiba, Scholar, Saint, and Martyr. The ancient rabbi increased visibility of Jews in the post-World War II Akiba was one of the founders of rabbinical study, but to world. His wish to join with those of other faiths led to the Conservative (or Masorti) Finkelstein, Akiba had new projects celebrating the cultural legacies of different deeper significance. religions. One of the best examples of this is the televiAkiba was the inventor of a new method of interpretsion show The Eternal Light. Broadcasting from the ing scripture, in which every marking in every word car1950’s to the 1980’s, this show was created by the Jewish ries its own meaning. From this, Akiba derived alleged Theological Seminary to showcase Jewish, Catholic, and scriptural authority for innovations he wished to make to Protestant culture for a mainstream American audience. Judaism. In a way, this paralleled the hope of Finkelstein The Eternal Light was both popular and critically esand of the Conservative movement to maintain Jewish teemed, earning Peabody and Emmy Awards. traditions while integrating. Finkelstein’s discovery of The Eternal Light was just one part of Finkelstein’s the antiquity of this practice added to the legitimacy of successful attempts to return apostate Jewish Americans the Conservative doctrine. Continuing his interest in ancient Judea, Finkelstein published in 1938 The Jewish Theological Seminary of America Pharisees, the Sociological Background of Their Faith. In this massive work, Louis Finkelstein was one of the longest-reigning leaders of the Jewish Finkelstein attempted to rehabilitate the Theological Seminary (JTS) and the most influential. The seminary was Pharisees from the millennia of scorn founded in 1886 as a response to the Reform movement, which some bethey had endured in mainstream Western lieved was too radical. Conservative, or Masorti, ideology has its roots in culture. In the foreword, Finkelstein atGermany and is based on integrating while retaining traditions. The Jewish community in America during the late nineteenth century was largely tributes modern understandings of equalGerman, and the Conservatives were soon active in America. The JTS’s ity, human rights, and freedom to the first leader was Sabato Morais. Following him was Solomon Schechter, Pharisees, claiming they had a profound who created the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, an organizaimpact on the development of the Christion of conservative synagogues. tian and Islamic worlds before the EnBy the time Finkelstein joined, the popularity of the JTS had declined glish and American Puritans put their considerably. However, the Eastern European immigrants provided a democratic ideals into practice. whole new group of Jews who confronted the need to integrate while Following the death of Cyrus Adler in maintaining their identities, and these people would be the fuel for the 1940, Finkelstein was elevated to presimovement’s vast increase in numbers during the 1950’s and 1960’s. Durdent of the JTS. Finkelstein made it his ing the Finkelstein era, the JTS founded the University of Judaism, which mission to reach out to other faiths and the split off to form the American Jewish University. In the closing years of Finkelstein’s chancellorship, rabbi Mordecai Kaplan created a schism by rest of the nation. During the pivotal years founding the Reconstructionist sect. Since that time, the JTS has lost its of 1940 to 1945, he served as President monopoly on the Conservative movement, but it remains influential. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s adviser on Jewish affairs. In 1938, he had cofounded the 371
Firestone, Shulamith to their ancestral faith. The numbers in the Conservative movement exploded during Finkelstein’s administration, as the Holocaust and the creation of Israel awakened a desire in Jewish Americans to take pride in their culture. Finkelstein was originally wary of support for Israel, but as the nation resisted the initial opposition of its neighbors, Finkelstein reconsidered, leading to a unification of American support for Israel. —Jacob Davis Further Reading Finkelstein, Louis. The Pharisees, the Sociological Background of Their Faith. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1938. An example of Finkelstein’s scholarship. _______, ed. The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of
Jewish Americans America, 1949. Finkelstein edited this collection of thirty-eight articles by Christians and Jews. It was the most comprehensive source of its time. Greenbaum, Michael B. Louis Finkelstein and the Conservative Movement: Conflict and Growth. New York: JTS Press, 2009. Greenbaum, a vice chancellor of the JTS, was a student of Finkelstein. In this biography, he chronicles the opposition Finkelstein overcame from within the Conservative movement. Wertheimer, Jack. Jews in the Center: Conservative Synagogues and Their Members. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002. An investigation into the laity of the Conservative movement following Finkelstein’s death. See also: Harold S. Kushner; Judah Leon Magnes; Sally J. Priesand; Isaac Mayer Wise.
Shulamith Firestone Canadian-born activist and writer In her groundbreaking work, The Dialectic of Sex, and in her activism with radical feminist groups, Firestone raised consciousness about the cultural subjugation of women. Born: 1945; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Also known as: Shulie Firestone Areas of achievement: Women’s rights; activism; literature Early Life Shulamith Firestone (SHEW-la-mihth FI-ur-ston) was born in 1945 in Ottawa, Canada. She and her family moved to the United States, where Firestone was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, along with her sister, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone. Firestone attended the Art Institute of Chicago, where she earned a bachelor of fine art’s degree in painting. Life’s Work Firestone is the author of two books: The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970), a groundbreaking theoretical work, and Airless Spaces (1998), a collection of short stories focusing on the struggle of those with mental illnesses. She was also instrumental in cofounding New York Radical Women (NYRW) in 1967, Redstockings in 1969, and New York Radical Feminists in 1969. 372
Firestone worked with several other women, including Carol Hanisch, who popularized the phrase “the personal is the political” in a 1969 essay, to develop NYRW. The purpose of the group was to modernize feminism from a cause devoted to achieving political rights into a transformative movement focused on social and cultural change. The organization staged numerous actions to raise consciousness and garner public attention. In January, 1968, NYRW staged a mock funeral of traditional womanhood at Arlington National Cemetery to bury traditional female roles and to protest some women’s support of the Vietnam War. The funeral offended some women who believed NYRW was too radical. In September, 1968, the group orchestrated a more successful protest at the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Miss America Pageant originated in 1892 as a way of luring tourists to the seashore resort at Atlantic City after Labor Day. Nearly from its inception, the pageant attracted skepticism on the part of individuals concerned with women’s rights because of its apparent fetishization of women as sex objects, especially because of the beauty contest’s popular swimsuit competition. As early as 1935 a talent segment was added to the pageant to counter claims of exploitation. The pageant was controversial for restricting competition to white contestants only, a practice that continued until the 1970’s, and it was accused of anti-Semitism. In 1945, Bess Myerson was the first Jewish woman to win the Miss America title.
Jewish Americans On September 7, 1968, members of NYRW held a phantom pageant in Atlantic City where they crowned a sheep Miss America, set up a “freedom trash can” into which they disposed their bras, their lipsticks, and copies of Playboy magazine, and they accepted questions only from female journalists. To NYRW the Miss America Pageant symbolized the degradation of women; supporters believed the contest represented female virtue and American wholesomeness. In January, 1969, NYRW disbanded over ideological divisions between radical feminists and socialist feminists. Firestone and Ellen Willis left NYRW to start up Redstockings in February, 1969. Firestone left the group in the same year. Later in 1969, after leaving Redstockings, Firestone and Anne Koedt, a former member of The Feminists, organized New York Radical Feminists (NYRF). NYRF’s core ideology focused on male oppression as a conscious activity and women’s unconscious internalization of the subordinate position. This theoretical stance differed both from Redstockings’ so-called pro-woman line of reasoning, which held that men subjugated women and women adapted to these conditions, and the position of The Feminists, who held that women’s subordination was the result of the unconscious acting out of internalized sex roles. Both Firestone and Koedt left NYRF in 1970 over organizational and leadership concerns. Significance Firestone is an important feminist theorist, a veteran of second-wave feminist activism, and a contributor to the New Left. First-wave feminism strove for political rights; second-wave feminism primarily focused on cultural change; and third-wave feminism is both a critique and an expansion of radical feminism. Firestone played a pioneering role in the founding of New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists. Her greatest contribution, however, is the publication in 1970 of her book The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. Taking her cue from Marxism and dialectical materialism, Firestone in her book transforms class conflict into conflict between the sexes. Karl Marx viewed history in terms of class conflict: bourgeois and proletariat; Firestone viewed history in terms of conflict between the sexes: men and women. Marx analyzed material relations by applying the labor theory of value; Firestone analyzed material relations by applying the sexual theory of value. Marx advocated collective revolutionary action to abolish capitalism; Firestone advocated collective revolutionary action to abolish patriar-
Firestone, Shulamith chy. Marx discussed alienation in terms of the oppression of workers by owners, private property, labor, and the means of production; Firestone discusses alienation in terms of the oppression of women by men, childbirth and child-rearing, lactation, marriage, and menstruation. Firestone wrote that “the end goal of feminist revolution must be . . . not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.” It is this natural division of labor, based on biological characteristics, according to Firestone, that is the proper object of feminist revolt: “Nature produced the fundamental inequality—half the human race must bear and rear the children of all of them—which was later consolidated, institutionalized, in the interests of men. . . . Women were the slave class that maintained the species in order to free the other half.” The goals of radical feminist revolution were, therefore, fourfold: liberation of women from biological reproduction and socializing child-rearing; self-determination of women and children; total integration of women and children into all aspects of society; freedom of women and children to do whatever they wish sexually. The means for revolution that Firestone proposed were similarly anticipatory and radical: elimination of the nuclear family, abolition of schools, advances in reproductive technology, and codification of equality. Many scholars, for example, trace Firestone’s promotion of reproductive technology as anticipating cybernetics, human cloning, sperm banks, and test-tube babies. —Keith Carson Further Reading Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race, and Class. New York: Vintage Books, 1983. Davis suggests that Firestone is among the first to describe the connection between rape and race in her writings. Firestone, Shulamith. Airless Spaces. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 1998. A collection of short stories focusing on the struggles of persons living at the intersection of poverty, mental illness, and depersonalized institutions. _______. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. New York: William Morrow, 1970. A theoretical exposition that sketches a philosophical basis for second-wave radical feminism and an important work of the New Left. See also: Susan Brownmiller; Emma Goldman; Bess Myerson; Gloria Steinem; Naomi Wolf. 373
Fish, Stanley
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Stanley Fish Educator and scholar A controversial figure in American literary criticism, Fish turned away from the formalistic methods of New Criticism and its emphasis on text and toward readerresponse criticism, which focuses on the direct experience of the reader. Born: April 19, 1938; Providence, Rhode Island Also known as: Stanley Eugene Fish (full name) Areas of achievement: Education; scholarship Early Life Stanley Fish was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Max Fish and Ida Dorothy Weinberg. Stanley Fish’s father, a plumbing contractor, brought relatives who had escaped the Holocaust to the United States. Fish grew up in Philadelphia. The first in his family to pursue higher education, Fish earned a B.A. in 1959 from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1959, he married Adrienne A. Aaron, with whom he had a daughter, Susan. From Yale University, Fish earned an M.A. in 1960 and a Ph.D. in 1962. Following his education, Fish taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1962 until 1974. His first book, John Skelton’s Poetry, published in 1965, originated as the dissertation for his doctoral studies. This book is noted for its indebtedness to New Criticism. Fish’s career as a John Milton scholar began when, in 1963, he was asked to teach a course in Milton, though he had never taken a course in Milton. The course resulted in Fish’s second book, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in “Paradise Lost,” published in 1967. This book established Fish not only as an authoritative Milton scholar but also as the founder of reader-response criticism. The book argues that readers, in the act of reading Milton’s poem, participate in and thus re-create the fall of Adam from grace into sin. By 1969, at the age of thirty-one, he had earned the title of full professor at Berkeley, he had published two full-length works, and he had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Life’s Work Moving across the country in 1974, Fish taught at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, until 1985, serving as Kenan Professor of English from 1978 until the end of his tenure. Between 1976 and 1985, he served a joint appointment, teaching also for the University of Maryland Law School. Throughout the decade of the 1970’s Fish returned to the discipline in which he had 374
studied: Renaissance poetry. He edited the collection Seventeenth-Century Prose: Modern Essays in Criticism, published in 1971. The following year, in 1972, his book Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature appeared. In this Fish applies reader-response criticism to seventeenth century texts. Similarly, in The Living Temple: George Herbert and Catechizing, published in 1978, Fish applies readerresponse methods to the poetry of George Herbert. Fish’s best-known book Is There a Text in This Class? Published in 1980 and exploring a subgenre of readerresponse criticism referred to as interpretive communities, the book counters the formalism of New Criticism, which houses all meaning within the text itself, with a new interpretative strategy, suggesting that readers themselves produce meaning from the text. This book contains the title essay “Is There a Text in This Class?” and also “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One,” which argues that poems are made by the reader during the process of reading, which is shaped by institutional practices. Divorcing his first wife in 1980, Fish married the feminist critic Jane Tompkins in 1982, and in 1985 he moved to Durham, North Carolina, after accepting a position at Duke University, where he served joint appointments in English and law. In addition, he served as chairman of the English Department between 1986 and 1982 and as associate vice provost between 1993 and 1998. Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies, published in 1989, introduces readers to Fish’s work in legal studies. Within this book, Fish argues against the application of theory to practice. There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too, published in 1994, won the PEN/ Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award. The book, which includes five essays written for public debates with Dinesh D’Souza, a policy analyst for the Ronald Reagan White House, suggests the impossibility of transcending one’s own biases in an argument. Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change followed in 1995. This book argues against the politicizing tendency of many academics and advocates to remain focused on their own fields of expertise. Similar in its attack on liberals is his 1999 publication The Trouble with Principle, in which Fish says it is not possible to stay neutral in arguments based on abstract principles.
Jewish Americans In 1999, Fish moved to the University of Illinois, Chicago, serving as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences until 2005. Surprised by Sin was reprinted in 1998 and won the Hanford Book Award. He returned to his studies in Milton with the 2001 publication of How Milton Works. This text uncharacteristically provides close readings of both Milton’s poetry and prose and thematically focuses on humanity’s departure from God. Fish moved to Miami in 2005, accepting a position as Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University. He returned to his focus on the purpose of the university and the goals of academics, who, he argues, should teach bodies of knowledge and modes of inquiry rather than indoctrinate students with political and ethical values. He presented this argument in his 2008 publication Save the World on Your Own Time.
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The Contemporary Sophist Often referred to as a contemporary sophist, Stanley Fish is known as a maverick in American literary studies, frequently arguing against the grain of standard practices. Ironically writing as a theorist arguing against theory, he has promoted the ideas that theory cannot be applied to practice and that the work of the university has no relevance to society, that its value is merely intrinsic. Though not a proponent of feminism, despite the fact that he is married to the celebrated feminist critic Jane Tompkins, Fish employs the method of many feminist scholars: using personal experience as evidence. However, unlike many feminists, he is not critiqued for these methods. For example, two of his most popular essays, “Is There a Text in This Class?” and “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One,” originate from particular experiences in his classroom. In addition, it is ironic that he began his career as a scholar of classic Christian literary texts (literature of the Renaissance and Milton), even though he is Jewish. Moreover, while emphatically stating that he strongly believes that the Holocaust did, indeed, happen, he argued against the evidence presented by a champion of the Zionist cause against a Holocaust denier in a highly publicized court case on the basis of rhetoric.
Significance Often a controversial figure in American literary studies, Fish is known for going against the grain of current practices. Educated at Yale University under the auspices of New Criticism, he established his career with a book on Milton that focuses not on Milton but on the reader of Milton. Moving away from specific literary texts, he sharpened his focus more clearly on the experience of the reader, who, he argued, was a necessary part in establishing the text. Then he turned his attention to the common practice of liberal academicians, who permeate their classrooms with liberal political views rather than limiting their influence to their established fields of study. Fish also has argued against the possibility of successfully applying theory to practice. As a literary theorist arguing against the usefulness of theory, Fish, ever the rhetorician, extols the primacy of the rhetorical situation. —Nettie Farris Further Reading Fish, Stanley. “Holocaust Denial and Academic Freedom.” Valparaiso University Law Review 35, no. 3 (2001): 499-524. This article, though firmly stating Fish’s belief in the historical event of the Holocaust, analyzes rhetorical errors in the 2000 courtroom argument of Deborah Lipstadt against the Holocaust denier David Irving.
_______. “An Interview with Stanley Fish: Aiming Low in the Ivory Tower.” National Civic Review 94, no. 2 (2005): 41-45. This interview focuses on Fish’s views on the purpose of the university and its connection to politics and society. Olson, Gary A. Justifying Belief. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Includes a lengthy interview with Fish in addition to a bibliography of Fish’s works. Olson, Gary A., and Lynn Worsham. Postmodern Sophistry. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. This collection of essays on the theoretical strains in the work of Fish includes an afterword by Fish in which he responds to his critics. Includes a chapter analyzing Fish’s public statements on Holocaust denial and a brief reference to Fish’s Jewish ancestry. Williams, Jeffrey J., ed. Critics at Work: Interviews, 1993-2003. New York: New York University Press, 2004. Includes a chapter on Fish, with an interview, biographical information, and a list of publications. See also: M. H. Abrams; Harold Bloom; Irving Howe; Alfred Kazin; Elaine Showalter; Lionel Trilling; Louis Untermeyer. 375
Fisher, Carrie
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Carrie Fisher Actor, novelist, and writer Fisher played the role of Princess Leia Organa in Star Wars (1977), and she has written novels and screenplays, one of which, Postcards from the Edge (1990), was nominated for multiple Academy Awards. Born: October 21, 1956; Beverly Hills, California Also known as: Carrie Frances Fisher (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; literature Early Life Carrie Fisher (KA-ree FIH-shur) was born on October 21, 1956, in Beverly Hills, California, to Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Her father’s grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. Fisher can recall her father singing in synagogue, and she still attends Friday services, although she has described herself as an enthusiastic agnostic. Her parents were both entertainment celebrities; her father was a crooner with gold records to his credit, and her mother was a singer, dancer, and star of many popular films. The couple was dubbed “America’s Sweethearts.” Her parents’ fame was something that had a profound effect on Fisher’s life. It afforded her a comfortable existence and helped her own career, but Fisher felt that she always had to compete for her parents’attention. She has a younger brother,
Carrie Fisher. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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Todd, who was named after a family friend, Mike Todd, who was married to Elizabeth Taylor. When Mike Todd died in a plane crash, Fisher’s father left her mother for Taylor. Fisher attended Hollywood High School, but she dropped out to tour with her mother on the road. At the age of thirteen, she appeared onstage for the first time in her mother’s Las Vegas nightclub act and tried marijuana. At the age of fifteen, she consulted a psychologist, and her life would be plagued by mental issues. Fisher started at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London in 1973. She studied there for eighteen months until she landed her first screen role, in Shampoo (1975). Life’s Work Fisher auditioned for two roles at once, for the films Carrie (1976) and Star Wars (1977) since George Lucas, the writer and director of Star Wars, and Brian de Palma, director of Carrie, were close friends and ran joint casting sessions. Fisher was selected for the leading female role of Princess Leia in Star Wars. She was told to lose ten pounds for the role, even though she weighed 105 pounds at the time. She found Lucas a controlling figure, and she hated the hairstyle that was chosen for her character. She chose not to say anything because she was afraid she would lose the part. During shooting, she abused drugs, such as painkillers and hallucinogens. Star Wars became an instant success and was one of the top-grossing films of all time. Fisher was surprised by the film’s influence. In 1980, Fisher reprised her Princess Leia role for The Empire Strikes Back, and she played a smaller role in The Blues Brothers as the former lover of John Belushi’s character. She was briefly engaged to Dan Aykroyd during this period, but she left him to go back to her former boyfriend, singer Paul Simon. She also appeared on Broadway in Censored Scenes from King Kong (1980). She performed in the comedy Under the Rainbow in 1981, and she played Princess Leia for the last time in 1983 in Return of the Jedi. One of the scenes in this film featured Fisher in a gold bikini. The
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scene assured her iconic status and made her a Playing Princess Leia sex symbol for a short while. She married Simon in 1983, but they divorced in 1984. She apThe film Star Wars (1977) launched Carrie Fisher to internapeared in The Man with One Red Shoe (1985) tional stardom. When she was cast, she had no idea how much the opposite Jim Belushi. role would change her life. Even though Fisher hated the “cinnamon bun” hairstyle chosen for Princess Leia, it made her instantly Fisher accidentally overdosed in 1985 and recognizable. Her Leia character was seen everywhere, from postentered a drug rehabilitation program. In 1987, ers to plastic action figures. She appeared as Princess Leia in the Fisher built on her experiences with drug addic1978 television film The Star Wars Holiday Special and again in tion and rehab and wrote Postcards from the The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Her iconic status was elevated to Edge (1987), which was a fiction based loosely that of a sex symbol when she appeared as Leia in Return of the on her own life. The book won the Los Angeles Jedi (1983) in a slave girl bikini costume. Fisher was worried that PEN Award for best first novel and was later the costume would make her subordinate to the men in the film, but adapted into a film in 1990, for which Fisher the strength of her character made it empowering. The Leia characwrote the screenplay. The film starred Meryl ter appears in modern music in the song by Blink-182, “A New Streep and Shirley MacLaine. Fisher was in the Hope.” Princess Leia was also chosen by Empire magazine as hit film When Harry Met Sally . . . (1989) in a among the one hundred greatest film character of all time. Fisher is still invited to and commonly appears at Star Wars conventions. prominent supporting role. She appeared in a She has joked that if she ever becomes senile, she is worried that handful of films in the 1990’s and wrote two she will slip back into her Princess Leia character. novels, Surrender the Pink (1991) and Delusions of Grandma (1993). Fisher married Bryan Lourd and the couple had a daughter, Billie. Lourd left Fisher for a man after three years of mother’s Las Vegas show to roles in a series of films, her marriage. In 1997, Fisher was hospitalized for a bad inperforming career has spanned over four decades. The teraction between her bipolar medication and her pain Star Wars films that she starred in secured her icon status. medication. She checked herself into rehab afterward. She has appeared in more than forty films, on various Eventually Fisher received electroconvulsive therapy to television shows, and onstage. She has written awardtreat her bipolar disorder. winning fiction and nonfiction. Her writing talents also Fisher was also one of the top script doctors in Hollyextend to the field of script doctoring, and some of the wood for a time, hired to improve scripts. Her work was most prominent names in the entertainment industry uncredited, but she worked with the scripts for The Wedhave turned to her to polish their scripts. Fisher’s life has ding Singer (1998) and Sister Act (1992), among others. taken extraordinary turns. Her battles with drug addicLucas even hired her to refine his television series, The tion and bipolar disorder are well documented, but she Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. She was proficient used her challenging personal experiences in the awardenough at fixing scripts that she was featured in a screenwinning Postcards from the Edge. She has raised awarewriting documentary, Dreams on Spec (2007). ness of these issues by speaking and writing openly Fisher has appeared on various popular television about them. shows, including Ellen, Sex and the City, and 30 Rock. — James J. Heiney She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her role on 30 Rock. In 2005, R. Gregory Stevens, a friend, was Further Reading found dead in Fisher’s bed, and she relapsed into drug Fisher, Carrie. Postcards from the Edge. New York: Siabuse from the shock of the experience. However, she mon and Schuster, 1987. Fisher’s best-selling novel quickly overcame her addiction. Soon after she wrote loosely based on her life. Deals with her main characand performed a one-woman show, Wishful Drinking ter’s drug addiction and relationships. (2009), which eventually she adapted into her memoir of _______. Wishful Drinking. New York: Simon and the same title. Wishful Drinking was also nominated for a Schuster, 2008. An autobiography written in Fisher’s Grammy Award for best spoken-word album. easy style. Highly personal and gives an intimate view of the events in her life. Significance Palmer, Cynthia, and Michael Horowitz. Sisters of the Fisher’s long-lasting entertainment career has covExtreme: Women Writing on the Drug Experience. ered many aspects of the industry. From appearing in her 377
Fisher, Eddie Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2000. Various writings by women, including Fisher, on their experiences with drugs. Pertinent in the light of Fisher’s addictions and triumph over addiction.
Jewish Americans See also: Jamie Lee Curtis; Fran Drescher; Nora Ephron; Eddie Fisher; Goldie Hawn; Elaine May; Paul Simon.
Eddie Fisher Singer and actor A popular singer, Fisher was recognized as a bridge between the music of Frank Sinatra and that of Elvis Presley. Fisher gained scandalous notoriety for his famous marriages and divorces. Born: August 10, 1928; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Died: September 22, 2010; Berkeley, California Also known as: Sonny Boy Fisher; Sonny Edwards; Edwin John Fisher (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music Early Life Eddie Fisher (fih-SHUR) was the son of Joseph Fisher, a grocer, and Kate Winokur, Russian Jewish immigrants. Eddie Fisher was the fourth of seven children. He was nicknamed Sonny Boy after Al Jolson’s hit song of 1928. The family suffered during the Great Depression of the 1930’s and had to move often. Fisher attended Thomas Middle School and South Philadelphia and Simon Gratz High School. Even when he was in elementary school, Fisher’s singing attracted attention. His parents entered him in amateur contests, including the famous Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour contest, one of many he won. He became a star on the local Philadelphia children’s radio program The Magic Lady Supper Club broadcast on radio. One of Fisher’s lifelong friends, the character actor Joey Forman, was also on the program. As a teenager Fisher also appeared on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts radio program, to win the competition. Life’s Work Fisher dropped out of high school in his senior year to become a professional singer. Using the stage name Sonny Edwards, he went to New York and found several brief engagements. He performed at the Paramount Theater between acts. He sang with the Buddy Morrow band for a few weeks. He auditioned for nightclubs, but his boyish seventeen-year-old looks were too youthful for the mature setting. 378
The owner of the famous Copacabana, however, was impressed with Fisher’s voice and put him in touch with publicist Milton Blackstone, who arranged for him to sing the summer of 1946 at Grossinger’s Catskill Resort Hotel, on the borscht circuit, where many Jewish performers began their careers. For the next few years he worked part time at the Copacabana. In 1949, after not having much success, Fisher decided to give his career one more try. He placed himself in Blackstone’s hands. Since Fisher was no longer a teenager, Blackstone was more hopeful for the singer’s career. Blackstone arranged for the popular radio comedian Eddie Cantor to discover Fisher at Grossinger’s. Fisher then joined the Cantor troupe, for live performances on Cantor’s national tour and for appearances on Cantor’s television show. Fisher also signed a record contract with RCA Victor, and in 1950 he had his first major hit, “Thinking of You.” The following year his recording of “Any Time,” a song more than twenty years old, sold a million copies. Other hits, such as “Oh, My Papa,” “Walking Behind You,” and “Wish You Were Here,” followed. Billboard magazine voted him the most promising vocalist of 1950. In 1951, during the Korean War, Fisher was drafted into the Army, but Blackstone used his influence to see that Fisher would serve as a singer. He was assigned to Washington as the official soloist for the Army band and a tenor in the chorus. He also continued his public appearances on television and in person. The Army also used Fisher for recruiting purposes. Fisher did go to Korea after he made a personal appeal to President Harry S. Truman to allow him to entertain the troops there. Fisher’s records in the in the early 1950’s were top sellers. He had thirty-five in the Top 40; nineteen in the top ten. Four of his songs made the number-one hit on the popular Our Hit Parade television show. In 1954, Fisher was named Cashbox magazine’s vocalist of the year. Fisher had his own television show from 1953 to 1959. He also had a hectic schedule of appearances. In order to keep up with the pace, his manager sent him to Dr. Max
Jewish Americans Jacobson, who gave Fisher injections described as special vitamins. In fact, Jacobson was giving Fisher amphetamines, and the singer became addicted. His career came to an end in the 1960’s, and his comeback attempts were failures. Fisher had a brief and unsuccessful film career, appearing in some films with his wives Fisher was married five times. His first three wives were film superstars: Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, and Connie Stevens, all of whom he divorced. He also divorced his fourth wife, Terry Richard. His fifth wife, Betty Lin, died in 2003. Fisher’s marriage to Debbie Reynolds was celebrated by fans and in the press, especially in fan magazines and gossip papers. The young stars appeared to be an ideal couple, despite the difference in their religions. However, the same media chronicled their difficulties, as the marriage broke up, largely over Fisher’s problems and finally his affair with Taylor, the widow of one of his best friends, Michael Todd. Taylor and Fisher subsequently married. That marriage broke up when Taylor had an affair with Welsh actor Richard Burton. Fisher had four children: Carrie and Todd, whose mother is Reynolds, and Joely and Tricia, whose mother is Stevens. His three daughters are successful actors, and his son helps Reynolds support her collection of Hollywood memorabilia. Fisher died from complications of hip surgery at the age of eighty-two on September 22, 2010. Significance Fisher was a popular vocalist of the 1950’s, replacing Sinatra as the teenage bobby-soxers’ singing idol. Although Fisher’s popularity brought him great wealth, his drug addiction and his hectic schedules ruined his voice. In addition, the rise of rock and roll made his style of singing fall out of favor. In addition to being a drug abuser, he became a compulsive gambler, lost his wealth, and found himself in tax troubles. He also was unable to establish a stable family life. His ex-wives Reynolds and Taylor and his daughter Fisher share bitter memories of him. —Frederick B. Chary Further Reading Fisher, Eddie. Eddie, My Life, My Loves. New York: Harper and Row, 1981. One of Fisher’s two autobiog-
Fisher, Eddie
Eddie Fisher. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
raphies, describing his marriages, his affairs, and his life as a celebrity. Includes illustrations. Fisher, Eddie, and David Fisher. Been There, Done That. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000. Later Fisher autobiography describes in his own words his hectic life and the famous people he knows. Grimes, William.“Eddie Fisher, Pop Singer, Dies at EightyTwo.” The New York Times, September 24, 2010. Obituary gives a thorough recounting of Fisher’s career. Stanley, Allessandra. “Roasted Eddie Fisher, Basted With Kindness.” The New York Times, November 18, 2004. Review of a television show in which Fisher appeared with his daughter Carrie and his son Todd. See also: Sammy Cahn; Carrie Fisher; Jerry Herman; Dinah Shore; Mel Tormé.
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Abraham Flexner Educator, author, and social reformer In 1912, Flexner created the Flexner Report, which surveyed the current state of medical schools and suggested reforms. The effort led to the closure of many inadequate schools, the reorganization of undergraduate premedical education, and long-term improvements. Born: November 13, 1866; Louisville, Kentucky Died: September 21, 1959; Falls Church, Virginia Areas of achievement: Education; medicine Early Life Abraham Flexner (AY-brah-ham FLEHKS-nur) was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and attended Johns Hopkins University. He came back to his hometown in 1886 to start a school that he intended to be revolutionary. The goals included small classes and other innovative techniques. He married in 1898. In 1905, he obtained a master’s degree from Harvard and started writing about higher education. He disliked many of the techniques of that day (some of which persist), including lectures with a large audience of students. In 1908, he published his first book, The American University, and he moved to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. His first book was revolutionary enough to attract the attention of the Carnegie Foundation and put him on the road to his first lasting triumph, that of reforming medical education. Life’s Work During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, several professional organizations gained great strength in America. The American Bar Association (ABA) flexed its muscle in the legal field, and the American Medical Association (AMA) flourished as well. These professional societies claimed that there were too many lawyers and doctors in practice that were underqualified. Critics of this professionalization trend argued that the AMA and ABA provided limited access for poor and minorities and that the professional societies were interested in keeping out those with different ideas or who had different political ideologies. Some critics also argued that the concern over the number of doctors and lawyers was based on a desire to limit competition rather than on a goal of increasing quality. Nonetheless, in this period these societies, along with the Progressive movement and a growing acceptance of the idea 380
of scientific medicine, pushed for a reexamination of medical (and legal) training. The AMA convinced the Carnegie Foundation to undertake the medical assessment, and it, in turn, called upon Flexner, who was not a doctor, to do the assessment. In Medical Education in the United States and Canada (1910), Flexner argued that better medical education would lead to better public health. Licensing boards in many of the states helped, as they began to require that doctors have a standardized curriculum and generally used benchmarks set up by the AMA. These reforms did a number of things and among them were eliminating many of the for-profit medical schools and tying many other medical schools to hospitals and universities. This may sound like a positive development, but many rural medical colleges were forced to close, which in turn meant that it was difficult for those in rural areas to become doctors and difficult for rural areas to attract doctors to work there. Almost all the African American medical schools were forced to close, with only two remaining open, and this was in an era when graduate education would remain segregated in many areas for the next four decades. These reforms did, however, achieve the AMA’s goal of increasing standards for doctors and its objective of reducing the number of doctors. After the AMA report, Flexner turned to medical education, and education in general, in Europe, and he studied those areas. He continued with the Carnegie Foundation, serving on its General Education Board, and he maintained his interest in education, even founding another innovative school. Throughout his life, Flexner argued that colleges should develop a student’s intellect rather than merely training a student for a job. In 1930, he moved to Princeton University and worked with its Institute for Advanced Study. Flexner attracted many of those who became well known there, including John von Neumann, an early pioneer in computer science and a renowned mathematician, and he also courted Albert Einstein. Flexner worked hard to relocate many Jewish scientists from Europe right before the Holocaust started, and this was the main way his religion impacted his public life. Flexner died at his home in 1959 at the age of ninety-two. Significance Flexner was significant in three areas: education in general, medical schools, and Princeton’s Institute for
Jewish Americans Advanced Study. He changed education in general with his writings and studies. Flexner’s report led to lasting reforms in medical school, and decades later his standards generally are still applied, with medical schools still being tied to universities and hospitals. The narrowing results of his study are also still being felt. Flexner also greatly helped Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study to become stronger, as he attracted many of the top names that became known there, including Einstein. —Scott A. Merriman Further Reading Barr, Donald A. Questioning the Premedical Paradigm: Enhancing Diversity in the Medical Profession a Century after the Flexner Report. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. This examines current medical education and argues that many of the prerequisites set up in response to the Flexner report may be counterproductive, particularly in terms of attracting minority doctors. Barzansky, Barbara, and Norman Gevitz, eds. Beyond
Foer, Jonathan Safran Flexner: Medical Education in the Twentieth Century. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. Takes the themes suggested by Flexner for medical education in the early twentieth century and traces their development throughout the century since. Bonner, Thomas Neville. Iconoclast: Abraham Flexner and a Life in Learning. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. This book examines Flexner and explains his path to being an educational reformer, especially for medical schools. It also discusses his personality and the other educational efforts in which he was involved. Flexner, Abraham. Medical Education in the United States and Canada. North Stratford, N.H.: Ayer, 2003. A modern reprint of the classic text from 1910. Zelenka, Marc H. The Educational Philosophy of Abraham Flexner: Creating Cogency in Medical Education. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008. Examines Flexner’s ideas and shows how they shaped his reform of medical schools. See also: Mary Antin; Hannah Arendt; Louis Wirth.
Jonathan Safran Foer Writer and novelist In his novels Foer addresses the issue of human suffering, from the Holocaust to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and his nonfiction book, Eating Animals, looks at the suffering of animals in the food industry. Born: January 1, 1977; Washington, D.C. Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Jonathan Safran Foer (SAF-ran FOH-ur) was born January 1, 1977, in Washington, D.C., the son of Albert Foer, an attorney, and Polish-born Esther Safran, president of a public-relations firm. At eight, Jonathan Safran Foer was injured in a chemistry-lab accident, which produced a mental breakdown lasting three years. At Princeton, the novelist Joyce Carol Oates encouraged him to become a writer and directed his senior thesis on his grandfather Louis Safran; it earned him the Princeton Senior Creative Writing Thesis Prize. Following graduation, Foer visited Ukraine and turned his thesis into his first novel, Everything Is Illuminated (2002).
Life’s Work When his first novel, Everything Is Illuminated, appeared in 2002, Foer became a celebrity overnight. The contract included film rights, extremely unusual for a first novel by a twenty-two-year-old. (The film adaptation directed by Liev Schreiber was released in 2005.) The contract’s projected value was two million dollars. Dubbed a “wunderkind” and a “literary rock star,” Foer enjoyed the mixed blessing of media hype. It brought him instant recognition and affluence, eliminating any hurry to write another novel or worry about finding a publisher. Foer was not the hero of Everything Is Illuminated, although he is called a “hero” by the other main character, Alex. The character “Jonathan Safran Foer” has traveled to the Ukraine searching for a woman named Augustine who supposedly saved Foer’s grandfather from the Nazis in 1942. He is assisted by Alex, a young Ukrainian whose fractured English is a source of humor, along with Alex’s “blind” chauffeur grandfather with his flatulent dog Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior. The story is told through Alex’s letters to Jonathan re381
Foer, Jonathan Safran garding the search for Augustine and the rough draft of the chronicle Jonathan is writing about his legendary ancestors who founded the shtetl of Trachimbrod and of Brod, who typifies the narrative’s mixture of joyfulness and pain. The day her father dies, she is raped in a context of comic exaggeration and folk humor. Similarly Alex’s humorous use of English and Jonathan’s rollicking history of the Safrans give way to the horror of Nazi atrocities, when each Jewish male is forced to spit on the Torah or witness the death of one after another family member. Particularly sadistic is the shooting of an unborn child whose mother survives. Jonathan later learns that Alex’s grandfather also has a Holocaust story. The Nazis assembled the people of his village and threatened to shoot each man who refused to point out a Jew. Eventually Alex’s grandfather identified his friend Herschel, who had been a second father to Alex’s father. That guilt causes Alex’s grandfather to slit his wrists in the bathtub. Humor and horror are also central to Foer’s second book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), another novel of interrelated narratives. One story is told by the eleven-year-old Oskar Schell, whose father perished in the collapse of the World Trade Center two years earlier (2001). In his father’s closet, Oskar finds a key and a piece of paper with “Black” written on it and searches for the key’s owner by interviewing everybody in the phone book named Black. Another narrative concerns the long letter his “blind” grandmother is writing to him on a typewriter without a ribbon. Another is produced by Oskar’s grandfather who lost his fiancé and their unborn child in the 1945 Allied reprisal firebombing of Dresden. The grandfather married the fiancé’s sister only when she agreed not to become pregnant and repeat his earlier loss. After she becomes pregnant and he leaves, the grandfather spends almost four decades writing letters to his second “lost” son, but sending only the empty envelopes, until he learns their son was killed on September 11, 2001, during the terrorist attacks on New York. The Schells are not identified religiously or ethnically as Jews. Oskar’s father does manage the family’s jewelry store, but certainly Jews have no monopoly on selling jewelry. If Oskar’s grandparents were in Dresden until
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Jewish Americans 1945, it is unlikely they could have escaped the Nazis if they were Jews. Significance Like Art Spiegelman’s use of the graphic novel in Maus, Foer seeks unconventional means to represent human suffering. Humor in the face of oppression may qualify Foer also as a Jewish writer. Foer’s significance may eventually lie in the vegetarian agenda espoused in his nonfiction book Eating Animals, published in late 2009. It exposes the horrors in the meat and seafood industries. He writes that as a child he came to see food as symbolic—for example, in the Passover Seder—and learned the principles of eating kosher, which insists that animals be raised and slaughtered with a minimum of suffering. — Earl G. Ingersoll Further Reading Collado-Rodriquez, Francisco. “Ethics in the Second Degree: Trauma and Dual Narrative in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated.” Journal of Modern Literature 32, no. 1 (Fall, 2008): 54-68. Explores the ethical consequences of the dual-narrative structure. Feuer, Menachem. “Almost Friends: Post-Holocaust Comedy, Tragedy, and Friendship in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated.” Shofar 25, no. 2 (Winter, 2007): 24-48. Focuses on reconciliation between the children and grandchildren of Jews and non-Jews “after Auschwitz.” Ingersoll, Earl G. “One’s Boy’s Passage and His Nation’s in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” CEA Critic 71, no. 3 (Spring/Summer, 2009): 54-69. Examines how Oskar copes with trauma and finds peace. Mullins, Matthew. “Boroughs and Neighbors: Traumatic Solidarity in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” Papers on Language and Literature 45, no. 3 (Summer, 2009): 298-324. Examines the need for “traumatic solidarity” to transcend boundaries of identity. See also: Saul Bellow; Joseph Heller; Norman Mailer; Bernard Malamud; Philip Roth.
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Fogel, Robert William
Robert William Fogel Economist and historian Fogel won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions in the field of economic history. His 1974 book, Time on the Cross, is an economic study of American slavery. Born: July 1, 1926; New York, New York Area of achievement: Economics Early Life Robert William Fogel (FOH-guhl) was the son of Russian immigrants who came to New York City penniless in 1922 from Odessa, Russia. They soon started a business, and, although the family was never wealthy, it was comfortable even during the harsh days of the Great Depression. Fogel and his older brother attended the public schools of New York City. Fogel graduated from Cornell University in 1948 with a major in history, and he received a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1960. In 1963, when he was thirty-seven years old, he earned his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in the field of economic history. While at Columbia, he studied under the noted economist George J. Stigler, who would later win the 1982 Nobel Prize. Fogel’s interest in economic history was also whetted at Columbia by another economics professor, Carter Goodrich, who pointed out to his students the gaps in the collective knowledge of economists. Fogel’s master’s thesis, prepared under the tutelage of Goodrich, dealt with the economic history of the Union Pacific Railroad, and later the thesis became Fogel’s first published book. Goodrich suggested that Fogel pursue a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins, where he could work on quantitative approaches to economic history with the noted professor Simon Kuznets. Kuznets went on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1971. Fogel moved to the University of Chicago in 1964, then had a six-year stint at Harvard, from 1975 to 1981, and returned to the University of Chicago. Life’s Work Fogel quickly noticed early in his academic career, even while an assistant professor at the University of Rochester, that the phenomena of economic history were not well quantified. Therefore, he took as his goal the formulating of quantitative and statistical techniques that would measure aspects of economic history. He was a pioneer in a field known as cliometrics—the analytical and
quantitative study of history. His research was computer intensive at a time when other economists were not using computers. Fogel’s early cliometric work was on railroads and their contributions to American economic growth. Contrary to those of other historians, his findings suggested that America would probably have grown almost as fast during the 1800’s even without railroads. Fogel made a name for himself in 1974 with the publication of his two-volume classic, Time on the Cross. This was a quantitative study of the accounting records of antebellum southern plantations. Time on the Cross concluded that slavery was a profitable system for southern agriculture. They concluded that southern plantations were 35 percent more productive than northern family farms. This contradicted the views of many historians, who argued that slave owners kept their slaves merely to appear wealthy, although the owners would have been better off hiring free workers. Despite the productivity data, a main point of controversy was in the way plantation owners treated their slaves. Fogel and Engerman concluded that, because slaves made a plantation profitable, the owners made sure that their slaves were well treated and happy. Slave owners did not want to overly exploit or oppress their slaves for fear that they would run away or get sick and not be able to work. Thus, as would be true with an expensive piece of equipment, plantation owners were willing to spend considerable amounts of money to keep their slave assets in the best of condition. Fogel and Engerman concluded, based on the numbers, that southern slaves lived better than northern industrial workers. They were also fed better and worked shorter hours. Slaves also typically received a couple of weeks off at Christmas, a benefit unheard of in the North. As a result of their treatment by plantation owners, slaves had a life span ten years longer than workers in northern cities. Fogel said that southern slaves lived materially better, if not psychologically better, than northern industrial laborers. Slavery was an efficient economic system wherein the slave workers, over their lifetimes, received back in the form of food, clothing, lodging, and medical assistance close to ninety percent of the income that they produced for the plantations. These findings were controversial and did not endear Fogel to civil rights activists. Later, Fogel conducted longitudinal research on the medical records of Civil War soldiers to determine the path of human evolution. He is basically taking records 383
Fortas, Abe of 100 and of 150 years ago and developing an evolutionary timeline to explain what humans will be like 100 years in the future. Significance Fogel’s major contribution is the application of the numbers from history to the problems of economics. By studying historical data and isolating their causes, Fogel has explained aspects of economics and history that previously remained hidden or misinterpreted. He studied micro-level accounting numbers to explain macro-level economic truths. When he received the 1993 Nobel Prize, Fogel was lauded for helping to revitalize the field of economic history through the use of quantitative methodologies. —Dale L. Flesher Further Reading Fogel, Robert W. The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100: Europe, America, and the Third World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. The product of Fogel’s research after he won the Nobel Prize.
Jewish Americans _______. The Union Pacific Railroad: A Case in Premature Enterprise. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960. Fogel’s first book, a quantitative history of the formative years of the railroad. Fogel, Robert W., and G. R. Elton. Which Road to the Past: Two Views of History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983. Two views of economic history methodologies, with Fogel espousing the quantitative approach. Fogel, Robert W., and Stanley Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. 2 vols. New York: Little, Brown, 1974. The classic and controversial work that made Fogel famous, it used plantation records to determine the efficiency of the slave system and the living conditions of slaves. Gibson, Lydialyle. “The Human Equation.” University of Chicago Magazine 99, no. 5 (May/June, 2007). Profile of Fogel and his work on the economics of human evolution. See also: Kenneth Arrow; Daniel J. Boorstin; Milton Friedman; Paul Krugman; Paul Samuelson; Herbert Stein.
Abe Fortas Lawyer and U.S. Supreme Court justice (1965-1969) Fortas was a gifted lawyer and a compromised jurist. As both advocate and judge, he advanced the cause of justice for juveniles, but, with frequent conflicts of interest, he made history as the first Supreme Court nominee to spark a Senate filibuster. Born: June 19, 1910; Memphis, Tennessee Died: April 5, 1982; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Abraham Fortas (full name) Area of achievement: Law Early Life Abe Fortas (ayb FOR-tahs) was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Memphis, Tennessee. His parents, Woolfe Fortas and Rachel Berzansky, were from Eastern Europe: Woolfe was born in Russia and Rachel in Lithuania. The Fortases were living in Leeds, England, where they owned and managed a china store, when they decided to join Woolfe’s brother in Memphis, Tennessee. With three children, the family arrived in 1905 in Memphis, where they had two more children, Abe Fortas last. 384
Woolfe, who renamed himself William, was a moderately successful businessman, and although he raised his children in an Orthodox household, he did so in an ethnically diverse neighborhood. Like his siblings, Fortas saw his religion as largely a matter of ritual. Music, in particular, the violin, was his passion. When his father died of cancer in 1930, Fortas found music to be a consolation and a source of income. That same year, Fortas graduated first in his class from Southwestern College in Memphis, where he was a scholarship student. Generous financial aid also permitted Fortas to attend Yale Law School, where he was one of the youngest students and one of the only Jews. Fortas did well at Yale, graduating second in his class and garnering the attention of a professor, William O. Douglas, who mentored the younger man. Douglas left Yale around the time Fortas graduated in 1933, and although the law school offered Fortas a teaching position, he opted instead to follow Douglas into President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal administration. Fortas first worked part time in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration
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and then went to the Securities and Exchange Commission when Douglas secured a full-time position for him there. In 1935, Fortas married Carolyn Eugenia Agger and moved with her back to New Haven, Connecticut, so that she could complete her law degree at Yale, where Fortas was reappointed to the faculty. In 1939 Fortas quit teaching altogether, taking a position as general counsel for the Public Works Administration. He continued his rise in the Roosevelt administration, finally becoming chief assistant to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. Abe Fortas. (LBJ Library Photo by Frank Wolfe)
Life’s Work In 1946, with the New Deal coming to an end, Fortas left government service to help set up a Washington law firm, Porter, Arnold, and Fortas, specializing in representation of corporate clients. Along with such lucrative work, Fortas also litigated a number of significant cases pro bono. Fortas defended foreign policy expert Owen Lattimore when the latter became a target of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade. Fortas also represented appellants in some important lawsuits concerning individual liberties, such as Durham v. United States (1954), a circuit court case that liberalized the insanity defense, and Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), the Supreme Court decision extending the right to counsel to all criminal defendants in state courts. Fortas continued his involvement in politics as well, helping to save Lyndon Johnson’s narrow victory in the 1948 Texas Democratic senatorial primary. From that time forward, the two men’s destinies were intertwined. When Johnson reached the White House in 1961, Fortas continued to be one of his closest advisers. For his part, Fortas enjoyed being close to power while at the same time continuing to reap the financial rewards of his lucrative private legal practice, and he declined Johnson’s 1964 offer to make him attorney general. The next year, however, Johnson forced Arthur Goldberg to step down from his role as associate justice of the Supreme Court, so that Johnson could nominate his friend Fortas to the High Court. Johnson did so—but without first obtaining Fortas’s consent. Fortas was easily confirmed, and over the next three years he did a creditable job on the Court led by Chief
Justice Earl Warren, usually voting with majority liberal bloc and distinguishing himself as an advocate for the rights of juvenile criminal defendants in opinions such as In re Gault (1967). In 1968, after Warren informed the president of his wish to retire, Johnson nominated his old friend Fortas as Warren’s replacement. By this time, however, the Democrat Johnson was a lame duck, having announced his decision not to seek reelection. Republicans, sensing an opportunity to humiliate Johnson and to nominate one of their own as the next chief justice, tasted blood. Fortas was required once again to undergo the Senate Judiciary Committee vetting process, but he made a crucial mistake, appearing before the committee even though no sitting justice had ever before done so. He encountered enormous hostility from both Republicans and southern Democrats, fueled, some said, by anti-Semitism and by charges of cronyism that escalated to claims that in counseling the president while serving on the Supreme Court, Fortas had violated the separation-of-powers doctrine. The hearings unearthed other improper relationships as well as evidence of greed: Fortas had accepted a stipend—funded by friends and former clients—equal to 40 percent of his Court salary for teaching a summer course at American University in Washington. In the end the committee recommended confirmation, but Fortas’s fate was sealed before his nomination reached the Senate floor, where it sparked the first filibuster in history of a Supreme Court nomination. The Senate never voted on Fortas, and he made history again in ask385
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ing the president to withdraw his name from Juvenile Justice Reform consideration. Fortas was the first candidate for chief justice to have been denied Senate apAbe Fortas was a pivotal figure in the advancement of rights for proval since the mentally unstable John Rutjuveniles caught up in the justice system. Fortas’s opinion for the ledge was rejected in 1795. majority in Kent v. United States (1966) marked the first time the Supreme Court considered juvenile court procedure. Fortas continFortas’s return to his seat as an associate ued his attack on juvenile justice the following year in his opinion justice was also unprecedented, but he did not for the majority in In re Gault (1967), in which the Court overturned stay there long. A year later, Life magazine relaws denying juvenile criminal defendants the same due process vealed that Fortas had accepted $200,000 to granted their adult counterparts. After that decision, juvenile defenserve as a consultant to a charitable foundation dants finally were granted the right to counsel, the right to crossset up by a former client who was under invesexamine accusers, and the right against self-incrimination, all of tigation for stock manipulation. Fortas later which had been denied them by paternalistic and misguided laws returned the money, but his reputation was pertaining solely to underage individuals. Two years later, Fortas shattered. With the likelihood of impeachment also authored the watershed opinion in Tinker v. Des Moines Indehanging over him and the newly elected adpendent Community School District (1969), extending the First ministration of Republican Richard Nixon acAmendment guarantee of freedom of expression to high school students for the first time. tively working against him, Fortas resigned from the Court on May 14, 1969. Fortas then returned to private practice. When his old firm, Porter, Arnold, and Fortas, rehe drafted such opinions as Tinker v. Des Moines Indejected him, he formed a new one, Fortas and Koven, pendent Community School District (1969), upholding while his wife remained at the renamed Arnold and Porhigh school students’ right to protest the war in Vietnam ter. Fortas’s new firm—combining, like the previous one, by wearing black armbands to school. corporate and pro bono work—was a success, and Fortas —Lisa Paddock even appeared on several occasions before his old colleagues on the Supreme Court. Further Reading Fortas died from a heart attack in 1982 in Washington, Covitz, Akiba J. “Divided Loyalties.” New Republic 233, D.C. His memorial service was held at the Kennedy Cenno. 16 (October 17, 2005): 9. Argues Fortas was the ter, where he had served on the board since it had opened last person elevated to the Court after enjoying a close in 1964. relationship with a president. Dean, John W. “Hatching a New Filibuster Precedent: The Significance Senator from Utah’s Revisionist History.” Findlaw, Fortas, although undoubtedly a flawed and ultimately May 6, 2005. Provocative opinion piece about the sigtragic figure, will be remembered for his legal achievenificance of the Fortas filibuster to the future of this ments as well as for the improprieties and political misdivisive Senate rule. calculations that ended his judicial career. He was, by all Kalman, Laura. Abe Fortas: A Biography. New Haven, accounts, a brilliant lawyer, who devoted himself with Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990. Comprehensive equal fervor to corporate clients and indigent individubiography of the controversial lawyer and jurist draws als. It was Fortas who helped change history by successon Fortas’s personal papers and on extensive interfully representing the illiterate itinerant Clarence Gideon views with family and associates. in Gideon’s seemingly quixotic search for justice in a system that had denied him benefit of counsel. Since See also: Louis D. Brandeis; Stephen G. Breyer; Felix then, a defendant who cannot afford a lawyer must be Frankfurter; Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Arthur J. Goldprovided one at no cost. Fortas’s dedication to civil liberberg. ties continued when he served on the High Court, where
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Foss, Lukas
Lukas Foss German-born musician A pianist, conductor, and composer, Foss promoted American and avant-garde musical works. Born: August 15, 1922; Berlin, Germany Died: February 1, 2009; New York, New York Also known as: Lukas Fuchs (birth name) Area of achievement: Music Early Life Lukas Foss (LEW-kuhs fas) was born on August 15, 1922, in Berlin. His father was a lawyer, and his mother was a painter. Foss was a natural and gifted musician. He studied piano from age seven to eleven with Julius Goldstein Herford. After hearing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (1786; The Marriage of Figaro) at age nine, he decided to make music his life. To escape the Nazis, Foss’s family moved to Paris in 1933. Here Foss studied piano, composition, flute, and orchestration at the Paris Conservatoire. The family moved to New York in 1937, changing its name from Fuchs to Foss. In that year Foss successfully auditioned for Fritz Reiner for entrance to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Foss studied conducting with Reiner, as well as piano, composition, and orchestration, graduating with honors in 1940. Foss was accepted at the newly founded summer Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood, in 1940, where he studied composition with Paul Hindemith and conducting with Serge Koussevitzky. He was one of Koussevitzky’s wunderkinder, the other being Leonard Bernstein. He became Koussevitzky’s assistant two years later. Foss’s early compositions were tonal, Romantic or neoclassical in style and eclectic, and he could move comfortably among musical styles. He came under the influence of Igor Stravinsky while studying with Hindemith at Yale in 1940 and 1941. Foss became an American citizen in 1942, and he composed The Prairie (1942), an oratorio based on Carl Sandburg’s poems. It is Foss’s contribution to musical Americana. A suite from it was premiered by Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Foss became the orchestra’s official pianist in 1944 after performing his own first piano concerto. Life’s Work In 1946, Koussevitzky appointed Foss, who was receiving commissions to compose, to teach at the Berk-
shire Music Center. His international reputation grew when he performed the premiere of his second piano concerto in Venice in 1951. The center for Foss’s career changed to Southern California in 1953 when he joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles, to teach composition and conducting. He began conducting a hugely popular and successful series of six-hour marathon concerts devoted to a single composer at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. His interests took a turn toward the avant-garde in 1956 when he began experiments in controlled improvisation for small chamber ensembles. Giving classically trained performers the chance to improvise, he believed, would allow them freedom and a means to bridge the gap between composer and performer. Instead of relying on detailed scores, these performances involved the use of charts, graphs, and diagrams to guide the performers. His Improvisation Chamber Ensemble toured the United States in 1960 and helped spread this innovative idea. Foss later abandoned group improvisations, finding that they had become safe and comfortable and no longer adventurous. When Foss returned to composing fully notated scores, his works nonetheless incorporated techniques he learned from improvising, as well as atonality, serialism (twelvetone technique), synthesizers, taped music, chance, and minimalism. His experimental composition for soprano and orchestra, Time Cycle (1960), is his major chamber composition, and it established him as a leading contemporary experimental composer. In the 1980’s, however, his works took a conservative, perhaps more listenerfriendly turn. In 1963, Foss became conductor and music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Although it was agreed the programming should be mostly standard classical works, Foss quickly began preparing a mixture of new and classical music. He gave American and world premieres of important works by Anton Webern, Krzysztof Penderecki, Charles Ives, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis. In the same year, Foss became codirector of the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at State University of New York, Buffalo, which encouraged conventionally trained young performers to pursue careers in avant-garde music. The concerts, given in Buffalo and New York City, offered the newest music of the experimental avant-garde. 387
Foss, Lukas Through the orchestra’s programming, recordings, and the Festivals of the Arts Today in Buffalo, Foss and the Buffalo Philharmonic were known internationally as major advocates and promoters of modern, experimental music. However, because of his programming of modern music, Foss’s popularity with some of the local Buffalo audiences suffered, and he found himself defending his musical programming on local TV. While at Buffalo, Foss continued to teach at Tanglewood, conduct internationally, and compose. His tenure at Buffalo ended in 1968. In 1971, he became director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. Foss transformed what was a community orchestra into a professional, virtuoso orchestra, whose performers were drawn from the freelancers and the teachers of the metropolitan New York area. Again, Foss’s innovative programming, designed to attract New Yorkers to Brooklyn, included marathon concerts, a series Meet the Moderns, and premieres of modern works by Darius Milhaud, Ned Rorem, and William Bolcom. Foss continued teaching, at Harvard University, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. From 1972 to 1976 Foss served as conductor and music adviser of the Jerusalem Symphony, traveling to Israel up to seven times a year. Between 1981 and 1986 Foss was conductor and music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. As he had done in Brooklyn, Foss improved the quality of the orchestra and took it on a European tour in 1986. In 1984, he planned a Festival of American Sacred Music, which encompassed genres from classical to American Indian. Held in venues throughout the city, the festival presented world premieres of works by David Del Tredici, John Corigliano, and John Adams. Foss resigned his position at Brooklyn in 1990, and he continued to compose, direct festivals, and conduct internationally until his death from a heart attack in 2009.
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Jewish Americans Significance Foss was an enthusiastic champion of American music and the compositions of the twentieth century’s leading modern composers. He was leading figure in the 1960’s avant-garde musical scene with his Improvisation Chamber Ensemble and his own compositions. Although he never held the directorship of a major orchestra, as a conductor he improved those he did direct, and he used those positions to promote American and modern music. — Thomas McGeary Further Reading Gagne, Cole, and Tracy Caras. “Lukas Foss.” In Soundpieces: Interviews with American Composers. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1982. Interview in which Foss discusses some of his major works and his approach to composition. Kozinn, Allan. “Lukas Foss, Composer at Home in Many Stylistic Currents, Dies at Eighty-Six.” New York Times, February 2, 2009, D10. Summary of Foss’s life and achievements. Mellers, Wilfred. “Today and Tomorrow: Lukas Foss and the Younger Generation.” In Music in a New Found Land. London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1964. Appreciative account of Foss’s experiments in improvisation and his early experimental avant-garde compositions. Perone, Karen J. Lukas Foss: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991. Essential guide for Foss; contains biography and extensive listing of articles, compositions, and recordings. See also: Misha Dichter; George Gershwin; Lorin Maazel; Itzhak Perlman; André Previn; Isaac Stern.
Jewish Americans
Frank, Barney
Barney Frank Politician Frank, an openly gay member of the House of Representatives, takes a liberal position on many civil rights issues and effectively demonstrates that sexual orientation does not affect or limit political ability. Born: March 31, 1940; Bayonne, New Jersey Also known as: Barnett Frank (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; social issues Early Life Barney Frank was born Barnett Frank in Bayonne, New Jersey, into a close-knit Jewish community and a family with a tradition of social activism. Even as a teenager, he was fascinated by the work of Congress and thought about running for office but was concerned that his ethnic background would work against him. He graduated from high school in 1957 (stating in the yearbook that his future career would be as a lawyer) and was accepted at Harvard University, which he attended for ten years, completing a bachelor’s degree in 1961 and going on to do graduate work in government and serve as a teaching fellow. His interest in politics was expressed through articles in the Harvard Review and working for several Democratic Party candidates. In 1967, he was asked to work on Kevin White’s eventually successful campaign for mayor of Boston. He served as executive director of White’s staff recruitment team and quickly gained a favorable reputation in the Boston press as a knowledgeable and respectable politician. He maintained an academic connection by teaching a seminar at Harvard on Boston city government, at which many of his colleagues were guest speakers. He resigned from the Boston administration after three years and took a post in 1971 as chief of staff for Representative Michael Harrington in Washington, D.C. Life’s Work Frank’s debating skills, versatile command oflanguage, and deft sense of humor quickly marked him as a figure to remember. Some of the issues with which he is most closely associated in Congress—housing and opposition to wasteful spending—are continuations of his legislative work in Massachusetts. He began to create a distinctive political identity while on Harrington’s
staff and in March, 1972, won his first election in Massachusetts in Boston’s Ward 5 to a slate for upcoming legislature seats. His high local profile and concern for holding state legislators directly accountable for action on neighborhood issues (unlike city officials, whose population base was citywide) enabled him to mount a strong campaign. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1972 (managing to earn a law degree from Harvard in 1977) and served eight years before successfully running for the congressional seat vacated by Robert Drinan, a Roman Catholic priest, as a result of a papal order in 1981. A highlight of the race was a letter by Cardinal Humberto Sousa Medeiros of Boston calling upon all Catholics to oppose candidates who did not support right-to-life legislation. It was issued on Rosh Hashanah, at a time when Frank had suspended campaigning for the religious holiday and could not respond. His first term was marked by appointments to the Select Committee on Aging, the Government Operations Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee, an unusual concentration for a freshman congressman and in part the result of support from House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill. He continued to define himself as a liberal Democrat but did not adhere to a strict liberal platform on all issues. A redistricting move by the Massachusetts legis-
Barney Frank. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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During his second term, Frank became heavily involved in the ongoing debate on immigration reform, a focus of his interest for the next deA willingness to engage civil rights issues has been one of Barcade. He supported the idea of granting amney Frank’s interests from his earliest days in public life, born out nesty to illegal immigrants who had entered the of an awareness of discrimination based on ethnic identity in his United States before a certain date but sanctionhome region. His experiences as a participant in the Mississippi ing employers who knowingly hired them after Freedom Summer effort of 1964 led to his working with student advocates of free speech at Harvard, expanding his knowledge of that time. The text of an amendment drafted by the possibilities of direct action as part of the political process. him calling for the creation of a special counsel During his terms at various levels of government in Massachusetts, to handle complaints of discrimination from he expanded his knowledge of the dimensions of race and sexual noncitizen employees was adopted by the House orientation as social issues requiring legislative redress, while his of Representatives in 1984. The 1952 immigraconsistent sponsorship of legislation aimed at inequalities in the tion law excluding those who practiced “sexual American housing market made him willing to raise housing isdeviation,” which effectively kept lesbians and sues. A significant civil rights gap for the United States in global gay men from permanent entry, was another of immigration regulation was closed by Frank’s successful work to his legislative targets. In 1983, Frank was one of remove homosexuality as grounds for the legal exclusion of immia group of thirty-five members of the House grants. The interests of transgender people and the political realiwho cosponsored a bill proposing the repeal of ties of the debate on same-sex marriage have also been areas where Frank has openly, consistently, and succinctly stated his views of the relevant section, and in 1985 he rewrote the democracy as well served by balanced yet diverse argument. section of the immigration law that listed legitimate bases for excluding a potential citizen, omitting the antigay text. Over the next three years, he worked to build support for the final lature based on population shifts forced Frank to oppose reform bill, requiring only that the sexual-orientation sixteen-year congressional veteran Margaret Heckler in provision not be restored. The new language was proa bid to retain his House seat in 1982. Despite the reposed as a separate bill in 1988 and passed with solid bidrawn boundaries of the Fourth District (which resulted partisan support, and it was signed into law by President in changing Frank’s constituency substantially by adding George H. W. Bush in 1990. a large number of blue-collar communities), he mounted Frank’s work on legislation addressing various civil a diverse campaign (which included two debates that rights issues for gays and lesbians fit well with his longgained massive media attention) and successfully constanding commitment to exploring creatively the role nected with his new constituents to win reelection with a government could and should play in establishing social solid margin over Heckler. justice for its citizens. In his book-length essay Speaking It was not until 1980 that Frank began quietly coming Frankly (1992) he set forth a challenge to his readers to out to his family and friends, and in April, 1980, he aprethink the assumptions underlying social problems such peared as the featured speaker at Gay and Lesbian Awareas racism, crime, and antigay prejudice, while preserving ness Day at Harvard but did not disclose his sexual oriena respect for the democratic process and its varied freetation. After his reelection in 1984, he informed some doms. A lengthy investigation by the House Ethics Comof his congressional colleagues, but his public coming mittee of allegations made by a former associate of Frank out was sparked by the publication of a book by former resulted in the House voting to reprimand him in 1990, but congressman Robert Bauman of Maryland, who noted his open response to the charges and admission of misFrank’s attendance at the Washington, D.C., Gay Pride judgments led his constituents to return him to his seat. Day celebrations. Frank deferred discussing his private life until he could do so in the Boston Globe, and in May, Significance 1987, he came out in an interview, noting that he did not In his lengthy career as a member of the United States consider being gay relevant to his work in Congress but Congress, Frank combined a sense of social justice with a also that he was not embarrassed at being who he was. deep knowledge of the legislative process and a deft skill His constituents solidly backed him in this, returning him at political negotiation and compromise. He brought with to office in 1988 with a massive percentage of the eligible him to Congress an established sensibility that a politivoters in his district. cian should attempt to serve and improve society and di-
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Jewish Americans rectly address and acknowledge major problems while working to craft pragmatic solutions across party lines. In the 1993 debates over the military’s ban of gays and lesbians (popularly known as the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy) he proposed an unsuccessful compromise measure allowing homosexual members of the armed forces to live openly off-post but requiring them to be closeted while on duty. He also was instrumental in effecting the removal of the use of homosexuality as grounds for the exclusion of immigrants by revising the McCarran-Walter Act and served as a cosponsor for the Employment NonDiscrimination Act (ENDA). Outside the arena of public life, Barney’s decision to come out served as an inspiration to many closeted men and women that it was possible to be who they were without sacrificing their dreams of contributing to the betterment of American society. —Robert B. Ridinger
Frank, Leo Further Reading Frank, Barney. Speaking Frankly: What’s Wrong with the Democrats and How to Fix It. New York: Times Books/Random House, 1992. A clear and readable essay that presents the full spectrum of Frank’s political thought and philosophy. Weisberg, Stuart E. Barney Frank: The Story of America’s Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009. A detailed account of Frank’s life that draws on his own views of his life and accounts from many friends, family members, and colleagues in public and governmental service. See also: Bella Abzug; Russ Feingold; Dianne Feinstein; Al Franken; Joe Lieberman; Howard Metzenbaum; Harvey Milk; Charles Schumer.
Leo Frank Only Jew lynched in the United States Frank was arrested and convicted for the murder of a thirteen-year-old, with anti-Semitism fueling the tooswift justice. Later, he was lynched, the only known lynching of a Jew in the United States. The AntiDefamation League came into prominence with its efforts to combat the injustices done to Frank. Born: April 17, 1884; Cuero, Texas Died: August 17, 1915; Marietta, Georgia Also known as: Leo Max Frank (full name) Area of achievement: Crime Early Life Leo Frank was born in Cuero, Texas, to Rudolf and Rachel Frank. Rachel was born in the United States and Rudolf was born in Dudelsheim, Germany, where he received his medical degree from the University of Giessen. The Franks moved from Texas to Brooklyn, New York, when Leo Frank was an infant. His sister, Marian, was born in 1886. Frank’s family attended Congregation Beth Elohim, and Rudolf was a charter member of the Reform congregation. Frank excelled in school and received his college preparatory education at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute. In 1902, he began his studies at Cornell University. In 1906, Frank graduated from Cornell with a degree in mechanical engineering. After graduation he toured Eu-
rope and successfully climbed Mount Pilatus in the Swiss Alps. Frank worked for a brief period as a draftsman for B. F. Sturtevant Company in Massachusetts. His next job, as a testing engineer, was with the National Meter Company in Brooklyn. In 1907, he accepted a job as superintendent of the National Pencil Company from his uncle, Moses Frank, an owner of the company and Confederate war veteran. Prior to beginning his duties as superintendent, Frank studied pencil manufacturing at Eberhard-Faber in Germany. Arriving in Atlanta in 1908, Frank became involved in his work and in religious and civic organizations. He belonged to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, having met the high standards of professionalism required for membership. Frank was a member of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, a Reform synagogue referred to as the Temple. David Marx, rabbi of the Temple, developed many social welfare programs and actively participated in interfaith activities and the improvement of Jewish-Christian relations. In 1910, Frank married Lucille Selig Frank, the daughter of a prominent Jewish family in Atlanta. Lucille’s grandfather, Levi Cohen, was cofounder of the Temple. The couple resided with Frank’s in-laws in a prosperous residential area of Atlanta. Though Frank’s German Jewish community made significant civic and philanthropic contributions to the Atlanta area, discrimi391
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nation against Jews prevented them from being fully accepted into Atlanta society. Life’s Work In 1912, Frank took office as president of Atlanta’s chapter of the B’nai B’rith, a Jewish humanitarian and human rights organization. On April 26, 1913, when Frank was twenty-nine years old and had been superintendent of the National Pencil Factory for five years, his thirteen-year-old employee Mary Phagan was murdered. The body of the strangled girl, thought to have been robbed and possibly raped, was found in the factory basement by the night watchman. On May 24, 1913, Frank was indicted for murder, largely because he had given Phagan her paycheck just before her murder and because Frank exhibited nervousness when being questioned by the police after Phagan’s body was discovered. Frank’s monthlong trial was noted for its rampant perjury, inept and corrupt police work, anti-Semitic sentiment, and hearsay testimony. Jim Conley, a black janitor, was the prosecution’s key witness. Frank’s conviction rested predominantly on Conley’s testimony, despite the facts that Conley was arrested as a suspect in the case when he was found washing blood from his shirt following the murder and that he changed his account of the crime in four affidavits. On August 25, 1913, Frank was found guilty. Frank and his attorneys were absent when the verdict was given, because of the judge’s concern about mob violence toward Frank. Frank was sentenced to hang. His attorneys immediately filed the first of more than a dozen appeals, all unsuccessful. In October 1914, William Smith, Conley’s attorney, declared his belief in Frank’s innocence and Conley’s guilt in Phagan’s murder.
Promotion of Social Justice
When Frank’s final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied, an execution date was set for June 22, 1915. Just prior to leaving office, Georgia governor John Slaton, after much deliberation and an intense examination of Frank’s case, commuted his sentence from death to life in prison. The class tensions, anti-Semitism, political ambitions, media sensationalism, and southern resentment of northerners that plagued the Frank trial and its aftermath were further fueled by Slaton’s commutation. A mob of outraged citizens hanged Slaton in effigy, calling him “King of the Jews.” The National Guard was called in, and Slaton, in an effort to protect Frank, arranged his secret transfer to the state prison. In August, twenty-five men kidnapped Frank. He was driven to Phagan’s hometown and lynched. The lynching had been planned and carried out by many prominent individuals. After the lynching, information surfaced regarding suppressed evidence: Phagan had been bitten on the neck, and Frank’s dental records did not match the teeth bites on the victim. Strands of hair implicating Frank in the murder did not, in fact, belong to Phagan. In 1982, Horace Mann, then eighty-three, who had been Frank’s office boy, confessed to witnessing Conley carrying Phagan’s body the day of the murder. His life threatened by Conley, Mann, a frightened boy, withheld the incriminating testimony. In 1983, an application, subsequently denied, was filed by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Atlanta Jewish Federation calling for a full pardon of Frank. On March 11, 1986, Frank was finally granted a posthumous pardon by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles because of the state’s failure to protect Frank, thus preventing his right to further appeal. In 1995, on the eightieth anniversary of Frank’s lynching, a plaque honoring Frank was placed by Rabbi Steven Lebow on the building that stands at the lynching site.
Leo Frank was able to achieve in his death the opportunity denied him in his short lifetime to promote social justice and fair treatment of all individuals. For nearly one hundred years, Frank’s case has merited attention. In 2009, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired The People v. Leo Frank, a series that chronicled the case. The award-winning musical Parade (1998), myriad books, scholarly articles, educational materials, and feature films based on his story have generated opportunities to examine how individuals can better treat one another. That the need for a deeper examination of this case and its anti-Semitism is still warranted can be seen in the glaring presence of the growing number of hate groups and the more subtle adherence to beliefs that often unwittingly promote hate and division.
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Significance Two legacies resulted from the Frank case. One legacy was the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, made up of many of the “Knights of Mary Phagan” who had participated in Frank’s lynching. The revitalized Klan would no longer limit its terrorizing activities to blacks. Jews and Catholics became new targets for the Klan. Many believe that Atlanta Jewry, as well as Frank family members, still suffer from repercussions of Frank’s lynching. Another legacy was the consolidation of the Anti-Defamation League, which grew in influ-
Jewish Americans ence during the Frank case and is one of the most prominent defenders of human rights, challenging anti-Semitism and bigotry in all forms. The Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center provide a wealth of educational materials on the Frank case, to prevent others from suffering social injustices and to bridge understanding among diverse populations. —Maureen Moffitt Wilt Further Reading Anti-Defamation League. The People v. Leo Frank: Teacher’s Guide. New York: iUniverse, 2009. This sixty-three-page guide was created in collaboration with Ben Loeterman Productions to accompany the film of the same name. The guide contains sections on anti-Semitism and religious bigotry, racism and race relations, regional and class tensions, and the power of the press.
Frank, Robert Oney, Steve. And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003. Oney’s 742-page book is based on his seventeen years of research and includes detailed information from letters written by Frank, the transcript of Slaton’s clemency hearing, interviews with children of the lynchers, and the names of the lynchers kept in a family Bible. Wilkes, Donald E., Jr. “Wrongly Accused, Falsely Convicted, and Wantonly Murdered.” Flagpole Magazine, May 5, 2004, 7-10. Meticulously documented account of the Frank case written by a law professor at the University of Georgia. Wilkes concludes that, beyond any reasonable doubt, Frank was innocent and Conley guilty. See also: Samuel Gompers; Abbie Hoffman; Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
Robert Frank Swiss-born photographer and film director Frank is a photographer who gained renown for his photographs of American life collected during his travels throughout the United States from 1955 to 1956. Born: November 9, 1924; Zurich, Switzerland Area of achievement: Photography Early Life Robert Frank was born to Hermann and Regina Frank, both Jewish, in 1924. Hermann was German, but he moved to Zurich after World War I to import Swedish radios. Frank grew up during the time of the Nazi rise and occupation of the countries surrounding Switzerland. The family was worried that the Nazis might occupy Switzerland, but this did not occur. Frank’s father, however, lost most of his family, who had been living in Germany. The Frank family lived in relative luxury during this time, having many nice possessions and even a maid. Frank often skied in the Swiss Alps. As a young man, Frank was impressed by photographic exhibitions that were focused on a central theme. He went into a career in photography rather than into his father’s business when he graduated from high school in 1940. He became an apprentice for a Swiss photographer, from whom he learned the basics of taking pictures and of making prints.
In 1942, Frank went to work for an advertising photographer, Michael Wolgensinger, from whom he learned to analyze and to visualize a final print for an advertisement. He also learned to make contact prints and to organize his photographs. Wolgensinger also showed Frank how an organized group of photographs could make a dramatic effect in a book. Frank made his own book in 1946 called Forty Fotos. Life’s Work Frank went to New York City in 1946 because it had many famous photographers and artists with whom he could become acquainted. He soon got a job with the magazine Harper’s Bazaar, and he was assigned to photograph fashion accessories. Frank did not like the commercial nature of fashion photography, so he quit the magazine in 1947, but he continued to work for similar magazines. He also took pictures of the New York City area. Many of these photographs were blurry, had poor exposures, and were unusual in composition. Frank liked the impressionist effect that such photographs gave to a viewer. Frank traveled for about four years, starting in 1948, to take photographs in Central America, South America, and Europe. Many of his pictures were published in short books such as Peru (1949) and Mary’s Book (1949). These books gave the viewer only a vague impression of 393
Franken, Al the areas photographed with little written explanations, and many pictures were, as some reviewers would say, poorly printed and organized. Some of Frank’s photographs were published in major magazines such as Life and Photo Arts. Some photographs were used by the famous photographer Edward Steichen for exhibitions in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Steichen also encouraged Frank to exhibit his photographs elsewhere. Frank made friends with another famous photographer, Walker Evans, in 1954, and Evans encouraged Frank to apply for a Guggenheim Fellowship, which Frank received in 1955. With this money, Frank traveled around the United States for several years, taking nearly thirty thousand pictures. Frank selected eighty-three photographs from these travels to put in a book, The Americans, which was published in Europe in 1958 and in the United States in 1959. The photographs gave a vivid impression of the United States, and, as many have come to believe, this was his most important book. Many of the initial reviews of The Americans were, however, quite negative, with the reviewers criticizing the extreme blurring, the muddy look, and the graininess of some photographs and the apparent lack of care to make an adequate photograph. Nevertheless, this book has become a classic, and it has been republished several times. Frank moved to making short films after 1959 that often appeared to have been poorly improvised, even though he usually had a written script. Most of these films did not make much money. In 1972, he made a famous film about the Rolling Stones that documented not only their performances but also their drug use and sexual encounters. During the time he made films, he also continued to take and to publish photographs. For example, he pub-
Jewish Americans lished The Lines of My Hand (1972), which contains a variety of photographs from his worldwide travels. Significance Frank developed a photographic style that was often similar to Impressionist paintings, to give a certain feeling about his subjects. Even though many of his photographs were initially criticized, many reviewers later recognized that his photographs about racial and religious discrimination, average people going about their work, and people’s everyday lives were important an important documentary on the society of his time. Young people kissing, people sitting or sleeping in parks, people at lunch counters, people working on assembly lines, and a person dressed as a cowboy in a big city became the important subjects of his photographs. — Robert L. Cullers Further Reading Frank, Robert. Hold Still; Keep Going. New York: Scalo Press, 2001. This book has many examples of Frank’s photographs along with short essays about his photographs and films. _______. The Lines of My Hand. Rev. ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989. This is an example of one of Frank’s books containing mostly pictures with few captions. Greenough, Sarah. Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2009. A biography of Frank with many of his photographs, including all the photographs from his book The Americans. See also: Diane Arbus; Richard Avedon; Nan Goldin; Irving Penn; Weegee; Garry Winogrand.
Al Franken Politician, entertainer, and writer As a political satirist and commentator, Franken invigorated the political left during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies; as a U.S. senator, Franken successfully made the challenging transition from entertainment to national politics. Born: May 21, 1951; New York, New York Also known as: Alan Stuart Franken (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; entertainment; journalism 394
Early Life Al Franken (FRANK-ihn) began his life in the place that would become the center for his early career, New York City, on May 21, 1951. Franken’s parents, Joseph and Phoebe, raised Franken in a Reform Jewish household. Franken’s parents relocated to Albert Lea, Minnesota, when Franken was four, so his father could work in a quilt factory. When that business failed in 1957, the Franken family moved again, this time to St. Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis with a large concentration of
Jewish Americans Jewish families (for Minnesota). Joseph worked as a printing salesman, and Phoebe obtained her real estate license. Franken attended the Blake School, a private high school, where he met his future comedy writing partner, Tom Davis. After graduating in 1969, Franken attended Harvard University, where he met his future wife, Frannie Bryson, a student at nearby Simmons College. Franken graduated in 1973, and the couple married in 1976, becoming parents to a daughter, Thomasin, and a son, Joe. Franken’s career in entertainment began during this same period, when producer Lorne Michaels hired Franken and Davis to become writers for the landmark comedy show Saturday Night Live. Franken wrote for the show between 1975 and 1980 and 1985 and 1995, garnering five Emmy Awards. His early material, written with Davis, focused much of its satire on political themes. Franken left the show when Michaels decided against Franken as the anchor for the show’s ongoing Weekend Update sketch. After leaving Saturday Night Live, Franken’s ongoing interest drew him to pursue politically oriented work. He attended the 1988 Democratic Convention and later anchored reports on the 1992 Democratic Convention for the Comedy Central channel. Life’s Work Franken’s political involvement began in earnest in 1996 when he wrote Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, a book that attacked the political right, followed in 1999 by Why Not Me? By 2003, Franken’s interest in public policy deepened, and he was appointed as a fellow to the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard. While at the Shorenstein Center, Franken wrote a third book of political satire, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right (2004), a direct reference to the slogan of the conservative Fox News Channel. Franken’s political commentary became even more prominent when he began hosting a daily program for Air America, a liberal radio network, in 2004. The following year, he produced a fourth book and worked to raise money and make personal appearances to support Democratic candidates. In 2006, Franken decided to move his radio show from New York City to Minneapolis, which indicated to many that he planned to run for office. In February, 2007, Franken formally announced his plans to challenge incumbent Republican senator Norm
Franken, Al
Al Franken. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Coleman for the seat. He became the candidate of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and began raising large amounts of money to mount a challenge to the already well-funded Coleman. Franken attacked Coleman for being beholden to special interests. On Election Day in November, 2008, the vote count was so close that Minnesota law mandated a recount. After several recount challenges from both candidates, a panel of judges named by the Minnesota Supreme Court formally declared Franken the winner in June, 2009. Upon taking office, Franken quickly introduced a variety of measures, including legislation designed to aid disabled veterans and women in the military. He was an outspoken supporter of health care reform, favoring positions that would limit the profits of health insurance companies and move the country toward universal coverage. Franken also demonstrated a strong interest in banking reform, calling for changes in the system of credit ratings and expanded regulation of the investment industry. On the Iraq War, Franken has favored the use of American troops in Iraq but has been critical of plans to increase the number of troops through a “surge” strategy. 395
Frankenthaler, Helen As a member of the Judiciary Committee, he was also a strong supporter of the nominations of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Significance Franken’s ability to wed comedic satire to political commentary broke many traditional boundaries between entertainment and politics. His work as a liberal satirist of the political right is widely credited with reinvigorating the political left, and his own election to and experience in the U.S. Senate represent the transition many political leaders have made from previous careers in fields unrelated to politics, such as entertainment (Ronald Reagan and Sonny Bono), athletics (Jack Kemp and Bill Bradley), medicine (Bill Frist), and the military (John Glenn). —David Smailes Further Reading Franken, Al. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. New York: Pen-
Jewish Americans guin Press, 2004. Perhaps the most representative of Franken’s four books of political commentary, giving a good example of the use of humor to attack his conservative targets. Green, Joshua. “He’s Not Joking.” The Atlantic 301, no. 4 (May 2008): 74-79. A lengthy profile piece, giving an excellent account of Franken’s decision to enter the Senate race and some of the challenges he faced. Hirsch, Michael. “Al Franken Gets Serious.” Newsweek 155, no. 2 (July, 2010): 38. A good, quick summary of Franken’s experience in the United States Senate, particularly his reception by other members of the body. Thompson, Stephen. “Al Franken.” Progressive 69, no. 9 (September, 2005): 37-40. A lengthy interview with Franken on his decision to join Air America. Included are his reflections on the difficult transition from the world of entertainment to politics. See also: Bella Abzug; Dianne Feinstein; Kinky Friedman; Bess Myerson.
Helen Frankenthaler Artist Frankenthaler invented the soak stain method of painting, which launched an innovative phase of colorfield painting. Born: December 12, 1928; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Art; education Early Life On December 12, 1928, Helen Frankenthaler (FRANKuhn-thawl-ur) was born into an upper-class, progressive Jewish family in New York City. Her father, Alfred Frankenthaler, was a New York State Supreme Court justice who died in 1940. Her mother, Martha Lowenstein, was an immigrant from Germany. Frankenthaler had two older sisters, Marjorie and Gloria. After attending Horace Mann and Brearley schools, Frankenthaler went to the Dalton School, a private college-preparatory school on Manhattan’s upper East Side. Her painting teacher at Dalton was the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo. In 1945, she graduated from Dalton and studied painting with Vaclav Vytlacil at the Art Students League of New York. In 1946, she enrolled at Bennington College in Vermont, where she studied under the influential abstract artist Paul Feeley, who taught her the cubist process of geometric construction. 396
In 1949, Frankenthaler graduated with a B.A. from Bennington College. Later that year, at the age of twentyone, she received an inheritance from her father’s estate that enabled her to paint full time and to maintain an art studio in New York City. She also took art history courses at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Fine Arts, where she studied with the celebrated art scholar and critic Meyer Schapiro. In spring, 1950, she coordinated the Bennington College Alumnae Paintings exhibition at the Jacques Seligmann Gallery in New York City, where she met the distinguished art critic Clement Greenberg, who promoted modern art, especially abstract expressionism. He became her mentor and close friend, introducing her to a new generation of artists that included Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Elaine de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, David Smith, Barnett Newman, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, and others. Inspired by Pollock’s art, Frankenthaler joined the second generation of abstract expressionists. During the summer of 1950, Frankenthaler spent three weeks in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she studied with the legendary teacher and avant-garde artist Hans Hoffman, who had a major influence on her work. Gottlieb selected Frankenthaler for inclusion in the exhi-
Jewish Americans bition Fifteen Unknowns: Selected by Artists of the Kootz Gallery, held in December, 1950. Life’s Work In the fall of 1951, Frankenthaler had her first solo exhibition at the newly established Tibor de Nagy Gallery, a showcase for many emerging artists, including Fairfield Porter, Larry Rivers, and Grace Hartigan. Frankenthaler continued to exhibit regularly at this gallery during the 1950’s. Her work was also included in Ninth Street: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture. In October, 1952, before her twenty-fourth birthday, Frankenthaler painted her revolutionary Mountains and Sea, in which she introduced the new technique of soak stain painting. Inspired by Pollock’s technique of dripping and pouring paint, she had discarded the easel. However, unlike any other painter before her, she thinned the oil paint and did not prime or seal the canvas. The result was an image embedded in the canvas and a spontaneous, watercolor-like effect, which contrasted with the heavy impasto of abstract expressionism. This new technique had an immediate impact on Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis, and the development of the color-field movement, which emphasized large areas of solid, flat colors. In 1958, Frankenthaler married artist Robert Motherwell; they would divorce in 1971. She married her second husband, Stephen M. DuBrul, Jr., in 1994. In 1958, she had a solo exhibition at the prestigious André Emmerich Gallery, where she continued to exhibit regularly during the next three decades. Frankenthaler had her first retrospective in 1960 at the Jewish Museum in New York. In 1962, she started using acrylics, which dried more quickly than oil paint and produced brighter colors. During the 1960’s, she began exploring printmaking, and she also began to show internationally. In 1966, she was one of four artists representing the United States at the International Venice Biennale in Italy. In 1967, she exhibited her largest painting at the time, thirty by sixteen feet, in the U.S. Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, Canada. In 1969, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective exhibition that subsequently toured the United States and Europe. During the 1950’s and the 1960’s, Frankenthaler was an established, prominent figure in the New York art scene. She had become a highly visible and successful woman artist in a field dominated by men. From 1958 to 1974, she taught at many schools,
Frankenthaler, Helen including Bennington College, Brooklyn Museum School, Drew University, Hunter College, New York University, the School of Visual Arts, Swarthmore College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Rochester, and Yale University. She had a summer studio in Provincetown, Massachusetts. During the 1970’s, she established a studio and second home in Stamford, Connecticut, and began creating ceramics, tapestries, and welded steel sculptures. During the 1980’s, Frankenthaler had several retrospective shows, including an exhibition of prints at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (1980); an exhibition of works on paper at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1985); and an exhibition of paintings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1989). She designed costumes and sets for England’s Royal Ballet in 1985. The Naples Museum of Art, Florida, presented a retrospective of her woodcuts in 2002. Significance During a prolific career spanning more than sixty years, Frankenthaler invented a new method of painting that changed the direction of twentieth century American art. She became internationally renowned, with works
MOUNTAINS AND SEA In 1952, twenty-three-year-old Helen Frankenthaler painted her legendary, breakthrough piece Mountains and Sea, which measured seven feet by ten feet. It launched her career and introduced her signature style. Impressed with Jackson Pollock’s use of line as shape and his method of pouring or dripping paint onto huge canvases on the floor, she discarded easels and fine brushes. However, in a departure from Pollock’s methods, she invented the new technique of soak stain painting, in which diluted oil paint was poured on an unprimed canvas. Absorbed into the canvas, the oil paint acted like watercolor, which contrasted with the heavy, gestural marks of abstract expressionist or action painting. The cliffs of Nova Scotia, Canada, had inspired Mountains and Sea, but Frankenthaler did not aim to paint nature realistically. She wanted to use colors and forms to express a feeling about the landscape. Historically, Mountains and Sea was the transition between the highly personal and emotional painting style of the first abstract expressionists and the color-field movement, which emphasized large flat areas of color. In 1953, Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis adopted the soak stain technique and became notable color-field painters.
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Frankfurter, Felix collected by major museums throughout the world. Her many awards include the Spirit of Achievement Award, Albert Einstein School of Medicine, Yeshiva University (1970); the Creative Artist Laureate Award, the American Jewish Congress (1970); An Extraordinary Woman of Achievement Award, the National Conference of Christians and Jews (1978); the Jerusalem Prize for Arts and Letters, Friends of Israel’s National Academy of Arts and Design (1999); and the National Medal of the Arts (2001). In 2008, the Knoedler and Company gallery held a landmark exhibition, Frankenthaler at Eighty: Six Decades. Films about Frankenthaler include Perry Miller Adato’s Frankenthaler: Toward a New Climate (1978) and John Feldman’s video portrait commissioned by the State University of New York, Purchase College School of the Arts (2007). On April 1, 2010, John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco opened the exhibition Helen Frankenthaler: Paintings 1961-1973, which included many rarely exhibited works from private collections. —Alice Myers Further Reading Clearwater, Bonnie. Frankenthaler Paintings on Paper (1949-2002). North Miami, Fla.: Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, 2003. This 114-page catalog was published for the exhibition, February 14 to June 8, 2003, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami. Illustrated with ninety-six excellent reproduc-
Jewish Americans tions, including seventy-one full-color plates. Bibliography. Frankenthaler, Helen, and Karen Wilkin. Frankenthaler at Eighty: Six Decades. New York: Knoedler, 2008. A beautifully illustrated catalog of the commemorative exhibition from November 6, 2008, to January 10, 2009, at the Knoedler and Company Gallery. Chronology. Goldman, Judith, and Helen Frankenthaler. Frankenthaler: The Woodcuts. Naples, Fla.: Naples Museum of Art, 2002. Traces the development of Frankenthaler’s woodcuts from East and Beyond (1973) to the Madame Butterfly triptych (2000). Sixty-four color plates, bibliography, and index. Harrison, Pegram. Frankenthaler: A Catalog Raisonné, Prints 1961-1994. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996. An invaluable resource that reveals Frankenthaler’s innovative printmaking processes. Illustrations include full-color reproductions of all 235 edition prints and more than seventy proofs. Bibliography, index, and chronology. Rowley, Alison. Helen Frankenthaler: Painting History, Writing, Painting. London: I. B. Tauris, 2008. This indepth study presents new interpretations of the artistic and political influences on Frankenthaler’s paintings. Illustrated. Bibliography and index. See also: Judy Chicago; Jim Dine; Alex Katz; Lee Krasner; Sol LeWitt; Louise Nevelson; Mark Rothko.
Felix Frankfurter Austrian-born U.S. Supreme Court justice (1939-1962), educator, and activist Frankfurter was a professor at Harvard Law School, a key member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal Brain Trust, and an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Born: November 15, 1882; Vienna, Austria Died: February 22, 1965; Washington, D.C. Areas of achievement: Law; government and politics; education Early Life Felix Frankfurter (FEE-lihks FRANK-fur-tur) was born in Vienna, Austria, the third of six children of Leopold Frankfurter and Emma Winter. Although Leopold was a merchant, Felix Frankfurter descended from a long 398
line of rabbis, and his family lived in the Jewish quarter of the city. In 1894, when he was twelve years old, Frankfurter immigrated with his family to the United States, where, like many other immigrants of their day, they settled on the lower East Side of Manhattan. The Frankfurters prospered in their adopted home, and within five years they had moved uptown to the more affluent Yorktown section of New York City. After graduating from a public high school, Frankfurter attended the public City College of New York, from which he graduated with high honors in 1902. After working briefly for the Tenement House Department of New York City to raise money to continue his studies, Frankfurter attended Harvard Law School, from which he graduated first in his class in 1906. Frankfurter’s success
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at Harvard Law School was both academic and social, and he formed lifelong relationships with such individuals as Walter Lippmann, who became a celebrated journalist, distinguished philosopher, and political commentator, and Horace Kallen, who became a distinguished philosopher and Zionist. Nonetheless, owing largely to the antiSemitism of the day, Frankfurter initially experienced some difficulty gaining employment in his chosen field. Eventually, Frankfurter did join the New York law firm of Hornblower, Byrne, Miller, and Porter in 1906, but his tenure there was short, as that same year he became assistant to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Henry Stimson. Thus began Frankfurter’s long career in public service. Life’s Work In 1911, Frankfurter followed Stimson to Washington, D.C., where the latter served as secretary of war and the former worked officially as a law officer in the Bureau of Insular Affairs and unofficially as Stimson’s assistant during the administrations of President William Howard Taft. Both Stimson and Frankfurter left government in 1912 after the election of President Woodrow Wilson, and the following year Frankfurter accepted a position at Harvard Law School, where he taught administrative and criminal law for the next quarter century even as he pursued other activities. Frankfurter was a highly influential law professor, but he was not satisfied to remain solely an academic. Together with Lippman, in 1914, he helped to establish the important politics and culture magazine The New Republic. That same year, although he had never been an observant Jew, Frankfurter listened to the urging of his friend, the “people’s attorney” Louis Brandeis, and spearheaded the nascent American Zionist movement. After lobbying successfully for Brandeis’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, Frankfurter took over his friend’s former role defending progressive labor legislation for the National Consumers’ League. Frankfurter’s activism continued during World War I, when he served as secretary and counsel to the Mediation Commission on Labor Problems, established to settle defense-industry strikes, and chaired the War Labor Policies Board. After the war, he helped found the controversial American Civil Liberties Union, and Frankfurter’s sympathies for labor and leftist causes resulted in his public support for the immigrant anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, whom many believed to have been framed for murder. In 1919, Frankfurter married Marion A. Denman, who would later coedit the letters of Sacco and Vanzetti. The
Felix Frankfurter. (Library of Congress)
marriage produced no children, but during World War II, the Frankfurters adopted three English refugee children. In 1932, Frankfurter reentered the political realm by supporting the candidacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and when Roosevelt moved into the White House in 1933, Frankfurter became one of the president’s staunchest Brain Trust lieutenants, supporting New Deal legislation and supplying bright young Harvard Law graduates— who came to be known as Frankfurter’s “Happy Hot Dogs”—to staff the administration. Roosevelt rewarded Frankfurter by nominating him for the Supreme Court, where he took his seat on January 30, 1939. Frankfurter served on the high bench until a debilitating stroke forced him to retire in 1962. He died of congestive heart failure in Washington, D.C., in 1965. Significance Because of Frankfurter’s reputation as a political progressive and his stellar academic career, many observers assumed that he would become the left-leaning Court’s intellectual leader. Instead, Frankfurter, whose philosophy of “process jurisprudence” left him ideologically op399
Freed, Arthur posed to abstract principles and political outcomes, practiced a kind of judicial restraint that was out of step with the Court’s increasing emphasis on individual rights. Frankfurter’s years on the Court seemed strangely at odds with his earlier endeavors, most of them devoted to social activism and progressive change. In the end, perhaps his greatest achievement grew out of his quarter century at Harvard Law School, where he helped shape the minds of legions of students who would have a significant impact on twentieth century America. —Lisa Paddock Further Reading Greenawalt, Kent. “Variations on Some Themes of a ‘Disporting Gazelle’ and His Friend: Statutory Inter-
Jewish Americans pretation as Seen by Jerome Frank and Felix Frankfurter.” Columbia Law Review 100, no. 1 (January, 2000): 176-214. Argues for the continuing relevance of Frankfurter’s restrained approach to jurisprudence. Stevens, Richard. Reason and History in Judicial Judgment: Felix Frankfurter and Due Process. 1987. Rev. ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2008. Focuses on Frankfurter’s view of due process as a key to American judicial statesmanship. Urofsky, Melvin I. Felix Frankfurter: Judicial Restraint and Individual Liberties. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Brief introduction to Frankfurter the public man. See also: Louis D. Brandeis; Stephen G. Breyer; Abe Fortas; Arthur J. Goldberg.
Arthur Freed Film producer and popular song lyricist Freed’s production unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) helped shape the look and the style of the Hollywood musical, which achieved prominence in the 1940’s and the 1950’s. Freed hired many of the best directors, performers, songwriters, and technicians of the day to create films that became classics. Born: September 9, 1894; Charleston, South Carolina Died: April 12, 1973; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Arthur Grossman (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music; theater Early Life Arthur Freed was born in Charleston, South Carolina, one of eight children of Max Grossman, an art dealer, and Rosa Grossman. Freed’s father’s occupation as an art dealer caused his family to live around the world, but they eventually settled in Seattle, Washington. Freed graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1914. He went to work as a piano player for a Chicago music publisher and performed in vaudeville. During World War I, Freed joined the Army and staged military shows with his partner, Louis Silvers. After the war, Freed returned to Seattle, but soon he moved to California to become a theater manager in Los Angeles. In 1921, Freed began collaborating with composer Ignacio (“Nacio”) Herb Brown. He married Renée Klein on March 14, 1923; they had one child. 400
In 1927, Freed and Brown wrote “Singin’ in the Rain,” the team’s most famous song, for a stage musical that Freed was producing in Los Angeles, The Hollywood Music Box Revue. The Freed-Brown collaboration lasted for more than twenty years; they wrote songs for more than two dozen Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) films. Several became popular standards, such as “Temptation,” “All I Do Is Dream of You,” and “You Were Meant for Me.” Life’s Work Freed and Brown joined MGM in 1929 as lyricist and composer, respectively, for that studio’s first all-talking musical, The Broadway Melody. The film Hollywood Music Box Revue of 1929 featured the motion-picture debut of “Singin’in the Rain,” which was later sung by Judy Garland in Little Nellie Kelly (1940), and then in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), which both critics and fans consider one of the best film musicals of all time. In 1938, Freed persuaded MGM president Louis B. Mayer to acquire film rights to L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; Freed became that classic film’s associate producer. The role of Dorothy was given to newcomer Garland, whom Freed discovered and then placed under contract to MGM. However, before The Wizard of Oz (1939) was finished, Mayer allowed Freed to produce Babes in Arms (1939), with Garland and Mickey Rooney as the leads; it became one of the studio’s largest-grossing films. This was followed
Jewish Americans by several other Freed-produced “backstage musicals,” all featuring Rooney and Garland, including Strike Up the Band (1940), Babes on Broadway (1941), and Girl Crazy (1943). Freed initiated a new era in the film musical when he persuaded Vincente Minnelli to join his musical production unit to direct Cabin in the Sky (1943) and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), one of Freed’s most fondly remembered films. Thereafter, Minnelli or former choreographers Stanley Donen and Charles Walters directed virtually all of Freed’s most renowned films: Easter Parade (1948), the only film Fred Astaire and Garland made together; On the Town (1949), one of the first films to be shot almost completely on location; Annie Get Your Gun (1950); An American in Paris (1951), which won an Academy Award for Best Picture; The Band Wagon (1953) and Silk Stockings (1957), both starring Astaire and Cyd Charisse; and Gigi (1958), Freed’s last great production, which benefited greatly from its Paris locations and which also won an Academy Award for Best Picture. All defined “the MGM musical,” with its integration of song and dance into the story line and a glorious display of color, costume, and scenic design. By the end of the 1950’s, the number of Freed’s projects decreased; his last film production was a nonmusical, The Light in the Piazza (1962). However, he continued to devote time to his hobby of growing prize-winning orchids. In 1951, Freed received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was its president from 1963 through 1967, and he produced several Academy Award shows, for which he received a special Oscar in 1968 for “superlative and distinguished service.” Overall, his productions received twenty-one Academy Awards. Freed spent much of the 1960’s as an inactive producer. He tried to get MGM to purchase the film rights to My Fair Lady (1956) and to Camelot (1960) but both films were made by Warner Bros., in 1964 and in 1967. In 1963, Freed and his associate producer, Roger Edens, attempted to develop a film, Say It with Music, based on the life and works of Irving Berlin, but it was never made. Freed resigned from MGM in 1970, shortly after the new studio head, former television executive James T. Aubrey, Jr., canceled work on the project. Freed died of a heart attack in 1973.
Freed, Arthur Significance Freed’s long career as a producer at MGM was one of the most distinguished in film history; he is recognized for the high quality of his musicals at MGM and for the talents he coached to highly regarded performances, such as June Allyson, Astaire, Garland, Eleanor Powell, Howard Keel, and Kelly. He encouraged directors Busby Berkeley, Minnelli, Donen and Walters; writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green; choreographers Michael Kidd and Bob Fosse; and composer André Previn. This was a tribute to his particular skill for hiring the best possible talent and for getting important stories for his musicals. His efforts resulted in what amounted to the formation of a theatrical stock company, with many of the collaborators forming close working relationships. —Martin J. Manning Further Reading Eyman, Scott. Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. Mayer gave Freed a chance to produce at MGM, and this biography discusses the relationship between the two men. There is good material on Freed and the Freed Unit, especially some of the great films the unit produced, especially Meet Me in St. Louis. Fordin, Hugh. The World of Entertainment! Hollywood’s Greatest Musicals. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975. Comprehensive and well-illustrated study of all the films Freed produced, based on Freed’s archives. The producer gave the author complete access to all his files; information is quite thorough on each film. This is not a biography but a behind-thescenes, film-by-film account of the making of his musicals. Hemming, Roy. The Melody Lingers On: The Great Songwriters and Their Movie Musicals. New York: Newmarket Press, 1986. Freed’s contributions as a lyricist are covered in the section on his partner, Brown. There is a discussion of the Freed-Brown hit “Singin’ in the Rain” and its evolution into the classic film of the same title. See also: Stanley Donen; Stanley Kramer; Sidney Lumet; Arthur Penn.
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Betty Friedan Feminist, activist, and writer Friedan’s 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, launched the women’s liberation movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Born: February 4, 1921; Peoria, Illinois Died: February 4, 2006; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Bettye Naomi Goldstein (birth name); Betty Naomi Goldstein Friedan (full name) Areas of achievement: Activism; literature; women’s rights Early Life Betty Freidan (free-DAN) was born into a middleclass Jewish family in Peoria, Illinois. As a teenager, she became involved in social justice issues, in part because of the anti-Semitism she perceived and experienced. Anxious to leave Peoria, she attended Smith College in Massachusetts. She graduated summa cum laude from Smith as a psychology major and wrote a highly praised senior thesis. She received a major fellowship to pursue graduate study in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, but left after a year. Why she discontinued graduate school is a subject of debate; some speculate she feared her advanced degrees would scare away a prospective husband and leave her a well-educated old maid. She moved to New York, working as a writer first
Betty Friedan. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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for the Federated Press and later for the UE News, a publication of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). Her politics were radical, and her friends included people later investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In her mid-twenties she met Carl Friedan (who had changed his name from Friedman) through a mutual friend. He initially pursued a career in the theater but later worked in advertising. After they married, she worked as a journalist until laid off by UE News when she was pregnant with her second child; UE News had suffered setbacks during the 1950’s and reduced its paid staff to two people. For several years Friedan did freelance writing, mostly for women’s magazines. She was a suburban housewife engaged in activities with her children but with a passion to do more. For her fifteenth Smith reunion, she was asked to survey alumnae. She agreed because of her anger over a book, Modern Women: The Lost Sex (1947), which argued that obtaining higher education prevented women from adjusting to their roles as wives and mothers. Her response, which she originally intended to publish as an article, became the nucleus of The Feminine Mystique (1963). The book was an amalgam of her experiences as a radical analyst and a suburban housewife, plus her growing criticism of Freudian psychology. The book took five years to complete. While her book was in press in 1962, she tried to resume graduate study in psychology but was rebuffed by a faculty adviser at Columbia University who dismissed her earlier academic work and told her that psychology had changed substantially since her college and graduate school years. The professor advised her to continue working as a community volunteer. This was not uncommon advice for talented women attending graduate schools in the 1960’s. Disillusioned, Friedan returned to her life in the suburbs, unaware of the life-changing nature of her forthcoming book. Life’s Work The publication of The Feminine Mystique in 1963 awakened many
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women and sparked a revolution in women’s The Feminist Movement: Second Wave thinking in a decade marked by the Civil Rights movement and a heightened awareBetty Friedan, a larger-than-life figure, possessed tremendous enness of injustices in society. The book changed ergy and creativity and focused them on solving women’s problems Friedan’s life: She was no longer a stay-atthrough her writing and activism for most of her life. Her legacy remains, although many younger women are only vaguely aware of her home mother who wrote part-time. She begroundbreaking achievements. Students and scholars view Friedan’s came a celebrity and an activist. In the midThe Feminine Mystique (1963) as the point of departure for any major 1960’s, Friedan became acquainted with study of the second wave of feminism. The first wave involved obtainwomen who had served on the President’s ing voting and property rights for women; the second wave, which Commission on the Status of Women. She lasted from the early 1960’s to the late 1970’s, addressed inequalities discovered how few women held key posiin society and the workplace and reproductive rights. The Feminine tions even after enactment of the Civil Rights Mystique remains in print and has eclipsed most other works on the Act of 1964; its Title VII forbade discrimiwomen’s movement of the late twentieth century. Friedan described nation in employment but was not fully enwomen’s discontent with their lives in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, forced. Frustration among prominent women when their existence centered almost exclusively on home and family; in Washington and New York led to the forshe argued that women wanted to play a role in the larger society. Her findings were based not only on the experiences of the women she mation of the National Organization for knew but also on her work in psychology and on her involvement in Women (NOW) in October, 1966. Friedan liberal activism. She became the symbol of the women’s movement wrote its Statement of Purpose and became for a generation of women. NOW’s first president (1966-1970). In the 1960’s, protests and demonstrations characterized the Civil Rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam War, and the women’s movement evolved, sharp differences dithe women’s movement. In 1971, Friedan, together with vided its leaders. Over time Friedan found herself at odds Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem and othwith Abzug, Letty Pogrebin, and Steinem. Some differers, cofounded the National Women’s Political Caucus ences were eventually resolved; others were not. A heart (NWPC). Friedan hoped that the NWPC would bring tocondition limited her activity in the late 1980’s and early gether women of varying political views, but it soon 1990’s, but she recovered well from heart valve replacegravitated toward issues identified by the more liberal ment. She accepted various short-term teaching appointleaders in the coalition. In the early 1970’s, Friedan ments at colleges and universities but eventually stopped founded the National Association for the Repeal of teaching. Abortion Laws, which after Roe v. Wade (1973) was reFriedan recognized her importance in the women’s named the National Abortion Rights Action League movement and in later years became annoyed when not (NARAL). given the deference she considered her due. Some conHer marriage, which had been turbulent for a long temporaries considered her temperamental and autotime, ended in 1969. Her husband had recognized the pocratic in her later years. Friedan reconciled with most tential of the book and initially helped to promote it; then of her peers, including Abzug and Pogrebin, but not jealousy set in as she gained prominence and celebrity Steinem. In her mature years, Betty had a series of male status. Her income in the 1960’s far exceeded his, which escorts, usually prominent men, often academics, but caused additional problems. She alleged that he beat her, never remarried. She was a complex figure who wanted and she frequently covered a black eye with makeup in to lead a full, rich life. She succeeded in some ways but her public appearances. the true love she sought evaded her for much of her life. Friedan’s fame led to invitations to travel to many Friedan died on her eighty-fifth birthday of congestive countries. She met with prominent people, from Pope heart failure. Paul VI to Indira Gandhi to Simone de Beauvoir. As time passed, Friedan could pick and choose where and when Significance to become involved. Her growing international fame disFriedan was a major voice in the second wave of femitanced her from regular involvement in the American ornism (the first having won American women the vote in ganizations that she had cofounded, but Friedan was acthe early twentieth century). Although liberal in her tive in the International Year of the Woman (1975). As 403
Friedman, Benny views, she tried to include women with diverse viewpoints in the organizations that she founded. Her books published after The Feminine Mystique were important but did not have the same impact as that first work. The organizations that she cofounded still exist, although they were transformed over time. In her later years Friedan disagreed with some developments in the women’s movement, but she continued to be active until her death. —Norma C. Noonan Further Reading Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: Norton, 1963. The book that ignited the feminist movement and made Friedan a legend. Multiple editions are available. The 2001 edition has an introduction by Anna Quindlen. _______. The Fountain of Age. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993. In this work, Friedan tackles the issues of aging, illness, and related issues. This book
Jewish Americans was written about the time of her heart surgery, which suggests she, too, was coping with those issues. _______. Life So Far. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. This important memoir describes her life as Friedan recalled and experienced it. _______. The Second Stage. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981. This work, written years after The Feminine Mystique, advises women of the dangers of factionalism within the women’s movement and urges women to work with men to solve the pressing issues of society. Hennessee, Judith. Betty Friedan: Her Life. New York: Random House, 1999. A friend of Friedan gives an insightful, frank view of Friedan, including her friendships and rivalries with some of the other prominent feminists. See also: Bella Abzug; Susan Brownmiller; Gloria Steinem; Naomi Wolf.
Benny Friedman Football player As a quarterback for the University of Michigan football team and a professional after graduation, Friedman elevated the role of a passer into a major offensive weapon and brought football to the attention of the public. Born: March 18, 1905; Cleveland, Ohio Died: November 23, 1982; New York, New York Also known as: Benjamin Friedman (birth name) Area of achievement: Sports Early Life Benny Friedman (FREED-muhn) was the fourth of six children born to Russian immigrants Lewis and Mayme Friedman. Lewis was a tailor who viewed sports as a distraction in his children’s education. However, for Benny Friedman, and for many Jewish boys, the growing popularity of football provided a means for acceptance into the non-Jewish community. Using a regimen of calisthenics and body-building, the relatively small (fivefoot-ten) Friedman developed his body sufficiently to participate in what was then an often brutal sport. An allaround athlete, Friedman became a starter in the backfield for the varsity team of Glenville High School. Friedman’s passing, running, and defense led Glenville 404
to the unofficial national championship by his senior year. Since he had not yet reached his full height and weight by the time he entered college, Friedman’s size limited his choices for college. Penn State University and Ohio State University passed on Friedman because of such concerns. Dartmouth College offered him a partial scholarship, but football was a minor program at the school. Friedman’s choice became the University of Michigan, the football team led by the legendary coach Fielding “Hurry-Up” Yost. Freshman football at Michigan was informal, with only intrasquad games and occasional matches with the varsity. Friedman had no scholarship, and his time was spent primarily in class, in working two jobs, and on the practice field. Discouraged by his prospects, Friedman was ready to transfer when a chance meeting with assistant coach George Little convinced him to change his mind. He started the 1924 season on the varsity, sitting on the bench. Life’s Work Friedman’s football career began in earnest the fourth game of the season, a week after Red Grange scored five touchdowns in a 39-14 University of Illinois rout of
Jewish Americans Michigan. Friedman played briefly in that match, long enough to tackle Grange after the game was decided. As a starting back against University of Wisconsin, Friedman threw one pass for a touchdown and scored another by running. He continued as a starter the rest of the season, earning an honorable mention on the All-American Midwest team as quarterback and placekicker. During his junior and senior seasons at quarterback, Friedman led the Michigan team to victories in fourteen of sixteen games. It was during these seasons that Friedman established the passing game as a viable offensive maneuver. The brutality of the sport and all-too-frequent fatalities had resulted in President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 pushing for rule changes to open the offense. However, until Friedman established the passing offense, the request had rarely been implemented. With his teammate Bennie Oosterbaan, Friedman became known as the front half of the “Benny to Bennie” passing team. In 1926, Friedman became a consensus All-American and received the conference’s most valuable player award. Professional football during the 1920’s was still in its infancy, with little support in the cities that hosted teams. Friedman’s popularity resulted in a contract offer of eighteen thousand dollars, the highest in the league, from the Cleveland Bulldogs of the National Football League (NFL) in 1927. The team moved to Detroit in 1928, and Friedman led the league in several offensive categories. Friedman’s crowd appeal resulted in the purchase of the entire Detroit team by the New York Giants in 1929. He was picked for the all-NFL team in each of his first four seasons. In 1932, Friedman moved to the Brooklyn Dodgers football team as a player coach. Injuries ultimately slowed Friedman down, and he retired after the 1934 season. During these years, Friedman set season and career records for pass-completion percentage and touchdown passes that lasted for years, all during a time in which the size and relatively round shape of the football made passing a challenge. Following naval service during World War II, Friedman separated from organized sports until 1949 when Abram Sachar, president of the newly established Brandeis University in Massachusetts, offered him a position as athletic director. Friedman served in that position until 1961. In 1951, Friedman was elected to the College Football
Friedman, Benny Hall of Fame, and he spent his last years lobbying unsuccessfully for admittance to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Likely as the result of this self-promotion, voters declined to support his admittance. Friedman’s health deteriorated during the 1970’s. A blood clot following a leg injury, exacerbated by diabetes, resulted in amputation of one leg and potential loss of the other. In November, 1982, Friedman committed suicide. Twenty-three years later Friedman was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Significance Offensive football, as it was played during the early decades of the twentieth century, relied largely on the “power” or running game. Passing represented more of a desperation tactic when movement of the ball had to be carried out quickly over a relatively long distance. Initially in the college game and then in professional football, Friedman established the passing game as a legitimate offensive weapon. As one of the first “name” players to join professional ranks, Friedman brought public recognition and a significant amount of money to a sport largely ignored by the public. — Richard Adler Further Reading Greenberg, Murray. Passing Game, Benny Friedman, and the Transformation of Football. New York: PublicAffairs, 2008. Extensive biography of the subject. The author provides insight into both the professional and the personal life of Friedman. Peterson, Robert. Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. The story of the development and rise of professional football. Friedman was significant because he placed emphasis on the passing game and because he was among the first to catch the eye of the public. Poole, Gary. The Galloping Ghost: Red Grange, an American Football Legend. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. The story of one of Friedman’s most famous college and professional contemporaries. The rivalry between their respective schools became the source of legends. See also: Lyle Alzado; Sid Luckman.
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Bruce Jay Friedman Novelist, screenwriter, and actor An acclaimed writer for film, stage, and books, Friedman became an influential cultural figure in the mid-1950’s, when he began his career as the executive editor for three prominent men’s magazines. His fiction uses dark comedy to confront bigotry.
man has published in total more than thirty novels, collections of short stories, play, screenplays, and collections of essays. His short story was used for 1972’s The Heartbreak Kid (screenplay by Neil Simon); his screenplay was used for 1980’s Stir Crazy (which famously paired Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor and has been voted the Born: April 26, 1930; Bronx, New York twenty-second funniest comedy of all time) and for Areas of achievement: Literature; entertainment 1984’s Splash (which also helped launch the careers of Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah); his nonfiction best seller Early Life was used as the basis for 1984’s The Lonely Guy. FriedBruce Jay Friedman (FREED-muhn) was born in man has also had success on Broadway, beginning with New York to Irving Friedman and Mollie Liebowitz. AfTwenty-Three Pat O’Brien Movies (1966), Scuba Duba ter obtaining a degree from the prestigious University of (1967), and a stage adaptation of his second novel, A Missouri journalism program, Friedman served from Mother’s Kisses (1968). Then came his breakthrough 1951 to 1953 as a lieutenant in the United States Air with Steambath (1970). Portraying the afterlife as a Force during the Korean War. Following his service, he steambath, the play subsequently was adapted for televipursued his ambition of being a writer by going to work sion, earning an Emmy Award nomination. The story for the Magazine Management Company, a New Yorkwas nominated for a Nebula Award, one of the highest based periodical publisher that specialized in men’s magahonors in science-fiction writing. zines devoted to fishing, hunting, and other typically Distinct from his screenplays, which are often less samasculine activities. In time, he was promoted to executirical and more generally comedic, Friedman’s novels, tive editor for three of the periodical company’s titles. He especially the early ones, may have the widest signifimarried Ginger Howard in 1954, and they had two sons, cance. They exhibit images and gestures that laid the Josh in 1956 and Drew in 1958. Friedman achieved the groundwork for the comedic writing of later Jewish American Dream before turning thirty, but his prime American writers, especially Philip Roth and Woody contributions were still to come. Allen. In Friedman’s works, the model of the nervous, obsessive Jewish male is crystallized, usually accompaLife’s Work nied by the stereotypical overbearing Jewish mother Friedman’s first novel, Stern, published in 1962, was from A Mother’s Kisses. Many writers have borrowed considered a critical success, but it was not until the 1965 and parodied these archetypes. Friedman did not shy anthology Black Humor that Friedman crystallized for away from topics such as drugs, prostitution, crime, and future generations his unique approach to fiction. Friedsex in order to tweak the fragile veneer of gentility of middle-class suburbia. There may be a direct line of descent from Friedman’s frankness about male sexuality to Roth’s Portnoy’s ComFriedman and Black Humor plaint (1969) and from Friedman’s comedic metaphysical speculation in Steambath to such In 1965, Bruce Jay Friedman edited an anthology called Black Allen films as Love and Death (1975) and Humor. It collected a who’s who of authors of the time and identified his stage-play God (1975). Similarly, Howard an attitude toward the world, one that tapped into the growing unhapStern’s Private Parts (1983) inescapably alpiness in American life. It was a way to approach the human condiludes to Friedman’s The Dick (1970), though tion. The book not only represented a new approach in American fiction but also looked back to forebears in Jewish American writing. the books are otherwise entirely different. Thus, the realism found in the fiction of Saul Bellow and Bernard Friedman has also chronicled, along with a Malamud was confronted by the surrealism and absurdity of modern whole generation of writers, hilarity in outraconditions of black humor. As coined by Friedman, black humor geous circumstances; this approach takes the was the cosmic and bleak joke, like Job’s predicament. situation comedy and turns it into something of significance and exemplifies the kind of hu406
Jewish Americans mor at the heart of the wildly successful film The Hangover (2009) and Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Big Lebowski (1998). Friedman’s Harry Towns stories form an interconnected series, though each can stand alone. Critical reception of them has been overwhelmingly positive, with protagonist Towns emerging as a memorable character in literature. Friedman later wrote the nonfiction The Lonely Guy’s Book of Life (1978), thereby establishing indelibly the figure of the lonely guy in American literature. In Stern, the problem is an inability to assimilate from a New York urban setting into a genteel (gentile) suburbia, where anti-Semitism is around every corner. For Towns, the problem becomes more general; he finds himself at odds with the culture and the social strata. Towns has been likened to the males portrayed in Ernest Hemingway’s fiction; they need adventure on a grand scale in order to make their lives seem significant. Where Hemingway’s characters roam to the far corners of the world, Friedman’s seek their destiny locally. The pathos that rises from the stories is an indictment of modern life. Friedman’s work is focused on males and is primarily for male readers, just as was his work at Magazine Management Company. Significance Friedman is a comedic writer, but just beneath the surface of the joke may be found anger or outrage or sadness. In Friedman’s best work, he goes beyond the angry jab and the exasperated rant. His novels pushed comedy into the dark corners of the human psyche, but only to il-
Friedman, Kinky luminate them. The ultimate punch line is in the optimism of his characters, who rarely accept defeat, and in the laughter produced by Friedman’s works, which is always the last word. — Michael Gaiuranos Further Reading Friedman, Bruce Jay. Stern. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962. Friedman’s first novel brings together elements that make up today’s approaches to humor. _______, ed. Black Humor. New York: Bantam, 1965. This book, edited by Friedman, exemplifies what is commonly known as black humor. Malin, Irving, ed. Contemporary American Jewish Literature: Critical Essays. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973. This collection of critical essays on Jewish American literature provides an excellent overview and a broader context for Friedman’s fiction. Schulz, Max F. Black Humor Fiction of the Sixties: A Pluralistic Definition of Man and His World. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1973. This is a study focused on black humor, and it investigates the 1960’s generation of writers who practiced it. _______. Bruce Jay Friedman. New York: Twayne, 1974. This is one of the few critical biographies of Friedman and his work. See also: Saul Bellow; Nora Ephron; George S. Kaufman; Tony Kushner; David Mamet; Neil Simon; Wendy Wasserstein.
Kinky Friedman Musician, novelist, and writer A singer-songwriter, columnist, and novelist, Friedman uses his unique brand of satirical humor to poke fun at those who are comfortably locked in tradition. Born: November 1, 1944; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: Richard Samet Friedman (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment; literature Early Life Kinky Friedman (KEEN-key FREED-man) was born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 1, 1944, the oldest of
three children of Dr. S. Thomas Friedman and Minnie Samet. Kinky Friedman was born during World War II while his father was navigator on a B-24 bomber. After the war, the family moved to Houston, Texas, where his mother was a speech therapist and his father pioneered community-action programs. In the late 1950’s, the family, including his sister Marcie and his brother Roger, relocated to Austin, where his father became a professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas. Friedman showed a precocious interest in music and in chess, and he was chosen at age seven to be one of fifty players to challenge U.S. grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky. In 1953, Friedman’s parents opened the pre407
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Kinky Friedman. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
dominantly Jewish Echo Hill Ranch Summer Camp south of Kerrville, in the Texas Hill Country. He spent his childhood summers in camping activities. Friedman graduated from Austin High School in 1962, and he earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas, Austin, where he majored in psychology. While at the university, he participated in the Plan Two Honors program, was a member of the Tau Delta Phi fraternity, and formed his first band, King Arthur and the Carrots. He received his nickname “Kinky” during his freshman year because of his extremely curly dark hair. The name became descriptive of his unconventional public persona. After graduating from the University of Texas, he served two years in the United States Peace Corps, on Borneo in Malaysia. Life’s Work Successful as a musician, songwriter, columnist, and novelist, Friedman gained prominence as a countrywestern singer and songwriter. He adopted the image 408
Jewish Americans of a cigar-chomping, irreverent, outrageous, but thought-provoking cowboy in a big black hat. By 1971, he formed his second band with the satirical name Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, a name that may have been a play on the popular band Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Each band member was recognized by an intentionally offensive name. The band worked its way to success with the encouragement of such prominent musicians as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and toured with Bob Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Friedman was a musical guest on Saturday Night Live and played the Grand Ole Opry. His lyrics mixed social commentary with exaggeratedly maudlin ballads and ribald humor, having such titles as “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You,” “Western Union Wire,” and “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed.” Friedman’s songs have been recorded by such artists as the New Kingston Trio, Glen Campbell, Dwight Yoakam, Nelson, Lyle Lovett, and Kelly Willis. Nelson, Tom Waits, and Lovett released the album Pearls in the Snow: The Songs of Kinky Friedman (1999) as a tribute to Friedman’s talent as a songwriter. Since he began his career as a novelist in the 1980’s, Friedman has published more than a dozen detective novels set in Manhattan, and he has appeared in several films, including the cult favorite Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). He has written a column for Texas Monthly magazine. He is cofounder, with Nancy Parker-Simons and Tony Simons, of the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, which cares for stray, abused, and aging animals. He was one of two independent candidates who made unsuccessful runs for the office of governor of Texas in the 2006 election. He owns Kinkajou Records of Nashville, Tennessee, established in 1999 in conjunction with the release of Pearls in the Snow. With his sister Marcie and brother Roger, he continues the tradition of Echo Hill Ranch, the family’s summer camp. Significance In all his various endeavors, Friedman remains true to the proposition that satire can and does remove the shadows that cover and protect some of society’s irrational and frequently harmful activities, particularly those that have come to be valued as traditional, normal, or generally acceptable in popular culture, whether they are in the realm of music, the arts, or politics. He is a serious musi-
Jewish Americans cian who considers himself a satirist. His actions and opinions are often intentionally offensive, even though they are meant to call attention to defects in the human condition. — Jan Statman Further Reading Benarde, Scott R. Stars of David: Rock ’n’ Roll’s Jewish Stories. Lebanon, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 2003. In-depth work containing more than fifty profiles of Jewish musicians, including Friedman. Bogdanov, Vladimir, Chris Woodstra, and Stephen Thomas Erlewine, eds. All Music Guide to Country: The Definitive Guide to Country Music. 2d ed. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2003. Reviews and ratings for more than ten thousand recordings by more than one thousand artists representing all facets of
Friedman, Milton country-western music. This compendium contains facts and factoids about country music and the people who make that music, including Friedman. Burka, Paul. “The Weirdest Governor’s Race of All Time.” Texas Monthly 34, no. 7 (July, 2006). Description of Friedman’s candidacy in the Texas governor’s race. Parker-Simons, Nancy. The Road to Utopia: How Kinky, Tony, and I Saved More Animals than Noah. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Nancy Parker-Simons describes day-to-day life at the Utopia Rescue Ranch, with particular emphasis on the role Friedman played in founding the ranch and continues to play in maintaining and underwriting its activities. See also: Bella Abzug; Victor Borge; Bob Dylan; Al Franken; Randy Newman.
Milton Friedman Economist and educator Friedman argued against Keynesian economics, urging greater reliance on markets and reduced government intervention. Born: July 31, 1912; Brooklyn, New York Died: November 16, 2006; San Francisco, California Area of achievement: Economics Early Life Milton Friedman (FREED-mihn) was born to poor Jewish immigrants who came to America from the town of Beregszász (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now part of Ukraine). His parents worked in a Brooklyn dry goods store and moved to New Jersey shortly after Friedman was born. At Rahway High School, Friedman became interested in mathematics and planned to become an actuary. At Rutgers College (now Rutgers University), he developed a love of economics, and he double majored in economics and mathematics. After earning his bachelor’s degree, Friedman attended the University of Chicago, pursuing a graduate degree in economics. A fellowship led him to transfer to Columbia University. After completing his course work, he went to work in Washington, D.C.—first compiling consumption statistics for the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, then analyzing the market for independent professionals (such as doctors and lawyers) for the Na-
tional Bureau of Economic Research. The latter work (which became Friedman’s doctoral dissertation) found that physicians earned high salaries because the medical profession reduced the supply of doctors. After teaching briefly at the University of Minnesota, Friedman returned to the University of Chicago and developed the Chicago School of Economics, which stressed the benefits of free markets. His Newsweek columns from 1966 to 1984, a best-selling book in 1962 (Capitalism and Freedom), and a television series (Free to Choose), all argued that free markets give people what they want and improve their well-being. Conversely, government actions were ineffective and restrained freedom. Friedman argued against minimum wages (believing they increased unemployment, hurting those with low incomes), against Social Security (because it supported the wealthy who tend to live longer and collect benefits longer), and against government support for higher education (because it primarily benefits those who are well off). On the other hand, he supported legalizing prostitution and drugs, an all-volunteer army, and educational vouchers that enabled parents to select which school to send their children to. Life’s Work Friedman’s professional work on the determinants of consumption, the role of money in the economy, and the 409
Friedman, Milton natural rate of unemployment all countered the interventionist emphasis proposed by John Maynard Keynes. These contributions to the understanding of how the economy works earned Friedman a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976. In contrast to Keynes, Friedman thought fiscal policy would not lower unemployment. Moreover, he held that activist monetary policy would worsen the business cycle and create inflation. His argument follows from a simple mathematical equation—the quantity theory of money, MV=PQ. This equation says that the amount of money in the economy (M) times the number of times each dollar is used in a year to buy goods (V, the velocity of money) equals the economic output sold during the year (price, P, times production, Q, or GDP). Before Friedman, economists thought that interest rates and expected inflation determined velocity. Friedman found that these factors had only a small impact on velocity, and that V was stable over time. This meant that the money primarily determined GDP. Although money could affect production for a period of around six to nine months, Friedman thought that money had no real impact in the long run. In a year or so, the only impact of more money would be on prices. Creating money, therefore, is inflationary. Since inflation is a monetary phenomenon, restrain-
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ing money growth controls inflation. Friedman proposed that the money supply should increase 3 to 5 percent annually, the normal growth rate of the U.S. economy. This would provide the money needed to purchase additional goods but not cause inflation. Going further, Friedman blamed the Great Depression on the Federal Reserve. It tightened the money supply in 1929, fearing stock market speculation; then it did nothing from 1930 to 1931 when people were withdrawing their money from banks. This led to a sharp drop in the U.S. money supply, reduced spending, and created a depression. Because central banks cannot be trusted to manage the money supply, Friedman thought they should be forced to follow his monetary rule. Friedman’s notion of a natural rate of unemployment also supported his case against activist economic policies. He pointed out that some unemployment is natural. Some people are always between jobs, and new labor force entrants do not find work immediately. Other people lack the skills and education employers seek. The natural rate, Friedman suggested, depended upon various institutional factors that leave some people without jobs at any given time. For example, generous unemployment benefits and a working spouse allow people to spend a long time looking for work and a longer time being unemployed. Friedman used the natural rate hypothesis to challenge the idea of a trade-off between inflation and unemployment, known Permanent Income Hypothesis as the Phillips curve. He argued that attempts to reduce unemployment below the Milton Friedman’s permanent income hypothesis held that connatural rate would only generate inflation. sumer spending depends not on consumers’ current income but on their Facing higher prices, people buy less, leadaverage income spread over a longer time period. His book A Theory of ing to reduced production and returning the Consumption Function (1957) provided evidence to support this unemployment to its natural rate. In the view. It showed that permanent income, or the weighted average of several years’ income, was a better predictor of annual consumption than long run, the Phillips curve was really a current income. vertical line at the natural rate of unemThis contradicted the macroeconomic theory of consumption develployment, and policy makers cannot reoped by John Maynard Keynes, which held that consumer spending was duce unemployment. mainly influenced by people’s current income. Keynes thought spendIn international economics, Friedman ing was habitual. Most people put a little money from each paycheck also sought to counter Keynes. Keynes fainto savings but spent most of what they earned. Given such behavior, vored fixed exchange rates rather than flexfiscal policy works well. Any tax cut, or income received from addiible exchange rates and devised the Bretton tional government spending, would mainly be spent. The economy Woods system of fixed exchange rates after would therefore grow, and unemployment would fall. World War II. Friedman argued that flexiFriedman sought to show that his permanent income hypothesis ble exchange rates were preferable to fixed made fiscal policy ineffective in creating jobs. Because people will view their additional income as temporary, rather than permanent, the tax exchange rates on a number of grounds. cuts (or additional government spending) will create little additional First, countries must use monetary policy consumer spending and few additional jobs. to keep their rates fixed. Flexible rates let central banks focus on monetary policy
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Jewish Americans without worrying about the value of the national currency. Second, with fixed rates, trade restrictions become a common response to trade deficits; with flexible rates, the rate adjusts automatically in response to trade problems. Finally, with fixed rates, countries experiencing inflation buy cheaper foreign goods. This demand then creates inflation abroad. With flexible rates, countries experiencing inflation see the value of their currency fall, and foreign goods become more expensive. In 1977, Friedman become senior scholar at the Hoover Institution in California. In the 1980’s, he served as an economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan and continued arguing for free market economics. He died of heart failure in San Francisco in 2006. Significance Friedman led a movement toward free market economics in the late twentieth century, as well as a movement away from the activist policies of Keynesian economics. His work argues that capitalism promotes political and individual freedom, while the market counters political power and improves economic well-being. For this reason, Friedman opposed all interventionist economic policies. His professional writings argued that Keynesians did not correctly understand how the economy worked. His popular writings also opposed government programs and government regulations (such as rent controls and minimum wages) because they limited individual freedom and reduced individual welfare. —Steven Pressman
Fuldheim, Dorothy Further Reading Ebenstein, Lanny. Milton Friedman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. A biography of Friedman, relying on interviews with Friedman and people who knew him, to present his life and free market ideas. Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. A powerful argument that capitalism creates freedom and better economic outcomes; the book makes a strong case for free market economics. _______. A Theory of the Consumption Function. Princeton. N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957. Classic study showing that consumer spending depends on average income over a long period of time rather than on current income. Friedman, Milton, and Robert Roosa. The Balance of Payments: Fixed Versus Flexible Exchange Rates. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1967. A debate between Friedman and Keynesian Roosa concerning the relative advantages of fixed and flexible exchange rates. Pressman, Steven. Fifty Major Economists. 2d ed. New York: Routledge, 2006. An introduction to the main economic contributions of Friedman, this work also explains his opposition to Keynesian theories and policies. See also: Ben Bernanke; Alan Greenspan; Paul Krugman; Joseph Stiglitz.
Dorothy Fuldheim Journalist Fuldheim was an intrepid broadcast television reporter and interviewer who broke many rules when entering the industry. She became the first American woman to host her own television show and the first woman to anchor a television newscast. Born: June 26, 1893; Passaic, New Jersey Died: November 3, 1989; Cleveland, Ohio Also known as: Dorothy Violet Snell (birth name) Areas of achievement: Journalism; social issues Early Life Dorothy Fuldheim (DOR-oh-thee FOOLD-him) was born in Passaic, New Jersey, on June 26, 1893. Most of
her childhood, however, was spent in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Despite later becoming a big name in broadcasting, Fuldheim was an elementary school teacher for several years. After her first marriage and during the 1920’s, Fuldheim decided to change paths in life. She moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and sought jobs in theater, lecturing, and broadcasting. Before entering the world of television, Fuldheim first excelled in radio programming. She hosted a biography program for the station WTAM and soon moved up to the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), where she became the station’s first female commenter. Fuldheim caught her big break when a Cleveland Press representative talked to her about entering the field of 411
Fuldheim, Dorothy journalism. Fuldheim was not well versed in journalistic enterprises, but she accepted the offer and began traveling the globe. While not yet achieving the fame she would soon experience as a television broadcaster, Fuldheim still was able to conduct interviews with such powerful figures as Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini, both before the advent of World War II. Life’s Work Fuldheim’s television broadcasting career got off to a late start in comparison to those of many of her contemporaries and successors: She was fifty-four when she joined WEWS-TV in Cleveland. The station was owned by Scripps-Howard, the same company that owned The Cleveland Press, an afternoon newspaper. When Fuldheim joined the station in 1947, it was the only television station between New York and Chicago. Although Fuldheim had never been trained formally in journalism, she became a well-known broadcaster and traveled to several different locations to cover stories. While anchoring for WEWS-TV, Fuldheim began to leverage her influence over her segments and based her interviewing format on that of Eyewitness News, the first thirty-minute broadcast in the United States. Fuldheim’s newscasts soon began to focus on interviews and her opinionated commentary. The revamped show made her the first woman in the country to have a news analysis program on television. Her program would grow to receive national attention, as Fuldheim nabbed interviews with people such as Helen Keller, Barbara Walters, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Fuldheim’s ability to attract highprofile interviewees extended into the political realm, and she was able to bring several U.S. presidents onto her show. Fuldheim also helped develop a show with Cleveland radio host Bill Gordon called The One O’Clock Club, which featured interviews, news, and entertainment. The show did not rival the popularity of her other work, but it did inspire another show hosted by entertainer Mike Douglas that received national attention. Fuldheim went on to receive many honors, and she was inducted into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame in 1980. Before her death in 1989 at the age of ninety-six, Fuldheim was invited to cover several important international events, such as the wedding of Prince Charles and
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Jewish Americans Lady Diana Spencer and the funeral of assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. When Fuldheim was unable to cover major news events and anchor, the network offered her a nightly commentary spot. However, a stroke in 1984 drove her off the air forever with a legacy that lasted more than thirty years. Significance Fuldheim’s polarizing personality led her to receive a notable amount of attention. She often voiced unpopular opinions and injected a large amount of her own opinion into her newscasts. However, her role in the development of the American broadcasting industry is legendary. She was a pioneer in newscasting, the first woman to anchor a television news broadcast and host her own television show. In 2003, Fuldheim was posthumously awarded an Ohio Historical Marker, which the WEWS studio displays outside its building. —Jill E. Disis Further Reading Beadle, Mary E., and Michael D. Murray, eds. Indelible Images: Women of Local Television. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 2001. A look at Fuldheim and other important women in the television industry. Useful for those who are interested in a media career. Fuldheim, Dorothy. I Laughed, I Cried, I Loved: A News Analyst’s Love Affair with the World. Cleveland, Ohio: World, 1966. Fuldheim recounts her experiences with television news and the many famous interviews she had the privilege of conducting during her time as a broadcaster. _______. A Thousand Friends. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974. A book by Fuldheim that details her adventures in entering a new profession at the age of fifty-four. Mote, Patricia M. Dorothy Fuldheim: The First First Lady of Television News. Berea, Ohio: Quixote, 1997. A biography of Fuldheim, highlighting the importance of her shattering boundaries in television news, including being the first woman to host her own television show. See also: Susan Faludi; David Halberstam; Dorothy Schiff; Daniel Schorr; Barbara Walters.
G Art Garfunkel Singer and actor Garfunkel, possessed of a high and pure singing voice, found success in his decades-long partnership with singer and songwriter Paul Simon. In addition, Garfunkel played compelling roles in films. Born: November 5, 1941; Forest Hills, Queens, New York Also known as: Tom Graph; Artie Garr; Arthur Ira Garfunkel (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment Early Life Art Garfunkel (GAHR-fuhn-kuhl), the son of Jacob and Rose Garfunkel, was born on November 5, 1941, into a Jewish Romanian American family in the Forest Hills section of Queens, New York City. Art Garfunkel has early memories of a delight in music in general and of a love of singing in particular. At twelve, Garfunkel met Paul Simon, his future singing partner, at Public School 164 in the school’s production of Alice in Wonderland. Simon first broached the idea of forming a singing duo, called Tom and Jerry, when he heard Garfunkel sing in a school talent show. From 1956 to 1962, Simon and Garfunkel marketed themselves in the manner of their idols, the Everly brothers, and achieved modest success with their first record, “Hey, Schoolgirl,” which they performed on American Bandstand. After Garfunkel graduated from Forest Hills High School, he decided to enroll in Columbia University in Manhattan. He continued to sing, recording a few songs for Octavia Records under the name Artie Garr, but he did not achieve the fame of his high school days. After he graduated in 1962 with a B.A. in art history, he toyed with the idea of resuming his musical career. His singing partner, Simon, was receptive, and they recorded Wednesday Morning, Three A.M. in 1964. Their new album, composed of folk ballads and gospel songs, was a commercial failure, although it demonstrated how comfortable the duo was with expressing their shared Jewish heritage. Garfunkel decided to return to Columbia University as a graduate student in mathematics, while Simon traveled to find friendly audiences in the United Kingdom.
Life’s Work After completing an M.A. in mathematics, Garfunkel was contacted by Tom Wilson and Bob Johnston, his former record producers. They liked Simon’s ballad “The Sounds of Silence,” but they thought that the addition of a studio band would create a smoother, more appealing sound, similar to that of Bob Dylan. The revised “Sound of Silence” was far more successful in its second run, reaching number one on the Billboard charts. Simon and Garfunkel recorded ten songs with the new studio backing, and the resulting album, The Sounds of Silence, released on January 17, 1966, was a hit. The next three albums—Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (1966), Bookends (1968), and Bridge over Troubled Water (1970)—were similarly successful. At the height of their success, however, personal differences affected Simon and Garfunkel’s partnership. Garfunkel took a break from music for three years while he pursued other interests, including acting. He appeared in two films in the early 1970’s, namely Catch-22 (1970) and Carnal Knowledge (1971), the latter film earning Garfunkel a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actor in 1972. He married Linda Marie Grossman in 1972, but they divorced in 1975. Several of his solo albums after 1972 were moderately successful, notably Angel Clare (1973), Breakaway (1975), and Watermark (1978). He met longtime girlfriend Laurie Bird in the early 1970’s, but he was never able to overcome his fear of another divorce. When she committed suicide in June of 1979, the heartbroken Garfunkel sunk into a deep depression, and his album Scissors Cut (1981) was a flop. He returned to film, appearing in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980). As with Carnal Knowledge, Bad Timing was critically well received. Another film, released in 1986, was Blaine Novak’s Good to Go, where he met Kathryn Cermack. The couple married on September 18, 1988. Garfunkel later appeared in the films Boxing Helena in 1993 and The Rebound in 2010. The year 1990 proved to be a rewarding one for Garfunkel. Simon and Garfunkel were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Garfunkel’s son James was born on December 15. In 2002, Garfunkel released 413
Gay, Peter his first album as a songwriter, Everything Waits to Be Noticed. In 2003, Simon and Garfunkel were given the Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award. Garfunkel’s second son, Beau Daniel, was born on October 5, 2005. Garfunkel released, under the Rhino label, Some Enchanted Evening on January 30, 2007. Significance Garfunkel’s pure, high singing voice and attractive demeanor have made him appealing to audiences as a singer and as an actor. Although he is not outspoken about his faith, he performs songs that demonstrate his quiet faith in God. Garfunkel is one of the few talents to make the challenging transition between music and film. —Julia M. Meyers Further Reading Baggelaar, Kristin, and Donald Milton. Folk Music: More than a Song. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976.
Jewish Americans Baggelaar and Milton discuss Simon and Garfunkel’s work in the context of the reinterpretation of traditional folk music in the 1960’s and their exploration into traditional melodies. Kingston, Victoria. Simon and Garfunkel: The Definitive Biography. London: Pan Books, 1997. This biography examines not only the professional relationship between Garfunkel and Simon during the years of their successful musical partnerships but also their friendship, decades long and alternatively tempestuous and close. Morella, Joseph, and Patricia Barey. Old Friends: A Dual Biography. Hartford, Conn.: Carol, 1991. This biography examines the personal and professional history of Simon and Garfunkel, from the duo’s early childhood friendship to their success as pop musicians in the 1960’s. See also: Leonard Cohen; Bob Dylan; Billy Joel; Paul Simon.
Peter Gay German-born social and intellectual historian Gay helped define the field of modern European intellectual history, especially in the areas of the Enlightenment and the impact of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. Born: June 20, 1923; Berlin Germany Also known as: Peter Joachim Fröhlich (birth name) Area of achievement: Scholarship Early Life Peter Gay was born Peter Joachim Fröhlich in Berlin in 1923, the only child of secular German Jews. His father was a merchant who specialized in china and silverware; his mother was a housewife. He was an only child but grew up surrounded by numerous cousins, and he spent summers at the farm of the parents of their gentile family housekeeper until the Nazis prohibited such arrangements. Both his parents were fervent atheists, so Gay received no religious instruction. He was an aboveaverage student at school but never at the top of his class. As a youth, he was an avid reader with eclectic tastes. His hobbies included stamp collecting and sports, interests that he shared with his father. The central event of his youth was the Nazi seizure of 414
power in Germany in 1933. He was forced to leave school, and his family began to plan to emigrate in 1937, finally succeeding in leaving for Cuba in March, 1939. His family stayed in Cuba for two years. Gay attended Havana Business School, and his mother underwent treatment for tuberculosis. In April, 1941, they arrived in the United States and settled in Denver, Colorado. Gay went to high school, worked at the Imperial Cap company, and attended the University of Denver and Columbia University. In 1926, after he became a U.S. citizen, he legally changed his name to Gay from Fröhlich, which means happy in German Life’s Work Gay completed his dissertation at Columbia University in 1951, and it was published as his first book in 1952. In 1959, Gay began a twenty-year intensive focus on the European Enlightenment. The centerpiece of his undertaking was the magisterial The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, which appeared in 1966 and 1969. Sweeping in its scope and breathtaking in its bold assertions, the approach was traditional, with little attention to social history or the new outlook that gender studies would soon bring to the field. Gay consistently portrayed the intellec-
Jewish Americans tual giants of the Enlightenment in a positive light, believing fervently that almost all the positive aspects of modern thought could be traced back to the Enlightenment. Within a few years of this masterpiece, he published books on Weimar Germany, New England Puritans, and reading history. The last work, titled Style in History (1974), had its origins in a graduate historiography course Gay taught and is noted for its probing analysis of the work of Edward Gibbon. Beginning in the 1980’s, Gay took off in a new scholarly direction: a kaleidoscopic examination of the lives and loves of the nineteenth century European middle class. Gay intended to shatter the image of middle-class prudery that had prevailed, and he produced five massive volumes, called collectively The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, that highlighted Victorians, eminent and otherwise, who were adventurous although discreet in their sexual tastes and practices. After reaching his seventh decade, Gay turned inward and wrote a book titled My German Question (1998) that combined autobiography with the trained eye of a veteran historian. Gay wanted to discredit scholars and others who criticized German Jews for remaining in Germany after the Nazis seized power. Gay insisted with great eloquence that German Jews understood the antiSemitic agenda of the regime, but that it was years before the murderous intent behind that agenda became horribly clear to all. He noted that German Jews remembered how the German army extended benign treatment to Polish Jews during World War I, and that it was not unrealistic of German Jews to doubt the Nazis would hold power very long. He was also adamant that immigration restrictions were more to blame than any single factor in enabling the Nazis to carry out their extermination plans. After retiring from teaching, Gay continued writing and publishing. He worked on his positive evaluation of Sigmund Freud and his theories and published a large survey of modernism in 2008. After four decades of scholarship on women’s history had changed the way many historians write, Gay remained an exception, portraying modernism as a product of overwhelmingly male creative forces.
Gay, Peter Significance Gay’s reverence for the highest standards of scholarship and his exaltation of truth as the highest obligation of historians earned him the respect of the academic community. His well-informed and thoroughly researched historical works, more than thirty in number, open for readers worlds that existed in the past, and his interest in psychoanalysis, especially as explained by Sigmund Freud, enliven his assessments of historical events. With his graceful prose and insightful interpretations, Gay is one of the foremost scholars in the field of intellectual history. — Michael Polley Further Reading Gay, Peter. A Godless Jew. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987. In this book ostensibly about Freud, Gay included amny of his own views about the role of religion in modern society in this book. _______. My German Question. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998. The book focuses on Gay’s life from 1933 to 1939 and also offers valuable insights into later events in his career. _______. Style in History. New York: Basic Books, 1974. As he examined the legacy of four modern historians, Gay revealed quite a bit about his own philosophy of history. _______. Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet as Realist. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959. This thorough study of Voltaire bolstered the reputation of the philosophe and repudiated critics who stated that Enlightenment principles were of no value in mastering the challenges of the twentieth century. Leith, James A. “Peter Gay’s Enlightenment.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 5, no. 1 (Autumn, 1971): 157171. This article analyzes Gay’s reinterpretation of the Enlightenment. See also: Daniel J. Boorstin; Oscar Handlin; Gerda Lerner; Moses Rischin; Barbara W. Tuchman.
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David Geffen Business executive and philanthropist Geffen became a billionaire in the American entertainment industries through a shrewd understanding of popular tastes and an ability to negotiate lucrative deals with artists and industry executives. Born: February 21, 1943; Brooklyn, New York Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music; philanthropy Early Life David Geffen (GEH-fehn) was born in 1943 in Brooklyn, New York, the second son of Batya Volovskaya, a Ukrainian, and Abraham Geffen, a Lithuanian. The couple had met in British-mandated Palestine and married in Tel Aviv in 1931. In the United States, the Geffen family
David Geffen. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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settled in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. Abraham had little ambition and held a series of low-paying jobs. His son learned his first entrepreneurial skills from his hardworking mother, who made and sold women’s undergarments in her shop. Batya called her favorite son “King David” and spoiled the talkative youngster, who was fascinated by show business. David Geffen attended Hebrew school and had an Orthodox Bar Mitzvah, although by that time his father had become a Christian Scientist. Geffen was an indifferent and easily distracted student. After graduating from New Utrecht High School, Geffen attended—and soon dropped out of— Santa Monica City College, Brooklyn College, and the University of Texas at Austin. Life’s Work Geffen’s first entertainment-related job was as an usher at the Columbia Broadcasting System’s CBS Television City in Los Angeles. In 1964, he landed a job in the mail room of the New York office of William Morris Talent Agency (WMA), claiming he had earned a degree in theater arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. Intensely ambitious and eager to ingratiate himself with his superiors, Geffen worked in the WMA office in Los Angeles during his vacation. Geffen became a junior agent-at-large eighteen months after joining WMA; he doubled his salary when he moved to the Ashley Famous Agency, where he was personal manager for singersongwriter Laura Nyro and other developing musicians. The young businessman made his first million with the sale of the music publishing venture he had begun with Nyro. In 1970, living in Los Angeles, Geffen cofounded Asylum Records. He became known for his ability to recognize new talent and predict musical trends, signing Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, The Eagles, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and Linda Ronstadt. In 1971, Geffen sold Asylum Records to Warner Communications, in a noticeably lucrative sale. He stayed as president of Asylum during its merger with Elektra Records and into 1975, when he accepted a position as vice chairman of Warner Bros. film studios. In contrast to his great success as a freewheeling record executive, Geffen was less adept in the corporate environment of the film industry. He retired from the studio and soon after was misdiagnosed with terminal bladder cancer. During the next several years, he received treatment and briefly taught business at Yale
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University. After receiving a clean bill of Shaping American Popular Culture health, Geffen returned to the music industry with renewed zest. Like many moguls before him, David Geffen was born to immiStill associated with Warner, Geffen grant parents, was raised in a working-class neighborhood, and had litfounded Geffen Records in 1980. Among tle formal education, but possesses tremendous street smarts, energy, risky, but profitable, decisions was producing and ambition. Beginning as an agent, the gregarious young man develJohn Lennon and Yoko Ono’s album Double oped a broad social network, an expertise in negotiation, and a canny understanding of the appeals of entertainment. With substantial inFantasy, released shortly before Lennon’s asvolvements in the music industry, feature filmmaking, Broadway sassination. Geffen Records soon became an plays, and television production, Geffen has been singularly influeninfluential label. Into the mid-1980’s Geffen tial in anticipating, shaping, and profiting from American tastes in dealt directly with established artists, such popular culture in the last decades of the twentieth century and into the as Cher and Neil Young, while relying on next. Some historians of rock music consider Geffen America’s most younger colleagues to suggest stars-in-theinfluential figure in establishing the commercial viability of what had making, such as the band Guns N’ Roses. At begun as an alternative music form. Geffen’s ability to capitalize the conclusion of his contract with Warner, on media mergers became legendary. By the late 1990’s Geffen Geffen sold his recording operation to the had amassed enough clout and money to join two friends—Steven Music Corporation of America (MCA), reSpielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg—in doing what had been unthinktaining $50 million in stock options. When able for decades: They formed a new Hollywood studio, DreamWorks SKG. At the turn of the century Geffen had become Hollywood’s Matsushita bought MCA, Geffen earned a wealthiest individual, a man of tremendous influence and power, staggering $710 million, making him the reknown both for his ruthlessness in business dealings and for his excipient of the most money ever in a Japanese treme generosity. acquisition of a U.S. company. Back in business for himself, Geffen founded the record label DGC, with the stated objective of attracting innovative young ture followed for three DreamWorks films: American bands, such as Nirvana. In the 1990’s the popularity Beauty (1999), Gladiator (2000), and A Beautiful Mind of grunge rock propelled the profits of DGC. Once (2001). again, Geffen was ahead of the curve. In 1982, again with The studio also found success in television producsupport from Warner, the entrepreneur launched the tion (for example, the situation comedy Spin City, 1996Geffen Film Company. Its first production, Risky Busi2002), but DreamWorks Animation was the most consisness (1983), was a hit and made a star of young actor Tom tently profitable unit, producing some of the highestCruise. Other successes followed, including Little Shop grossing animation films in film history: The Prince of Horrors (1986), Beetlejuice (1988), Interview with the of Egypt (1998), the Shrek series (2001, 2004, 2007, Vampire (1994), and Beavis and Butthead Do America and 2010), Madagascar (2005), Bee Movie (2007), and (1996). Geffen also bankrolled a series of long-running, Kung Fu Panda (2008). These successes led to Dreamaward-winning Broadway and Off-Broadway shows: Works Animation becoming its own publicly traded Dreamgirls (1981), Little Shop of Horrors (1982), Cats company. (1982), M. Butterfly (1988), and Miss Saigon (1991). Surprisingly, given Geffen’s earlier impressive acIn 1994, Geffen joined film producer and director complishments in the recording industry, DreamWorks Steven Spielberg and former Disney executive Jeffrey Records never thrived and was sold to Universal Music Katzenberg to form DreamWorks SKG, a film studio and Group in 2003. Several DreamWorks films with huge entertainment production company. This ambitious enbudgets were failures in 2004-2005, and the studio came terprise joined three of the most powerful men in the close to bankruptcy. Even the SKG “Dream Team” could entertainment industries. Their first two releases—The not change Hollywood. In February, 2006, Viacom’s Peacemaker (1997) and Amistad (1997), directed by Paramount Pictures purchased the live-action DreamSpielberg—were not very profitable, but they estabWorks studio. lished DreamWorks in the high-stakes world of studio Since the late 1980’s Geffen has been a generous confilmmaking. Soon another drama directed by Spielberg, tributor to AIDS research and AIDS action causes and a Saving Private Ryan (1998), earned both critical acclaim lobbyist for gay rights and AIDS research funding. In and huge audiences. Academy Awards for Best Pic417
Gehry, Frank 1992, he received the Commitment to Life award from the LA AIDS Project; in his acceptance speech, he publicly described himself as a gay man for the first time. In May, 2007, Out magazine ranked Geffen as the most powerful gay person in America. The billionaire has been an active contributor to and fund-raiser for Democratic candidates. Although not a religious Jew, Geffen traveled to Israel in the mid-1970’s and found the experience of visiting Yad Vashem (the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem) emotionally shattering. With the advice of Atlantic Records executive and mentor Ahmet Ertegun, a twenty-seven-year-old Geffen bought his first artwork, a small Picasso painting. Geffen embraced art collecting with his typical gusto and sagacity, developing a collection that, by the mid-1990’s, ranked as one of the best private collections of postwar American painting in the world. When Geffen sold Jackson Pollock’s No. 5, 1948 for $140 million in 2006, it was the most expensive sale of a single painting to date. Significance Geffen has been an influential force in American popular culture since the 1970’s. Although his greatest mark has been on popular music, he has also helped shape tastes in television programming, Broadway shows, and feature films. Like many media moguls before him, Geffen is known for his energy, his ambition, his shrewdness, and the tenacity of his friendships and animosities. The David Geffen Foundation has contributed huge sums to AIDS research and action causes. The David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los
Jewish Americans Angeles, and the Geffen Playhouse attest to the billionaire’s generosity. — Carolyn Anderson Further Reading Goodman, Fred. The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen, and the Head-on Collision of Rock and Commerce. New York: Times Books, 1997. Written by a former editor of Rolling Stone, this interview-driven account of rock music places Geffen as its most influential figure. King, Thomas R. The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood. New York: Random House, 2000. Begun (but not completed) with Geffen’s cooperation, this detailed biography, written by a Wall Street Journal reporter, charts the mogul’s meteoric career. Includes photographs. Rensen, David. Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up. Organized by decade and agency and based on interviews with former mail-room clerks (including Geffen), this anecdotal survey looks inside the ruthless business of talent agencies. Singular, Stephen. The Rise and Rise of David Geffen. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1997. This unauthorized biography shows how Geffen negotiated and exploited the mergers of big conglomerates in the 1990’s. See also: Jerry Bruckheimer; Michael Eisner; Samuel Goldwyn; Jeffrey Katzenberg; Steven Spielberg; Irving Thalberg; Warner brothers.
Frank Gehry Canadian-born architect, artist, and designer An influential architect, Gehry is known for his fluid, sculptural designs and his use of new and unconventional materials. Making innovative use of state-of-the-art three-dimensional design software, Gehry has created landmark buildings throughout the world. Born: February 28, 1929; Toronto, Ontario, Canada Also known as: Ephraim Owen Goldberg; Frank O. Gehry; Frank Owen Goldberg (birth name); Frank Owen Gehry (full name) Areas of achievement: Architecture and design; art; business 418
Early Life On February 28, 1929, Frank Gehry (GEH-ree) was born Frank Owen Goldberg in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His father, Irving Goldberg, was the son of Polish Jewish immigrants living in Brooklyn, New York. When he moved to Canada, he met Gehry’s mother, Thelma Caplanski, who had emigrated from Poland to Toronto. Gehry grew up in a deeply religious household. His mother worked with a Jewish women’s organization and a Yiddish theater. Gehry also was influenced by his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, who headed a synagogue, gave him the Hebrew name Ephraim, which was used at Gehry’s Bar Mitzvah. Gehry attended Hebrew
Jewish Americans school and spoke Yiddish. His future unconventional use of various building materials would be inspired by explorations in his grandfather’s hardware store. He and his grandmother spent much time together, constructing small cities out of wood scraps. His grandmother kept live carp in a bathtub to make gelfite fish for Sabbath, and Gehry was fascinated with the movements of the fish, which later emerged as a favorite design theme. In 1947, Gehry’s family moved to Los Angeles, where Gehry worked as a truck driver and studied at Los Angeles City College. In 1952, he married Anita Snyder, and in 1954 he changed his name from Frank Owen Goldberg to Frank O. Gehry. The couple had two daughters but divorced in 1966. In 1975, Gehry married Berta Isabel Aguilera, and they had two sons. After graduating from the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture in 1954, Gehry served in the United States Army until 1956. He studied city planning at Harvard University from 1956 to 1957 and then apprenticed with numerous firms. In 1962, he established Gehry and Walsh in Santa Monica, California, and in 1967 he founded Frank O. Gehry and Associates, Inc., which was succeeded by Gehry Partners in 2002. Gehry’s early works were conventional, but by the late 1970’s he had rejected the rigidity of modernist design in favor of a deconstructive approach, resulting in sculptural collages of junk materials. Using this new personal aesthetic, he redesigned his house in Santa Monica (1977-1978). This shocking structure of exposed framing, chain link, corrugated metal, and unpainted plywood gained widespread attention and led to many residential commissions. Life’s Work During the 1980’s and 1990’s, Gehry developed his new style fully, received numerous large-scale public commissions, and became a significant international architect. He also was a professor at Yale University and the University of California, Los Angeles. By the mid-1980’s he was becoming famous in the United States. In addition to his deconstruction of architectural structure and his use of new materials, Gehry developed playful, organic, and sculptural forms to put feeling and movement into his buildings. He became known for his fluid sketches and crumpled-paper models. Fish became a recurring theme in his buildings. He also designed sculpture, jewelry, and household pieces inspired by fish. He
Gehry, Frank created the huge fish sculpture in front of the Fishdance Restaurant in Kobe, Japan (1987), his first major international commission, and the gigantic Standing Glass Fish in a glass building in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. His first European building was the curvaceous, white Vitra Design Museum (1987-1989) in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany. In 1989, he received the most coveted prize in architecture, the Pritzker Prize. Other prestigious awards include the Japanese Praemium Imperiale Award (1992), the National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment of the Arts (1998), and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Gold Medal (1999). Completed in 1997, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao was a turning point in his career, and the museum epitomized his trademark style of free-form, sculptural buildings. The fish imagery recurs here in the silvery and nautical appearance. To accurately design the twisted, curved
Frank Gehry. (Getty Images)
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The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Widely considered the most significant twentieth century building, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, brought Frank Gehry international recognition as the leading architect of his time. In 1991, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Basque government agreed to collaborate on the building of this innovative museum, and construction began in 1994. On October 3, 1997, the museum was inaugurated, and on October 19 it was opened to the public with a celebrated contemporary art exhibition called The Guggenheim Museums and the Art of This Century. The museum won Time magazine’s Best Design of 1997 award and had more than 1.3 million visitors within the first year. During its first decade, the museum had more than eighty exhibitions and more than ten million visitors. Built over the Nervion River on one side and against a freight yard on another side in urban Bilbao, this unusual three-story building epitomized Gehry’s idea of architecture as sculpture. The abstract, curvaceous, sleek, and free-form sculptural design became Gehry’s signature style. Constructed of glass, concrete, steel, limestone, and thin, reflective titanium pieces, the museum featured twenty galleries in 257,000 square feet of exhibition space, a library, an auditorium, a shop, a restaurant, administrative offices, and a stunning, asymmetrically curved tower.
surfaces of his masterpiece, Gehry used CATIA, a threedimensional modeling and analysis computer program originally created for the auto and aerospace industries. Gehry also used cutting-edge technology to construct the controversial rock-music museum Experience Music Project in Seattle (2002). Dedicated to Jimi Hendrix and suggesting a smashed guitar, the undulating steel and sheet-metal structure was commissioned by billionaire Paul G. Allen. Other music venues included the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (2003), the Bard Theater in Annandale, New York (2003), and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park (2004). Other notable buildings included the Chiat/Day building in Venice, California (1991), the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota (1993), the American Center in Paris, France (1994), and the Pariser Platz 3 in Berlin, Germany (1999). Gehry received honorary doctorates from numerous schools, including the Rhode Island School of Design (1987), Southern California Institute of Architecture (1997), University of Toronto (1998), Yale University (2000), Harvard University (2000), and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2004). In the twenty-first century, Gehry continued to receive commissions and awards. Prestigious awards included 420
the Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal (2000) and the Americans for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award (2000). He has also received more than twenty-five design awards from the American Institute of Architects. Gehry has frequently donated his services to charitable causes, including the Ronald McDonald House (2002) in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany, and Maggie’s Cancer Centre in Dundee, Scotland (2003).
Significance By the twenty-first century, Gehry’s revolutionary designs and landmark buildings had helped establish him as an international icon and celebrity and one of the most significant architects of his time. He was among the geniuses and heroes honored in Apple Computer’s “Think Different” advertising campaign of 1998. Appearing as himself, Gehry helped design a tree house in the “Castles in the Sky” episode of the children’s show Arthur, first aired in December, 2004. He played himself in “The Seven-Beer Snitch” episode of The Simpsons, which first aired in April, 2005. Director Sydney Pollack’s acclaimed 2005 documentary film Sketches of Frank Gehry featured interviews with Gehry’s critics and friends, such as Dennis Hopper and Julian Schnabel. In June, 2010, Gehry was the guest teacher directing a city-planning project in episode six of the television series Masterclass, in which internationally renowned artists mentor high school students. —Alice Myers Further Reading Bruggen, Coosje van. Frank O. Gehry: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1999. With two hundred duotone and color reproductions, this is the detailed story of Gehry’s revolutionary Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, from conception to construction. Dal Co, Francesco, et al. Frank O. Gehry: The Complete Works. London: Phaidon Press, 2003. With more than a thousand illustrations, this comprehensive study covers Gehry’s significant works, beginning with his senior thesis at the University of Southern California in 1954. Extensive bibliography. Gehry, Frank O., and Brooke Hodge. F.O.G.: Flowing in All Directions. Los Angeles: CIRCA, Museum of
Jewish Americans Contemporary Art, 2003. This publication accompanied Gehry’s work-in-progress exhibition from September 7, 2003, to January 26, 2004, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Illustrated. Isenberg, Barbara. Conversations with Frank Gehry. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Based on twenty years of conversation, this is an intimate portrait of the artist and his creative process. Beautifully illustrated with photographs and Gehry’s drawings. Index.
Gelbart, Larry Mathewson, Casey C. M. Frank O. Gehry: Selected Works: 1969 to Today. Richmond Hill, Ont.: Firefly Books, 2007. This retrospective includes details of Gehry’s artistic evolution through the years. Beautifully illustrated. See also: Dankmar Adler; Marcel Breuer; Louis I. Kahn; Robert Moses; Richard Neutra; Rudolph Schindler.
Larry Gelbart Playwright and screenwriter Through his prodigious creative output in the field of comedy, Gelbert increased appreciation for his film, television, and stage works and established new levels of satirical comedy. Born: February 25, 1928; Chicago, Illinois Died: September 11, 2009; Beverly Hills, California Also known as: Francis Burns; Elsig; Larry Simon Gelbart (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Larry Gelbart (GEHL-bahrt) was born on February 25, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois, to Jewish immigrants. His father, Harry, from Latvia, was a barber in a workingclass neighborhood; his mother, Frieda, from Poland, was a seamstress. Gelbart grew up on the west side of Chicago, speaking Yiddish until he was five, as both of his parents were trying to learn English. At school, Gelbart began to learn English and have fun with it, later thanking his mother’s satirical humor and his father’s stories for their roles in his career. He often practiced the clarinet or saxophone and listened to the jokes told by the customers in his father’s barbershop. The Gelbart family moved to Los Angeles in 1942, and Gelbart enrolled in Fairfax High School. Gelbart’s father became a barber in Beverly Hills, with a clientele that included Hollywood notables. Actor Danny Thomas, who had looked at one of Gelbart’s comedy sketches, passed it on to the head writer of Thomas’s show, who offered Gelbart a part-time job as a comedy writer for Danny Thomas (Maxwell House Coffee Time). At the time, Gelbart was sixteen; at age eighteen, when he graduated from high school, he became a staff writer for the radio show Duffy’s Tavern until he received his draft notice in 1946.
In his military service, for which Gelbart stayed home and wrote for the Armed Forces Radio Service variety show Command Performance, he also found time to write material for Duffy’s Tavern. He furnished material for numerous comedians, including Jack Paar and Bob Hope, for whom he wrote for several years (1948-1952) and with whom he moved into television. After working for Hope, Gelbart became a key writer for Red Buttons, who paid Gelbart more than thirteen hundred dollars a week to move beyond one-liners to an opening monologue, a sketch, a performance by a guest artist, and a final song. In 1955, Gelbart was hired to work with Mel Tolkin, Neil Simon, Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, and Mel Brooks on Caesar’s Hour, where Gelbart perfected sketches that depicted human comedy, or timeless comedy that pokes fun at everyone’s foibles. When Caesar’s Hour was canceled in 1957, largely because of Caesar’s growing dependence on alcohol and pills, Gelbart wrote for a variety of television performers, including Patrice Munsel and Pat Boone, and then Gelbart moved on to work on a long list of special shows, frequently written with Woody Allen, for Art Carney and Danny Kaye, among other entertainers. In 1957, Gelbart teamed up with director Burt Shevelove and Stephen Sondheim, fresh from the success of West Side Story (1957) to write a Broadway musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), that ran for 964 performances. Life’s Work A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, using the comedy of Roman playwright Plautus as a structure for characters and situations of the twentieth century, won five Tony Awards. The musical and its success allowed Gelbart, for the first time, to think of himself as a writer. 421
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man Comedy Machine; and conferred with Gene Reynolds about turning M*A*S*H, a novel by Richard Hooker (pseudonym of Dr. Richard Hornberger), a film by Robert Altman, into a television series. When his contract with Marty Feldman was fulfilled, Gelbart and his family moved back to California, where he devoted four years (1972-1976) of his life to his new series, M*A*S*H. Gelbart left M*A*S*H to work on Sly Fox (1976) based on Volpone (1605), a play by sixteenth century English poet-playwright, Ben Jonson. The original play about a rich, greedy Venetian, who feigns his own death for money, involves, in Gelbart’s version, a series of swindles in the California Gold Rush. An examination of human greed, deceit, and gullibility, the play opened in December, 1976, and ran for 495 performances. After the failure of Mastergate: A Play on Words (1989), which ran briefly on Broadway, Gelbart wrote City of Angels (1989), a musical comedy, for which he won his second Tony Award. Gelbart returned to film to write screenplays for Oh, God! (1977), directed by Carl Reiner; Rough Cut (1980); Neighbors (1981); Tootsie (1982), for which Gelbart was nominated for an Academy Award; Blame It on Rio (1984); and Barbarians at the Gate (1992), a made-for-television film. Gelbart died on September 11, 2009, in BevM*A*S*H erly Hills, California, of cancer. He was survived by his wife of fifty-three years, former actor Pat Larry Gelbart’s most enduring legacy, M*A*S*H, the comeMarshall, and five children.
Gelbart went to Hollywood to write a screenplay for Fair Game, a script that was never made into a film, and also wrote the script for The Notorious Landlady (1962) that was then rewritten by other writers. Uncomfortable with this process, Gelbart went back to New York. He moved his family to London in 1963 for the opening of Forum and stayed there ten years. During that time, Gelbart and Shevelove collaborated on the screenplay for The Wrong Box (1966), suggested by an obscure 1889 novel written by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne; Gelbart, with Norman Panama and Peter Barnes, wrote Not with My Wife, You Don’t (1966), an endeavor that became more unpleasant by the day. Gelbart doctored two Italian film scripts, The Chastity Belt (1966) and A Fine Pair (1968), both frustrating adventures, as was the treatment he prepared for director Roman Polanski’s script Cherchez la Femme, which resulted in a lawsuit. The final blow in his experience with screenwriting was watching his script for Forum, which he was not allowed to direct, become unrecognizable during production. In the 1970’s, Gelbart wrote a play, Jump (1971); became writer, creator, and producer of The Marty Feld-
dic account of a United States mobile Army surgical unit in the Korean War, remained on air for eleven years, and it has continued to be an esteemed classic situation comedy. It was initially conceived as a critique of the Vietnam War. Gelbart insisted that the Korean War was to be treated seriously; he was also fond of the theme song “Suicide Is Painless,” and he maintained that the show’s humor should connect with its minor key. In its second year, the dark-humored comedy, with its excellent writing, direction, and acting, shot to the top in ratings and remained there. M*A*S*H episodes usually contain multiple plot lines with some comedy and at least one that was dramatic. Driven by an emphasis on character, the plot involves the activities of the camp’s surgeons, “Hawkeye” Pierce and “Trapper” John McIntyre; the camp’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake; and the company’s clerk, “Radar” O’Reilly, who finishes Blake’s sentences; hard-nosed military characters Majors Margaret Houlihan and Frank Burns, and Father Francis Mulcahy, the company chaplain. To these, Gelbart added Max Klinger, who wore dresses in his desperate effort to receive a mental discharge. Editing and directing techniques were combined to emphasize the ensemble cast and its human, if absurd, responses to war.
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Significance Gelbart’s facility with language and his innate sense of humor were the essentials that led to his excellence in writing. Early in his development, he learned the necessity of adapting the material to fit different media or different audiences, and he reveled in adapting the works of others for his plays, films, and television productions. He loved words and relished puns, Yiddishisms, and the creation of diction appropriate to diverse characters. Gelbart revised and polished his works even during production, and through his incessant rewriting, he came to be proficient in radio, theater, film, and television. His reputation as a writer’s writer caused him to be a premier “film doctor” for many comedy productions. His scripts are still fresh and funny and are still influential in the area of film, television, and theatrical comedy. — Mary Hurd
Jewish Americans Further Reading Gelbart, Larry. Laughing Matters. New York: Random House, 1999. Gelbart’s memoir concerns his family and his start in the comedy business. Includes anecdotes about Caesar, Hope, Brooks, and numerous colleagues throughout Gelbart’s career. Malarcher, Jay. The Classically American Comedy of Larry Gelbart. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2003. Excellently researched and detailed account of the life and career of Gelbart, with much information coming from Gelbart himself and from copious interviews with Gelbart’s associates.
Gershwin, George Solomonson, Ed, and Mark O’Neill. TV’s M*A*S*H: The Ultimate Guide Book. Foreword by Larry Gelbart. Albany, Ga.: BearManor Media, 2009. Comprehensive book covering all aspects of the series: interviews, facts, trivia, episode guides, new interesting information from the actors, unseen scripts by Gelbart, and comments by his family. See also: Woody Allen; Milton Berle; Mel Brooks; Lenny Bruce; Sid Caesar; Harvey Keitel; Stanley Kubrick; Carl Reiner; Neil Simon; Stephen Sondheim; Ben Stiller.
George Gershwin Composer and musician Gershwin wrote compositions that bridged the gap between popular and symphonic music. His works reflect the optimism and vitality of American life in the early years of the twentieth century and celebrate the contributions of other cultures to the United States.
sons from several neighborhood teachers, but he made the most progress under Charles Hambitzer, who introduced him to the music of such composers as Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, Claude Debussy, and Edvard Grieg. Gershwin began keeping a scrapbook of concert pro-
Born: September 26, 1898; Brooklyn, New York Died: July 11, 1937; Hollywood, California Also known as: Fred Murtha; Bert Wynn; Jacob Gershvin (birth name) Areas of achievement: Music; theater Early Life George Gershwin (GURSH-wihn) was the second child of Morris (Moishe) Gershovitz and Rose (Rosa) Bruskin, who emigrated from Russia to New York City in the early 1890’s and married in 1895. Gershwin’s father was a successful restaurateur, and the children enjoyed a comfortable upbringing. The family moved frequently within the city but generally gravitated to Jewish communities on the lower East Side and in Harlem. Like many immigrant Jewish families in America, they lived a largely secular life. Although music was not particularly important in his family’s household, Gershwin grew up hearing opera on phonograph records. He also attended occasional classical music concerts at the Educational Alliance and became familiar with Jewish popular and liturgical melodies in his daily life. In 1910, Gershwin’s parents bought a piano for his older brother, Ira, but it was Gershwin who excelled on the instrument. He had been experimenting on a friend’s player piano and had even been notating musical ideas in a notebook. Subsequently, he took les-
George Gershwin. (Library of Congress)
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the most highly regarded theatrical works of the decade. The two would remain a successful team for the rest of Gershwin’s life. Although he did not read widely, George Gershwin was enThe year 1924 also saw the premiere of what thralled with DuBose Heyward’s novel Porgy (1925) and thought would prove to be Gershwin’s most popular immediately of turning it into an opera. The writer and his wife, symphonic work, Rhapsody in Blue, which he Dorothy, were dramatizing the book as a play when Gershwin first composed at the suggestion of bandleader Paul approached them, and it was several years before Heyward and Gershwin reached agreement on the project and began work. Whiteman. Since Gershwin’s experience as an Heyward wrote the libretto and collaborated with Gershwin’s orchestrator was limited, he allowed Ferde brother, Ira, on the lyrics, while Gershwin set their words to music. Grofé to arrange his piano sketches for jazz orDirector Rouben Mamoulian tried out Porgy and Bess on Septemchestra. Premiered as part of what Whiteman ber 30, 1935, in Boston, and, after Gershwin and his collaborators billed as “An Experiment in Modern Music,” made substantial cuts, opened the opera in New York City’s Alvin the work was an immediate success and is reTheater on October 10, 1935. The opera is set in a Charleston, garded as a landmark in American musical hisSouth Carolina, tenement called Catfish Row, and revolves around tory. Shortly afterward Gershwin composed his the thwarted love of the crippled African American beggar Porgy Concerto in F (1925), which in the opinion of for the beautiful Bess. Opening with what would become one of many critics surpasses Rhapsody in Blue in its Gershwin’s most popular songs, “Summertime,” the opera was a successful incorporation of jazz elements into a success, running for 124 performances before it closed. Some critics questioned the worthiness of the subject matter, classical music structure. Having grown surer while others found fault with aspects of Mamoulian’s direction, of his skills, Gershwin orchestrated this work but most were enthusiastic about the work, and it has since been himself. He became so well known that he was recognized as the finest American opera ever written. featured on the cover of Time magazine, becoming the first American composer to be so honored. Gershwin conceived his next large-scale orgrams and magazine clippings about classical music, but chestral work, An American in Paris (1928), on a visit to he also maintained an interest in popular music. Soon afthe French capital in 1926. A tone poem describing a ter beginning his studies with Hambitzer, he asked his tourist’s impressions of Paris, the work alternates pasteacher for help with a song he had written, “Since I sages of gaiety and of melancholy as the tourist’s moods Found You.” swing between enjoyment of the city’s sights and sounds As Gershwin’s music studies progressed, he devel(including automobile horns in the Place de la Concorde) oped from a rambunctious child into a much more disciand homesickness for his native land. The work’s rich plined one, yet he chose to follow an independent course. sound and exuberant spirits proved irresistible to audiAlthough he had been attending New York public schools, ences, but critics differed over the work’s merits. On the he dropped out in 1914 at the age of fifteen in order to other hand, Of Thee I Sing (1931) pleased critics and auwork. His employer was Jerome H. Remick and Comdiences alike. A musical for which George S. Kaufman pany, a popular music publisher that had, like many simiand Morrie Ryskind wrote the book and the Gershwin lar firms, once maintained its offices in the district known brothers the music, it won a Pulitzer Prize for drama. as Tin Pan Alley. Gershwin continued to live with his In 1929, Gershwin had begun work on an operatic parents and would do so until he was thirty-one. version of the play Tsvishn Tsvey Veltn (1914; The Dybbuk) by Szymon Ansky. The play is based on a Jewish Life’s Work folktale, and the opera would have been Gershwin’s only After leaving Remick in 1917, Gershwin worked overtly Jewish work, but he abandoned the project when briefly as a rehearsal pianist, but by this time he had bethe rights were assigned to another composer. Three gun selling songs. His revue Half-Past Eight (1918) years later, however, he signed a contract to turn DuBose closed after a week in Syracuse, New York, but La La LuHeyward’s novel Porgy (1925) into an opera. The resultcille (1919) proved to be the first of many successes on ing work, Porgy and Bess (1935), came to be recognized Broadway. Gershwin’s mother had long encouraged him as his masterpiece. to compose songs to Ira’s lyrics, and in the musical comGershwin clearly enjoyed the wealth and fame he had edy Lady Be Good! (1924) the brothers produced one of earned, and he had always been known for his emotional
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Jewish Americans and physical vitality. In early 1937, however, he began to suffer from headaches, depression, and lapses of memory. His condition worsened quickly, and he fell into a coma in early July. An emergency operation revealed the presence of a brain tumor, and he died without regaining consciousness. Significance Although the United States had produced many distinguished composers, most had studied in Europe. Gershwin, on the other hand, learned to write music in his native land, and while he was thoroughly familiar with European music, old and new, he viewed it from an American perspective. Whether writing for the theater, the concert hall, or the opera house, he made extensive use of the ethnically rich mixture of musical styles he grew up hearing on the streets of New York City, including the African American music known as jazz. His works were distinguished by jaunty rhythms, lilting melodies, and infectious good humor, and struck listeners as uniquely American. When Gershwin died, suddenly and unexpectedly, he was mourned by friends and strangers alike. Even the normally reserved American novelist John O’Hara felt the loss deeply, writing a few years later, “George died on July 11, 1937, but I don’t have to believe that if I don’t want to.” — Grove Koger Further Reading Hamm, Charles. “Towards a New Reading of Gershwin.” In The Gershwin Style: New Looks at the Music of George Gershwin, edited by Wayne Joseph Schnei-
Gershwin, George der. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Argues that Gershwin’s reputation has suffered because his works do not fit conveniently into the standard categories devised for European orchestral music. Hyland, William George. George Gershwin: A New Biography. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. Concise, sympathetic biography written for readers without a background in music. Concludes with an analysis of Gershwin’s growing reputation. Pollack, Howard. George Gershwin: His Life and Work. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Exhaustive critical biography devoting extensive detail to the structure and the composition of Gershwin’s works. Rimler, Walter. George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Well-illustrated biography drawing upon Gershwin’s words and accounts by his contemporaries. Rosenberg, Deena Ruth. Fascinating Rhythm: The Collaboration of George and Ira Gershwin. Rev. ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Accessible analysis of the dozens of musicals and hundreds of songs that the brothers produced together. Wyatt, Robert, and John Andrew Johnson, eds. The George Gershwin Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Generous collection of letters, articles, reviews, and reminiscences by Gershwin and others. See also: Irving Berlin; Leonard Bernstein; Marvin Hamlisch; Jerome Kern; Lorin Maazel; Stephen Sondheim; Kurt Weill.
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Ira Gershwin Lyricist Writing for Broadway musicals, films, satiric operettas, and a major American opera, Gershwin blended his words with music in songs that became enduring standards. Born: December 6, 1896; New York, New York Died: August 17, 1983; Beverly Hills, California Also known as: Arthur Francis; Israel Gershvin (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; theater Early Life Ira Gershwin (I-ruh GURSH-wihn) was born in New York City to parents who had migrated from St. Petersburg, Russia. Morris Gershovitz was a skilled shoe worker. His wife, Rose Bruskin, was the daughter of a furrier. Around the time of the birth of their first son in 1896, their name was changed, and on Gershwin’s birth certificate his name appears as Israel Gershvin, but he always regarded it as Gershwin. The family was not deeply religious; of three sons, only the oldest was given a Bar Mitzvah. The Gershwins
Ira Gershwin. (Library of Congress)
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were not poor nor were they consigned to a ghetto. The sons were expected to be educated and to be successful. The parents acquired a piano, and the boys were given lessons, but their mother appeared to regard piano playing as primarily a social accomplishment. Neither parent expected the sons to become professional musicians, although they later promoted a stage career for their youngest child, Frances. Gershwin, his noted brother George, and younger brother Arthur enjoyed the games of New York City street children. Gershwin entered a school for exceptional students called Townsend Harris Hall, where he succeeded more at cartooning and serving as a newspaper editor than at studying. Nevertheless, he was admitted to City College of New York as an English major, which he attended only two years as a full-time student. Unlike George, Gershwin did not gravitate early to a musical career. After dropping out of college, he worked as a darkroom assistant to a photographer and as a cashier, but he was attracted to vaudeville and the musical theater. In 1917, he began writing lyrics for some of the songs his younger brother was turning out. Until 1924, however, he worked only sporadically with George. At the age of thirty-two he married Leonore Strunsky. Life’s Work For Ira, 1924 was a pivotal year. After George composed his jazz-based symphony, Rhapsody in Blue, the two collaborated on a Broadway musical, Lady Be Good. Ironically, “The Man I Love,” which epitomized the blending of their skills, was dropped from the show as inappropriate. Another number from Lady Be Good exemplified their compatibility. Taking a previously unpublished song called “Syncopated City,” Ira first considered the song a difficult challenge, but he conceded that it had a “fascinating rhythm.” He thereby found its title and wrote the lyrics. Other musicals of the 1920’s included Oh, Kay! with “Someone to Watch Over Me” in 1926 and Funny Face in 1927, with the immensely popular “’S Wonderful.” For Girl Crazy in 1930, which starred Ginger Rogers and Ethel Merman, Gershwin wrote lyrics for “Bidin’ My Time,” “Embraceable You,” “But Not for Me,” and “I Got Rhythm,” the last a hit for Merman then and for decades thereafter. Soon the Gershwin brothers were involved in attempts to make operettas comparable to
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those by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur SulGiving Characters a True Voice livan, Strike up the Band (1930) and Of Thee I Sing (1931). Ira wrote words The opera Porgy and Bess (1935) interested Ira and George Gershwin as for the march that is the title song of a depiction of a depressed people in a time beset by Adolf Hitler’s tyranny. the former and two contrasting lyrIt began as George’s collaboration with DuBose Heyward, based on Heyics for love songs in the latter, “Love ward’s novel Porgy (1924). Ira Gershwin was brought in because the songs for one of the characters, Sportin’Life, called for a lyricist of his sophisticaIs Sweeping the Country” and “Who tion and comedic talent. Cares?” One of these, “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” is religiously skeptical in a way Soon the Gershwins contributed to similar to parts of the Jewish Talmud, in which some doctrines are intertwo other musical forms. DuBose Heypreted allegorically, while certain of its aphorisms are humorous. Ira’s conward and George undertook an opera, tribution went further, however. A song for Porgy, which was in Ira’s judgPorgy and Bess (1935). Sophisticated ment a “fifty-fifty collaboration with Heyward,” began with a phrase lyrics were needed for one character reflecting Ira’s penchant for colloquial language: “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’.” in this work, and Ira was brought in Ira’s skill with dialect is on display in the love song “Bess, You Is My to write them for “It Ain’t Necessarily Woman Now,” also regarded as a collaboration with Heyward. So” and “There’s a Boat That’s Leavin’ Although there has been some dispute about the relative contributions of Soon for New York,” but he also collabthese two men, Gershwin was a much more experienced lyricist than Heyward and was better able to express the aspirations of characters origiorated with Heyward on such songs as nally created by Heyward, making them more dramatically interesting. “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’” and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now.” The Gershwins reached a peak in film-writing in the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film Shall Significance We Dance (1937), with “Beginner’s Luck,” “They All Gershwin wrote in an age when Irving Berlin and Laughed,” “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” “They Cole Porter created both words and music, while others, Can’t Take That Away from Me,” and “Shall We Dance.” including Ira Gershwin, had to discover how to achieve Although the Gershwins believed that the presentation of that perfect balance between their words and a comsome of the songs did not do them justice, the songs beposer’s music. An outstanding lyric must be simple and came enduring standards. The same year they wrote the direct yet still original. The Gershwin brothers, though music for a Fred Astaire and Joan Fontaine film, A Damdifferent personality types, formed an unusually close sel in Distress, including “A Foggy Day,” which they collaboration. Their success on Broadway, in Hollywood completed in an hour after George came back from a musicals, and in forms such as operetta and even opera party at one in the morning and Gershwin started wonwas unmatched. Their collaboration accomplished what dering whether “a foggy day in London” might not sugfew have: Their songs outlasted their original vehicles. gest a song. —Robert P. Ellis This happy relationship, however, was nearly over. Shortly after the release of Shall We Dance and before A Further Reading Damsel in Distress was released, George died of a brain Furia, Philip. Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist. New tumor. Thereafter Ira worked with many other accomYork: Oxford University Press, 1996. Less a biograplished songwriters. In 1940 he collaborated with Kurt phy than a study of the lyrics, this book traces the deWeill to write thirty-six pages of lyrics for a show called velopment of Gershwin’s artistic development chroLady in the Dark, which Ira described as a blend of light nologically. opera, musical comedy, and choral pieces. One of its Gershwin, George. The Comedy Songs of George and Ira high moments was a long dialogue song tracing the amGershwin. Van Nuys, Calif.: Alfred, 2001. Here the bitions of a woman from age three to seventy-five, “The reader can find comedic songs of the sort Gershwin Saga of Jenny.” Ira continued to write until 1954, when in loved to write but which are seldom heard or seen outthe film A Star Is Born Judy Garland sang one of his last side the productions in which they originally aplyrics, “The Man That Got Away.” Ira never worked long peared. Examples are “The Babbitt and the Bromide,” enough with any other composer, however, to match the “Just Another Rumba,” and “Stiff Upper Lip.” success he had with George. Ira Gershwin died of heart Gershwin, Ira, and Robert Kimball. Ira Gershwin: Sedisease in 1983. 427
Ginsberg, Allen lected Lyrics. New York: Library of America, 2009. This collection considers aspects of Gershwin’s lyrics, such as their initial verses, that are often omitted in performance but that often display their writer’s typical wit and charm. Jablonski, Edward. Gershwin. New York: Da Capo Press, 1988. Although primarily a book about George Gershwin, this volume has a forty-five-page epilogue, “The Myths of Ira Gershwin,” that dispels many of the misconceptions about the lyricist. Rosenberg, Deena. Fascinating Rhythm: The Collabora-
Jewish Americans tion of George and Ira Gershwin. New York: Penguin Books, 1991. Focusing on the period from 1924 through 1937 when the brothers worked together, Rosenberg’s book is notable for appendixes containing a chronology and alphabetized list of Gershwin songs, music and lyrics to three songs, and a discography. See also: Harold Arlen; Irving Berlin; Leonard Bernstein; Sammy Cahn; George Gershwin; Yip Harburg; Jerome Kern; Jule Styne.
Allen Ginsberg Poet Ginsberg was a key figure in the Beat movement in poetry and a public artist with a profound commitment to social justice. Born: June 3, 1926; Newark, New Jersey Died: April 5, 1997; New York, New York Also known as: Irwin Allen Ginsberg (full name) Areas of achievement: Activism; literature; social issues Early Life Allen Ginsberg (GIHNZ-burg) was born in Newark, New Jersey, the younger of two sons of Louis Ginsberg and Naomi Livergant. Louis was a high school English teacher and minor poet; Naomi was troubled with mental illness throughout her adult life and was frequently institutionalized during Allen Ginsberg’s adolescence. Ginsberg graduated from Paterson Eastside High School in 1943 and then attended Columbia University, where he studied literature with Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren. At Columbia, Ginsberg met Lucien Carr, William Burroughs, and Columbia dropout and ex-football player Jack Kerouac. This coterie would form the foundation of the Beat literary movement, characterized by experimentation with drugs, by a rejection of conventional values, and by an interest in Eastern religions, During the first two years that he studied at Columbia, Ginsberg discussed great writers and philosophers, was arrested as an accessory after a murder when Carr rebuffed unwanted homosexual advances from Dave Kammerer with deadly force, and was finally suspended from Columbia for a year for writing offensive graffiti in the dust on his dormitory window. Ginsberg joined the U.S. Maritime Service in what was the last year of World War II, earning his 428
seaman union’s card and working several runs on merchant ships. After the war, Ginsberg returned to classes at Columbia and worked for the Associated Press. A car accident
Allen Ginsberg. (George Holmes/Courtesy, Harper & Rowe)
Jewish Americans and a flight from the police resulted in Ginsberg being referred to Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute where he met Carl Solomon, to whom Ginsberg would later dedicate “Howl.” Ginsberg spent the next few years in New York City, except for a trip to Mexico City with Carr to visit Burroughs. John Clellon Holmes wrote Go (1952), considered the first Beat novel, but Ginsberg never liked his depiction in the text, believing that Holmes misunderstood the import of Ginsberg’s Harlem vision of visionary poet William Blake. Ginsberg continued a professional correspondence with fellow New Jersey native and poet William Carlos Williams, who encouraged Ginsberg to continue to pursue unorthodox poetic structures. Ginsberg traveled to Denver before settling in San Francisco, where Robert Duncan’s poetry workshop at San Francisco State College and the San Francisco Poetry Center provided a supportive culture for the his creation of poetry. Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened City Lights Books in 1953 at Broadway and Columbus, the start of a nascent poetry scene in North Beach. Life’s Work The Six Gallery reading on October 7, 1955, is considered the defining moment of the Beat movement in American literature. For the reading, Ginsberg enlisted Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and others as readers, then consulted Kenneth Rexroth, a San Francisco poet since the 1930’s. Rexroth recommended Gary Snyder, a Reed College graduate studying Chinese and Japanese at Berkeley. Kerouac’s shyness kept him from reading, but, as he describes in The Dharma Bums (1958), he collected money for wine and then bought jugs of burgundy that he pounded on the floor as Ginsberg read “Howl” to an amazed audience. Ferlinghetti published Howl, and Other Poems in 1956 as the third of the esteemed Pocket Poets series, and the Six Gallery readers came to be known as the central figures of the Beat movement in literature. Over the next forty years, Ginsberg produced a corpus of poetry that puts him in the top ranks of American poets in the second half of the twentieth century. Howl, and Other Poems (1956, 1996), Kaddish, and Other Poems, 1958-1960 (1961), Reality Sandwiches (1963), The Fall of America (1972), and Plutonian Ode (1982) put Ginsberg within the poetic legacies of Walt Whitman’s common-man tradition, even as Ginsberg confronted issues of import in the twentieth century, such as psychedelic drug use, environmental stewardship, homosexuality, and the developing gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-
Ginsberg, Allen
“Howl” Wakes up the Literary Establishment Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” catapulted him into notoriety. The poet was at first disappointed that his mentor, Lionel Trilling, a well-respected professor of American literature, found the work “dull.” However, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a poet and publisher, was enthusiastic about the work, which he believed put Ginsberg “at the beginning of a great career.” In “Howl” Ginsberg used the length of a breath as meter for the poem, an unusual rhythmic structure, and experimented with form. The first part recounts the activities of the “angelheaded hipsters,” who are mostly his friends, a motley collection of students, junkies, artists, and dropouts. The second part is Ginsberg’s lament about the tensions of his time, marked by the Cold War and materialism, and ends with a vision of anarchy that consumes the world. In the third part Ginsberg addresses Carl W. Solomon, a poet he knew from Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute, who, he suggests, is declared mad but is really in the grip of a creative sanity. In this last part, Ginsberg paints a utopian future. However, the poem’s references to drug use, homosexuality, mental illness, and religion created an uproar that resulted in the poem’s publisher being put on trial for obscenity. Ferlinghetti ended up in court, while Ginsberg, delighted by the attention his poem was receiving, decamped to Tangiers, Morocco.
gender community. Though Howl, and Other Poems remains his best-known collection of poetry, “Kaddish” may ultimately be the more complex and lasting achievement: It details the mental illness, institutionalization, decline, and death of his mother, Naomi. Kaddish is the Jewish prayer for the dead, and Ginsberg’s poem of the same name serves as a chant that mourns the loss of his mother and of his religious tradition. Although Ginsberg continued to identify himself as a Jew, his studies and prayers in the Buddhist tradition superseded his Jewish identity after the early 1960’s. Even as Ginsberg wrote and read prodigiously, he was equally influential as an advocate for his fellow Beat writers, for young artists and poets, for friends who had fallen on bad times, for free speech, and for Buddhism. Ginsberg was a lifelong critic of smoking tobacco and at the same time an advocate of marijuana use, a stance he justified in his poetry and in his nonfiction essays. In 1954, Ginsberg met and fell immediately in love with twenty-one-year-old Peter Orlovsky, and the two remained a couple for the balance of Ginsberg’s life. 429
Ginsberg, Allen Their open relationship allowed Orlovsky to pursue heterosexual affairs, sometimes creating complex relationship dynamics with Ginsberg. Although Ginsberg encouraged the artistic output of his partner, Orlovsky served more as a companion and an administrative assistant than as a fellow artist. The couple moved among San Francisco, Boulder, and New York City, with periodic trips to Europe, North Africa, and Asia, but they lived principally in a loft in the East Village of lower Manhattan. In 1974, Ginsberg and writer Anne Waldman founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at what was then called Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) in Boulder, Colorado. Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Snyder, and other Beat writers often served residencies at the Jack Kerouac School, especially during the summer writing program. For twenty years, Ginsberg was generous with his time, his insights, and his money in supporting the school’s distinctive mission. During the last decade of his life, Ginsberg taught as Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College. He died of liver cancer in 1997. Significance Ginsberg’s poetry is firmly established in the canon of American literature, both as the Whitman of his era and as an original and eloquent poetic voice in his own right. Ginsberg was important in establishing the Beat literary movement, and he was a supportive advocate of younger artists. His controversial poem “Howl,” which made references to drug use and illicit sexual practices, became the subject of an obscenity trial. However, the judge dismissed the charges against the publisher, Ferlinghetti, declaring that the work had “redeeming social importance.” —Richard Sax
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Jewish Americans Further Reading Felver, Christopher. The Late Great Allen Ginsberg. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002. A photographic biography of Ginsberg’s life from 1980 to 1997, including captioned pictures and a prefatory essay. Hyde, Lewis, ed. On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984. Contains seventy-two brief letters, articles, and responses to the poetry of Ginsberg, including early letters of support and critique from William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore, and review articles by Diana Trilling, Robert Bly, Timothy Leary, and Czesuaw Miuosz. Miles, Barry. Allen Ginsberg: A Biography. New York: Harper Perennial, 1989. An early biography with extensive notes, bibliography, and index, drawing on the author’s personal friendship with Ginsberg over the previous quarter century. Morgan, Bill. I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg. New York: Penguin, 2007. Morgan provides glimpses of Ginsberg’s notso-private life that are at times described in his confessional poetry, including his psychosexual predilections; manic and depressive episodes; his interest in jazz, blues, and later punk music; and his social and artistic causes. Schumacher, Michael. Dharma Lion: A Critical Biography of Allen Ginsberg. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. A literary biography providing readings of Ginsberg’s major poems. Schumacher chronicles Ginsberg’s early years in Newark, college at Columbia, travels throughout the world, and his various political and social causes. See also: Joseph Brodsky; Lenny Bruce; Larry Kramer; Mark Strand.
Jewish Americans
Ginsburg, Ruth Bader
Ruth Bader Ginsburg U.S. Supreme Court justice As an attorney and a law professor, Ginsburg was a leader in the legal movement seeking to enhance the rights of women. In 1993, she became the first Jewish woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Born: March 13, 1933; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Ruth Joan Bader (birth name); Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg (full name) Areas of achievement: Law; activism Early Life Ruth Bader Ginsburg (BAY-dur GIHNZ-burg) was born in Brooklyn on March 13, 1933. She was raised in the city and educated in its public schools. Her mother, who died of cancer the day before her graduation from high school, was a significant influence on her, encouraging her to work hard on her education. She attended Cornell University in New York, where she met her future husband, Martin Ginsburg. Both began their legal studies at Harvard Law School, where she was one of few women in her class. When her husband was hired by a major New York law firm, she transferred to Columbia University Law School. There she graduated as a member of the law review, tied for first in her class. She then served as a law clerk for two years. One of her professors strongly urged that she be chosen for a highly prestigious Supreme Court clerk position, but this was a not a position open to women at that time. For the same reason, in spite of her stellar academic credentials, Ginsburg was unable to find a job with a major law firm in New York. Consequently she took a position teaching at Rutgers University Law School in 1963, where she first became interested in gender discrimination law. While there, she cowrote the first casebook in that field. In 1972, she joined the Columbia Law School faculty and became head of the Women’s Rights Project created by the American Civil Liberties Union. Life’s Work When Ginsburg began to work with the Women’s Rights Project, there were a large number of laws, both state and federal, that treated men and women differently, often to the disadvantage of women. She challenged many of these laws, and she was successful getting them rewritten. Her work contributed significantly to the advancement of women’s rights. In 1980, Ginsburg was appointed to the Federal Court
of Appeals for Washington, D.C., by President Jimmy Carter. While on this court she developed a reputation as being a moderately progressive judge, one who would interpret the law in a liberal fashion but not seek to push rapid change. In that vein, while on this court, she published an article criticizing the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade (the decision that overturned existing laws banning and regulating abortion) for going too far, too fast and for not focusing only on the rights of the woman. In 1993, when Byron R. White, who was appointed by John F. Kennedy, retired, President Bill Clinton was given the opportunity to fill the vacancy. At that time there were no Jewish justices on the Court; indeed there had not been one since Abe Fortas stepped down from the Court in 1969. It took the president some time to decide on a nominee, but he eventually chose Ginsburg. She was easily confirmed by the U.S. Senate, winning her seat by a vote of ninety-six to three.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (Steve Petteway/Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)
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Championing Women’s Rights As a woman in a field then dominated by males, Ruth Bader Ginsburg felt the sting of gender bias, and she spent much of her professional life fighting it. As a professor and a leader of the American Civil Liberties Women’s Rights Project, she participated in a number of lawsuits challenging laws that discriminated against women. As project director, she argued six cases involving women’s rights before the U.S. Supreme Court, winning five. She also submitted a number of amici curiae briefs in support of other litigants. Her basic argument was that such laws violated the “equal protection” clause of the U.S. Constitution, and, like laws that distinguish people on the basis of race, they should be treated with “strict scrutiny,” which usually means they would be declared unconstitutional. If the Court was unwilling to take that position, she would argue that most legal distinctions between men and women were based on stereotypes and, hence, were invalid because they fit no rational purpose. In 1996, she wrote the majority opinion in United States v. Virginia, the case in which the Supreme Court decided that Virginia Military Institute must admit women.
Since Ginsburg has joined the Court, she has become a member of its “liberal” bloc. Analyses of her decisions show she has tended, in nonunanimous decisions, to vote with such justices as John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and (fellow Clinton appointee) Stephen Breyer. Those with whom she has tended to disagree most have been Justice Samuel Alito and her former colleagues on the Court of Appeals, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. As a member of the “liberal” bloc, she has voted with the majority in the case invalidating a Texas law that prohibited private sexual relations between consulting adults of the same gender. She has also made it clear that she considers laws seeking to restrict access to abortions to be unconstitutional. To a degree greater than some of her colleagues, she has supported the rights of the accused against the power of the state in cases of criminal law. Because of the conservative ascendancy on the Court, Ginsburg often votes with the minority. For instance, when the majority of the Court held that large punitive damages in lawsuits are unconstitutional, she voted in the minority. She also voted with the minority when the Supreme Court upheld California’s “three strikes and you’re out” law, and she did the same in a case in which the majority took the position that made it difficult for citizens to effectively pursue pay-discrimination lawsuits. She also voted with the dissenters in Bush v. Gore, the case that determined the outcome of the 2000 432
presidential contest. Because she tends to vote with the minority a significant amount of the time she has, relatively speaking, written fewer opinions of the Court (majority opinions) and more dissenting opinions than many of her colleagues. Although she has had philosophical differences with some of her peers on the bench, she has been able to maintain good personal relationships with many of them. For instance, though she and Sandra Day O’Connor (the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court) did not always vote the same, they became good friends. The Ginsburgs also have a close personal relationship with the Scalias, though the two justices disagree often in their votes.
Significance Ginsburg has had significant impact on American life as a role model, a leader in the women’s rights movement, and as a judge. When she entered Harvard Law School, a female lawyer was a rarity. She excelled in the field, and now women make up about 30 percent of the legal profession. Her role in the crusade for greater legal equality for women has been compared to Thurgood Marshall’s role in legal integration. She is also the first Jewish woman to attain the position of justice of the United States Supreme Court. She is known as a jurist who carefully builds on existing law to extend it in liberal directions. As both an attorney and a judge, she has been an intelligent and effective spokesperson for equality for all under the law. —David M. Jones
Further Reading Baer, Judith. “Advocate on the Court: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Limits of Formal Equality.” In Rehnquist Justice: Understanding the Court Dynamic, edited by Earl Matz. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003. Evaluates her approach to equality for women, comparing it to other feminist theories. O’Brien, David M. “Judicial Legacies: The Clinton Presidency and the Courts.” In The Clinton Legacy, edited by Colin Campbell and Bert A. Rockman. New York: Chatham House, 2000. Discusses Clinton’s philosophy of judicial appointments and how Ginsburg fit into it. Strum, Philippa. Women in the Barracks: The VMI Case and Equal Rights. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. Discusses the movement to integrate
Jewish Americans women into the formerly all-male Virginia Military Institute. Contains material on Ginsburg’s role, both as an attorney and as a Supreme Court justice. Tushnet, Mark. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Equal Protection Clause.” In A Court Divided: The Rehnquist Court and the Future of Constitutional Law. New York:
Glaser, Donald A. W. W. Norton, 2005. Describes Ginsburg’s judicial philosophy; also contains biographical materials. See also: Louis D. Brandeis; Stephen G. Breyer; Benjamin Cardozo; Abe Fortas; Felix Frankfurter; Arthur J. Goldberg.
Donald A. Glaser Physicist During a career filled with diverse scientific achievements, Glaser invented the bubble chamber, which allowed scientists to observe high-energy beams of fundamental particles produced by particle accelerators. Born: September 21, 1926; Cleveland, Ohio Also known as: Donald Arthur Glaser (full name) Area of achievement: Science and technology Early Life Born to William J. and Lena Glaser, Jewish emigrants to the United States from Russia, Donald A. Glaser (GLAY-zur) received his early education in the public schools of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where he developed a love for science. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from the Case Institute of Technology in 1946. His bachelor’s thesis was an electron diffraction study of the properties of thin metallic films evaporated onto crystalline metal substrates. In 1949, he completed his Ph.D. in physics at the California Institute of Technology. He officially received his degree in 1950. His doctoral thesis was an experimental study of the momentum spectrum of high-energy cosmic ray and mesons at sea level. Glaser accepted a teaching and research faculty position at the University of Michigan in 1949, and he was promoted to full professor of physics in 1957. While at Michigan, Glaser worked on experiments associated with identifying the properties and the interactions of short-lived elementary particles known as strange particles. The most common tool used for tracking elementary particles at the time was the cloud chamber. Glaser’s graduate school experience had shown him that cloud chambers were inadequate for tracking strange particles. As the particles passed through a gas and collided with metal plates, the scientist’s view of the events was obscured.
Life’s Work To overcome the problems associated with using cloud chambers, Glaser recognized that he needed a detector that contained a higher-density medium than the vapor in a cloud chamber. In the early 1950’s, he experimented with using superheated liquid in a glass chamber. Highenergy elementary particles would leave a track of bubbles as they passed through the liquid. These tracks could be photographed. This led Glaser to his invention of the bubble chamber in 1952. He used ether as the working substance, and he showed that hydrogen would also work. The images he produced with his bubble chamber at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York brought recognition for his invention and funding to produce larger chambers. The bubble chamber allowed physicists to observe what happens to high-energy beams of particles produced by high-energy accelerators. In 1959, Glaser accepted a position as a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB). He worked on improvements to his bubble chamber by varying the liquid used in the chamber and the effects of using containers of varying shape and size. Along with Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez, he worked on the development of a hydrogen bubble chamber at UCB. Glaser conducted experiments in high-energy nuclear physics and determined lifetimes, decay modes, and spins for the neutral lambda hyperon, the neutral K-meson, and the neutral sigma hyperon as well as differential crosssections for their production by pions. Other experiments provided information about pion-proton scattering, parity violation in nonleptonic hyperon decay, and the branching ratios in positive K-meson decay. In 1962, Glaser changed his research focus to molecular biology. He studied the control of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) synthesis in bacteria and human skin cancer induced by ultraviolet radiation. In 1964, he added professor of molecular biology to his title at UCB. In 1971, Glaser and three friends cofounded Cetus Corporation, 433
Glaser, Milton the first biotechnology company, to bring the results of microbiology research to applications in medicine and agriculture. Glaser then turned his talents to neurobiological research, particularly associated with the human visual system. He worked on computational models of human vision that can be used to predict human visual abilities that are testable by psychophysical and electrophysiological methods. Professor of neurobiology was added to his title in 1989. For his contributions to a variety of scientific areas, Glaser has received many honors. He was awarded the Henry Russell Award from the University of Michigan (1953), the Charles Vernon Boys Prize of the London Physical Society (1958), and the American Physical Society Prize (1959). For his invention of the bubble chamber, Glaser was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1960. Significance For atomic physicists, Glaser’s bubble chamber became second in importance to only the cyclotron for detecting high-energy elementary particles and studying high-energy nuclear physics. Notable discoveries made by using a bubble chamber include the discovery of weak neutral currents, which confirmed the validity of the electroweak theory and paved the way for the discovery in 1983 of the W and Z bosons that mediate the weak nuclear force. Bubble chambers have also been used in researching weakly interacting massive particles as a possible solution to the dark matter problem. —Alvin K. Benson
Jewish Americans Further Reading Allison, Amy. Luis Alvarez and the Development of the Bubble Chamber. Newark, Del.: Mitchell Lane, 2002. An overview of Glaser’s invention of the bubble chamber. Details of his subsequent work with Alvarez at UCB in the development of the hydrogen bubble chamber are presented in a clear, concise manner. Bettini, Alessandro. Introduction to Elementary Particle Physics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2008. This book presents a clear, insightful description of the standard model of elementary particle physics, which includes contributions made to this field through implementation of Glaser’s bubble chamber. The interplay between theoretical and experimental physicists in developing an understanding of the fundamental forces of nature is discussed. Some photographs of data obtained using the bubble chamber are shown. Galison, Peter Louis. Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Galison probes the use of simple to complex apparatuses in experimental microphysics, and what it means to be a physicist and do experimental physics. The development of experimental tools, such as Glaser’s bubble chamber, is explored. Coordination among instrument makers, theoretical physicists, and experimental physicists is examined. See also: Hans Albrecht Bethe; Albert Einstein; Richard P. Feynman; David Gross; Leon Lederman; Frederick Reines.
Milton Glaser Graphic designer, artist, and illustrator Glaser has contributed to the areas of graphic, environmental, interior, and poster design. His famous creation is the “I Heart NY” logo that he created for the city of New York in 1976. Born: June 26, 1929; Bronx, New York Also known as: Max Catz Areas of achievement: Architecture and design; art Early Life Milton Glaser (GLAY-zer) was born in the Bronx in New York City on June 26, 1929, to Eugene and Eleanor Bergman Glaser. At the age of five, Glaser decided that 434
he wanted to become an artist. His father resisted the idea, but Glaser’s mother supported her son’s artistic ambitions. At the age of eight, he was confined to bed with rheumatic fever and spent a year sculpting clay cities and figures. Glaser’s first attempt at line art was comic strips. At the age of twelve, he took a portfolio of his comic strips to a studio for review. After the comics were rejected, Glaser turned to other forms of art. From 1943 to 1946, Glaser attended the High School of Music and Art. This school offered intense instruction in both music and art, and Glaser took courses in painting, poster design, and typography.
Jewish Americans Glaser applied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn but failed the admissions test. Instead, he went to work for a packaging company, and within a year, Glaser was promoted to art director. He attended the Cooper Union School of Art and graduated in 1951. Glaser won a Fulbright Scholarship, and in 1952 he went to Italy to study etching under the tutelage of Giorgio Morandi at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Life’s Work In 1954, Glaser returned to New York and cofounded Pushpin Studios in New York City with Seymour Chwast, Reynold Ruffins, and Edward Sorel. Glaser and Chwast directed the studio for twenty years. Glaser married Shirley Girton in 1957. In 1968, he and Clay Felker established New York Magazine. Glaser served as president and design director for the magazine until 1977. Glaser established his own studio, Milton Glaser, Incorporated, in 1974. The Manhattan studio produced print graphics and environmental and interior design work. In 1976, Glaser created what is perhaps the most-copied logo in the world, the “I (Heart) NY” logo, designed in 1976 pro bono for the city of New York as part of an advertising campaign to promote tourism in the city. In 1983, he joined with Walter Bernard and formed WBMG, a design firm that specialized in publications. At WBMG, Glaser worked on redesigning high-profile newspapers and magazines from around the world, including The Washington Post newspaper, Family Circle magazine, and the French publication Paris Match. Some of Glaser’s work includes graphic and decorative programs for restaurants in New York’s World Trade Center; architectural design of the Observation Deck and Permanent Exhibition for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center; the redesign of Grand Union supermarkets, including store interiors and store-brand packaging; interior design for the 1987-1988 Triennale di Milano International Exhibition; and the design of more than three hundred posters for various purposes, including theater, film, and advertising. Glaser’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including in a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1975, an exhibit at the Louvre Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, and several exhibitions in Italy and Japan. Glaser has been heavily involved with design and education during his career. He was an instructor and board member for the School of Visual Arts in New York and
Glaser, Milton served on the board of directors of the Cooper Union, his alma mater. His membership in professional design associations included a stint as president for the International Design Conference in Aspen in 1972, and he served as vice president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts in 1989. Glaser has won numerous awards during his career. In 1979, he received a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators and the St. Gaudens Medal from Cooper Union, and he was inducted into the Art Directors Club of New York Hall of Fame. In 1992, he won a gold medal from the American Institute of Architects, and in 1996 he was awarded the Prix Savignac for the World’s Most Memorable Poster of 1996. Glaser holds honorary doctorate degrees from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Moore College, Philadelphia Museum School, School of the Visual Arts, Queens College, the City University of New York (CUNY), New York University at Buffalo, and the Royal College of Art in London. Significance Glaser’s contributions to graphic design and illustration include a wide range of projects, from posters and book illustrations to architectural and interior design work. His work is described as direct, simple, and elegant. Glaser has had a profound influence on graphic design and illustration during his long career and continues to contribute his energies to the profession. In 2009, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded him the National Medal of Arts for his outstanding contributions to art. — Karen S. Garvin Further Reading Glaser, Milton. Art Is Work. New York: Overlook Press, 2008. Showcasing Glaser’s graphic design achievements, this book addresses questions such as “What Is Design?” and describes Glaser’s approach to the design process. _______. Drawing Is Thinking. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 2008. This collection of Glaser’s work includes illustrations ranging from drawings to completed designs. The preface is an interview between Glaser and Peter Mayer about Glaser’s work. See also: Jules Feiffer; Frank Gehry; Richard Neutra; Ben Shahn.
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Paul Michael Glaser Actor, activist, and writer Best known as an actor and as Starsky in the 19751979 television series Starsky and Hutch, Glaser has been an activist for the prevention and treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) through the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Born: March 25, 1943; Cambridge, Massachusetts Also known as: Paul M. Glaser; Paul Glaser; Michael Glaser; Mike Glaser; P. M. Glaser; Paul Manfred Glaser (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; activism; social issues Early Life Paul Michael Glaser (GLAY-suhr) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 25, 1943. The youngest of three children, Glaser is the son of architect Samuel Glaser and Dorothy Glaser and is of Jewish heritage. He planned a career in acting while he was still in high school at the Cambridge School of Weston; he worked in summer stock in the Boston area even before his high school graduation. Glaser graduated from Tulane University with a B.A. (1965) and an M.A. in English and theater (1966). In 1967, he earned a second M.A. in theater (acting and directing) from Boston University. After his graduation from Boston University, Glaser moved to New York. He made his stage debut in 1968 in an Off-Broadway role in Joseph Papp’s rock version of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1600-1601). In 1969, he made his Broadway debut in The Man in the Glass Booth (1968) by Robert Shaw; in 1970, he appeared onstage with Blythe Danner in Butterflies Are Free (1969). In 1971, Glaser made his film debut in Fiddler on the Roof; next came the film version of Butterflies Are Free (1972). Glaser’s debut in television—the medium in which he excelled—was on the daytime dramas Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (1969-1970) and Love of Life (19701971). Glaser appeared in other televised series: The Sixth Sense (1972), Cannon (1972), The Streets of San Francisco (1972), The Waltons (1972), Kojak (1974), and The Rockford Files (1974). Later he would appear in The Mentalist (2004) and The Closer (2008). Life’s Work Glaser’s best-known role was as Starsky in eightytwo episodes of Starsky and Hutch (1975-1979). In 436
2004, he made an appearance in the film of the same name. Glaser acted in other television films. He had the title role in The Great Houdini (1976), and he had starring roles in the 1983 miniseries Princess Daisy and the 1984 Single Bars, Single Women. Glaser’s voice is the principal one in the animated Lights: The Miracle of Chanukah (1983) that introduces children to the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and to Jewish traditions and symbols. Glaser began directing in 1977. He directed five episodes of Starsky and Hutch (1977 and 1979), the 1984 television film Amazons, and thirty episodes of several other television series (1977 to 2008). He received a 1984 Emmy Award nomination for outstanding direction of an episode in Miami Vice and a 1986 Directors Guild of America nomination for outstanding directorial achievement for an episode of Miami Vice. Glaser took the lead in John Huston’s Phobia (1980). The same year he married Elizabeth Meyer. She contracted human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) through a blood transfusion she had while giving birth to their first child, a daughter, Ariel. Both their son Jake and Ariel were found to be HIV positive in 1985. After Ariel’s death in 1988, Elizabeth Glaser founded and chaired the Pediatric AIDS Foundation. After his wife’s 1994 death, Glaser assumed the chair of the renamed Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation until 2002; he testified before Congress, met with national leaders, and headlined annual fund-raisers for the foundation. Jake remains active in the group; Glaser remains the honorary chair. Glaser directed the big-screen films Band of the Hand (1986), The Running Man (1987) with Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Cutting Edge (1992), The Air up There (1994) with Kevin Bacon, and Kazaam (1996) with Shaquille O’Neal and Jake Glaser. In 1996, Glaser married Tracy Barone, president of a film production company. Before their 2007 divorce, they had a daughter, Zoe. Significance Glaser earned initial fame as Starsky in the series Starsky and Hutch. His audio role in the animated Lights: The Miracle of Chanukah introduces children to the Jewish religion, its symbols, its holidays, and its traditions. Glaser’s wife Elizabeth and two children were infected with HIV from a transfusion Elizabeth received dur-
Jewish Americans ing childbirth. After their daughter’s death, Elizabeth formed the Pediatric AIDS Foundation and served as chair. After Elizabeth’s death, Glaser assumed the chair until 2002; his work raised public awareness of AIDS. Glaser’s distinguished career in television, plays, and films brought him recognition as a writer, actor, and director. —Anita Price Davis Further Reading Browning, Mark. Stephen King on the Big Screen. Chicago: Intellect Books, 2009. Browning includes a chapter on The Running Man, the 1987 action film starring Schwarzenegger and directed by Glaser. This film is an adaptation of King’s 1982 novel with the same name. Edwards, Nicholas, and Paul Michael Glaser. Kazaam. New York: Scholastic, 1996. This fiction book has a
Glashow, Sheldon L. rapping genie named Kazaam who grants a boy a wish. This is the subject of Glaser’s film Kazaam. Fowler, Joanne. “Alive and Thriving.” People 69, no. 13 (April 7, 2008): 111-114. This article with photos is an update on AIDS survivor Jake Glaser and his father, Paul Michael Glaser. Oldenburg, Ann. “Starsky and Hutch, Both Originals and Replicas.” USA Today, March 5, 2004, p. 10e. Oldenburg recalls the series Starsky and Hutch and comments on the film update starring Ben Stiller. Sheff-Cahan, Vicki. “Life after Elizabeth.” People 46, no. 6 (August 5, 1996): 19. The tragedies in Glaser’s life, his film Kazaam, Glaser’s relationship with Barone, and the Pediatric AIDS Foundation are the article’s subjects. See also: Ed Asner; Larry David; Fran Drescher; Judd Hirsch; Ben Stiller.
Sheldon L. Glashow Physicist and writer A Nobel Prize-winning physicist famous for his work on the unification of electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces, Glashow predicted the charm quark’s existence and searched for “grand unified theories.” Born: December 5, 1932; New York, New York Also known as: Sheldon Lee Gordon (full name) Area of achievement: Science and technology Early Life Sheldon L. Glashow (SHEHL-don ell GLA-shoh) was born in New York City to Lewis Glukhovsky and Bella Rubin, who had emigrated from czarist Russia because of economic, political, and religious restrictions on Jews (a U.S. immigration official shortened their name to “Glashow”). Lewis became a successful plumber, and Glashow and his two older brothers led a comfortable, middle-class life in which their interests in science and medicine were encouraged. For example, Lewis built the fifteen-year-old Glashow a chemistry laboratory in the family’s basement, where he learned how to safely synthesize dangerous compounds. At the prestigious Bronx High School of Science Glashow’s education as a future scientist was facilitated not only by excellent teachers but also by such fellow students as Steven Weinberg, with whom he would later share the Nobel Prize.
In 1950, Glashow and his classmate Weinberg attended Cornell University, where they became part of a group of students and faculty members who together forged a stimulating intellectual milieu. As a physics major, Glashow took a number of required courses in his discipline as well as in mathematics, but, as an upperclassman, he was allowed to take several graduate courses, including one in classical electromagnetic theory, in which he was deeply impressed by how the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell had unified electricity and magnetism. Furthermore, Maxwell had also shown that light is simply another electromagnetic phenomenon. Despite his receiving an A in this advanced course, Glashow nevertheless had to take the elementary course in electrodynamics. Fortunately other required courses, especially those in quantum mechanics, proved much more valuable for Glashow’s later work in elementary particles and forces. After graduating from Cornell, Glashow began graduate studies in physics at Harvard University in the fall of 1954. In his first year he took several courses in advanced physics and mathematics and fulfilled his foreign-language requirements (in French and Russian). He also chose Julian Schwinger as his thesis director. Schwinger, a former New Yorker who had worked with the atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, was helping to formulate 437
Glashow, Sheldon L. the new field of quantum electrodynamics, for which he would share the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics. Schwinger, who believed that the weak and electromagnetic interactions should be combined into a unified theory, urged Glashow to study their possible unification based on some new ideas that had been developed by the American physicists Chen Ning Yang and Robert Mills. The weak interaction regulated the decay of certain particles, for example, nuclear beta decay. Glashow’s thesis was entitled “The Vector Meson in Elementary Particle Decay,” and he formally received his Ph.D. in 1959. By this time he was already engaged in postdoctoral studies at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark (he had hoped to work at the Lebedev Institute in Moscow but was unable to obtain a visa). During his two-year stay in Europe, Glashow deepened and advanced his understanding of the electroweak theory to such an extent that his insights had attracted the attention of such distinguished physicists as Murray Gell-Mann, who was engaged in organizing elementary particles according to his eightfold way. Life’s Work Glashow spent the first several years of his scientific career on the West Coast of the United States, first as a researcher at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), then as a teacher and researcher at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. He initially went to California to work with Gell-Mann at a time when giant accelerators were helping physicists find many new elementary particles and theoreticians were proposing new ways to organize and explain the “particle population explosion.” Glashow left Caltech to foster his academic career at Stanford and Berkeley. Although his lectures focused on the basic truth of GellMann’s eightfold way, Glashow’s research continued to center on the development of his electroweak theory. Glashow’s publications generated interest in his ideas and financial support, which he used to do research at Harvard and in Europe. Another important contribution of Glashow to elementary particles grew out of his collaboration with James Bjorken, a Stanford colleague whom Glashow later met in Copenhagen. Motivated by aesthetic and mathematical concerns, they conjectured that a new quark (a quark is an elementary particle with electric charge one438
Jewish Americans third or two-thirds that of the electron) was needed, which they called the charmed quark. They were bothered by inconsistencies in the three-quark theory and by a basic lack of symmetry: Since four kinds of leptons (such as electrons and muons) existed, why should not four kinds of quarks also exist? They even proposed a “Periodic Table of Quarks and Leptons” in 1964, in which seven of the eight particles were known. The predicted charm quark was discovered in 1974. However, in 1975 the discovery of another lepton, the tau, forced them to create a third row in their table. Like Albert Einstein before him and like many of his fellow theoretical physicists, Glashow, in his later career, became interested in grand unified theories (or GUTs), whose goal is to unify all the basic forces of the universe, just as he and others had unified the electromagnetic and weak forces into the electroweak force. In the 1970’s, working with Howard Georgi, Glashow devised a GUT that, for many physicists, became the model of all future work on unification. Their model helped make understandable many of the properties of elementary particles, but, unfortunately, some of their predictions disagreed with experimental values. Unlike Glashow’s
Studying the Weak Force When Sheldon L. Glashow began his research, physicists were beginning to understand that the basic forces of the universe formed a hierarchy, with the most powerful being the strong nuclear force, which holds protons and neutrons together in atomic nuclei, followed by the electromagnetic force, which describes the interactions of photons with matter, and ending with the gravitational force, the weakest, which regulates the motions of heavenly objects. However, physicists discovered that a fourth force was necessary to explain the behavior of all matter, and they called it the weak force or the weak nuclear force. Unlike the strong force that holds nuclei together, the weak force regulates what causes nuclei to fall apart, for instance, the mechanisms responsible for radioactive decay. Glashow was one of several physicists, including Julian Schwinger, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg, whose work convincingly showed that the electromagnetic interaction and the weak nuclear interaction are “different facets of one unified theory.” Furthermore, they predicted that this weak force is conveyed by particles that should have masses about a hundred times larger than the proton’s mass. When these socalled intermediate vector bosons were discovered, using the proton-proton collider at the European Center for Particle Physics (CERN) in the 1970’s, they were named the W and Z bosons, helping to establish them as the mediators of the weak force.
Jewish Americans theory, which makes predictions that are testable, another theory seeking to unify all the universe’s forces— superstring theory—is characterized, according to Glashow, by its failure to make verifiable or falsifiable predictions. Consequently, Glashow has become one of the foremost critics of superstring theory. Significance Because Glashow’s work concentrated on the universe’s fundamental forces and basic particles, his ideas have had an influence not only on physicists but also on chemists, astronomers, and cosmologists. His theories have helped astronomers understand how the early universe evolved and chemists comprehend how the elements were formed. His work on a verifiable grand unified theory has fostered other research on what he insists genuine GUTs should be. Besides his numerous technical contributions to more than three hundred research papers, he has written a general physics textbook: From Alchemy to Quarks: The Study of Physics as a Liberal Art (1994). His popularizations of modern physics, such as Interactions (1988) and The Charm of Physics (1991) have been widely read. He has also been concerned about the effects of discoveries by physicists on society. For example, he has been active as a member of the Board of Sponsors for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. —Robert J. Paradowski Further Reading Glashow, Sheldon L. The Charm of Physics. New York: The American Institute of Physics, 1991. Part of the Masters of Modern Physics series, this collection of
Glass, Philip the author’s best articles for the general reader contains accounts of Glashow’s greatest discoveries, of modern achievements in elementary particles, and of studies of the structure of the universe. Illustrated with photographs and diagrams. Index. Glashow, Sheldon L., with Ben Bova. Interactions: A Journey Through the Mind of a Particle Physicist and the Matter of This World. New York: Warner Books, 1988. Aided by science writer Ben Bova, Glashow provides the general reader with an instructive and entertaining tour of the universe’s microworlds. Illustrated with photographs and diagrams. Includes appendixes on particle names and major discoveries but no index. Pagels, Heinz R. Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time. New York: Bantam Books, 1985. Pagels analyzes Glashow’s contributions in part 2, “The Early Universe,” and part 3, “Wild Ideas.” Bibliography and index. Penrose, Roger. The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. This massive book, intended for “the serious lay reader,” provides a comprehensive account of what modern physicists know about the universe. Glashow’s work on electroweak theory is analyzed in chapter 25, “The Standard Model of Particle Physics.” Bibliography and index. See also: Hans Albrecht Bethe; Albert Einstein; Richard P. Feynman; David Gross; Leon Lederman; Frederick Reines; Steven Weinberg.
Philip Glass Musician and composer Glass, a founder of minimalism in music, writes in a motoric, repetitive style for stage and film. Born: January 31, 1937; Baltimore, Maryland Areas of achievement: Music; theater Early Life Philip Glass was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 31, 1937. At age six he began studying violin, and two years later he studied flute at the Peabody Conservatory. He began composing at age twelve. Entering the University of Chicago when he was fifteen, he graduated in
1956. There he studied piano and was introduced to the twelve-tone technique of Arnold Schoenberg; after composing in that style, he abandoned it before graduating. Glass took extension courses in 1956 and 1957 at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. After a stint in Baltimore to earn money back, he enrolled full-time at Juilliard, where he studied with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti, graduating with a master’s degree in composition in 1961. He also studied analysis with Darius Milhaud at Aspen in 1960. His earliest compositions were in the tonal vein of the American Symphonist school; most were performed at 439
Glass, Philip Juilliard and several were published. He also wrote music for the dance department, which anticipated his later work for the theater. On a Ford Foundation grant, he spent 1961 to 1963 composing music for ensembles selected from the Pittsburgh public schools. Life’s Work Glass then went to Paris in 1964 on a Fulbright scholarship to study with the renowned teacher Nadia Boulanger. He was not impressed by the modern school of composition in Paris at the time, headed by Pierre Boulez. He composed little, using the time, as he has said, to reeducate himself in music. The turning point in his development came while in Paris when he was hired by a filmmaker to transcribe for Western musicians Ravi Shankar’s score for the film Chappaqua (1966). In the process he discovered the cyclic structures and additive processes of Indian music. His new style emerged in the music he wrote as theater pieces for the Mabou Mines troupe in 1965. Employing spare ensembles, these works have instrumental lines
Philip Glass. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans that repeat short melodic segments and are divided into repeated modules. Following years were spent wandering in North Africa and India, before Glass returned to New York in 1967. There, on March 18, he heard a recital of the music of Steve Reich at the Park Place Gallery. The two began performing in each other’s ensembles and analyzing each other’s compositions. The earliest pieces Glass composed beginning in 1967—Strung Out, Music in the Shape of a Square, and In Again Out Again—culminate in One Plus One, his first fully additive composition, which shows the influence of Indian music gained by studying with Alla Rakha, Shankar’s tabla player, who was then living in New York. These early pieces were scored for small numbers of players; One Plus One is performed by just hands rapping on a tabletop, with an attached microphone. Until the late 1970’s, Glass wrote all his compositions for performance by the Philip Glass Ensemble. Most performances were held in lofts, studios, galleries, night-
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clubs, restaurants, and museums in New The Portrait Trilogy York. His first traditional concert-hall performance was at Town Hall in 1974. Philip Glass created major music and theater pieces on three diverse During these years, Glass developed individuals: theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, the great leader of Inhis characteristic style. The works can be dia’s nationalist movement Mahatma Gandhi, and the Egyptian pharoah Akhnaten. These were all collaborations with director Robert M. Wilson. considered minimalist in the sense that The first, called Einstein on the Beach (1976), was a spectacle of music they use small ensembles of instruments and media. The subject, Einstein, was connected with creativity, space, and voices, and that they develop out and time—all elements that were portrayed in an unconventional draof the repetition of small fragments or matic presentation, marked by Glass’s characteristic musical repetitions. phrases of diatonic notes, arpeggios, or The second, Satyagraha (1980), scored for a full symphony orchestra, fomelodic phrases, which are repeated in cuses on Gandhi, who protested British colonial rule in India in the first motoric, mechanical rhythms. Amplified half of the twentieth century. It is based on the ancient Sanskrit scripture, keyboards and woodwinds are the core of the Bhagavad Gita. Because the opera’s theme involves nonviolent prohis ensembles, which occasionally add tests, other characters present are the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, specific singers or instruments. The titles the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, and the American civil rights leader Marof some compositions suggest their minitin Luther King, Jr. The third work is Akhnaten (1984), about the Egyptian ruler who introduced monotheism to his country. It uses a small orchestra, mal nature: Two Pages (1968), Music in but its songs are sung in Akkadian, biblical Hebrew, and ancient Egyptian Contrary Motion (1969), Music in Fifths languages. (1969), and Music in Similar Motion (1969). As well as minimalist, his style might be called additive or process music. Glass preferred to say he wrote music cially successful American composers. His output inwith repetitive structures. The resulting cycles of pulsatcludes twenty-five operas, eight symphonies, numerous ing rhythms seem to be closer to rock music than to clasconcertos, and solo piano works. He has collaborated sical symphonic music. with dancers, such as Twyla Tharp and Lucinda Childs; Glass collaborated extensively with artists and theatpop singers, including Paul Simon and David Byrne; and rical groups, which calls attention to the connections that writers, including Allen Ginsberg and Doris Lessing. He musical minimalism had with the minimal aesthetic in has scored many films, notably Koyaanisqatsi (1982). other arts. Although based on “minimal” elements, a work such as Music in Twelve Parts (1974) is large-scale, Significance with several instruments, dense and complex textures, Glass developed early in his career a distinct repetiand great length—up to four hours. tive, additive style of music that became a signature of Glass’s collaboration with the theater director Robert musical minimalism. This style, often been reviled beM. Wilson on the five-hour stage work Einstein on the cause of its simplicity, lends itself as accompaniment or Beach, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in background music for theater and stage works, and as a 1976, brought Glass to world prominence. Instead of result Glass has become one of the most prolific Amerihaving a narrative plot, the multimedia work (often can composers, collaborating on works for theater, for called an opera) incorporates dance, film, monologues, film, and with pop musicians. costumed actors, lighting effects, and stage design in a —Thomas McGeary series of visions, images, or icons, drawn from Einstein’s life, such as his violin, or twentieth century science, such Further Reading as a spaceship. The libretto is composed of numbers, the Glass, Philip. Music by Philip Glass. Edited by Robert T. solfège syllables, notebook jottings, and monologues. Jones. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. A useful Following Einstein on the Beach, Glass became prisource book for Glass’s operas; includes a memoir by marily a composer for theater, dance, and film. SatyaGlass and descriptions by him of his major operas, graha (1980) presents a biography of Mahatma Gandhi, with their librettos. mixing elements of narrative, fairy tale, and comic book. Kostelanetz, Richard, ed. Writings on Glass: Essays, InMore traditional is Akhnaten (1984), about the pharaoh terviews, Criticism. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997. who introduced monotheism. Collects a variety of writings about Glass, his music, Glass is one of the most recognizable and commer441
Glazer, Nathan and specific compositions; includes a list of compositions, bibliography, and discography. Mertens, Wim. American Minimal Music: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass. New York: Alexander Broude, 1983. Coverage of Glass puts him in the company of his fellow minimalist composers and discusses the historical roots of minimalism. Useful musical examples. Potter, Keith. Four Musical Minimalists. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2000. A chapter on Glass presents an overview of his life and career, with clear presentations of his various techniques and descriptions of major works.
Jewish Americans Schwarz, K. Robert. Minimalists. London: Phaidon Press, 1996. Chapters on Glass, one treating him as a minimalist and the second treating his operas and musictheater works as maximalist. Strickland, Edward. Minimalism: Origins. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. This broad discussion of American minimalism puts Glass’s music in the context of minimalism in painting and sculpture. See also: Danny Elfman; Allen Ginsberg; Steve Reich; Arnold Schoenberg; Paul Simon.
Nathan Glazer Educator, social reformer, and sociologist Through his publications, Glazer has advanced and clarified thinking about American social problems involving ethnic relations and other issues. A lifelong skeptic, he has challenged conventional wisdom by persuasively promoting new perspectives. Born: February 25, 1923; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Education; social issues; sociology Early Life Nathan Glazer (NAY-thuhn GLAY-zur) grew up in East Harlem and East Bronx, New York. His father, a sewing machine operator and tailor, and his mother were from Poland and spoke Yiddish at home. Glazer was the youngest of seven children. His father was a lifelong socialist, voting for Norman Thomas, a leading socialist who ran for president six times. The household was Orthodox Jewish but moderately so. Glazer attended public schools in New York City and then enrolled in 1940 at City College of New York (CCNY), at first majoring in history. He joined a Zionist organization and was chosen as editor of its national newspaper, Avukah Student Action. During lunches, Glazer participated in a discussion group of Marxists who opposed Joseph Stalin’s brutal tyranny in the Soviet Union. He gravitated away from history toward a major in sociology, and he went to the University of Pennsylvania in 1942 to pursue a master’s degree. In early 1944, he received his B.A. from CCNY and his M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. 442
Glazer enrolled as a doctoral candidate in sociology at Columbia University while on the staff of the Contemporary Jewish Record, a publication of the American Jewish Committee that in 1945 transformed into the wellrespected Commentary. From 1953 to 1957, he was an editorial advisor for Anchor Books and then played the same role at Random House. Then he taught urban sociology at the University of California, Berkeley (19571958), Bennington College (1958-1959), and Smith College (1959-1960), and he obtained grants to complete publications, including studies on ethnic groups in New York City. He had already written and cowritten several major publications by the time he received his Ph.D. in 1962. He married Ruth Slotkin on September 26, 1943. They had three children and divorced in 1958. In 1963, Glazer married Sulochana Raghavan, a researcher with whom he cowrote Conflicting Images: India and the United States (1990). Life’s Work Although primarily known as a tenured faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley (19631969) and at Harvard University, where he began to teach in 1969, Glazer first had governmental experience as a member of the Housing and Home Finance Agency (now the Department of Housing and Urban Development), under the administration of President John F. Kennedy in 1962. During the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, Glazer was a consultant with the Model Cities Program. However, he was doubtful that the promises of the Great
Jewish Americans Society, Johnson’s program to eliminate poverty and racial divisions, would ever be fulfilled, and in time he became known as a “neoconservative” skeptic of social engineering. In his best-known publication, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City (1963), he demonstrated that the groups in the subtitle had not behaved as if America were a melting pot in which all lost their ethnic roots in order to conform to a new American culture. Instead of abandoning their root cultures to adopt American ways, they had in effect become bicultural—adapting traditions of their forebears within ethnic enclaves while also becoming Americanized. Glazer’s belief that assimilation might be necessary for the advancement of minorities and the maintenance of social peace returned in the form of his book Affirmative Discrimination (1975). He argued strongly against affirmative action on many grounds, but his views were later modified in We Are All Multiculturalists Now (1997). In The Limits of Social Policy, (1988), he argued that the problem of poverty could not be solved by economic programs, since the poor had developed a culture of poverty, in which they had accepted their status as inevitable and reoriented their lives to avoid fleeting and often inconsequential opportunities to advance. Other of Glazer’s publications have dealt with such topics as American communism, American culture, American foreign policy, architecture, campus unrest, criminology, housing, immigration policy, and Jews in Russia and the United States. Each focus has resulted from a well-researched intellectualization based on his personal experiences. Significance Glazer’s book publications number nearly forty in a long, productive career. He cofounded an important policy-oriented journal that set a neoconservative agenda, The Public Interest (1965-2003), and became coeditor
Glazer, Nathan from 1973 until 2003. His empirical findings and wellsupported opinions have been in the center of debates on American social issues for most of a half century. — Michael Haas Further Reading Dorman, Joseph. Arguing the World: New York Intellectuals in Their Own Words. New York: Free Press, 2000. Profiles of four intellectuals whose ideas shaped U.S. policy debates: Glazer, literary critic Irving Howe, political analyst Irving Kristol, and sociologist Daniel Bell. Glazer, Nathan. Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy. New York: Basic Books, 1975. The classic argument against affirmative action. _______. The Limits of Social Policy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. Based in part on his experience as an urban sociologist with the federal government, this presents an argument against social engineering. Often considered a classic in neoconservative social thinking. _______. We Are All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997. Glazer recants his blanket opposition to multiculturalism in education, as presented in Affirmative Discrimination, finding some value in curricula stressing the contributions of ethnic groups that are still striving to advance. Glazer, Nathan, and Daniel P. Moynihan. Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1963. A description of the separate realities of five ethnic groups in America’s largest city. Glazer’s coauthor, Daniel Moynihan, wrote the chapter on the Irish. A second edition was published in 1970. See also: Mary Antin; Susan Brownmiller; Emma Goldman; Ernestine Rose; Lillian D. Wald.
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Louise Glück Poet Glück demonstrates in her poetry her control of language and her technical skills with rhythm, sound, and diction. Her work encompasses a wide range of resources, including the natural world, cultural artifacts, and lived experience. Born: April 22, 1943; New York, New York Also known as: Louise Elisabeth Glück (full name) Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Louise Glück (lew-EEZ GLOOK) was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island in a family of assimilated Jews. Her father, Daniel, was of Hungarian Jewish descent. Although he had aspirations of becoming a writer, he gave them up to become a businessman. He is known for marketing the X-Acto knife. Her mother, Beatrice, was educated at Wellesley. Glück was the first surviving child of the couple; their first daughter had died at birth. By the time she was a high school senior, Glück was deathly ill with anorexia, an eating disorder.
Louise Glück. (James Baker Hall/Library of Congress)
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In order to overcome the illness, she began a seven-year study of psychoanalysis, which not only saved her life but also taught her discipline and attention to language. Glück attended Sarah Lawrence college, then transferred to Columbia University, where she studied writing. She studied for two years with Leonie Adams. Upon realizing that the two differed in stylistic tastes, Glück began studying with Stanley Kunitz. From Kunitz, she received confirmation that she was indeed a poet, even if sometimes her poems were not good. In 1966, she won the Academy of American Poets Prize from Columbia University and a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship. The following year, she received a National Endowment for the Arts grant. In 1967, she married Charles Hertz, Jr., with whom she had a son, Noah Benjamin Hertz, in 1973. The couple later divorced. Glück’s first collection of poetry, Firstborn, was published in 1968. She began teaching in 1970 at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Early in her career, Glück taught at numerous colleges, including Goddard College in Vermont, the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, the University of Iowa, the University of California, Davis, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of California, Berkeley. Glück continued winning awards, earning the Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize from Poetry Magazine in 1971 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1975. Her second book, The House on Marshland, was published in 1975, and her third collection, The Garden, was published in 1976. In 1977, she married John Dranow, a writer, whom she later divorced. Life’s Work Glück is known for her stylistic transformations between collections that, at the same time, retain her unique voice. Though the poems of her first collection, Firstborn, are often compared to the confessional lyrics of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton, Glück distances herself from these poets in her second collection, The House on Marshland. This collection includes “Abishag,” which retells the story of a minor character associated with King David. Such retellings, as a form of Midrash, or interpretation of biblical stories, place Glück’s poetry within the Jewish tradition. Her fourth collection, Descending Figure, published in 1980, ends with “Lamentations,” a similar retelling based on the creation myth found in Genesis. In addition,
Jewish Americans in this collection, Glück develops her use of sequences, providing her poetry with a larger sense of context and complexity. In 1983, Glück began a lengthy tenure teaching at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Her fifth collection, The Triumph of Achilles, published in 1985, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and incorporates Greek myths. Ararat, published in 1990, is a pivotal shift in its conception as a book-length poem sequence. One of her most autobiographical works, it focuses on her immediate family and the theme of death. The Wild Iris, published in 1992, is one of Glück’s most critically acclaimed works. It received a Pulitzer Prize and a William Carlos Williams Award. Poems in this collection appear in the voice of a gardener, in the voices of the flowers of the garden, and in the voice of God. Proofs and Theories, published in 1994, is a collection of nonfiction essays and contains the autobiographical essay “Education of a Poet” and “On Stanley Kunitz,” about her mentor. This book won a Martha Albrand Award for nonfiction. Meadowlands, published in 1996, explores the dissolution of Glück’s second marriage, juxtaposing autobiography with mythic retellings of the return of Odysseus to Penelope. Glück again mines Greek myth for Vita Nova (1999), in particular, the story of Dido and Aeneas and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. This book received the prestigious Bollingen Prize from Yale. The Seven Ages (2001) is one of her most comprehensive collections and serves somewhat as a recollection of her human life span. Glück served as the United States Poet Laureate between 2003 and 2004. In 2004, she left Williams College and began teaching at Yale. Averno, published in 2006, traces Persephone’s descent into hell and explores relationships with mothers and lovers. It includes “October,” a long poem previously published separately as a chapbook. She served as judge for the Yale Series of Younger Poets between 2003 and 2010. Significance With a literary career spanning more than forty years, Glück has received every major award in American poetry. Although she refuses to align herself with a particular camp (for example, feminism), her work is analyzed through a variety of lenses: feminist, ecofeminist, psychoanalytic, spiritual, Jewish. A lyric poet, she is known for expanding the depth and complexity of the simple short lyric through the use of multiple voices, classical
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The Postconfessional Classicist Although autobiographical material appears throughout the body of work of Louise Glück, the poet quickly moved away from the confessional mode of her early lyrics (written in the vein of Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath) to a mode less centered on her private self. Beginning with stories from Jewish scripture, Glück then utilized stories from Christian scripture, German fairy tales, and Greek myths, juxtaposing this archetypal material with her personal experiences. In these juxtapositions, she reimagines cultural narratives, retelling them through the lens of her biography. This use of multicultural materials not only allows Glück to develop her approach to the lyric form technically but also deepens the reader’s understanding of both the familiar texts and the poet. In effect, the reader is provided with a new story, both familiar and strange, both private and individual, and at the same time universal. So, unlike readers of a typical confessional poem, who learn something about the poet, readers of a typical poem by Glück in her mature work will learn something about themselves and their communities.
Greek and biblical narratives, and poetic sequences. About midway in her career she began to write the booklength sequence, in which all the poems in a volume create the sense of one long poem. Her entire body of work could likely be read as a sequence itself. Her landscapes are most often bleak, her theme is usually loss or rejection, her attitude toward the physical human body and its hungers and imperfections is negative, sometimes bordering on disgust, and her tone is distanced and controlled. — Nettie Farris Further Reading Diel, Joanne Feit, ed. On Louise Glück: Change What You See. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. This full-length collection of essays by different authors includes a rare interview with Glück. Glück, Louise. Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry. Hopewell, N.J.: Ecco, 1994. This collection of essays by Glück contains the often-quoted autobiographical essay “Education of the Poet.” Gordon, Maggie. “A Woman Writing About Nature: Louise Glück and the Absence of Intention.” In Ecopoetry: A Critical Introduction, edited by J. Scott Bryson. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2002. Places the work of Glück in the context of ecofeminism. 445
Goldberg, Arthur J. Gregerson, Linda. “The Sower Against Gardens.” In Negative Capability. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.Analyzes The Wild Iris and Meadowlands as extended poem sequences. Keniston, Ann. “Buried with the Romantics: Louise Glück’s The Wild Iris.” In Overheard Voices: Address and Subjectivity in Postmodern American Poetry. New York: Routledge, 2006. Examines the use of the rhetorical figure apostrophe as it appears in The Wild Iris. Morris, Daniel. The Poetry of Louise Glück. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Introductory chapter serves as an overview of Glück’s work. Part 1 ex-
Jewish Americans plores larger themes and part 2 provides close readings of selected books. Includes a chapter exploring the question of whether or not Glück’s poetry should be considered Jewish. Upton, Lee. “Fleshless Voices: Louise Glück’s Rituals of Abjection and Oblivion.” In The Muse of Abandonment. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1998. Considers the theme of abandonment in the work of Glück, with special attention to the poem “Gretel in Darkness.” See also: Joseph Brodsky; Stanley Elkin; Maxine Kumin; Stanley Kunitz; Dorothy Parker; Mark Strand.
Arthur J. Goldberg Lawyer, U.S. Supreme Court justice (1962-1965), and diplomat A leader in the labor movement, Goldberg was named secretary of labor in 1961, and in 1962 President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the United States Supreme Court, where he cast a decisive vote in many significant decisions. Born: August 8, 1908; Chicago, Illinois Died: January 19, 1990; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Arthur Joseph Goldberg (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; law Early Life Arthur J. Goldberg (GOHLD-burg) was born in Chicago, the youngest child of Jewish immigrants. When his father died in 1916, his older siblings dropped out of school in order that the family survive. Goldberg was an excellent student, graduating from high school at the age of sixteen. He graduated from Northwestern University Law School, where he stood first in his class and served as editor of the law review. He married Dorothy Kurgans in 1931. After serving for a time with the major firm of Pritzker and Pritzker (non-Jewish firms not being open to him in Chicago at that time), he struck out on his own, ultimately gravitating to the area of labor law. During World War II, he worked with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). After the war, he returned to labor law and became chief counsel for the United Steel Workers. He also became involved in politics, working as an ally of Adlai 446
Stevenson, whom he supported in the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956. During that time, he played a major role in the merger of the two dominant labor organizations of the time: the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Life’s Work In the late 1950’s, Goldberg became acquainted with John F. Kennedy. They grew to respect each other and, when Stevenson indicated he did not want to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, Goldberg became the first major labor leader to support Kennedy’s bid. After assuming the presidency, Kennedy appointed Goldberg to the position of secretary of labor, and he was easily confirmed. During his time in the Labor Department, Goldberg worked as an effective liaison between the president and labor leaders and, in several instances, became involved in the settlement of major labor-management disputes. He was an advocate of racial integration in the workplace at a time when that was a highly controversial subject. In 1962, Felix Frankfurter retired from the United States Supreme Court, and shortly thereafter Kennedy nominated Goldberg to fill the vacancy on what some called the court’s “Jewish seat,” one that had been held for several decades by Frankfurter and by Benjamin Cardozo before that. Again, Goldberg was easily confirmed. His ascension to the position had a major impact on Supreme Court rulings, because while Frankfurter
Jewish Americans was a strong advocate of judicial restraint, Goldberg took a much more activist position. In the closely divided court, that one vote made a great difference. As an activist, Goldberg voted with the majority in a “one-person, one-vote” case that changed the nature of many state legislatures, and another that did away with the poll tax. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson pressured Goldberg to leave the Supreme Court in order to serve as ambassador to the United Nations. This Goldberg reluctantly did. His impact there was significant, too. He was also part of a group of leading foreign-policy makers that encouraged Johnson to take a more dovish position in the Vietnam conflict. Goldberg resigned from his position in the United Nations in 1968 and joined a prestigious law firm in New York City. In 1970, he unsuccessfully ran for governor of the state of New York. He then moved to Washington, D.C., where he continued to practice law. He died of heart complications on January 19, 1990. Significance Goldberg made his mark on American society in many ways. As a labor leader and as secretary of labor he played a major role in shaping labor policy in the United States after World War II. One of his major goals there was to make certain that working people shared equitably in the abundance of the era. As a Supreme Court justice, he helped form the liberal majority on the Court that had an enormous role in transforming American society. He was one of the first to suggest that the death penalty could be considered “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment, an issue that is still being debated today. His support of the majority decision in the
Goldberg, Rube case of Griswald v. Connecticut (1965) helped set the stage for the controversial abortion decision of Roe v. Wade (1973). As a diplomat working in the United Nations he helped create compromises that maintained the solvency of the United Nations, helped to bring about a cease-fire in an Indian-Pakistan war, and helped negotiate the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1967. The national boundaries established at that time are still largely in place. For service to his country, he received the Medal of Freedom, the highest award the United States can give a civilian, in 1978. — David M. Jones Further Reading Belknap, Michael R. The Supreme Court Under Earl Warren, 1953-1969. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004. Discusses the Warren Court and Goldberg’s role in it. It also discusses personal relationships among the justices. Goldberg, Dorothy. A Private View of a Public Life. New York: Charter House, 1970. His wife’s view of the man and the role both played during the time covered. Quite “chatty” and informal, but it shows another side of the man. Stebenne, David. Arthur J. Goldberg: New Deal Liberal. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. A somewhat critical biography that focuses on his role as a labor leader. While it discusses his subsequent career, it does not go into great detail there. See also: Louis D. Brandeis; Stephen G. Breyer; Benjamin Cardozo; Abe Fortas; Felix Frankfurter; Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Rube Goldberg Cartoonist An influential editorial cartoonist of the twentieth century, Goldberg drew wildly original cartoons that offered a provocative critique of American culture, notably its wary fascination with machines and technology. Born: July 4, 1883; San Francisco, California Died: December 7, 1970; New York, New York Also known as: Reuben Lucius Goldberg (full name) Areas of achievement: Art; journalism
Early Life Rube Goldberg (rewb GOHLD-burg) was born in San Francisco, California, on the Fourth of July, 1883. As a child, Goldberg loved to sketch, tracing elaborate drawings from encyclopedias and magazines before he was six. At the age of twelve, he took informal drawing lessons from a neighbor, a sign painter, who taught him bold and heavy line strokes and sharpened his observational skills to record the world around him with meticulous care. His father, a banker and real estate broker, frowned on his son’s dream of becoming an artist, seeing little 447
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The Goldberg Contraption When Rube Goldberg was pursuing an engineering degree at the University of California, Berkeley, he was assigned to calculate the earth’s weight using a roomful of elaborate machines, an endeavor that struck him as singularly pointless. That experience, science and technology going to absurd lengths to achieve minimum results, guided Goldberg’s most notable accomplishment: a half century of cartoons depicting elaborate machines that performed simple tasks— for instance, putting a stamp on an envelope or swatting a fly or buttering toast—through a chain reaction that might include animals or birds, bowling balls or feather dusters, oversized gloved hands or large boots, all propelled by intricate systems of gears and cranks, pipes and strings. The machines delighted Goldberg’s audience, themselves wary of the new age of machines. By 1931, Goldberg’s contraptions had become such a national fixture that Webster’s Dictionary introduced a new entry, “rube goldberg,” an adjective that applied to any concept, process, idea, or proposal that went to great lengths to achieve minimal ends. The machines compel admiration because of Goldberg’s solid sense of engineering—the machines, despite their wacky appearance, appear to work. His contraptions inspired countless cartoon and film sequences as well as the Milton Bradley children’s game Mousetrap and dozens of video games. Goldberg’s machines celebrate ingenuity—each year since 1949, Purdue University’s prestigious school of engineering has sponsored a Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, in which engineering students construct working machines that go to great lengths to achieve a simple task. Videos of the winning gizmos have found a wide (and mesmerized) audience on television and online, a tribute to Goldberg’s enduring creative genius.
possibility for stable income. He offered a compromise—he would pay for his son’s college education if Goldberg would study mining engineering at the nearby University of California, Berkeley, a field that promised reliable (and lucrative) employment and involved expert drawing skills. Obedient, Goldberg enrolled in the program. However, he was not happy. He spent a summer before his senior year working in a gold mine, and it was a terrifying experience. Dutifully, he completed his degree, and in 1904 he accepted a position with the city’s water and sewers department. Within six months, however, he tired of the tedium of office work and the politicking of the back room. Satisfied that he had tried, he quit to pursue his childhood ambition: to be a cartoonist. The only opening he could find he took: in the sports department of the San Francisco Chronicle. Initially, he was a general custodian, but soon he demonstrated his skills at drawing and was made a sports cartoonist, providing vivid sketches, mostly of 448
boxing matches and baseball games. The work was demanding—sports cartoons were half a page, and Goldberg was expected to produce more than three hundred each year. Nevertheless, he loved the work. Within a year, he was working for the much larger San Francisco Bulletin. His drawings found a wide audience and increased newspaper sales—his sketches were bold, capturing the drama and animation of competition with remarkable immediacy. In 1907, with just under two hundred dollars in his pocket, Goldberg moved to New York City, determined to make it big.
Life’s Work Initially, Goldberg freelanced his cartoons to five different newspapers, notably the New York Evening Mail. In 1912, the New York Evening Mail gave Goldberg his first big break—his own regular feature. Titled Foolish Questions, it poked fun at the obvious questions that annoying people ask. By 1915, the feature was nationally syndicated. At the same time, Goldberg created several longrunning character-driven comic series, notably Mike and Ike, Boob McNutt, and Lala Palooza, that poked gentle fun at the foibles of characters who were noticeably human— naïve and harmless dreamers who lacked the common sense to realize their most profound ambitions. The comics were hugely successful. Reportedly, Goldberg earned more than $100,000 in 1920. In 1914, Goldberg debuted a character based loosely on an eccentric professor of analytical mechanics at Berkeley: The character was named Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. Each cartoon would feature Professor Butts’s “explanation” of one of his newest inventions, gadgets that would accomplish the simplest kinds of tasks (folding a napkin or turning a door knob or opening a window) only by engaging an extremely complicated and wildly inventive chain reaction of gears, wheels, handles, cranks, and other assorted devices. The series quickly found a national audience. For more than fifty years, Goldberg devoted much of his professional work to designing these whimsical contraptions, drawing on his solid credentials in engineering to devise gadgets that revealed a zany creativity. In the years leading up to World War II, Goldberg was
Jewish Americans the most recognized and prolific cartoonist in America. In addition to his numerous series, Goldberg accepted a position as editorial cartoonist for The New York Sun in 1938, where he produced scathing political cartoons, notably ones that promoted American involvement in stopping Adolf Hitler long before it was popular (given the virulence of the hate mail he received, he convinced his two grown sons to change their last name to avoid the possibility of retaliation). Determined to give artistic legitimacy to cartooning, Goldberg spearheaded the founding of the National Cartoonists Society in 1946 and served as its first president. The organization brought together the talents of comic strip artists, editorial cartoonists, panel cartoonists, and sports cartoonists and sought to promote cartoonists as both artists and cultural commentators. Indeed, in 1948, Goldberg was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning for his provocative cartoon entitled “Peace Today,” which warned of the absurdity of a world, in possession of an atomic bomb, willing to wage ultimate war as a way to make peace. Goldberg drew until he was in his seventies. Approaching eighty, Goldberg, restless with the limitations of cartooning, turned his artistic energy to sculpture. In fact, it was his sculpture that, ironically, earned him at last the Cartoonist of the Year honor from the society he had helped found nearly forty years earlier. A celebration of Goldberg’s lifework was mounted by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of History and Technology, just months before his death from cancer, at the age of eighty-seven, on December 7, 1970. Significance Goldberg’s artistic achievements made him influential; he was a nationally recognized celebrity and a regular on radio and later television shows. More significant than his longevity or his productivity (at one time he was creating more than fifty strips) were Goldberg’s superb satiric observations. Whether in his earliest comic strip character studies or in his elaborate contraptions or in his
Goldberg, Rube scathing editorial cartoons, Goldberg exercised the fullest range of satire with confidence and precision, from gently poking fun at his characters’ struggles to find love or career success to caustic and uncompromising attacks on institutions and ideologies that he perceived as a threat to freedom and individuality. — Joseph Dewey Further Reading Berry, Ian, Lawrence Raab, and Linda Scherer. Chain Reaction: Rube Goldberg and Contemporary Art. Sarasota Springs, N.Y.: Tang Teaching Museum, 2001. Important assessment of Goldberg as an influential artist. Places Goldberg within a broad context of postmodern sculpture and its explorations of machines as art. Goldberg, Reuben Lucius. The Best of Rube Goldberg. New York: Prentice Hall, 1979. Vividly illustrated collection of some of Goldberg’s most famous contraptions. Introduction provides biography that stresses Goldberg’s engineering background and its influence on his sense of technology. Kaplan, Arie. From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2008. History of the influence of Jewish sensibility on the evolution of comics after World War II; includes Goldberg as an early example and adds helpful commentary on his satire. Wolfe, Maynard Frank. Rube Goldberg: Inventions! New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. Handsomely illustrated collection of Goldberg’s gadgets. Wood, Art. Great Cartoonists and Their Art. Monticello, Ky.: Firebird Press, 2000. Positions Goldberg as one of the most influential newspaper cartoonists in American cultural history. Includes commentary on Goldberg’s political cartoons. See also: Al Capp; Jules Feiffer; Al Hirschfeld; Roy Lichtenstein; Ben Shahn.
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Jeff Goldblum Actor In a long career in films, television, and the theater, Goldblum established himself as a distinctively original actor whose offbeat comic style made his dramatic turns more compelling. Born: October 22, 1952; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Also known as: Jeffrey Lynn Goldblum (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Jeff Goldblum (GOHLD-blewm) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the suburb of West Homestead. His father, Harold Goldblum, was an internist, and his mother, Shirley Temeles, was a radio broadcaster who later ran an appliance sales firm. The Goldblums belonged to an Orthodox synagogue. Jeff Goldblum’s paternal grandfather, Josef Povartzik, had emigrated from Russia in 1911 and changed his name to Goldblum, and his maternal grandfather, Samuel Louis Temeles, had come to the United States from Austria-Hungary in 1910. Jeff Goldblum decided to become an actor when he appeared in a spoof of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan operettas when he was in the fifth grade. While attending West Mifflin North High School, he performed as a jazz pianist at local cocktail lounges. While in high school, Goldblum participated in a summer drama program at Carnegie-Mellon University. When his application to the university’s drama school was rejected, he decided to skip college, and he moved to New York City to become an actor. He studied under legendary acting teacher Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse, and in 1971 Goldblum landed a small role in the New York Shakespeare Festival production of Two Gentlemen of Verona (15941595), which had a Broadway run. Meisner taught him to find his own voice, to never copy anyone, and to treat his entire career as an acting class. Life’s Work Goldblum made his film debut as a rapistmurderer in Death Wish (1974). That same year, while appearing in the Off-Broadway musical revue El Grande de Coca-Cola (1973), he was spot450
ted by film director Robert Altman, who cast Goldblum in small roles in California Split (1974) and Nashville (1975). In Paul Mazursky’s Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), Goldblum gave the first of many distinctive comic performances as a struggling actor. He also made an impression with a brief appearance in Woody Allen’s Academy Award-winning Annie Hall (1977), summarizing a superficial, trendy Southern Californian with the line, “I forgot my mantra.” Goldblum’s first major film role came in Joan Micklin Silver’s independent comedy Between the Lines (1977) as the rock critic for an underground Boston newspaper. In Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake Invasion of the Body
Jeff Goldblum. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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Snatchers, Goldblum is a San Francisco THE FLY mud-bath proprietor turned into an alien pod. Goldblum followed with his first teleFans of Jeff Goldblum generally agree that he gives a rounded pervision series, Tenspeed and Brown Shoe formance in The Fly (1986). The original 1958 film played on audi(1980), but the crime comedy, costarring ences’ fears of science during the early atomic-bomb era. The remake offers a metaphor for a different kind of anxiety during the early years of Ben Vereen, was canceled after thirteen epthe acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) crisis. Goldblum’s isodes. Seth Brundle invents a machine that can teleport objects. To impress The 1980’s offered a wide variety of journalist Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), with whom he has fallen in roles for Goldblum. He is a wisecracklove, Brundle decides to test the device on himself. When a fly enters the ing magazine writer in Lawrence Kasdan’s machine, the genes of the fly and Brundle are spliced, and Brundle hugely popular college-reunion film The slowly turns into a monster. At the beginning of The Fly, Goldblum Big Chill (1983), he played comedian Ernie plays Brundle with the goofy charm of an aging adolescent, saying his Kovacs in the television film Ernie Kovacs: invention will change the world. When Brundle’s appearance changes, Between the Laughter (1984), he appeared his humanity and essential sweetness remain, with Goldblum gradually in the cult science-fiction comedy The Admoving the character from a comic figure to a tragic one. Many comventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the mentators complained that Goldblum’s performance, hailed as one of the most sympathetic cinematic monsters ever, was not recognized with Eighth Dimension (1984), and he costarred an Academy Award nomination. with Michelle Pfeiffer in John Landis’s romantic comedy Into the Night (1985). Next came Goldblum’s heralded role as the doomed scientist in David Cronenand Grace, he starred as an eccentric police detective in berg’s The Fly (1986). Previously wed to actor Patricia the short-lived Raines (2007), and in 2009 he began two Gaul, Goldblum was married to Geena Davis, his costar seasons in the long-running Law and Order: Criminal in The Fly, from 1987 to 1990. In The Race for the DouIntent as an intellectual, piano-playing detective. Goldble Helix (1987), made for British television, Goldblum blum starred in Martin McDonagh’s controversial The plays James Watson in an account of the discovery of the Pillowman (2005) on Broadway in 2005, sang and danced structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in 1953, acin a 2007 revival of The Music Man (1957) in Pittsburgh, centuating the scientist’s eccentricities more than his costarred with Kevin Spacey in a London revival of Dalearning. In The Tall Guy (1989), one of his best comevid Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow (1988) for Spacey’s Old dies, Goldblum is the straight man to an obnoxious BritVic Theatre Company in 2008, and costarred with Merish comedian played by Rowan Atkinson. After an abcedes Ruehl in an acclaimed production of Neil Simon’s sence of eighteen years, Goldblum returned to the stage The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971) in 2010, also at in 1989, appearing as Malvolio in the New York Shakethe Old Vic. speare Festival production of Twelfth Night (1600-1602). Goldblum has played Jewish characters in many films, Until the 1990’s, with the notable exception of The including blacklisted film director Herbert Biberman in Big Chill, Goldblum’s films made little impact at the box One of the Hollywood Ten (2000). A notable Goldoffice. All that changed when he played a cynical matheblum performance is in the little-seen Adam Resurrected matician in Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster Jurassic Park (2008). Goldblum plays Adam Stein, a popular Berlin (1993) and followed that success with a role as a comentertainer, who is thrown into a concentration camp puter scientist who saves the earth from alien invasion in and becomes dominated by the commandant, played by Independence Day (1997) and reprised his earlier role in Willem Dafoe, who forces Stein to perform while his The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). In addition to wife and child are put to death. Most of Adam Resurthese big productions, Goldblum directed Little Surrected is set at a mental hospital for Holocaust survivors prises (1996), which was nominated for an Academy in Israel in 1961. Award for Best Live-Action Short Film. Goldblum cofounded a Los Angeles acting school, In the twenty-first century Goldblum appeared in Playhouse West, in 1981 and began to teach there. He such films as Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with also kept up his piano playing, forming the Mildred Steve Zissou (2004) but worked mainly in television and Snitzer Orchestra with friends and performing solo and on the stage. He was nominated for a 2005 Emmy Award with the band in Los Angeles clubs. for his guest appearances on the situation comedy Will 451
Goldhaber, Maurice Significance A busy and reliable actor, Goldblum is equally adept at leading and at character roles. Goldblum is noted for his alternately rushed and hesitant line deliveries, his eyes widening in excitement. He seems to evaluate the meaning of every word of dialogue with his subdued, neurotic style, making his characters’ comments seem sincere and ironic at the same time. His humor as a comic actor is aided by his size (six feet four inches), as he throws his entire body into his observations. Goldblum’s ability to make his style effective comically and dramatically at once was captured in an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. In one scene, Goldblum’s detective character enlists his father, a prominent psychiatrist played by F. Murray Abraham, in interrogating a suspect. When his father insists on helping the suspect instead, Goldblum’s cop sputters his objections, becomes frustrated at his inability to stop the doctor, and begins reaching out his huge hands to strangle his father, only to withdraw them at the last moment. Goldblum’s amusing yet thoughtful acting style has enlivened his characterizations of quirky scientists, artists, and intellectuals. —Michael Adams
Jewish Americans Further Reading Goldblum, Jeff. “Copping an Attitude.” TV Guide 57 (June 29-July 12, 2009): 38. The actor describes the psychology of his Law and Order: Criminal Intent character. Hoban, Phoebe. “The Outsider as Hollywood Favorite.” The New York Times, June 15, 1997, sec. 2, p. 19. Biographical sketch and appreciation of Goldblum’s elliptical acting style. Itzkoff, Dave. “The Case of the Quirky Detective.” The New York Times, April 19, 2009, sec. AR, p. 20. Compares Goldblum’s personality to his characters’ cerebral detachment. Rosen, Marjorie. “More than a Contender.” People Weekly 37 (May 11, 1992): 129-131. Goldblum discusses his relations with his ex-wives and family members. Small, Jonathan. “Jeff Goldblum.” TV Guide 55 (March 26-April 1, 2007): 26-27. Goldblum discusses his similarities to his Raines character. See also: Matthew Broderick; Adrien Brody; Albert Brooks; Charles Grodin; Dustin Hoffman; Robert Klein; Rob Reiner.
Maurice Goldhaber Austrian-born scientist Goldhaber, a physicist who has worked primarily in research on the atomic and subatomic level, is responsible for several major findings about neutrons, protons, and neutrinos. Born: April 18, 1911; Lemberg, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Lviv, Ukraine) Area of achievement: Science Early Life Maurice Goldhaber (MOH-rees GOHLD-hay-bur) was born on April 18, 1911, in Lemberg, Austria. Goldhaber pursued advanced studies in physics during his time spent in institutions of higher learning. In 1934, he worked at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, with esteemed physicist and Nobel Prize laureate James Chadwick. The two worked extensively with neutrons and protons. One of the duo’s important contributions was demonstrating that the neutron, one of the main particles in an atom, is its own unit and not a combination of electrons 452
and protons. Goldhaber’s work impressed Chadwick so much that Chadwick threw his support behind Goldhaber’s experimental career ambitions. In 1936, Goldhaber earned a doctorate degree in physics from Cambridge University. In 1938, after his college years, Goldhaber decided to move to the United States. His first job was as an assistant physics professor at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. Just one year later, he married Gertrude Scharff, another physicist, who moved to central Illinois and worked with him at the university. He quickly established himself as an asset to the university and became a full-fledged professor in 1945. However, Goldhaber did not stay in Illinois. Five years later, he moved to the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, where he eventually became director and was a great influence on the organization’s physics department. Life’s Work Goldhaber became renowned for his work on the atomic and subatomic level. His twelve years of research
Jewish Americans and instruction at the University of Illinois resulted in a wide variety of discoveries and research projects. Goldhaber explored nuclear physics, X-rays, neutrons, and nuclear decay while at the institution. He spent a lot of time working with his wife and fellow physicist, and the two were able to prove that beta rays—radiation particles present in radioactive materials that can be used to treat health problems such as cancer—were identical to electrons. Goldhaber’s work helped scientists to understand subatomic particles and the anatomy of an atom. One of Goldhaber’s major accomplishments, however, came during his collaboration in 1957 with physicists Lee Grodzins and Andrew Sunyar. The three scientists were able to confirm that neutrinos, or small, electrically neutral particles, had negative helicity, which would imply that neutrinos spin counter to their momentum. While much of Goldhaber’s work is equally technical, what Goldhaber proved about neutrons and neutrinos offered an advanced understanding of particle physics for scientists who would come after him. After Goldhaber retired from his term as director at the Brookhaven laboratory, he joined another organization, Irvine-Michigan-Brookhaven. This group collaborates with other physicists to study proton decay and neutrinos in an attempt to understand subatomic particles. He also worked with a Japanese group called the Super Kamiokande collaboration, which is trying to prove that neutrinos have mass. Significance While much of Goldhaber’s work is highly technical, it is not difficult to understand how important his contributions have been to scientists, especially physicists, all over the world. By breaking down the complexities of atoms, neutrons, protons, and neutrinos, Goldhaber has given many researchers a better understanding of the basic building blocks of life. Goldhaber’s achievements
Goldhaber, Maurice have been recognized by several organizations. He has received the Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Citation for Meritorious Contributions, the National Medal of Science, the Wolf Prize in Physics, and several honorary degrees, from Tel-Aviv University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of New York at Stony Brook, and more. One of his significant prizes is the Enrico Fermi Award, an honor given to scientists whose life’s work is in energy use and production. In addition to his membership in several educational facilities, Goldhaber has been a part of such organizations as the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. —Jill E. Disis Further Reading Bernstein, Jeremy, and Anthony Hiss. “Omega Minus.” The New Yorker, March 7, 1964, 39. Goldhaber discusses the amazing research being done at Brookhaven laboratory. Crease, Robert P. Making Physics: A Biography of Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1946-1972. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. A lengthy and technical account of the Brookhaven National Laboratory and its early years. Brookhaven was one of Goldhaber’s most cherished institutions and where he conducted much of his research. Goldhaber, Maurice. “A Closer Look at the Elementary Fermions.” Proceedings of the Academy of Science of the United States of America 99, no. 1 (October 31, 2001). An article about one of Goldhaber’s chief fields of research: elementary fermions. See also: Hans Albrecht Bethe; Albert Einstein; Richard P. Feynman; Sheldon Glashow; Walter Kohn; J. Robert Oppenheimer; Frederick Reines; Steven Weinberg.
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Daniel S. Goldin Scientist and engineer Leading the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goldin improved the agency’s safety record, moved away from manned missions, and sought cooperation with the international community in space endeavors. Born: July 23, 1940; New York, New York Also known as: Daniel Saul Goldin (full name) Area of achievement: Science Early Life Daniel Saul Goldin (GOHLD-ihn) was born in New York City in 1940. Encouraged by his father to pursue rocketry, Goldin received a degree in engineering from the City College of New York in 1962. Later, while serving as the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Goldin made frequent commencement speeches about his youth in the South Bronx and the importance of parents in shaping children’s lives. He often mentioned the emotional experience of announcing the discovery of life’s building blocks on Mars shortly before his father, a biologist, died in 1996. After graduating, Goldin took a job with the NASA Lewis Research Center (now the Glenn Research Center), where he worked on electric propulsion systems. In 1967, Goldin left the Lewis Center for TRW, a company that performs defense-related projects for the U.S. government. There he worked to develop new spacecraft technology. At the same time, he attended the executive management program at the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 1983. Goldin was then appointed general manager of TRW’s Space and Technology Group in Redondo Beach, California. During his time at TRW, Goldin developed an interest in helping minority-owned businesses and received his first award from the National Association of Small Disadvantaged Businesses. Goldin has received seventeen honorary degrees from universities around the world. Life’s Work In 1992, President George H. W. Bush appointed Goldin as the ninth head of NASA, and he would go on to be the longest serving administrator, working there until 2001. NASA had become notorious for exceeding its allocated budget while not meeting promised deadlines and was still plagued by a 1986 disaster in which the 454
space shuttle Challenger had exploded shortly after takeoff. Goldin reshaped NASA under the theme “faster, better, cheaper.” At the time that Goldin was asked to cut more than a billion dollars from the budget, NASA was responsible for twenty thousand jobs in nine states. Therefore, the proposed cuts brought Goldin intense criticism, which intensified in 1999 with the failure of two unmanned missions to Mars. Opponents claimed reduced staff was forcing the elimination of necessary procedures. Goldin met this criticism with two strategies. First, he implemented a new safety policy, receiving praise from Vice President Al Gore for efforts to rewrite NASA’s safety policies. Second, he sought to expand NASA’s cooperation with other agencies, visiting with the Italian, Russian, and Israeli space agencies. He also promoted the Origins Program, which sought to cooperate with biologists to study the origins of life. This changed the focus of NASA’s programs from manned spaceflight toward the development of technology that could probe deep into space while being operated from Earth. As part of this program, the Hubble Space Telescope was repaired in 1993 to correct a problem with the main mirror that had occurred during its original manufacture. Goldin described this as his proudest moment. As a result, the telescope began returning pictures from deep space, including photos of the Eagle Nebula, which is sixty-five hundred light-years from Earth. Along with these cooperative efforts, Goldin promoted the Discovery Program to develop cheaper unmanned probes. This allowed him to aggressively push programs for the exploration of Mars while at the same time reducing costs. These efforts reduced NASA’s longterm spending projection by thirty billion dollars. After the initial problems in 1999, the agency made a successful landing of a remote-controlled exploratory robot in 2004. The Spirit rover was able to take soil samples and return photographs of the Martian surface. Although a private man, Goldin cited the September 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon near his office as a major factor in his decision to leave NASA. He stated that he wanted to better balance work and family life. After leaving NASA, Goldin sought the presidency of Boston University. However, conflict with the existing leadership forced him to withdraw. He later moved to California. There he founded the Intellisis Corporation to further the advancement of life sciences and computational systems
Jewish Americans in space exploration. He also sits on the boards of several aerospace companies and maintains a position with the Competiveness Council, which addresses issues of America’s business presence around the world. Goldin and his wife Judith have two daughters, Ariel and Laura. Significance After the decline of the Soviet Union, NASA struggled to convince the U.S. government that it still had a relevant role. Goldin found new missions based on cooperation rather than the older model of competition. As part of this effort, Goldin reworked a Cold War program that competed with the Russians for an orbiting scientific laboratory. The new cooperative effort became known as the International Space Station. Goldin also championed new initiatives for safety and opportunities for women and minorities. During his time at NASA, Goldin received a second award from the National Association of Small Disadvantaged Businesses. He also issued a new equal employment opportunity (EEO) policy and spoke to various ethnic groups, includ-
Goldin, Nan ing Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and African Americans, to encourage them in scientific careers. Under Goldin’s leadership, Mae Jemison became the first African American woman to fly in space and Eileen Collins became the first female commander of a shuttle mission. —Kevin J. Knox Further Reading Bell, Jim. Mars 3-D: A Rover’s-Eye View of the Red Planet. New York: Sterling, 2008. A book for youth that combines interesting facts with pictures from the Mars Rover mission. McCurdy, Howard E. Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Examines how successful NASA missions were under the “faster, better, cheaper” policy. See also: Albert Einstein; Richard P. Feynman; Stephen Jay Gould.
Nan Goldin Photographer Goldin gained fame by photographing people’s lives at an intensely personal level, and her gripping images made her one of the foremost photographers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Born: September 12, 1953; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Nancy Goldin (full name) Area of achievement: Art Early Life Nan Goldin (GOHL-dihn) is one of four children of Hyman and Lillian Goldin. After spending part of her childhood in Washington, D.C., Nan Goldin began to take photographs at the age of fifteen while attending Satya Community School in Lincoln, Massachusetts. In 1972, Goldin became transfixed by a pair of transsexuals she saw in downtown Boston. She made a movie of them, and that began her long obsession with the transgendered community. Her first exhibition, in 1972, featured blackand-white photographs of drag queens. She fell in love with a drag queen and moved into a Boston apartment with two transsexuals for the next two years. Part of Goldin’s expression of friendship involved photography.
She wanted to show her friends how beautiful they were through film. She never viewed them as men dressing as women but rather as a third gender that made more sense than either of the other two. She admired their courage. Meanwhile, Goldin supported herself by working in Beacon Hill pharmacy. Taking a photography class at night, she aimed to become a fashion photographer who would put drag queens on the cover of Vogue. Goldin completed a course of study at Imageworks in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1974; then she began to attend art school full time. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Tufts University in Boston in 1977 and returned to earn a Fifth Year Certificate in 1978. Life’s Work Goldin briefly journeyed to London after graduation. She lived in squatter apartments and mixed with skinheads. Returning to the United States, she lived in the Bowery on the lower East Side of New York City in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. As she built her reputation as a photographer, Goldin worked as a bartender in Times Square, at a time when the area had a reputation for being 455
Goldin, Nan seedy. Goldin’s reliance on spontaneity and her focus on the human condition place her among the ranks of the neoexpressionists. In Goldin’s images, content is more important than a perfect composition. Her early blackand-white photographs, from the beginning of the 1970’s, reflected her dream of becoming a fashion photographer. By the end of the decade, Goldin had begun to focus on her own life, and this became the hallmark of her work. Her photographs of the 1980’s and the early 1990’s typically show representatives of urban subculture, such as gays and lesbians, sex workers, transsexuals, and drug addicts. Goldin initially exhibited her photographs in the form of slide shows in her apartment or in clubs such as the Mudd Club and Tin Pan Alley. In 1985, Goldin’s work was included in the Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York. Her friends became the topic of her best-known work, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986). Goldin is famous for her explicit portrayal of the erotic, but her work has never been pornographic or sensationalist. One of the more outspoken women artists on sexuality, Goldin sees sex as a mirror for the soul and a link to the pains and joys of love and friendship. Meanwhile, Goldin struggled with drug abuse and went into drug rehabilitation in 1988. With her health restored, she won the Camera Austria Prize for contemporary photography in 1989. The next year, Goldin received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mother Jones Documentary Photography Award. Moving to Berlin in 1991 as part of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Artists-in-Residence program, Goldin published Cookie Mueller (1991), photographs documenting her close friendship with an actor who succumbed to AIDS. In 1995, she made the documentary I’ll Be Your Mirror for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In the 1990’s, Goldin began to allow natural light to appear in her pictures, and she started photographing outdoors. Her pictures became less dark, in subject as well as in form. By the opening of the twenty-first century, Goldin had become a legendary figure in photography. France made her a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in France in 2006. She capped her career by winning the prestigious 2007 Hasselblad Foundation International Award
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Jewish Americans in Photography for outstanding artistic achievement. At this time, Goldin lived and worked in New York City and in Paris. Significance Goldin celebrates those who live in marginal subcultures through her realistic photographs. The theme of the outsider is central to her work, and she documents those who make an everyday life into an extraordinary life. By photographing the private moments of friends, she blurs the division between public and private. Everything is performed for the camera and, therefore, for the public. Her work fits an era in which little is kept private. Further Reading Goldin, Nan. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. New York: Aperture Foundation, 1986. Goldin’s first book remains one of her most famous collections of photography. _______. Cookie Mueller. New York: Pace/MacGill Gallery, 1991. Goldin documents the life and death of her close friend. _______. The Other Side. New York: Scalo, 2000. Goldin discusses her career up to 1992. The photographs in the book are exclusively of the transsexual community in the 1970’s and the 1980’s. Goldin, Nan, and Elisabeth Sussman. I’ll Be Your Mirror. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1996. This book is the most extensive examination of Goldin’s work. Ritchey, Jack, et al., eds. Nan Goldin: The Beautiful Smile. Gottingen, Germany: Steidl, 2007. Published in conjunction with Goldin’s Hasselblad Award recognition, this is a book chiefly of photographs. Weinberg, Jonathan, and Joyce Henri Robinson. Fantastic Tales: The Photography of Nan Goldin. University Park: Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, 2005. This has a short but excellent examination of Goldin’s photography and a sample of her works. —Caryn E. Neumann See also: Diane Arbus; Alfred Eisenstaedt; Annie Leibovitz; Herb Ritts; Cindy Sherman.
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Emma Goldman Lithuanian-born activist and feminist Goldman expounded anarchist principles in speeches across the United States, attacking repressive government, religion, militarism, and sexism. Born: June 27, 1869; Kovno, Lithuania, Russian Empire (now Kaunas, Lithuania) Died: May 14, 1940; Toronto, Ontario, Canada Also known as: Red Emma Areas of achievement: Activism; social issues; women’s rights Early Life Emma Goldman (GOHLD-muhn) showed her rebellious spirit early, fighting with her autocratic father and despotic teachers. She passed the entrance examinations for admission to a German-language secondary school, but she could not attend when her religious teacher refused to provide a certificate of character because she did not show proper respect for authority. When her family moved to St. Petersburg, Goldman was exposed to socialist and anarchist critiques of capitalism and of government. She accepted the idea that violence was justified to bring about change. However, her true inspiration was anarchist Peter Kropotkin, who believed in a normal evolution to a better society with social revolutions serving only to clear the way for progress. Private property sanctified by state and religion was the basis of oppression; once those obstacles were transcended, a stateless society based on freedom and voluntarism would evolve. In December, 1885, Goldman accompanied her older sister in emigrating to America. They settled in Rochester, New York, and Goldman went to work in the city’s clothing factories. Her marriage to a fellow clothing worker ended in divorce within a year; however, under existing naturalization law marrying a citizen automatically made Goldman a citizen of the United States. The execution of four anarchists for alleged participation in the Chicago Haymarket bombings (1986) made Goldman disillusioned with American freedom. Working for low wages under harsh and arbitrary conditions in the clothing factory owned by the chairman of the United Jewish Charities of Rochester convinced her that German Jewish factory owners deliberately exploited needy Russian Jews. Her experience with Jewish capitalism in Rochester and her difficulties with religious teachers in Russia led
Goldman to repudiate both religious and secular Judaism. The first issue of Goldman’s monthly magazine, Mother Earth, had a lengthy article condemning nationalism, with special emphasis on Zionism. Life’s Work On August 15, 1889, Goldman moved to New York City, determined to launch a career propagandizing radical ideas. She was quickly accepted by the anarchist community and often asked to lecture. On her first day in New York Goldman met Alexander Berkman, who became her lover and constant companion (when they were not in prison) until his death in 1936. Goldman was very open about her love affairs, which always began passionately and often ended in lifelong friendships. Berkman and Goldman were repulsed by the July, 1892, gun battle at the Homestead steel plant near Pittsburgh between strikers and Pinkerton detectives hired by Henry Clay Frick, chairman of Carnegie Steel, in which ten workers died. Berkman decided Frick should be punished. With Goldman’s help he bought a pistol, entered Frick’s office July 23, and wounded but did not kill him.
Emma Goldman. (Library of Congress)
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Defense of Free Speech Emma Goldman used attempts to prevent her from being heard as occasions to energize defenders of freedom of speech. In Chicago in 1908 a police captain literally dragged her off the platform. News reports aroused prominent citizens to form a free speech league, and when Goldman returned in 1910 she spoke without molestation. After being forced out of San Diego in 1912 and 1913 by vigilantes protected by the police—on one of these occasions, one of her companions was tarred and feathered—she was triumphantly invited back in 1915 by a committee of civic leaders. Her 1910 tour was one of her most successful, both in raising money and in starting five successful free speech fights. In that year, however, the University of Wisconsin disgraced itself when the regents and president of the university bowed to a public outcry and disciplined a faculty member for announcing Goldman’s speech to his classes. Protests by the class of 1910 finally led to placement of a plaque on campus in 1915 dedicating the university to freedom of speech. The most lasting of Goldman’s contributions to free speech was enlisting Roger Baldwin in 1911. He went on to organize the National Civil Liberties Bureau, which fought to protect civil rights during the 1919-1920 Red Scare and ultimately led to the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union. Through that organization the influence of Goldman’s fight for free speech extends to the present.
Berkman was imprisoned for fourteen years after a trial during which he hid Goldman’s complicity. Goldman kept speaking up. In 1893 she was sentenced to a year in prison, accused of inciting a riot by a speech to striking workers. While in prison she decided to move beyond Yiddish- and Russian-speaking audiences and become an apostle of anarchism to the American public. As she ranged across the country, hostile press coverage and attempts by police to suppress her made “Red Emma” the best known and most frightening example of dangerous radicalism. After Leon Czolgosz claimed to have been inspired by Goldman to assassinate President William McKinley, pressure to silence her intensified, although extensive government efforts revealed no connection. In 1908, the federal government legally denaturalized her ex-husband, automatically revoking Goldman’s citizenship, planning to bar her reentry as an undesirable alien if she ever left the country. In her lecture tours Goldman basically restated Kropotkin’s sweeping criticism of capitalism, religion, and nationalism. Applying his insights to the American scene, 458
Jewish Americans she described the repressive forces denying true freedom to Americans, whether workers prevented from unionizing or intellectuals inhibited from speaking out critically. Goldman also lectured on new European plays and novels, stressing their radical social content. She attacked the institution of marriage, arguing that it treated women as objects, making the survival of true love improbable. After activist Margaret Sanger was arrested in 1915 on obscenity charges for advocating birth control, Goldman added birth control information to her lectures. Goldman was contemptuous of the idea that women’s suffrage would fundamentally change government. Early in 1917 Goldman began concentrating on antiwar speeches. In July, she and Berkman were sentenced to two years in prison for opposing conscription. They were deported to the Soviet Union in December, 1919. At first the two enthusiastically supported the new regime. Able to speak Russian, they were not dependent on government handouts for information, and Goldman soon became appalled by the savage repressive actions of the government. They left Russia in December, 1921. Left-leaning liberals refused to believe her accounts of what she had seen; liberal weeklies refused to accept her articles. Her 1923 My Disillusionment in Russia received little attention. No one Goldman approached was willing to join her in publicly protesting. Soviet persecution of dissidents. She continued to lecture and in 1931 published a widely ignored autobiography. Upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Goldman rallied to support the anarchist armies in Catalonia. In 1940, she was in Canada raising funds for Spanish refugees when she suffered a fatal stroke. Once dead, Goldman was permitted to reenter the United States for burial in Chicago. Significance Goldman was at least partially successful in becoming an apostle of anarchism to America. Her notoriety as a dangerous subversive made her a celebrity. Papers announced her arrival in town. Although most coverage was negative, attacks on her aroused curiosity and swelled her audiences beyond the already converted. She became adept at witty responses to those who came to jeer and, more importantly, educated open-minded individuals, who came out of curiosity, about progressive social causes.
Jewish Americans As continuous revelations of Soviet brutality erupted, beginning with the Great Purge of the 1930’s, Goldman’s critique of communism became more acceptable to liberals. The major revival of her fame came with the rise of the New Left in the 1960’s. Her ideas on feminism and her attacks on state power and on conformity strongly influenced a new generation. Goldman’s major books came back into print and remain so in the twenty-first century. —Milton Berman Further Reading Drinnon, Richard. Rebel in Paradise: A Biography of Emma Goldman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. Detailed life by a sympathetic New Left scholar. Falk, Candace. Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984. Stresses Goldman’s private life. _______, et al. Made for America, 1890-1901. Vol. 1 in Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. _______. Making Speech Free, 1902-1909. Vol. 2 in
Goldman, Marcus Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. These two volumes contain letters, articles and speeches, and government documents dealing with efforts to suppress and deport Goldman. Goldman, Emma. Living My Life. 2 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931. A 993-page narrative of her struggles against authorities. Very open account of her sex life. Rudahl, Sharon. A Dangerous Woman: A Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman. New York: New Press, 2007. A celebration of Goldman’s life using comicbook techniques. Solomon, Martha. Emma Goldman. Boston: Twayne, 1987. Focuses on Goldman as a writer, discussing her rhetorical devices and platform performance. Weiss, Penny, and Loretta Kensinger, eds. Feminist Interpretations of Emma Goldman. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. Fifteen essays analyze what is still valuable in Goldman’s insights for modern feminism. See also: Susan Brownmiller; Betty Friedan; Samuel Gompers; Jerry Rubin; Gloria Steinem.
Marcus Goldman German-born business executive and investor An influential financier, Goldman believed in using wealth to create business opportunities and pioneered strategies of investment banking that have made the firm he began more than a century ago, Goldman Sachs and Company, one of the most enduring investment institutions in American financial history. Born: December 9, 1821; Trappstadt, Bavaria (now in Germany) Died: July 20, 1904; New York, New York Area of achievement: Business Early Life Marcus Goldman (GOHLD-mihn) was born in the heart of rural Bavaria in central Germany. Records are sketchy, but it appears Goldman was an only child; his mother at one time taught elementary school; his father, a farmer with modest income, was a broker, negotiating deals among resident farmers in which livestock would be traded for crops or against the promise of future crops.
Although Goldman stopped his formal schooling at age ten, he learned from his father the process of negotiations, the dynamic of brokering deals, and above all the value of integrity and honesty in building and maintaining a reputation for reliability and stability in transactions that involved people’s livelihoods. In the mid-1840’s, when Goldman was in his twenties, Bavaria was rocked by a succession of political upheavals centered on radical efforts to unify the nationstates of Germany. Amid such turmoil and violence, Goldman, unmarried and ready to seek his fortune, determined to immigrate to the United States and take his chances. He docked in Philadelphia in 1848 and settled there. He went into business almost immediately. Over the next five years, with indefatigable energy, he worked along the streets in the Jewish neighborhoods of the city in a horse-drawn peddler’s wagon, buying and selling merchandise and getting to know the people of his neighborhood. In 1854, he used his accumulated savings to open a modest shop specializing in housewares and gro459
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tablishments. Caught up in a temporary cash shortage or perhaps in a long-term financial catastrophe, these business owners (and sometimes individuals) would receive the money from Goldman in return for a legally binding IOU. The loans would, of course, be high risk, and those who received the money would be expected to repay the amount quickly, usually within several weeks. Goldman Life’s Work secured a percentage of the loan’s principal as payment for negotiating the deal. Goldman moved to lower Manhattan, the heart of the Quickly, Goldman parlayed his services into a significity’s financial district, with the goal of providing financial services to small business owners. That was his cant lending establishment dealing in such short-term sodream. Like his father who had worked tirelessly to efcalled commercial paper, brokering debts with remarkable acumen and a savvy sense of entrepreneurialism. fect deals among neighbors back in Bavaria as a way for More to the point, in a kind of business known for attractfarmers, often struggling under enormous debts, to maining predatory money lenders, Goldman quickly earned a tain their production and to keep their lands, Goldman reputation for integrity and for honesty. Because Goldsaw in the often tempestuous boom-and-bust economic man was very much a hands-on lender and because his environment of post-Civil War New York a chance to play a pivotal role in the city’s vast financial market. firm’s assets grew sufficiently that he did not have to rely on banks for his stakes, the deals he negotiated and Without wasting time, he set himself up immediately as a the businesses he secured realized their money quickly, broker of debts, providing unsecured loans for individurevolutionary in a process that previously would take als or businesses (most often small neighborhood shops) months, even years. Within a decade, Marcus Goldman unable to secure such monies from more traditional esand Company was dealing in close to five million dollars’worth of commercial transactions annually. Goldman was quite a characFounding Goldman Sachs ter: He walked the streets of Manhattan in a dapper suit and top hat, keeping receipts from Although the massive global investment banking firm that bears deals he would negotiate along the way in the his name bears little resemblance to the comparatively modest enterbrim of his hat, maintaining a close feeling prise Marcus Goldman founded and ran for more than thirty years, with those with whom he did business. there is no doubt he contributed to that firm’s success and its reputaIn 1882, with his brokerage firm dealtion as one of the elite independent financial players. Indeed, the firm’s move into the front ranks of investment banking was entirely ing in more than fifty million dollars’ worth the work of chief executive officers who directed the firm in the deof investment services annually, Goldman, cades after Goldman’s death (notably the firm’s management of the past sixty, promoted his son-in-law, Samuel initial public stock offerings of, first, Sears and Roebuck and then the Sachs, to joint directorship. Goldman and Ford Motor Company). Sachs flourished (although Goldman and his As the architect of the company’s protocol, however, Goldman’s son-in-law had a falling out and the families vision built the fortunes of Goldman Sachs—his belief in the promise did not speak to each other for years), and the of new businesses; his faith in his adopted country’s marketplace to company joined the New York Stock Exattract and sustain businesses; his understanding of the need for fichange in 1896, a sign of its prestige and its nancial officers grounded in the fundamental processes of economics success. The firm specialized in financing (himself minimally educated, he was among the first to see the wissmall businesses and staking promising endom of having executives with postgraduate degrees); and, above all, his insistence on integrity and trust within the investment dynamic. trepreneurs with seed money; Goldman and Despite being rocked periodically by public scandals and having to Sachs would raise capital, trade securities, weather difficult economic times (notably the Great Depression, inmanage corporate mergers, and even raise sider trading scandals during the late 1980’s, and in the early 2000’s money through issuing and selling securities the controversial federal bailout in the wake of the mortgage meltand bonds. When Goldman retired just shy of down), the firm Goldman envisioned continues to be one of the most the new century, he left the firm under the diprofitable investment banks in American economic history. rection of his son and two of his sons-in-law. He died in 1904 at the age of eighty-two. ceries and ran the shop for most of the next fifteen years. He married and had five children. It was in part because of the financial strain of the large family that Goldman decided in 1869 to move his family to New York City with its promise of far more lucrative success. He was at the time nearly fifty.
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Jewish Americans Significance When Goldman, a Jewish immigrant, determined to make his way in New York City’s financial district, he understood that some financial enterprises, notably stock and bond trading, would be denied him, controlled, as they were, by a close-knit network of second-generation American Protestants. Against that entrenched establishment, however, Goldman pioneered what became a lucrative niche—trading in commercial paper, using financial resources to help develop entrepreneurs. He never aspired to the grand-scale wealth of other financiers of his time, never lived in ostentatious splendor, never peddled political influence, and never pursued celebrity. He quietly raised his family (many members of which he brought into his company), attended synagogue, and sought to maintain his reputation within the neighborhoods of his Manhattan environs. That he made a considerable fortune is testimony to the care of his endeavor, the reach of his modest vision, and his uncanny business acumen, which gave him an intuitive sense of potentially profitable investments. —Joseph Dewey Further Reading Chernow, Ron. The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance. New York: Grove, 2001. Offers an important context for understanding Goldman’s era and the Protestant makeup of the Gilded Age financial environment.
Goldovsky, Boris Provides a helpful definition of commercial paper as an investment strategy. Ellis, Charles D. The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs. New York: Penguin, 2008. A fulsome history of the corporation Goldman began. While it focuses on the evolution of the firm after Goldman’s death, this work describes Goldman’s early success and summarizes his business ethics. Endlich, Lisa. Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success. New York: Touchstone, 2000. A rare account of the operations of Goldman Sachs from a former executive. Carefully documented and highly readable for readers who have limited knowledge of banking processes. Ferguson, Niall. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. New York: Penguin, 2008. Illuminating historical account of credit, banking, and investment (based on a Public Broadcasting Service series of the same name). Chapters 1 and 2 are particularly helpful because they examine the concept of credit and the dynamics of bonds and stocks. Morrison, Alan, and William J. Wilhelm, Jr. Investment Banking: Institutions, Politics, and Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Explains the foundations of the banking strategies that made Goldman’s wealth, with an emphasis on contemporary practices. See also: Barry Diller; Carl Icahn; Sumner Redstone; George Soros.
Boris Goldovsky Russian-born musician Pianist, conductor, producer, educator, and radio lecturer, Goldovsky played a major role in introducing and promoting opera in the United States. Born: June 7, 1908; Moscow, Russia Died: February 15, 2001; Brookline, Massachusetts Area of achievement: Music Early Life Boris Goldovsky (BOH-rihs goh-DOHLF-skee) was born in Moscow on June 7, 1908, into a prosperous musical Jewish family. His father was a lawyer; his mother was the prominent violinst Lea Luboschutz. When it was discovered that he had no interest in the violin, he was given piano lessons and later received four years of
more rigorous training with the German teacher Karl Augustovich Kipp. The family lost their wealth with the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and to earn money Goldovsky became his mother’s accompanist. After the Communist takeover, Goldovsky and his mother traveled to Berlin on a concert tour in September, 1921, with the understanding that his father and family would join them. Meanwhile, his father died, and Goldovsky and his mother never returned to the Soviet Union. Goldovsky studied with a fellow Russian immigrant Leonid Kreutzer and later with Artur Schnabel. After a year in Paris, where he had traveled to accompany his mother, in 1924 his mother left for the United States to pursue her violin career and Goldovsky re461
Goldovsky, Boris turned to Berlin to continue studying with Schnabel. After a brief trip to the United States to accompany his mother, Goldovsky returned to Europe to study piano with Ernq Dohnányi in Budapest. Goldovsky’s mother accepted a teaching position at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1927. After graduating from the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest in 1930, Goldovsky emigrated to the United States and joined his mother in Philadelphia. The results of his years in Europe were fluency in several languages and a thorough musical training. At the Curtis Institute, Goldovsky studied conducting under Fritz Reiner, from whom he received his first training in opera. Goldovsky initially disliked opera, but it was while coaching a student rehearsal of act 1 of La Bohème (1896) that he realized its potential as a dramatic art form if done properly. At Curtis, Goldovsky met and married a fellow student, the soprano Margaret Codd, who had a career in opera. After he and Codd graduated in 1934, Goldovsky became Reiner’s assistant and vocal coach, helping him to prepare operas for the Philadelphia Grand Opera Association. Life’s Work When Artur Rodzinski began an opera season with the Cleveland Orchestra in 1936, Goldovsky was hired to help prepare the productions (while also assisting Reiner in Philadelphia). On the basis of his growing reputation for coaching opera, he was invited to begin an opera department at the Cleveland Institute of Music for the fall of 1936. He accepted, but, despairing at how little he knew about stage directing, he studied opera dramatics over the summer with Ernst Lert, to whom Goldovsky attributed his credo that opera singers must express the dramatic meaning of music in a seemingly spontaneous manner through their motions, gestures, and expressions. Singers must understand the dramatic and psychological motivation for every phrase they sing. Opera, like good theater, must make dramatic sense. Scenery, costumes, lights, and instrumental passages also must contribute to the dramatic whole. The enemies of good opera were those who separated the music from the drama. Goldovsky, who had previously maintained he had no interest in opera partly because it lacked the dramatic intensity of theater, suddenly found opera to be his life mission. When Serge Koussevitzky founded the summer Berkshire Music Festival, at Tanglewood in Massachusetts, in 1940, Goldovsky became the musical assistant for the 462
Jewish Americans opera department. In the informal, experimental atmosphere, Goldovsky was given free rein to coach singers and present productions, many of them world premieres. He held this post until 1962. The names of the singers who passed through Tanglewood read like a Hall of Fame of American opera. On the basis of his work at Tanglewood, he was invited in 1942 to become the director of the opera department at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. When New York’s Metropolitan Opera toured to Boston in 1944, Goldovsky was the local member of the Saturday afternoon radio intermission opera quiz. His vast knowledge of opera prompted the Texaco company to offer him the post of intermission host for the Texacosponsored Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. These talks, heard nationwide, did much to educate Americans about opera. Avoiding too much technical language and plot summary, Goldovsky focused instead on musical and dramatic analysis of the opera of the day, with illustrations played at the piano. Selected talks have been published in Accents on Opera (1953) and Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen! (1984). In 1946, he founded the New England Opera Theater at the New England Conservatory. The company became independent when Goldovsky took it to New York in the 1950’s, where it was known as the Goldovsky Opera Theater. The opera company’s main mission was training young singers for careers in opera. For four decades the company toured the United States and Canada. The fruits of Goldovsky’s many years of teaching are contained in two books, Bringing Opera to Life (1968) and Bringing Soprano Arias to Life (1973). Goldovsky returned to the Curtis Institute to teach in the later 1970’s. In 1985, he retired from Curtis and disbanded the Goldovsky Opera Theater. He died after a long illness at age ninety-two in Brookline, Massachusetts, on February 15, 2001. Significance Through the educational opera programs he established, his touring opera company, and his fifty-year series of Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts, Goldovsky was a significant teacher, promoter, and popularizer of opera in America. — Thomas McGeary Further Reading Goldovsky, Boris. Accents on Opera. New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1953. Essays on aspects of individ-
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ual operas adapted from Goldovsky’s Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. _______. Bringing Opera to Life: Operatic Acting and Stage Direction. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968. A handbook for operatic training of the student, covering the language of the theater, staging, creating a character, choruses, and ensembles. _______. Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen! Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. A collection of Goldovsky’s Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast scripts from the 1960’s to 1980’s. _______. My Road to Opera: The Recollections of Boris Goldovsky. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979. Goldovsky’s memoirs of his life in opera up to 1951; contains
memoirs of the greats of American musical life, including Reiner, Josef Hofmann, and Koussevitzky. Goldovsky, Boris, and Arthur Schoep. Bringing Soprano Arias to Life. New York: G. Schirmer, 1973. Discusses the vocal and musical aspects, dramatic situation, and character motivation needed for performance of famous arias. Tommasini, Anthony. “Boris Goldovsky, Ninety-Two, Musician and Opera’s Avid Evangelist.” The New York Times, February 18, 2001. Obituary giving a summary of Goldovsky’s life and achievements. See also: Leonard Bernstein; Lorin Maazel; André Previn; Isaac Stern.
Barry Goldwater Senator, military leader, and business executive Goldwater rose to prominence in Republican politics representing Arizona in the U.S. Senate and becoming the Republican presidential nominee in 1964. He was the patriarch of the conservative movement. Born: January 1, 1909; Phoenix, Arizona Died: May 29, 1998; Paradise Valley, Arizona Also known as: Barry Morris Goldwater (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; business; military Early Life Barry Goldwater was born at his family home on Center Street (now Central Avenue) in Phoenix, when it was still the Arizona Territory. He was the first of three children born to Baron and Josephine Goldwater. His grandfather, Michel, had emigrated from Konin, a Jewish ghetto in Poland, and he changed the family name from Goldwasser to Goldwater. Michel founded a retail business that became the Goldwater Department Stores. While Michel and his wife Sarah were observant Jews, and Michel was a founder of the Congregation B’nai B’rith in Los Angeles (prior to settling in Arizona), his sons, including Baron, were less so. When Baron married Illinois-born Josephine Williams, an Episcopalian, he agreed that
Barry, his brother Robert, and his sister Carolyn would be baptized and raised Protestant. Goldwater grew up knowing little about his Jewish heritage, a fact he later regretted. When Goldwater was born, the family was prosper-
The Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act Barry Goldwater considered his most important achievement, and the one of which he was proudest, to be his work on the military reorganization bill he sponsored with fellow congressman William Nichols. He described May 7, 1986, the day it passed, as the “proudest day of my political career.” The bill made sweeping changes in the U.S. military system, which had not been changed in forty years and was no longer efficient. Changes were deemed necessary because of inherent problems in the existing military organization that surfaced in the Vietnam War and again in the Iranian hostage crisis of 1980. While not the sole cause of failures in those areas, the antiquated military system contributed heavily. The reorganized military eliminates competition among the branches, avoids duplication, and dramatically reduces cost. Perhaps most importantly, it streamlines the chain of command by creating a direct line of communication between the president of the United States and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The final bill passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming majorities, something that seldom happens in partisan politics. One of the things that pleased Goldwater most was that the reform bill did not add any layers to an already overburdened government bureaucracy.
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Goldwater, Barry ous and lived in comfort. He did not distinguish himself in school and was sent to Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, where his parents thought the discipline would be good for him. From there, he attended the University of Arizona, but he dropped out before earning a degree when his father died in 1929. Goldwater felt obligated to learn the family business from the ground up and worked various jobs throughout the company before becoming manager. He discovered he had a natural flair for the retail business and an uncanny ability to buy successfully for the stores those items the clientele would embrace. In 1937, he became the company president. In 1934, Goldwater married Margaret (Peggy) Johnson, an Episcopalian from Muncie, Indiana, though her family was initially lukewarm to the idea, in part because of his Jewish ancestry. The couple had a successful marriage and four children, two daughters and two sons. By then the Goldwaters were the leading mercantile family in Arizona. Goldwater successfully presided over the retail empire until he ran for and was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Barry Goldwater. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans Life’s Work Though politics defined him, Goldwater had many other interests. He was a serious photographer whose work was published and exhibited nationally and internationally; a pilot who logged twelve thousand hours of flying time in nearly three hundred types of aircraft; and a soldier with a long military career that included World War II service in the U.S. Air Corps, attaining the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. Politics was Goldwater’s passion. He began his political career as Phoenix city councilman in 1948, four years before being elected to his first Senate term. He disapproved of many of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Depression-era measures and ran for the Senate to give those with differing views a voice in Congress and to help change the direction in which the country was heading. At the center of his political beliefs were fiscal responsibility, limited government, and military strength. He left the Senate after only two terms to become the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1964. The Vietnam War was raging, and the Cold War made many people afraid Goldwater would lead the country into confrontation with Russia. He was overwhelmingly defeated by incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson. It appeared his career was over, and that his conservative views were doomed for extinction. (That would change in 1980, when Ronald Reagan swept into the Oval Office for two terms with a large majority.) In 1968, Goldwater ran for the Senate again and Arizonans reelected him. He went on to serve three more terms before retiring in 1987, after a total of thirty years. He handpicked his successor, John McCain. During Goldwater’s second Senate career, he concentrated on working for economic stability, intelligence gathering, and military restructuring, among other issues about which he felt strongly. He was especially enthusiastic about the Goldwater-Nichols Act (1968), which reorganized the military. His longevity in the Senate entitled him to key committee appointments. Though his outspokenness sometimes made him unpopular, it defined the way he lived. He was unable to hide his opinions in the guise of being agreeable. He joked that the hip problems he developed in his later years were a result of decades of having Peggy kick him under the table as she said, “Barry, that’s enough.” Even his detractors believed him to be a man of integrity. Known as a conservative, Goldwater held some opinions that
Jewish Americans were far from conservative. For example, he favored legal abortion and gay rights. Goldwater’s son, Barry, Jr., followed him into politics and served as a California congressional representative from 1969 through 1984. When Peggy died in 1985, the couple had been married more than fifty years. He married his second wife, Susan Shaffer Wechsler, in 1992. Among Goldwater’s many honors, President Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Goldwater died at his home near Phoenix on May 29, 1998, of complications of a stroke. Significance Goldwater was recognized as the patriarch of the conservative movement. His influence and mentorship helped shape the career of President Ronald Reagan and presidential candidate John McCain. He sponsored Senate bills that flew in the face of business-as-usual Washington politics, and his impact in the areas of military structure, energy, and adherence to the Constitution is still felt and will continue to affect the way the United States conducts its business. More important, his philosophies still form the basic planks in the Republican Party platform, though in some ways the conservatives of the party have moved further to the right. Goldwater was more a pragmatist than an idealist, and he did not equate compromise with selling out. —Norma Lewis Further Reading Dean, John W., and Barry Goldwater, Jr. Pure Goldwater. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. This
Goldwyn, Samuel book provides insights into the man who is considered the father of today’s conservative movement, as it draws on Barry Goldwater’s journal entries, along with the memories of those closest to the Grand Old Man of the Grand Old Party. Goldberg, Robert Alan. Barry Goldwater. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995. The author’s extensive research made this book what many political scholars consider definitive on the senator from Arizona and 1964 presidential candidate. Goldwater, Barry M. The Conscience of a Conservative. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Press, 1994. This has been reissued over the years since first published in the 1960’s, and is still considered the seminal treatise of the conservative movement as Goldwater lays out his philosophies in his own words. A thorough look at his ideas and the movement he spearheaded. Perlstein, Rick. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. New York: Avalon, 2009. The author focuses on the 1960’s and the conservative right taking on the liberals to bring about smaller government and the return of personal responsibility. Story, Ronald, and Bruce Laurie. Rise of Conservativism in America, 1945-2000. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. A study of the conservative movement that swept America during the last half of the twentieth century and the role played by Goldwater. See also: Bella Abzug; Russ Feingold; Joe Lieberman; Abraham A. Ribicoff.
Samuel Goldwyn Polish-born producer and filmmaker One of the most successful independent producers in the history of the Hollywood film industry, Goldwyn was noted for the high quality of his films and founded a company that became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Born: August 17, 1879; Warsaw, Russian Empire (now in Poland) Died: January 31, 1974; Beverly Hill, California Also known as: Samuel Goldfish; Samuel Goldisch; Schmuel Gelbfisz (birth name) Area of achievement: Entertainment
Early Life Very little is known about the early years of Samuel Goldwyn, born Schmuel Gelbfisz into a Polish Jewish family in Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire. Still in his teens, he ran away from home. Traveling on foot and without money, he made it to Birmingham, England, where he lived with relatives. He anglicized his name, spelling it Samuel Goldfish. In 1899, he entered the United States illegally from Canada. A hard worker and an ambitious entrepreneur, Goldfish went to work in Gloversville, New York, aptly named since it was the home of several glove manufac465
Goldwyn, Samuel turers. Goldfish was a superb salesman, often convincing new clients to try his firm’s gloves and opening up new markets. By 1902, Goldfish had become a naturalized American citizen, living in New York City. He soon began to enjoy the city’s entertainments, especially the first motion pictures, and became excited about producing his own films. In 1910, his marriage to Blanche Lasky, the daughter of vaudeville impresario Jesse Lasky, provided the opportunity to enter the new business of making and exhibiting moving pictures. Along with Adolf Zukor and Lasky, Goldfish bankrolled the first full-length feature film, The Squaw Man (1914), directed by Cecil B. DeMille, who was soon to become one of Hollywood’s great directors. However, Goldfish’s personality was abrasive to his business partners. Opinionated and unwilling to compromise, he had a falling out with Lasky and Zukor and in 1916 started the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation in partnership with the Selwyn brothers, Edward and Archibald. Never happy with the jokes made about his last name, Goldfish had his name legally changed to Goldwyn in 1918. As usual, however, he quarreled with his business partners and was forced out of his own company, which later became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, even though Goldwyn himself was never actually part of what became a great film studio.
Jewish Americans Instead, Goldwyn embarked on a separate course, becoming an independent producer who could not rival the major studios in numbers of pictures released each year but who proved adept at garnering the publicity and critical praise for films featuring what he called the “Goldwyn touch.”
Life’s Work Although many of the founders of the Hollywood studios were Jewish (Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures and the Warner brothers, for example), a name like Goldfish sounded “too Jewish” at a time when this new entertainment industry was relocating from New York to Hollywood and aiming to produce films appealing to a mass audience. Goldwyn gravitated toward gentile subject matter and society. He also affected an impeccable style of dress featuring English tailoring. After divorcing his first wife in 1915, Goldwyn married again in 1925—this time to Frances Howard, a sophisticated Gentile actor who contributed significantly to her husband’s assimilation into American society. Only his accent and his imperfect mastery of the English language gave away his immigrant origins. Indeed, Goldwyn’s shaky hold on American idioms became the butt of jokes that had him coining such nonsensical expressions as “Include me out” and “A verbal contract is not worth the paper it’s written on.” Goldwyn’s greatest success came with the advent of sound. Like all Hollywood producers, Goldwyn realized that talking pictures needed THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES new kinds of scenarists—writers used to inventing dialogue. Unlike his competitors, howWithout question The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) marked ever, Goldwyn did not flood the market with not only a highlight of Samuel Goldwyn’s career but also a mile“talkies.” Instead, he carefully developed scripts stone in the history of Hollywood. Not many producers would have based on highly praised works of literature had the courage or the resources to back a sprawling film telling the story of several servicemen returning from World War II. The such as Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith (1931) and film’s length (172 minutes) made it commercially problematic. It Dodsworth (1936), which were nominated in was difficult, for example, for theaters to run double and triple 1931 and 1936 for best pictures of the year by bills—a necessary means of luring audiences attracted to televithe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scision, which was beginning to reduce the weekly attendance at film ences. Even more prestigious were his adaptheaters. Nevertheless, Goldwyn persisted, producing a film that tations of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights captured the anticipation and the anxiety about the postwar world (1939) and Lillian Hellman’s Broadway success for both the returning veterans and their families and friends. The The Little Foxes (1941), both directed by Wilfilm featured outstanding performances by Fredric March and liam Wyler, who also directed Sidney Howard’s Harold Russell (a paraplegic veteran acting for the first time), acclaimed play Dead End (1937). Indeed many who won Academy Awards as well as William Wyler’s Academy critics suggest that Wyler was largely responsiAward-winning direction, and Oscars for best screenplay, best picture, best musical score, and best film editing. The same year ble for the “Goldwyn touch.” They point out Goldwyn won the Irving Thalberg Award, an honor named after that after 1946, the year that the Wyler-directed the legendary production chief at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The Best Years of Our Lives won the Academy Award for Best Picture and that Wyler departed
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the studio, the Goldwyn organization never again reached such heights of artistic or business success. Indeed, nearly all of Goldwyn’s subsequent films were either box-office or critical failures. Goldwyn’s combative and controlling personality—his demand that he have absolute control over his productions—made it intolerable for directors such as Wyler to function according to their own aesthetic standards. Wyler was not alone in leaving Goldwyn’s employ; Hellman discovered that her scripts were often rewritten so strenuously that their original efforts were obliterated. Even so, from 1931 to 1946, Goldwyn managed to forge a brilliant coalition of writers, cinematographers, and directors. His achievement stemmed in part from the faith he put in writers such as Hellman, who worked on their own, creating scripts in an industry that usually employed teams of writers. On the set, directors such as Wyler—for all their quarrels with Goldwyn—usually ruled, and cinematographers like the great Greg Toland were allowed to develop new techniques that advanced the art of the motion picture. A shrewd appraiser of talent, Goldwyn was able to hire actors such as Bette Davis and Gary Cooper for roles that ensured the success of his films. As Goldwyn aged, he began to rely increasingly on his wife Frances to make creative decisions, and Samuel Goldwyn. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) it seems that after 1946 Goldwyn’s ability to analyze scripts and manage his studio declined. His beCertainly he was not the only producer—independent or havior became more erratic and his autocratic tendencies otherwise—to make an art form out of an industry. Howmore strict. Like other studio heads, he was uncertain ever, the longevity of his desire to hire the very best techhow to react to the new entertainment medium of televinicians and artists, and his willingness to scrap scripts, sion. directors, and actors in the service of art, make him a noIn the early 1970’s, Goldwyn continued to maintain table figure in the history of Hollywood. Goldwyn was the façade of an active producer, but his studio rarely awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on March managed to release more than one film a year. He died of 27, 1971. natural causes at the age of ninety-four. — Carl Rollyson Significance Further Reading Although the “Goldwyn touch” was, in part, no more Berg, A. Scott. Goldwyn: A Biography. New York: Knopf, than a publicity gimmick, the phrase became synonymous 1989. A comprehensive biography written with the with the notion of quality. At a time when Hollywood cooperation of the Goldwyn family and the Goldwyn was often denigrated as a “factory town” and motion piccorporation. As in many authorized biographies, the tures as merely a commercial enterprise, Goldwyn ofsubject is somewhat sanitized. In other words, this biten spent thousands of dollars just to make his films ography lacks the bite of Carol Easton’s more incisive authentic and artistic. In many instances, he knew that work. he would not recoup his investment. Instead he counted Easton, Carol. The Search for Sam Goldwyn. New York: on an overall impact that would cast a Goldwyn picture Morrow, 1976. A penetrating study of Goldwyn and as an exemplar of high aesthetic and moral standards. 467
Gompers, Samuel his impact on Hollywood. Although this biography is unauthorized, Easton compensated for her lack of access to the Goldwyn family and inner circle by seeking out others in Goldwyn’s employ, including actor Dana Andrews in a candid interview that brings Goldwyn to life with striking immediacy. Includes a bibliography and index. Rollyson, Carl. Lillian Hellman: Her Life and Legend.
Jewish Americans New York: iUniverse, 2008. A revision of Rollyson’s 1988 biography. Includes several chapters on the making of Goldwyn’s films and his relationships with screenwriters and directors, especially Hellman and Wyler. See also: George Cukor; Cecil B. DeMille; Al Jolson; Ernst Lubitsch; Louis B. Mayer.
Samuel Gompers British-born labor leader The founder and first president of the American Federation of Labor, Gompers pioneered in organizing a coalition of trade and craft unions in the United States, in which skilled workers had their own union organizations within their job specialties. Born: January 27, 1850; London, England Died: December 13, 1924; San Antonio, Texas Area of achievement: Activism Early Life Samuel Gompers (GOM-purs) was born in Great Britain to a Dutch family that had migrated to London from Amsterdam. His father was a cigar maker. For a few years, Gompers attended a Free Jewish School in the Spitalfields section of London. His four years there, from age six to ten, was his only formal education, although he was occasionally able to attend a Hebrew night school. He learned Hebrew and did some study of the Talmud. In his autobiography, he wrote about the impact that Talmud study had on him, teaching him to think abstractly, to make careful distinctions, and to develop closely reasoned arguments. Gompers recalled that his family was “not scrupulously Orthodox” in regard to religious observance, but they did observe the major fast days and important ceremonials. In later life, he believed that trying to serve others provided an important spiritual dimension to his life. At age ten, Gompers had to leave the day school he attended to be apprenticed in the shoemaking trade. This arrangement lasted only a few months, and later his father apprenticed him in the cigar maker’s trade. In 1863, the Gompers family migrated to New York City, where they settled on the lower East Side of Manhattan. At age fourteen, in 1864, Gompers joined the Cigar Makers’ International Union. At age seventeen, he married Sophia Julian, a young Jewish girl from a working468
class family. Shortly after his marriage, when his wife was expecting their first child, Gompers joined the Hand-inHand Society, a Jewish mutual-aid society that sought to provide its members access to medical care and burial plots in a local cemetery. In his memoirs, Gompers recorded that he held membership in the Cigar Makers’ International Union from 1864 and had membership card number one. Gompers soon rose to leadership in his union local and then in the
Samuel Gompers. (Library of Congress)
Jewish Americans national organization. Through his work with the Cigar Makers’ International Union, he also became acquainted with the broader labor movement in the United States. Life’s Work As a young man, Gompers embraced socialist ideals, but eventually he rejected the socialist position as too idealistic and radical for the American situation. Two labor leaders he worked with in the union, Adolph Strasser and Ferdinand Laurrell, were instrumental in leading Gompers to embrace the ideals of trade unionism, in which skilled workers organized their own unions within their trades or craft specialties. These unions represented only the skilled workers and often charged relatively high dues, but they sought to provide a strike fund and other benefits out of the money collected. Gompers became a national leader of the Cigar Makers’ International Union in the 1870’s. In 1881, he worked with other national labor leaders to form the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions in the United States of America and Canada. This attempt at an umbrella organization for trade unions never attracted widespread support and lasted only five years. In 1886, Gompers was instrumental in the move to scrap this organization and create the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL was a coalition of trade unions, and only trade unions, rather than universal workers’ organizations, such as the Knights of Labor, were allowed to join. Gompers became the first president of the AFL and served in that position longer than any successor. He worked tirelessly to promote the agenda of the AFL through extensive travels and a steady stream of letters and articles for magazines and newspapers. By 1894, more than a quarter of a million workers belonged to the AFL. The keys to the success of Gompers’s leadership of the AFL were his focus on trade unions; on practical, attainable goals; and on remaining, as much as possible, nonpartisan in politics. Rather than seeking to organize all workers, at all skill levels, trade unions represented the skilled workers in a single craft, who shared common interests and concerns. Gompers rejected idealistic or utopian goals and stressed what he often called “pure and simple unionism”—an emphasis on better wages, benefits, and working conditions for union members. In politics, Gompers believed the AFL should remain nonpartisan, endorsing candidates from the major parties who promised to seek the workers’ goals. In the early twentieth century, however, he was led to embrace the Democratic Party more fully, as candidates such as William
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Trade Unionism The American Federation of Labor represented the triumph of craft or trade unionism in America, a system in which each job specialty or craft had its own union. Earlier attempts at a kind of umbrella labor organization in America focused on universal unions, which tried to organize all kinds of workers, of various skill levels, into one massive union. The National Labor Union, founded in 1863, and the Knights of Labor, founded in 1869, were both attempts at creating such a universal union. These failed for a variety of reasons. Workers in different industries and different job specialties felt little solidarity, and skilled workers did not see their interests as being the same as those of unskilled workers. Skilled workers, who could not be easily replaced by employers, often questioned why they should strike or take other job actions in order to protect the jobs of unskilled workers. Gompers sought to create an umbrella organization of craft unions, in which workers would belong to their own union, representing only workers in their specific trade or craft. These workers shared common interests. The American Federation of Labor was intended to provide leadership and coordination for the national efforts of the various trade unions.
Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson backed many of the goals of organized labor. Although Gompers initially opposed U.S. entry into World War I, eventually he worked with President Wilson to see that strikes did not handicap war production, and after the war he attended the Versailles Peace Conference. In the 1920’s, Gompers supported the creation of a Pan American Federation of Labor. He was in poor health with heart and kidney problems the last few years of his life, and while attending a meeting of this organization in Mexico City in December, 1924, he collapsed and died shortly afterward in San Antonio, Texas. Significance Gompers was instrumental in turning the American labor movement toward trade unionism, where it found its great success. Earlier efforts to form universal unions of all workers at all skill levels, such as the Knights of Labor, largely failed, as did the later International Workers of the World. In trade unions, workers with similar skills found more solidarity. Gompers was also influential in defining the structure and the tactics that trade unions would use. He developed a type of labor organization in 469
Goodman, Benny which the union leadership maintained strong control over the individual locals, enabling the national organization to act in a united fashion, increasing its power and influence. During the height of the power and influence of American labor unions, trade unions such as those that belonged to the AFL had the strongest impact. — Mark S. Joy Further Reading Buhle, Paul. Taking Care of Business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999. A critique of American labor from a socialist viewpoint; goes into depth on these three major leaders of the AFL and its successor, the AFL-CIO, but is largely critical in its assessment of their leadership. Gompers, Samuel. Seventy Years of Life and Labor. New
Jewish Americans York: E. P. Dutton, 1925. Gompers’s memoir, which has been republished many times in various editions. Valuable for details on his early life and firsthand accounts of events. Kaufman, Stuart. Samuel Gompers and the Origins of the American Federation of Labor, 1848-1896. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973. The standard, in-depth study of Gompers’s work in organizing the AFL; a scholarly work with full references and bibliography. Nicholson, Philip Yale. Labor’s Story in the United States. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004. An overview of the history of organized labor in the United States; helps in placing Gompers within the context of the overall labor movement. See also: Betty Friedan; Emma Goldman; Jerry Rubin.
Benny Goodman Musician An exacting bandleader and virtuoso clarinetist, Goodman was one of the most popular performers of the swing era, from 1935 to 1945. He was noted for integrating African Americans into musical combos, which was previously off limits. Born: May 30, 1909; Chicago, Illinois Died: June 13, 1986; New York, New York Also known as: King of Swing; The Professor; Patriarch of the Clarinet; Benjamin David Goodman (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; social issues Early Life Benny Goodman (GOOD-mehn) was born into a large family in Chicago, Illinois. His parents, David and Dora Goodman, were both first-generation Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who had met in Baltimore, Maryland, before moving to the Maxwell Street area of Chicago. Goodman’s father, originally trained as a tailor, had to accept work as a manual laborer in the stockyards. Goodman and his eleven siblings were raised to appreciate the value of education and were highly motivated to improve their economic situation. In 1919, the nearby Kehelah Jacob Synagogue offered some musical training and the loan of instruments, so Goodman and two of his brothers joined the program. He was given a clarinet and 470
developed a deep love for the instrument. Goodman went on to play in another boys’ band program at Hull House, and, recognizing his son’s talent, his father paid for Goodman’s private lessons with Franz Schoepp. Goodman soon started working as a professional musician, and by the age of fourteen, he was helping to support his family. Soon after this, however, his father was killed in a tragic accident. Goodman, who had listened carefully to the New Orleans jazz musicians who came to town, continued to build his reputation in the Chicago area. He added jazz improvisation to his musical skills and played in Chicago jazz bands, notably that of drummer Ben Pollack, who relocated the band to New York in 1928. Life’s Work After Goodman arrived in New York, he left Pollack’s group and, as a free agent, started playing on radio broadcasts, an important source of work for trained musicians during the Depression years. These engagements were commercial, leaving no room for Goodman to develop as an improvising jazz artist. In 1933, he met John Hammond, who had the influence and the financial resources to sponsor Goodman on recordings with great jazz artists, including drummer Gene Krupa, violinist Joe Venuti, vocalist-trombonist Jack Teagarden, and vocalist Billie Holiday. His confidence bolstered, Goodman formed his own big band in 1934 and began to play
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exciting jazz arrangements by Fletcher Henderson and others. Although live dances in ballrooms were logistically and financially difficult to sustain at that time, Goodman and his band performed on the Let’s Dance radio program, which was popular with many young people who could not afford to go out to ballrooms. This exposure proved valuable and contributed to the success of his 1935 national tour. Goodman’s band, with its precise renderings of Henderson’s jazz arrangements, the driving drums of Krupa, and Goodman’s wailing clarinet, were perfect for jitterbug dancing and became viewed as the embodiment of the swing era. During the same years, while his big band soared in popularity, Goodman continued playing with small combos and working on his classical clarinet technique. With the encouragement of Hammond, he developed good relationships with talented African American colleagues, including pianist Teddy Wilson and Henderson, and performed with them in 1935 in one of the first racially integrated public concerts. Vibraphonist Lionel Hampton joined in 1936. Goodman’s famous Carnegie Hall concert of 1938 was integrated as well. In 1939, Hammond introduced Goodman to guitarist Charlie Christian, who joined with Hampton, Wilson, and drummer Benny Goodman. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) Krupa to become a member of Goodman’s landmark sextet. In America, Goodman had formed a cultural his clarinet technique in 1949, including radical changes bridge. His own Jewish heritage was not a barrier to his in his embouchure and fingerings. He expanded his success as a star performer who was able to bring African repertoire to include pieces by Igor Stravinsky, Aaron American repertoire, musical styles, and musicians to Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Claude Debussy, and many white audiences. On the other side of the Atlantic, the others. He recorded the Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with Nazis viewed jazz with virulent hostility, since its flexthe Boston Symphony in 1956, and for the rest of his life, ible blending of collaborative improvisation, African he retained his activities in this sphere in tandem with his rhythms, Western harmonies, and multiethnic performwork in jazz. ers suggested a cultural future that was in direct opposiIn jazz, Goodman experimented with the bebop style tion to their pure-race plans. Jazz was often associated in the 1940’s, but he soon returned to his swing style. He with resistance in Europe during the war years, even went on tours, concertized, and appeared on television though the United States was still largely segregated. programs. In 1956, Steve Allen played Goodman in The Although the big bands declined during and after Benny Goodman Story, a film loosely based on his early World War II, Goodman continued to expand his musilife and career. Goodman continued playing until his cal horizons. Always fascinated with Western classical death of a heart attack in 1986. music, he had already recorded a clarinet quintet by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with the Budapest Quartet in Significance 1938, and had premiered Béla Bartók’s Contrasts in Rising from poverty to the heights of stardom, Good1939. With the encouragement of the English virtuoso man inspired generations of fans with his brilliant perclarinetist Reginald Kell, Goodman completely revised 471
Goodman, Benny formances. His professional inclusiveness set a pattern for continued integration in music, long before racial barriers fell in sports, public education, and the military. Although he sometimes intimidated his musicians with harsh glances and had a reputation as a tough employer, he also engaged in quiet acts of altruism behind the scenes. As one of the most popular big band leaders, he contributed to the ongoing development of the repertoire for large jazz ensembles in a standard configuration of wind instruments and rhythm section that persists to this day. His parallel achievements at the highest levels of both jazz and Western classical music demonstrated possibilities for meeting the challenge of bimusicality, the true mastery of more than one musical language. —John E. Myers
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Goodman’s Carnegie Hall Concert of 1938 After months of planning, advanced ticket sales, and rehearsals, the concert was held on January 16, 1938. Already sold out, the enterprise was a financial success, but as an artistic experiment to present jazz in a formal concert setting, its cultural goals were especially significant. The program opened with Benny Goodman’s big band playing a few familiar hits, but they were followed by a historical section, starting with a New Orleans group. Historical self-consciousness, a part of Western classical traditions for some time, was part of Goodman’s strategy for promoting a more serious view of jazz. As the evening progressed, Goodman was joined by members of Duke Ellington’s and Count Basie’s orchestras. The musicians engaged in lively exchanges with a high level of spontaneity, including a rare chordal solo by Basie’s guitarist Freddie Greene. Another highlight of the concert was an extended modal improvisation on “Sing, Sing, Sing,” with an unexpected classically inflected solo by pianist Jess Stacey. The concert was recorded, but the recordings were not published until the 1950’s. The concert presaged many more presentations of jazz in the following years in formal venues all over the world.
Further Reading Collier, James Lincoln. Benny Goodman and the Swing Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Puts Goodman’s success in historical context, with attention to the cultural environment of the 1930’s. Includes index, bibliography, and discography. Connor, D. Russell. Benny Goodman: Listen to His Legacy. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1988. Detailed and exhaustive documentation of recordings, films, concerts, and media broadcasts, with complete indexes of song titles, composers, performers, arrangers, and scores. Illustrated. Firestone, Ross. Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton, 1993. Includes coverage of Goodman’s career before and after the swing era. Illustrated. Magee, Jeffrey. The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz. New York: Oxford
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University Press, 2005. Includes analysis of scores and covers Henderson’s collaboration with Goodman. Tumpak, John R. When Swing Was the Thing: Personality Profiles of the Big Band Era. Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 2008. Based on interviews with musicians and family members, including extensive coverage of Goodman and his associates. Richly illustrated with more than one hundred photos. Wilson, Teddy. Teddy Wilson Talks Jazz: The Autobiography of Teddy Wilson. Foreword by Benny Goodman. New York: Continuum, 2001. Includes accounts of Wilson’s work with Goodman and John Hammond. See also: Herb Alpert; Irving Berlin; Sammy Cahn; Artie Shaw; Dinah Shore.
Jewish Americans
Goodson, Mark
Mark Goodson Producer and entertainer Goodson had an indelible impact on the television landscape through the quiz shows he produced with his business partner, Bill Todman. Together they created What’s My Line, The Price Is Right, Match Game, Password, and other popular game shows. Born: January 24, 1915; Sacramento, California Died: December 18, 1992; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Business; entertainment Early Life Mark Goodson (GOOD-suhn) was born on January 24, 1915, in California. His parents were Abraham Ellis and Fannie Goodson, a Jewish couple who emigrated from Russia early in the twentieth century. Mark Goodson described his upbringing during the Great Depression as a time of incredible hardship for his impoverished family. Anxiety about becoming poor again troubled Goodson for the rest of his life. As a boy Goodson appeared in local Sacramento theater productions, sometimes finding paying work as part of a stock company. His parents forbade him to pursue an acting career, however, and after his high school graduation in 1932, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, to study economics and political science. He continued acting on the side in student productions. After graduating cum laude in 1937, Goodson worked as a disc jockey at San Francisco station KJBS. His parents’ ambitions for him to attend law school were abandoned. In 1939, the Mutual Broadcasting Company hired him to work as a newscaster and program director at its San Francisco affiliate, KFRC. Life’s Work Goodson’s illustrious career in game shows began at KFRC in 1939, when he came up with a concept for a show in which participants tried to pop balloons at range and collect the prizes inside. Goodson called it Pop the Question. In 1941, Goodson moved on to a bigger market, New York, serving as an announcer on soap operas and game shows such as The Jack Dempsey Sports Quiz and The Answer Man. That same year he married Bluma Neveleff. He produced several dramas, soaps, and a 1944 program aimed at selling war bonds, The Treasury Salute. Goodson’s fateful job, however, involved working on a game show called Battle of the Boroughs, which introduced him to a writer, Bill Todman, who would col-
laborate with Goodson on many of his great successes. In 1946, they formed their own company, GoodsonTodman Productions. Their first collaboration was Winner Take All, in a quiz-show format that Goodson created and Todman tested and marketed; the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) bought the show in 1946, and it premiered in 1948. The Goodson-Todman partnership continued in this vein for decades, with Goodson focusing on the creative development of new formats and Todman handling the business side. Winner Take All was the first show to set two players against each other in direct competition for a prize and the first show to invite winning contestants to return for another show until they lost. Goodson and Todman worked together on four other radio shows: Hit the Jackpot, Spin to Win, Rate Your Mate, and Time’s a Wastin’. Radio quiz shows faced a difficult transition into television, where contestants were thought to look static and uninteresting. Goodson and Todman changed all that in 1949 when they came up with the concept for their famous show What’s My Line? The format involved a celebrity panel attempting to guess the occupation of a guest, who often had an unusual job; prize money was small (fifty dollars), but panelists and guests were paid lump sums for appearing, although these amounts were not publicized. The low-payout format was common among the game shows Goodson produced throughout his career, and his success as a packager of shows came from their lucrative combination of small budgets and massive popularity. The show premiered on CBS on February 1, 1950, under the title Occupation Unknown but was soon renamed What’s My Line? What’s My Line? solved the difficulties of television presentation through its use of celebrities and its elegant style. Participants appeared in formalwear (although the clothes became slightly less formal over the course of the show’s run) and exchanged witty remarks in the form of questions about the guest’s occupation. The show popularized one of the panelists’ frequent questions, “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” The show was an incredible success, even spawning a radio version in 1953. The television format ran from 1950 to September 3, 1967, becoming the longest-running prime-time game show in television history. Goodson created many other game shows while What’s My Line? ran on CBS, and by 1956 Goodson-Todman 473
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Defining the Game Show Format Thanks to Mark Goodson’s programs, the game show has been recognized as an extremely profitable television format. Goodson resisted industry trends toward larger cash prizes, sticking with low-budget, high-profit shows that relied on guesswork and humor to entertain the audience. He avoided the quiz-show scandals of the 1950’s, when many of the big-money games were revealed to have fed answers to certain contestants. Goodson is credited with introducing buzzers and other sound effects to the game show medium, and he was the first to pit contestants against one other and ask winners to return for another game. His collaboration with Bill Todman and the producers they employed showed Goodson’s perfectionism; he wanted as many people as possible to test and challenge game-show concepts to fine-tune them. From humble beginnings, Goodson rose to incredible wealth and success; his quiz shows’ popularity can be traced to his understanding of audience psychology, his extensive knowledge of games and quizzes, and his work ethic.
Productions had become the largest producer of game shows in the United States. The company created the game shows It’s News to Me, The Name’s the Same, Two for the Money, Judge for Yourself, and I’ve Got a Secret and the dramas The Rebel, Jefferson Drum, Branded, and The Web. The company produced several twists on the What’s My Line? format, including The Name’s the Same (in which panelists tried to guess the strange names of ordinary people) and the well-known To Tell the Truth (1956), which featured a panel of celebrities questioning three contestants who claimed to be the same person. To Tell the Truth’s host would ask the show’s famous catchphrase “Will the real [name] please stand up?” In 1956, Goodson produced his enduring show The Price Is Right for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). It was a success both with advertisers and with audiences, testing contestants’consumer acumen by asking them to guess the cost of featured items. One of Goodson’s writers, Bob Stewart, came up with the concept after watching an auctioneer at work through his office window. The format of The Price Is Right was altered in 1972, and it continued to run decades later. Later hits for Goodson-Todman productions included Password (1961), The Match Game (1962), and Family Feud (1976). Goodson apparently disliked Todman’s stake in the business, claiming Goodson’s shows no longer needed Todman to market them. Nevertheless, the
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partnership did not end until Todman’s death in 1979. Afterward the company was renamed Mark Goodson Productions. Goodson’s writers and producers were responsible for the original concepts for most of his shows, from What’s My Line? onward; however, Goodson refined their concepts into the forms that became popular on television. He described a rigorous internal testing process in which writers and producers collaborated to iron out potential problems in each new format. On December 18, 1992, Goodson died of pancreatic cancer while at his home in New York. He was seventy-seven years old. The rights to the Goodson-Todman shows were later sold to FremantleMedia, a large European television producer.
Significance Goodson’s influential work in television was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement in Daytime Television Emmy in 1989. He was appointed to the American Film Institute’s board of directors, where he served from 1975 to 1992, and he was named a trustee at the Museum of Broadcast Communications. While critics have accused Goodson’s quiz shows of having a negative effect on the television landscape, there is no doubt that the public enjoyed them. According to Goodson’s obituary in The New York Times, there had not been a week of television without a Goodson show on the air since 1950. —C. Breault Further Reading Carter, Bill. “Mark Goodson, Game-Show Inventor, Dies at Seventy-Seven.” The New York Times, December 19, 1992. This concise obituary sums up Goodson’s life and career with fairness and brevity. Goodson, Mark. “If I Stood Up Earlier . . . ” The New York Times, January 13, 1991. Fascinating article by Goodson on his encounter with blacklisting. Peers, Martin. “All American Buys Out Goodson.” Daily Variety, April 10 1996. A short news piece article detailing the sale of the rights to Goodson shows. See also: Sid Caesar; Larry Gelbart; Monty Hall; Alan King; Carl Reiner; Aaron Sorkin.
Jewish Americans
Gordis, Robert
Robert Gordis Rabbi, religious leader, and scholar Gordis chaired the Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative Judaism, which in 1988 released Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism, a document that helped define the Conservative Jewish movement. Born: February 6, 1908; Brooklyn, New York Died: January 3, 1992; New York, New York Area of achievement: Religion and theology Early Life Robert Gordis (GOR-dihs) was born on February 6, 1908, in Brooklyn, New York. He began his journey to becoming an esteemed rabbi-scholar when he entered the Jewish Theological Seminary, a Conservative Jewish seminary in New York City. The institution, at which Gordis was ordained in 1932, was quickly becoming one of the most important centers of Conservative Judaism in not only the United States but also the world. Gordis’s early years as a rabbi involved intensive study of a great number of religious texts. He began his career as a teacher soon after graduating from the seminary. In 1937, he became a teacher at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Around the same time, he served as a rabbi at the Temple Beth El at Rockaway Park, Queens. Gordis’s participation at Temple Beth El would last more than three decades, during which time he would establish a Conservative Judaism school. The rabbi’s early interests were also heavily focused on the study of the Bible and the development of his own theories on religion. Gordis published a book in 1945 on his interpretations of Conservative Judaism, called The Wisdom of Ecclesiastes. The book was one of the first of its kind, regarding a rabbi’s personal commentary on Conservative values, and led Gordis to make a significant impact in the Conservative Jewish community. His study of Ecclesiastes, a book of the Hebrew Bible, continued into the 1950’s and culminated in a book called Koheleth— The Man and His World, published in 1951. Life’s Work Gordis’s influence became prominent during the 1950’s and 1960’s. After the success attained from publishing his first works, Gordis cofounded a quarterly journal called Judaism in 1952. He served as chairman and editor for the publication. In 1954, Gordis published A Song of Songs: A Study, Modern Translation, and Commentary,
which included a large amount of Gordis’s thoughts on an important scriptural passage read during the Jewish Passover. Gordis’s study of the Wisdom books of the Jewish Bible continued well into his career. By 1974, Gordis had released critical analyses of the books of Esther and Lamentations. The in-depth nature with which he conducted his research on these books proved that his interest in Jewish scripture was not superficial; Gordis spent decades perfecting his work and releasing comprehensive commentaries on these books. Gordis’s work, however, was not limited to scriptural commentary. Many of his later books illuminated Gordis as the rabbi-scholar he became. Gordis wrote several volumes about modern-day Judaism and the difficulties secularism created for those practicing Judaism. Despite the incredible amount of literature Gordis published, it was not his own books for which he would become most recognized. That honor belonged to Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism. The document, released in 1988, was the first attempt in about a century to define specifically what it meant to be a Conservative Jew. Much of this denomination’s definition previously came from activists who claimed that it was neither the far-right Orthodox Judaism nor the far-left Reform Judaism, a definition that primarily described what Conservative Judaism was not. Gordis’s involvement in Emet Ve-Emunah was paramount. As the chairman of the Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative Judaism, Gordis was in charge of putting the document together. Gordis died on January 3, 1992, in his Manhattan apartment after a long illness. His legacy continues in his son, David M. Gordis, and his grandson, Daniel H. Gordis. Significance Gordis’s significance as an important part of the Conservative Jewish movement was made concrete by his involvement with Emet Ve-Emunah. Since its creation in 1985, the document has been studied by numerous Conservative Judaism congregations. According to the document, the Conservative movement was distinct because of its ability to combine many of the old Jewish traditions with modern-day interpretations of events, such as the increased presence of women as equal members of society and the aftermath of the Holocaust. 475
Gottlieb, Adolph His work was even enough to inspire son David and grandson Daniel to pursue active roles in the Conservative Jewish movement. The two have written extensive memoirs about Gordis and his contributions to Jewish religion and society. — Jill E. Disis Further Reading Gordis, Daniel H. “Sacred Texts in Sacred Context: Images of My Grandfather.” Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought 40, no. 4 (October, 1991). A piece by Gordis’s grandson about Gordis’s interpretations of books from the Jewish Bible and Daniel’s thoughts of his grandfather’s interpretations. Gordis, David M. “Interreligious Dialogue: Lessons from My Father’s House and Beyond.” Judaism: A Quar-
Jewish Americans terly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought 40, no. 4 (October, 1991). Gordis’s son, David, describes his father’s teachings and how influential Gordis was in his life. Much of this work describes Gordis as a father and the kind of experiences his son had growing up. Gordis, Robert. Understanding Conservative Judaism (Emet Ve-Emunah: Studies in Conservative Jewish Thought). Jersey City, N.J.: Ktav, 1979. An older edition of some of Gordis’s thoughts on Conservative Judaism, which would eventually lead to the creation of the 1988 historical document explaining this denomination. See also: Henry Berkowitz; Louis Finkelstein; Joseph B. Soloveitchik; Isaac Mayer Wise.
Adolph Gottlieb Artist Gottlieb, an artist of the New York School of abstract expressionism, did groundbreaking work in the fields of pictograph, imaginary landscape, and burst paintings. Born: March 14, 1903; New York, New York Died: March 4, 1974; New York, New York Area of achievement: Art Early Life Adolph Gottlieb (AY-dolf GOT-leeb) was born to Emil and Elsie Gottlieb in New York City on March 14, 1903. The family later had two daughters, Eda and Rhoda. Gottlieb’s father hoped his son would join him in his stationery business, but early in life Gottlieb developed a fascination with painting. He left high school at sixteen, worked for his father during the day, and spent his evenings studying at the Art Students League, where he took classes with John Sloan and attended lectures by Robert Henri. At seventeen, Gottlieb earned passage to Europe by working on a steamer. He spent six months in Paris, where he took sketch classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and visited the Louvre to study the artwork of the masters. He then spent a year visiting the major museums of Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Vienna, and Prague. He was introduced to European avant-garde art movements, including fauvism and cubism. When he returned to New York in 1921, he and his friend Barnett 476
Newman spent time at New York’s galleries and museums. At the encouragement of his family, Gottlieb finished high school, after which he studied at Parsons School of Design, the Art Students League, Cooper Union, and the Education Alliance Art School. During the 1920’s, he began exhibiting paintings at the Opportunity Gallery, while supporting himself by sign painting and by teaching art at settlement houses and summer camps. Although he was well respected by other artists, teaching became his main means of support during the 1930’s. Life’s Work Gottlieb married Esther Dick on June 12, 1932. That same year he was awarded a solo exhibit at New York’s Dudensing Galleries. In 1935, he became a founding member of The Ten, a group of artists involved in expressionist and abstract painting. Although he was an easel painter for the Works Projects Administration (WPA), his work turned away from social themes with his growing interest in primitive art forms He resigned from the WPA in 1937 when his wife was advised to move to a dry climate for her health. They spent eight months in the desert near Tucson, Arizona. Desert moods and Western expanses influenced his later surrealist imagery. His commissioned post office mural in Yerrington, Nevada, was dedicated in 1941, the year he began to paint pictographs, for which he developed grid compartments em-
Jewish Americans ploying primitive symbols, man-made objects, and nature images. In 1951, he began his imaginary landscape series, in which shapes acquired meaning as pure form. In 1956, he began his burst series, in which the picture plane was divided into two horizontal zones—one having a bright geometric form and the other having an irregular set of brush strokes—revealing what Gottlieb considered life’s contradictions, order and chaos. Although he will always be known as a leading abstract expressionist, Gottlieb’s use of color in his burst series granted him recognition as one of the first color field painters and a forerunner of lyrical abstraction. Gottlieb was the first American to win the Gran Premio at the Bienal de São Paolo in 1963. His works were exhibited extensively and acquired by museums in the United States and overseas. A major retrospective of his work organized jointly by the Whitney and Guggenheim Museums opened at both museums on February 14, 1968. When a fire destroyed his studio, he established a new studio and returned to printmaking, painting, and sculpture. Gottlieb suffered a stroke in 1971, but he continued to paint while in a wheelchair. He worked on a series of monotypes until two weeks before his death on March 4, 1974. Significance Gottlieb was a pioneer in the abstract expressionist movement, also known as the New York School. His art drew its inspiration from primitive art forms, Greek mythology, and surrealism. He sought to express images of universal meaning that would transcend concepts of space, time, and language, and they eventually evolved into large-scale abstractions. He realized that his visualization of these abstract forms required an abstract paint-
Gould, Elliott ing and sculptural environment in which to exist. As a central figure of abstract expressionism, he worked closely with other artists seeking new means of visual expression. —Jan Statman Further Reading Alloway, Lawrence. The Pictographs of Adolph Gottlieb. New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, 1964. Contains essays and information concerning Gottlieb’s pictograph paintings. Doty, Robert, and Diane Waldman Doty. The Art of Adolph Gottlieb. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1968. This is a 121-page in-depth catalog of Gottlieb’s art. It explains that he adopted the term pictograph to describe a series of his paintings because he scorned the then-accepted ideas of what art and painting should be. Gottlieb, Adolph. Adolph Gottlieb: Paintings, 1921-1956. Omaha, Nebr.: Joslyn Art Museum, 1980. The artist describes his work in his own words. Gottlieb, Adolph, and William Robinson. Adolph Gottlieb: Vertical Moves. New York: Pace Wildenstein, 2002. Essays and quotations in which the artist explains his work. Herskovic, Marika. “Adolph Gottlieb.” In American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950’s. New York: New York School Press, 2003. Arranged alphabetically, this is an illustrated survey of abstract expressionism, including artists’ statements, artwork, and artists’ biographies. See also: Jim Dine; Alex Katz; Lee Krasner; Sol LeWitt; Louise Nevelson; Barnett Newman; Mark Rothko.
Elliott Gould Actor Although rarely a leading man, Gould helped bring the Jewish experience to the American screen. His most celebrated performances were in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970) and The Long GoodBye (1973). Born: August 29, 1938; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Elliott Goldstein (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater
Early Life Elliott Gould (EH-lee-uht gewld) was born Elliott Goldstein in the ethnic melting pot of Brooklyn to second-generation Jewish parents. His grandparents were originally from Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. The family was blue-collar. His father, Bernard, worked in a factory overseeing garment production, and his mother, Lucille, was described by Gould as an Anna Magnani type (Magnani was an Italian actor with a fiery personality). 477
Gould, Elliott The family was poor, living in a two-and-a-half-room apartment, and Gould claimed his parents were emotionally distant from each other. Gould was troubled during his childhood, and his mental health suffered throughout his life. Nevertheless, he had a Jewish education and an extended family that fostered his heritage by holding Passover seders and by giving him a Bar Mitzvah ceremony. Gould first began acting at the insistence of his mother. In 1944, his father was away in the Army, and Gould’s mother took him to audition for local television shows. It was there that his first director told him to call himself “Gould” instead of “Goldstein.” When he was twelve, Gould began tap-dancing professionally. Early stage performances would lead to his first Broadway role, as a chorus dancer in Irma La Douce (1960). In I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1962), Gould met and starred alongside Barbra Streisand, who, like Gould, was deeply devoted to Judaism. The two were married in 1963 and had
Elliott Gould. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Jewish Americans a son, Jason. However, the marriage was not happy. Gould continued to struggle with mental problems, and his career did not advance as rapidly as Streisand’s. Streisand won two Grammy Awards for a 1963 album, while Gould was largely unknown and sometimes referred to as “Mr. Streisand.” They divorced in 1971. Gould continued his work in theater, acting in Once upon a Mattress (1959), and also went into films. Gould’s first big hit would not come until 1969, when he starred alongside Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, and Dyan Cannon as Ted Henderson in Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, directed by Paul Mazursky. The film, a satirical investigation into the sexual openness of the hippie movement, was popular among America’s youth as much for its comedy as for its relevance. Life’s Work The role that cemented Gould’s place in cinema was that of Trapper John McIntyre in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970). Originally, Altman was not going to be the director, and Gould was not going to play Trapper. However, when he met with Altman, Gould said the role of Duke, a southerner, was wrong for him, and he would prefer to play Trapper. During filming, Gould and his costar, Donald Sutherland, did not get along with Altman. Altman’s tendency was to leave the stars to direct themselves while concentrating his own efforts on the crew and extras. Gould and Sutherland resented this and attempted to have Altman fired. Altman eventually reconciled with Gould, and Gould regretted his treatment of Altman. M*A*S*H was a huge hit when it came out in 1970, winning the Academy Award for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium and a Golden Globe for best musical/comedy. The film allegorized the Vietnam War through the Korean War, and Gould became a countercultural hero for the rebelliousness of his character. Gould next appeared in Getting Straight (1970). In this film, directed by Richard Rush, Gould starred as Harry Bailey, a Vietnam veteran who becomes involved with student protests. Getting Straight premiered within days of the shootings of war protesters at Kent State University, and Gould was hailed by Time magazine as an icon of his generation. Gould’s leading-man status would be shortlived. He next starred in Move (1970), directed by Stuart Rosenberg. Gould’s role as Hiram Jaffe, a writer who sinks into a world of fantasy, was a re-
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flection of Gould’s own mental condition. In I Collaboration with Robert Altman Love My Wife (1970), director Mel Stuart used Gould to investigate America’s attitudes toward Among Elliott Gould’s most celebrated leading roles are the sex, but the film is not as well remembered as ones he did under the direction of Robert Altman. Known for his earlier projects. Still, Gould stuck with characimprovisational style and independence, Altman worked with Gould to create iconic characters during the Vietnam War era. Toter-driven films about the changing culture. He gether, Gould and Altman enjoyed a first success with M*A*S*H bought production rights to Jules Feiffer’s Little (1970), which was not only a clear indictment of war in a time Murders (1971) and starred in the filmed adapwhen that was unusual in Hollywood but also an introduction to the tation, directed by Alan Arkin. Gould was planwithdrawn, drifting-hero type for which Gould would become ning additional projects with studio producer known. Gould worked again for Altman in 1973 and 1974, creating Jack Brodsky when Gould was picked to star in heroes who were urban and Jewish. Capitalizing on Gould’s ap1971’s The Touch, directed by the Swedish dipearance and his mannerisms, Altman used Gould to re-create the rector Ingmar Bergman, famous for his explostandard American image of what a Jewish man is like. Altman alration of deep emotions. Gould’s role was Dalowed the notoriously troubled Gould to do his own rambling vid Kovac, a concentration camp survivor who onscreen, which helped to redefine how mentally ill people are wrecks a couple’s marriage. The experience of treated in film, making sympathetic and heroic what could be frightening and unpleasant. Altman and Gould grew to respect making the film triggered in Gould a serious each other gradually, and audiences grew to appreciate their works mental breakdown. He entered an unhealthy regradually. lationship with Jennifer Bogart, had a child by her, quit work, and made no more films until 1973. It would take Gould’s former enemy Altman era. Those characterizations are relevant to anyone seekto save his career. United Artists executive David Picker, ing an understanding of the cultural movements of the after having Gould’s mental condition evaluated, cast 1960’s and the 1970’s. Gould’s work, however, is imporhim to play Philip Marlowe in The Long Good-bye tant to American culture in a different way. Voicing the (1973), a modern take on film noir detective stories. rabbi in Hey, Arnold! or God in the computer-animated When the original director, Peter Bogdanovich, heard The Ten Commandments (2007) gives Gould a platform with whom he was to work, he quit, and Altman was to bring Jewish characters and culture to the world stage. hired. The casting of many non-actors in the film’s other Gould also remains in reverence of Chabad, a Hasidic roles was controversial, and the film opened to poor removement, and the Jewish traditions of his childhood. views. The film’s New York opening was delayed for six —Jacob Davis months while the film was rebranded. The film restored Gould’s career, though it would never recover fully. Further Reading Gould branched out in the light of his reduced presHoberman, J. “The Goulden Age.” The Village Voice, tige, of changing tastes in cinema, and of the end of the April 10, 2007. This profile of Gould analyzes him counterculture. He has worked on television shows, such within the context of a wider Jewish movement in as Friends and Kim Possible. Little of his work since Hollywood. 1973, however, has been as artistically prominent. He Lim, Dennis. “An Angsty Leading Man Who Caught the had another child with Bogart, but they divorced, remarSpirit of His Times.” The New York Times, August 1, ried, and separated. 2008. A profile of Gould that explains his role in the counterculture. Significance Zuckoff, Mitchell. Robert Altman, the Oral Biography. In spite of the reduction in roles, Gould has never New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. A biography of wanted for work since The Long Good-bye. Part of Robert Altman made up of oral interviews, this book the reason for the fading of his star may be how disincludes commentary by and about Gould in Altman’s tinctly period his great works were. In his roles, Gould films. examined 1970’s culture with directors who used innovative techniques. The sexuality, neuroticisms, and See also: Alan Arkin; Richard Dreyfuss; Charles commentaries inherent in such characters as Trapper in Grodin; Judd Hirsch; Barbra Streisand. M*A*S*H and Harry in Getting Straight belong to that 479
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Stephen Jay Gould Scientist, educator, and writer In science, Gould is best known for his evolutionary theory, often called “punctuated equilibrium” and for his discoveries in paleontology, but he was also acclaimed for his popular works on subjects as diverse as evolution and baseball. Born: September 10, 1941; New York, New York Died: May 20, 2002; New York, New York Area of achievement: Science Early Life Stephen Jay Gould (gewld) was descended from Eastern European Jews who came to the United States early in the twentieth century. He was born and raised in Bayside, a predominantly Jewish community in the borough of Queens, where he often heard Yiddish being spoken by his relatives. His father, Leonard, a court stenographer and a Marxist, was a secularized Jew, proud of his heritage, as was his son. His mother, Eleanor Rosenberg, was a housewife and an amateur artist. A formative influence in Gould’s youth occurred when his father, an amateur naturalist, took him to the American
Stephen Jay Gould. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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Museum of Natural History, where the dinosaur exhibits, especially that of the Tyrannosaurus rex, indelibly impressed him. He decided immediately to become a paleontologist when he grew up. His schoolteachers encouraged his interests in geology and biology, and in Jamaica High School he first encountered the ideas of Charles Darwin, who became his lifelong hero. Desiring an education in the liberal arts as well as in science, he attended Antioch College in Ohio, where he also participated in the Civil Rights movement and graduated in 1963 with a double major in geology and philosophy. He then went to Columbia University and specialized in evolutionary biology and paleontology. During this time he married Deborah Lee, whom he had met at Antioch College and with whom he would have two sons. He left Columbia in 1966 to teach at Antioch, and in 1967 he moved to Harvard University where he became an assistant professor and where he was able to complete his doctoral work for Columbia University on the variations and evolution of a Bermudian land snail. As a successful teacher and researcher at Harvard (where he remained for the rest of his career), he was quickly promoted to associate professor in 1971 and, two years later, to professor of geology and curator of invertebrate paleontology at the school’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. Life’s Work Throughout his career Gould practiced science as both a specialist and a generalist. For example, his early work centered on land snails in Bermuda and other West Indian islands. His underlying motivation was to explain how small genetic differences could result in such variations in sizes, colors, and shell shapes. More influential than this work on fossil and contemporary snails was a general theory of evolution that he developed with Niles Eldredge, who originated the idea of “punctuated equilibrium.” In this theory, which countered the espousal of the Darwinians of a steady, gradual evolutionary change, Gould and Eldredge proposed that evolution took place largely in relatively rapid periods during which new species were efficiently brought into existence. Fascinated by the biogenetic law, whose
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motto was “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”— The Structure of Evolutionary Theory that an individual’s embryological development summarizes the various stages of its evolution, Working against the pressure of the ultimate deadline, his own Gould wrote Ontogeny and Phylogeny (1977), death, Stephen Jay Gould managed to complete The Structure of published by Harvard University Press, which Evolutionary Theory, a massive (1,433-page) book, a short time reviewers praised as a major contribution to before cancer spread to his brain and ended his life. Called “a landevolutionary developmental biology. For this mark publication, both for its historical sweep and for its scientific vision,” this book derives its title from Thomas S. Kuhn’s seminal and other accomplishments Harvard rewarded work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Gould starts him with its Alexander Agassiz Professorship with a detailed history of evolutionary biology, then proceeds to orof Zoology in 1982, followed, a year later, by a ganize this vast amount of material with a novel structure, moving fellowship from the American Association for from the “history of Darwinian logic and debate” to Gould and the Advancement of Science to honor his conNiles Eldredge’s theory of punctuated equilibrium. Less happily, tributions to the “public understanding of sciaccording to some critics, Gould also uses this book to settle scores ence.” with some old foes, including Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, In 1974, Gould began writing a column, “This and Edward O. Wilson. These sections tend to be highly polemical. View of Life,” for the magazine Natural History; Also included intermittently throughout this magnum opus are this continued, with more than three hundred biographical asides, more in the spirit of his Natural History essays monthly columns to January, 2001. Periodithan an impersonal scientific text. Despite demurrals from some readers, most saw this book as a fitting end to a scientific life well cally he collected these essays into such books lived. as Ever Since Darwin (1977), The Panda’s Thumb (1980), The Mismeasure of Man (1981), The Flamingo’s Smile (1985), Bully for Brontosaurus (1991), and Dinosaur in a Haystack political intentions, Gould and other liberals viewed hu(1995). Several of these won awards; for example, The man sociobiology as redolent of racist and sexist social Panda’s Thumb won the American Book Award for sciDarwinism. In various articles, Gould also attacked the ence, and The Mismeasure of Man merited the National views of British biologist Richard Dawkins and the Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction, and it American philosopher Daniel Dennett, whom he characwas also widely adopted at many American colleges and terized as “Darwinian fundamentalists” or “ultra-Daruniversities by teachers who wanted to explore science winists,” since they contended that genes (for Dawkins) and racism. Gould was also willing, on occasion, to use and “algorithmic processes” (for Dennett) control everyhis nonscientific interests in baseball, choral singing, and thing in biological and human evolution. They were also rare books as subjects for his essays. critical of punctuated equilibrium, derisively characterHis books for the general reader were not restricted to izing it as “evolution by jerks.” Gould responded in kind his Natural History columns. For example, Wonderful by calling their gradualist theory “evolution by creeps.” Life: The Burgess Shales and the Nature of History During the final two decades of his life, Gould experi(1989) dealt with an extremely old geological formation enced not only various controversies but also significant in British Columbia that contained fossil evidence for a personal challenges, including a battle with cancer. In dramatic efflorescence of many unusual multicelled crea1982, his doctor told him he was suffering from mesothetures (the so-called “Cambrian explosion”). Gould’s exlioma, a rare form of cancer that affects the outer coverplanation of this proliferation as occurring because of a ings of the body’s organs, but, through surgery, radiation, series of geological and biological accidents “within a chemotherapy, and positive thinking and feeling, Gould few stereotyped designs” was controversial, for some recovered, proving for him that the “median” (an eightsaw the strangeness of these Cambrian creatures as an armonth average survival time) was not the “message” (he tifact of the human imagination. lived for twenty more years). After a divorce from his Gould’s work was also the subject of controversy in first wife in 1995, he married Rhonda Roland Shearer, a various scientific debates. For example, his Harvard colManhattan sculptor, and they moved to a loft in SoHo. league, Edward O. Wilson, published, in 1975, SocioGould then spent half his time at Harvard and half in New biology: The New Synthesis in which he argued that aniYork City, while working assiduously with whatever mal social behavior, including that of humans, could be time was left to him on his culminating work, The Strucexplained genetically. Although Wilson disavowed any 481
Gratz, Rebecca ture of Evolutionary Theory, which he was able to see published in 2002, a short time before he died of cancer in the library of his New York home. Significance Characterized as “America’s best-known natural scientist,” Gould believed that scientific discoveries could and should be communicated to the public and that this could be done without “dumbing down” their contents. For both his scientific and his “universalizing” publications, he was honored with various degrees and awards, including the Schuchert Award (1975) from the Paleontological Society and the Linnean Society of London’s Darwin-Wallace Medal, which was given posthumously in 2008. In the spirit of many other secularized Jews, with whom he closely identified, Gould, throughout his life, combated racism, sexism, fascism, and “predatory capitalism” through his writings, speeches, and political activism. He was also an opponent of “scientific” creationism, participating in efforts to have its teaching banned from American public schools. — Robert J. Paradowski Further Reading Prindle, David F. Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2009. Prindle, a professor of government at the University
Jewish Americans of Texas, analyzes Gould’s political views instead of his science, which also has “political ramifications.” Glossary, extensive bibliography, and index. Ruse, Michael. Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Gould made use of Ruse’s analysis of Darwin and group selection in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, and Ruse devotes a chapter to Gould in his book. References, glossary, and index. Shanahan, Timothy. The Evolution of Darwinism: Selection, Adaptation, and Progress in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Shanahan, a philosopher, devotes large sections of his book to an analysis and evaluation of controversies between Gould and scientists such as Richard Dawkins and philosophers such as Daniel Dennett. Notes, references, and index. Sterelny, Kim. Dawkins v. Gould: Survival of the Fittest. 2d ed. Cambridge, England: Totem Books, 2007. Sterelny, a philosopher, analyzes which view of evolution, Gould’s punctuated equilibrium or Dawkins’s natural selection acting on genes, will prevail. Suggested readings, glossary, and an appendix on the geological time scale. See also: H. Robert Horvitz; Irwin Rose; Harold E. Varmus.
Rebecca Gratz Philanthropist Gratz aided Philadelphia’s Jewish community by establishing and leading innovative organizations to provide educational and social services, improving people’s well-being and reinforcing their comprehension of Jewish religious practices. Born: March 4, 1781; Lancaster, Pennsylvania Died: August 27, 1869; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Areas of achievement: Philanthropy; social issues; education Early Life Rebecca Gratz (grats) was born on March 4, 1781, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to Michael, a Silesian immigrant from Langendorf, and Miriam Simon. Gratz’s father and his brother accrued income from trade and investments, becoming significant members of Philadelphia’s 482
eighteenth century Jewish community. Gratz’s maternal grandfather acquired wealth selling supplies to colonists and the British army. Gratz’s family, devout Sephardic Jews, attended services at Congregation Mikveh Israel and participated in that synagogue’s activities. They rarely encountered anti-Semitism, possibly because of their affluence and their social status. Gratz studied at a local academy for girls. She supplemented her education by consulting books in her family’s library. Because Gratz could not read Hebrew, she secured English translations of theological books examining Judaism, often asking authors, including Isaac Leeser, whose sermons impressed Gratz, for their manuscripts. Because of their family’s prominence, Gratz and her siblings participated in elite social events. Several contemporary artists painted portraits of Gratz. She chose not to marry. Her younger brother, Joseph, accompanied Gratz
Jewish Americans on trips to the New Jersey coast and to popular New England sites. She befriended Washington Irving and other notable literary figures, writing letters to authors, including Maria Edgeworth, whose novel Harrington (1817) she criticized because the plot depicted a Jewish woman marrying a Christian. Many contemporaries believed Gratz inspired Sir Walter Scott’s fictional Rebecca, a Jew who rejected matrimony with a Christian in Ivanhoe (1819). Life’s Work Gratz often accepted nurturing roles caring for relatives. In 1801, she assisted Jewish and Christian women in Philadelphia in creating the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances and served as its secretary. At that time, approximately two hundred Jews resided in Philadelphia, which had a population of forty-one thousand people. By 1815, Gratz helped establish the Philadelphia Orphan Asylum. For forty years, she represented that institution as its secretary and advised women developing orphanages elsewhere in the United States. While Gratz interacted with Christian women performing charity work, their attempts to convert impoverished people upset her. Gratz voiced her interpretations of biblical scriptures, defending Judaism to Christians she knew and demanding they honor her beliefs and constitutional rights protecting religious freedom. She decided to counter evangelical activity by creating a charity specifically for Jews. In 1819, Gratz and friends in her synagogue established the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society (FHBS) for Jewish women and children. At her home, Gratz started a school that her nieces and nephews attended because local synagogues did not provide sufficient religious instruction for Jewish youth. Gratz contemplated how Christian groups, specifically the Protestant American Sunday School Union, offered children training regarding religion and discussed ideas with ministers she knew. By 1838, Gratz incorporated educational techniques and structures she considered useful to create the Hebrew Sunday School (HSS) to instruct Jewish girls and boys. She especially liked Jewish educator Grace Aguilar’s concepts. Gratz realized the importance of Jews comprehending their religion and retaining its integrity while assimilating into American communities. As HSS superintendent, Gratz hired HSS alumni who had prepared to teach that school’s pupils. The HSS enabled Jewish women unprecedented opportunity to shape religious education for Jewish students,
Gratz, Rebecca molding curricula to the needs of Jews in Philadelphia and other American locations where HSS standards were adopted. Gratz became aware of problems associated with immigration, specifically issues affecting Jewish children. She established the Jewish Foster Home (JFH) in 1855. Gratz assisted several women to manage the JFH. Her affiliation as JFH’s vice president aided public acceptance of that home, which eventually became part of the Association for Jewish Children in Philadelphia. By 1860, Philadelphia’s Jewish population reached 8,000, among the city’s 670,000 residents, many of whom were impacted by Gratz’s work. After Gratz’s death in Philadelphia on August 27, 1869, she was buried in Mikveh Israel’s cemetery. Significance Gratz developed and implemented unique social programs, designed for American situations, which provided Jews representing diverse backgrounds and theological identifications with centralized charities and public services to help them and their families achieve better lives. Her pioneering ventures empowered both women and Jews. Gratz’s work altered how Jewish communities in the United States perceived females and the decisions they made. Her ideas changed how Jewish children were educated. The HSS’s existence through the late twentieth century emphasized the enduring value of Gratz’s contributions. Her other social works also continued to assist Jews or to provide a foundation for similar charities decades after she died. — Elizabeth D. Schafer Further Reading Ashton, Dianne. Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997. Comprehensive biography examines Gratz’s activities in context of the changes occurring in Judaism in nineteenth century America. Chapters focus on specific projects. Illustrations, bibliography, genealogical charts. Chametzky, Jules, et al., eds. Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Excerpts from Gratz’s correspondence include seven letters accompanied by scholarly annotations and a biographical profile discussing how she perceived her identity as a Jew in America. Diner, Hasia R., and Beryl Lieff Benderly. Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Basic 483
Green, Adolph Books, 2002. Describes Gratz’s responses to challenges presented by nineteenth century gender and religious issues and contemporary Jewish and Christian educational procedures that influenced how she taught American children Judaism. Lewin, Judith. “Legends of Rebecca: Ivanhoe, Dynamic Identification, and the Portraits of Rebecca Gratz.” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and
Jewish Americans Gender Issues 10 (Fall, 2005): 178-212. Literary criticism and historical analysis exploring Gratz’s interactions with her peers. Interprets how artistic images of Gratz represent aspects of nineteenth century Jewish culture. See also: Mary Antin; Emma Goldman; Maud Nathan; Henrietta Szold.
Adolph Green Playwright and actor Green’s collaboration with Betty Comden, which began in 1938 and continued until his death in 2002, was among the most productive and successful in the history of American musical theater.
The Six Company. Shortly afterward, Betty Comden joined this group, which created short plays and songs in a downtown loft. The group spent much of the summer of 1938 performing at summer camps.
Born: December 2, 1914; Bronx, New York Died: October 23, 2002; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Theater; entertainment
Life’s Work In 1938, Green joined Comden, Judy Tuvim, Alvin Hammer, and John Frank in establishing the Revuers, a group that presented short dramatic pieces along with songs and lyrics contributed mostly by Comden and Green. This company performed so successfully at the Village Vanguard that, in 1939, it was brought to New York City’s Rainbow Room for an extended run. The following year, the Revuers performed in Radio City Music Hall. In 1940, Adolph married Elizabeth Reitel, a marriage that ended in divorce. In 1947, he married Allyn McLerie, from whom he was divorced in 1951. The last of his three marriages was to actor Phyllis Newman, who bore him two children, Adam in 1961 and Amanda in 1964. During the 1940’s and 1950’s, Comden and Green divided their time between New York and Hollywood, where they continued to produce phenomenal quantities of work. Through all of the years of their professional relationship, they worked together almost daily, usually for five or six hours a day, in Comden’s apartment if they were in New York and in whatever temporary quarters they occupied during their sojourns in California. In 1944, Bernstein asked the pair to write the lyrics and music for a musical based on an idea by Jerome Robbins that Bernstein wished to produce. The result was On the Town, Comden and Green’s most successful early musical, which also was a notable success as a film released in 1949. Before their first film, Good News, was released in 1947, they were enjoying considerable success with performances of the Revuers and with such musicals as Billion Dollar Baby (1945).
Early Life Adolph Green was the son of two Eastern European Jews, Daniel Green and Helen Weiss, who left their native Hungary in the early twentieth century with the expectation of building better lives in New York. The city was a magnet for European Jews, who were eager for their children to enjoy the inexpensive educational opportunities, from elementary school through colleges and universities that offered solid undergraduate education and graduate programs leading to master’s and doctoral degrees, that New York offered. Adolph Green spoke Hungarian before he spoke English. Following his graduation from New York’s DeWitt Clinton High School in 1934, he enrolled in college courses but quickly lost interest. He dropped out almost immediately. His chief interest was theater. He supported himself with menial jobs that enabled him to participate in small theater groups in the evenings. During the summer of 1937, Green played the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance (1879), a W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan operetta being performed at Onata, a summer camp in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Here Green met Leonard Bernstein, who also worked at the camp. The two built a friendship that lasted through their lives and quickly blossomed into a productive professional relationship. When Green was passed over for other roles at Camp Onata, he returned to New York and joined a theater group, 484
Jewish Americans The pair produced musicals for some six decades, attracting enthusiastic audiences with such plays as Singin’ in the Rain (1985), Wonderful Town (1953), Bells Are Ringing (1956), Do Re Mi (1960), Applause (1970), On the Twentieth Century (1978), The Will Rogers Follies (1991), and many others. In 1990, Green and Comden received the William Inge Theatre Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Theatre. The following year they received the Johnny Mercer Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. On December 8, 1991, they received the highest honor the United States can bestow on performers: the Kennedy Center Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Performing Arts. Comden and Green had active lives as actors both on the stage and in films. They were unfailingly charitable, contributing regularly to the Federation for Jewish Charities and the National Conference for Christians and Jews. Green died at his home in Manhattan on October 23, 2002, at the age of eighty-seven. Significance Green and his collaborator, with their incredible versatility and admirable energy and imagination, created a new era in the American musical. They won seven Tony Awards and were nominated for five more. Active in writing for both Broadway and Hollywood, they also were splendid actors in both venues. The pair, spending more time together than most married couples do, succeeded in maintaining their close working relationship from 1938 until Green’s death in 2002. — R. Baird Shuman
Green, Adolph Further Reading Bernstein, Leonard. The Joy of Music. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959. The chapter “American Musical Comedy” presents interesting insights into Bernstein’s association with Green and Comden. Comden, Betty. Off Stage. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. An informative assessment of Comden’s collaborations and relationship with Green. Knapp, Raymond. The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006. Concise coverage of Comden and Green’s producing the lyrics and music for Bernstein’s On the Town (1944) that was a success on Broadway and later as a film (1949). Lamb, Andrew. One Hundred Fifty Years of Popular Musical Theatre. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. Mentions Comden and Green in the context of popular music in United States theater. Robinson, Alice M. Betty Comden and Adolph Green: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. A comprehensive bibliography of the works that grew out of Green’s long collaboration with Comden. Excellent biographical essay, although it covers its subjects only to 1992. See also: Leonard Bernstein; Betty Comden; George Gershwin; Ira Gershwin; Marvin Hamlisch; Lorenz Hart; Jerry Herman; Jerome Kern; Alan Jay Lerner; Frederick Loewe; Jerome Robbins; Richard Rodgers; Stephen Sondheim.
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Hank Greenberg Baseball player A perennial American League All-Star, “Hammerin’ Hank” Greenberg led the Detroit Tigers into the World Series four times. Born: January 1, 1911; New York, New York Died: September 4, 1986; Beverly Hills, California Also known as: Hammerin’ Hank; Henry Benjamin Greenberg (full name) Area of achievement: Sports Early Life Hank Greenberg (GREEN-burg) was born on Manhattan’s lower East Side to David Greenberg, owner of a textile-shrinking company, and Sarah Greenberg. His parents were Romanian immigrants who met and married in the United States. They kept a kosher home, observed the High Holidays, and sent young Greenberg to Hebrew school. Like many other parents of their genera-
Hank Greenberg. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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tion, they hoped that their son would become a doctor, dentist, lawyer, or teacher. In 1917, the Greenbergs moved to the middle-class Jewish neighborhood surrounding James Monroe High School in the Bronx. By this time, their son had become obsessed with sports, especially baseball, much to his parents’ dismay. His father was angry that his son did not want to go to college to pursue a career in the professions. Greenberg recalled that neighbors on the block would point to him as an example of a ne’er-do-well who would rather play baseball than go to school. He was the only one of four siblings not to graduate from college, although he did attend New York University for a semester on an athletic scholarship in 1929. Friends and relatives sympathized with his mother over the disgrace that her son had become. Meanwhile, Greenberg idolized Babe Ruth. Greenberg went to Yankee Stadium often, waiting for a chance to see Ruth as he came out of the players’ entrance. The New York Yankees, Ruth’s team, did not sign Greenberg, much to their later regret. Greenberg signed with the Detroit Tigers at the age of nineteen and played one game with them in 1930. He then spent three years in the minor leagues, with teams in Hartford, Connecticut; Raleigh, North Carolina; Evansville, Indiana; and Beaumont, Texas, before advancing out of the farm system for good in 1933. Life’s Work In his first full year in the major leagues, in 1933, Greenberg became a sensation. A huge, powerful man, he stood six feet, four inches and weighed 215 pounds. Playing first base and the outfield, he also swung a hot bat. On a Detroit Tigers club that finished fifth, Greenberg hit twelve home runs and batted in eighty-seven runs. He set an American League record for runs batted in (RBIs) in 1937 with 183 and won the Most Valuable Player Award that year. In 1938, he hit fiftyeight homers, narrowly missing breaking Ruth’s record of sixty. Greenberg helped the Tigers win pennants in 1934, 1935, and 1940. He led or tied for league leadership in home runs in 1935, 1938, and 1940. He had the highest RBI total in both major leagues in 1935, 1937, and 1940. Named to the All-Star team four times, Greenberg also re-
Jewish Americans ceived the American League’s Most Valuable Player award twice (1937 and 1940). It is probable that his achievements would have been greater had it not been for the interruption of war. Greenberg served longer in the military during World War II than any other major leaguer, having been drafted in May, 1941. He was the only baseball superstar ensnared by the pre-Pearl Harbor draft. He received his Army discharge papers on December 5, 1941, but he reenlisted immediately after the Japanese attack. Unlike many baseball players who served as athletic directors, Greenberg volunteered for combat and served in the China-Burma-India theater with the Twentieth Bomber Command, the first B-29 unit to go overseas. When Greenberg returned to the ball field, the media viewed him as the heroic symbol of veterans seeking to regain their civilian skills. He became “Captain Henry,” a designation used repeatedly by newspaper reporters during Greenberg’s post-World War II career. In his first game with the Tigers, Greenberg hit a home run. On the final day of the season, he hit a grand slam (a home run with men on all bases) to clinch the pennant for Detroit. In 1946, his first complete season in five years, Greenberg led the league in RBIs with 127 and home runs with forty-four. Despite Greenberg’s status as a star, the Tigers decided to end a salary dispute with Greenberg in the off-season by selling his contract to the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League. Greenberg retired after the 1947 season. He won election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1956. Following his retirement, Greenberg remained in baseball as an executive for fourteen years. He worked for the Cleveland Indians as a farm director, treasurer, general manager, and part owner before disagreements over personnel decisions prompted the board of directors to fire him in 1957. Cleveland set major-league attendance records and won the 1948 World Series under Greenberg. His tenure is also notable for his efforts to promote racial integration. Greenberg bounced back with the Chicago White Sox in 1959 as the club’s general manager and vice president. In that year, the White Sox won their first pennant since the infamous 1919 Black Sox scandal. When his friend Bill Veeck sold his interest in the White Sox in 1961, Greenberg left baseball. A smart man, despite what the neighbors once thought, Greenberg had managed to invest his baseball earnings shrewdly. Subsequent success as an investment banker brought him substantial wealth and a home in Beverly Hills, where he died of cancer in 1986. Greenberg had married Carol Gimbel, a department-store heiress, in
Greenberg, Hank
The Hebrew Star Hank Greenberg became more than just a baseball player. He represented the Jewish athlete in an era of significant anti-Semitism. His presence and power demolished stereotypes about Jewish physical weakness. He also stood up against anti-Semitism hurled in his direction on the playing field. As the long-sought “Hebrew star,” both second-generation Jews eager for assimilation and acceptance and Jews tied more closely to European traditions took enormous pride in Greenberg’s achievements. He represented every Jew. The belief that a democratic American society had made Greenberg’s success possible by giving this son of an immigrant a fair chance to prove himself offered similar hopes to other American Jews. Nevertheless, Greenberg was not an observant Jew. One of his school-age sons once identified himself as Episcopalian, even though his mother was also Jewish. After his playing days ended, Greenberg gradually became more Jewish in his identity. He strongly supported Jewish causes and wanted to be known as a Jewish ballplayer. After his death, he is more remembered for being a Jewish baseball player than for any of his other achievements.
1946, and the couple had three children before their 1959 divorce. Greenberg was survived by his second wife, Mary Jo Tarola. Significance Greenberg was the preeminent Jewish athlete in the first half of the twentieth century. At a time when baseball reigned as the undisputed national game, Greenberg emerged as an all-American hero. By doing so, he shattered stereotypes about Jews and served as an inspiration to other members of his religion. The media of the 1930’s devoted considerable print to the reasons for the scarcity of Jewish professional athletes. Jews were denigrated as being too weak and too individualistic for team sports. Greenberg ranks with the most powerful sluggers who ever played the game. He is routinely listed among the best players of baseball. Further Reading Greenberg, Hank. Hank Greenberg: The Story of My Life. New York: Times Books, 1989. Greenberg’s autobiography sheds light on the challenges faced by Jewish athletes. Levine, Peter. From Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport 487
Greenberg, Irving and the American Jewish Experience. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. This is a scholarly examination of the challenges facing Jewish athletes, including Greenberg. Riess, Steven A., ed. Sports and the American Jew. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1998. The chapter on Greenberg explores the Jewish American sports hero while an introductory essay by Riess sets him in historical context.
Jewish Americans Simons, William M. “The Athlete as Jewish Standard Bearer: Media Images of Hank Greenberg.” Jewish Social Studies 44 (Spring, 1982): 95-112. Simons examines the symbolic significance of Greenberg for Jewish and gentile Americans. — Caryn E. Neumann See also: Sandy Koufax; Bud Selig; Kevin Youkilis.
Irving Greenberg Orthodox rabbi, writer, and religious activist An Orthodox rabbi, writer, and educator, Greenberg is an influential rabbi of modern time. He is known for his campaign to promote respect and cooperation between Jewish and Christian communities and for his extensive writings on Holocaust theology. Born: May 16, 1933; New York, New York Also known as: Yitz Greenberg Areas of achievement: Religion and theology; education Early Life Irving Greenberg (UR-veeng GREEN-burg) was born to Orthodox Jewish parents in New York in 1933; his father, Eliyahu Chayim Greenberg, was an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. In his relationship with his son, Eliyahu fostered a strong faith in the Jewish community and an understanding that Judaism could and should confront the challenges posed by the always-changing modern society. As a student, Irving Greenberg studied at the Bais Yosef Yeshiva in Boro Park near Brooklyn, New York, and he was ordained as a rabbi in 1953. While at the Bais Yosef Yeshiva, Greenberg received a firsthand education in the social and emotional ramifications of the Holocaust, because many of his fellow students were refugees. At the school, he studied under the modern Orthodox rabbi, Joseph Soloveitchik, who instilled in his students the idea of the centrality of “musar,” or ethics that must be present in Jewish life and teachings. Soloveitchik also influenced Greenberg’s academics by teaching him of the importance of maintaining the Orthodox tradition while insisting on new and creative activity in the world. In addition to becoming an ordained rabbi, Greenberg studied at Harvard University, where he earned his Ph.D. Another strong influence in Greenberg’s life has been his wife, Blu, a founder of Orthodox feminism and, like her 488
husband, an important person in contemporary Jewish life. For a time, Greenberg served as the rabbi at the Riverdale Jewish Center in New York and as an associate professor of history at Yeshiva University, also in New York. He served as founder, chairman, and professor in the department of Jewish Studies at the City College of the City University of New York. Life’s Work Partly because many of his peers at the Bais Yosef Yeshiva were survivors of the Holocaust, Greenberg has devoted much time to the study of the event. In 1961, he took a sabbatical in Israel to study the Holocaust, and at this time he crafted a theory that Christian anti-Semitism provided a religious foundation upon which the Nazi regime could base its persecution of the Jewish people. With his wife Blu, Greenberg planned to launch a campaign demanding that Christians stop demeaning the Jewish tradition. However, his campaign was never put into effect, because in 1965, the Catholic Church held its Vatican II Council, during which it publicly revised its relationships with the Jewish people and committed itself to revising its existing anti-Jewish doctrines. Inspired by the Catholic Church’s actions, Greenberg decided that it was necessary for the Jewish people to do likewise. Spurred by this belief, Greenberg has worked extensively at writing, researching, and educating others about the cooperative partnership that he believes must exist between Christians and Jewish communities. His book For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism and Christianity, which was published in 2004, addresses this issue. Among other things, Greenberg advocates a theology of “covenantal pluralism,” which means that both Jews and Christians hold equal contracts to God and that both groups are equally people of Israel, despite the different
Jewish Americans roles they play. As a prominent face in the advocacy for interfaith teachings, Greenberg has been a source of controversy in the Orthodox Jewish community and has received frequent criticism from some of his fellow Orthodox rabbis. In addition to writing and educating, Greenberg is a leader in several organizations in the Jewish community. He cofounded the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (CLAL), an organization that focuses on adult and leadership education within the Jewish community. It promotes relationship development across communities and encourages pluralism and openness. Greenberg served as president of the organization from its founding in 1974 until 1997. Significance In addition to his involvement in the CLAL, Greenberg has been instrumental in other activities to strengthen the Jewish community. He was the founding president of the Jewish Life Network, which became the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life. This organization was created in 1994 to foster Jewish identity in America through varied cultural and educational activities. Some of these activities included the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education Project; the establishment of Makor, a center for Jews in their twenties and thirties; and Birthright Israel, a worldwide program that provides Jewish youths with the opportunity to live and study in Israel. —Sarah Small Further Reading Greenberg, Irving. For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism and Christian-
Greengard, Paul ity. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2004. Greenberg’s book discusses the relationship between Jews and Christians and his personal encounters in Judaism and Christianity. _______. The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays. New York: Summit, 1988. Greenberg presents the principles and theology of Judaism through discussion of the religion’s holy days. Greenberg, Irving, and Shalom Freedman. Living in the Image of God: Jewish Teachings to Perfect the World. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1998. A collection of conversations between Greenberg and Freedman, this book presents the major themes of Greenberg’s work and thought, addressing the important challenges for the modern Jewish community. Hebbelthwaite, Peter. “Christians, Jews Detect Spirit of Shalom.” National Catholic Reporter, February 18, 1994, p. 10. Article describes the way that Christians and Jews can work together. Oppenheim, Michael. “Irving Greenberg and a Jewish Dialectic of Hope.” Judaism 49, no. 2 (2000): 15. Greenberg defines Judaism not in terms of the Holocaust but in terms of redemption. Rose, Or N. “An Orthodox Iconoclast: Irving Greenberg.” Tikkun 20, no. 2 (2005): 64-66. Review of Greenberg’s book describes how he began his interfaith work. Soloveichik, Meir. “Of (Religious) Fences and Neighbors.” Commentary 123, no. 3 (2007): 38. Greenberg discusses his theory of “covenantal pluralism.” See also: Henry Berkowitz; Harold S. Kushner; Judah Leon Magnes; Isaac Mayer Wise.
Paul Greengard Neuroscientist and educator Greengard researched signal transduction in neurons and the role of neurotransmitters in the brain. He won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his research on dopamine. His discoveries help scientists understand how the brain functions and disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Born: December 11, 1925; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Science and technology; education
Early Life Paul Greengard (GREEN-gahrd) was born in New York City on December 11, 1925, to Benjamin Greengard and Pearl Meister. His mother, who was Jewish, died while giving birth to him. Greengard’s father remarried when Greengard was one year old. His stepmother was Episcopalian, and Greengard was raised Christian, despite his Jewish heredity. Greengard grew up and received his primary education in New York City. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy as an electronics technician. After the war, 489
Greengard, Paul he graduated from Hamilton College in 1948 with a degree in mathematics and physics. He wanted to pursue a graduate degree in physics, but at the time the only research being done in physics was on nuclear weapons. Because Greengard had no desire to contribute to weapons research, he pursued a doctoral degree in biophysics. Greengard got his Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University in 1952, where he researched neuroscience, a developing field. Even after receiving his doctorate, Greengard continued postdoctoral studies in a number of renowned European universities, in London, Cambridge, and Amsterdam. Greengard was a professor of pharmacology and psychiatry at Yale University from 1968 to 1983. He then became the head professor at the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience at Rockefeller University in New York in 1983. Greengard married Ursula von Rydingsvard, a well-known sculptor, and they had three children. Life’s Work While a graduate student at Johns Hopkins, Greengard attended a lecture by Alan Hodgkin, which inspired Greengard to study the nervous system. As a result of Hodgkin’s lecture, Greengard became interested in neuroscience and the function of neurotransmitters in the brain. Since then, he has dedicated his life to researching and to teaching neuroscience, particularly the communication that occurs between nerve cells in the brain. His work has shown how neurotransmitters work and how they affect the brain physically and mentally. Greengard won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2000, along with Arvid Carlsson and Eric Kandel. Greengard found that neurotransmitters alter the function of nerve cells through a process he called slow synaptic transmission. This controls functions such as mood and alertness. In his research, Greengard further discovered a sort of domino effect that occurs with dopamine, a type of neurotransmitter, and nerve cells. When nerve cells react with dopamine, there is an increase in cyclic AMP-regulated phosphoprotein-32 (DARPP-32). Greengard found that DARPP-32 activates proteins that can affect signal transmission in areas of the brain that control functions such as speech, movement, and sensory perception. Greengard’s discoveries also helped to
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Jewish Americans explain how certain drugs work to affect the brain, nerve cells, and neurotransmitters. In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Greengard has won multiple awards, including the New York City Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Science and Technology (1998), the Bristol-Myers Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience Research (1989), and the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health (1997). Significance Greengard’s work with neurotransmitters and signal transduction helped shape the field of neuroscience. Through his research, he discovered that DARPP-32 is a key molecule in dopamine reactions in the brain. Greengard’s findings demonstrated that disruptions in dopamine signaling can cause such neurological and psychiatric disorders as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia. Because of his research, scientists have begun to understand and to treat more effectively Parkinson’s disease and other disorders generated by faulty signal transduction. In addition, because of Greengard’s Nobel Prize-winning research, insight has been provided into how drug abuse and therapeutic drugs affect brain function. —Amy Harwath Further Reading Dreifus, Claudia. “He Turned His Nobel into a Prize for Women.” The New York Times, September 26, 2006. In a conversation format, Greengard tells how he used his Nobel Prize monetary award to create a scholarship for women in science. “Paul Greengard.” In Who’s Who in America. 64th ed. New Providence, N.J.: Marquis Who’s Who, 2010. Lists information on his career, awards, memberships, and achievements. Skolnik, Fred, and Michael Berenbaum, eds. Encyclopaedia Judaica. 2d ed. Detroit, Mich.: Thomson, 2007. The entry on Greengard gives a good account of his education and explains in simple terms the discoveries that led to his winning the Nobel Prize. See also: Richard Axel; Michael Brown; Stanley Cohen; Gerald Edelman; Gertrude Belle Elion; Stanley B. Prusiner; Harold E. Varmus.
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Greenspan, Alan
Alan Greenspan Economist and Federal Reserve chairman (1987-2006) As the second longest serving chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Greenspan was credited with the ability to calm the stock market and to guide the economy along a path of low inflation and low unemployment. Born: March 6, 1926; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Economics; government and politics Early Life Alan Greenspan grew up in the Washington Heights section of New York City, a lower-middle-class, immigrant neighborhood at the northern end of Manhattan. As the only child of Rose Goldsmith and Herbert Greenspan, his early years were modest. When Greenspan was young, his parents divorced, in part due to financial stress created by the stock market crash in 1929. Greenspan and his mother moved into her parents’ apartment, and it was in these cramped quarters that his world took shape. To help with expenses, Greenspan’s mother took a sales job at a furniture store in the Bronx. While an attractive and outgoing woman, she never married again. Greenspan’s father, who was a moderately successful broker on Wall Street, did not play a large role in his son’s upbringing. In 1935, Greenspan’s father wrote a book, Recovery Ahead!, which outlined steps that the government should take to stimulate the economy. In the copy he gave to Greenspan, he wrote, “May this my initial effort with constant thought of you branch out into an endless chain of similar efforts so that at your maturity you may look back and endeavor to interpret the reasoning behind these logical forecasts and begin a like work of your own.” These words may have inspired both Greenspan’s career and the tangled speech he often employed to describe the economy during his career. While both sides of Greenspan’s family were Jewish, with his mother’s family emigrating from Hungary and his father’s family from Romania, Greenspan refused his Bar Mitzvah. Since the grandfather he lived with was a cantor at a synagogue, this must have been a source of concern. Not embracing religion, Greenspan found youthful passions in baseball, music, and mathematics. After graduating from George Washington High School, Greenspan was not old enough to be drafted into the military during World War II, so he enrolled at
Juilliard to pursue his passion for music. Later found unfit to serve in the military, he took advantage of his musical training, joined Henry Jerome’s orchestra, and, playing the clarinet, toured with the group. Though talented, Greenspan recognized that he would never be a great musician, and he decided to pursue his interest in economics. In the fall of 1945, he enrolled at New York University (NYU), graduating summa cum laude in 1949 with a degree in economics. Life’s Work After finishing college and while pursuing a master’s degree at NYU, Greenspan took a job with the Conference Board, a private nonprofit organization that promoted activities to enhance business performance. In the library of the organization, he found a treasure trove of business data in which to immerse himself. From this ex-
Alan Greenspan. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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needed a quote from an expert. He also received a Ph.D. in economics from NYU in 1977. With the election of Ronald Reagan as presiThe first major test that Alan Greenspan faced as chairman of dent in 1980, Greenspan returned to governthe Federal Reserve came within months of his start, with the colment as an outside adviser to the administralapse of the stock market on October 19, 1987, often referred to as tion. Greenspan’s career-defining opportunity Black Monday. On that day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average came in 1987 when President Reagan selected dropped 22.61 percent, the largest single-day percentage drop in its history. While not responsible for the stock market, the Federal him to replace Paul Volcker as chairman of the Reserve is responsible for the soundness of the banking system. Federal Reserve Board, the group responsible Such a steep drop in the stock market draws into question the value for U.S. monetary policy. With his years of exof assets in general and, therefore, the ability of lenders to repay perience analyzing the economy and his prior loans. The uncertainty this creates undermines the normal flow of government experience, Greenspan seemed well credit, which is vital for economic activity. suited for the position. Recognizing the potential danger to credit markets and, ultiOne issue that came up during the Senate mately, the economy, the Federal Reserve responded, under the hearings, which were held as part of the process guidance of Greenspan, by issuing a statement the next day to asleading to his confirmation, were ideas he had sure markets that the Federal Reserve would support the financial expressed as a result of his association with a system. Greenspan backed up that statement with actions to restore group headed by Ayn Rand. In the early 1950’s, confidence in the banking system. By taking decisive action, Greenspan is often credited with averting what could have turned as a result of his involvement with Joan Mitchinto a severe recession. This event increased his credibility with ell, who became his first wife, Greenspan atmarkets and contributed to his reputation as a calm leader, deftly tended meetings hosted by Rand at which she guiding the economy. would present her philosophy and brand of laissez-faire capitalism. In writings for this group, Greenspan advocated the dismantling of government regulation, in particular antitrust legisperience, he gained a valuable understanding of how varlation, and the return of the country to the gold standard. ious parts of the economy are interconnected. These writings advanced the idea that markets could In 1953, Greenspan left the Conference Board and better regulate business than government. During quesjoined with William Townsend to form Townsendtioning about instances where his ideas differed from the Greenspan, a company that compiled economic data and laws that he would be required to uphold, he explained provided forecasts for major corporations. His success in that he was able to separate his personal views from his this partnership deepened his understanding of the U.S. legal duties. economy and brought him into contact with many business leaders. In 1958, Greenspan took charge of the enSignificance tire company when his older partner died. Greenspan served as Federal Reserve chairman for In 1967, Greenspan’s career took a new turn when he more than eighteen years; he was reappointed four times was asked to join Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign for four-year terms and served under four presidents. At to help with speeches and to develop policy. While home in the halls of power and at the A-list Washington Greenspan did not accept a position in the administration parties he often attended with his second wife, television when Nixon was elected, he did agree in 1974 to serve as journalist Andrea Mitchell, whom he married in 1997, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, a small Greenspan came to personify the Federal Reserve. group that advises the president on economic matters. He During his time as chairman, Greenspan displayed the was selected while Nixon was in office, but he served unsame pragmatism seen at his confirmation hearing and der President Gerald Ford. From this position, Greendid what the circumstances seemed to require. His steady span learned the ins and outs of government and politics. approach to the job saw the country through such events Following Ford’s loss to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 as the stock market crash in October, 1987; two receselection, Greenspan returned to his consulting firm but sions, 1990-1991 and 2001; the Asian financial collapse not completely to a private life. In addition to work at in 1997; and the demise of the hedge fund Long-Term his company, he gave numerous speeches to interested Capital Management, which, it was feared, would degroups and made himself available to news agencies that stabilize markets around the world. Greenspan is often
Black Monday—Greenspan’s First Test
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Jewish Americans credited with guiding the U.S. economy through these perils with only modest levels of inflation and unemployment and with solid economic growth. Since his retirement, he has continued to speak about the dangers the economy faces and to defend his record against criticism that his policies may have led to the financial crisis beginning in 2007. —Randall Hannum Further Reading Greenspan, Alan. The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World. New York: Penguin Press, 2007. Autobiography written after he retired from the Federal Reserve Board provides interesting details of his life, his career, and the issues facing the economy in the years ahead.
Grodin, Charles Martin, Justin. Greenspan: The Man Behind Money. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2000. Readable biography covers details of Greenspan’s public and private life. Tuccille, Jerome. Alan Shrugged: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan, the World’s Most Powerful Banker. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2002. This interesting biography brings to life the man who guided monetary policy for almost two decades. Woodward, Bob. Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. A compelling, detailed account of Greenspan’s first dozen years at the Federal Reserve by a celebrated Washington Post reporter. See also: Kenneth Arrow; Ben Bernanke; Arthur Burns; Milton Friedman; Jeffrey D. Sachs; Herbert Stein.
Charles Grodin Actor, writer, and activist Beginning his career as an actor, Grodin excelled at directing, writing, and producing for film and the stage. Born: April 21, 1935; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Also known as: Chuck Grodin; Charles Grodinsky (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; social issues Early Life Charles Grodin (GROH-dihn) was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on April 21, 1935. His father owned a wholesale goods store, and his mother was a volunteer who aided disabled veterans. Grodin was impeached as fifth-grade class president because he talked too much, and he was expelled from Hebrew school for asking too many questions. He credits these early rejections with making him tough enough to succeed in his future careers. In high school, Grodin joined the drama club, even though he could not act in plays because he had to work at his father’s store. He decided then that acting was his future, and he dropped out of the University of Miami after one semester to pursue a career in the theater. Grodin left Florida to study acting at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, which he disliked, and he departed for New York, where he studied with famed acting coaches Uta
Hagen and Lee Strasberg. At the Actors Studio, Grodin refused to participate in many of the exercises, which he considered ridiculous. He did not like acting classes and found them mostly useless. In 1956, Grodin debuted Off-Broadway in Don’t Destroy Me. This was followed by television roles on Armstrong Circle Theatre (1958), Have Gun, Will Travel (1960), and The Defenders (1962). In 1962, Grodin made his Broadway debut in Tchin-Tchin (1962), starring Anthony Quinn and Margaret Leighton, a wellreceived production. Life’s Work In 1964, Grodin appeared on Broadway in Absence of a Cello (1964) and in his first film, Sex and the College Girl (1964). Grodin continued to work in television, guest-starring on such shows as The Virginian, The Big Valley, and The FBI, among others. In 1967, Grodin was considered for the role of Benjamin Braddock in Mike Nichols’s The Graduate (1967), but ultimately the role went to Dustin Hoffman. Grodin’s first big break came when he was cast in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Then, in 1970, Grodin played Aarfy Aardvark in Nichols’s Catch-22 (1970). In 1972, Grodin got the lead in Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972), a satiric romantic comedy, in which Grodin perfected his trademark style. He underplayed his character, never going for big laughs, but sub493
Grodin, Charles tly unleashing the comedy. This part earned Grodin a Golden Globe nomination. Grodin’s other important film roles were Heaven Can Wait (1978), Real Life (1979), and The Great Muppet Caper (1981). In 1988, Grodin played his most popular role, The Duke, opposite Robert De Niro in Midnight Run (1988), a buddy comedy about a bounty hunter and a criminal. This was followed by two successful turns as the father in the Beethoven films (1992 and 1993). In 1993, Grodin had a starring role in Heart and Souls (1993). Grodin stayed active in theater, writing, directing, acting, and producing: Lovers and Other Strangers (1968), Thieves (1974), Same Time, Next Year (1975), The Price of Fame (1990), and The Right Kind of People (2006). Grodin, a popular storyteller, was one of Johnny Carson’s favorite guests and has appeared many times with David Letterman. In 1993, Grodin gave up film acting for seventeen years in order to be home to rear his son. During this time, Grodin began a career as a journalist and a commentator on television and radio. He contributed segments on 60 Minutes II (1999-2005) and hosted The Charles Grodin Show (1995-1998), which received four CableACE nominations. He provides an Andy Rooneystyle commentary heard on radio and is a frequent guest on news talk shows. Grodin is also the best-selling author of memoirs, nonfiction books, advice books, and a children’s book. Much of Grodin’s life has been devoted to humanitarian and charitable work. He works with the Innocence Project to repeal unjust sentences and to free inmates wrongfully imprisoned under the felony murder rule, which expands the definition of murder. Grodin was instrumental in the dismantling of New York’s Rockefeller drug laws, which inflict harsh penalties for the sale or possession of narcotics. He works for the Children’s Cancer and Blood Foundation, Help USA, the Robert Kennedy Foundation, and other charities. In 2006, he received the William Kuntsler Award for Social Justice. Significance Afraid that he would be uninteresting, Grodin came on The Tonight Show in character as a boorish, annoying, and antagonistic guest. He was not polite to the host Carson, and rather than answering questions, Grodin asked
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Jewish Americans sarcastic questions of Carson. Carson so loved the routine that he had Grodin on many times. Grodin maintained this persona for all future talk-show appearances. He became known as a curmudgeon, which has been both negative and positive. Many viewers who did not know his behavior was a joke thought him rude and angry. Grodin, however, is nothing like this persona in real life. He has devoted his life to ensuring social justice. His early experiences being chastised for asking questions helped Grodin to face the rejection and anxieties that are part of life as a performer. They also set the stage for his second career in journalism. On his shows and as a guest on others’ shows, Grodin asks difficult, often uncomfortable questions. Using the confrontational character he created for his appearances on The Tonight Show, Grodin does not shy away from controversy in his books and on his shows. — Leslie Neilan Further Reading Grodin, Charles. How I Got to Be Whoever It Is Am. New York: Springboard Press, 2009. This memoir includes anecdotes about Grodin’s life and professional experiences. _______. It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here: My Journey Through Show Business. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. This autobiography explores Grodin’s experiences in filmmaking and his encounters with famous people. _______, ed. If I Only Knew Then . . . Learning from Our Mistakes. New York: Springboard Press, 2009. Grodin interviews eighty-six celebrities about their biggest mistakes and what they learned from them. Tallmer, Jerry. “From Fleabag Room to Co-op Board to Stage.” The Villager 75, no. 39 (February 15-21, 2006). Interview with Grodin in conjunction with his play “The Right Kind of People,” which looks at the foibles of a co-op’s board, whose members seem to want to keep out people of different colors and religions. See also: Judd Apatow; Alan Arkin; Matthew Broderick; Albert Brooks; James Caan; Peter Falk; Jeff Goldblum; Elliott Gould; Goldie Hawn; Ricky Jay; Rob Reiner; Gene Wilder.
Jewish Americans
Gross, David
David Gross Physicist A renowned physicist, Gross is a string theorist who won the Nobel Prize for his collaborative research with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer. Born: February 19, 1941; Washington, D.C. Also known as: David Jonathan Gross (full name) Areas of achievement: Science and technology; mathematics Early Life David Gross (grohs) was born in Washington, D.C., in 1941 to Bertram Meyer and Nora Faine. Bertram was the son of immigrants from Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and Nora immigrated as a young girl to the United States from Ukraine with her family. Bertram graduated from college with an English degree and later worked as a staff member for Senator James E. Murray of Montana, where Bertram helped write the Employment Act of 1946, legislation created following World War II. His mother attended college and graduated with a degree in chemistry. David Gross was the oldest of four sons, and he grew up in Arlington, Virginia, a middle-class suburb of Washington, D.C. The children of academic parents, Gross and his brothers were encouraged to read from a very young age. His father hired the ten-year-old Gross to proofread the father’s book, for which Gross was paid ten cents a page. His parents always welcomed the opinions of Gross and his brothers in political and intellectual discussions, which gave the boys confidence from a young age to formulate and to voice their opinions. In 1953, Gross’s father was sent to Israel as part of an advisory team from the United States, along with the first U.S. aid package. Although the team returned to the United States in 1955, Gross’s father chose to stay; he joined the Hebrew University and helped establish the School of Business Administration. When Gross moved with his family to Israel, he had no knowledge of Hebrew and was forced to adapt to a new and different environment. During this time, Gross became an avid reader and was attracted to books about physics and mathematics. In particular, he was fascinated by theoretical physics and, even as a boy, vowed to pursue it as a career. Life’s Work Intent on becoming a theoretical physicist upon graduating from high school, Gross attended the Hebrew University, where he earned his degree in physics and
mathematics. After graduating, he applied to graduate schools in the United States. He moved to the University of California, Berkeley, for his graduate studies, which was advantageous for Gross because the university was the center of elementary particle physics, with new discoveries happening all the time at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, or “Rad Lab.” After graduating from Berkeley in 1966, Gross spent a short time at Harvard University, where he accepted an invitation to be part of the Harvard Society of Fellows. There he had the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues, many of whom were leaders in the field of physics. It was at Harvard that Gross took the first steps in his research that ultimately would lead to his Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of asymptotic freedom and quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Faced with many offers for faculty positions, Gross accepted in 1969 an offer from Princeton University, where he joined the faculty as an assistant professor; he stayed at Princeton for the next twenty-seven years. Between Princeton and the Institute for Advanced Study, Gross was surrounded by talented theorists with whom he collaborated on much of his research. He spent some time working on string theories, but he chose to devote the majority of his time to gauge theories. It was at Princeton that he discovered asymptotic freedom and the emergence of QCD, research that he had begun at Harvard and for which he later won the Nobel Prize in Physics. After this discovery, he spent several years immersed in researching the dynamics of gauge theories, in an attempt to solve QCD, and although he made much progress, a final solution was not found. It was during the 1980’s that the research trend shifted to speculative physics, and Gross followed. He began researching string theory again, and then in 1984 he collaborated with other researchers to discover the heterotic string, which, at the time, presented the possibility of explaining the Standard Model for string theory. Significance In 1996, Gross accepted an offer from the University of California, Santa Barbara, to become the director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. In this position, he served as a scientific leader to professors and researchers. In addition, Gross has held the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics. He has also been the recipient of many honors in the scientific community, in495
Guggenheim, Meyer cluding the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Prize in 1987. — Sarah Small Further Reading Ekspong, Gosta, ed. Nobel Lectures in Physics, 20012005. Hackensack, N.J.: World Scientific, 2008. This book provides Gross’s lecture at the Nobel Prize ceremony and offers illustrations and mathematical formulas. Overbye, Dennis. “From a Physicist and a Nobel Prize
Jewish Americans Winner, Some Food for Thought.” The New York Times, October 19, 2004, p. F3. Gross talks about the future of physics. Tugend, Tom. “Five Jews Nab Nobel Science Wins.” Jewish Journal, October 14, 2004. In this article, Gross discusses being Jewish and in the company of a growing number of Jewish Nobel laureates. See also: Hans Albrecht Bethe; Albert Einstein; Richard P. Feynman; Sheldon L. Glashow; Leon Lederman; Frederick Reines.
Meyer Guggenheim Swiss-born industrialist and philanthropist Guggenheim built a worldwide mining and smelting empire. He became patriarch of one of the world’s wealthiest families, and the Guggenheim dynasty left its legacy through numerous philanthropies. Born: February 1, 1828; Lengnau, Switzerland Died: March 15, 1905; Lake Worth, Florida Areas of achievement: Business; philanthropy Early Life Meyer Guggenheim (MI-yur GEWG-ihn-him) was born in the Jewish ghetto in the Aargau canton of Switzerland. His father, Simon, was a tailor; his mother, Schafeli Levinger, died in 1836, leaving Simon to raise Guggenheim and his four sisters. Meyer took up work as a peddler, selling odds and ends throughout Switzerland and Germany. Under the laws of the Jewish ghetto, Simon was restricted from marrying a widow, Rachel, who had seven children. In 1848, Simon and Rachel decided to immigrate to the United States to marry and to start a new life. They settled in Philadelphia with their combined twelve children. In 1852, Meyer Guggenheim married Rachel’s daughter, Barbara. He resumed his work as a peddler, selling household goods to Pennsylvania Dutch miners and farmers. Guggenheim’s fluency in German was an advantage; to their credit the Pennsylvania Dutch showed him no discrimination as a Jew and readily purchased goods from this enterprising merchant. Guggenheim ingeniously discovered a better way to make black stove polish and introduced coffee essence—a forerunner of instant coffee—to his product line. In 1854, he had accu496
mulated enough capital to buy a grocery store in a Philadelphia suburb. In the years that followed, offspring and new lines of business came quickly. From 1854 to 1873, Guggenheim and his wife had eleven children. Guggenheim made money selling spices, Swiss lace and embroideries, lye, and railroad stock. Not a particularly religious man, Guggenheim gave little Jewish education to his seven sons, but he prepared them to take over his enterprises, sending them to prestigious preparatory schools. His daughters were educated at a Jewish finishing school in Paris. In 1877, he formed M. Guggenheim’s Sons, allotting each of his sons an equal share in the partnership. It was a close-knit brood, and with seven energetic sons under Meyer’s focused leadership, the Guggenheims were an impressive business force. When Guggenheim’s shares in Colorado silver mines soared in value in 1881, he was launched in the business he would come to dominate—worldwide mining and smelting. Life’s Work Guggenheim and his sons began accumulating mining, smelting, and refining operations throughout the world and especially in Mexico. In 1888, Guggenheim built the largest smelting operation in the world at Pueblo, Colorado; it was soon generating annual profits of more than $600,000. In 1899, he established the Guggenheim Exploration Company (Guggenex) to consolidate and extend Guggenheim control over mining copper, zinc, lead, silver, and gold. In 1901, after an epic business battle against Henry Rogers and other rival capitalists, the Guggenheims took control of the American Smelting
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and Refining Company (ASARCO). The GugInitiating the Guggenheim Legacy genheims formed one of the largest trusts in the of Philanthropy United States, with mining interests extending to Mexico, Canada, Chile, Bolivia, Australia, Although a titan in business, Meyer Guggenheim is well known and Africa. In an age of business combination for instituting a legacy of philanthropy. Guggenheim was a beneand consolidation, the Guggenheims ferociously factor of his family’s synagogues, Jewish hospitals, the Hebrew pursued their financial interests and also tried to Education Society, and the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asydevelop a reputation for integrity and fair treatlum. In 1903, he helped raise more than $100,000 to support Jews of Kishinev, Russia, suffering under czarist pogroms. He founded ment of their employees, in part to deflect any the Schweizerisches Israelitisches Alterasyl home for aged Jews in anti-Semitism aimed against their business sucLagnau, Switzerland. Guggenheim’s descendants expanded their cess. With the help of Jacob Schiff, of the investgiving beyond Jewish charities and established charitable foundament firm of Kuhn and Loeb, the Guggenheims tions. Where Guggenheim put business before philanthropy, later established yet another mining company, Amergenerations put philanthropy before business. They donated their ican Smelters Securities, capitalized at $77 milspectacular Sands Point estate in Port Washington, New York, for lion. With Guggenex, ASARCO, and American public purposes. The Murray and Leonie Guggenheim Foundation Smelters, the Guggenheims dominated worldprovided free dental clinics. Daniel Guggenheim’s foundations wide copper mining and other metals. With the funded annual concerts in New York and the growth of aeronautics. backlash against trusts in the administration The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation funds social science reof President Theodore Roosevelt and later adsearch. The prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded to scholars and artists by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial ministrations, the Guggenheims were subjected Foundation. Several of the world’s leading art museums, including to scrutiny and to congressional hearings but the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the Peggy Guggenescaped relatively unscathed. Under Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Deutsche Guggenheim Museum in heim’s leadership the family’s companies were Berlin, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York laden with debt as they sought rapid expansion, City. were founded and endowed by the Solomon R. Guggenheim but they brought in even greater revenue and Foundation. were able to pay substantial dividends. Later generations of Guggenheims were less successful in business. With their wealth, the Guggenheim clan repassed on to his seven sons, who were already multimillocated from Philadelphia to New York City, the patriarch lionaires and whose combined wealth was estimated at settling into a brownstone mansion at 66 West Seventymore than seventy-five million dollars. During his life Seventh Street in 1888. Guggenheim had become one of and in his will, Guggenheim donated $200,000 to Mount the nation’s leading industrialists; as a family of Jewish Sinai Hospital of New York City, a large sum to the wealth, the Guggenheims were second in the world only Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Invalids in New York, to the Rothschilds. They joined Temple Emanu-El, then and $110,000 to the Jewish Hospital in Philadelphia, in located on Fifth Avenue and Forty-third Street, the richmemory of his wife, who died in 1900. est and most prominent Jewish synagogue in the world. The father and his sons gathered at Guggenheim’s manSignificance sion every Friday for a Sabbath dinner, as much to disGuggenheim was one of the great industrialists of cuss their business interests as to express Jewish devoAmerican history. He arrived in the United States from a tion. For Guggenheim business was everything, and he European ghetto, his only skill being the persistence of a cared little for ostentation. He did, however, develop cerpeddler. With ingenuity and hard work, he achieved one tain attributes of wealthy gentlemen of New York. He business success after another, until he controlled the had a stable of horses and carriages, for pleasure trips in world’s leading conglomerate of mining, smelting, and Central Park. He contributed to New York charities. He refining operations. A large part of his success was his spent winters in Florida. close-knit Jewish family, M. Guggenheim’s Sons, provGuggenheim died in 1905. His funeral at Temple ing a formidable rival to any other industrial combine. Emanu-El was attended by the other leading Jewish famGuggenheim remained concerned for the Jewish comilies of New York. Guggenheim’s personal estate was munity as he rose to the highest levels of American busivalued at more than two million dollars. His fortune was 497
Guggenheim, Peggy ness, providing for needy Jews in Switzerland, Russia, Philadelphia, and New York. He wanted a reputation for enlightened management of his employees and of his business—perhaps attained. What can hardly be disputed is that Guggenheim founded one of America’s great entrepreneurial dynasties, which would distinguish itself even more for its civic and cultural benefactions than for its accumulation of wealth. —Howard Bromberg Further Reading Davis, John. The Guggenheims: An American Epic (18481988). New York: William Morrow, 1988. Part 1 focuses on Meyer Guggenheim as founder of one of America’s great dynasties. Grimm, Robert, ed. Notable American Philanthropists: Biographies of Giving and Volunteering. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. Seventy-eight short descriptions of charitable endeavors of individuals and families prominent in American philanthropy; highlights Guggenheim and his descendants for believing that accumulation of wealth mandated benefactions for the good of humanity. Hoyt, Edwin, Jr. The Guggenheims and the American Dream. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1967. By the
Jewish Americans author of books on the fortunes of other wealthy families such as the Vanderbilts and Morgans; depicts Guggenheim as an aggressive industrialist and reluctant philanthropist. O’Brien, Thomas. “Copper Kings of the Americas: The Guggenheim Brothers.” In Mining Tycoons in the Age of Empire, 1870-1945: Entrepreneurship, High Finance, Politics, and Territorial Expansion, edited by Raymond E. Dumett. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009. Analyzes the success of the Guggenheims as mining financiers. Unger, Debi, and Irwin Unger. The Guggenheims: A Family History. New York: Harper Perennial, 2006. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists recount the rise and decline of the fortune and enterprises begun by Guggenheim. Weld, Jacqueline. Peggy Guggenheim: The Wayward Guggenheim. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1986. Recounts the flamboyant life and art patronage of Guggenheim’s granddaughter. See also: Walter Annenberg; David Geffen; Peggy Guggenheim; Larry Page; Sumner Redstone; George Soros.
Peggy Guggenheim Art collector and philanthropist Guggenheim was an art collector who anticipated the importance of European modernism and surrealism by being among the first to buy and to exhibit works by artists in these styles. Her home in Venice, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, became a living museum, where she displayed her famous art collection. Born: August 26, 1898; New York, New York Died: December 23, 1979; Padua, Italy Also known as: Marguerite Guggenheim (full name) Areas of achievement: Art; philanthropy Early Life Peggy Guggenheim (GEW-gehn-him) was born in New York, New York, the second of three daughters of Benjamin and Florette. Both sides of Guggenheim’s family were wealthy Jewish families who emigrated from Europe to the United States in the nineteenth century because of restrictions placed on Jews with regard to business practices. Her paternal grandfather, Meyer Gug498
genheim, immigrated to Philadelphia in 1848 from the German part of Switzerland and made his fortune in silver and lead mines in Colorado. The Seligman family immigrated to the United States in 1837 from Germany and rose to great wealth in the United States during and after the Civil War. Guggenheim’s maternal grandfather, James Seligman, helped to found the banking firm J. and W. Seligman with his brothers in New York in 1864. Guggenheim’s older sister, Benita, to whom she was very close, was born in 1895, and her younger sister, Hazel, was born in 1903. Guggenheim’s father died on the Titanic in 1912. As a child, Guggenheim was an avid reader and was fortunate to be able to travel in Europe and to visit museums there. In 1914, she graduated from the Jacobi School in New York, a Jewish school for girls. After this, Guggenheim worked with tutors, who focused her education on history, economics, and Italian. In 1919, Guggenheim turned twenty-one and gained direct control of the income from her trust, which was then worth $450,000. A
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decisive experience in Guggenheim’s early cultural development was her time working in 1920 at her cousin Harold Loeb’s progressive Sunwise Turn bookshop in Manhattan, a gathering place for avant-garde culture, with art exhibitions and literary readings. Guggenheim wanted to avoid the fate of women of upper-class Jewish families in New York, which was to devote themselves to raising their children and running a household. In 1920, Guggenheim left for Europe, where she believed she could escape the social conventions of American society and have a freer and more interesting life. She lived in France and England until the summer of 1941. Arriving in Paris, Guggenheim met and married her first husband, the American expatriate writer and artist, Lawrence Vail, in 1922, whom she first had met at the Sunwise Turn bookshop in New York. While married to Vail, who was known as the King of Bohemia, Guggenheim first met some of the avant-garde figures of the Paris artistic and literary worlds, such as artist Man Ray, designer Mina Loy, photographer Berenice Abbott, writer Djuna Barnes, and artist Marcel Duchamp. Guggenheim stayed friends with Barnes for much of her life and supported her with a stipend; Duchamp became a lifelong mentor in her artistic endeavors. Although her marriage to Vail was tempestuous, it produced her two children, Sinbad and Pegeen. In 1928, Guggenheim fell in love with English writer John Holmes and in 1930 began proceedings to divorce Vail. She received custody of their daughter Pegeen. After the divorce came through, Guggenheim moved to England with Holmes, through whom she began to meet people in Britain’s literary world. While Holmes was a brilliant man and Guggenheim called him “the love of her life,” he was unsuccessful in his writing endeavors and was an alcoholic. Holmes died in 1934. Life’s Work In 1937, Guggenheim’s mother died in New York, leaving Guggenheim $500,000 from her estate in trust, which produced additional investment income. With the advice of Duchamp and the urging of her friend, the playwright Samuel Beckett, and the help of her contacts in Paris, Guggenheim decided to open a gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, at 30 Cork Street in London’s Piccadilly. Her gallery would contribute to the growing appreciation of modern art in England. Duchamp’s influence on Guggenheim was significant during this period; he
taught her the difference between European abstract art and surrealist art, and he introduced her to many of the artists she would exhibit and collect. In her gallery in 1938, expressionist painter Wassily Kandinsky had his first solo exhibition in England. Exhibitions that followed included those featuring contemporary sculpture by Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, and Antoine Pevsner. Contemporary painting exhibitions included the works of surrealists Max Ernst, René Magritte, and Yves Tanguy. On exhibit also were collages by Arp, Ernst, and Kurt Schwitters. While her gallery was a critical success, Guggenheim was forced to close it in 1939 because she was losing money. Guggenheim then asked her friend, the English art historian Herbert Read, about founding a museum of modern art in London, with Read as the director. However, as World War II began, this idea was abandoned. Undeterred by the war, Guggenheim decided to return to Paris to assemble an important collection of modern art with the idea of eventually founding a museum. With a list compiled by Read and revised by Duchamp and her friend, Nelly van Doesburg (artist Theo van Doesburg’s wife), Guggenheim began to visit artists and dealers to buy artworks, with a goal to buy one work of art each day. Guggenheim acquired fifty works of art before Paris fell
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its presentation of art. The surrealist portion of the gallery was painted black with cantilevered, curved walls. There was a room for kinetic art While Peggy Guggenheim was an heiress, she devoted most of with interactive displays, and there were bioher money to buying the art and supporting the artists of the first morphic wooden furniture units that displayed half of the twentieth century. This began with her London Gallery, sculpture. Guggenheim Jeune, from 1937 to 1939, which gave many EuroFrom 1942 to 1947, Guggenheim’s gallery pean abstract and surrealist artists exposure in London. When she decided she wanted to found a museum devoted to modern art, showcased numerous contemporary artists. DuGuggenheim began to collect the major art figures of the day in champ, Louise Nevelson, Georges Braque, and Paris. Undeterred by the threat of World War II, she visited many Pablo Picasso were some of the artists shown artists and Parisian galleries, eventually purchasing fifty works of during the first year. In 1943, a Spring Salon for art. Forced to leave France because of the war, Guggenheim conYoung Artists showcased little known artists tinued to engage with the art of her time, opening the gallery Art of who later became esteemed figures in AmeriThis Century in New York in 1942. Until 1947, this gallery procan art, such as William Baziotes, Robert Mothmoted European modernist and surrealist artists and brought to the erwell, and Ad Reinhardt. The fall of 1943 saw public’s attention contemporary artists such as Jackson Pollock the first solo exhibition of abstract expressionist and Mark Rothko, who become consequential in the art world. ReJackson Pollock. Based on this exhibit, in 1944, turning to Europe, Guggenheim bought a palazzo in Venice with the Museum of Modern Art bought its first the goal of showcasing her collection in a museum-type setting. She opened her collection to the public in 1951, and it was a signifiPollock painting, She Wolf. In the 1944-1945 cant contribution to modern art. Guggenheim’s dream of supportseason, painter Mark Rothko was also given his ing the arts was fulfilled, even after her death in 1979, when her first solo exhibition. In 1946, Guggenheim pubpalazzo and art collection became a part of the Solomon R. Guglished Out of This Century: The Informal Memgenheim Museum. oirs of Peggy Guggenheim. Guggenheim always missed living in Europe, and in May, 1947, she closed the doors of her gallery to return. She settled in Venice, and to the Germans, including Alberto Giacometti’s sculpin 1948 she purchased the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on ture Woman with Her Throat Cut, Brancusi’s sculpture the Grand Canal. In the 1950’s and the 1960’s, GuggenBird in Space, and works from artists Tanguy, Kandinheim’s collection at her palazzo in Venice became well sky, and Ernst (whom she later married in New York). known, and she hosted many famous visitors. During the Because of the uncertainty of war, art was available and fall and winter, art in Guggenheim’s collection was inexpensive. In 1941, however, Guggenheim realized it loaned to international museum exhibitions; in the spring was advisable to leave Europe because of the war, and and summer, her collection was open, free of charge, to her art collection was sent to Grenoble, in southeastern the public three afternoons a week. In 1969, her collecFrance, for safekeeping (before later being transported to tion was shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York). She arranged transport to New York for herin New York. This was a precursor to an agreement that self, her children, Vail and his wife, writer Kay Boyle, on July 17, 1975, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and surrealist André Breton and his wife, and Ernst. the palazzo would be transferred to the Solomon R. After arriving in New York, Guggenheim pursued the Guggenheim Foundation. After Guggenheim’s death on idea of establishing a museum of modern art in the December 23, 1979, from a stroke, the collection offiUnited States. Because of World War II, New York was cially became a part of the Guggenheim Museum. home to many displaced surrealists and other European artists. First, Guggenheim published a catalog of her colSignificance lection called Art of This Century (1942). Then, in 1942, Guggenheim was a visionary art collector who, in her she opened a gallery at 30 West Fifty-seventh Street, also gallery, exhibited European surrealist and modernist art called the Art of This Century, which functioned as a mualongside emerging American artists. She gave the reseum space as well as a commercial art gallery. At this nowned painter Pollock his first exhibition, promoting time there were no more than twelve other art galleries in his career and supporting him financially with a stipend. New York City. The gallery, with movable walls made of She also gave Rothko his first exhibition. A number of stretched canvas and a turquoise floor, was innovative in other abstract expressionist artists she exhibited became
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Jewish Americans well known. After settling in Venice in her palazzo on the Grand Canal, Guggenheim and her art collection attracted attention worldwide. She generously loaned her artworks to museums for part of the year, and she transformed her palazzo into a public museum the rest of the year. —Sandra Rothenberg Further Reading Dearborn, Mary V. Mistress of Modernism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Dearborn had unprecedented access to the Guggenheim family, friends, and archival papers. Gill, Anton. Art Lover: A Biography of Peggy Guggenheim. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. An earlier, comprehensive biography covering all aspects of the life of Peggy Guggenheim drawn from interviews with family and friends and from public and private archives, diaries, and unpublished and published works.
Guston, Philip Guggenheim, Peggy. Art of this Century. 1942. Reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1968. Published as a catalog of Guggenheim’s art collection. Essays on surrealism by Breton and on abstract art by Arp and Piet Mondrian are included. Statements by other artists augment the catalog entries of the artworks. _______. Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict. Garden City, N.Y.: Universe Books, 1980. Guggenheim’s autobiography recounting her experiences in the art world and her relationships with husbands, friends, and lovers. Vail, Karole B. P. Peggy Guggenheim: A Celebration. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Guggenheim museums, this work includes an essay by Peggy Guggenheim’s granddaughter, Karole Vail, and former Guggenheim Museum director, Thomas Messer. See also: Meyer Guggenheim; Alex Katz; Lee Krasner; Man Ray; Mark Rothko; Gertrude Stein.
Philip Guston Canadian-born artist Guston was a significant figure in the New York School of abstract expressionism that emerged in the 1950’s. Born: June 27, 1913; Montreal, Quebec, Canada Died: June 7, 1980; Woodstock, New York Also known as: Phillip Goldstein (birth name) Area of achievement: Art Early Life Philip Guston, the youngest of seven children, was born Phillip Goldstein in Montreal, Canada, on June 27, 1913, to Leib (Louis) and Rachel Goldstein, Jewish immigrants from Odessa. In 1919, the family moved to Los Angeles, where Louis, a blacksmith by trade, was reduced to carting refuse in a horse-drawn wagon. Depressed by his inability to support his large family, he hanged himself. Guston discovered his father’s body, an event that traumatized him and found echo in his first mature painting, Conspirators (1930), which depicts Ku Klux Klan lynchers with knouts and ropes. Guston found refuge in drawing, which he practiced in a large closet lit by a dangling light bulb; the image of the bulb would return as a key iconographic element of his late art. His precocity was indicated when he won an
art contest sponsored by the Los Angeles Times in 1927. He attended Manual Arts High School, from which he and his classmate, Jackson Pollock, were expelled for criticizing the school’s curriculum. Pollock was readmitted, but Guston did not return. He won a scholarship to the Otis Art League, but, dissatisfied with its academic approach, he dropped out after three months. It was there, however, that he met his future wife, Musa McKim, whom he married in 1937. In 1931, he had his first exhibition, where Conspirators was sold; the painting was subsequently lost. Life’s Work With many other artists, Guston—who began to call himself Guston from 1935 onward—found work during the Great Depression with the New Deal’s mural arts programs, the Works Progress Administration, and the Federal Arts Project. He met and worked beside artists who would become the most significant figures of abstract expressionism, including Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. Guston’s mural work, which won a first prize at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, displayed his thorough study of Renaissance art and the influence 501
Guston, Philip of Pablo Picasso, Giorgio De Chirico, Fernand Léger, and José Clemente Orozco, whose work he observed directly as it was being produced. In 1940, Guston moved to Woodstock, New York. He returned to easel painting with a pivotal work, Martial Memory (1941). During and after World War II, he held teaching positions at the University of Iowa and Washington University. As his reputation grew, he received prestigious awards and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Prix de Rome, which enabled him to travel to Europe for the first time. Several paintings from the late 1940’s, including Porch No. 2 (1947) and The Tormentors (1947-1948), signaled a move toward abstraction. As he was to do twenty years later, Guston temporarily abandoned painting to work out his stylistic change in pen and ink. When he returned to the easel, it was with a fully developed abstract idiom, first displayed in a 1952 exhibit at New York’s Peridot Gallery. In a series of major works, including Zone (1953-1954), Beggar’s Joys (1954-1955), Dial (1956), and To Fellini (1958), he emerged as a leader of the New York School. Guston never abandoned the image, however, and the thick impasto shapes that bulked in his work as the 1950’s progressed showed his journey back toward figuration. He was not, however, prepared to embrace pop art when it emerged in the early 1960’s, and in 1962 he joined with fellow expressionists in leaving the Sidney Janis Gallery in protest over a pop art exhibition. That same year, he enjoyed a major retrospective at the newly opened Guggenheim Museum in New York. However, the high tide of abstract expressionism passed, and by 1970 many of the leaders of the New York School had died. Guston’s palette, so vivid and arresting in the 1950’s, became progressively darker, and the still-undefined shapes that haunted his canvases became more insistent and obsessive. In the late 1960’s, Guston again abandoned painting in favor of pen and ink. In a remarkable series of drawings executed in 1968 and 1969, he worked his way back to direct representation, one object at a time. The iconography he worked out—the Ku Klux Klan figures he referred to as “hoods”; clocks and pointing fingers; ladders and flattened shoe soles; nail-studded sticks and shield-like garbage covers; brick walls and tenements—suggested both the urban anomie of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s and the more private drama of the aging and ailing artist. This new work was first exhibited at the Marlborough Gallery in 1970, where it received largely negative and even outraged reviews. For Guston, however, the new style was 502
Jewish Americans liberating, and his final decade would be, despite failing health, the most productive of his career. By the end he no longer had the strength for easel work, but he continued his voluminous output in acrylic and ink on paper. On June 7, 1980, he died of a heart attack in Woodstock, just after the opening of a major new retrospective organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Significance Guston’s fifty-year career spanned New Deal pictorialism, abstract expressionism, and the neo-figuration of the 1970’s, of which he was a pioneer. His abstract expressionist works remain central both to his own and to the New York School’s achievement, but his more immediate influence lies with his late work, whose objectification is not static, as in pop art, but ceaselessly questioning and dynamic. A major retrospective in 2003 and 2004 confirmed his status as one of the major figures of twentieth century American art. Guston had friendships with many important writers, including E. E. Cummings and Philip Roth, and the impact of his sensibility can be seen in literature as well as in the arts. —Robert Zaller Further Reading Ashton, Dore. A Critical Study of Philip Guston. New York: Viking Press, 1976. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Ashton’s classic study of Guston’s paintings and drawings was the only such work authorized by the artist. With updated bibliography and new final chapter. Feld, Ross. Guston in Time: Remembering Philip Guston. New York: Counterpoint, 2003. Novelist Feld’s memoir of his long friendship with Guston, combining biography with interpretations of Guston’s work and excerpts from his letters. Mayer, Musa. Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston by His Daughter. New York: Penguin Books, 1990. Includes extensive interviews with Guston’s family, friends, students, and colleagues, and the artist’s letters, notes, and other writings. Richly illustrated with several full-color images of paintings. Storr, Robert. Philip Guston. New York: Abbeville Press, 1986. Comprehensive introduction to Guston’s life and work, written by a leading art critic. See also: Helen Frankenthaler; Adolph Gottlieb; Peggy Guggenheim; Alex Katz; Lee Krasner; Barnett Newman; Mark Rothko.
H David Halberstam Journalist Halberstam was a globetrotting journalist whose reporting on the Vietnam War helped shape negative American popular opinion about the conflict and won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1964. His 1972 book, The Best and the Brightest, blamed the American political elite for this unpopular war. Born: April 10, 1934; New York, New York Died: April 23, 2007; Menlo Park, California Areas of achievement: Journalism; social issues; sports; war Early Life David Halberstam (HAL-bur-stam) was in 1934 in New York City. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe , who arrived in America around 1890. His father, Charles Halberstam, served as a combat medic in World War I and graduated from medical school afterward, setting up practice in New York City before becoming an Army surgeon. His mother, Blanche Levy, held a postgraduate degree in education from Boston University and worked as a schoolteacher. When David Halberstam and his older brother Michael were boys, the Halberstams moved to Army bases all over the United States. Their homes ranged from El Paso, Texas, to Winsted, Connecticut, where Halberstam was a classmate of consumer advocate Ralph Nader. To fit in with the local boys, the brothers became tenacious fighters, brash and independent. In addition to getting good grades in school, they were involved heavily in team sports, such as football, basketball, and baseball. After World War II, the family moved to Yonkers in Westchester County, New York. Halberstam graduated from high school in 1951, one year after his father died in 1950. Halberstam was admitted to Harvard, where, as a Jew, he felt accepted academically but not socially. He became managing editor of the university newspaper, The Crimson, and relished work with tight deadlines. In 1955, he earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism, then an exotic choice, while Michael studied medicine. Attracted to the controversial, Halberstam covered
the Civil Rights movement for a tiny Mississippi paper, The Daily Times Leader of West Point, for ten months in 1955 and 1956 before being fired for his progressive ideas. He got a job with The Nashville Tennessean in April, 1956. In relatively sophisticated Nashville, Halberstam spent four happy years at the newspaper he called his graduate school. In November, 1960, upon invitation by James Reston, the bureau chief, Halberstam joined the Washington, D.C., bureau of The New York Times. Halberstam was bored in Washington and did poorly. From 1961 to 1962, Reston assigned him as foreign correspondent in the Congo, and Halberstam thrived. In September, 1962, Halberstam was assigned to Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam.
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Halberstam, David Life’s Work Arriving in Saigon, Halberstam was eager to report on America’s support for President Ngo Dinh Diem fighting a bitter guerrilla war against Communists from North Vietnam. Halberstam accompanied U.S. troops on fifty combat missions. What he saw in the field starkly contrasted with the rosy versions of the conflict offered to the media by senior American officials. Halberstam was enraged with official lies, and his reporting became antagonistic. In the aftermath of Diem’s clash with extreme Buddhists beginning on May 8, 1963, Halberstam became convinced that Diem had to be removed from office. Together with his reporter colleagues Stanley Karnow and Neil Sheehan, he wrote articles highlighting the problems of Diem’s regime. Their reporting became more urgent after the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc fatally set himself on fire in public protest on June 11, 1963. President John F. Kennedy asked Arthur Ochs Sulz-
THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST The Best and the Brightest (1972) represents David Halberstam’s devastating reckoning with the leading American policy makers he held accountable for dragging the United States into an unwinnable war in Vietnam. The title is sarcastic, indicating that the elite of U.S. statesmen educated at the best universities and institutions was unable to foresee the tragedy they were creating. Published at the height of the sometimes secret negotiations to end America’s involvement in the war in Vietnam, The Best and the Brightest has been incredibly popular ever since. A 2001 reprint with a foreword by Senator John McCain, himself a former prisoner of war of North Vietnam, successfully showed that contemporary American readers still were convinced by the force of Halberstam’s arguments and the persuasive power of his research that the Vietnam War was folly. Some critics have suggested that the book constitutes the revenge by outsider Halberstam on an elite establishment that first socially rejected him at Harvard in the early 1950’s for his Jewish heritage and later blatantly lied to him in the person of high American officials during his time as a reporter in Saigon from 1962 to 1963. History showed that what Halberstam revealed and fiercely denounced—the American experiment to win the conflict in Vietnam based on a finely calculated, often deceptively limited approach—failed in the face of Communist determination to win at all costs.
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Jewish Americans berger, then publisher of The New York Times, to replace Halberstam in Saigon, but Sulzberger refused to remove Halberstam. After Diem was killed in an American-approved coup on November 2, 1963, the war deteriorated. Halberstam left Saigon. In 1964, he received the Pulitzer Prize for his work in Vietnam. During his next assignment, in Warsaw, Halberstam married Polish actor El/bieta Czy/ewska on June 13, 1965. He also published his first nonfiction book, The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam During the Kennedy Era, in 1965. After an assignment in Paris in 1966, Halberstam angrily left The New York Times in 1967 for Harper’s magazine until 1971. Halberstam wrote two more nonfiction books before the great success of his 1972 best seller, The Best and the Brightest, which charged that elite American statesmen created a disaster in Vietnam. In 1977, Halberstam and Czy/ewska were divorced. In 1979, Halberstam’s The Powers That Be looked at the power of the media in American politics. On June 29, 1979, Halberstam married Jean Sandness Butler, who was born in 1947 and was a Lutheran. Their daughter Julia was born in 1980. Halberstam agreed that his fellow reporter A. J. “Jack” Langguth become Julia’s godfather in the Christian tradition. In the 1980’s, Halberstam began writing sports books. The Breaks of the Game (1981) looked at professional basketball. The Amateurs (1985) concerned four American athletes’ quest for Olympic gold medals. In The Reckoning (1986), Halberstam looked at competition between Japanese and American car companies. Summer of ’49 (1989), Halberstam’s chronicle of the 1949 baseball pennant race, became a popular book. He continued to write, producing ten more books about sports or politics, his last being The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (2007). With rare exceptions, Halberstam’s books did not mention his Jewish identity. However, as shown by the last call he made to his friend Jim Wooten, in private, Halberstam felt deeply Jewish American. In the call, he gently mocked Wooten for playing golf at a club where Jews still did not feel fully welcome and ended with greetings to the few Jews on these greens. On April 23, 2007, Halberstam died in a car accident, a broken rib puncturing his heart, in Menlo Park, California. Significance Halberstam established his reputation as a brilliant if controversial writer with his reporting from Saigon in
Jewish Americans 1962 and 1963. Marguerite Higgins, a fellow journalist there, charged Halberstam, Karnow, and Sheehan with deliberately undermining America’s war effort by focusing exclusively on the negative and refusing to see their manipulation by the extremist Buddhist monk Thich Tri Quang. Halberstam’s reporting indubitably helped shift the mood in Washington toward an acceptance, if not outright promotion, of the coup against Diem. After the coup things got much worse instead of better as hoped by Halberstam and others. Historian Mark Moyar even called the three writers the most harmful journalists in American history, which other historians consider an exaggeration. After the success of The Best and the Brightest, Halberstam quickly became one of America’s most wellread nonfiction writers. He gained a large and loyal readership with his trademark focus on telling anecdote and detail, his dedication to progressive social values, and his tendency to personalize history. — R. C. Lutz Further Reading Dygert, James H. The Investigative Journalist: Folk Heroes of a New Era. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1976. This older book is still valuable to illustrate original impact and popular appeal of journalists such as Halberstam. Places Halberstam in the context
Hall, Monty of post-Watergate American disillusionment with government. Moyar, Mark. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Revisionist history with extremely critical evaluation of Halberstam’s reporting from Vietnam. Author sees Halberstam as tendentious, often false and misleading, and damaging to American policy. Includes notes and index. Prochnau, William W. Once upon a Distant War. New York: Times Books, 1995. Sympathetically chronicles how Halberstam and other journalists became infuriated by official lies in Vietnam and gradually turned from idealistic supporters to staunch opponents of America’s war effort. Great detail and attention to Halberstam’s Jewish heritage in sections devoted to him. Includes index. Wooten, Jim. “The Halberstam You Didn’t Know.” Columbia Journalism Review 46, no. 2 (July/August, 2007): 16-20. Sympathetic review of Halberstam as private man and friend. Records Halberstam’s last phone call to the author on the day of his death, confirming Halberstam’s lifelong identification with his Jewish heritage. See also: Carl Bernstein; Matt Drudge; Seymour M. Hersh; William Safire.
Monty Hall Canadian-born actor, entertainer, and philanthropist Best known as host of the long-running and successful game show Let’s Make a Deal (1963-1986), Hall has been a television producer, an actor, and an emcee. The recipient of many awards for his generous involvement in philanthropic activities, he considers his children his greatest accomplishment. Born: August 25, 1921; Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Also known as: Maurice Halperin; Monty Halparin; Monty Halperin; Monte Halparin (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; philanthropy; social issues Early Life Born in 1921 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Maurice Harvey Halparin and Rose Rusen, Monty Hall grew up in his grandfather’s house, with aunts, uncles,
cousins, grandparents, and two sets of great-grandparents. Hall wanted to attend medical school and spent two years working in his father’s butcher shop to save the $150 needed for the University of Manitoba (UM) tuition. After one year, Hall’s money was gone; he had to leave school. When clothing merchant Max Freed inquired about his presence in the shop, he learned why and offered Hall the tuition. In exchange, Hall agreed to repayment, to keeping good grades, and to helping another person. Upon his return to UM, Hall served as student body president and found his passion to be entertainment, not medicine. Hall’s decision came after he produced and starred in theatrical performances, worked at a radio station, and emceed a traveling army show. On September 28, 1947, Hall married television producer and writer Marilyn Doreen Plottel. They had three children: Joanna 505
Hall, Monty
Monty Hall. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
(Gleason), Richard, and Sharon Fay. Hall calls his children his greatest achievement. When Joanna was born in 1950, Hall was working at the Canadian Wheat Board and had changed his name from Halparin to Hall. Actor Joanna—married to actor Chris Sarandon—received a Tony Award for Best Actress and Broadway’s 1988 Theatre Award. Richard is an Emmy Award winner. Sharon is a senior executive with Sony Television. Life’s Work The Halls moved to New York in 1956, and he began working for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). He served as a sports announcer from 1956 to 1963. The Halls moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960’s. He sold his show Your First Impression and emceed such shows as The Sky’s the Limit (1955-1956); Cowboy Theatre (1956-1957), Bingo-at-Home (1958), Monitor (1956-1961), Byline: Monty Hall (1959), and Video Village (1960-1962). He held recurring roles on ER. 506
Jewish Americans In 1963, Hall and Stefan Hatos created Let’s Make a Deal (1963-1986). The show gave costumed contestants the chance to trade items they had with them for an unknown prize in a box or behind a door. The game show led to the development of a puzzle by Steve Selvin in 1975, and it was published in American Statistician. Selvin called this dilemma “The Monty Hall Problem” or “The Monty Hall Paradox”: There are three doors with prizes behind each. The contestant chooses one door. Monty Hall offers to change the door the contestant chose for another and also reveals the prize behind one of the doors not chosen. Should the contestant make the switch? Although Hall did not regularly use this practice, the conclusion is that the contestant should make the exchange. Originally, the probability is 1:3 that the selected door is the correct one; after opening one door, the usual conclusion is that the probability is 2:3, the chance is doubled. Mathematicians and the public have debated the probability statistics for decades. When Hall left Let’s Make a Deal in 1986, he devoted his time to fund-raising for various charities. His awards are numerous: the 1988 Order of Canada, the highest award from the government of his birthplace; induction into the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame (1995); and stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1973), the Palm Springs Walk of Stars (1996), and Toronto’s Walk of Fame (2002). Hall was Hollywood’s honorary mayor from 1973 to 1979, and he earned more than five hundred awards for charitable and philanthropic activities, including the Variety Clubs International Humanitarian Award (1983). He received honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Manitoba, Haifa University, and Philadelphia’s Hahnemann Medical College. Significance Hall is highly regarded for his charitable work, using his celebrity status to promote worthy causes, Jewish and secular. He was the driving force behind the development of Israel Tennis Centres, and since 1972, he has spearheaded the annual Monty Hall Diabetes Tennis Tournament, which provides funds for the Diabetes Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. From 1985 to 1995, the annual Monty Hall Golf Classic raised money for young people who compete in the World Maccabiah Games in Israel. His work with Variety clubs, a worldwide organization sponsored by people in show business, has
Jewish Americans benefited young children with limited means for improvement, in health or in education. For the contributions Hall and his wife have made to the Jewish Home, the charity gave its inaugural lifetime achievement award to Marilyn and Monty Hall and named its charitable arm the Marilyn and Monty Hall Statesman’s Society. —Anita Price Davis Further Reading Gardner, Gerald, and Jim Bellows. Eighty: From Ben Bradlee to Lena Horne to Carl Reiner, Our Most Famous Eighty-Year-Olds Reveal Why They Never Felt So Young. Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks, 2007. Still active and still involved with his family, Hall spoke in his interview about the work that is still important to him. Hall, Monty, and Joe Durso. Growing Up Western. Helena, Mont.: Twodot, 1997. This account of his boyhood includes Hall’s story of growing up in the West and includes tales from Old Al, his grandfather. Hall, Monty, and Bill Libby. Emcee Monty Hall. New
Hamlisch, Marvin York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1973. This book is Hall’s autobiography. It describes in detail his creation of Let’s Make a Deal, the most successful game show in television history. King, Alan. Matzo Balls for Breakfast and Other Memories of Growing Up Jewish. New York: Free Press, 2004. Jewish celebrities share anecdotes about their childhoods. In addition to Hall’s story, there are contributions from Billy Crystal, Woody Allen, and Steven Spielberg. Rosenhouse, Jason. The Monty Hall Problem: The Remarkable Story of Math’s Most Contentious Brainteaser. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. This is a readable but serious explanation of the Monty Hall Dilemma, faced by contestants choosing and changing unopened boxes for prizes. Psychologists, philosophers, and mathematicians share their perspectives. See also: Larry Gelbart; Mark Goodson; Norman Lear; Groucho Marx; Rod Serling; Aaron Spelling.
Marvin Hamlisch Composer and musician Hamlisch is a pianist, conductor, and award-winning composer of Broadway musicals, Hollywood film scores, and Top 40 hit songs. Born: June 2, 1944; New York, New York Also known as: Marvin Frederick Hamlisch (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; theater; entertainment Early Life Marvin Hamlisch (MAHR-vihn HAM-lihsh) is the son of Max Hamlisch, a musician, and Lilly Schachter, a seamstress. Both parents were from Vienna and escaped from Austria, fearing the increasing German aggression against Jews. They landed at Ellis Island on Thanksgiving, 1937. Marvin Hamlisch has one sibling, an older sister. By the time Hamlisch was three, he was keeping time with the music on the radio, and his father realized his son had musical talent. When Hamlisch was five, he listened to his sister’s piano lessons, and when the teacher left, Hamlisch went to the piano and picked out the songs by ear. At age six Hamlisch auditioned for a place at the
Juilliard School of Music’s Preparatory Division. When the judges heard he could play a melody in any key, Hamlisch was accepted, the youngest student ever accepted at Juilliard, and he attended classes every Saturday until he was twenty. However, despite his father’s wishes, Hamlisch did not aspire to become a classical musician; he wanted to write a Broadway show. Hamlisch took weekly piano lessons and attended public school, where he played piano for assemblies. By the sixth grade he was adept at playing both classical and popular pieces. When the class put on a production of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), Hamlisch taught the songs, rehearsed the cast, and played all the music. For junior high, to accommodate his lessons at Juilliard and his piano lessons, Hamlisch enrolled at the Professional Children’s School. There he met students involved in music and the theater. One of his friends was dating Liza Minnelli. Minnelli asked Hamlisch, who had been writing songs with lyricist Howard Liebling, his brother-in-law, to write some songs for her. Minnelli recorded the songs for a Christmas surprise for her mother, Judy Garland. Hamlisch and Liebling continued writing songs and finally had a hit 507
Hamlisch, Marvin with “Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows,” recorded by Lesley Gore in 1965. Life’s Work When Hamlisch was a senior in high school, Minnelli introduced him to Buster Davis, a prominent musical director and vocal arranger. After Hamlisch auditioned, Davis hired him as a rehearsal pianist for a new show Funny Girl (1964). Davis taught Hamlisch about working in show business, requiring him to do everything from fetching coffee to playing for the singers. Hamlisch also wrote background vocals for the chorus. His ability to play in any key and write down changes in the music score proved invaluable. When the show opened, Hamlisch returned to classes at Queens College, part of the City University of New York, where he was enrolled. Davis then hired Hamlisch to work with him on the televised Bell Telephone Hour. Still taking classes, Hamlisch put in long hours, but the television show provided him with the experience of working with many different artists, such as Erroll Garner and Leontyne Price. His duties
Marvin Hamlisch. (Redferns/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans ranged from writing new arrangements for the singers to being rehearsal pianist. After three seasons, when the show went off the air in 1966, Hamlisch returned to college as a full-time student; he received a B.A. in music in 1967. Hamlisch waited for the next opportunity. It came in the form of an invitation to play piano at a party, hosted by Hollywood film producer Sam Spiegel, and this resulted in an opportunity to score a Hollywood film, The Swimmer (1968), based on John Cheever’s story of the same name. Once the score was completed, Hamlisch relocated to Los Angeles, hired two orchestrators, and for the first time heard his music played by a full orchestra. The film was not a success, but Hamlisch’s score received excellent reviews. He was beginning to be recognized, and he scored two films for Woody Allen. Hamlisch scored the music for Kotch (1971), and his song “Life Is What You Make It,” with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, won a Golden Globe. It was his score of the Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford hit The Way We Were (1973) that brought him fame. The film score and the title song, sung by Streisand, earned Hamlisch two Academy Awards. At the same award ceremony, Hamlisch won a third Academy Award for his adaptation of Scott Joplin’s ragtime music for The Sting (1973). The year 1974 was big for Hamlisch; in May he received a call from director-choreographer Michael Bennett, asking him to “drop everything” and return to New York. Bennett’s project was A Chorus Line (1975), and he wanted Hamlisch to write the music, with lyrics by Ed Kleban. The musical was unusual in that the story line was individual stories of dancers, auditioning for a musical. The music consisted of dance numbers and songs expressing various characters’ ideas, dreams, and struggles. A major hit song from the show, “What I Did for Love,” was almost not included. The New York Times reviewer described Hamlisch’s score as perfect. The show ran for fifteen years on Broadway, 6,238 performances, and earned Hamlisch a Tony Award for Best Original Score as well as a Pulitzer Prize. Following his success with A Chorus Line, Hamlisch returned to Hollywood to write the music for a James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). He teamed with the lyricist Carole Bayer Sager to write what became a hit song, sung by Carly Simon, “Nobody Does It Better.” The professional collaboration with Sager became a personal relationship. They were together until 1980, and their relationship was the basis of the Neil Simon musical They’re Playing Our Song (1978), with music by Hamlisch and lyrics by Sager. The show opened on
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Broadway on February 11, 1979; at this time Rescuing THE WAY WE WERE Hamlisch had two shows running on Broadway. Always busy, Hamlisch returned to Hollywood Marvin Hamlisch had already gained some fame as a Hollyto adapt the music for Ordinary People (1980) wood composer of film scores when producer Ray Stark offered and write the score for Sophie’s Choice (1982). him the opportunity to score a film, The Way We Were (1973), starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. Hamlisch had worked He started work on another musical based on with Streisand on Funny Girl (1964) and looked forward to having the life of film star Jean Seberg. In 1983, the her sing his music. However, the title song, with lyrics by Alan and show opened in London and was a flop. DisMarilyn Bergman, did not please Streisand. She thought the song couraged, Hamlisch turned to other projects. was too sentimental, and she had to be persuaded to sing it. Once He began conducting various orchestras, inthe film was completed, the film was screened before a preview aucluding the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Boston dience. The ending, when the major characters meet again after Pops, and the London Symphony. Another musome years, should have moved the audience to tears, but it failed sical, Smile (1986), was also a failure, but his to do so. Hamlisch had to fight for permission to redo the conclupersonal life improved when he met Terre Blair, sion with the addition of the title song, and he had to pay the musia television interviewer. Their courtship began cians himself. The new ending, with the song, sung by Streisand, on long-distance telephone calls, but once they evoked those tears. The film earned Hamlisch two Academy Awards, and the title song, recorded by Streisand, was named by met, marriage followed shortly thereafter, on Billboard as the number one pop hit of 1974. March 6, 1989. Hamlisch has continued to write and arrange music. He was commissioned to write music based on Emery Reves’s 1945 book The Anatthe second person (Richard Rodgers was the first) to win omy of Peace, and it was premiered by the Dallas SymEmmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards and the Pulitphony Orchestra in 1991. Hamlisch was musical dizer Prize. rector and arranger for Streisand’s comeback tour in —Marcia B. Dinneen 1994, which was filmed for television and won Hamlisch two Emmy Awards. He received another Emmy for Further Reading Streisand’s 2001 television special Barbra Streisand— DeMain, Bill. “Legends of Songwriting: Marvin HamTimeless. In addition, Hamlisch has been a principal conlisch.” The Performing Songwriter, July, 2003, 90-91. ductor for a number of orchestras. He has been the princiAn overview of Hamlisch’s life and career. pal pops conductor for the Pittsburgh Symphony since Griffin, Mark. “Nobody Does It Better: An Interview 1995, and he was appointed principal pops conductor with Marvin Hamlisch.” Film Score Monthly 8, no. 4 of the National Symphony, beginning with the 2000(April/May, 2003): 14-16. Includes information on 2001 season. In 2010, Hamlisch was appointed principal Hamlisch’s accomplishments and background on his conductor for the Pasadena Pops orchestra. Hamlisch work for filmmakers. has continued to score for Hollywood films, including Hamlisch, Marvin, with Gerald Gardner. The Way I Was. The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) and The Informant! New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992. This auto(2009). biography is a down-to-earth look at Hamlisch, detailing his struggles to succeed and the people he met Significance along the way to success. Hamlisch has been involved with music all his life. His career has spanned four decades and ranges from See also: Burt Bacharach; Billy Joel; Carole King; writing pop songs to composing film scores and writing Barry Manilow; Randy Newman; Stephen Sondheim; Broadway musicals. Hamlisch has scored more than Barbra Streisand. forty films. He received a number of awards and is only
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Oscar Handlin Scholar, educator, and writer A renowned historian, Handlin pioneered the academic study of immigration and immigrants in America, writing extensively on ethnic and social history. Born: September 29, 1915; Brooklyn, New York Areas of achievement: Education; scholarship; social issues Early Life Oscar Handlin (AHS-kahr HAND-lihn) was born to Joseph Handlin and Ida Yanowicz, Jewish immigrants from Russia. Oscar Handlin’s parents were independent entrepreneurs in groceries, dry cleaning, and real estate. As a child, Handlin was a voracious reader of history. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1934 after three years and from Harvard University with a master’s degree in history in 1935. As an undergraduate he won the Union League History Prize. On entering Harvard he wished to study medieval history, but the professor he favored retired. He switched to the renowned historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., and pursued his doctorate in American immigration. From 1936 to 1938 he taught history at Brooklyn College, while working on his doctorate, which he received in 1940. In 1939, he returned to Harvard and remained there until his retirement in 1986. In 1937, he married another historian, Mary Flug, with whom he had three children, two sons and a daughter. His wife died in 1976, and Handlin married Lillian Bombach in 1977. Life’s Work In 1941, Handlin’s first book, based on his dissertation Boston’s Immigrants: A Study in Acculturation, won the American Historical Association’s Dunning Prize awarded to young scholars. In 1947, he collaborated with his wife to write Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy: Massachusetts, 1774-1861. This was the first of a number of books he coauthored with his wives and other colleagues. In 1951, Handlin published his classic The Uprooted, making him a well-known figure to many undergraduates studying American history. The Uprooted was a definitive and well-written study of American immigration, even if some critics pointed to examples of immigrants that did not fit Handlin’s mold. The work won the Pulitzer Prize. In addition to the positive experiences, Handlin pointed out the negative impact of immigration as the newcomers contrasted the strange, harried, fast-paced 510
life in the New World with the idealized villages they left behind. Handlin wrote biographies and studies on the Civil Rights movement and other periods of American history. In 1954, Handlin became a full professor at Harvard. The same year he published two of his important works on American attitudes toward immigrants. One, The American People in the Twentieth Century, was an analysis of views toward immigrants and racism in America. The other, Adventure in Freedom: Three Hundred Years of Jewish Life in America, gave his incisive and authoritative history of Jews in the United States and the antiSemitism that accompanied it. His other books on immigration include From the Outer World, edited with his wife Lillian, which is a collection of essays by visitors to the United States from the non-European world. Handlin was one of the editors of the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (1980). In 1969, he edited the forty-two volumes of the American Immigration Collection. Handlin also was the editor-in chief of the Harvard Guide to American History, first published in 1954, a valuable bibliographic guide for students at all levels. In 1979, his students wrote Uprooted American: Essays to Honor Oscar Handlin. Handlin regularly wrote about books for the prestigious Atlantic Monthly. He also managed a television station in Boston and served as chair for the committee awarding Fulbright scholarships. He was the director of the Harvard University Library from 1979 to 1983. In addition, he lectured around the United States. Handlin was no stranger to controversy. His 1964 Fire-Bell in the Night: The Crisis in Civil Rights criticized segregation but also affirmative action measures to promote integration. Staunchly anticommunist, he supported the Vietnam War and opposed the demonstrations against it. He also dismissed the radical historians of the 1960’s and 1970’s as faddists and biased. Handlin has argued that racism in America stems from slavery, but the African American slaves were viewed as inferior because of their status as slaves, not because of their race. Handlin also wrote articles and reviews for the American Jewish Committee’s journal Commentary. In his 1948 article “Our Unknown Jewish Ancestors,” he criticized American works on Jewish history for being either apologetic or filled with false pride and called for more serious works. The piece excited a great deal of comment and discussion.
Jewish Americans Significance Many scholars believe Handlin legitimized the study of immigration and immigrants in American history. He has written or coauthored almost 150 books and has edited scores of others. The Uprooted examines the impact that immigration had on the future generations, not just on the society as a whole. One of his major points was that the immigrants came not because they saw America as the land of opportunity but because they could not remain in their homelands. When the famous journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote an article in Commentary warning American Jews that Zionism might lead them to loyalties divided between Israel and the United States, Handlin rebutted her, saying it was not necessarily true. He argued that all immigrants had sympathy for their original homelands, and Jewish sympathy for Israel was in the American tradition. —Frederick B. Chary Further Reading Berwin, Lila Corwin. Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Iden-
Harburg, Yip tity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Examines Jewish self-identity and its role in American life. Handlin is one of the authors she analyzes. Handlin, Oscar. “A Career at Harvard.” The American Scholar 65 (Winter, 1996): 47-58. Handlin writes about his academic experience at Harvard University. _______. The Uprooted. 2d ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Handlin’s Pulitzer Prizewinning classic. He discusses and analyzes the immigrant experience in America. Stave, Bruce. The Making of Urban History: Historiography Through Oral History. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1977. This collection of essays on urban history contains an interview with Handlin, who expresses his view on the ethnic and immigrant contribution to American urban life. Whitfield, Stephen J. “Handlin’s History.” American Jewish History 70 (December, 1980): 226-237. Examines Handlin’s contribution to American history and his analysis of the Jewish experience in America. See also: Daniel Bell; Daniel J. Boorstin; Peter Gay; Barbara W. Tuchman.
Yip Harburg Lyricist, poet, and writer Harburg had an uncanny ability to tap into the hopes and the fears of Americans through his poignant, cleverly subversive song lyrics. Born: April 8, 1896; New York, New York Died: March 5, 1981; Hollywood, California Also known as: E. Y. Harburg; Irwin Hochberg; Yisrael Hochberg; Isidore Hochberg (birth name); Edgar Yipsel Harburg (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment Early Life Yip Harburg (yihp HAR-burg) was born into poverty on the lower East Side of New York City. He was the son of Louis and Mary Ricing Hochberg, Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jews and staunch socialists who had emigrated from Russia in the 1880’s. The Hochbergs produced ten children, only four of whom survived. As a child, the hyperactive Harburg was given the nickname Yipsl, Yiddish for squirrel. He began working at an early age to help with the family’s finances. For enter-
tainment, he attended Yiddish theater and vaudeville shows, and he read for hours at the public library, where he developed a particular fondness for the surprise endings of O. Henry stories and the witty poetry of W. S. Gilbert. Harburg went to high school at Townsend Harris Hall, where he developed a lifelong friendship with classmate Ira Gershwin. After graduation, Harburg and Gershwin attended City College together, and Harburg began contributing light verse to local publications. Following college, he worked as a factory supervisor for the Swift Company in Uruguay from 1917 to 1920. Upon his return to New York, he went into partnership with a college chum in an electrical appliance enterprise. In 1923, he married Alice Richmond, with whom he had two children, and he took the name Yip Harburg. The appliance business thrived until the stock market crash of 1929. His marriage ended in divorce, and Harburg, plunged into debt. He had to borrow money from Gershwin to survive. However, Gershwin did Harburg an even bigger favor by introducing him to composer Jay Gorney. 511
Harburg, Yip Life’s Work Harburg and Russian-born Gorney began collaborating in 1929, and that year they contributed several songs to the film Applause (1929) and to the Broadway revue Earl Carroll’s Sketchbook (1929). The exposure led to further collaborations with composers such as Harold Arlen and Vernon Duke. Harburg also signed a contract with Paramount Pictures on Long Island to supply humorous poems for short subjects and cartoons. The Gorney-Harburg team was kept busy in the early 1930’s turning out songs for a number of musical revues—Garrick Gaieties, Vanderbilt Revue, Ziegfeld Follies—and hit it big with a number for Americana (1932), “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” The song tidily encapsulated America’s economic woes and showcased Harburg’s special talents for using simple words and an undercurrent of social commentary to capture complex emotions. That same year, the Arlen-Harburg collaboration produced “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” and Harburg and Duke wrote “April in Paris.” In 1934, Harburg and Arlen moved to Hollywood to write songs for film. The two men worked on dozens of movies in the 1930’s and 1940’s, highlighted by their efforts in The Wizard of Oz (1939), for which Harburg wrote lyrics for all the songs. Harburg and Arlen shared an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Over the Rainbow,“ which became Judy Garland’s signature tune. That same year, Harburg wrote the lyrics for songs in At the Circus, including “Lydia the Tattooed Lady,” which became one of Groucho Marx’s favorite performance pieces. Even while working on the West Coast, Harburg continued to pen lyrics for Broadway musicals, including Hooray for What! (1937), Bloomer Girl (1944), and his masterpiece, Finian’s Rainbow (1947). The Broadway connection would be particularly important to Harburg after 1951 when he was blacklisted from film, radio, and television because of alleged activities associated with the Communist Party. Harburg kept busy right to the end of his life, working on such Broadway musicals as The Happiest Girl in the World (1961) and Darling of the Day (1968) and publishing books of light verse: Rhymes for the Irreverent (1965) and At This Point in Rhyme (1976). He died of a massive heart attack in Hollywood while driving to a film story conference. Significance During his long and productive career, Harburg wrote intelligent, crafty lyrics for more than six hundred topi-
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Jewish Americans cal, often socially relevant songs. Unusual among lyricists, who generally collaborate with only a handful of favorite partners, Harburg relished the variety of working with many composers. Between 1929 and 1979, he collaborated with nearly fifty individuals, including some of the biggest names in the business: Sammy Fain, Arlen, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Levant, Burton Lane, Jerome Kern, Gershwin, Jule Styne, and Jacques Offenbach. In 2005, the United States Postal Service commemorated Harburg’s life with his portrait on a thirty-seven-cent postage stamp. — Jack Ewing Further Reading Gottlieb, Jack. Funny, It Doesn’t Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. This wellresearched study encompasses theatrical and popular music between 1914 and 1964, illustrating how Jewish melodic themes—such as the Yiddish lullaby that inspired “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”—have permeated American culture. Harburg, Yip, et al. The Wizard of Oz: Seventieth Anniversary Deluxe Songbook. Harlow, England: Alfred Publishing, 2009. A compendium of lyrics and chords for all the film’s songs, including some that were deleted, with background information and many photos. Keyser, Herbert. Geniuses of the American Musical Theatre: The Composers and Lyricists. New York: Applause, 2009. This is a collection of illustrated biographies of twenty-eight of the most renowned Broadway songwriters and lyricists, including Harburg. Suskin, Steven. The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. This explores the crucial relationship between composers and orchestrators that makes or breaks a Broadway production. Contains specific information on Harburg-written songs for Finian’s Rainbow and details about the scores of all of Harburg’s staged musicals. See also: Harold Arlen; Burt Bacharach; Irving Berlin; Sammy Cahn; Leonard Cohen; Betty Comden; Adolph Green; Lorenz Hart; Jerome Kern; Alan Jay Lerner; Frederick Loewe.
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Hart, Lorenz
Lorenz Hart Lyricist and playwright Collaborating with composer Richard Rodgers from 1919 through 1943, Hart produced the lyrics for hit Broadway musicals and popular songs. His clever use of language and rhymes had a dramatic influence on twentieth century musical theater. Born: May 2, 1895; Harlem, New York Died: November 22, 1943; New York, New York Also known as: Larry Hart; Lorenz Milton Hart (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; theater
sixteen-year-old Richard Rodgers, a quiet, reserved, tall aspiring songwriter, also of Jewish descent, complained he needed to find a good lyricist, Leavitt took him to meet the boisterous Hart, and the pair hit it off. They managed to place a collaborative work, “Any Old Place with You,” into a 1919 Broadway show entitled Lonely Romeo. After that, writing songs and shows with Rodgers was the focal point of Hart’s life. Life’s Work For six years Rodgers and Hart struggled to get more of their works performed in the Broadway theater. They achieved widespread recognition in 1925 with a show entitled Garrick Gaieties that parodied current events and included their first hit song, “Manhattan.” Their trajectory from then on had three general phases: Through the Roaring Twenties and until the stock market crash in 1929, they created musical comedy shows for the New York and London stages, such as A Connecticut Yankee (1927). From 1930 through 1935, they worked in Hollywood on film scores and musical numbers as a way to further their careers in the dark days of the Great Depression. From 1935 until Hart’s death in 1943 (although heavy drinking on Hart’s part strained their relationship),
Early Life Lorenz Milton Hart (Loh-REHNZ MIHL-tehn hahrt) was born in Harlem in 1895, the son of German immigrants Frieda Isenberg and Max Hertz. His father, who changed his name to Hart upon coming to America, prospered through connections to Tammany Hall, so the family was able to move farther uptown to a largely Jewish and more affluent neighborhood on the edge of Morningside Heights. There Hart and his younger brother Teddy would both be bar mitzvahed at a nearby Reform synagogue, Mount Zion. Hart was always the smallest child in his class at Columbia Grammar and DeWitt Clinton schools, and he used his wit and intelligence to maintain his popularity and social prominence by running literary societies and school papers, serving as a class leader, and gaining a reputation for writing and directing satirical parodies of popular shows. Outgoing, raucous, and the life of the party, he scripted the big show every year at summer camp, and his work in theater eventually landed him a job translating and adapting plays from the German (which he grew up hearing in his home) for the Shubert Organization, even while attending Columbia University. In 1919, a Columbia student named Phil Leavitt found out that Hart was fascinated by new developments in musical theater, which eliminated the customary line of chorus girls and advanced the plot through song. When Lorenz Hart (right) with Richard Rodgers. (Library of Congress)
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the team generated ten new shows, most of them big hits and some quite innovative, including On Your Toes (1935), Babes in Arms (1937), The Boys from Syracuse (1938), and Pal Joey (1940). Gifted, exuberant, and gregarious, Hart was also moody, temperamental, and low in self-esteem. He was Jewish in a society dominated by white Anglo-Saxon Protestant traditions and sensibilities and outside the norm in other noticeable ways. His diminutive stature (he was fourfoot-ten) and his unusual body proportions (large head, small hands, and short legs) set him apart. Something integral to his identity was his sexual orientation: He was attracted to men, a source of personal conflict. This sense of isolation was the source of the most moving songs about unreturned love, which he penned in the first half of the twentieth century. He sought escape and relief in drinking, and as time went on he declined into alcoholism.
“Blue Moon” Although a great many songs with lyrics penned by Lorenz Hart have entertained audiences over the years, “Blue Moon” is a song with an unlikely beginning that has been rediscovered and reappreciated by succeeding generations. It has been covered by a diverse and wide range of recording artists in an equally remarkable variety of musical styles. Hart gave the tune a set of lyrics for Jean Harlow to perform in a 1933 Metro-GoldwynMayer film, but the idea was discarded, although the lyrics were copyrighted. The tune was given lyrics to be the title song for a 1934 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film, Manhattan Melodrama, and that, too, fell through, though again the lyrics were copyrighted. A third set of lyrics was written as “The Bad in Every Man,” for a nightclub number sung by blond actor Shirley Ross in blackface. It received little attention. Still convinced the melody was viable, Jack Robbins at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer persuaded Hart to give it one more try, and he came up with this classic song of someone lonely, looking for love. The song was the theme of radio program Hollywood Hotel and was recorded by jazz vocalist Connee Boswell in early 1935. Subsequent interpretations of the song included one by Mel Tormé that placed on the Billboard charts in 1949; a doo-wop version by the Marcels that went to number one in 1961; a 1994 tribute to Elvis Presley’s take on the song by Chris Isaak; a Rod Stewart and Eric Clapton collaboration in 2004; and a cover by the band Phish in 2009.
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Many of the songs created by Rodgers and Hart, particularly from their time in Hollywood and their last eight years of collaboration, endure as classic ballads and selections popular to cover for musical performers in the twenty-first century. Some of the more notable include “Ten Cents a Dance” from the 1930 musical Simple Simon; “Isn’t It Romantic?” from the 1932 film Love Me Tonight; “The Lady Is a Tramp” and “My Funny Valentine” from the 1937 Broadway musical Babes in Arms; “Falling in Love with Love” from the 1938 Broadway musical The Boys from Syracuse; and “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” from the 1940 Broadway musical Pal Joey. One of the most recorded of Rodgers and Hart’s tunes is a song he wrote the lyrics for in 1934, “Blue Moon.” In 1943, the pair reconciled and launched a revival of their earlier hit A Connecticut Yankee. Unfortunately, Hart had reached the stage in alcoholism where he could not control his actions in public. On opening night he was ejected from the theater for disturbing the audience by loudly singing his lines along with the star, Vivienne Segal. Sent out into a cold, rainy New York November night, he contracted pneumonia, and he died from it a few days later. Significance Hart’s dying words were “What have I lived for?” Although he was periodically consumed with self-loathing, Hart was a brilliant and generous man who loved the world of the theater and was a master at wordplay and internal rhyming. He challenged and transformed the norms for musical song lyrics in the early twentieth century, and much of the impetus for his creativity came from his struggles to fit in with a society that would always consider him different. Hart helped many young entertainers move up in the business, among them Gene Kelly and Desi Arnaz. —Scot M. Guenter Further Reading Hart, Dorothy. Thou Swell, Thou Witty: The Life and Lyrics of Lorenz Hart. New York: Harper and Row, 1976. Rich in photos, with testimonials and recollections from Hart’s friends and associates. Lindberg, Ulf. “Popular Modernism? The ‘Urban’ Style of Interwar Tin Pan Alley.” Popular Music 22, no. 3 (October, 2003): 283-298. Offers a context in which to assess the lyrical innovations introduced by Hart. Nolan, Frederick. Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Well-
Jewish Americans researched biography that also gives a rich sense of the New York entertainment world of the period. Nolan, Frederick, Richard Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein II. The Sound of Their Music: The Story of Rodgers and Hammerstein. New York: Applause Books, 2002. Includes an appraisal of how Rodgers’s
Hart, Moss early work with Hart prepared him for subsequent significant collaborations with Hammerstein. See also: Harold Arlen; Sammy Cahn; Betty Comden; Yip Harburg; Jerome Kern; Alan Jay Lerner; Frederick Loewe; Richard Rodgers.
Moss Hart Playwright A major figure in the American theater, Hart made musical comedy socially relevant and topical. Born: October 24, 1904; Bronx, New York Died: December 20, 1961; Palm Springs, California Also known as: Robert Arnold Conrad Area of achievement: Theater Early Life Moss Hart’s grandfather, Joseph Solomon, a cigar maker, was the ne’er-do-well son of a wealthy and accomplished Jewish family in London. He married without their approval and emigrated to New York, where Hart’s mother was born. While visiting England, she met Barnett Hart, also a cigar maker, who followed her to the United States and married her. Both cigar makers lost their jobs to mechanization. Solomon, a tyrant, forced the Hart family to move in with him after his wife’s death. Moss Hart grew up in grinding poverty, sharing apartments with his grandfather, mother, father, aunt, brother, and sister. They also took in boarders. Later in life, Hart said that his ambition was based on his fear of poverty. One bright spot in his youth was his relationship with his mentally ill aunt, Kate. Every Thursday, until Hart was ten and Kate vanished, she took Hart out of school to attend matinees. He fell in love with Broadway and determined to make his fortune in the theater. Hart had to leave school in seventh grade to begin working to help support the family. While toiling for a clothing manufacturer, he wrote a revue featuring skits about the company’s clothing line to showcase merchandise to clients. This experience energized him, and he began seeking out theatrical employment. At eighteen Hart got a job with booking agent Augustus Pitou. In 1923, Pitou asked Hart to read over some scripts for possible production. Hart decided he could do better and ghostwrote as Robert
Arnold Conrad The Beloved Bandit. Pitou produced it, but it failed and lost Pitou $45,000, forcing him to fire Hart. For the next four years Hart directed community theater, mostly at synagogues and at the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YHMA). He spent summers as social director at Jewish camps, where he produced theatrical entertainments. He also began writing plays, hoping to become a Jewish Eugene O’Neill. A script Hart offered to Broadway producer Jed Harris was rejected but picked up by Sam Harris (no relation), who asked Hart to make it a musical. Hart refused, saying he only wrote serious plays. Harris counter-offered, saying he would produce it if Hart collaborated with George S. Kaufman, the famous playwright, to write the musical. Hart jumped at the chance to work with one of his idols. Life’s Work Hart’s play, Once in a Lifetime (1930), a satire about Broadway actors moving to Hollywood to star in “talkies,” played for 406 performances, making Hart both famous and rich. He moved his family from Brooklyn to Manhattan. This marked the beginning of a professionally and financially rewarding collaboration between Hart and Kaufman, lasting from 1930 to 1940. Together they produced seven plays: Merrily We Roll Along (1934), You Can’t Take It with You (1936), I’d Rather Be Right (1937) with Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (no relation), The Fabulous Invalid (1938), The American Way (1939), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939), and George Washington Slept Here (1940). You Can’t Take It with You (1936) earned Hart the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1937. During the 1930’s Hart also collaborated with Irving Berlin on As Thousands Cheer (1933) and Cole Porter on Jubilee (1935). Hart and Kaufman ended their partnership in 1940 but remained close friends. In1941, Hart teamed with Kurt 515
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ing with Junior Miss in 1941. His greatest directorial success came with My Fair Lady, which ran from 1956 to 1962 for a total of 2,717 perWhen Moss Hart began playwriting he was loath to do musiformances. This was followed by Camelot in cals, thinking that only straight plays were serious theater. His ex1960, his final theatrical achievement. Although perience of musicals consisted mostly of revues, loosely conthe Arthurian musical stumbled in tryouts, when nected acts designed mostly for escapist entertainment. However, Hart suffered a heart attack, Camelot opened when Once in a Lifetime (1933) was turned into a musical, Hart maintained the play’s satiric edge and learned that musical comedy anyway. Hart was able to do some revising and had more potential than he thought. saved the play, turning into a Broadway hit, runCollaborating with Irving Berlin, Hart wanted to make a sophisning for 873 performances. In 1959, Hart’s ticated and modern revue. They came up with the concept of a memoir, Act One: An Autobiography, was pubshow designed around a newspaper, with songs based on the headlished. It is widely considered to be the best lines. Each song in As Thousands Cheer (1933) was topical and book on the American theatrical life in the factual, focused on events or personalities in the news. To remain 1930’s to 1950’s. topical through the show’s run, songs were added, removed, or alPersonally, Hart was witty and charming, tered as needed. It was a totally innovative concept and the show never publicly saying anything mean about anywas a smash. one. Flamboyant and gregarious, he always took Hart continued to alter the musical comedy form in Lady in the care of his family, moving them with him from Dark (1941), making the songs push the story forward rather than simply expressing an emotion. He continued to increase the level Brooklyn to Manhattan to Hollywood, as he of sophistication with My Fair Lady (1956), turning it into the most climbed up the social ladder. He was a spendglamorous show on Broadway. Hart’s vision helped the musical thrift, going through his lifetime earnings of comedy grow from its humble vaudeville background to the serimore than five million dollars. Although there ous American art form it is today. is a lot of speculation that Hart was a homosexual, no definitive proof was ever offered. His wife, Kitty Carlisle Hart, and his two children maintain that he was heterosexual. He Weill (music) and Ira Gershwin (lyrics) to write Lady in struggled with bipolar disorder and depression most of the Dark, based on Hart’s experiences with psychoanalyhis life. Hart died of massive heart failure on December sis. It was a great Broadway smash and proved that Hart 20, 1961. had the talent to work alone or to collaborate. In 1943, Hart wrote Winged Victory as a fund-raiser Significance for the Army Emergency Relief Fund. The play chroniHart left an indelible imprint on American theater. In cled a group of soldiers as they went through pilot trainhis prime, Hart was among the most successful comedy ing. It ran for 226 performances, closing only so the cast playwrights, and his works The Man Who Came to Dincould make the film version. Afterward, the show went ner and You Can’t Take It with You remain favorites, peron tour and played another 445 performances around the formed all over the world in revivals and in community country. His last play of the 1940’s was Light Up the Sky theaters. He introduced high style into musical comedy, (1948), a satire of the theatrical world that even poked with his elegant and urbane direction of My Fair Lady. fun at the playwright. He elevated Broadway with well-written, sophisticated In 1947, Hart wrote the celebrated screenplay for Genscripts and comedies that had depth and provided insight tleman’s Agreement, which won the Academy Award for into the human experience. Best Picture. This film features a reporter passing as Jew—Leslie Neilan ish to uncover the truth about anti-Semitism in America. The film determines that most people are anti-Semitic, Further Reading hypocritical, and racist. This film was the closest Hart Bach, Steven. Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart. ever got to writing the great Jewish American plays that Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2002. This biograhe had desired to do in his early career. He went on to phy of Hart gives a balanced look at Hart’s triumphs write the screenplays for Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and failures. and A Star Is Born (1954). Brown, Jared. Moss Hart: A Prince of the Theater. Hart also achieved fame as a Broadway director, startNew York: Back Stage Books, 2006. Meticulously re-
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Jewish Americans searched biography and analysis of Hart’s life and work. Brown goes to some length to correct the inconsistencies in Hart’s Act One. Hart, Kitty Carlisle. Kitty. New York: Doubleday, 1988. Autobiography by Hart’s wife contains many stories of Hart’s life after Act One. Hart, Moss. Act One: An Autobiography. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. The book is a funny and charming account of an extraordinary life lived in the theater; some details are not entirely true and some of the stories are enhanced for dramatic effect. Lerner, Alan Jay. The Street Where I Live. New York:
Hauptman, Herbert A. W. W. Norton, 1978. Lerner lovingly recounts his experiences making My Fair Lady, Camelot, and Gigi, and includes stories of working with Hart. Mordden, Ethan. Sing for Your Supper: The Broadway Musical in the 1930’s. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Part of a series about musical comedy divided into decades; Mordden showcases this fertile period in the development of the musical. See also: Paddy Chayefsky; Ben Hecht; Lillian Hellman; George S. Kaufman; Larry Kramer; Tony Kushner; Neil Simon.
Herbert A. Hauptman Mathematician and physicist Hauptman’s work in mathematics and X-ray crystallography led to his development of a mathematical formula for determining the threedimensional atomic structure of molecules from twodimensional X-rays. Born: February 14, 1917; Bronx, New York Also known as: Herbert Aaron Hauptman (full name) Areas of achievement: Mathematics; science and technology Early Life Herbert A. Hauptman (HOWPT-man) was born on February 14, 1917, in the Bronx, New York. He is the eldest son of Austrian immigrant Israel and Leah Rosenfeld Hauptman. Herbert A. Hauptman has two brothers, Manuel and Robert. As soon as he learned how to read, Hauptman became interested in science and mathematics. He attended Townsend Harris High School and qualified for free tuition to the City College of New York. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, graduating in 1937. Hauptman went on to obtain his master’s degree in mathematics from Columbia University in 1939. On November 10, 1940, Hauptman married teacher Edith Citrynell, and they moved to Washington, D.C. The couple had two daughters, Barbara, born in 1947, and Carol, born in 1950. Life’s Work In Washington, Hauptman worked as a Census Bureau statistician. During World War II, he served in the
U.S. Army Air Force for five years, from 1942 to 1947, where he worked as a radar instructor. After the war was over, Hauptman went to work at the National Research Laboratory as a physicist and mathematician. At the National Research Laboratory, Hauptman met Jerome Karle, a former classmate from City College of New York, whose background was chemistry. They teamed up to pursue research into identifying molecular structure of substances through the methodological examination of their X-ray crystallography. In 1953, they published a book on their work, Solution of the Phase Problem, 1. The Centrosymmetric Crystal. Hauptman decided to pursue a career in basic scientific research, and so he enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, to pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics. He was awarded his doctorate in 1955. While Hauptman worked on his degree, he continued to work with Karle at the National Research Laboratory on X-ray crystallography. After he obtained his doctorate, Hauptman taught part time at the University of Maryland. Hauptman and Karle worked out a mathematical formula that allowed them to determine the three-dimensional structure of molecules based on a close examination of a two-dimensional crystallographic X-ray. Their formula could be used to locate the exact position of atoms within a structure. However, it was nearly three decades before the importance of this formula would be realized. Hauptman went on to head the mathematical physics department of the National Research Laboratory. In 1965, he began collaborating with the Medical Foundation of Buffalo in research on steroids. In 1970, the foun517
Hauptman, Herbert A. dation eventually lured Hauptman to Buffalo, where he became part of the research staff. In 1972, he was promoted to research director. Hauptman also became a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In 1985, Hauptman and Karle were awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work in developing direct mathematical methods to determine the atomic structure of crystals. With the Hauptman-Karle mathematical model, it took scientists just a few days to work out the three-dimensional atomic structure of complex molecules. Prior to their work, it had taken scientists years to determine the atomic makeup of molecules containing just a few atoms. Since its development, the HauptmanKarle formula has been used to map the structure of human hormones, vitamins, antibiotics, and other drugs. The model has also been applied to nonmedical uses. In 1976, Hauptman developed a program he called SnB, or “shake and bake,” which could perform the complex calculations to solve the puzzle of atomic structure of molecules with up to three hundred or four hundred atoms within a few hours or days. Using this program, researchers could extend their studies to large molecules, such as proteins, which had previously been too difficult to determine by indirect methods. In 1986, Hauptman became president of the Medical Foundation of Buffalo, which, in 1994, was renamed the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute. The institute continues to pursue biomedical research into a variety of health issues, including breast cancer and antibiotics. Hauptman continues to be active as the institute’s president and is currently guiding the foundation’s efforts in protein research. Hauptman has received honorary degrees from both American and international schools, including the City College of New York in 1996, University of Parma in Italy in 1989, Columbia University in 1990, the Technical University of Uód. in Poland in 1992, and Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, in 1993. Hauptman has also been the recipient of numerous
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Jewish Americans awards, receiving the Belden Prize in Mathematics in 1935 from the City College of New York. Other awards include the Pure Science Award from the Scientific Research Society of America in 1959, the Jewish Academy of Arts and Sciences Medal in 1986, and the Dirac Medal for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics from the University of New South Wales in 1991. In 1988, Hauptman was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. During his career, Hauptman has written more than 170 books and journal articles, and he has continued to refine his research methods. Significance Hauptman and Karle’s mathematical model, known as the “direct method” of determining molecular structure, allowed scientists to fathom the atomic structure of many substances that previously could not be studied except by indirect inferences that sometimes took many years of research. The Hauptman-Karle method reduced uncertainty and sped up the process. — Karen S. Garvin Further Reading Chung, Deborah D. L., ed. The Road to Scientific Success: Inspiring Life Stories. Vol. 1. Singapore: World Scientific, 2006. Book about scientists and their discoveries includes a reference to Hauptman. Hauptman, Herbert A. On the Beauty of Science: A Nobel Laureate Reflects on the Universe, God, and the Nature of Discovery. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2008. Hauptman is refreshingly frank in talking about his challenges as a scientist, the successes and the failures. Staba, David. “What Does Bioinformatics Mean?” The New York Times, July 9, 2006. A look at how organizations such as the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute are advancing medical research. See also: Paul Berg; Roald Hoffmann; Walter Kohn; Rudolph Marcus; Irwin Rose.
Jewish Americans
Hawn, Goldie
Goldie Hawn Actor and entertainer Using Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In television show as a springboard, Hawn launched a career as a comic and dramatic actor and a film producer and director. Born: November 21, 1945; Washington, D.C. Also known as: Goldie Jeanne Hawn (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Goldie Hawn was the first of two daughters born to musician and bandleader Edward Rutledge Hawn and his wife Laura Steinoff. Hawn’s father was a Presbyterian of English and German descent; her mother was of Hungarian Jewish descent. Hawn and her sister were reared in their mother’s Judaic faith. Hawn’s mother owned and operated several small businesses, including a dance school; Goldie excelled as a dancer from an early age. Her first major break came when she was chosen to perform as Juliet in the 1961 production of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1595-1596) at the Shakespeare Festival in Williamsburg, Virginia. She attended dramatic arts classes at American University in Washington, D.C., but she did not complete her degree program, leaving in 1964 to give ballet lessons and take professional dancing assignments, including stints as a go-go dancer in nightclubs. She first appeared on network television as a supporting cast member on the 1967-1968 comedy show, Good Morning, World. As the show was folding, however— in January of 1968—Hawn rapidly achieved celebrity status. Life’s Work From 1968 to 1970, Hawn was a regular member of the cast of the tradition-breaking comedy hour, Rowan and Martin’s LaughIn, which was rated as the most watched and popular television show for the 19681969 and 1969-1970 seasons; it ran through the spring of 1973. Hawn’s characterization as the giddy but charmingly naïve blonde, who would sometimes hilariously confuse her one-line deliveries, became one of the show’s most celebrated features. The rec-
ognition provided by her role in Laugh-In attracted the attention of Hollywood and soon propelled her into films. Though she began with a minor part in Walt Disney Productions’ The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band in 1968, she was afterward signed to a supporting role in Cactus Flower (1969) opposite Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman and won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award in the category of best supporting actress. Thereafter, Hawn appeared in both comedy and dramatic starring roles: There’s a Girl in My Soup (1970), $ (1971), Butterflies Are Free (1972), The Girl from Petrovka (1974), The Sugarland Express (1974), Shampoo (1975), and The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976). She married film director Gus Trikonis in 1969 and credited him with teaching her about the fundamen-
Goldie Hawn. (CBS/Getty Images)
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Calling PRIVATE BENJAMIN In 1979, Goldie Hawn was approached by screenwriters Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers at an informal luncheon meeting about an idea for a movie script about a wealthy, coddled young woman named Judy Benjamin whose husband dies on their wedding night and who, distracted by grief, buys into an unscrupulous recruiter’s false advertising of Army life. Thinking conditions in the military to be more luxurious than they are in reality, she is forced to adapt and goes through a process of growth, achieving self-confidence and independence. This idea developed into the groundbreaking film Private Benjamin (1980). At the end of the conversation, almost as an afterthought, it was decided that the trio (later joined by Harvey Miller) would produce the film themselves, with Hawn as executive producer. This marked a watershed, because a woman had rarely occupied an executive position in the then male-dominated Hollywood film world. Private Benjamin, which was made under the auspices of Warner Bros. Studio, and directed by Howard Zieff, would prove to be a great cinematic success, grossing receipts just short of seventy million dollars. The film spawned a television comedy series, which aired from 1981 to 1983. Hawn’s diverse talents were recognized; she was credited with opening the doors for many subsequent female directors and producers, and she became, from that time, an established influence in the film industry.
tals of film directing. Problems developed when Hawn’s career overshadowed that of her husband, and in 1976 Hawn and Trikonis divorced. Hawn then married singermusician William Louis “Bill” Hudson, and they had a son, Oliver, and a daughter, Kate. Hawn’s career was busy; she starred in Foul Play (1978), Travels with Anita (1978), Lovers and Liars (1979), and Seems Like Old Times. In 1980, her relationship with Hudson ended, rather acrimoniously, in divorce. At this time, Hawn engineered a breakthrough by starring in and producing Private Benjamin. It was a substantial box-office hit and secured Hawn’s reputation as a major player on the Hollywood scene. In 1983, she entered into a relationship with actor Kurt Russell. Hawn and Russell had a son, Wyatt, and reared Hawn’s two children from her second marriage and Russell’s child by a previous marriage to actor Season Hubley, Boston. In 1984, Hawn teamed with Anthea Sylbert to form the Hawn-Sylbert Movie Company. This enterprise enjoyed indifferent success; though under its auspices Hawn acted 520
Jewish Americans in and produced Swing Shift (1984), Protocol (1984), Wildcats (1986), CrissCross (1992), and Something to Talk About (1995). She also produced or coproduced: My Blue Heaven (1990), When Billie Beat Bobby (2001, television), The Matthew Shepherd Story (2002, television), and directed and produced Hope (1997, television). Her career exploded in a burst of activity during the early 1990’s when, in addition to CrissCross, she starred in Bird on a Wire (1990), Deceived (1991), HouseSitter (1992), and Death Becomes Her (1992). During her mother’s final illness and death, Hawn went on hiatus. She resumed acting in 1996 in The First Wives Club and Everyone Says I Love You. Since then, her film roles have been infrequent: The Out-of-Towners (1999), Town and Country (2001), and The Banger Sisters (2002). Hawn’s main philanthropic interests are expressed in the work of the Hawn Foundation, which she initiated in 2003 and which is concerned primarily with assisting schoolchildren who are neglected or depressed with Buddhist-inspired meditation and mind-calming methods. The foundation plans to expand its work into school systems in the United Kingdom. Hawn claims dual religious beliefs, Judaism and Buddhism, claiming that there are vast areas of compatibility between the two faiths. In 2005, Hawn published her autobiography, A Lotus Grows in the Mud. Significance Hawn’s early renown as a comedian developed from her portrayal of ditzy-blond types. That characterization, however, has been eclipsed by her reputation as an independent woman who shattered the Hollywood “glass ceiling” through her successes in producing and in directing films and television shows. Her philanthropic foundation focuses on troubled schoolchildren. — Raymond Pierre Hylton Further Reading Berman, Connie. Solid Goldie: An Illustrated Biography of Goldie Hawn. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981. Rather dated, but nonetheless this volume contains details on Hawn’s life. Ford, Elizabeth A., and Deborah C. Mitchell. The Makeover in Movies: Before and After in Hollywood Films, 1941-2002. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004. Hawn is noted for her role in Shampoo and for her successful transition from a 1960’s sex symbol into a more polished, middle-aged screen persona. Hawn, Goldie, and Wendy Holden. A Lotus Grows in the Mud. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2005. Hawn’s
Jewish Americans markedly spiritual autobiography is fashioned largely through the intermingling of her life experiences with her Buddhist-derived philosophy. Emphasizes family as a major influence in her career development. Shapiro, Marc. Pure Goldie: The Life and Career of Goldie Hawn. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol, 1998. Pulls no punches in discussing Hawn’s troubled youth and
Hecht, Ben controversies in her personal life. Depicts Hawn as a woman of integrity who endured a great deal in order to remain true to her principles. See also: Bea Arthur; Fanny Brice; Jamie Lee Curtis; Fran Drescher; Ricki Lake; Elaine May; Gilda Radner.
Ben Hecht Playwright, journalist, and activist Hecht was a playwright who wrote screenplays for the Hollywood film industry in its formative years. He played a significant role in advocacy groups that prodded the U.S. government to rescue Jewish refugees from the Nazis. Born: February 28, 1894; New York, New York Died: April 18, 1964; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Journalism; activism; entertainment Early Life Born to Russian Jewish immigrants in New York City in 1894, Ben Hecht (hehkt) was raised in Racine, Wisconsin. He went to Chicago at the age of sixteen to begin his journalistic career as a reporter for the Chicago Daily Journal and then as the author of a daily column, “One Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago,” for the Chicago Daily News. Hecht developed a no-holds-barred style that would characterize his entire literary career. In the 1920’s, Hecht branched out into writing novels and plays. His first major success in the theater was The Front Page, a 1928 play about political and journalistic corruption that he coauthored with Charles MacArthur. It won a Pulitzer Prize. In the 1930’s, Hecht moved to Hollywood, writing screenplays for a string of hit films, including Underworld (1927), for which he was honored at the inaugural Academy Awards ceremony. His reputation as a script doctor brought Hecht to the set of Gone with the Wind (1939), where he managed to rewrite large sections of the screenplay without ever reading the original novel. His voluminous film credits also include the classic Wuthering Heights (1939) and the Alfred Hitchcock thrillers Spellbound (1945) and Notorious (1946). Hecht wrote twenty-five books, twenty plays, sixty-five film scripts, and hundreds of short stories and magazine articles. Film critic Judith Crist dubbed him “the most prolific multimedia child of this century.”
Life’s Work As a young man, Hecht exhibited little interest in Jewish affairs, and his first marriage (in 1915) was to a nonJew, Marie Armstrong. His best-selling 1931 novel, A Jew in Love, portrayed American Jews in unflattering terms and was strongly criticized in the Jewish community. The Nazis’ persecution of European Jewry transformed Hecht. “I turned into a Jew in 1939,” Hecht wrote
Ben Hecht. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Hecht, Ben in his autobiography. “The German mass murder of the Jews, recently begun, had brought my Jewishness to the surface.” He joined the Fight for Freedom Committee, which advocated preemptive U.S. military action to oust the leader of Germany, Adolf Hitler, and wrote a fundraising pageant for the group at Madison Square Garden called “Fun to Be Free.” In 1941, Hecht became active in the Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews, better known as the Bergson Group, which sought to create a Jewish army to fight alongside the Allies against the Germans. The group employed protest tactics that were not commonly used by American Jews at the time, such as full-page newspaper advertisements, dramatic theatrical events, and lobbying Congress. When news of the Nazi genocide was confirmed in late 1942, the Bergson activists established the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, which successfully prodded the U.S. government to rescue some Jewish refugees from the Nazis. Later, the Bergsonites created the American League for a Free Palestine, to rally American public support for Jewish statehood, and the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation, to serve as a government-in-exile for the future Jewish state and pressure the British to withdraw from Palestine. Hecht was a central figure in all of these groups. The Bergson Group’s efforts were opposed by some mainstream Jewish leaders, who feared its noisy protests would provoke anti-Semitism or undermine their positions of leadership in the community. In 1943, Hecht wrote a pageant, called “We Will Never Die,” that the Bergson Group staged at Madison Square Garden and around the United States to raise public awareness of the plight of European Jewry. Hecht designed many of the group’s hard-hitting newspaper advertisements urging rescue and used his Hollywood and Broadway connections to persuade prominent actors and entertainers to support the Bergson Group. After the war, Hecht authored a Broadway play, A Flag Is Born (1946), to dramatize the plight of Holocaust survivors and the need for a Jewish state. Starring young Marlon Brando, A Flag Is Born was staged in various cities, and in Baltimore, Maryland, the Bergson Group and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) used the play to force the desegregation of the city’s theaters. Funds raised by A Flag Is Born were used to purchase a ship that the Bergson Group named the SS Ben Hecht. It attempted to bring six hundred European Jewish refugees to Palestine, but it was intercepted by the British. 522
Jewish Americans Hecht strongly supported the Jewish underground militias that fought the British authorities during the years leading up to Israel’s creation in 1948. The association of British film theater owners responded by boycotting films written by Hecht. Although he was flattered by the move, Hecht’s livelihood suffered. During the postwar years, Hecht continued writing film scripts and hosted a television program, The Ben Hecht Show, which featured interviews and commentary on current affairs. He also ignited controversy with a 1961 book, Perfidy, that sharply criticized the response of the mainstream Zionist leadership to the Holocaust. Hecht suffered a fatal heart attack in 1964, at age seventy. He was survived by his second wife, Rose, and two daughters, one from each marriage. Significance Hecht was a major contributor to the world of stage and screen during the mass entertainment industry’s formative years. His activism, as one of the leading figures in the Bergson Group, influenced U.S. foreign policy toward Jewish refugees and Palestine and helped set the stage for subsequent decades of activism by American Jews. —Rafael Medoff Further Reading Hecht, Ben. A Child of the Century. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954. Hecht’s autobiography is fascinating and entertaining, even though some parts are colored by artistic license. _______. Perfidy. New York: Julian Messner, 1961. Hecht’s controversial account of a 1950’s Israeli trial in which a government official was accused of collaborating with the Nazis in wartime Hungary. Troy, Gil. “From Literary Gadfly to Jewish Activist: The Political Transformation of Ben Hecht.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 40, no. 4 (Fall, 2003): 431-449. Traces Hecht’s evolution from a politically uninvolved literary figure in the 1920’s and 1930’s to a deeply involved political activist during and after World War II. Wyman, David S., and Rafael Medoff. A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust. New York: New Press, 2002. The first scholarly study of the Bergson Group, in which Hecht was active and which lobbied for U.S. action to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. See also: Paddy Chayefsky; Moss Hart; Lillian Hellman; George S. Kaufman; Larry Kramer; Tony Kushner; Clifford Odets; Neil Simon; Wendy Wasserstein.
Jewish Americans
Heifetz, Jascha
Jascha Heifetz Lithuanian-born musician Among the great violinists of the twentieth century, Heifetz was a role model for other violinists, from Yehudi Menuhin to Gil Shaham, and a patron of many composers whom Heifetz commissioned to write music for his performances. Born: February 2, 1901; Vilna, Lithuania, Russian Empire (now Vilnius, Lithuania) Died: December 10, 1987; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Jim Heifetz; Iosef Ruvinovich Heifetz (birth name) Area of achievement: Music Early Life Jascha Heifetz (YAH-shah HI-fehtz) was born in Vilna, Lithuania, then part of czarist Russia, in 1901. He was the only son of Ruvin, the concertmaster of the Vilna Symphony Orchestra, who was his first teacher, and his wife, Annie, who subsequently had two daughters, Pauline and Elsa. His father presented Heifetz with a miniature violin on which to study; later, both he and his sister Pauline began piano lessons. At the time of Heifetz’s first public appearance at the age of seven in Kovno, Lithuania, he was studying with Ilya Davidovich Malkin at the Imperial School of Music in Vilna. With the assistance of Malkin, two years later Heifetz was admitted to the class of the great concert violinist and pedagogue Leopold Auer, at the Conservatory in St. Petersburg, and Heifetz’s first performance there was on April 30, 1911. Heifetz likewise continued his study of the piano and added classes in viola and in basic composition. As his professional earnings exceeded those of his father, Heifetz essentially supported his family with his concert tours. Although the Heifetz family was Jewish more by background than by religious practice (in the family it was considered “religious neutrality”), because of his father’s concern for the family’s safety in the Jewish community during and after the Russian Revolution, Heifetz and his family emigrated from Russia and came to the United States, where he made his American debut in Carnegie Hall on October 27, 1917. Life’s Work Heifetz became a naturalized American citizen in 1925. Many of his colleagues from Auer’s class
in St. Petersburg, as well as Auer himself, also left the Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States. Heifetz’s first marriage, to the actor Florence Vidor, ended in divorce, and so did his second marriage, to Frances Spiegelberg. From these marriages, Heifetz had three children, Josepha, Robert, and Jay. For many years Heifetz was based in New York; however, in the early 1940’s, he moved to Beverly Hills, California, which remained his home for the rest of his life. He toured widely in North and South America and in Europe. Apart from concert commitments with major orchestras, he appeared in chamber-music programs; his interest in contemporary music resulted in commissions to important composers, including William Walton, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Heifetz also made transcriptions for violin and piano of many works not originally composed for those instruments, which he occasionally included on his programs.
Jascha Heifetz. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Heller, Joseph Heifetz was criticized for being “emotionless” in public performance, notably by Virgil Thomson. Heifetz was certainly reserved professionally and personally, perhaps because of strict upbringing and education, especially from his father. However, the strong emotion underlying his public persona was expressed openly in other ways, notably in frequent tours to Israel, demonstrating his political support for the Jewish homeland, and in his iconoclastic choice of repertoire. Heifetz took a sabbatical from concertizing in the late 1940’s; when he returned to public performance in the 1950’s, he gradually scaled back his concert schedule. In later life he taught master classes at the University of Southern California (USC). Among his students were Sherry Kloss; Sando Xia, a Chinese student who ultimately joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; and Ayke Agus, piano accompanist for Heifetz’s master classes and later his personal assistant. Kloss and Agus published biographies of their teacher. Heifetz taught until 1983, when he resigned because of problems with the administration of the program at USC; subsequently he continued the course in his own home. Heifetz died in Los Angeles on December 10, 1987, after complications from a fall and neurosurgery. Significance Heifetz was thoroughly educated in music from an early age, and he went on to become a colleague and role model to many other musicians. Through his live performances, recordings, transcriptions, and teaching, he demonstrated the extent to which a musician can overcome personal adversity and achieve a professional career. He was a profound musical influence on audiences and stu-
Jewish Americans dents. His work as a teacher ensured that his students, both soloists and orchestral musicians from many countries, have continued his professional standards into future generations. — Susan M. Filler Further Reading Agus, Ayke. Heifetz as I Knew Him. Portland, Oreg.: Amadeus Press, 2001. Personal account from an Indonesian woman who studied in Heifetz’s master class at University of Southern California and later became piano accompanist for the class. She ultimately worked closely with Heifetz for fifteen years, functioning as his professional assistant. Axelrod, Herbert R. Heifetz. Neptune City, N.J.: Paganiniana, 1976. An inside look at Heifetz’s life and work, written while he was still alive. Includes many comments from Heifetz and those who worked with him on a regular basis. Kloss, Sherry. Jascha Heifetz Through My Eyes: The Eyes Are the Mirror of the Soul. Muncie, Ind.: Kloss Classics, 2000. Another personal account from a member of the master class. Offers text and illustrations. Less well organized and useful than the Heifetz account by Agus. Wechsler-Vered, Artur. Jascha Heifetz. New York: Schirmer Books, 1986. In contrast to the books by Agus and Kloss, this biography was written by an objective outsider to Heifetz’s circle. See also: Leonard Bernstein; Lorin Maazel; Itzhak Perlman; André Previn; Isaac Stern.
Joseph Heller Novelist and playwright Heller’s novels have enriched a long line of Jewish satirical writing, directed at institutions and society as a whole. His novel Catch-22 made significant antiwar statements that resonated with readers. Born: May 1, 1923; Brooklyn. New York Died: December 12, 1999; East Hampton, New York Also known as: Joey Areas of achievement: Literature; theater 524
Early Life Joseph Heller (HEHL-ehr) was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian Jewish parents. His father, Isaac Donald Heller, was a delivery driver, whose first wife died not long after their arrival in the United States, leaving a boy and a girl. Isaac married again, to Lena, a seamstress, but she died when Heller was only five years old. The family was impoverished, and bilingual in Yiddish and in English. Heller attended Abraham Lincoln High School, the same school as playwright Arthur Miller, graduating
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there in 1941. While at school, he decided to become a writer; he unsuccessfully submitted short stories to publications. After high school, he worked for a year as a blacksmith’s apprentice and a filing clerk, before enlisting in the Army Air Corps in 1942. He eventually attended cadet school and trained as a bombardier. He was then commissioned and assigned to the Mediterranean island of Corsica. From there, he flew sixty sorties over France and Italy during a two-year period. When he was demobilized in mid-1945, the G.I. Bill enabled him to enroll at the University of Southern California. He majored in English and transferred to New York University before graduating in 1948. This was followed by two years at Columbia University for his master’s degree. He gained a Fulbright scholarship and spent some months at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University. On his return to the United States he worked for Time magazine from 1952 to 1956; for Look magazine from 1956 to 1958; and for McCall’s from 1958 to 1961. At the same time he was writing short stories that were accepted by Esquire, Atlantic Monthly, and Cosmopolitan. Life’s Work Heller’s first major publication was the novel Catch22 (1961), based on his wartime experiences. The initial chapter appeared as a short story entitled “Catch-18” in 1955, but the full novel gestated until 1961. The hardback edition was not an immediate success in the United States, receiving mixed reviews. It did much better in the United Kingdom. The paperback edition, however, took off in 1964, coinciding as it did with the war in Vietnam. Over the course of Heller’s life, it sold some ten million copies and, with the sale of the movie rights, made him a millionaire. After publication, he decided to leave copy-editing and journalism for teaching and writing movie, television, and play scripts. He taught creative writing classes at City College of New York and later at Yale University. An anti-Vietnam War play, We Bombed in New Haven, appeared in 1967, first performed at Harvard and then on Broadway. A dramatization of Catch-22 was made in 1973, and one episode from the novel was made into a play called Clevinger’s Trial, also in 1973. A second novel, Something Happened, did not appear till 1974. Although this was also satiric, its subject matter was entirely different. It concerns a middle-aged protagonist, a businessman, whose dreams of love and success have evaporated into a dull mediocrity. The irony of the title is that nothing happens, at least not till the end of the
Joseph Heller. (Mariana Cook)
(quite lengthy) novel. Its repetitiveness could be seen as annoying, or the very point Heller is trying to make. Heller’s next novel, Good as Gold (1979), has a Jewish protagonist, an English professor, who is inveigled into White House politics as a spin-doctor. Heller satirizes Jewish liberals who have compromised themselves in politically successful right-wing politics. The later novels did not have as much impact as his first novel. A fourth novel was much bolder in its zaniness, God Knows (1984). A biblical King David on his deathbed rambles through his life in the manner of a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, irreverently commenting on his poetry, his son Solomon, and his wife Bathsheba. The book is anachronistic, including references to modern Israel and the Jewish situation. However, the theme is familiar: The male protagonist has lost his way and has no guiding purpose because God no longer speaks to him. In 1982, Heller divorced his wife of thirty-five years, Shirley, by whom he had two children. Then he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, which left him almost paralyzed. He required two months of intense nursing at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and four more months of rehabilitation at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. Friends stepped in to help him through 525
Heller, Joseph this serious illness, an account of which was written up by Heller and one of the friends, Speed Vogel, as No Laughing Matter (1986). Later he married his nurse, Valerie Humphries. Near the end of his life Heller again picked up Catch-22 characters. In Closing Time (1994), Heller resurrects Yossarian, his Catch-22 hero, in midlife, working for business tycoon Milo, his erstwhile antagonist, as a public relations consultant. However, few of the other Catch-22 characters appear in this satire of American capitalistic society. Heller’s last two books were another novel, Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man, published posthumously in 2000, and a memoir, Now and Then (1998), which lovingly re-creates a long-disappeared Coney Island and gives an account of his wartime experiences. Significance Heller’s significance centers on his antiwar novel, Catch-22. Its biting satire of institutional military ineptness seemed out of place as a comment on World War II, but its exaggeration of anti-Communist war efforts reminded readers of the era of the McCarthy witch hunts, the government effort in the 1950’s to root out Communists and other subversives. The ineptness of the war machine during the Vietnam War proved Heller’s satire was not misplaced. The novel was studied at Air Force training institutions as an example of mindless administration. —David Barratt
Jewish Americans
CATCH-22 Catch-22 (1961) is Joseph Heller’s first and best-known novel, based on his wartime experiences with the American Air Force off the coast of Italy. It took him some eight years to write. Its reputation lies not in its account of World War II (1939-1945) but in its strong statements about the insanity of warfare in all its forms. When Catch-22 was published in 1961, the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War, and its theme had a remarkable relevance that attracted readers. The wars in Iraq have given it a renewed popularity. The novel’s protagonist and antihero is Captain Yossarian, like Heller, a bombardier, whose duty it is to guide the pilot over the bomb site and then release the bombs, often under heavy antiaircraft fire. Most crews were given forty missions to fly and then sent home, but Yossarian’s commander, Colonel Cathcart, in a bid to gain favor with his generals, keeps upping the number of missions his squadrons are to fly, to forty-five, to fifty, and to sixty. Yossarian makes it his main job in life to avoid these ever-escalating missions. He is psychologically devastated by the sheer terror of several previous missions and by the death of one officer, Snowden, whom Yossarian vainly tried to keep alive. Heller delays the full story until almost the end of the novel, while he hints earlier at its devastating effect on Yossarian. Most of Yossarian’s actions reveal the absurdity of the military administration, especially what comes to be called Catch-22. There are several versions of the “catch” in the novel, but all mean that it is futile to try to work around the military bureaucracy. Yossarian’s particular version has to do with being declared insane. If any officer is declared insane, he is excused further from flight duties if he so requests. However, only sane people ask to be excused; the insane want to keep flying. Heller introduces several characters, all full of absurdities, into the nearly plotless novel. One of the most devastating presentations is mess officer Milo Minderbinder, who tries to put the war effort on a commercial cooperative basis. This means not only requisitioning planes to fly around the Mediterranean buying and selling commodities but also selling the planes’services, including to the Germans. This results in American planes being used to strafe the airfield. It is an Alice-in-Wonderland world. At times Heller moves from black comedy to a vision of anarchy and evil that resembles a medieval painting of hell. One of Yossarian’s final visits to Rome shows every sort of vice running unchecked. Meanwhile, Yossarian is arrested for not having a pass and the chaplain is interrogated for a dubious signature on a censored letter. In the end, Yossarian escapes for Sweden, a neutral country. Heller’s portrayal of the sheer lack of heroism, the futility of chains of command, and the real enemy being the insanity of the bureaucracy makes a devastating cumulative impact.
Further Reading Craig, David M. Tilting at Mortality: Narrative Strategies in Joseph Heller’s Fiction. Vol. 4 in Humor in Life and Letters. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000. Traces Heller’s development both thematically and artistically, concentrating on his treatment of human mortality. Fowles, Anthony. Student Guide to Joseph Heller: The 526
Novels. London: Greenwich Exchange, 2005. A good introductory guide to all of Heller’s fiction. Kazin, Alfred. Bright Book of Life: American Novelists and Storytellers from Hemingway to Mailer. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981. An early attempt to place Heller in a tradition of American novelists.
Jewish Americans Pinsker, Sanford, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. Understanding Joseph Heller. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009. A thorough study of Heller, covering all of his output and its cultural context.
Hellman, Lillian See also: Saul Bellow; Michael Chabon; E. L. Doctorow; Howard Fast; Mark Helprin; Norman Mailer; Bernard Malamud; Philip Roth; Leon Uris; Herman Wouk.
Lillian Hellman Playwright, writer, and activist Hellman was an award-winning playwright and a vocal political activist. Her brilliantly written autobiographies became best sellers. Born: June 20, 1905; New Orleans, Louisiana Died: June 30, 1984; Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts Also known as: Lillian Florence Hellman (full name) Areas of achievement: Activism; literature; theater Early Life Lillian Hellman (HEHL-muhn) was born on June 20, 1905, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the only child of Max Bernard Hellman, the self-educated son of German Jewish immigrants, and Julia Newhouse, a member of a wealthy Jewish family from Demopolis, Alabama, who later relocated to New York City. While Max was attempting to set up a shoe-manufacturing business in New Orleans, he took his wife and child to live with his two unmarried sisters, Hannah and Jenny, who ran a boardinghouse at the edge of the exclusive Garden District. When Lillian Hellman was six, her father’s business failed, and Max moved to New York, where he worked as a salesman. During the years that followed, Hellman and her mother would spend six months of each year in Manhattan and six months in the South, usually at the Hellman sisters’ boardinghouse in New Orleans. Hellman was utterly charmed by New Orleans—the people, the street life, the food. When she later recalled her childhood, Hellman would always mention events that took place in New Orleans. Hellman attended Public School 6 in New York, then Hunter and Wadleigh high schools. After graduating from Wadleigh in 1921, she entered New York University, but after two years as an unexceptional student, she dropped out to work as a manuscript reader for a publishing firm and later as a theatrical play reader. On December 30, 1925, she married a young writer, Arthur Kober,
and went with him to Paris. It was at this time that her first works appeared in print—three formulaic short stories. After returning from Europe in 1930, the couple went to Hollywood, where Hellman worked for MetroGoldwyn-Mayer as a scenario reader. It was at this time that she met the writer Dashiell Hammett, who would become her friend, her lover, and her lifelong companion. In 1932, Hellman divorced Kober. Back in New York City, she became a play reader for the producer Harold Shulman. Meanwhile, she had been working on a play,
Lillian Hellman. (Library of Congress)
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Hellman as a Classical Moralist Although Lillian Hellman was often innovative in her plots and her stagecraft, where her themes were concerned she was a moralist in the classical tradition. In The Children’s Hour, she demonstrates the power of malicious gossip in the service of evil. In Another Part of the Forest, she shows that the Hubbards are defined not by a sense of good and evil but solely by their love of money. The results of such moral bankruptcy are evident in The Little Foxes, when Regina deliberately lets her husband die. Watch on the Rhine is also a play about a moral choice. The hero, who is a secret agent in the battle against fascism, chooses to kill another agent who is threatening to expose him to the Nazis. Certainly his decision would be justified as self-defense and the defense of his entire network. By contrast, The Searching Wind is an indictment of a self-indulgent generation, too enamored of pleasure seeking to recognize the growth of totalitarianism or the need to make moral choices. Thus in her plays, Hellman acts as a classical moralist, analyzing actions in order to sort out evil, pointing out the difference between good manners and good behavior, warning against greed and materialism, and crusading for personal freedom. Though in her own life she could be deceived, there is no doubt that Hellman’s moral compass was set to goodness and truth.
The Children’s Hour, in which a girl’s false accusation of sexual misconduct destroys the lives of two innocent teachers. When she showed her play to Shulman, he was enthusiastic, and, despite its controversial subject matter, he assembled a cast and staged it. The Children’s Hour opened on Broadway November 20, 1934. The play was a success, remaining at the same theater for an unprecedented 691 performances, and Hellman’s career as a playwright was launched. Life’s Work Between 1934 and 1961, Hellman wrote thirteen dramatic works, several of which have become classics. Her most famous, The Little Foxes (1939), was set in 1900 and inspired by her wealthy Demopolis relatives, the Hellmans and the Marxes. In The Little Foxes, the Hubbards were portrayed as a greedy, selfish, and totally unprincipled lot. Interestingly, there was no hint that the Hubbards were Jewish, though Hellman had been known to comment that she had no ancestors who were not. Clearly, Hellman wanted the fictional family to represent all the American families obsessed by greed. In her 528
Jewish Americans prequel to The Little Foxes, called Another Part of the Forest (1947), which was set twenty years earlier, Hellman showed the Hubbards in the process of becoming soulless materialists, as she believed so many ambitious Americans had late in the nineteenth century. A visit to Bonn, Germany, in 1929 and another to Spain during the civil war convinced Hellman that the same ruthless greed motivated the various fascist movements. Her antifascist plays include Watch on the Rhine (1941) and The Searching Wind (1944). Hellman’s own battle against fascism began in May, 1952, when she was subpoenaed to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Her longtime companion Hammett was known to be a member of the Communist Party and even served time in prison for refusing to answer questions asked him by the committee. Despite her own Communist sympathies, Hellman was not prosecuted, but she was blacklisted in Hollywood. In her last memoir, Scoundrel Time (1976), Hellman presents her account of the hearing and speculates about the consequences of McCarthyism, which included, she believed, the Vietnam War and Watergate. However, she does admit that she was so enchanted by theoretical communism that she was willfully blind to the fact that in the Soviet Union, under Joseph Stalin, freedom of speech was eliminated and millions of people were tortured and executed, including many Jews. Among Hellman’s most successful later plays were her brilliant adaptation of French playwright Jean Anouilh’s L’Alouette (1952), the story of Joan of Arc, which Hellman retitled The Lark (1955), and Toys in the Attic (1960), which won the Critics’ Circle award. Her last play, My Mother, My Father, and Me (1961), was merely a collection of satirical sketches. Hellman’s final works were all memoirs: An Unfinished Woman (1969), which received a National Book Award; Pentimento: A Book of Portraits (1976); Scoundrel Time; and Maybe: A Story (1980). “Julia,” one of the segments in Pentimento, was made into a film in 1977. Biographers remain uncertain as to the accuracy of many details in Hellman’s memoirs. Some passages, it is believed, are more fiction than fact. Hellman died from natural causes on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, on June 30, 1984. She was seventy-nine. Significance Although Hellman is admired for the courage she displayed in her fight against fascism at home and abroad and though she was honored both for her film scripts and for her finely honed autobiographical prose, it is her
Jewish Americans achievements as a playwright that have earned her a permanent place in literary history. At a time when male writers dominated the Broadway stage, Hellman surmounted gender barriers and produced a series of beautifully crafted plays, none of them alike except in broad thematic emphasis, that all had the memorable characters and compelling action necessary to keep a theater filled night after night. Hellman did much to make the 1930’s and the 1940’s the golden age of American theater. —Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman Further Reading Austenfeld, Thomas Carl. American Women Writers and the Nazis: Ethics and Politics in Boyle, Porter, Stafford, and Hellman. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001. Relates Hellman’s social and political views to the main events of the twentieth century. Includes bibliography and index. Bryer, Jackson R., ed. Conversations with Lillian Hellman. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986. Twenty-six interviews, ranging from conversations with reporters after the Broadway openings of her plays to more formal, later interviews, such as that in
Helmsley, Leona the Paris Review. A useful supplement to her memoirs. Griffin, Alice, and Geraldine Thorsten. Understanding Lillian Hellman. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. Includes an overview of Hellman’s career and specific discussions of her works. Includes notes, bibliographical references, and index. Hellman, Lillian. Three: An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, Scoundrel Time. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979. The complete memoirs, with commentaries by the author. Photographs. McGraw, Eliza R. L. Two Covenants: Representations of Southern Jewishness. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. Includes extensive references to Hellman, along with more general comments. Includes bibliography and index. Rollyson, Carl E. Lillian Hellman: Her Legend and Her Legacy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988. One of the major studies of Hellman as a person and as an artist. Includes illustrations, bibliography, and index. See also: Edna Ferber; Dorothy Parker; Wendy Wasserstein.
Leona Helmsley Business executive and criminal
Born: July 4, 1920; Marbletown, New York Died: August 20, 2007; Greenwich, Connecticut Also known as: The Queen of Mean; Leona Roberts; Lena Mindy Rosenthal (birth name) Areas of achievement: Business; crime
whom she had a son, Jay. They were divorced in 1952. Shortly thereafter, she married Joseph Lubin, from whom she was also divorced. In 1962, she joined a real-estate firm as a secretary. She was soon promoted to the position of real-estate broker, a job at which she was successful. Eventually she joined a firm associated with the extremely wealthy Harry Helmsley, whose companies controlled a significant amount of commercial real estate in New York City. She rose rapidly in that organization, becoming a vice president. She also caught the attention of Harry, and they were married in 1972.
Early Life Leona Helmsley (lee-OH-nah HEHLMS-lee) was born in a small community near New York City, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Poland. Helmsley’s father worked as a hatmaker. Early in her life, the family moved to New York City, where Helmsley attended high school and Hunter College for a time. In 1971, she officially changed her name to Leona Roberts. At age eighteen she married Leo E. Panzirer, with
Life’s Work After the marriage, Helmsley first attracted public attention for her lavish entertainments and for her management of the luxury hotels she and Harry owned. She personally appeared in many of the advertisements for these places, stating that her hotels were the only ones where the Queen still stood guard. She also developed a “handson” style of management, whereby she roamed the hotels, directly observing operations. If she saw anything—
Helmsley became famous after she married real estate mogul Harry Helmsley and took over management of hotels he owned. She gained significant publicity by appearing in advertisements for those upscale inns and for her conviction on tax-evasion charges.
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Helmsley, Leona no matter how minor—out of order, she demanded it be fixed immediately. Unfortunately, she also gained a reputation for being a tyrannical manager. She was not adverse to the practice of humiliating workers in public and firing them on the spot. This was one of the reasons many referred to her as the “Queen of Mean.” This reputation increased when she took over the remodeling of a spacious mansion (purchased for eleven million dollars in 1983) she and Harry bought in Greenwich, Connecticut. She wanted to make many expensive changes in the place (including the installation of a million-dollar marble dance floor over their indoor swimming pool), but she would often refuse to pay bills when they came due. She was sued a number of times by various contractors, and these lawsuits received a great deal of publicity. The house was the source of other problems. In 1987, the Helmsleys were charged in both federal and state
Leona Helmsley. (NY Daily News via Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans courts with tax evasion (and other infractions) because, it was alleged, they were illegally charging the costs of the house improvements to their business. Though Harry was adjudged incompetent to stand trial, Helmsley was tried in federal court. Part of her legal defense was that her treatment of those who worked for her was so overbearing they were motivated to lie about her activities. Associates were blamed for whatever illegal behavior did take place. Helmsley was found guilty of thirty-three counts of tax evasion but acquitted of all other charges. She was originally sentenced to four years of imprisonment— which was seen to be a relatively harsh punishment for such a crime—fined more than seven millions dollars, and ordered to pay back taxes of $1.7 million. After several unsuccessful appeals, Helmsley entered prison in 1992. She was released on probation after spending eighteen months behind bars, most of the time in a federal prison located in Connecticut. Her postprison career was not without controversy. For instance, the 750 hours of community service she was required to undertake as a condition of her probation was increased when a judge concluded that her employees were doing most of this service for her. She was also involved in controversies with former partners of Harry (who died in 1987) about business affairs. Even after her death from heart failure in 2007, at the age of eightyseven, her will generated disputes because of the favorable treatment given her dog. Her four grandchildren, on the other hand, received relatively small amounts. Thus, even in death Helmsley was able to generate personal and critical controversy. Significance In some ways Helmsley’s life embodied the American Dream. She demonstrated that, even though one is born in modest circumstances, one can, with hard work and some luck, “make it” in American society. Though born poor, she died a rich woman. In addition, she demonstrated that, with money and creativity, one can make oneself famous. Unfortunately, she also showed that the arrogance sometimes associated with wealth can work against one’s reputation. Her treatment of employees and her alleged statement implying that only “little people” pay taxes were devastating to her reputation. While affluent, she was also unpopular in many circles. — David M. Jones
Jewish Americans Further Reading Kristen, McMurran. “Tax Troubles Hound Gotham Hotel Queen Leona Helmsley.” People Weekly, January 25, 1987, 32-35. Written in the breezy style associated with this journal, this article describes her personality, her reputation, and the nature of the charges brought against her. Moss, Michael. Palace Coup: The Inside Story of Harry and Leona Helmsley. New York: Doubleday, 1987. This book is written in a reportorial, not scholarly,
Helprin, Mark style. It describes in some detail the personal and business lives of both Harry and Leona Helmsley, as well as their life together. Toobin, Jeffrey. “Rich Bitch: The Legal Battle over Trust Funds for Pets.” The New Yorker, September 29, 2008. Discusses Helmsley’s life, her troubles, and her will. See also: Alan M. Dershowitz; Michael Milken; Jay A. Pritzker.
Mark Helprin Novelist and political commentator A free-spirited journalist and political commentator, Helprin is regarded highly for his exuberant and imaginative novels and short stories. Born: June 28, 1947; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Literature; journalism Early Life Mark Helprin (HEHLP-rihn) is the only child of Morris Helprin, a film critic and film executive, and Eleanor Lynn, an actor. Although Mark Helprin’s ancestry was Hasidic, his parents were American-born secular Jews. His parents also were left-wing political progressives; his mother was for a time a member of the Communist Party. Helprin was raised largely in the suburb of Ossining, New York; prone to illness and often lonely, the young Helprin developed an active imagination and an independent mind. Just before he graduated from Harvard University in 1969, Helprin sold two stories to The New Yorker. In 1972, he received a master’s degree from the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies. During this period, he was married briefly to Judith di Leo, a Wellesley student. After obtaining his degree from Harvard, Helprin became an Israeli citizen and joined the Israeli infantry and air force for a year, going on dozens of patrols at the Lebanese border. In the mid-1970’s, he did postgraduate work at Columbia University and Princeton University and served briefly in the British Merchant Navy. In 1976 and 1977, he studied at Magdalene College, Oxford University. Along the way, Helprin acquired a knowledge of Latin, French, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic, and German. Helprin early abandoned his parents’ leftist politics and their sophisticated lifestyle, choosing to lead a rather
austere, orderly life that ruled out coffee, alcohol, smoking, popular culture, elaborate cuisine, and parties. Electing to divide his time between the introspective world of writing and the more strenuous one of open-air activity, such as mountain climbing, Helprin also chose a conservative political stance at odds not only with his parents but also with most of the literary establishment. In 1980, Helprin married Lisa Kennedy, a tax lawyer, with whom he has two daughters. Life’s Work Helprin’s first major success was with his 1981 story collection, Ellis Island, and Other Stories. Arguably his greatest work, however, is the magical and witty Winter’s Tale, published in 1983 and set in a mystical, celebratory New York City. This novel won wide critical acclaim and became a best seller. In 2006, it received multiple votes when The New York Times Book Review asked critics to nominate the best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years. Subsequent novels, 1991’s A Soldier of the Great War and 1995’s Memoir from Antproof Case, featured heroes whose lives were shaped by their wartime experiences. This is a recurring motif in Helprin’s work, beginning as early as his first novel, 1977’s Refiner’s Fire, a somewhat autobiographical depiction of a young man in the Israeli army during the Yom Kippur War. Whether concerning war or not, all his fiction is characteristically dreamlike, freewheeling, colorful, and filled with incident. A humorous novel, 2005’s Freddy and Fredericka, is also a picaresque adventure story. Helprin developed a second vocation as a political commentator, and he worked in 1996 as a speechwriter for presidential candidate Robert Dole. Helprin is noted espe531
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cially for writing Dole’s nomination acceptance speech, considered the high point in the senator’s presidential campaign. From 1985 to 2000, Helprin wrote conservative political commentary for The Wall Street Journal. After publishing a novel and a short-story collection in the first decade of the twenty-first century, Helprin returned to political writing in 2009 with his controversial Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto, a defense of individual intellectual property rights. Helprin has published political opinion pieces in many major magazines and was appointed a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. Memberships in such politically conservative organizations are said to have led the literary world to distance itself from Helprin. Nevertheless, he has garnered numerous literary prizes, including the Prix de Rome, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a World Fantasy Award, the PEN/ Faulkner Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and a Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. Significance Helprin has received much recognition for his inventive and dreamlike short stories and novels. Describing himself as Jewish by birth and faith, he has characterized his work as religious in nature, although not in a doctrinaire way. He has cited the Bible and also Dante and William Shakespeare as significant sources of inspiration. Claiming that he has never introduced a truly evil character into his writing, Helprin instead is dedicated to restoring to contemporary literature a time-honored heroic dimension. A traditionalist culturally and politically, Helprin has established himself as an influential political conservative and has won awards for his political commentary. —Margaret Boe Birns Further Reading Anderson, John. “Dressing Down the Primitives: Writer Mark Helprin Makes the Case for Conservatism, Civil Discourse, and Open Minds.” Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2005, p. I12. Helprin discusses his childhood, marriage, fiction, political opinions, literary politics, career, and creative writing. Buckley, Christopher. “A Talk with Mark Helprin: I May Be an Anomaly.” The New York Times, March 25, 1984, sec. 7, p. 16. Important interview with Helprin in which he is welcomed to the camp of political conservatives; this article is often perceived as having a negative effect on his consequent literary reception. 532
Mark Helprin. (©Jerry Bauer)
De Mott, Benjamin. “Winter’s Tale.” The New York Times Book Review, September 4, 1983, p. 1. Seminal review of Helprin’s writing that established him as a major American writer. Praises Winter’s Tale as “a great gift in an hour of great need.” Lambert, Craig. “Literary Warrior: Mark Helprin’s Fictional Marvels and Political Heterodoxies.” Harvard Magazine, May/June, 2005, 38-43. Insightful interview with Helprin, featuring his ideas and details on his private life, political life, home life, and life as a writer. Meroney, John. “Mark Helprin.” The American Enterprise 12, no. 5 (July/August, 2001): 14-18. Interview with Helprin includes discussions of politics, the Republican Party, his personal life, love and romance, and the new electronic media. See also: E. L. Doctorow; David Halberstam; Seymour M. Hersh; Leon Uris; Herman Wouk.
Jewish Americans
Hentoff, Nat
Nat Hentoff Journalist, music critic, and novelist Hentoff, a self-taught constitutional scholar, has spent his life defending the Bill of Rights and exposing attacks on American liberties through his writing. He also pioneered the field of jazz criticism. Born: June 10, 1925; Boston, Massachusetts Also known as: Nathan Irving Hentoff (full name) Areas of achievement: Journalism; government and politics; music Early Life Nat Hentoff (HEHN-tawf) was born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 10, 1925. Rising anti-Semitism during his youth had a huge impact on Hentoff. He credits these experiences with awakening him to the problems of civil justice. Hentoff went to Boston Latin, a prestigious middle-high school in Boston. This school encouraged intellectual pursuit and educational excellence. One day, when he was eleven, he walked past a music store playing Artie Shaw’s “Nightmare.” This was his first exposure to and the start of his lifelong love of jazz. He began to frequent the Savoy Club and other jazz venues in the Boston area. Despite being underage, he was often allowed inside to hear the music and meet the musicians. Another life-shaping experience happened when Hentoff was fifteen. He read George Seldes’s newsletter In Fact: An Antidote to the Falsehoods in the Daily Press. This awakened his desire to pursue muckraking journalism and led to his career as a social commentator and critic. Hentoff graduated with honors from Northeastern University in 1945. From 1944 to 1953, he hosted a regular radio show on WMEX Boston. Although this required a variety of activities, reading news and sports, for example, the show was mostly devoted to jazz. He played music, interviewed musicians, and promoted shows. Hentoff became an active figure in the Boston jazz scene, forming friendships with many of the most important musicians of the time, such as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Jo Jones, and many others. In 1950, he won a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Sorbonne and lived in Paris for a year. He spent most of his time going to jazz clubs. When he returned from Paris he got his first serious break as a writer. Jazz producer Norman Granz got Hentoff a job at DownBeat, a major
jazz magazine. Hentoff was associate editor there from 1953 to 1957. Life’s Work In 1957, Hentoff moved to New York City and began his fifty-year relationship with The Village Voice, an alternative newspaper. There Hentoff began his illustrious career as a constitutional law expert. He wrote a weekly column on issues concerning civil liberties in America and abroad. His major areas of interest—First Amendment issues and education—were his most frequent topics. He was considered liberal and leftist, being a staunch supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union, civil rights, and rights for women and a fierce foe of the Vietnam War. He became one of the newspaper’s major writers and often found himself embroiled in controversy. Never one to jump on a bandwagon, Hentoff was an investigative journalist, concerned with the long-term impact of legislation and government policies. Calling himself a “libertarian socialist,” he never sided with any argument based on prior loyalty. His fiercely independent spirit challenged other journalists to step away from their political affiliations and evaluate each case, each event, honestly. Never afraid of controversy, Hentoff publicly changed his opinion on the abortion debate. Always against capital punishment, he reversed his opinion that abortion was a women’s rights issue to believing that it was a civil rights issue for the unborn child. This so outraged many of his liberal supporters that he was considered a pariah in many of the circles that used to revere him. By the end of his time at The Village Voice, he had not reversed this position. Hentoff also wrote for The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The Jewish World Review, Jazz Times, The Weekly Media Syndicate, Atlantic, and many other publications. He wrote more than fifty books, among them memoirs, political commentary, histories of jazz, novels, and children’s literature. Many compilations of his columns have been published as well. In 2010, after being fired by The Village Voice, Hentoff continued to write and was named a senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute. He is the recipient of numerous awards, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship (1972), the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel (1980), Honorary Doctor of Laws from Northeastern University (1985), the National Press Foundation Award for Lifetime Achievement (1995), and the National En533
Herberg, Will dowment for the Arts Jazz Master (2004). His continued devotion to jazz earned him a seat on the board of the Jazz Foundation of America. Significance Hentoff’s career as a constitutional watchdog brought him to the forefront of American policy-making for more than fifty years. He inspired legions of young writers and encouraged them to dig as deep as possible for the truth and not to be blinded by politics, fame, and popularity. He devoted his life to protecting the civil liberties of Americans and promoting those values overseas. His principled and intellectual pursuit of truth made him an icon of American journalism. He is a world-renowned authority on law and the Constitution, and he has taught classes on these topics in many universities. —Leslie Neilan Further Reading Hentoff, Nat. At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene. Berkeley: University of California Press,
Jewish Americans 2010. This book discusses the history of American jazz and its impact on social issues and civil rights. _______. Boston Boy: Growing up with Jazz and Other Rebellious Passions. 2d ed. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2001. This memoir of Hentoff’s early days explains how civil rights and jazz became the passions of his life. _______. Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other. New York: Perennial Books, 1993. This controversial book uses case studies to show how Americans refuse to allow dissenting opinion. Hentoff claims that the left and the right equally abuse the First Amendment. _______. The Nat Hentoff Reader. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2001. This is a compilation of twentyfive years’ worth of columns on issues such as civil liberty, race, terrorism, and free speech. See also: Alan M. Dershowitz; George Gershwin; Artie Shaw; Judy Sheindlin.
Will Herberg Russian-born sociologist, theologian, and political commentator In a long career as a writer, a scholar, and an activist, Herberg made a pilgrimage from promoting an agnostic Marxist philosophy to embracing religion and becoming a prominent figure within the circles of American political conservatism. His significant work was his sociological study of American religion and ethnicity, Protestant-Catholic-Jew, published in 1955. Born: June 30, 1901; Liachovitzi, Russia Died: March 27, 1977; Chatham, New Jersey Areas of achievement: Scholarship; religion and theology; activism Early Life Shortly after Will Herberg (HUR-burg) was born in a rural village near Minsk in Russia, his family migrated to the United States and settled in Manhattan. His parents were not observant Jews, although they occasionally attended synagogue on the High Holidays. Herberg’s mother was a strong believer in education, and Herberg excelled in his high school studies. The story of his higher education is complicated. Herberg claimed to have a B.A., an M.A., and a Ph.D. from Columbia Uni534
versity in New York City, but there is no record that he received these degrees. He nearly completed an undergraduate degree at City College of New York, but he was expelled from that school in 1920 after a controversy with a military science instructor. As a young man, Herberg embraced Marxism and became active in Communist Party work. He wrote widely for leftist journals and lectured in support of and worked in organizing the Young Workers League. In 1925, he married Anna Thompson, a young woman from Brooklyn whose family had also migrated from Russia. In 1929, when the Communist Party in the United States purged members who were thought to be deviating from the teachings of Joseph Stalin, Herberg followed the American Communist leader Jay Lovestone into a breakaway organization. From 1933 to 1954, Herberg worked as a researcher and director of education for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Life’s Work Herberg wrote widely on a variety of issues: politics, labor history, religion, sociology, and cultural criticism. He published several books and more than six hundred
Jewish Americans articles. He also taught widely, both in formal educational settings and in informal institutes and seminars. Over time, he gradually moved away from Marxism. During the New Deal, he was cautiously optimistic about the reforms President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted. By the late 1940’s he was becoming more conservative in his political views, and, somewhat to his own surprise, he found himself embracing theistic religion. His religious thought was influenced by reading the works of the neoorthodox Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and the Jewish thinkers Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. Herberg eventually became a noted writer within Conservative Judaism and became the religion editor for William F. Buckley’s conservative political journal National Review. He was also a frequent contributor to another major conservative magazine, Russell Kirk’s Modern Age. Perhaps his most significant theological contribution was Judaism and Modern Man, published in 1951. In 1955, Herberg began teaching at Drew University and remained there until his retirement in 1976. The book most associated with Herberg’s career is his Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology, published in 1955. Herberg argued that while immigrants and their descendants tended to stay within the religious traditions of their ancestral families, in America there was a tendency to broaden theological perspectives and minimize religious differences. The identification with one of the three main faith communities helps people find and define their places within American society. No matter what religious faith they expressed, Herberg believed that the real religion of many Americans was a kind of generic faith in the American way of life. He described and critiqued this civil religion that he saw as a challenge to true religious faith. His mind failing, Herberg died at the age of seventy-five. Significance Herberg was among the first Jewish scholars in the United States to find an audience among the broader society. His sociological studies, political commentary, and theological writings meant that scholars and readers in a variety of fields became familiar with his work. While he became deeply committed to Conservative Judaism, he
Herberg, Will was also widely involved in ecumenical events. Although later scholars criticized some of his arguments in Protestant-Catholic-Jew, his classic book became a mustread for a generation of scholars studying various aspects of American religion. His career is also notable as an example of a personal intellectual pilgrimage from a materialistic Marxist philosophy to a recommitment to religious faith and an embracing of political conservatism. —Mark S. Joy Further Reading Ausmus, Harry J. Will Herberg: From Right to Right. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. An intellectual biography of Herberg that offers an in-depth study of his life and thought. Thoroughly documented with citations to Herberg’s voluminous writings and includes a complete bibliography of his publications. Butler, Jon. “Jack-in-the-Box Faith: The Religion Problem in Modern American History.” Journal of American History 90, no. 4 (March, 2004): 1,357-1,378. An article surveying the problems involved in the study of religion in modern American life; discusses the significance of Protestant-Catholic-Jew and puts it in context. Herberg, Will. Judaism and Modern Man: An Interpretation of Jewish Religion. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951. The first book Herberg published, this work also marks his reembracing of Jewish faith. _______. Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955. Herberg’s best-known work; a study of the connection of religion and ethnicity to the self-identity of Americans. Schwartz, Joel. “Protestant, Catholic, Jew . . . ” Public Interest 155 (Spring, 2004): 106-125. An in-depth retrospective review of Herberg’s career and the impact of his most significant book, published in observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the appearance of Protestant-Catholic-Jew. See also: Harold S. Kushner; Chaim Potok; Isaac Mayer Wise.
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Jerry Herman Composer, lyricist, and entertainer Herman is one of Broadway’s most celebrated composers and lyricists. His works, including Hello, Dolly! (1964), Mame (1966), and La Cage aux folles (1983), are among the most glittering successes in musical theater history. Born: July 10, 1931; New York, New York Also known as: Gerald Sheldon Herman (birth name) Area of achievement: Music Early Life Jerry Herman is the son of Harry Herman and Ruth Sachs. Jerry Herman disliked his middle name, Sheldon, and he considered his first name, Gerald, too pretentious. In 1961, shortly before the opening of Milk and Honey, when his name was to be set in lights on the marquee of the Martin Beck Theater, he changed it legally to Jerry Herman. Herman was raised in Jersey City, N.J., but he spent his summers at Stissing Lake Camp, in Pine Plains, New York, which was run by his parents and which was where he first became involved in theatrical production. At the age of seventeen, Herman was introduced to Frank Loesser, who, after hearing material Herman had written, urged him to continue composing. Herman attended the Parsons School of Design for one year, but he transferred to the University of Miami for its theater depart-
Jerry Herman. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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ment. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1954. In 1974, the university built a new theater, one that can be adapted to open, thrust, or proscenium stage, called the Jerry Herman Ring Theater. Upon graduation, Herman was drafted into the U.S. Army; stationed at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, he served one year. After his military service, Herman moved to New York City, where he produced the Off-Broadway revue I Feel Wonderful, comprising material he had written at the University of Miami. It opened at the Theatre de Lys in Greenwich Village on October 18, 1954, and ran for forty-eight performances. When his mother died of cancer, after this show opened, he dealt with his grief by putting together a revue called Nightcap in 1958 that opened at a New York City jazz club, the Showplace, where it had a successful run. Life’s Work In 1960, Herman made his Broadway debut with the revue From A to Z, which featured contributions from newcomers Woody Allen and Fred Ebb. That same year, producer Gerard Oestreicher asked Herman if he would be interested in composing the score for a show about the founding of the state of Israel. This became his first fullfledged Broadway musical, Milk and Honey (1961), starring Yiddish theater star Molly Picon; her presence was a major factor in the show’s lengthy run. In 1964, producer David Merrick brought Herman on board to write the music and the lyrics for Hello, Dolly!, based on a Thornton Wilder play; it became his most successful show. The original production ran for more than two thousand performances, the longest-running musical for its time; it was later revived in several new Broadway runs and on national tours, and it continues to be a staple of dinner theaters and college and high school productions. The original production starred Carol Channing, who became identified with the role. The musical swept the Tony Awards that season, winning ten, including one for Herman. However, he had a difficult relationship with producer Merrick, and Herman was accused of plagiarizing the first two lines of the show’s title song, a charge he settled out
Jewish Americans of court, partly to prevent a hold-up in the negotiations between Merrick and Twentieth Century-Fox over the film rights for Hello, Dolly! The film studio was reluctant to proceed if there was a legal dispute simmering over the popular title song. In 1966, Herman created the smash-hit musical Mame, starring Angela Lansbury and Beatrice Arthur, who won Tony Awards; it was based on the Patrick Dennis book Auntie Mame (1955) and the 1956 Broadway play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. The musical introduced a string of Herman standards, including the title tune, and it ran for more than fifteen hundred performances. Like Hello, Dolly!, it has had several major revivals and productions in local and regional theaters. Herman’s later productions were not commercial successes, at least in their original runs. Dear World (1969), starring Angela Lansbury, was a musical version of Jean Giraudoux’s play The Madwoman of Chaillot (1945), which closed after 132 performances, but it continues in revivals. Mack and Mabel (1974), the story of silent film director Mack Sennett and actor Mabel Normand, starred Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters; it closed after eight weeks, but Herman considers Mack and Mabel his personal favorite. Like other Herman shows, it has been revived. The Grand Tour (1979), starring Joel Grey, was based on Franz Werfel’s play Jacobowsky and the Colonel (1944); it closed after sixty-one performances. All are noted for their interesting concepts and their melodic, memorable scores. In 1983, Herman had his third mega-hit with La Cage aux folles, starring George Hearn and Gene Barry, which earned Herman yet another Tony Award for best musical and achieved a certain status as the first gay musical. Its score included the anthem “I Am What I Am.” In his post-Cage years, Herman put together a catalog of his songs as Jerry’s Girls (1985), an all-girl retrospective revue with the Herman point of view of femininity, which enjoyed a lengthy national tour before its Broadway opening. In July, 1998, Herman appeared in another musical revue of his songs, An Evening with Jerry Herman, which he designed as a retrospective of his work. As a show doctor, Herman was involved with other shows to which he contributed songs. These included Ben Franklin in Paris (1964), for which he wrote the uncredited ballad “To Be Alone with You,” and A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine (1980), for which Herman contributed three credited songs. Herman has devoted much of his time to raising funds in the fight against acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
Herman, Jerry His work is honored by a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Herman wrote the title song for Barney’s Great Adventure (1998), on video, and he created Mrs. Santa Claus (1996) as a television special for Angela Lansbury. There are original cast recordings for all of Herman’s major shows, including a concept album, Miss Spectacular (1999), for an unproduced Las Vegas musical; and there are multiple recordings that celebrate his music. Significance Besides writing the music and the lyrics for three of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history, all with more than fifteen hundred performances, Herman wrote songs that lingered in the mind and became chartbusters. Herman’s work was popular, down to earth, and appealed to a diverse audience. High school and regional productions of his work flourish. —Martin J. Manning Further Reading Citron, Stephen. Jerry Herman: Poet of the Showtune. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. Based on a series of interviews Herman gave to the author, the book clarifies many misstatements about Herman’s life, including his year of birth and his college graduation. Herman, Jerry, and Ken Bloom. Jerry Herman: The Lyrics: A Celebration. New York: Routledge, 2003. Bloom contributes introductory remarks to chapters consisting of lyrics, a generous selection of blackand-white and color production stills, and publicity posters for Herman’s shows. Herman, Jerry, with Marilyn Stasio. Showtune: A Memoir. New York: Donald I. Fine Books, 1996. For the most part, this is a lighthearted memoir of the composer, with more substance in the beginning. Much of it is a paean to his leading ladies. Jordan, Richard T. But Darling, I’m Your Auntie Mame! The Amazing History of the World’s Favorite Madcap Aunt. Updated ed. New York: Kensington Books, 2004. With an introduction by Herman, this book provides good background on the creation of Herman’s version of Mame. Offers an entertaining read about a popular book and its many stage and film renditions. See also: Betty Comden; George Gershwin; Ira Gershwin; Adolph Green; Marvin Hamlisch; Lorenz Hart; Alan Jay Lerner; Frederick Loewe; Richard Rodgers; Stephen Sondheim. 537
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Bernard Herrmann Musician, composer, and conductor An unparalleled musicologist, Herrmann became an outstanding composer of film music. He wrote the music for Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane in 1940 and for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in 1960. Born: June 29, 1911; New York, New York Died: December 24, 1975; North Hollywood, California Also known as: Benny Herrmann Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment Early Life Bernard Herrmann (bur-NAHRD HUR-mehn) was born on June 29, 1911, to Abraham and Ida Herrmann, Russian Jewish immigrants whose families had settled in New York in the 1880’s. A premature baby, Bernard Herrmann was the first of three children and his mother’s favorite. At age five, he contracted St. Vitus’s dance (Sydenham’s chorea), a neurological disorder that primarily attacks children, and he barely survived. Because their father favored the arts over religious training, the children were given musical instruments at an early age. Young Herrmann began playing the violin at five and took violin lessons until thirteen; at eleven, he composed his first opera. An awkward, socially inept child, he retreated from the taunting and harassment of his classmates to the New York Public Library, where he read nineteenth century English literature. Herrmann entered DeWitt Clinton High School in 1927, and by the end of his second year there, he learned that he would not graduate on time. He considered studies less important than sneaking into Carnegie Hall to watch various conductors at work or forming a trio and performing at select locations. In addition, Herrmann was composing some of his first pieces; in 1927, he was awarded one hundred dollars in a high school song competition. That same year, he began studies with composition teacher Gustav Heine. While still in high school, Herrmann enrolled in New York University’s fine arts school to study composition and conducting. His concert compositions during this time period already exhibited his characteristic use of color and chromatic progressions in the creation of dramatic atmosphere. These concert works would later be replaced with shorter 538
pieces for radio, film, and television, which would showcase Herrmann’s skill at uniting music with drama. With the death of his father in 1933, and the deepening gloom of the Great Depression, he realized he needed artistic satisfaction and money. He soon signed a contract with the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) to arrange, conduct, and program music for the radio, and, in three and a half years, he established a wide audience. In 1938, Herrmann joined CBS’s The Mercury Theatre on the Air, as composer-conductor, where he met Orson Welles, who asked Herrmann to write the music for his first film, Citizen Kane, in 1940. Life’s Work With the success of Welles’s Citizen Kane, assisted in no small part by Herrmann’s music, Herrmann supplied the film music for William Dieterle’s All That Money Can Buy (1941), for which Herrmann received an Academy Award. His next undertaking, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942),was also to be directed by Welles, but the success
The Score for PSYCHO Bernard Herrmann’s musical collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) produced world-renowned results. The film, involving the theft of forty thousand dollars by Marion Crane and her subsequent murder in a shower, was photographed by Hitchcock in black and white. Accordingly, Herrmann wrote a “black and white score,” using only violins and rejecting other instruments that provide “color” in orchestration. Early in the film Herrmann’s chords hint of violence to come and register tension and mounting suspense during Crane’s escape from Phoenix. Voyeurism is indicated thematically as the camera enters the hotel window in Phoenix and again when the hotel’s proprietor, Norman Bates, spies on her through a peephole. Hitchcock had intended that the shower scene be silent, except for Crane’s screams and the sounds of running water. Herrmann, realizing the scene should include more visceral effects, scored music for first and second violins, played in ascending glissandi (musicians’ rapid gliding finger movements over the strings) that clash when the two parts meet. Herrmann’s achievement of terror through the “shrieking violins” is unique in representing not only the knife’s stabs but also the birds’ cries, related to Bates’s stuffed birds. Herrmann’s innovative musicality matched Hitchcock’s minimalist beliefs and created the perfect atmosphere for the memorable murder of Crane.
Jewish Americans of the first film was not repeated. Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) Pictures denied Welles the final edit and cut fortythree minutes of the film and thirty-one minutes of Herrmann’s fifty-eight-minute score. RKO assigned a staff composer to create a new finale. Herrmann, threatening a lawsuit, immersed himself in composing, conducting, and programming music for CBS. Herrmann scored the brooding, melancholy music for Jane Eyre (1944), and, in so doing, he returned to his beloved world of English literature. He had begun work on his only opera, Wuthering Heights (1982), in 1943, and it required eight years to finish and took a heavy toll on his relationships, particularly his marriage to Lucille Fletcher, which ended in 1948. As chief conductor of the CBS Symphony, Herrmann continued to produce American music for radio and to create Romantic music in film. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), one of Herrmann’s most eloquent scores, became his personal favorite. In 1951, the CBS Symphony was disbanded, and the network’s priority became television. After working on several projects in Hollywood, Herrmann teamed with Alfred Hitchcock in 1954, initiating a productive collaboration. Their first venture was The Trouble with Harry (1955), followed by Hitchcock’s remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and The Wrong Man (1956). In Vertigo (1958), viewed by many as Hitchcock’s finest film, Herrmann incorporated his favorite themes of isolation, obsession, and endless yearning. In 1959, Herrmann scored the music for Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, opening with a fandango and maintaining silence for the dramatic crop-dusting scene. Hitchcock, impressed with the results, persuaded Herrmann to use an electronic device in lieu of music four years later with The Birds (1963). In 1960, Herrmann scored the music for Hitchcock’s Psycho and Marnie (1964). In 1966, Herrmann and Hitchcock fell out, and Herrmann forfeited the scoring assignment for Torn Curtain (1966). In 1959, Herrmann began work for Rod Serling on The Twilight Zone, and Hermann provided music for the first year of the show’s five-year run. Serling’s perceptions of human experience visualized in fables, allegories, and nightmares were perfectly suited to Herrmann’s atmospheric music that emphasized alienation and tension. Much like Hitchcock, Serling provided Herrmann with an opportunity to work outside the norm. In addition to his work for Hitchcock’s films, Herrmann turned out distinctive music for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1959), Mysterious
Herrmann, Bernard Island (1961), Cape Fear (1962), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Sisters (1973), Obsession (1976), and Taxi Driver (1976). Herrmann died of cardiovascular disease on December 24, 1975, the night following the completion of the score for Taxi Driver. Significance At the time of Herrmann’s first scoring success, Citizen Kane, film music was essentially uniform in style and structure. Herrmann, however, always an individualist, used distinctive orchestration to emphasize theme and character, a practice he continued throughout his career. Ignoring the long melodic phrasing used by many of his peers, he valued understatement and employed short phrasing that could be transformed throughout the piece to indicate psychological complexity. His fragmented scores seemed to reflect his own complexity. His personal life, frustrated by divorces, broken friendships, bitter and angry collaborative endings, pushed him to search obsessively for an ideal that could be realized in his music. His work in radio, television, and cinema gives his music its enduring resonance and makes him one of the most imitated of all film musicians. — Mary Hurd Further Reading Davis, Richard. Complete Guide to Film Scoring. Boston: Berklee Press, 1999. Book serves as a good introduction to those interested in film music or as a reference work. Contains nineteen interviews with composers. Larsen, Peter. Film Music. Translated by John Irons. London: Reaktion Books, 2008. Probes the relationship between film and music; also contains an examination of Herrmann’s score for Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. Smith, Steven C. A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Excellently documented biography, with an overview of the accomplishments of Herrmann. Includes photographs, correspondence, papers, interviews, and recollections of a large number of people who knew Herrmann well. Timm, Larry M. The Soul of Cinema: An Appreciation of Film Music. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education, 2003. Study of the utilization of music in various motion pictures and of the scores of numerous composers and the characteristics of their music. Includes pertinent information on Herrmann. See also: Danny Elfman; Philip Glass; Randy Newman. 539
Hersh, Seymour M.
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Seymour M. Hersh Journalist and writer A famous investigative journalist, Hersh has exposed abuses by American forces in Vietnam and Iraq and uncovered American and Israeli government secrets. His biases and his reliance on anonymous sources have been widely criticized, however, especially when Hersh targeted such public persons as Henry Kissinger and John F. Kennedy. Born: April 8, 1937; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: Sy Hersh; Seymour Myron Hersh (full name) Area of achievement: Journalism Early Life Seymour Hersh (SEE-mohr hursh) was born a twin into a Yiddish-speaking immigrant household in Chicago. His father, Isadore Hersh, came from Lithuania, and his
Seymour M. Hersh. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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mother, Dorothy Margolis, came from Poland. Before Seymour Hersh and his fraternal twin Alan were born, the couple had twin daughters. Hersh’s father managed a drycleaning plant and shop in the tough southwest Chicago neighborhood of Austin, but the family soon moved to the more upscale Hyde Park district, where Hersh grew up. Hersh’s family was not political. His two favorite subjects in high school were baseball and literature. With a rebellious spirit, he visited Chicago nightclubs where he watched stand-up comedians and satirists such as Lenny Bruce. Hersh attended the University of Chicago and earned his bachelor’s degree in history in 1958. Around this time, Hersh later commented, he became an agnostic Jew and maintained only a vague Jewish identity. Interested in Jewish history, but not in religion, he valued Jewish American writers such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. Because his lack of interest translated into poor grades, Hersh was expelled from the University of Chicago Law School in 1959. He turned to journalism and worked as a police reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago from 1959 to 1960. Drafted into the United States Army, he was an Army journalist in Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1960. He unsuccessfully tried his hand at a Chicago suburban paper in 1961 before joining the United Press International (UPI) news agency, which sent him to Pierre, South Dakota. In 1963, Hersh was hired by Associated Press (AP) and stationed in Chicago. Hersh married his Jewish American college sweetheart, Elizabeth Sarah Klein, on May 31, 1964, and they had three children, Matthew, Melissa, and Joshua. Hersh stated that he left their involvement with their religious faith up to his children, and that only some had their bar (or bat) mitzvah. His wife eventually became a psychoanalyst. Life’s Work In 1964, while working for Associated Press in Washington, D.C., Hersh became opposed to America’s military involvement in Vietnam. In 1967, he left the news agency. In 1968, Hersh wrote his first book, Chemical and Biological Warfare: America’s Hidden Arsenal, which laid out his suspicions of American secret weaponry. Hersh became press secretary for Senator Eugene McCarthy, an antiwar liberal Democrat, but Hersh left politics after McCarthy’s defeat in the U.S. presidential primaries of 1968.
Jewish Americans Working as a freelance journalist, Hersh got his big break when he was tipped off about an Army court-martial of the officer who ordered the 1968 murder of more than three hundred Vietnamese civilians at the village of Son My, called My Lai 4 by Americans. Visiting the officer, Hersh got him to talk and broke the news in a story that ran on the left-leaning Dispatch News Service in November, 1969. Thirty-six leading newspapers picked up the story. It won Hersh the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Hersh wrote two books about the event and the trial, My Lai Four (1970) and Cover-Up (1972), which solidified his national fame. Hersh was hired by The New York Times, where he worked in Washington, D.C., and New York from 1972 to 1979. His newspaper reporting was investigative and confrontational. He investigated illegal domestic spying by the Central Intelligence Agency and American involvement in the 1973 coup in Chile. A planned 1974 story of the United States retrieving a sunken Soviet submarine had to be postponed until 1975 for national security reasons. After turning to exposing corporate malfeasance in the United States, Hersh used aggressive investigative methods that critics charged amounted to blackmailing sources, and he was forced to leave the paper. During the 1980’s and 1990’s, Hersh’s zeal as an investigative reporter led him to cast his subjects in the darkest light possible. This alienated Hersh from American mainstream journalism. His spiteful biography The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (1983) left critics wondering why Hersh harshly criticized everything Henry Kissinger did as U.S. national security adviser and secretary of state. Hersh complained bitterly that some fellow Jewish Americans called him a “kapo,” a Nazi term for Jews who helped them, for writing The Samson Option (1991). This book tried to expose Israel’s semisecret atomic program. Hersh’s low point was The Dark Side of Camelot (1997), trying to destroy the legacy of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Critics proved that some of Hersh’s anonymous sources had provided him with forged negative material. Hersh’s reputation as an investigative journalist was restored in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Publishing his incisive reports in The New Yorker since that time, Hersh became a widely read source of material critical of the American government, particularly its wars on terrorism and in
Hersh, Seymour M.
Exposing the My Lai Massacre On November 12, 1969, the small, left-wing Dispatch News Service agency broke a story by freelance journalist Seymour Hersh that the United States Army was preparing to courtmartial Second Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr. It was alleged that Calley ordered a massacre perpetrated by American soldiers in the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai, a year before, on March 16, 1968, killing hundreds of civilians. The story was immediately picked up by thirty-six major newspapers, including The San Francisco Chronicle and the London Times. It quickly spread around the world. This globe-shattering story began in the fall of 1969, when Seymour Hersh got a tip-off from his friend Geoffrey Cowan from The Village Voice about Calley’s court-martial. True to his hands-on style of investigative reporting relying on primary sources, Hersh flew to Fort Benning in Georgia where Calley was based. Clothed like an official visitor, Hersh entered the military base and began his clandestine fifteen- hour search for Calley, finally meeting him. Driving Calley to his girlfriend’s house after buying food and alcohol, Hersh managed to engage Calley in a nighttime conversation, during which the officer revealed the atrocity. Exposing the terrible truth of My Lai catapulted Hersh to international reporting fame. Outrage at this atrocity solidified American public opinion against further U.S. military engagement in Vietnam.
Iraq. Hersh exposed torture and prisoner abuse at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, summarized in his book Chain of Command (2004). By 2010, Hersh was less antagonistic toward the government of U.S. president Barack Obama than to that of his two predecessors. Significance Hersh’s exposure of the My Lai massacre proved criminal misconduct by the United States Army in Vietnam. Hersh’s revelation significantly helped to turn troubled American public opinion against continuing military engagement in Vietnam. With this story, Hersh became one of the top American investigative reporters. However, Hersh’s unrelenting, continuous harsh criticism of the United States and of the Israeli government and some of its public figures made him unpopular with many audiences who believed he was far too one-sided. Critics included Jewish Americans who felt Hersh underestimated the malicious resolve of Israel’s enemies, which required effective Jewish countermeasures. Hersh’s work to uncover failures, shortcomings, missteps, and misjudgments in the U.S. war on terror and in its relationship with Iraq and Iran earned him a new ap541
Heschel, Abraham Joshua preciative audience after 2001. By age seventy-three, Hersh had written nine books. He was recognized with a Pulitzer Prize, five Polk Awards, the 2004 George Orwell Award, and numerous international honors. —R. C. Lutz Further Reading Applegate, Edd. Journalistic Advocates and Muckrakers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997. Places Hersh in the tradition of American investigative journalists bent on shaking up the public by exposing inequities. Aucoin, James L. The Evolution of American Investigative Journalism. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007. Puts Hersh’s work, especially his exposure of the My Lai massacre, in the context of investigative journalism in America. Downie, Leonard, Jr. The New Muckrakers. Washington: New Republic, 1976. Early study of Hersh’s accomplishments in uncovering government secrets such as
Jewish Americans the My Lai massacre. Still valuable look at Hersh’s first journalistic triumph. Isaac, Rael Jean. “Investigating Seymour Hersh.” In The Jewish Divide over Israel: Accusers and Defenders, edited by Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2006. Critical review of Hersh’s stance toward Israel; questions the morality and wisdom of Hersh’s exposure of Israel’s atomic weapons program in the light of Arab hostility toward the very existence of the Jewish state. Jensen, Carl. “Seymour Hersh.” In Stories That Changed America: Muckrakers of the Twentieth Century by Carl Jensen. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2000. Brief biography of Hersh highlighting his major accomplishments, followed by three excerpts from his book on the My Lai massacre; good overview of his work as an investigative reporter. See also: Carl Bernstein; Matt Drudge; David Halberstam; Ted Koppel; Walter Lippmann; Daniel Schorr.
Abraham Joshua Heschel Polish-born rabbi, philosopher, and theologian Heschel taught an approach to Judaism grounded in spiritualism and human concerns. Born: January 11, 1907; Warsaw, Russian Empire (now in Poland) Died: December 23, 1972; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Religion and theology; scholarship; social issues; activism Early Life Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1907, Abraham Joshua Heschel (AY-brah-ham JOSH-ew-wah HESH-uhl) was the youngest of six children. His family had seven generations of preeminent Hasidic rabbis. His great-greatgrandfather and namesake was Rebbe Avraham Yehoshua Heschel of Apt. His father, Rabbi Moshe Mordecai, and those who went before him helped to found the Polish Hasidic movement, a Jewish sect of mystics, in the eighteenth century. His mother, Reisel Perlow, gave him a love of learning, and, as a young man, Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote poetry in Yiddish, which was later published in 1933 as Der Shem Hamefoyrosh: Mentsch, dedicated to his father. Heschel received a traditional Jewish (yeshiva) educa542
tion in Warsaw and went to Berlin, where he studied at the university and also taught the Talmud, during 1932-1933, at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. There he studied under some of the finest Jewish educators of the time: Hanoch Albeck, Ismar Elbogen, Julius Guttmann, and Leo Baeck. Heschel earned his Ph.D. degree from Berlin University in 1933 and accepted a fellowship at the Hochschule, graduating the following year. Life’s Work Between 1935 and 1937, Heschel wrote three works that began to establish his reputation as a serious scholar: Maimonides: Eine Biographie (1935), concerning the medieval Jewish philosopher; Die Prophetie (1936), on Hebrew prophecy; and Don Jizchak Abravanel (1937), about the fifteenth century Jewish statesman of Spain. In 1937, Heschel accepted a teaching position in Frankfurt am Main at the prestigious Judisches Lehrhaus. With the impending war in Europe, he was deported from Nazi Germany in 1938 and returned to Warsaw for a few months, teaching at the Institute of Judaistic Studies. When the Nazis invaded Poland, Heschel fled to London, where he founded the Institute for Jewish Learning.
Jewish Americans In 1940, Heschel emigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio, and joined the faculty of Hebrew Union College. In 1945, he became the chair and professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism at Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City. That same year, he became an American citizen, and in 1946 he married concert pianist Sylvia Straus. They had one daughter, Susannah. Heschel remained at the Jewish Theological Seminary until his death in New York City on December 23, 1972. Heschel’s view of a religious life prompted him to become actively involved in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and early 1970’s to end racial discrimination in America. He marched and preached with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Heschel was one of the first religious leaders in the United States to speak out against the war in Vietnam. He risked criticism from fellow Jews by meeting with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in Rome to discuss Jewish concerns with Vatican Council II. Heschel believed it important that Jewish approval be added, if possible, to some of the council’s decrees, such as the denial of any Jewish guilt in the crucifixion of Jesus. For Heschel, Judaism was about both reason and a culture of religious experience; it was philosophical and experiential. The key was finding a loving and devoted human response to God. Heschel believed that Jewish ethics and teachings would guide human behavior in relation to modern concerns and challenges. This helps explain why he became a public advocate in favor of civil rights and against the Vietnam War. Heschel resists easy categorization as either a fundamentalist or an extreme liberal. He opposed the notion that all that Judaism had to teach had been revealed at Sinai, but likewise he would not be swayed from the fundamental belief that Judaism is founded on the conviction that God made his will known to his people. Over the course of his active and productive life, Heschel wrote several important books, including his magnum opus, Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (1951), The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (1951), Man’s Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism (1954), God in Search of Man (1955), The Prophets (1962), Who Is Man? (1965), and The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (1966).
Heschel, Abraham Joshua Significance Heschel is one of the most important Jewish thinkers and teachers of the twentieth century. He had a lasting impact on deeply religious and secular Jews alike. Indeed, his influence reached far beyond the Jewish community as a result of his steadfast and very visible support for the Civil Rights and antiwar movements of the 1960’s and early 1970’s. As such, he played a pivotal role in helping to strengthen relations between Jews and African Americans. Heschel came to symbolize for a new generation of Jews a vital conception of Judaism that is relevant to their lives and to their desire to live a meaningful life committed to social justice based on deeply rooted Jewish values, including the humanity of all people, the command to oppose injustice, and the obligation to care for the stranger and to help repair the world. —Stephen F. Rohde Further Reading Chester, Michael A. Divine Pathos and Human Being: The Theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel. Portland, Oreg.: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005. Begins with a short biography of Heschel, then moves on to examine his depth theology and his conception of the divine pathos. Kaplan, Edward K. Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007. This is a continuation of Kaplan’s major biography of Heschel, covering his years in the United States, highlighted by details on his spiritual and political radicalism. Kaplan, Edward K., and Stanley Dresner. Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998. Important portrait of Heschel’s early life, his education, and his migration to the United States. Rose, Or N., and Susannah Heschel. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man of Spirit, Man of Action. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2003. For a juvenile audience, this book presents the life story of Heschel, including the drama of his escape from the Holocaust and his involvement in the Civil Rights movement. Includes many photographs. See also: Henry Berkowitz; Moshe Feinstein; Judah Leon Magnes; Isaac Mayer Wise.
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Eva Hesse German-born artist Hesse’s sculptural works were constructed from nontraditional materials. She was a pioneer in efforts to have artwork by women receive recognition. Born: January 11, 1936; Hamburg, Germany Died: May 29, 1970; New York, New York Area of achievement: Art Early Life Eva Hesse (EE-vuh hehs) was born in 1936 in Hamburg, Germany, as the Nazi regime reached the height of its power. In 1938, Hesse’s parents sent her and her sister, born in 1933, to the Netherlands. Her father’s brother and the brother’s wife in Amsterdam were not able to help. After a few months apart, the family was reunited and left for England. In 1939, they immigrated to the United States, sponsored by cousins in New York. Hesse’s Dutch aunt and uncle were deported to concentration camps. None of the family that stayed in Europe survived. Hesse’s father had been an attorney of criminal law, and he had two doctoral degrees. Her mother, a great beauty who suffered from manic depression, had been an art student. The Hesses’ first apartment in New York was across the street from Nazi headquarters. In New York, Hesse’s father studied to become an insurance broker. Her mother was in and out of hospitals, eventually leaving the family to live with her doctor and his wife. As a child, Hesse was always frightened and lonely. Her mother committed suicide when Hesse was ten years old. Hesse attended New York’s School of Industrial Art until 1952; then, at age sixteen, she entered New York’s Pratt Institute. She was younger than other students and unhappy because Pratt did not emphasize painting. She quit midyear in 1953. When her father remarried, Hesse’s stepmother insisted Hesse get a job. She found a job at Seventeen magazine, she went to films and the Museum of Modern Art, and she studied painting from live models. After a long illness, her father died. Hesse attended New York’s Cooper Union from 1954 to 1957. She enjoyed her studies there and excelled. Hesse attended the Yale School of Art and Architecture from 1957 to 1959, studied under Josef Albers, gained artist friends, and received a bachelor of fine arts degree. In 1961, she met and married sculptor Tom Doyle. 544
Life’s Work Hesse showed her work at the John Heller Gallery in 1961, and she had a solo show of her works on paper in 1963 at the Allan Stone Gallery. In 1964 and 1965, she and Doyle lived in a nonworking textile mill in Germany’s Ruhr region. Her husband had received financial support to live and work there; she was not happy to be in Germany. Although their marriage dissolved at this time, Hesse found a new direction for her work in that mill. She began to use abandoned industrial material for sculpture, first in relief and later free-standing or hanging work. She worked with electrical cords, cloth-covered cord, masonite, using detritus to create relatively small sculptures with satirical names. When she returned to New York, the pieces grew larger, and she began working with the materials most associated with her: various plastic items, fiberglass, and latex. Her work established her presence in a movement away from minimalism to postminimalism. Her work was in the notable postminimalist exhibits of 1966, Eccentric Abstraction and Abstract Inflationism and Stuffed Expressionism. Hesse asserted herself as a feminist artist, aware of the obstacles to advancement in a world dominated by male artists, curators, writers, and gallery and museum directors. In 1968, she began teaching in New York at the School of Visual Arts. Her show, Chain Polymers, at the Fischbach Gallery, in November, 1968, was the only one-person show of her sculptures in her lifetime. The Whitney Museum included a large, major work, Expanded Expansion, in its show, Anti-Illusion: Process/ Materials, in 1969. In 1969, Hesse discovered she had a brain tumor, and she died in 1970. Her illness came at a time when she and her work were receiving wide attention in the art world. Her work received many posthumous exhibitions, both in the United States and abroad. Among these were the Guggenheim Museum in 1972, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2002, and New York City’s Jewish Museum of Art in 2006. Hesse’s work has continued to attract interest from artists and scholars. Her favorite materials, such as latex and plastics, do not age well. Their changing qualities change the works’ appearance over time. However, observers have found their altered states witty and sensual, holding a fascination for the onlooker. Hesse’s personality engaged the admiration and affection of many.
Jewish Americans She insisted that art and life should be one and that her work, though it might appear entirely abstract to some, was truly inseparable from her interior life. An exhibition in 1994, In the Lineage of Eva Hesse, at Larry Aldrich Gallery, New York, demonstrated the art world’s acknowledgment of her ongoing influence on generations of artists and art lovers. —Leslie Joan Friedman Further Reading Danto, Arthur C. “All About Eva.” The Nation (July 17/ 24, 2006): 30-34. A sensitive appreciation of Hesse’s work.
Hillman, Sidney Lippard, Lucy R. Eva Hesse. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1992. A book-length biography by an art historian with special expertise in the feminist movement in art. Nixon, Mignon, ed. Eva Hesse. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002. Essays and interviews by Cindy Nemser, Rosalind Krauss, Mel Bochner, Briony Fer, Anne M. Wagner, and Mignon Nixon. The interviews with Hesse are informative. There has been controversy over Nemser’s interview article for selective editing. See also: Helen Frankenthaler; Lee Krasner; Barbara Kruger; Barnett Newman; Mark Rothko.
Sidney Hillman Lithuanian-born labor leader A prominent union organizer, Hillman helped shape national labor regulations and practices. He participated in the creation of the American Clothing Workers Union (ACWU) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Born: March 23, 1887; Magarå, Lithuania Died: July 10, 1946; Point Lookout, Long Island, New York Also known as: Simcha Hillman (birth name) Area of achievement: Activism Early Life The second of seven children, Sidney Hillman (SIHDnee HIHL-muhn) was born on March 23, 1887, in Magarå, Lithuania, to Samuel, a merchant, and Judith, a shopkeeper. Although poor, Hillman enjoyed an average, if uneventful, childhood. Hillman was a descendant of a string of rabbis, and when he demonstrated a habit of reading, his parents enrolled him at the age of fourteen in a yeshiva in a suburb in Kovno, Slobodka. Shortly thereafter he found a Russian-language tutor, Michael Zacharias, who exposed him to a range of secular subjects, including modern politics. Zacharias resided with his aunt and uncle, Dr. and Mrs. Matis, who were members of the Bund, an underground socialist political network. A few months after Hillman’s fifteenth birthday, following a spat with the chief rabbi of his yeshiva concerning his secular pursuits, Hillman abandoned his religious studies. Homeless and unemployed, he moved in with the Matis family. In his new environment, Hillman discov-
ered similarly oriented, intellectually curious individuals, with whom he studied politics and philosophy. He acquired his earliest political views, which included tenets of socialism and an appreciation for democracy. Hillman was arrested for the first time on May 1, 1904, after leading a parade of one hundred laborers marching in protest. Eventually released after political maneuvering by Dr. Matis and his father, Hillman returned to his childhood home in Magarå. He was then arrested again in August of 1905, amid the uprisings that occurred throughout the region. Released four months later, he again returned home, this time met by his parents’ pleas to move west. After initial hesitancy, Hillman migrated to Manchester, England, where his uncle resided, in late 1906. Nine months later, on August 1, 1907, he boarded a ship in Liverpool and disembarked ten days later at a port in New York City. Hillman began his life in America at twenty years of age. Life’s Work Toward the end of 1907, unsatisfied with New York’s lower East Side, Hillman moved to Chicago, Illinois. He enrolled in English classes at the Hebrew Institute of Chicago, continued to educate himself by reading, and attended socialist lectures. After almost two years of employment at Sears, Roebuck and Company, in the spring of 1909, he took a job at Hart, Schaffner, and Marx, a clothing manufacturer, where he worked as a garment cutter under the watchful gaze of reputedly unforgiving floor managers. On September 22, 1910, a small group of women—including Hillman’s future 545
Hillman, Sidney wife, Bessie Abramowitz—walked off the job. This initiated a mass strike, which, by late October, counted approximately forty-five thousand participants, including Hillman. Hillman assumed a leadership position in the chaos of the strike, negotiating with factory heads and encouraging workers to accept a settlement. As a result of this experience, Hillman learned the power of collective action and acquired an appreciation for impartial arbiters as mediators between labor and management. By the beginning of 1911, Hillman was in charge of the local United Garment Workers (UGW) union branch. In this capacity, he became a close associate of such progressive reformers as Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, and John E. Williams. All three influenced Hillman’s thinking about the relationship between labor and government in the context of a political democracy. In January of 1914, Hillman accepted a job in New York with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). Although he stayed with the ILGWU only nine months, the position introduced him to notable Jewish torchbearers like Louis Brandeis, Morris Hillquit, and Abraham Cahan. When a late 1914 dispute between factions of
Sidney Hillman. (Library of Congress)
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Jewish Americans the UGW resulted in the creation of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), Hillman was recruited to serve as the organization’s first president. Under Hillman’s leadership, the ACWA provided services and opportunities for its members, which included various education programs, housing cooperatives, and unemployment insurance. As a supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Hillman served on the National Recovery Administration’s Labor Advisory Board from 1933 to 1936 and on the National Industrial Recovery Board. In such capacity, he prodded the government into accepting greater responsibility in the lives of American laborers. For example, he participated in writing the 1935 Wagner Act, which secured collective bargaining rights for workers and also called for the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established regulations concerning workdaylength and minimum wages. In 1937, Hillman helped found the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) with John L. Lewis; in this position Hillman fostered political initiatives by rallying laborers throughout the country. He remained one of FDR’s labor advisers, serving as the associate director of the Office of Production Management in 1941 and becoming a member of the labor division of the War Production Board in 1942. In the postwar years, Hillman helped establish the World Federation of Trade Unions, which aimed to help rebuild Europe. Hillman died of a heart attack, his fourth, on July 10, 1946, on Long Island, New York, leaving behind his wife Bessie and daughters Selma and Philoine. Although Hillman never returned to Orthodox Jewish practices, he considered himself Jewish, both culturally and politically. He followed the philosophy of Reform Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who ultimately led kaddish at Hillman’s funeral. Significance Hillman is known for his contributions to union activism. He was an effective and pragmatic mediator between labor and management. In his early career, he helped to establish use of impartial arbiters as a standard practice in labor-management negotiations. As a union organizer, he successfully united various ethnic labor groups. As a political consultant, he encouraged the federal adoption of regulations, which he believed promoted fair labor practices. Hillman believed that the government ought to manage the relationship between businesses and society. His moderating and practical
Jewish Americans stance enabled him to effectively negotiate between conflicting parties, ultimately allowing him to advance the rights of workers. —Britt P. Tevis Further Reading Epstein, Melech. Profiles of Eleven. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1965. Biographical sketch of Hillman as an immigrant and a labor leader. Fraser, Steven. Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993. A thorough text that focuses on the details of Hillman’s professional career, from his time in Lithuania through his death in New York.
Hirsch, Judd Gould, Jean. Sidney Hillman: Great American. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952. A detailed account of Hillman’s personal life. Josephson, Matthew. Sidney Hillman, Statesman of American Labor. New York: Doubleday, 1952. A biography of Hillman, which traces his life in tandem with the evolution of American industry. Soule, George Henry. Sidney Hillman: Labor Statesman. New York: Macmillan, 1939. Early Hillman biography, detailing his participation in various labor organizations. See also: Shulamith Firestone; Emma Goldman; Samuel Gompers; Hannah Solomon; Henrietta Szold.
Judd Hirsch Actor An award-winning actor of stage, cinema, and television, Hirsch is well regarded for his portrayal of Jewish characters, which he informs with his personal experiences of anti-Semitism. Born: March 15, 1935; Bronx, New York Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Judd Hirsch (juhd hursh) is the son of Joseph Sidney Hirsch, an electrician, and Sally Kitzis, Jewish Russian immigrants. Hirsch attended De Witt Clinton High School and City College of New York, graduating with a degree in physics. In 1956, Hirsch married Elissa, and they had a son, Alexander, a musician. Hirsch and Elissa divorced in 1958. In 1992, he married Bonnie, and they had two children, a daughter, Montana Eve, and a son, London. Hirsch and Bonnie divorced in 2005. Life’s Work Hirsch has appeared in numerous stage plays, films, and television dramas. He also directed several theatrical plays. Hirsch began his professional theater career in the early 1960’s. In 1969, he joined the repertory ensemble of Philadelphia’s Theatre of Living Arts, and beginning in 1973 he appeared frequently in the Circle Repertory Company of New York. In 1974, Hirsch appeared in the television miniseries The Law, which brought him to the attention of a national audience and led to his leading role as Alex Rieger in the situation comedy Taxi, for which he won an Emmy
Award as the lead in a television comedy. Taxi ran from 1978 to 1983. From 1988 to 1992, he played in another award-winning television comedy, Dear John. For the 1997-1998 television season Hirsch starred in the situation comedy George and Leo. In this vehicle he was paired with Bob Newhart, another veteran of television comedy situation comedies. They were the fathers of a married couple, and the laughs in the show were based on the differences in their characters, with emphasis on the fact that Newhart was a Gentile and Hirsch was a Jew. Hirsch was cast mainly in Jewish roles. On Broadway he played Eddie Ross in Herb Gardner’s Conversations with My Father (1992), about a man who comes to grips with his ethnicity, which he has tried to hide, for example, by changing his name from Itzik Goldenberg to Eddie Ross. The role brought out memories of the antiSemitism Hirsch had experienced in his life. In the film Running on Empty (1988), Hirsch played Artie Pope, the Jewish head of a family, on the run from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) because Artie and his wife, student radicals in the 1960’s, blew up a university building in which a janitor was injured. Hirsch also played the Jewish father of Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day (1996), supplying, as one critic called it, “borscht-belt comic relief.” On television Hirsch played Alan Eppes on the drama Numb3rs, the Jewish father of the two main characters, an FBI agent and a mathematics professor. Hirsch has been nominated many times for acting awards, including Academy Awards, Tony Awards, Emmy Awards, and Golden Globes. He won Tony Awards for 547
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Jewish Americans Hirsch answered the characters in the dramas of classic playwrights “William Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw.” Yasmina Reza’s comedy Art (1994) is one of Hirsch’s favorite vehicles. He has played the character Marc in hundreds of performances. The British actor Nigel Havers has also played the part in many performances, and he and Hirsch have a friendly rivalry over who has performed it the most. Hirsch was also the narrator for the Broadway album of The Odd Potato (2005), a show based on a story by Eileen Bluestone Sherman about a Jewish family remembering their deceased wife and mother at a Hanukkah celebration.
Judd Hirsch. (AP/Wide World Photos)
his leading performances in Conversations with My Father and I’m Not Rappaport (1984), two Emmy Awards for Taxi, and a Golden Globe for his role as John Lacy in the television comedy Dear John. In 1994, Hirsch played Willie Loman in the Arthur Miller classic Death of a Salesman (1949) in a regional theater in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In an interview Hirsch gave to Walter Bilderback for American Theater magazine, the actor explained his ideas about playing Loman and acting in general. Since he was usually cast in new plays, he often did not get to perform in established works. Thus, being cast as Loman was an opportunity for him to interpret a role that had been played by Lee J. Cobb, the original Loman; Fredric March, who played it in the 1951 film; and Dustin Hoffman, who played the part in a 1984 revival. It is not merely coincidental that Cobb and Hoffman, like Hirsch, are Jews. Miller also was a Jew, and while he did not mention Loman’s religion in the play, many of Loman’s characteristics, particularly his ambitions and dreams, echo the life of Jewish immigrants to America. As for Hirsch’s philosophy of acting, he explained that his goal is to make the audience “feel something about the story” by discovering the reasons for his character’s actions. When asked what parts he would like to play, 548
Significance Hirsch is an award-winning actor who has played the lead in several well-received Broadway dramas and comedies. He is also well known for his roles on television, especially as the lead character, Alex Rieger, in Taxi. In films, he generally plays a supporting character. Hirsch was cast mainly in Jewish roles, and some plays were written with him in mind. These include Gardner’s Conversations with My Father and I’m Not Rappaport, Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly (1979), Jules Feiffer’s Knock, Knock (1976), and Neil Simon’s autobiographical Chapter Two (1977). — Frederick B. Chary Further Reading Bilderback, Walter. “Judd Hirsch: Willie and Me.” Variety 11, nos. 5/6 (May/June, 1994): 38-39. A review of Hirsch’s portrayal of Loman and an interview in which Hirsch gives his philosophy of acting. Goldman, Ari. “Judd Hirsch Finds the Echoes in Conversations.” The New York Times, March 22, 1992. Hirsch talks about his personal experiences with antiSemitism and how it helped him in his portrayal of Ross in Conversations with My Father. “The Odd Potato: The Broadway Album” School Library Journal 53, no. 10 (October, 2007): S49. A brief review of Hirsch’s Broadway album about a family’s Hanukkah celebration. See also: Alan Arkin; Ed Asner; Matthew Broderick; Joel and Ethan Coen; Billy Crystal; Jules Feiffer; Robert Klein; Bette Midler; Barbra Streisand.
Jewish Americans
Hirschfeld, Al
Al Hirschfeld Artist For seven decades, Hirschfeld produced thousands of elegant caricatures that captured the essence of celebrities and of Broadway shows, and which graced the pages of dozens of publications. Born: June 21, 1903; St. Louis, Missouri Died: January 20, 2003; New York, New York Also known as: The Line King; Albert Hirschfeld (full name) Areas of achievement: Art; theater; entertainment
the actors in his ever-present sketchbook. An agent in attendance placed one of the drawings in the New York Herald Tribune. Soon afterward, Hirschfeld became a regular contributor to New York newspapers. In 1927, the year he went to Russia for six months as theater correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, he married for the first time, to chorus girl Florence Ruth Hobby. Their marriage, strained by Hirschfeld’s many trips abroad—including extended stays in Tahiti and Bali in 1931—would end in divorce in 1941.
Early Life Life’s Work Al Hirschfeld (HERSH-fehld) was the son of a GerWhile travel abroad may have jinxed his first marman American father and a Ukrainian mother. A child riage, the experiences Hirschfeld absorbed in foreign enprodigy in art, he grew up in humble circumstances in vironments had a positive effect on his artwork. By the St. Louis. At the suggestion of a painting teacher, the early 1930’s he had developed the ability to reduce huHirschfeld family moved when their son was twelve man subjects to their most essential qualities, limned in years old to New York City, where his extraordinary talstrongly contrasting blacks and whites. His clean, crisp ent would have a better chance to flourish. In New York, lines produced maximum effect—the delineation of charHirschfeld attended daytime classes at the Vocational acter—with a minimum of effort. A sure stroke here School for Boys, and at night he took courses in painting caught a typical gesture, such as the uplifted pinky on and in sculpture at the prestigious Art Students League W. C. Fields’s hand as he quaffs a drink. A confident of New York, an adjunct to the National Academy of slash there preserved Mae West’s trademarked smirk, the Design. Following high school graduation in 1920, he became an art director at Selznick Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where he created A National Pastime: Finding “Nina” posters for many silent films, including several featuring Charlie Chaplin. He continued to deIn November, 1945, Al Hirschfeld inserted something new into velop his craft, picking up tips from fellow arthis New York Times drawing for a review of the now-forgotten muists Charles Dana Gibson (of “Gibson Girl” sical, Are You with It? Just four letters, N-I-N-A, appeared in the design of a faked-up poster in the illustration to commemorate the fame), John Held, Jr., and Mexican illustrator October birth of his only child, daughter Nina. Hirschfeld intended Miguel Covarrubias, with whom he shared a the addition as a one-time gimmick, but faithful readers, delighted studio. with the innovation, demanded he continue the practice. The artist When Selznick Studios folded in 1924, impishly obliged them, often including his daughter’s name sevHirschfeld afterward determined that he wanted eral times in a single drawing, intricately woven into the tangle of to work as a freelancer rather than as an eman actor’s hair, a fold of cloth, or a background detail. It became a ployee, and he completed projects on commisgame between artist and audience to see how many Ninas he could sion for other New York-based film production include and how many Ninas readers could find. In the 1960’s, in companies. Still searching for a unique style, he response to new reader demands, Hirschfeld would indicate how went to Paris to continue his artistic education. many times he had hidden the name in a drawing. He supported himself as a part-time tap dancer The Spot the Nina Game became so popular that even the U.S. military took notice. Hirschfeld drawings were used in bomberand grew a beard, which he would retain for the pilot training for studying methods of camouflage. When the U.S. rest of his long life. He also traveled to North Postal Service commissioned Hirschfeld to draw caricatures for Africa and to London, drawing and painting postage stamp series, it waived the rule forbidding hidden meswherever he went. sages for the first time in history. Returning to New York, Hirschfeld happened to attend a play in 1926, and he drew some of 549
Hirschfeld, Al playful twinkle in Groucho Marx’s eye, or the instantly recognizable slope of Bob Hope’s nose. Unlike those of some other caricaturists, Hirschfeld’s portraits—though they naturally exaggerated particular facial features— were never mean-spirited. Most subjects were honored to have Hirschfeld draw them, because it meant they were worthy of being noticed in the world of entertainment. The place where most of America first became aware of Hirschfeld’s talents was in the theater section of The New York Times, where the artist’s works were a fixture for more than seventy years. Hirschfeld saw not only all the major plays on Broadway but also witnessed many productions in Baltimore in preparation for their New York debuts. It was in Baltimore that he met popular German-born actor-singer Dorothy Clara Louise “Dolly” Haas, who, as a Jew, had fled from Adolf Hitler’s regime in the mid-1930’s. They married in 1943 and produced a daughter, Nina, in 1945. As Hirschfeld’s fame spread, the demand for his singular talent increased. In the 1930’s, he drew political cartoons for several radical publications, including New Masses. In 1932, he published the first of ten books of illustrations, Manhattan Oases, containing drawings of New York speakeasies. Between 1942 and 1954, American Mercury commissioned him to do a series of paintings of American political figures for the magazine’s covers. During the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, Hirschfeld accompanied humorist and best friend S. J. Perelman on two around-the-world jaunts, and he illustrated Perelman’s accounts of the journeys, The Swiss Family Perelman (1950) and Westward Ha! (1948). In the 1950’s, as television became predominant, TV Guide called upon Hirschfeld to illustrate the new medium; he would do more covers for the magazine than any other artist. From the 1960’s on, Hirschfeld was a popular choice as an artist for film posters and book and record album covers. In the 1990’s, the United States Postal Service made Hirschfeld the first living artist to have his signature on a U.S. postage stamp. It commissioned him not once but twice. In 1991, he portrayed great comedians on stamps (Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Fanny Brice, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Jack Benny, and Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy). In 1994, he drew a series of greats of the silent screen (Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Charlie Chaplin, the Keystone Kops, Theda Bara, John Gilbert, and Zasu Pitts). In 1994, Hirschfeld’s wife of more than fifty years, Dolly, died of ovarian cancer. Two years later, he married widowed theatrical historian Louise Kerz. America’s 550
Jewish Americans best-known caricaturist continued working right to the very end of his long and productive career: He died of natural causes while sketching, less than six months short of his one-hundredth birthday. Significance Hirschfeld received considerable recognition for his work throughout his career and posthumously. His artwork can be found in such institutions as the Brooklyn Museum, the Library of Congress, the Lincoln Center Library, the Metropolitan Museum, the Morgan Library, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian Museum, and in many other public and private collections. In 1996, he was the subject of an Academy Award-nominated feature documentary, The Line King. He received a special Tony Award for his contributions to American theater. In 2002, he was named as a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts and elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. After his death, the Martin Beck Theater in Manhattan was renamed the Al Hirschfeld Theater in his honor. Further Reading Hirschfeld, Al. Hirschfeld on Line. New York: Applause Books, 2000. This collection contains essays about the artist from a number of individuals who knew him or were the subject of his drawings, and it includes a generous selection of his delightful art. _______. Hirschfeld’s British Aisles. New York: Glenn Young Books/Applause Books, 2005. This is a collection of the artist’s caricatures of British theatrical and cinematic celebrities, spanning the period from the late 1920’s to the end of the twentieth century, with commentary from many of those depicted. _______. Hirschfeld’s Harlem. New York: Glenn Young Books/Applause Books, 2005. This collection, a blend of color lithographs and black-and-white drawings, demonstrates Hirschfeld’s range as an artist in Harlem, one of his favorite venues. Includes commentary from many African American celebrities. Leopold, David. Hirschfeld’s Hollywood: The Film Art of Al Hirschfeld. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001. This collection, produced to coincide with an exhibition at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, focuses on Hirschfeld’s work for the film industry. — Jack Ewing See also: Jules Feiffer; Ben Shahn.
Jewish Americans
Hoffman, Abbie
Abbie Hoffman Activist, writer, and environmentalist A major political activist of the 1960’s, Hoffman was skilled at manipulating the media to bring attention to his anti-Vietnam War, antigovernment protests. He helped define a performance-based style of protesting designed to embarrass the government. Born: November 30, 1936; Worcester, Massachusetts Died: April 12, 1983; New Hope, Pennsylvania Also known as: Barry Freed; Free!; Abbott Howard Hoffman (full name) Areas of achievement: Activism; social reform Early Life Abbie Hoffman (A-bee HAWF-mihn) was born to middle-class Jewish parents in Worcester, Massachusetts. His father, Johnnie, a local Jewish community leader, tried hard to be accepted by Gentiles. His son disapproved of that attitude, always maintaining it was better to remain the Jewish outsider than to be assimilated. An excellent student, Hoffman earned a B.A. in psychology from Brandeis University in 1959. At Brandeis his belief that he was an outsider was strengthened by his experiences with teachers who held radical left political views. He earned his M.A. in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and returned in 1960 to work at Worcester State Hospital as a psychologist. During this time, he began writing political and social commentary for The Worcester Punch, an underground newspaper. Some of Hoffman’s Brandeis friends were involved with the Civil Rights movement, traveling to the south as Freedom Riders and Freedom Schoolteachers from 1960 to 1964; Hoffman, unhappy that he had not gone with them, was finally able to go as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1965. This was the beginning of his lifelong career as an activist. Life’s Work Hoffman wrote letters to The Worcester Telegram and Gazette, chronicling his experiences in Mississippi. These were analytical, third-person narratives with the byline Abbott Hoffman. In 1966, he moved to New York to run Liberty House, a store selling goods hand-
made by southern blacks, and continued his involvement in SNCC. However, in 1966, Stokely Carmichael kicked all whites out of SNCC. A disgusted Hoffman published “SNCC: The Desecration of a Dream,” in The Village Voice, condemning Carmichael and the other militants for hijacking the organization. This article marked a radical change in Hoffman’s writing style. The name Abbie Hoffman appeared for the first time as his byline. Writing in the first-person, instead of his previously formal analytical style, he wrote more personally and emotionally, interspersing Yiddish into his work. Within a year he was a hippie using drugs and beginning his antiestablishment protests. In 1967, Hoffman began a series of pranks designed to showcase the U.S. government’s hypocrisy. He cofounded the Youth International Party (YIP) and staged his first major event at the New York Stock Exchange. While on a tour, he and some friends tossed dollar bills onto the trading floor. Many traders made a mad dash for the money, and trading was suspended. Although
Abbie Hoffman. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Trial of the Chicago Seven (or Eight) Yippies planned to protest at Chicago’s 1968 Democratic National Convention by staging marches and antiwar demonstrations. Hoping to discourage protesters, Mayor Richard Daley enforced a curfew and denied the protesters permits to march or to camp in Grant Park. However, about fifteen thousand people showed up to march (along with Pigasus, their candidate for president) and were met by the Chicago police force in full riot gear. This began five days of police attacks on protesters and journalists, many of whom had equipment confiscated or destroyed. The Chicago Eight—Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, John Froines, Lee Weiner, Tom Hayden, and Bobby Seale—were arrested as inciters of the riot. Hoffman used the opportunity to showcase his derision for America’s corrupt judicial system. The judge, Julius Hoffman (no relation), was an easy target because of his obvious antagonism toward the defendants. He had Seale bound and gagged in the courtroom and sentenced him to four years for contempt. Seale was removed from the trial and the others became known as the Chicago Seven. During the trial, Hoffman and Rubin harassed the judge mercilessly, turning the trial into a circus. In Yiddish, Hoffman called the judge a disgrace to the Jews. Throughout the trial they staged disruptions, once showing up wearing judge’s robes over Chicago police department uniforms. The trial, which lasted from September 24, 1968, to February 18, 1970, ended in acquittals of all conspiracy charges. In November 21, 1972, all other charges were overturned because of judicial racism and bias. Hoffman’s constant outbursts underscored the judge’s lack of impartiality and exposed his attempts to manipulate the trial on behalf of the prosecution. Using the media scrutiny of the trial to showcase the government’s bias against America’s counterculture, Hoffman served as a polarizing force, urging people to end the Vietnam War, change drug legislation, and restore American values of free speech and individual freedom.
Hoffman had not alerted the media, the story made the news, and the event went down in protest history. Realizing the usefulness of manipulating the media, he took advantage of it from then on. Later that year Hoffman and fifty thousand followers attempted to levitate the Pentagon three hundred feet to rid it of evil spirits. In 1968, Hoffman published his first book, Revolution for the Hell of It. In order to protest President Lyndon Johnson’s war policies, YIP mounted a protest in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Violence erupted, and hundreds of people were beaten and arrested. This resulted in the notorious trial of the Chicago Eight, in which Hoffman 552
Jewish Americans and seven others were arrested on conspiracy charges, increasing his popularity with the counterculture. In 1969, while awaiting trial, Hoffman published his second book, Woodstock Nation. In 1970, Steal This Book was published. However, because of its title, many bookstores refused to carry it. In 1974, Hoffman was arrested for intent to distribute cocaine. He claimed he was framed and jumped bail, had plastic surgery, changed his name to Barry Freed, and lived underground for six years. While in hiding, he remained politically active. He used his organizational skills to spearhead his community’s suit against the government to clean up the St. Lawrence River. While underground he also testified at Senate subcommittees on the environment, was the magazine Crawdaddy’s travel editor, appeared on television, received a citizenship commendation from New York’s governor, published more books, wrote thirty-five articles, and was appointed to a federal water resources commission. He gave himself up in 1980 and served only four months of a one-year term. He was never prosecuted for the alleged cocaine possession, nor was he given the usual sentence for bail jumping. Although suffering from bipolar disorder, Hoffman continued to write books, give lectures, and work for change until his untimely death by suicide in 1983. In 1992, he was posthumously awarded the Courage of Conscience Award for his lifetime commitment to social justice by the Peace Abbey. Significance Hoffman’s deep love for America and his fear that the America he loved was being destroyed by greed, stupidity, and disinterest led him to champion a multitude of social causes. From his early work in the Civil Rights movement, through his performance-artbased attacks against the military-industrial complex during the Vietnam War, his attacks against rampant consumerism, and his struggle to help preserve the environment, Hoffman dedicated his life to making people aware of the world around them and asking them to get involved to effect change. His enthusiasm and hope spoke to many people, young and old, and helped to motivate many Americans to take a stand for the protection of liberties and the environment. —Leslie Neilan
Jewish Americans Further Reading Farber, David. Chicago ’68. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Traces the events at the 1968 Democratic Convention that led to the trial of the Chicago Eight. Provides a great deal of information on the underground groups involved in the events. Hoffman, Abbie. The Autobiography of Abbie Hoffman. 2d ed. Introduction by Norman Mailer. Afterword by Howard Zinn. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2000. Includes new photographs and an afterword discussing Hoffman’s legacy. _______. Revolution for the Hell of It: The Book That Earned Abbie Hoffman a Five-Year Prison Term at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. Rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2005. Includes new introduction and foreword to the book originally published in 1968. Jezer, Marty. Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993. Presents a balanced picture of the man and his philosophies.
Hoffman, Dustin Raskin, Jonah. For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. A member of the Yippie party, Raskin focuses on Hoffman’s importance to the protest movement and his genius as a strategist. It provides definitive versions of many controversial stories about Hoffman. Sloman, Larry. Steal This Dream: Abbie Hoffman and the Countercultural Revolution in America. New York: Doubleday, 1998. Using more than two hundred interviews, Sloman provides commentary on Hoffman’s role as an activist. Weiner, Jan, ed. Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Eight. New York: New Press, 2006. Using an abridged transcript of the trial, Weiner provides commentary and information to show the miscarriage of justice that occurred. See also: Betty Friedan; Emma Goldman; Jerry Rubin.
Dustin Hoffman Actor A versatile actor on the stage and in film, Hoffman soared in popularity after playing the engaging role of Benjamin in the acclaimed 1967 film, The Graduate. Born: August 8, 1937; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Dusty; Hook; Dustin Lee Hoffman (full name) Areas of achievement: Theater; entertainment Early Life Dustin Hoffman (DUH-stihn HAWF-mihn) was born in 1937 in Los Angeles, California, the second son of Lillian and Harry Hoffman, who was a first-generation Jew from Russia. Hoffman grew up surrounded by the influences of show business. His mother was a jazz pianist, and his father worked on props and sets for Columbia Pictures. In 1939, his older brother secured a walk-on part in the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. His father later opened his own business, Harry Hoffman Furniture Company, which folded with the stress of the economic Depression. His mother stayed home to care for her two sons. Hoffman’s first acting gig came when he was twelve years old. When he was in the seventh grade, Hoffman’s short stature landed him the role of Tiny Tim in a staged version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843).
Dustin Hoffman. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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mental institution. Hoffman demonstrated and sold toys at Macy’s. Just as his dream was about to fade, Hoffman succeeded in gaining a role at On February 18, 1999, at the Twenty-seventh Annual Lifetime Sarah Lawrence College in Gertrude Stein’s In Achievement Awards, the American Film Institute (AFI) honored Savoy: Or, Yes Is for a Very Young Man (A Play Dustin Hoffman, a Jewish American who endured rejection and adversity to accomplish his passionate dream to become a working of the Resistance in France) (1946). Soon after, actor. With minimal career success until his thirties, Hoffman he was cast in a small Broadway walk-on part gained public acclaim in 1967 with his portrayal of college student in A Cook for Mr. General (1961). Hoffman Ben Braddock in the film The Graduate. Thirty years and more joined the Theatre Company of Boston and was than two dozen films later, Hoffman has garnered two Academy paid for his part in Samuel Beckett’s En attenAwards and seven nominations, among other industry awards, for dant Godot (1952; Waiting for Godot, 1954). his work. The AFI presented Hoffman with a Lifetime AchieveHe served as the assistant director for Arthur ment Award to honor his versatility in portraying complex characMiller’s A View From the Bridge (1956). He ters. Film critic David Thomson described Hoffman’s talent in trained in method acting at Lee Strasberg’s playing the frustrated or fringe members of society. Others have well-known Actor’s Studio. When he was called his characters antiheroes. Examples include autistic Rayslated to appear in the Broadway play The Submond in Rain Man, street man Ratso in Midnight Cowboy, and articulate Dorothy in Tootsie. Hoffman thanked the AFI for the ject Was Roses (1964), which promised him the award and its commitment to preserve films. Hoffman shares this recognition of directors and film producers, he honor with other celebrated actors and directors, such as Alfred had an accident, resulting in life-threatening Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, Steven burns, that thwarted this opportunity. In 1965, Spielberg, James Stewart, Barbra Streisand, Sean Connery, and Hoffman reemerged on stage in New York with Sidney Poitier. Harry, Noon, and Night (1965). He began to gain attention for his acting, earning honors such as a Theatre World Award for Eh? (1966) and the Obie Award for best actor in The JourHis mother encouraged Hoffman to play classical piney of the Fifth Horse (1966), which was produced Offano while in high school. Though musically inclined, he Broadway. also enjoyed other school activities, such as track and Hoffman’s major break came with the New Hollytennis. Although Hoffman was not high-performing acawood filmmaking in the 1960’s. His character acting demically, he graduated in 1955 from Los Angeles High style and unique looks proved advantageous when direcSchool before enrolling in Santa Monica City College to tor Mike Nichols cast him as Benjamin Braddock in the seek a degree in music. There he struggled to keep his 1967 motion-picture hit, The Graduate. Although Hoffgrades up, and, to improve his grade point average, he man was in his thirties, he demonstrated the personality took what he considered an easy course in drama perforNichols desired for the central role as a recent college mance. This class rekindled his desire to be an actor. Afgraduate. This performance gained Hoffman his first ter a brief time in college, Hoffman began lessons at the Academy Award nomination and made his name recogPasadena Playhouse, where he cultivated an interest in nizable to American filmgoers. method acting. Although performing was not easy for Hoffman has acted in films, television, and theater. Hoffman, his passion for this art eventually propelled His second Academy Award nomination was for his role him to a lucrative and successful career. as Ratso Rizzo in the 1969 best picture Midnight Cowboy, opposite Jon Voight. Other major film credits inLife’s Work clude Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He SayHoffman was determined to succeed as an actor. In ing Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971), Papillon 1958, he left Los Angeles to further his acting career in (1973), Straw Dogs (1971), Lenny (1974), All the PresiNew York. Upon arrival he lived briefly with his Pasadent’s Men (1976), and Marathon Man (1976). Hoffman dena Playhouse classmate, Gene Hackman, who had won his first Academy Award for his role as Ted Kramer moved to New York with a similar goal. Later Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). His performance in Tootsie resided with aspiring actor Robert Duvall. Acting jobs (1982) brought him another Academy Award nominawere scarce, so Hoffman paid his bills by working as a tion. His second Oscar was earned for his performance in typist for a phone book company and as an attendant at a Rain Man with Tom Cruise in 1988.
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Jewish Americans Significance Hoffman spent his lifetime pursuing his dream as an actor. He faced adversity and rejection many times before finding success in his early thirties. He gained recognition for his amazing ability to embody the complex characters he played in theater, in films, and on television. He demonstrated that hard work and persistence are often necessary to reach career goals, especially in the acting field. His performances in various well-known films have enriched the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. Hoffman received two Academy Awards, six Golden Globes, three honors from the British film industry, one Emmy Award, three Drama Desk Awards, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Hoffman’s films continue to bridge the gap between generations, he has earned respect from younger filmgoers in his mature years. Hoffman’s energy and dedication in his performances enliven films and theater in the United States. —Marylane Wade Koch
Hoffmann, Roald Further Reading Dargis, Manohla. “Dustin Hoffman Stops Trying So Hard.” The New York Times, April 17, 2005. Profile by a film critic examines Hoffman’s career trajectory, focusing on how he relies on ability, personality, and effort rather than traditional good looks. Grant, Meg. “Just Dustin.” AARP Magazine 52 (March/ April, 2009): 30-33. Contains a brief overview of Hoffman’s career and examines what is important in his life. Hoffman, Dustin. “Dustin Hoffman Has a Secret.” Interview by Meg Grant. Reader’s Digest 172 (June, 2008): 36-38. Hoffman discusses his wife, his life, and his priorities. Lenburg, Jeff. Dustin Hoffman: Hollywood’s Antihero. 1983. Reprint. Lincoln, Nebr.: iUniverse, 2001. Details Hoffman’s career journey. See also: Alan Arkin; Ed Asner; Matthew Broderick; Richard Dreyfuss; Elliott Gould; Judd Hirsch; Paul Newman; Barbra Streisand.
Roald Hoffmann Polish-born scientist, poet, and playwright A theoretical chemist, Hoffmann won a Nobel Prize for his work on the course of chemical reactions. Born: July 18, 1937; Zuoczów, Poland (now Zolochiv, Ukraine) Also known as: Ronald Hoffmann; Roald Safran (birth name) Areas of achievement: Science and technology; literature Early Life Roald Hoffmann (ROH-ahld HAWF-mihn) was born in Poland, with the surname Safran, a little over two years before the outbreak of World War II, a conflict that profoundly affected his Jewish family. His father, Hillel Safran, a civil engineer, and his mother, Clara Rosen, a schoolteacher, named him after the polar explorer Roald Amundsen. In June, 1941, Nazi troops occupied Zuoczów, where his family lived; they temporarily moved the family to a Jewish ghetto and later deported them to Lackie Wielkie, a labor camp. Hoffman’s father managed to have his wife and son smuggled to a Ukrainian village,
and they made their way to Amsterdam, where they spent the remainder of the war hidden in a schoolhouse attic. When the Nazis discovered the planned escape of Hoffmann’s father, he was executed. After the Soviet defeat of the Nazis, Hoffmann and his mother were able to move to Kraków, where she eventually met and married Paul Hoffmann, whose wife had perished in the Holocaust. This new family, as displaced persons, moved from camp to camp, from Czechoslovakia and Austria to West Germany, before finally immigrating to the United States in 1949. By this time Hoffmann had mastered several languages, and he learned English during his elementary education in Queens and in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated with honors from Stuyvesant High School in 1955, and then, complying with his mother’s wishes, he became a premedical student at Columbia College. Here, influenced by his poetry professor, Mark Van Doren, Hoffmann found himself attracted to literature and to art history, but chemistry fascinated him even more. By taking six or seven courses per semester, Hoffmann was able to graduate summa cum laude from Columbia with a de555
Hoffmann, Roald gree in chemistry after only three years. During the summers, he gained practical experience in chemistry and physics by working at the National Bureau of Standards and Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1958, Hoffman began graduate studies in physics and chemistry at Harvard University, receiving a master’s degree in physics in 1960. In 1959, when he had attended a summer program in quantum chemistry in Sweden, he met Eva Börjesson, a receptionist, whom he married in 1960, and they had a son and a daughter. The most influential of his doctoral advisers at Harvard was the future Nobel laureate William Lipscomb, who had studied with the great physical chemist Linus Pauling. Hoffmann’s thesis dealt with such complex molecules as the boron hydrides, in both their ground and their excited states. He received his Ph.D. in 1962. Life’s Work For the next three years, Hoffmann was a junior fellow at Harvard, and, building on his thesis work, he developed ways of calculating the electronic structures of molecules. He expanded these studies in the mechanisms of reactions of organic molecules, which led to his important collaboration with Robert Burns Woodward, who was soon (in 1965) to win a Nobel Prize for his studies in synthetic chemistry. Woodward and Hoffmann formulated rules that applied to single-step organic reactions propelled by heat or light. Chemical reactions involve electrons in the outermost shells of atoms, and these electrons occupy orbitals that have symmetry; thus their rules were initially called “orbital symmetry” rules, and later the Woodward-Hoffmann rules. These rules gave chemists the power to predict how newly created molecules would be structured. In 1965, Hoffmann accepted a position in the department of chemistry at Cornell University, becoming a full professor there in 1968. The separation between Harvard and Cornell did not prevent Hoffmann from continuing to collaborate with Woodward, who helped him develop his own research style, which was characterized by a search for connections, rooted in experimental observations, between apparently simple problems, such as a molecule’s structure and function. Like Pauling but unlike Woodward, Hoffmann saw himself as primarily a theoretical chemist concerned with “beautiful” structures and reactions. He employed this approach in dealing with organic, inorganic, and mixed organic-and-inorganic molecules, such as organo-metallics. His work has involved elements from all over the periodic table, and his successful papers have resulted in a series of awards, 556
Jewish Americans including the Arthur C. Cope Award in Organic Chemistry (1973), the Linus Pauling Award, culminating in the Nobel Prize (1981) and the Priestley Medal (1990), the American Chemical Society’s highest award. Hoffmann was only forty-four when he won the Nobel Prize, and by this time he had begun to write poetry. While at Columbia, he had admired Van Doren, who devoted his life to literature, and Wallace Stevens, who managed to have a career as an insurance executive and as a major American poet. Hoffmann’s work in the symmetries of molecules and reaction mechanisms convinced him that beauty was part of the chemical experience, something he tried to communicate in many of his poems and popular writings. He found a meaningful emotional outlet in writing poems, which have been collected in a series of volumes, including The Metamict State (1987), Gaps and Verges (1990), Memory Effects (1999), and Soliton (2002). Some of his themes in these poems concern his childhood experiences of the Holocaust, the beauty of nature, and the existential pleasures of chemistry. He has also communicated his love of chemistry through a twenty-six-part television series, The World of Chemistry, that he hosted, which first aired on the Public Broadcasting Service in 1990. In 2001, the chemist and novelist Carl Djerassi collaborated with Hoffmann in writing a play, Oxygen, about the controversy over who should be given credit for discovering this important element—Carl Scheele, Joseph Priestley, or Antoine Lavoisier. The play premiered at the San Diego Repertory Theatre in 2001 and had other productions in London and Germany. Significance Hoffmann’s illuminating body of work in theoretical chemistry has been recognized as important by many awards and more than twenty-five honorary degrees from American and foreign institutions given to Hoffmann. In particular, the formulation of the WoodwardHoffmann rules has been cited as a highly significant contribution to theoretical chemistry, since these rules provided chemists with a powerful tool for predicting the pathways of chemical reactions. His attempts to discover and to communicate emotional truths through his poetry have also met with success, as some of his poems have been widely anthologized. Although Hoffmann’s television series did not achieve the acclaim of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos or Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, it has found its niche in chemical education, as have his popular writings and his Cornell lectures to undergraduates. His love of his fellow Jews was brought out in 2009
Jewish Americans when, largely because of his efforts, a Holocaust monument was dedicated in western Ukraine, near where so many of his relatives and other Jews suffered and died. —Robert J. Paradowski Further Reading Nye, Mary Jo. From Chemical Philosophy to Theoretical Chemistry: Dynamics of Matter and Dynamics of Disciplines, 1900-1950. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Although Nye focuses on developments in theoretical chemistry before Hoffmann made his mark, she analyzes Hoffmann’s contributions in her concluding chapter. Extensive bibliography and index. Ruthen, Russell. “Profile: Modest Maverick—Hoffmann’s
Holman, Nat World of Chemistry, Poetry, and Pedagogy.” Scientific American 263, no. 1 (July, 1990): 32-35. Engaging survey of Hoffmann’s life and career, with a sidebar poem from Gaps and Verges. Streitweiser, Andrew, Jr. “The 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.” Science 214 (November 6, 1981): 627-629. Streitweiser concentrates on the scientific work that led to Hoffmann’s Nobel Prize, along with the independent contributions of Kenichi Fukui. He makes use of some mathematical and chemical equations, but most of what he communicates can be understood without them. See also: Paul Berg; Jerome Karle; Walter Kohn; Rudolph Marcus; Irwin Rose; Carl Sagan.
Nat Holman Athlete
Born: October 19, 1896; New York, New York Died: February 12, 1995; Bronx, New York Also known as: Kid Holman; Mr. Basketball; The Old Professor; Old Drill Master; Nathan Helmanowich (birth name) Area of achievement: Sports
Athletic League title, and he was president of the student council his senior year. As an adolescent, he was noted for his focus on technical skills. This practical concern would be the specialty that would bolster his later career. After graduating from high school, Holman went to the Savage School for Physical Education and continued to play basketball, remaining highly successful. Although his love for other sports continued, he chose basketball because of its popularity and because playing basketball, which was invented in America, was a way to be American without rejecting his Jewish heritage.
Early Life Nat Holman (HOHL-mihn) was one of ten children born to a family of Russian immigrants who had been uprooted from Germany. Holman’s brother Jacob was a large influence on Holman and convinced the family to change their name from Helmanowich to something more American sounding to improve their economic prospects. Growing up in the inner city, Holman spent much of his leisure time at settlement houses created to provide a safe place for Jewish youth. It was there that Holman discovered basketball, invented only five years before he was born. A natural athlete, Holman excelled in many sports, including baseball and soccer, which he began to play at age eight. While he was attending Commerce High School, he was persuaded to take up football as well. Participating in so many sports did not spread Holman’s talent too thin; in fact, his basketball team won the Public School
Life’s Work One of Holman’s distinctions is that he was a professional basketball player and a college coach at the same time. Holman began playing professionally for the New York Knickerbockers, in 1917, while he was still in school. Upon graduation, he was hired by City College of New York (CCNY) to coach soccer. Holman was a successful soccer coach, but after a brief stint in the Navy, coaching there as well, he returned to coach basketball in 1919 and baseball in 1920. In 1921, while still working for CCNY, he played professionally for the Original Celtics. The Celtics were another example of how playing sports helped to Americanize immigrants. The team had consisted of Germans, Irish, and Jews brought together by pre-World War I tensions. When the team re-formed after the war, Holman was the only Jew on the team. As such, he wanted to uphold the reputation of his heritage.
Holman made his mark as a basketball coach, although he began his sports career as a strong basketball player, leading the Original Celtics, a barnstorming team, to several winning seasons.
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Horvitz, H. Robert Holman’s career with both the Original Celtics and CCNY was enormously successful. The Original Celtics, during Holman’s time, popularized professional basketball. Even while playing between 150 and 200 games per season, the team did much traveling, cementing Holman in the national consciousness. The Celtics disbanded in 1928, but Holman continued playing professionally until 1933. Although Holman’s professional career presented unusual challenges in coaching, CCNY’s team did not suffer. Holman’s main challenge at CCNY was that the school required no tuition. Consequently, the best high school basketball players were recruited to other schools and offered scholarships. Nonetheless, Holman used his evolving knowledge of the game to teach his team the technical skills he believed were the key to winning. After more than thirty years of coaching, Holman saw results in the 1949-1950 season. The CCNY team won both major titles in basketball: the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Invitation Tournament (NIT). Holman deserves much of the credit for this, but that season would cripple his career. Within months, four of his players were found to have been shaving points. Suspicion was cast on Holman; though he was not found guilty of wrongdoing, CCNY basketball was downgraded in college basketball. Never again was it considered a major team. Holman retired in 1960 and died of natural causes in 1995. Significance Holman was one of the people responsible for raising basketball to a worldwide sport, with his promotional
Jewish Americans work and his playing and coaching. Holman wrote a number of books instructing new coaches on the importance of ball-handling and shooting techniques. To make athletics a positive experience for future generations, Holman founded Camp Scatico in New York. Many foreign countries trace their basketball traditions back to Holman’s visits, in which he established training clinics. Chief among these is Israel, whose athletics Holman promoted even after his retirement. In recognition of his efforts, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1964. —Jacob Davis Further Reading Gibbons, William C. “Is Basketball’s Future Its Past?” Encounter 19, no. 3 (Fall, 2006): 32-38. This article discusses Holman’s coaching style in the context of a modern team. Holman, Nat. Holman on Basketball. New York: Crown, 1950. One of Holman’s detailed treatises on coaching. It contains almost no biographical information, but it does show his expertise. Nelson, Murry R. “Basketball as Cultural Capital.” In Sporting Nationalisms: Identity, Ethnicity, Immigration, and Assimilation, edited by Mike Cronin and David Mayall. Portland, Oreg.: Frank Cass, 1998. This sociological analysis of sports details how American immigrants related to athletics and how Jews were associated with basketball early in the twentieth century. See also: Senda Berenson Abbott; Red Auerbach; Larry Brown.
H. Robert Horvitz Scientist Horvitz won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work on nematode worms, which helped advance research in cell death, or apoptosis, and organ regulation in humans. Born: May 8, 1947; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: Howard Robert Horvitz (full name) Area of achievement: Science and technology Early Life H. Robert Horvitz (HOR-vihtz) was born May 8, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Mary Savit, was a 558
Chicago native, and his father, Oscar Horvitz, was from nearby Joliet. H. Robert Horvitz was a second-generation Jewish American. His maternal grandfather, David Savit, was a native of Russia who in 1904 moved to Chicago, where he became a dress manufacturer and grocer. Chess and reading were among his favorite pastimes. Horvitz was fond of his grandparents, the rest of whom had emigrated from parts of Russia to the United States. Horvitz’s maternal grandmother, Rose Savit, came to live with his family for a time. Rose would often share stories of Chicago speakeasies with Horvitz, since she had seen them firsthand during the 1920’s.
Jewish Americans Horvitz, who was given the first name Howard, was often called “Bobby” or “Rob” by his parents and schoolmates. In 1950, when Horvitz was three, his sister Carol Cecile was born. Horvitz became an avid fan of the Chicago Cubs and a member of the Boy Scouts. His family often moved on the north side of Chicago, bouncing back and forth from near Lake Michigan to a few miles to the west. Horvitz went to high school at Niles East in Skokie, Illinois, where he first developed a love of biology. For college, he flew across the country to Cambridge, where he enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a mathematics major in 1964. While in college, Horvitz pursued a host of different activities, including being a newspaper editor and working in student government. Horvitz also enjoyed success working for International Business Machines (IBM) on summer breaks. Life’s Work Even though Horvitz graduated from MIT with a degree in mathematics, he had an inherent interest in biology. Even with his lack of academic study in the field, Horvitz was accepted at Harvard University’s Department of Biology, where he struggled to keep up with other graduate classmates who had advanced knowledge of the subject. Despite his handicap, Horvitz succeeded in his studies, earned a doctorate degree, and shortly thereafter, in 1978, became a professor at MIT. Horvitz’s best-known work, however, had been set in motion four years earlier, when Horvitz was studying on a fellowship from the Muscular Dystrophy Association of America. Horvitz focused on the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Horvitz used the worm as a model for his research in the field of genetics and discovered that he could use it to find several important genes that were in charge of cell death, or apoptosis. Horvitz’s research deciphered these genes in the nematode worm, and he was able to relate this discovery to the genes’ human counterparts. This radical discovery provided concrete details surrounding programmed cell death in humans. Horvitz’s discoveries regarding genes and cell death led him to new revelations, based on interactions with the nematode, about organ development in humans. Horvitz’s long and unrelenting research was eventu-
Horvitz, H. Robert ally rewarded in 2002 when he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this work. The award was shared by fellow researchers John Sulston and Sydney Brenner, whose research with nematode worms helped propel Horvitz to make more discoveries. Horvitz’s vast knowledge of biology and life sciences has led to a life of research and travel. Horvitz has given speeches and lectures around the world, and he has traveled to places such as Russia, Europe, Tibet, Egypt, India, and Japan. Significance Although biology was not Horvitz’s first choice of career, his contributions in the field have earned him a Nobel Prize. His scholarly achievements led to a position as a biology professor at MIT and a scientist at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. In addition, Horvitz has worked at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and has been recognized with prizes from Columbia University. Horvitz’s discoveries have many positive implications for the scientific world. The ability to explore organ regulation and cell death could lead to effective methods for disease control and treatment. —Jill E. Disis Further Reading Angier, Natalie. “Studies of Cell Death as a Key Life Process Trace a Complex Dance.” The New York Times, December 31, 1991. Describes Horvitz’s contributions to the understanding of cell death. Marseken, Susan F., Lambert M. Surhone, and Miriam T. Timpledon. Sydney Brenner: Biologist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, H. Robert Horvitz, John E. Sulston, Apoptosis, History and Highlights in Apoptosis Research. Beau Bassin, Mauritius: Betascript, February 18, 2010. This details apoptosis research, the field in which Horvitz won his Nobel Prize. Potten, Christopher, and James Wilson. Apoptosis: The Life and Death of Cells. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, August 16, 2004. This book offers technical information on the field of apoptosis, in which Horvitz worked. See also: Carl Djerassi; Sheldon L. Glashow; Daniel S. Goldin; Jonas Salk; Béla Schick.
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Harry Houdini Hungarian-born escape artist and magician Houdini, a master of illusion, made dramatic, deathdefying acts into sensational entertainment. Born: March 24, 1874; Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Hungary) Died: October 31, 1926; Detroit, Michigan Also known as: Ehrich Weiss; Ehrie Weiss; King of Cards; King of Handcuffs; Great Houdini; Erik Weisz (birth name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Harry Houdini (hew-DEE-nee) was born to Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz and his second wife, Cecilia Steiner Weisz, in Budapest on March 24, 1874. In 1876, due partly to anti-Semitism, the rabbi immigrated to Appleton, Wisconsin, to lead a small Jewish Reform congregation. His wife and five children joined him in 1878. Their surname was changed from Weisz to Weiss. When Houdini was eight, the family relocated to Milwaukee, where they struggled with poverty. In his first public performance on October 28, 1883, when he was only nine, Houdini appeared as a trapeze artist called Ehrich, the Prince of Air in a five-cent circus. At the age of twelve, he ran away from home to shine shoes for soldiers in the U.S. Cavalry. In 1887, Houdini joined his father in New York City, where the rabbi had gone to look for work. The family was reunited there in 1888. Houdini idolized a French magician named JeanEugène Robert-Houdin. He adopted that name, adding an “i” at the end, and changed his name legally to Harry Houdini in 1913. At the age of seventeen, Houdini performed about twenty magic shows a day in music halls, amusement parks, and sideshows. He and Jacob Hyman, later replaced by Houdini’s brother, Theo, performed magic shows as The Houdini Brothers. In 1893, Houdini met Wilhelmina Beatrice (Bess) Rahner, an eighteenyear-old aspiring dancer and singer. Although Bess was a devout Catholic, she and Houdini married in 1894, and they formed an act called The Houdinis. Their happy marriage and partnership lasted until his death. Although their signature act, the metamorphosis, in which they traded places in a locked trunk, was successful, they found it difficult to make a living in traditional venues, such as beer halls, carnivals, and circuses. In 1895, Houdini began experimenting with escapology, particularly handcuff and prison escapes in local police sta560
tions. The turning point came in 1899, when tycoon Martin Beck was so impressed by the handcuff act that he booked The Houdinis for his Orpheum vaudeville circuit. Life’s Work In 1900, the Houdinis traveled to Europe, where Harry became a celebrated international star. A highlight was his escape from handcuffs and other restraints at Scotland Yard. His theater engagements throughout Europe were always sold out. He challenged local police in each city, and always escaped their constraints and prison cells. In 1904, at the London Hippodrome, Houdini performed his famous mirror escape from cuffs with nesting locks that were impossible to pick. It had taken a lock-
Harry Houdini. (Library of Congress)
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Houdini, Harry
smith five years to make the special handcuffs. Establishing Escapology as Houdini became known as the King of HandComplete Entertainment cuffs, and he established escapology, by itself as a total act. Although the word escapology was coined by Harry Houdini’s In 1905, Houdini and Bess returned to the contemporary, illusionist Norman Murray Walters, the practice of United States. They bought a farm in Stamford, escapology had already existed for centuries. Escapology is the art Connecticut, and a house in Harlem, New York, of escaping from traps or restraints, such as padlocks, handcuffs, which would be their home base. steel boxes, cages, coffins, straitjackets, burning buildings, fish tanks, and other forms of confinement. Houdini was the first enterIn 1906, he made the highly publicized estainer to perform an act consisting entirely of escape techniques. It cape from the prison cell once occupied by was the turning point in his career. He defined the repertoire and esCharles Guiteau, President James A. Garfield’s tablished escapology as a complete form of entertainment. In assassin. In Rochester, New York, in 1907, 1895, he began successful escapes from handcuffs and jail cells in Houdini performed his first manacled bridge police stations. By 1899, he had established a reputation for such jump. In 1908, he performed the famous overescapes. In 1909, at London’s Hippodrome Theater, Houdini persize milk can escape, in which he was shackled formed the famous mirror escape, freeing himself from a handcuff and then lowered into a large milk can full of that took five years to make. In 1912, he introduced the Chinese liquid. water torture cell, his most famous act, for which he was shackled Houdini became interested in airplanes in and suspended upside-down in a locked, water-filled glass and 1909, and the next year he piloted the first sucsteel cabinet. In 1920, Funk and Wagnall’s New Dictionary included the verb “Houdinize,” defined as extricating oneself from cessful flight in Australia. In 1912, he perbonds or confinement, and the word “houdini” has come to signify formed his remarkable underwater box escape a master escapologist. in New York’s East River. He also debuted his most famous act, the legendary Chinese water torture cell, at Berlin’s Circus Busch. In this escape, Houdini was suspended upside-down into Halloween for the next decade but was never able to a glass and steel tank filled with water, with a restraint communicate with him. holding his ankles. After being rejected for military service in World Significance War I (1914-1919) because of age, forty-three-year-old During his life, Houdini was the most famous and Houdini found other ways to be patriotic. He gave benefit highly paid performer in the world. Mystery, glamour, performances in military training camps and organized and drama surrounded his public persona and personal events to sell Liberty Bonds. His patriotic show, Cheer life. Obsessed with death and illusion, Houdini perUp, featured a vanishing elephant trick. formed miraculous, death-defying escapes in dangerous Houdini also had a film career from 1918 to 1922. The circumstances. He established escapology as a legitimate serial in which he appeared, The Master Mystery (1920), form of entertainment. Houdini’s life was the success was popular with audiences. He also campaigned against story of a Jewish immigrant who escaped from poverty to false spiritualists or mediums and wrote two exposés, achieve wealth and international fame. At a time when Miracle Mongers and Their Methods (1920) and A Magithere was anti-Semitism in Europe, and Russia had recian Among the Spirits (1924). strictions on Jewish visitors and performers, Houdini On October 22, 1926, in Montreal, Houdini accepted was able to travel freely, becoming the world’s most celea student’s challenge to test his stomach muscles, but the brated magician. Some believe that Houdini was a spy student struck before Houdini could tighten his abdomifor Scotland Yard and the U.S. Secret Service. When he nal muscles. Houdini was in extreme pain but continued testified in support of a congressional bill against frauduhis shows. Finally, he went to the hospital, but his appenlent mediums, spiritualists made derogatory references dix had ruptured and he died from peritonitis on Hallowto Jewish people. Since his death, Houdini has become a een, October 31. According to his wishes, Houdini was legendary, mythic figure, the inspiration for countless buried at New York’s Machpelah Cemetery, a Jewish books, television shows, musicals, stories, and more. cemetery. Before he died, he and Bess had shared a seFilms include Houdini (1953), Ragtime (1981), Young cret code, “Rosabelle, believe,” which he would use to Harry Houdini (1985), and Death Defying Acts (2007). reach her from the afterlife. She held yearly séances on 561
Howe, Irving In 1975, a star for Houdini was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the United States Postal Service issued a Houdini postage stamp in 2001. —Alice Myers Further Reading Brandon, Ruth. The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini. New York: Random House, 2003. Psychological study exploring Houdini’s obsession with death in both his personal life and his death-defying escapes. Notes, bibliography, and index. Illustrated. Houdini, Harry. A Magician Among the Spirits. 1924. Reprint. Amsterdam: Fredonia Books, 2002. Houdini’s exposé of fraudulent spiritualists or psychics, whose tricks he often replicated. Illustrated. Kalush, William, and Larry Sloman. The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero. New York: Atria Books, 2006. This well-researched
Jewish Americans and controversial biography asserts that Houdini was a spy for Britain and the United States and was murdered by a spiritualist cult. Illustrated, with index. Milbourne, Christopher. Houdini: A Pictorial Biography. Reprint. New York: Gramercy Books, 1998. This reprint of the author’s Houdini: A Pictorial Life (1976) contains more than 250 illustrations, including Houdini’s autobiographical pamphlet (1917), memorabilia, rare photographs, and posters. Bibliography and index. Silverman, Kenneth. Houdini! The Career of Ehrich Weiss. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Extensive archival research and more than one hundred photographs reveal previously unknown aspects of Houdini’s career and personal life, including his encounters with anti-Semitism. Bibliography and index. See also: David Copperfield; Ricky Jay; Rod Serling.
Irving Howe Literary and social critic Howe is best known as the author of World of Our Fathers (1976), a richly textured portrayal of the East European Jewish experience in New York City. A renowned literary critic, he was the editor of Dissent magazine for almost forty years. Born: June 11, 1920; Bronx, New York Died: May 5, 1993; New York, New York Also known as: R. Fahan; R. F. Fangston; Theodore Dryden; Irving Arthur Horenstein (birth name) Areas of achievement: Literature; journalism; activism; social issues Early Life Irving Howe (UR-vihng how) was born in the predominantly Jewish east Bronx, New York, the only child of East European immigrants David Horenstein and Nettie Goldman, who lost their grocery business in the Great Depression and became garment workers. Howe grew up speaking and reading Yiddish, a language he rejected as a youngster but one he would embrace later as a student of Yiddish literature and culture and as a literary critic. Although the Horensteins were no longer strictly observant in their faith, Howe’s life was informed and shaped by Jewishness, within the family and within a neighborhood framed by landsmanshaftn (fraternal and 562
mutual-aid societies for immigrants who originate from the same Old World regions), free-loan societies, leftist political groups, and store-front shuln (houses of prayer). Although Howe attended heder (Jewish elementary school) reluctantly and only to prepare for his Bar Mitzvah in 1933, he said later that growing up in a Jewish immigrant community provided a moral context and an essential goodness of soul unmatched by anything he ever found elsewhere. Howe’s parents lost their grocery store in 1930, when he was ten years old, and the family, one year into the Depression, was plunged into poverty. At twelve, Howe began to read voraciously, displaying a remarkable intellectual energy and a nascent understanding that poverty and inequality were caused not only by economic change but also by unjust social arrangements. His political consciousness was nurtured by a collection of left-wing groups that flourished in the Jewish east Bronx. At fourteen, Howe became a member of the Young People’s Socialist League. He developed into a fervent anti-Stalinist socialist, an identity and worldview he brought with him to the City College of New York after graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1936. Here, Howe became a leader of the Trotskyist student group, which constantly tangled with students in the Young Communist League over global issues, including the Moscow Trials
Jewish Americans of 1936-1938, the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, and many others. After graduating from college in 1940, Howe held a series of odd jobs and wrote for the radical newspapers Labor Action and New International. He entered the Army in 1942 and served four years, mostly in Alaska. Life’s Work Even while living in Alaska, Howe continued to write for the radical newspapers, mostly under the pseudonym R. Fahan. He wrote for the rest of his life, becoming preeminent as a social and literary critic and an important radical voice in American political culture. By the time he died in 1993 from cardiovascular disease at the age of seventy-two, Howe was best known for his award-winning World of Our Fathers (1976), a brilliant narrative of the East European Jewish immigrants and the world they found and made in New York. This book represented a culmination of Howe’s personal journey from alienation to repossession of Yiddishkhayt (the content of Yiddish culture), which to him meant mostly the political activism rooted in the prophetic injunctions of Hebrew scripture and in the Yiddish literature of Eastern Europe, represented by Isaac Leib Peretz, Lamed Shapiro, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Sholom Aleichem. Howe also collaborated with several translators to produce invaluable anthologies of Yiddish fiction and poetry for Englishspeaking readers. Before publishing World of Our Fathers, however, Howe had won extraordinary attention and admiration over the course of half a century for his prodigious output of illuminating essays on American and Jewish culture which appeared in a host of periodicals, including Partisan Review, Commentary, The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and Harper’s. These essays on radical politics, the responsibility of intellectuals in modern society, ethnic identity, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevski, William Faulkner, Aleichem, and so many other subjects proved Howe to be an incisive and erudite critic and one dedicated to plain prose and the “common reader.” This remained true even after Howe became a professor at Brandeis from 1953 to 1961. During that time, he continued to write extraordinarily influential essays, including “This Age of Conformity” (1954) and “On Ideas and Culture” (1956). In 1954, Howe also cofounded Dissent, a democratic socialist journal he edited for almost forty years. His classic collection of essays, Politics and the Novel (1957), was also published during this
Howe, Irving time. From Brandeis, Howe went to Stanford University (1961-1963) and then to Hunter College (1963-1986). Again, during these years he wrote culture-bending essays, including “Mass Society and Post-Modern Fiction” (1963), “Black Boys and Native Sons” (1963), “The New York Intellectuals” (1968), “Philip Roth Reconsidered” (1972), and “Writing and the Holocaust” (1986). Howe stayed active in politics, mainly with the Democratic Socialists of America, until he died. Significance In Howe’s career as a literary critic, socialist editor, and political activist, and in the cultural and literary disputes he chose to enter about Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison and Hannah Arendt, race and multiculturalism, Marxism and postmodernism, and many other subjects, his critical consciousness and political conscience constantly informed one another. This process of mutual reinforcement led him to support progressive causes throughout his life and to write powerfully influential pieces—political, literary, and Jewish—that were analytically sharp, lucid, accessible, and ethically meaningful. In the century of Auschwitz, the Gulag, and interethnic mass murder, it had been hard to sustain political certainties and difficult to take pride in one’s humanity. To have lived a life of conviction and engagement in that era, as Howe did, was a rare achievement. — Gerald Sorin Further Reading Howe, Irving. A Critic’s Notebook. Edited by Nicholas Howe. New York: Mariner Books, 1995. Posthumously published illuminating essays on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from “Characters: Are They Like People?” to “What Can We Do with Chekhov?” _______. A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography. New York: Mariner Books, 1984. Not a great deal here on Howe’s personal life, but it is an adventure in the construction and reconstruction of ideas. Jumonville, Neil. Critical Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. An intelligent guide to writings on mass culture, intellectual freedom, and Stalinism, by literary and social critics, including Irving Howe, Nathan Glazer, Sidney Hook, Clement Greenberg, Lionel Trilling, and many others. Pinsker, Sanford. “Lost Causes/Marginal Hopes: The Cultural Elegies of Irving Howe.” Virginia Quarterly Review 65 (Spring, 1989): 215-230. An insightful es563
Hughes, Sarah say on Howe’s intellectual development, his hopes, and his disappointments. Sorin, Gerald. Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent. New York: New York University Press, 2002. An award-winning comprehensive biography, including Howe’s personal life, details and analyses of his
Jewish Americans long career, and an interpretation of his contributions and significance. See also: M. H. Abrams; Harold Bloom; Stanley Fish; Alfred Kazin; Elaine Showalter; Lionel Trilling; Louis Untermeyer.
Sarah Hughes Ice skater Hughes was the Olympic gold medalist in figure skating at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, after she outperformed the expected winner, fellow American Michelle Kwan. Born: May 2, 1985; Manhasset, New York Also known as: Sarah Elizabeth Hughes (full name) Areas of achievement: Sports; entertainment Early Life Sarah Hughes (hewz) was born May 2, 1985, in Manhasset, New York, to John Hughes, of Irish descent, and Amy Pastarnack, who is Jewish. The close-knit family, in which Sarah Hughes was the fourth of six children, embraces both ethnicities. Though proud of her Judaism, Hughes has always enjoyed celebrating Christmas. Like all champion figure skaters, Hughes’s love for the sport began at an early age. Motivated by a strong desire to do everything her older siblings did, she laced up her first pair of skates at the age of three. Almost immediately, she was hooked, and she willingly sacrificed a so-called normal childhood for the intense training required to reach the sport’s highest levels. That included the early-morning practice sessions before school that mandated early bedtimes. It meant relying on tutors when out-of-town competitions caused spotty attendance. She did, however, find time to play in her junior high orchestra, and she was a high school honor student at Great Neck North High School. In addition to skating practices six days a week, she studied ballet for eleven years, an activity that no doubt added to the grace she displays when skating. Hughes never felt the need to leave home to train, in part because she was strongly selfmotivated and in part because she wanted to be nearby her mother, who was stricken with breast cancer. Hughes remained in New York and continued training with her local coach and choreographer, Robin Wagner. Hughes’s 564
mother survived her ordeal, and Hughes did an advertisement to promote public awareness of the disease. Life’s Work Just seven years after skating for the first time, Hughes was ready to compete. This took her all over the globe, and she gradually began winning titles. Over the years, she developed into a competitor with an even disposition. Whatever she was feeling inside, she maintained an unflappable public image, win or lose. During her early
An Olympic Upset Sarah Hughes was not expected to win an Olympic gold medal when she went to Salt Lake City in 2002. Everyone expected that Michelle Kwan would win. Sasha Cohen was expected to place second. During the four minutes that Hughes skated in the finals, her performance was flawless, despite the fact that her routine was one of the most technically difficult ever done in an Olympic competition. She has said that being prepared is not enough: Once a skating program begins, anything can happen, and there are no do-overs. Furthermore, with the Olympics, an athlete must wait four more years for another chance. One misstep or one minuscule flaw on the rink’s surface can send a skater sprawling on the ice. Knowing that, she skated, in her words, “as if she had nothing to lose.” When the four minutes ended, she knew she had skated as well as she ever had, but she did not know whether it was good enough to take the top spot. The scores were tallied. Irina Slutskaya took second, and Hughes earned the gold. Following Hughes’s win, her hometown of Great Neck, New York, celebrated with a parade in her honor on what former Senator Hillary Clinton designated as Sarah Hughes Day. The hometown girl had joined an elite group: She became one of only seven United States women to have taken the Olympic gold in figure skating.
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teenage years, she became a regular on the skating circuit, where she was known as a focused hard worker who never took herself too seriously. She counted among her friends such skating legends as Scott Hamilton and Peggy Fleming. Hamilton was the announcer when Hughes won the gold medal in the Salt Lake City Olympics Games in 2002. After her stunning upset, he told her, based on his own experience, that her life would never be the same. Hughes did not just compete with other skaters, she competed with herself; she was eager to improve her best efforts. For her second Olympic performance, she chose a technically difficult routine that included, among other challenging moves, two triple-triple jumps. That was daring, because she went into that phase of the competition in fourth place, behind Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen, and Irina Slutskaya. Cohen fell on the ice, and Kwan skated below her usual elegance. That left Hughes and Slutskaya in a battle for the top two spots. Though Slutskaya also performed brilliantly, sixteen-year-old Hughes beat her out for the gold medal. Among her many awards and honors, Hughes, in 2002, was named the top amateur athlete in the United States, a designation she had to give up when she began touring proSarah Hughes. (AP/Wide World Photos) fessionally with the Smucker’s Stars on Ice show in 2004-2005. Hughes was inducted strong work ethic, competitive nature, and ability to fointo the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame after being cus on goals, she will succeed in whatever path she nominated by her younger sister, Emily, also a figurechooses. skating Olympian. Along with being chosen for the Skating Hall of Fame, Hughes was tapped for the InternaSignificance tional Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2005. Hughes is living proof that someone with a combinaHughes took a leave from Yale University after her tion of talent and drive can achieve his or her dreams. She freshman year to skate professionally with the Smucker’s is a young woman whose core values are intact and to skaters. Her gold medal made her a headliner in the show, whom family is all-important. When Hughes remembers but she never intended to make a career of skating. Unher night of Olympic triumph, she thinks about her famderstanding the value of an education, and unwilling to ily in the stands, whose love and support helped make her rest on her Olympic laurels, Hughes returned to Yale and a top amateur athlete. graduated in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in American —Norma Lewis studies. Her skating career over, Hughes has kept her options Further Reading open, considering a career in medicine. Her father beBrennan, Christine. Champions on Ice: Twenty-five Years lieves her greatest gift may be writing, based on the fact of the World’s Finest Figure Skaters. Toronto, Ont.: that her Figure Skating Hall of Fame acceptance speech McClelland and Stewart, 2002. With a foreword by was a poem she had written for the occasion. With her 565
Hughes, Sarah another skating great, Brian Boitano, this book describes the careers of great figure skaters, including that of Hughes. Hines, James R. Figure Skating: A History. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2006. An exhaustive work that covers figure skating: what defines the sport, the figures, and the superior athletes, including Hughes. Shulman, Carole. The Complete Book of Figure Skating. Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics, 2001. Though not specifically about Hughes, the book explains the sport
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Jewish Americans in detail, enhancing the understanding of the technical aspects of her performances. Sivorinosky, Alina. Sarah Hughes: Skating to the Stars. New York: Penguin, 2001. Captures Hughes’s drive and her love of skating, setting the stage for her future success in the 2002 Olympics. Written for young teenagers, it contains good information. See also: Mark Spitz; Kerri Strug; Dara Torres.
I Carl Icahn Investor and philanthropist Icahn perfected the art of acquiring sufficient shares in a corporation to effectively influence the company’s management. While this practice is variously known as “corporate raiding” or “shareholder activism,” Icahn has practiced it successfully for three decades, becoming one of the world’s richest men. Born: February 16, 1936; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Carl Celian Icahn (full name) Areas of achievement: Economics; philanthropy
a controlling interest in a company and demand changes in the company’s policies, management, or holdings. Some companies, feeling pressured and perhaps fearful, would buy out the “greenmailer’s” shares at an exorbitant price, thus making profit for the “greenmailer.” B. F. Goodrich was among the companies reportedly “greenmailed” by Icahn. Financial regulation requirements have changed corporate rules so that “greenmailing” is no longer feasible. However, many of Icahn’s profit-making ventures in the 1980’s have been labeled “greenmailing”
Early Life Life’s Work Carl Icahn (I-kahn) was born in Brooklyn, New York, Icahn has accumulated a fortune by buying and selland grew up in Queens in a Jewish home. His father was a ing companies such as TransWorld Airlines (TWA), cantor in a local synagogue and also had a law degree. His mother was a teacher. Icahn attended Princeton University, where he obtained a degree in psychology. At the urging of his mother, he began medical school but dropped out to pursue a career in business. Icahn’s first financial position was as a stockbrocker with Dreyfus and Company. There he learned about arbitrage, a foundation for his future financial activities. Icahn is known for buying up large numbers of shares in companies in order to gain a controlling interest. He then uses his influence (based on the fact that he is a major shareholder) to change policies, leadership, and practices of the organizations. In some cases, he forced companies to divest parts of their ownership—either to become more efficient or to make greater profits. These activities are variously called “corporate raiding” or “shareholder activism,” depending on whether his actions are viewed as negative or positive. Icahn believed that most corporations were wasteful and seemed organized to create large profits for the chief executives officers and a few higher-ups and not to operate efficiently to benefit shareholders. When taking over companies or influencing them, he claimed that he made the companies better, by making them more efficient. In the 1980’s, some of his efforts were described as greenmail (an adaptation of the word blackmail). In this situation, a person (such as Icahn) would buy Carl Icahn. (AP/Wide World Photos) 567
Icahn, Carl United States Steel Corporation, and Texaco Oil. His takeover of TWA in 1985 is particularly well known. Unlike some corporate raiders, he did not take his profits and leave. Sometimes he took on management of the corporation, as he did at TWA. Icahn attempted to reorganize Time Warner Incorporated into several separate interests. He also tried to take over Marvel Comics. He owns full or partial interest in numerous companies, and he serves on many corporate boards. He is listed among the top sixty individuals in the world based on net worth. Now in his fourth decade as a financier, Icahn continues to work long hours, selecting companies in which to invest and making decisions for the corporations that he runs. He has an uncanny ability to select companies that have potential, acquire a major interest in them, and then force them to become more efficient. He has had failures as well as successes, but on balance he has been wildly successful. Icahn has personal investments in a number of seemingly unrelated (and sometimes unsuccessful) businesses, including a rail-car manufacturer, a bankrupt auto-parts maker, a metal recycling company, Imclone (a pharmaceutical company), and XO Communications (a telecommunications provider). Many corporate raiders use other people’s money for their investments, but Icahn is committed to putting his money into ventures. He has enough resources to withstand failures when he has them, and he continues to buy—going after companies that seem to have promise. In June, 2008, Icahn launched on the Internet the Icahn Report, which campaigns for shareholder rights. It hosts United Shareholders of America, where individual investors can sign up and take part. One of the world’s richest individuals, Icahn is a generous philanthropist. Icahn Stadium in New York City bears his name, and so do the Carl C. Icahn Center for Science and the Icahn Scholar Program at Choate Rosemary Hall, a New England preparatory school. He also has made donations to fund a genomics laboratory at Princeton University, his alma mater. He is a trustee of Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York City. Donations to
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Jewish Americans this hospital resulted in a building named for him (Icahn Medical Institute). He and his wife, Gail, created the Children’s Rescue Fund, a foundation to help single pregnant women and single women with children in the Bronx. The foundation built Icahn House, a sixty-five-unit facility for homeless families. Significance Icahn’s financial efforts over the decades have been successful. From his youth, Icahn has been able to identify companies in need of reorganization. He marshals the resources to take them over, and, in some cases, reorganizes them into more efficient, profit-making companies. His name is synonymous with “corporate raiding,” “hostile take-overs,” and “shareholder activism.” He is one of the wealthiest men in the world. —Mary C. Ware Further Reading Kadlec, Daniel. Masters of the Universe. New York: HarperBusiness, 1999. The financial editor for Time magazine traces the lives of some of the most influential individuals on Wall Street, including Icahn. Parker, Emily. “Carl Icahn: Corporate Hell-Raiser.” The Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2008, p. A9. Biographical article with interview follows Icahn’s image as it moved from corporate raider to “shareholder activist.” Includes many pithy quotes from Icahn. Rosenberg, Hilary. The Vulture Investors. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2000. Provides information on the lives of many of the masters of corporate takeover, including Icahn. Stevens, Marc. King Icahn: The Biography of a Renegade Capitalist. New York: Dutton, 1993. One of the few books focusing solely on Icahn’s life. Its main weakness is that it chronicles his life and work only through 1990. See also: Barry Diller; Marcus Goldman; Jerome Kohlberg, Jr.; Sumner Redstone; David Sarnoff; George Soros.
Jewish Americans
Irving, Amy
Amy Irving Actor From a prominent show-business family, Irving first gained recognition in the 1970’s in motion-picture thrillers, often playing the commonsensical girl-nextdoor role. Her brief marriage to director Steven Spielberg generated as much publicity for her as her performances in films and plays. Born: September 10, 1953; Palo Alto, California Also known as: Amy Davis Irving (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Amy Irving (UHR-veeng) was born in California into an active show-business family. Her father, Jules, had worked as an artistic director for the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center in New York before becoming a highly successful television director and producer in California. Her uncle, Richard, was also a television producer, and her mother was actor Priscilla Pointer, with whom Irving frequently worked on stage and screen. While a pupil at the Professional Children’s School in New York, Irving began playing walk-on roles in plays on and Off-Broadway, some directed by her father and later, after the death of her father, by her stepfather, Robert Symonds. After graduation from high school, Irving was involved briefly with the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, which her parents helped found, before spending three years studying in England at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Upon returning to the United States, Irving sought work in Hollywood and quickly became involved with a circle of young directors who were on the brink of phenomenal success. After appearing opposite Ron Howard in an episode of his television series Happy Days, just as he was about to embark on a directing career, she met through auditions George Lucas, Brian De Palma, and Steven Spielberg. After losing the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars (1977) to Carrie Fisher, she was signed by De Palma for her first film role, that of Sue Snell in his 1976 adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie (1974). De Palma was so impressed with Irving’s acting skill that he sent her to Spielberg to audition for the role ultimately played by Teri Garr in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Although she did not get the role, she and Spielberg began to date.
Life’s Work Carrie made Irving a star. She and Spielberg fell in love and married in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in November of 1985. The marriage lasted until 1989, and the couple had one son, Max. After Carrie became a “sleeper” hit, De Palma at once cast her in his next horror thriller, The Fury (1978), and Irving played the lead female role. In 1980, she played two roles involving diverse types of music: In Honeysuckle Rose she played a fan of a country-western singer (Willie Nelson), and in The Competition, she played a classical pianist facing off against her boyfriend (Richard Dreyfuss) in a prestigious piano contest. She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Yentl (1983), in which she portrays a naïve Jewish girl who marries a student who is another young woman (Barbra Streisand) masquerading as a man to obtain an education. The 1980’s proved to be a highly productive decade for Irving. In addition to her film roles and an Academy Award nomination, she appeared in two of the most popular television miniseries of the era: The Far Pavilions (1984), based on M. M. Kaye’s best-selling novel, in which she played an Indian princess, and Anastasia (1986), in which she played Anna Anderson, a naturalized American citizen who claimed to be the Archduchess Anastasia, who supposedly had survived the slaughter of the Russian royal family by the Bolsheviks. In 1988, Irving provided the singing voice for Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? with Bob Hoskins. The same year, she appeared in what is likely her best film, Crossing Delancey (1988), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for best actress. From the late 1980’s onward, though she continued to appear in films and on television, she concentrated on live theater on and Off- Broadway, winning an Obie in 1988 for The Road to Mecca, appearing in revivals of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House (1919) and Anton Chekhov’s Tri sestry (1904; The Three Sisters, 1920), and in 2006 starring in Tom Stoppard’s complex cycle of plays about the Russian intelligentsia, The Coast of Utopia (2002). After the divorce from Spielberg, Irving married South American director Bruno Barreto. After the dissolution of that union, she married American documentary-maker Kenneth Bowser, Jr.
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Irving, Amy Significance Though her father was of Russian Jewish descent, Irving has Welsh and Native American background on her mother’s side of the family, and Irving was raised as a Christian Scientist. Nevertheless, two of her best performances, those in the films Yentl and Crossing Delancey, represent and celebrate her Jewish heritage. Yentl, based on a short story by Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, vividly re-creates life in the shtetlach, rural Jewish enclaves in Eastern Europe in the centuries before World War II. Jewish religion, education, folkways, and family life are carefully, lovingly detailed. Crossing Delancey, in which a contemporary young Jewish couple inadvertently experiment with the assistance offered by a traditional matchmaker, depicts a similar modern milieu in the United States and offers a paradigmatic tale of how young people, whatever their heritage, explore their background and traditions, choosing what to keep and what to revise. —Thomas Du Bose
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Jewish Americans Further Reading Knapp, Laurence F., ed. Brian De Palma, Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. Interesting and useful collection of interviews with the director who cast Irving in her breakthrough roles in Carrie and The Fury. McBride, Joseph. Steven Spielberg: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Excellent biography of the director to whom Irving was married for almost five years, providing provocative insight into the nature of the couple’s relationship and the causes of their break-up. Muir, John Kenneth. Horror Films of the 1970’s. New York: McFarland, 2002. Good treatments and analyses of the films in which Irving first rose to fame. Sandler, Susan. Crossing Delancey. New York: Samuel French, 1984. The play on which Irving’s best film was based. See also: Carrie Fisher; Natalie Portman; Steven Spielberg; Barbra Streisand.
J Jacob K. Javits Politician and U.S. senator As a member of the United States Senate for twentyfour years, Javits crafted legislation on civil rights, foreign policy (notably the War Powers Act of 1973), and the protection of pensions.
Joy, Joshua, and Carla. Javits held the seat until he withdrew his candidacy for reelection to the House in 1954 to successfully run for attorney general of New York. In 1956, Javits was first elected to the United States Senate.
Born: May 18, 1904; New York, New York Died: March 7, 1986; West Palm Beach, Florida Also known as: Jacob Koppel Javits (full name) Area of achievement: Government and politics
Life’s Work Javits took office on January 9, 1957, and was reelected for three subsequent terms. When he took his seat, Javits was one of only two Jewish senators. His political position is best described as liberal Republican.
Early Life Jacob K. Javits (JA-vihtz) was born in 1904 in a lower East Side tenement in New York City. His father, Morris Jawetz, was a former rabbinical student from Austria who changed his name to Javits when he arrived in the United States. His mother, Ida Littman, emigrated from Palestine through Russia. Javits’s father worked as a tailor and later as janitor; he was also active in the Democratic Party; he died when his son was fifteen, two years after Javits was bar mitzvahed. Javits attended public school in New York City and earned his bachelor’s degree at Columbia University. In 1926, Javits graduated from New York University Law School and began practicing law in New York City the following year. During this period, Javits began writing a series of articles on economic and political issues; he also married Marjorie Ringling in 1933, but their marriage ended in divorce three years later. Javits’s law career was interrupted in 1941 by World War II, when he volunteered to work for the Army in the chemical warfare service. He was commissioned as an officer the following year and was discharged as a lieutenant colonel in 1945, receiving both the Legion of Merit and the Army Commendation Ribbon. He then returned to practicing law in New York. In 1946, Javits was elected as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives. In the following year, he married Marion Ann Borris; their marriage would continue for the rest of his life and would produce three children:
Jacob K. Javits. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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Javits, Jacob K. His politics and his faith left him outside the mainstream of his conservative Republican colleagues. Javits guided to adoption a series of progressive reforms in areas such as civil rights, urban redevelopment, foreign policy, and labor relations. He took pride in three legislative achievements: the War Powers Act of 1973, which sought to limit the president’s ability to commit troops during undeclared wars; the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974, which protected the retirement pensions of more than fifty million Americans; and legislation creating the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. Although he had ambitions to become the first Jewish president, his political career remained anchored in the Senate. He rose to become the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a position where he influenced the decision making of presidents. Javits remained an adamant supporter of the state of Israel throughout his political career, but he was critical of the settling of occupied territories as tending to undermine Middle East peace. He was instrumental in shaping the Israeli-Egyptian peace proposal that was eventually adopted at Camp David in 1978. After losing to Alfonse D’Amato in a bid to regain nomination as the Republican candidate for the Senate in 1980, Javits ran as an independent liberal but lost. During the campaign, Javits began to exhibit the symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease), a nerve condition that he struggled to overcome for the rest of his life. Following his Senate career, Javits resumed his law practice and taught as an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs. In 1983, Javits was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was further honored by the dedication of a convention center and federal building, both located in Manhattan, in his name. Three years later, on March 7, 1986, Javits died of a heart attack while on vacation in West Palm Beach, Florida. He is buried in Linden Hill Cemetery in Queens.
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Jewish Americans Significance Although many of his legislative achievements were obscured because he was a member of the minority party (allowing the majority to take credit), Javits was widely recognized by his colleagues as being one of the most influential and hard-working members of that body during his years in the Senate. His most important piece of legislation, the War Powers Act, continues to shape the debate over presidential power to commit troops, an issue appropriate to American involvement in Iraq and in Afghanistan. —David Smailes Further Reading Javits, Jacob. “The Congressional Presence in Foreign Relations.” Foreign Affairs 48 (January, 1970): 221234. Offers a clear statement of Javits’s position on executive power and the role of the Senate in foreign policy. Javits, Jacob, and Rafael Steinberg. Javits: The Autobiography of a Public Man. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. The best source for understanding Javits’s political thinking, his particular interest in Middle East politics, and the effect of his life in politics on his marriage and his family. Lazarowitz, Arlene. “Senator Jacob K. Javits and Soviet Jewish Emigration.” Shofar 21, no. 4 (Summer, 2003): 19-32. Describes Javits’s work on the U.S. law affecting the emigration of Soviet Jews. The role of his faith is particularly highlighted. Mann, Robert. Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Mann’s chronicle of the Vietnam War includes the account of Javits’s early support for and later disillusionment with the war. See also: Bella Abzug; Abraham Beame; Benjamin N. Cardozo; Ed Koch; Fiorello Henry La Guardia; Abraham A. Ribicoff; Eliot Spitzer.
Jewish Americans
Jay, Ricky
Ricky Jay Magician and actor An accomplished sleight-of-hand artist, Jay is a film and television actor and a technical consultant on feature films. He is a scholar and collector of ephemera (posters and other paper advertisements) on magicians, vaudeville-style entertainments, and novelty acts. Born: 1948; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Richard Jay Potash (birth name) Areas of achievement: Theater; scholarship; entertainment Early Life Ricky Jay was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1948, and grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Jay declines to discuss his childhood, indicating that his parents discouraged his interests, though they did allow him to have a favorite magician perform at his Bar Mitzvah. Jay was close to his maternal grandfather, accountant Max Katz, an accomplished amateur magician and member of the Society of American Magicians. Jay performed a magic trick informally for society members at the age of four; at seven he made his first television appearance as a magician; by his teenage years he was known professionally as “Tricky Ricky.” Jay left home at fifteen, and by eighteen he was supporting himself in a variety of jobs. He appeared twice on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, while attending several colleges, including Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, but he spent most of his time learning and practicing magic. In the 1970’s, he moved to California to study with sleight-of-hand expert Charlie Miller and magician Dai Vernon, known as “The Professor.” Life’s Work In the 1980’s, Jay appeared as an opening act for musicians ranging from the new-wave B-52’s to jazz singer Anita O’Day. He became known for his expertise at close-up magic and sleight-of-hand card tricks and for his devotion to the idea of magic as a source of wonder. He could win endless hands of poker, even when audience volunteers shuffled and dealt the cards; change a torn piece of paper into a butterfly; or throw a playing card hard enough from ten paces away to pierce the outer rind of a watermelon. Jay was once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for throwing (“scal-
ing”) a card 195 feet. He could also perform mental feats, such as reciting the works of William Shakespeare while simultaneously playing chess and calculating cube roots of numbers called out by audience members. He would not reveal the secrets behind illusions and preferred the company of amateur magicians to professional showmen. In 1994, Jay performed a one-man Off-Broadway show, Ricky Jay and His Fifty-Two Assistants, directed by playwright and filmmaker David Mamet. The show consistently sold out and was revived for a ten-week run in 1998. Mamet also directed Ricky Jay: On the Stem (2002), in which Jay told stories about early con artists while performing a range of close-up illusions. As an actor, Jay has appeared in several films and television programs, often playing some type of con artist. He served as technical adviser on films involving gam-
Ricky Jay. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Joel, Billy bling and cons, including Ocean’s Thirteen (2007), The Prestige (2006), and The Illusionist (2006). He designed a wheelchair to make an actor appear legless in Forrest Gump (1994) and developed a bit for comedian Steve Martin, in which Martin pulls a series of improbable items from the fly of his pants. Jay has acted in seven films directed by Mamet, serving as a consultant on three, and Jay appeared in Paul Thomas Anderson’s films Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999). In 2004, Jay wrote an episode for the television series Deadwood, in which he had a recurring role as card sharp Eddie Sawyer. While studying magic, Jay became fascinated with the history of entertainment and the books he consulted. His personal collection includes thousands of books, ephemera (posters, tickets, and playbills), and objects related to historical and novelty entertainments. He has written several books, among them Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women (1986) and Jay’s Journal of Anomalies (2001), and in them he has collected stories about unusual entertainers throughout history, including vaudeville acts based on physical deformities, a mind-reading horse that entertained Shakespeare, and performers who sang happily while crucified or appeared to amputate their own noses. Significance In addition to his accomplishments as a magician and his successful one-man shows, Jay has both acted in and consulted on many notable film and television projects. He is noted for his wide-ranging scholarship and ability to speak with erudition and warmth on the history of entertainment, magic, illusion, novelty acts, and con games. Because he is not merely a performer but a historian with stringent scruples about preservation of arti-
Jewish Americans facts and arcane knowledge, Jay’s lectures, exhibits, and publications teach and perpetuate his reverence for the illusionist’s skill and the timeless, unquenchable human desire to entertain. —Maureen Puffer-Rothenberg Further Reading Grauer, Neil A. “The Wizard of Odd.” Smithsonian 35, no. 3 (June, 2004): 109-111. Compares Jay to the escape artist Harry Houdini. Jay, Ricky. Extraordinary Exhibitions: The Wonderful Remains of an Enormous Head, the Whimsiphusicon, and Death to the Savage Unitarians, Broadsides from the Collection of Ricky Jay. New York: Quantuck Lane Press, 2005. Selections from Jay’s personal collection of advertisements for strange and unusual acts dating back to the 1600’s, with his explanatory comments. _______. Jay’s Journal of Anomalies: Conjurers, Cheats, Hustlers, Hoaxsters, Pranksters, Jokesters, Pretenders, Sideshow Showmen, Armless Calligraphers, Mechanical Marvels, Popular Entertainments. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Collects all sixteen issues of the quarterly journal, with Jay’s savvy, humorous articles about eccentric nineteenth-century entertainments. Singer, Mark. “Secrets of the Magus.” In Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick. New York: Random House, 2000. Portrait of Jay as a magician, collector, and scholar. Discusses Jay’s involvement with the Mulholland Library of Conjuring and the Allied Arts and his views on performing. See also: David Copperfield; Harry Houdini; David Mamet.
Billy Joel Singer, entertainer, and writer One of rock and roll’s most talented, versatile, and musically accomplished artists, Joel produced a wide variety of hits throughout the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s. Born: May 9, 1949; Bronx, New York Also known as: Bill Martin; Piano Man; William Joseph Martin Joel (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment 574
Early Life The paternal grandfather of Billy Joel (JOH-ehl) was a successful Bavarian businessman who fled from his home in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1938, when the Nazi Party began to persecute Jews. He lost his property but saved himself and his family, who used forged passports to gain entry into Switzerland, Cuba, and finally, in 1942, New York. Joel’s father, Helmuth (Howard), was fifteen when he escaped Germany and vividly remembered the
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sounds of a German training camp near the family’s home. Howard enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II and returned to Bavaria in April, 1945, where he took part in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Returning from the war, Howard married Rosalind Hyman, who came from a family of well-educated British Jews. They shared a love for classical piano but seldom observed Jewish religious traditions. Joel would later say that his circumcision was as close as his parents came to religious observance. Joel was born in the Bronx on May 9, 1949. However, shortly afterward his parents moved to Levittown on Long Island. He was weaned on classical piano music, able to play bits of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at age three, and compose music and lyrics at age six. His early teachers included the noted pianist Morton Estrin and the musician-songwriter Timothy Ford. Growing up, Joel avoided sports and devoted himself to music. The fact that Joel’s piano teacher also ran a ballet school caused him to be teased in high school. As a result he took up boxing and became quite skilled. He entered the Golden Gloves, amateur boxing competitions, and won twenty-two of twenty-four bouts. However, a broken nose in his last fight convinced him to quit. It was the appearance of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 that lured Joel to popular music. He began playing at a piano bar and joined the Echoes, a group with which he cut several records as piano accompanist and played night shows. He left Billy Joel. (Redferns/Getty Images) the Echoes in 1967 to play for the Hassles, a Long Island band. In 1971, the group disbanded, having twenty single release. His album, The Stranger, released achieved little success. One complicating factor was that in 1977 kept on selling, and by 1985 it was Columbia Joel fell in love with the group leader’s wife, Elizabeth Records’s top-selling album. Weber Small. She divorced her husband and married Joel For his next album, Glass Houses (1980), Joel won in September, 1973. The marriage lasted for nearly nine best rock male vocal performance at the Grammy Awards. years. It was his fifth Grammy in three years. In 1981, he released Songs in the Attic, a collection of tunes from his Life’s Work concert tours, which soon became his fourth consecutive In 1971, Joel signed a recording contract with Paratop-ten album. One year later, in spite of a motorcycle acmount Records, releasing his first album, Cold Spring cident, he completed a new album, The Nylon Curtain, Harbor, named after a village in northern Long Island. which reached number seven on the Billboard album Meanwhile, “Captain Jack,” a song that he had sung in chart and which was nominated for a Grammy Award for a live concert and that had strong drug connotations, album of the year. An Innocent Man, released in 1983, slowly became a popular underground hit on the East contained ten brand-new songs, rose to number four on Coast. At around the same time, Joel went to the West the Billboard album charts, and was nominated for a Coast to eke out a living singing in piano bars under the Grammy Award for album of the year. It seemed everyname Bill Martin. His trying experiences were incorpothing Joel touched turned to gold, including the rerelease rated in his song “Piano Man,” which became a top575
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in 1983, of a remastered version of his What Made Billy the Kid Billy the Great first album, Cold Spring Harbor. In 1985, Billy married the supermodel From 1999 to 2001, Billy Joel achieved the immortality he so richly Christie Brinkley, who gave birth later deserved as one of rock and roll’s most talented musicians and songthat year to their daughter, Alexa Ray. Alwriters. In 1999, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, though divorced nine years later, they realong with such living legends as Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen. mained on friendly terms. After comHis genius was recognized as his ability to synthesize such diverse influences as Ludwig von Beethoven’s classical music, Dave Brubeck’s jazz, pleting a new album The Bridge (1986), George Gershwin’s show music, and Ray Charles and Fats Domino’s soul Joel planned a history-making tour of the music into a mix ranging from romantic balladry to hard rocking with Soviet Union, giving three live perforjazz, pop, doo-wop, and soul thrown in. What made the mix most original mances in Moscow and three in Leninwas the integration of his own life experiences in crafting the lyrics for his grad. In 1989, he released the album Storm songs. His success was so great that he tied the Beatles for the most platiFront and, four years later, produced River num albums in the United States, and from 1974 to 1993 he had at least of Dreams. Composed of new songs, it one single in the Top Forty in every year but three. That his contribution topped the Billboard album chart. was not only to rock and roll but also to the historical development of Following the break-up of his marriage American culture was highlighted in March, 2000, when he was awarded to Brinkley in 1994, Joel toured widely, the Smithsonian Institution’s James Smithson Bicentennial Medal. The both on his own circuit, to places such as following year Joel was honored with the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame Johnny Mercer Award, an annual award that goes to a writer or writers alAustralia and Japan, and on tour with ready inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame judged to be the most Elton John. In 2002, he won a Tony Award original. Joel’s stated personal goal as an artist was to make music that for best orchestration for his work in meant something in his time and that also transcended time. Moving Out, a musical based on twentyfour of his songs that was a smash hit on Broadway for the next three years. In 2003, he began another concert tour first number one album, was conceived of as a day in with John. In 2006, after not releasing any new songs for Manhattan. It is perhaps fitting that on October 21, 2000, thirteen years, Joel embarked on a whirlwind concert as the New York Yankees faced the New York Mets at tour across the United States and Western Europe. Twelve Yankee Stadium in the opening game of the World Sedifferent shows at Madison Square Garden resulted in a ries, Joel sang the national anthem. He closed out the Columbia Records release of thirty-two songs, Twelve century’s end in New York with a gala Millennium Eve Gardens Live. concert at Madison Square Garden. —Irwin Halfond Significance After catching public attention at the age of twentyFurther Reading four with his song “Piano Man,” Joel quickly catapulted Bego, Mark. Billy Joel: The Biography. Cambridge, to fame as a singer-songwriter. His numerous albums Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2007. A discussion of Joel’s have sold more than one hundred million copies and origins and career based on many interviews from thirty-three of his songs have appeared on the Billboard other sources. Top 40 charts and top-ten hits chart throughout the Bordowitz, Hank. Billy Joel: The Life and Times of an 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s. Three songs reached the pinAngry Man. New York: Billboard Books, 2005. Writnacle of number one hits on Billboard. Nominated thirtyten with drama and sensitivity, this is an overview of three times for the Grammy Award, he was a six-time the career of one of America’s great rock artists. winner. His genius was recognized in his induction into Smith, Bill. I Go to Extremes: The Billy Joel Story. Sun the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992 and into the Rock Lakes, Ariz.: Robson, 2007. Joel’s life as described and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. He has received six honby a friend and veteran author, who used interviews to orary doctorate awards. His albums have sold more than uncover many intimate details. one hundred million copies worldwide, and his greatest hits album reigns as the sixth best seller in American muSee also: Burt Bacharach; Marvin Hamlisch; Carole sic history. Many of his songs relate to life experiences in King; Randy Newman; Carly Simon. New York, and his album Fifty-second Street (1978), his 576
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Al Jolson Singer and actor Jolson was one of the first nationally popular Jewish entertainers, and his songs represented a merger of early African American jazz and of mainstream popular music. Born: May 26, 1886; Srednike, Russia (now Seredmius, Lithuania) Died: October 23, 1950; San Francisco, California Also known as: Asa Yoelson (birth name); Al Joelson Area of achievement: Entertainment
Their first major opportunity came in 1903 when the William Morris Agency found them a job on Long Island. This was followed by additional bookings until 1908, when showman Lew Dockstader observed a performance by Jolson in blackface. Known as Al Jolson, because Joelson was too large for the brothers’ printed cards, he was signed for Lew Dockstader’s Minstrels. While the show was on tour, Jolson’s performances came to the attention of producers Lee and Jake Shubert, who decided to take a chance on the singer. Harry’s career was never as successful as his brother’s, and the two would have a troubled relationship over the years. The Shuberts signed Jolson for the Winter Garden production of The Musical Review of 1911, a musical comedy in two parts: Bow Sing and La Belle Paree. Jolson’s part was clearly racist and consisted of a musical comedy parody in African American dialect.
Early Life Al Jolson (JOHL-son) was born Asa Yoelson in a Russian shtetl, the fifth child of Rabbi Moshe and Naomi Yoelson. When Jolson was about four years old, his father came to America and settled in Washington, D.C., as rabbi and cantor for Talmud Torah. Four years later the family joined him. Jolson’s mother died soon afterward during a pregnancy. His father married again, to his mother’s cousin. Chyesa. However, Chyesa never filled the maternal void for the children. Jolson’s popular song “Mammy” was in part a lament for his late mother. After their mother’s death, Jolson and his older brother, Hirsch, found solace in performing. Starting as street-corner singers using the Americanized names Al and Harry Joelson, the brothers used the coins thrown to them to frequent local theaters and vaudeville houses. Harry and Al began singing in front of servicemen enlisted for the Spanish American War in 1898, then they drifted from town to town as truants. At one point Jolson spent time in St. Mary’s Industrial School in Baltimore as a runaway, the same school that later trained another truant, George “Babe” Ruth. Jolson’s first paid acting job was as an extra in the play The Children of the Ghetto (1899). In hopes of starting a show business career, Jolson traveled to New York in 1900, following Harry, who had found work in the theater. Reduced to sleeping where he could, Jolson developed what was likely tuberculosis, but he still managed to obtain a few stage roles. His first billing was in 1901 with fellow actor Frederick Moore: Joelson and Moore. In general, however, the brothers found little work and frequently returned home. Al Jolson. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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Breaking Barriers Al Jolson was among the first major Jewish American entertainers to appeal to a widespread general audience. While there were numerous Jewish actors in the entertainment field who preceded Jolson, most remained in vaudeville and played to a primarily Jewish audience. Jolson transcended the ethnic barrier. While he clearly retained his heritage, notably in the film The Jazz Singer (1927), which could arguably be described as a fictionalized biography of Jolson, his songs merged American jazz of the period, which contained elements of African American music, and the timeless appeal of a longing for simpler times. Like that of his contemporary Jewish American entertainer Eddie Cantor, with whom Jolson maintained a friendly rivalry, Jolson’s professional career evolved with the industry itself, moving from the “street-corner” entertainer, to music houses, vaudeville, and eventually motion pictures. His starring role in the first talkie provided more than simple entertainment for the masses. His endearing performance practically ensured that talking pictures would become a success. Jolson embodied the classic American immigrant success story. During World War II and the Korean conflict, he was the first major entertainer to visit the troops, and perhaps this generosity led to his decline in health.
Life’s Work The Jolson mystique began with his performances in La Belle Paree. The show received mixed reviews, but Jolson was singled out for his appeal. The third performance on March 21, 1911, was played before a raucous crowd. Jolson broke out in whistles, a gimmick for which he became known. Jolson’s popularity on Broadway continued to increase, and he headlined in Vera Violetta (1911); The Whirl of Society (1912), which introduced the runway ramp into the audience; The Honeymoon Express (1913); Robinson Crusoe, Jr. (1916); Sinbad (1918); and Bombo (1921). The songs Jolson introduced became part of his repertoire, including George Gershwin’s “Swanee.” Jolson became the highest paid performer on the stage, and his personal life remained second to his career (and growing ego). Two marriages failed during this period. During the 1920’s, film studios began experimenting with an innovation: sound. In 1927, Warner Bros. decided to produce a full-length film version of the Broadway play, The Jazz Singer (1925), the story of a rabbi’s son who forsakes the synagogue for a life in show business. George Jessel, who had been playing the part on Broadway, declined the role in the film, and Jolson became the logical 578
choice for the starring role. Jolson had a national audience for a show that had clear autobiographical elements. The film was silent, with songs and an improvised monologue by Jolson talking to his mother interspersed in the action. The film was a hit, and Jolson continued to star in a series of musicals. The quality of the films’ plots eventually declined until Jolson’s roles developed into parodies of the man. Early in 1928, Jolson met eighteen-year-old showgirl, Ethel “Ruby” Keeler, with whom he fell in love, and they married later that year. They remained together until 1939, in what quickly became an unhappy union. Whether it was the age difference, which seemed to bother the insecure Jolson more than Keeler, or her refusal to cater to his ego, the marriage failed. Keeler became a significant musical performer on stage and on film screens. One incident highlighted their interactions. During her performance in the 1929 production of Show Girl, Jolson rose from the audience to sing an impromptu song. The “intrusion” proved popular with the audience, and Jolson repeated the performance in subsequent shows. Keeler later indicated she had no idea why Jolson chose to do so. Shortly after the entrance of the United States into World War II, Jolson began a tour of military camps in the south, often playing two shows on the same day. His popularity among the troops resulted in a national tour to such places as Alaska, followed by overseas trips to South America, London, and North Africa. Jolson’s exhaustion triggered malaria and a recurrence of tuberculosis, resulting in removal of a portion of his lung. Jolson never fully recovered his health. Following his return, Jolson began a “barnstorming” tour to the West, visiting injured veterans along the way, the “Purple Heart circuit,” as it was called. While in Arkansas, he met a twenty-year-old nurse, Erle Galbraith, who surprisingly was unaware of the level of Jolson’s popularity. The two fell in love, and Erle became his fourth wife. The two remained happily married until his death. Jolson’s obvious continuing popularity resulted in another of the film biographies popular at the time, and filming of The Jolson Story began in 1945. Jolson wanted to portray himself, but by this time he was nearly sixty and Larry Parks was chosen to star. Jolson did appear in one scene, dancing in a “Swanee” number. The success of the film resulted in a sequel, Jolson Sings Again (1949). When the Korean War broke out in 1950, Jolson again was the first major entertainer to travel to the war zone to entertain the troops, at his own expense. It was no surprise
Jewish Americans to soldiers in isolated regions to have Jolson suddenly appear to provide an impromptu concert. The travel took a significant toll on his already precarious health. Jolson died of a heart attack in October, 1950, while in San Francisco, during a trip in which he was planning another film. Significance Jolson defined entertainment for generations. Billed as “the world’s greatest entertainer,” Jolson was certainly the most famous entertainer of his time. Other performers had toured in plays, though not to the degree to which Jolson had through large and small towns. Other performers had starred in films, though Jolson carried his talent from the stage to the screen, providing entertainment for those who never had an opportunity to see him in person. His catchphrase, “You ain’t heard nothing yet,” exemplified the enthusiasm and the excitement he brought to every performance. —Richard Adler
Jong, Erica Further Reading Freedland, Michael. The Story of Jolson. Portland, Oreg.: Mitchell Vallentine, 2007. An updated illustrated version of an earlier work by the author. Entertaining overview of the subject’s career and private life. Goldman, Herbert. Jolson: The Legend Comes to Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Extensively researched biography of the subject. Included are a stageography and a filmography encompassing the entertainer’s life. Grudens, Richard. When Jolson Was King. Stonybrook, N.Y.: Celebrity Profiles, 2006. Biography of the subject with emphasis on his entertainment and singing career. See also: George Burns; Eddie Cantor; Cecil B. DeMille; Samuel Goldwyn; Louis B. Mayer.
Erica Jong Writer and feminist Jong was a pioneer in the second wave of feminism, and she wrote frankly about the sexual desires and passions of women in her fiction and her nonfiction works. Born: March 26, 1942; New York, New York Also known as: Erica Burrows; Erica Mann (birth name) Areas of achievement: Literature; journalism Early Life Erica Jong (jawng) was born in 1942 into a Jewish household. Her father, who came from Poland, was born Nathan Weisman; he changed his name to Seymour Mann. He was a successful manufacturer of porcelain dolls, and he built a profitable company that made other gifts and home accessories. Jong’s mother, Eda Mirsky, came from England, but she was of Russian descent. Jong was the middle of three sisters. After high school in New York, Jong attended Barnard College, where she immersed herself in literature. She graduated in 1963, then proceeded to Columbia University, gaining an M.A. in 1965. She was enrolled in a Ph.D. program but dropped out to pursue a career in writing. She married Michael Werthman, a college
sweetheart, but the marriage soon ended. In 1966, she married Allan Jong, a Chinese American psychiatrist in the military, and moved to Germany, where he was stationed. From her home in Heidelberg, she traveled widely and favored Italy, particularly Venice. The marriage faltered, and they were divorced after their return to the United States in 1969. Her third husband was Jonathan Fast, a novelist and social worker. It was while she was married to him that, at age thirty-five, Jong had her first work published and gave birth to her only child, Molly. Life’s Work Jong saw herself primarily as a poet, and her first published works were two volumes of poetry, Fruits and Vegetables (1971) and Half-Lives (1973). The verse she wrote was accessible and frank, on such topics as her experiences as a woman and a wife, and female sexual desire and fantasy. The typical format was short-lined free verse, which avoided difficult or abstruse imagery and symbolism. Her poetry became instantly controversial and popular. A British edition of the first volume came out in 1973. It was her first novel, however, that gained her an enduring reputation. Fear of Flying, published in 1973, is 579
Jong, Erica bluntly autobiographical. It continued the sexual openness of the poetry and became instantly sensational for a reference to “zipless” sexual intercourse, used by the narrator, Isadora White Wing, to describe her primary sexual fantasy. She wants to experience a passionate sexual encounter that is guiltless, without consequences. Because this was the common understanding of Jong’s message, her book was vilified in the same way as were the novels of her two writer heroes, Henry Miller and Vladimir Nabokov. In fact, Fear of Flying points out that such fantasies are impossible. When Isadora is presented with opportunities to play out her fantasy, they either end in grief and farce or are perceived as attempted rape. Her attempted infidelity brings her greater distress, which is resolved only when she abandons it and decides her real fulfillment is to be found in writing. The book addresses other themes, such as gender identity, finding “the right man,” and childlessness, all
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Jewish Americans played out against a Jewish motif. The fear in the novel’s title symbolizes a series of phobias that Isadora attempts to treat with psychoanalysis, called the “Jewish science” after Sigmund Freud, whose city of Vienna is the site of the novel. One of the fears Jong had of living in Germany was her Jewish identity. The comedic spirit of the book is a necessary counterbalance to this awareness of what went on at Auschwitz, a concentration camp where thousands of Jews were exterminated. Fear of Flying was followed by How to Save Your Own Life in 1977. This involves Isadora’s adventures through her third marriage. As Miller and Nabakov had praised her first novel, the British novelist Anthony Burgess praised this one. Jong was writing prolifically at this time: Further volumes of poetry appeared, including At the Edge of the Body (1979) and Ordinary Miracles (1983), honest poems about pregnancy and motherhood, with which many women readers identified. At the same time, she published a string of novels, none quite as good as her first, but which had a significant impact on the growing feminist movement of the time. Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny HackaboutJones (1980) is a frank account of a sexually exploited woman based on John Cleland’s Fanny Hill (1748) and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722), eighteenth century British novels. In 1987, Jong published a novel set in Venice, first called Serenissima, then retitled in 1995, Shylock’s Daughter, after a character in William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (1596-1597) with its problematic Jewish theme. Before that, she had become involved in journalism and writing literary essays. Witches (1981) is the first of several books to explore the link between witches and women. Her autobiographical Fear of Fifty appeared in 1994, covering the end of her third marriage and the start of her fourth marriage, to lawyer Ken Burrows. By this time she had moved out of New York to rural Connecticut. In 2003, she published the novel Sappho’s Leap, a celebration of the first known female poet, and, in 2009, Love Comes First, her first volume of poetry for ten years, appeared. This contains significant poems exploring Jewishness and ecological issues. Significance Jong expanded the boundaries of what women writers are permitted to publish. A leading figure in the modern feminist movement, she has also
Jewish Americans worked for reconciliation in the gender war that ensued. In addition to writing decisively on female identity and mother-daughter relationships, she has pursued themes of Jewish identity and the conflicting demands of writing and motherhood. — David Barratt Further Reading Bloom, James D. Gravity Fails: The Comic Jewish Shaping of Modern America. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2003. Sets Jong’s Jewish themes into a wider context of Jewish comic writing. Mackenzie, Suzie.“What This Woman Wants.” The Guardian, April 3, 1999. An in-depth profile of Jong.
Jong, Erica Templin, Charlotte. Feminism and the Politics of Literary Reputation: The Example of Erica Jong. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995. Traces how Jong’s work was received and the academic establishment’s avoidance of her as a major writer. Examines in depth the reception of Fear of Flying. _______, ed. Conversations with Erica Jong. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002. Literary conversations between Templin, an authority on Jong’s writing, and Jong. See also: Judy Blume; Nora Ephron; Lillian Hellman; Fran Lebowitz; Dorothy Parker; Susan Sontag; Wendy Wasserstein.
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K Pauline Kael Film critic As film critic for The New Yorker for more than twenty years, Kael conveyed the joy of watching films and made films a serious topic of discussion. Born: June 19, 1919; Petaluma, California Died: September 3, 2001; Great Barrington, Massachusetts Area of achievement: Journalism
Sound. She also began a weekly broadcast about film on KPFA, Berkeley’s listener-supported radio station; managed Berkeley’s Cinema Guild and Studio two-screen repertory theater, founded by Edward Landberg, one of her husbands; wrote programs for the films she showed; and lectured at universities in San Francisco and in Los Angeles.
Life’s Work The vitality and intelligence of Kael’s writings led to Early Life the publication of I Lost It at the Movies (1965). The colPauline Kael (KAY-ehl) was born in Petaluma, Calilection reached a larger readership than most books on fornia, an agricultural region north of San Francisco, the fifth and last child of Polish immigrants Isaac Paul Kael and Judith Friedman. Pauline Kael’s father lost his farm during the Great Depression and moved to San Francisco, where she became a regular filmgoer. She said she had trouble dating because she often disagreed with her dates about the quality of the films they attended. Kael attended the University of California, Berkeley, on a partial scholarship, majoring in philosophy, but she dropped out six credits short of graduation when she ran out of money. Abandoning plans to teach or to go to law school, she then went to New York with a friend, the poet Robert Horan, for three years before returning to San Francisco. While trying to write plays and working on experimental films, Kael supported herself and her daughter, Gina James, from a relationship with the poet and filmmaker James Broughton, by working as a cook, a seamstress, an advertising copywriter, a textbook writer, and a bookstore clerk. She was married and divorced three times. In 1953, Kael argued about a film with a friend in a coffee shop when the editor of City Lights overheard them and asked Kael to review a film for his magazine. Her review of Charles Chaplin’s Limelight (1952) launched her career as a critic, and she wrote reviews and essays for such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, Film Culture, Film Quarterly, Kulchur, The Massachusetts Review, Moviegoer, Partisan Review, and Sight and Pauline Kael. (AP/Wide World Photos) 582
Jewish Americans films, and its publication coincided with the increasing interest in foreign-language films and the rise of university film courses. In addition to analyzing the schizophrenic nature of Hud (1963) and the pretentiousness of Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Kael attacked Andrew Sarris, the primary American proponent of the auteur theory, which holds that films reflect the personalities of their directors. This essay, “Circles and Squares,” has remained one of her most famous. Earning more writing assignments, she moved to New York in 1965 and wrote for such slick magazines as Holiday, Life, Mademoiselle, and Vogue, but McCall’s fired her for panning The Sound of Music (1965). The New Yorker published an impassioned analysis of Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and in 1968 William Shawn, the magazine’s editor, hired her as one of two film critics, with Kael writing often lengthy reviews in the fall and winter while Penelope Gilliatt served as the critic for the rest of the year. Kael’s pugnacious, colloquial style contrasted not only with Gilliatt’s more genteel approach but also with the magazine’s overall self-consciously sophisticated tone. In 1978, Kael left film criticism, at the instigation of actor-director-producer Warren Beatty, to try the other side of the film business. She and Beatty eventually had a falling out, and she left her position as production executive to work briefly as a consultant at Paramount Pictures before returning to The New Yorker. By that time Gilliatt had left the magazine, and Kael began reviewing every other week, commuting between New York and her home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In addition to her reviews of current films, Kael wrote capsule reviews of older films showing at repertory theaters in New York. These reviews were collected in Five Thousand and One Nights at the Movies (revised 1991). Kael published eleven other collections of reviews and essays. Deeper into Movies (1973) became the first film book to win the National Book Award for Arts and Letters. One of her most famous essays, “Raising Kane,” first appeared in The Citizen Kane Book (1971). She created a controversy by claiming that journeyman screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz was the primary creative force behind the screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941), not cowriter, director, and star Orson Welles. Kael retired from The New Yorker in March, 1991, because of declining health. She died in 2001 from Parkinson’s disease.
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The BONNIE AND CLYDE Defense Upon its release in August, 1967, Bonnie and Clyde was greeted by most of its reviewers as an unusually violent B film. Over the following weeks, the treatment of violence by director Arthur Penn and the artistic quality of his film ignited a national debate. A highlight of this argument was the appearance of Pauline Kael’s essay in the October 21 issue of The New Yorker. Kael had originally written it for The New Republic, which rejected her defense of its violence. Acclaiming Bonnie and Clyde as the most exciting American film since The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Kael discussed its debt not only to gangster films of the past but also to foreign films, particularly those of the French nouvelle vague. She explained that it made viewers feel without telling them how to feel, pinpointing what would come to be seen as the difference between the old Hollywood and the new Hollywood. Time followed with a December 8 cover story about the phenomenon. Kael’s nine-thousandword essay helped solidify the film’s reputation and also propelled her into her choice position at The New Yorker.
Significance Kael’s tenure at The New Yorker came during a period many have termed a golden age for American films. Released from previous restraints imposed on the way filmmakers could portray sex, violence, and social and political issues, American films embraced this new freedom by presenting society in a way never seen before, especially during the decade beginning with the release of Bonnie and Clyde. As directors as varied as Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Sam Peckinpah, and Martin Scorsese broke new ground, Kael became the most widely read and debated film critic ever, acting as a cheerleader for the innovations of this exciting era. Kael could overly praise some directors, as with her paeans to Altman’s Nashville (1975) and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Ultimo tango a Parigi (1972; Last Tango in Paris), calling the latter “the most liberating film ever made.” She contradicted her position on the auteur theory by almost always seeing quality in the work of her favorites, especially Altman and Brian De Palma, whose Casualties of War (1989) she was alone in acclaiming as a masterpiece. Kael’s negativity could also be controversial, as with her disapproval of the Holocaust documentary, Shoah (1985), which sparked a rebuttal from literary critic Alfred Kazin. She could also be hostile toward those of whom she disapproved. According to biographer Marc 583
Kahn, Louis I. Eliot, Clint Eastwood sought the counsel of a psychoanalyst because of Kael’s attacks on his films. Kael is unrivaled as the most influential American film critic. She inspired viewers to venture to see offbeat, difficult films, and the passion of her writing encouraged an entire generation of critics, including David Edelstein, Owen Gleiberman, Elvis Mitchell, Michael Sragow, and James Wolcott. The even more combative Armond White praised her for enlivening the national discourse through the way she evoked the social and political zeitgeist in her reviews. According to Louis Menand, she conveyed better than anyone else the sensation of experiencing a film. For Manohla Dargis, Kael inspired her not only to write about films but also to write. Kael’s work also had an impact on the development of such filmmakers as Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, who called her the professor in the film school of his mind. The numerous awards for Kael’s lifetime achievements include recognition from the Newswomen’s Club of New York, the American Film Institute, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the National Book Critics Circle. —Michael Adams
Jewish Americans Further Reading Brantley, Will, ed. Conversations with Pauline Kael. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996. Nineteen interviews conducted between 1966 and 1994. Includes chronology. Davis, Francis. Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2002. In interviews conducted shortly before her death, Kael reflects on her life and her career and expresses disappointment at the quality of contemporary films. Menand, Louis. “Kael’s Attack on Sarris.” In Polemic: Critical or Uncritical, edited by Jane Gallop. New York: Routledge, 2004. Places the critics’ quarrel in historical context, discusses Kael’s influence, and provides a biographical sketch. Murray, Edward. Nine American Film Critics: A Study of Theory and Practice. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1975. Detailed look at Kael’s work praises her awareness of the significance of acting while criticizing her neglect of visual style and her impressionistic, undisciplined approach. See also: Dorothy Schiff; Barbara Walters; Walter Winchell.
Louis I. Kahn Estonian-born architect and educator Kahn was a renowned architect in the school of international modernism who developed a personal style of monumental architecture distinctive for its innovative form and its advanced use of space, materials, and light. Born: February 20, 1901; Pernau, Estonia, Russian Empire (now Pärnu, Estonia) Died: March 17, 1974; New York, New York Also known as: Louis Isidor Kahn; Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky; Leiser-Itze Schmuilowsky (birth name); Louis Isadore Kahn (full name) Areas of achievement: Architecture and design; education Early Life Louis I. Kahn was born in Estonia, then part of the Russian Empire, on February 20, 1901. His Estonian father, Leopold, and his Latvian mother, Bertha, were Jew584
ish. Kahn’s father immigrated to the United States in 1904 and settled in Philadelphia in 1905; the following year Kahn’s mother joined him, with Kahn and his two siblings. His father, a skilled designer and stained-glass craftsman, found little work, and the family survived on his mother’s labor in the woolen industry. Although poor and often keeping a disorderly household, Bertha kept alive some of the German and Yiddish traditions of Europe; the family was Jewish but not strictly Orthodox. Kahn’s lower face was scarred from burning coals he was carrying; scarlet fever gave his voice a high pitch and kept him from entering school on schedule. In grammar school he excelled in drawing, painting, and sculpture, and he was admitted to the selective Central High School. He took free drawing classes on Saturday and won citywide prizes. In addition, Kahn was a talented pianist. He turned down a music scholarship to concentrate on art.
Jewish Americans A class in architecture prompted him to enroll at the University of Pennsylvania in 1920 to study architecture. There the Frenchman Paul Cret taught the principles of Beaux-Arts architecture. Kahn internalized from the Beaux-Arts style an emphasis on the form appropriate for a building: symmetry and a masonry architecture of weight and mass with clearly organized spaces created by structural solids. After graduation in 1924, Kahn worked for the city architect of Philadelphia, and he was chosen design chief for the city’s celebration in 1926 of the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. After a trip to Europe in 1928 and 1929, Kahn worked in Cret’s office, and Kahn married Esther Israeli in 1930. In Europe, in Cret’s office, and in the architectural community of Philadelphia, Kahn encountered the International Style of modern architecture, which was superseding Beaux-Arts. International Style modernism emphasized boxlike structures with thin skins, abstract forms, and open fluid spaces not defined by the structural steel skeleton. Kahn’s life’s work was to find a place within modernism. Life’s Work With no work for architects and engineers during the Great Depression, Kahn became an organizer of the Architectural Research Group from 1932 to 1934. Its concern for architecture’s social responsibility found expression in designing Depression-era urban housing projects. From friends in the Jewish community he obtained a commission for a synagogue for the Ahavath Israel congregation. In 1935, he started a practice with Alfred Kastner, and they became involved in projects that incorporated new building technologies (such as slab roofs) with modernism to meet the needs of American housing. In 1941, Kahn formed a partnership with George Howe and later Oskar Stonorov, again working on war-effort public housing projects as well as on private homes. The best known is the Mill Creek project in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the mid-1940’s Kahn developed his idea that architecture should embody the values and needs of human institutions. Modern architecture must achieve “monumentality”: a spirituality inherent in a building that conveys a sense of eternity, with the greatness found in the monumental buildings of the past. The basic ribs, vaults, and domes of ancient buildings should enclose larger and simpler spaces and be made modern by application of new technologies. Kahn abandoned steel construction
Kahn, Louis I. and thereafter designed in precast, bare concrete and textured brick. Kahn began his teaching career as a visiting critic at Yale University in 1947, a position continued as a senior critic from 1950 to 1957. During a fellowship to the American Academy in Rome in 1950 and 1951, he traveled through Italy, Greece, and Egypt, where he was impressed by the elemental forms of masonry, stone, and columns and the play of light on the materials that he saw in ancient architecture. In 1951, he received the first important commission of his career, the Yale University Art Gallery, which established his international reputation. The urban building featured ordered geometry and exposed structures. Kahn’s first major project was the Richards Medical Research Laboratories at the University of Pennsylvania, which features several of Kahn’s principal architectural ideas. His creation of differentiated space, shaped by a rational structure, contrasted to the spatial continuity characteristic of modernism. His idea of “served spaces” and “servant spaces” was achieved by a scheme of towers containing large, undivided spaces for laboratories (served spaces) grouped around a servant tower containing mechanical equipment, stairwells, restrooms, storage, and service rooms. The towers are created from a precast concrete frame with joints openly exposed that reveal the structural forms. The frame is filled in with brick and windows. Kahn’s integration of site, space, and function with construction and materials pointed a way to reinvigorate architecture in the 1960’s. Kahn’s next major U.S. project was the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences in La Jolla, California. Kahn designed two long blocks containing study and laboratory spaces facing a long courtyard. The vast courtyard opens toward the Pacific Ocean. Dominant in the institute are the sensations of light and silence. In 1957, Kahn became a professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, a post he held until his death in 1974. His later major works include two projects in south Asia: the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, India, and the new capital at Dhaka, Bangladesh. The latter expressed the function and spirit of assembly by incorporating the idea of the mosque. These two projects, well conceived for the sites, recall the monumental, archaic forms of ancient architecture. Two further major projects in the United States were museums: the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Yale Center for British Art. The Kimbell museum, sited in the middle of a large park, is remarkable 585
Kalb, Marvin for its interior space and light. The public areas are covered by long concrete vaults resting on widely separated columns. Light enters from the top of the vaults and is reflected by diffusers, creating vast light-filled areas for the display of art. At the end of his life, Kahn received numerous prestigious awards from chapters of the American Institute of Architects (1969, 1970), the national American Institute of Architects (1970), the Royal Institute of British Architects (1971), and the city of Philadelphia (1971), among others. Kahn died of a heart attack at Pennsylvania Station in New York City in 1974, while returning from a trip to India. His last project, the controversial Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, remains unbuilt. Significance Kahn’s career passed through the Beaux-Arts tradition and dominant International Style to his personal, innovative style noted for its monumental and spiritual handling of form, materials, and light. He reconnected modern architecture with the fundamentals of historical buildings and revitalized the archaic forms and materials of architecture. His buildings are expressive forms embodying a meaningful order of structure, mass, and light. Kahn’s ideas about architecture verged on neo-Platonism, meditating on the interplay of form, design, or-
Jewish Americans der, space, silence, and light. He saw architecture as the meeting of the measurable (light) and the unmeasurable (silence). Material, for Kahn, was spent light. Kahn restored moral importance to architecture and redirected modernism to serve the essence of human institutions. —Thomas McGeary Further Reading Brownlee, David B., and David G. De Long. Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture. New York: Rizzoli, 1991. Illustrated catalog of Kahn’s buildings, with introductory essays on aspects of his buildings and ideas. Scully, Vincent, Jr. Louis I. Kahn. New York: George Braziller, 1962. A concise, midcareer summary of Kahn’s building projects and ideas about architecture. Tyng, Alexandra. Beginnings: Louis I. Kahn’s Philosophy of Architecture. New York: John Wiley, 1984. Long biographic essay and extensive discussion of Kahn’s architectural ideas. Wurman, Richard S. What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn. New York: Access Press, 1986. Collection of Kahn’s writings about architecture. See also: Gregory Ain; Frank Gehry; Daniel Libeskind; Robert Moses; Richard Neutra; Rudolph Schindler.
Marvin Kalb Journalist A former State Department attaché, Kalb contributed thirty years of distinguished reporting for CBS and NBC, serving as chief diplomatic correspondent, Moscow bureau chief, and the host of Meet the Press and the Kalb Report. Born: June 9, 1930; New York, New York Also known as: Marvin L. Kalb; Marvin Leonard Kalb (full name) Areas of achievement: Journalism; literature Early Life Marvin Kalb was born to Max Kalb and Bella Portnoy in New York City on June 9, 1930. Marvin Kalb’s Jewish background helped stimulate his lifelong interest in the politics and legacy of the Ten Commandments and his membership in the Council on Foreign Religions. After 586
his 1951 graduation from City College of New York with a B.S., Kalb earned an M.A. from Harvard University in 1953. From 1953 to 1955 he served in the U.S. Army. After his discharge, he was studying for a Ph.D. in Russian history at Harvard when Edward R. Murrow recruited him to serve as State Department press correspondent stationed in Moscow. On June 1, 1958, Kalb married Madeleine J. Green. The couple had two children—Deborah Susan in 1964 and Judith Ellen in 1966. Deborah is a writer-journalist and the cowriter of The Presidents, First Ladies, and Vice Presidents: White House Biographies (2009). Judith and her husband J. Alexander Ogden are associate professors of Russian language at the University of South Carolina. Kalb earned the 1961 Overseas Press Club Award for the best radio reporting from abroad and its 1965 award
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for the best interpretation of foreign affairs on television. The International Cinema Society presented him with its 1967 award for the best interpretation of foreign news on television. Life’s Work Kalb served as news correspondent for Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) from 1957 to 1980. His station from 1960 to 1963 was Moscow; from 1963 to 1980 he was Washington diplomatic correspondent. During this period, he cowrote three fiction books (1961, 1963, 1977) and— with his brother Bernard—the biography of Henry Kissinger (1974). From 1980 to 1987 he served as chief diplomatic correspondent for National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and moderated the televised Meet the Press. Kalb returned to Harvard, and from 1987 to 1999 he held the positions of Edward R. Murrow Professor of Press and Public Policy; lecturer in public policy; faculty chair of Washington Programs; founding director and later Senior Marvin Kalb. (CBS/Getty Images) Fellow of the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on Press, Politics, and Public PolSignificance icy; senior research associate for science and internaKalb has influenced the past and the future of journaltional affairs; and a member of the executive committee ism through the quality of his own writings; through the of Harvard’s Russian Research Center. Kalb is a James content of his books and articles; through the televised Clark Welling Presidential Fellow at George Washington programs on which he has served as host, contributor, University. and participant; through his roles as educator at both A prolific writer, Kalb has written a significant numHarvard University and George Washington University; ber of fiction and nonfiction books. In 2003, he puband through his example as a successful State Departlished The Media and the War on Terrorism, which exment attaché, educator, and journalist. He helped set the plores the delicate balance between protecting sensitive standard for journalism, an honor recognized with two information and the public’s right to know. In One ScanPeabody Awards, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Unidalous Story (2001), he cautions against tabloid journalversity Award, several Overseas Press Club Awards, and ism for the mainstream press. the National Press Club’s Fourth Estate Award for lifeKalb hosts the monthly Kalb Report, a discussion of time achievement. media ethics and responsibility sponsored by George — Anita Price Davis Washington University, the National Press Club, and the Shorenstein Center. His memberships include the AuFurther Reading thors Guild, State Department Correspondents AssociaHess, Stephen, and Marvin Kalb. The Media and the War tion, and Overseas Writers. He often hosts specials for on Terrorism. Washington, D. C.: Brookings Instituthe Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), appears regution, 2003. This book cautions against the tabloid larly on Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour, and lectures and modstyle of reporting by the mainstream press and chalerates programs across the country. He has also been a lenges journalism to improve. contributing news analyst for National Public Radio and Kalb, Marvin. The Nixon Memo: Political Respectabilthe Fox News Channel. 587
Kallen, Horace ity, Russia, and the Press. Rev. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. This case study begins with President Richard Nixon’s private 1992 memo criticizing President George W. Bush’s policy toward Russia and how the words explode on the front page of The New York Times. The book explores how Nixon and others tried to use the press to develop public policy. _______. One Scandalous Story: Clinton, Lewinsky, and Thirteen Days That Tarnished American Journalism. New York: Free Press, 2001. Kalb evaluates the way
Jewish Americans that the media reported the scandal, cautions against the use of tabloid-style reporting, and challenges journalism to change for the better. Kalb, Marvin, and Bernard Kalb. Kissinger. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974. Kissinger’s collaboration on this 577-page biography is for some reviewers a positive and for others a negative. See also: Carl Bernstein; David Halberstam; Ted Koppel; Al Michaels; Morley Safer; Daniel Schorr; Mike Wallace; Barbara Walters.
Horace Kallen German-born educator, philosopher, and writer Kallen redefined the way immigrants were perceived in the United States and advocated various reforms with the aim of consolidating American democracy. Born: August 11, 1882; Bernstadt, Silesia, Germany (now Bierutów, Poland) Died: February 16, 1974; Palm Beach, Florida Also known as: Horace Meyer Kallen (full name) Areas of achievement: Education: philosophy; scholarship Early Life Horace Kallen (HOH-rehs KAL-ihn), the son of Jacob David Kallen, a Hebrew scholar and Orthodox rabbi, and Esther Rebecca Glazier, arrived in the United States in 1887 and settled in Boston. Horace Kallen had six sisters and one brother. In 1902, while attending Harvard University, he became a committed Zionist. He majored in philosophy at Harvard and was awarded his baccalaureate degree magna cum laude in 1903. He then taught English at Princeton University, but he was dismissed because of his religious views in 1905. After studying philosophy at Oxford University and Université de ParisSorbonne, Kallen returned to Harvard, where he worked as an assistant to philosopher George Santayana. After completing his doctorate in philosophy in 1908, Kallen lectured in philosophy at Harvard College and at Clark College in nearby Worcester, Massachusetts. From 1911 to 1918, he taught in the philosophy department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which dismissed him for supporting those refusing to serve in the U.S. Army during World War I because they were pacifists. In 1918, he cofounded the New School for Social Research in New York, a refuge for academics then undergoing 588
persecution for leftist views, joining at the rank of professor. He taught at New School until his retirement in 1973. In 1926, he married Rachel Oatman Van Arsdale, and they had two children. Life’s Work When Kallen arrived in the United States, Europe was being flooded with inexpensive American agricultural and other products, throwing many farmers and shopkeepers out of work. To provide ballast for ships returning from Europe to the United States, passenger fares were slashed. The result was the largest wave of immigration to the United States, particularly from Eastern Europe and Italy, and these immigrants brought customs unfamiliar to most Americans. In a polemic written during the first year of World War I, Kallen’s colleague, University of Wisconsin sociologist Edward Ross, published a scathing critique of Italians and Slavs as genetically inferior and Jews as greedy. Their presence in the United States as a rootless proletariat, he claimed, threatened skilled native-born workers, and these unsavory groups relied on political corruption for their advancement. Ross decried the fact that these groups had not assimilated to American-English culture. Reviewing Ross’s book, in an essay written in 1915, Kallen advocated cultural pluralism. He believed that diverse cultures coexisting in the United States strengthened rather than jeopardized American solidarity. If one culture insisted on dominating all others, he argued, the result would be continuing disunity and strife. He asserted that the pressure for Americanization not only misrepresented the contributions of immigrant groups but also ignored fundamental American constitutional principles of equality and justice.
Jewish Americans Kallen suggested that Ross and his numerous supporters were members of an elite Anglo-Saxon class that was losing its dominance and fighting to protect its prerogatives. The uniqueness of America, Kallen believed, was that many streams of immigrants had been enriching the country for more than a century, creating a mosaic of cultures. Ethnic groups, according to Kallen, retained what was valuable from their own cultural heritage and accepted a common political culture in the form of democratic principles: representative government under a rule of law that protects individual liberties. Kallen also favored the desire of the Jewish people to have a homeland in Palestine, not only to protect them against persecution but also to enhance the Jewish cultural heritage, which had been compromised during assimilationist pressures throughout the world over the centuries. He supported the League of Nations, which the United States never joined, and wrote about problems of consumerism and environmental degradation before those issues became popular. He strongly advocated adult education. Kallen died at the age of ninety-one while on vacation in Palm Beach, Florida. Significance Kallen wrote more than thirty books and has been characterized as an aesthetic pragmatist, a cooperative individualist, a Hebraist, a humanist, a Zionist, but most of all as a cultural pluralist. His challenge to the prevailing ethos on ethnic relations opened a new discourse on the nature of American culture, society, and politics that continues to the present. His advocacy of cultural pluralism later was applied by multiculturalists to reforms in education and politics. He cofounded the American Jewish Congress and the American Civil Liberties Union and was vice president of
Kaplan, Justin the American Association for Jewish Education. He was a member of the Presidential Commission on Higher Education and the New York City Commission on Intergroup Relations. His views gained prominence when he served as a member of congressional committees on international peace and in think tanks and study groups devoted to questions from labor relations, law, and philosophy. —Michael Haas Further Reading Gilbert, James. Redeeming Culture: American Religion in an Age of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Chapter 8 contains a biography of Kallen. Kallen, Horace. Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea: An Essay in Social Philosophy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1956. A thorough exposition of Kallen’s philosophy, along with comments by Stanley H. Chapman and others. _______. “Democracy Versus the Melting-Pot.” The Nation, February 18 and 15, 1915, 190-194, 217-222. Critique of the thesis that immigrants should abandon ancestral traditions and become Americanized. Konvitz, Milton R., ed. The Legacy of Horace Kallen. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1987. Seven chapters by various scholars on Kallen’s intellectual contributions. Maxcy, Spencer J. “Horace Kallen’s Two Conceptions of Cultural Pluralism.” Educational Theory 29, no. 1 (1979): 31-39. Contrasts Kallen’s initial focus on cultural ethnicity with his later view of labor organizations as the foundation for industrial democracy. See also: Hannah Arendt; Daniel J. Boorstin; Albert Ellis; Peter Gay; Emma Goldman; Hannah Solomon.
Justin Kaplan Biographer and editor A writer and editor, Kaplan is best known for his biographies of historical figures. He has written and edited books that have won the Pulitzer Prize. Born: September 5, 1925; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Literature; scholarship Early Life Justin Kaplan (KAP-lihn), son of Tobias and Anna Kaplan, was born in New York City. Kaplan’s father
owned the Dexter Shirt Company, a financially stable concern. Kaplan grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family, but his mother died when he was eight years old, and his father died six years later, when Kaplan was fourteen. As a child, Kaplan found Judaism and its practices to be old fashioned and hindrances to experiencing a secular, Americanized lifestyle. However, as he grew older, Kaplan came to appreciate and identify with his Jewish heritage more. Kaplan graduated from Harvard University in 1944, 589
Kaplan, Justin and he returned in later years to lecture periodically. However, he considered writing and editing to be his true line of work. Noted for his award-winning biographies, Kaplan has said that his past contributed to his interest in writing about other people. The struggle he had to renew his life after the deaths of his parents led Kaplan to become curious about the hardships of others. In his biographies, he artfully examines his subjects to find how they adjusted to major changes in their lives. Kaplan married author Anne Bernays on July 29, 1954. They had three children: Susanna Bernays, Hester Margaret, and Polly Anne. Kaplan and Bernays came from similar backgrounds and collaborated to write a joint memoir about their lives, Back Then: Two Literary Lives in 1950’s New York (2002). Life’s Work Kaplan worked as a freelance writer in New York from 1946 until 1954, when he became an editor at Simon and Schuster. In 1959, he became a full-time writer. Over the years, Kaplan lectured at Harvard University (1969, 1973, 1976, 1978) and at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia (1983). Kaplan is best known for his biographical works. His first, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, published in 1966, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Arts and Letters. In this, the most famous of his biographies, Kaplan pointed out the tension between the man Samuel Clemens and his alias Mark Twain. Literary critics praised Kaplan’s style, especially his ability to engage the reader by enlivening the biography format into a work that is entertaining and observes the mysteries of significant individuals in history. Kaplan’s other works include Lincoln Steffens: A Biography (1974); Mark Twain and His World (1974); Walt Whitman: A Life (1980), which won the American Book Award in 1981; and When the Astors Owned New York (2006). In addition, Kaplan wrote two books with his wife: The Language of Names (1997) and Back Then. In addition to writing, Kaplan has also edited various works, including the sixteenth and seventeenth editions of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (1992, 2002). Kaplan has been a member of several organizations, including the
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Jewish Americans American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Society of American Historians, and Phi Beta Kappa. Significance Kaplan’s ability to write biographies that read like novels has earned him lavish praise from literary critics. He won awards for his works on Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, both historical figures who provided mystery for Kaplan to unwind and bring forward in his writing. Kaplan’s tragic past helped establish his future line of work. In overcoming adversity and unhappy conditions, Kaplan was drawn to discovering and then writing about the lives and struggles of others in his detailed and insightful biographies. As Kaplan noted in Back Then, the Jewish people are “a stubborn, perdurable people,” and it is from his Jewish background that he drew his perseverance. After his childhood, he adopted the same fierce will to endure that he came to admire in his ancestors. Kaplan personifies the historical ability of the Jewish people to overcome adversity and to appreciate and to find meaning in struggle. —Amy Harwath Further Reading Bernays, Anne, and Justin Kaplan. Back Then: Two Literary Lives in 1950’s New York. New York: Perennial, 2003. The chapters of this memoir are written alternately by Kaplan and his wife. The only true collaboration is in the introduction. The book offers an informative yet entertaining and detailed account of their lives and backgrounds. Note the differences in writing styles and voice. Levine, Bettijane. “In Others’Words.” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1992. Kaplan explains his dream job, editing Bartlett’s. Sachs, Andrea. “Looking Back: A ’50s Feeling.” Time, June 24, 2002. Profile of Kaplan and his wife Bernays, including details on their romance, their marriage, and their writing life. See also: M. H. Abrams; Daniel Bell; Allan Bloom; Daniel J. Boorstin; Peter Gay; Barbara W. Tuchman.
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Mordecai Kaplan Lithuanian-born rabbi, religious leader, and scholar Kaplan, an influential rabbi and author, formulated Reconstructionism, a philosophy that argued that Judaism needed to confront and adapt to the American context. Born: June 11, 1881; Šven5ionys, Russian Empire (now in Lithuania) Died: November 8, 1983; New York, New York Also known as: Mordecai Menahem Kaplan (full name) Areas of achievement: Activism; religion and theology; scholarship Early Life Mordecai Kaplan (MOR-duh-ki KAP-lihn) immigrated to the United States at the age of eight. He studied for a time at Yeshiva Etz Chayyim in Manhattan. He completed his undergraduate studies at the City College of New York and went for a master’s degree and a doctorate at Columbia University. He also studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). He married Lena Rubin in 1908 and had four daughters. While on his honeymoon in Lithuania, he received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines, the founder of the Mizrahi religious Zionist movement. Kaplan began his career as an Orthodox rabbi, serving Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York City. He helped found Young Israel, a movement of modern Orthodox synagogues. However, his thinking could not permit him to stay in the Orthodox world, and eventually he left, helping to found the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ) in Manhattan. At the SAJ his daughter Judith celebrated the first Bat Mitzvah in America, on March 18, 1922. Life’s Work Kaplan’s first book, Judaism as a Civilization (1934), became one of the most important books of Jewish thought written in the twentieth century. In it, Kaplan criticized the three denominations of American Judaism—Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox—and established a program for change. He admired Reform for its willingness to challenge the norms of the Jewish tradition. He criticized it because of its rejection of the ethnicity inherent in Judaism. He admired neo-Orthodoxy’s ability to provide a total life for its adherents, but he found it static and unable to recognize a need for change.
Kaplan approved of Conservative Judaism’s commitment to Zionism and to the scientific study of the Jewish past. However, he argued, Conservative Judaism was unwilling to make necessary changes in halacha, Jewish law. To flourish in America, Kaplan argued, Judaism had to be reconstructed to embrace all of its cultural and historical aspects. It had to understand the importance of Zionism as an expression of the Jewish people. Jews must be willing to adapt halacha as needed. All of this was emblematic of the fact that Judaism needed to be understood broadly as an evolving religious civilization, with clearly identifiable historical periods in its development. Judaism had undergone, and would continue to undergo, significant change as the Jewish people interacted with the countless phenomena they encountered. The past, therefore, was only one place from which Jews must draw their ethos. The present, too, made important claims on the modern Jew. Out of this came a well-known saying: “The past has a voice, but not a veto.” The past did not have an absolute claim on Jewish practice in the present. Modern Judaism could not be authoritarian, nor could it any longer believe in supernatural revelation. Halacha should become sancta, folkways, important aspects of the life of a Jew, but no longer possessed of the authority once granted. The most important aspect of Judaism is the Jewish people. This reconstructed Judaism understood that in democratic America, Judaism faced another civilization congenial to Judaism. This led Kaplan to assert that in America Jews had to be willing to live simultaneously in two civilizations. Jews must embrace openly American democratic civilization while retaining their loyalty to Judaism. Kaplan opposed traditional Jewish theology. He conceived of a nonsupernatural God as “the Power that makes for salvation.” Kaplan was less interested in complex systematic theology than in understanding the effects the notion of God had on people. To Kaplan, God was, as it were, woven into the tapestry of the universe, a real being whose existence served as a moral and spiritual centripetal force for men and women. While teaching at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Kaplan was active in numerous practical endeavors. He was instrumental in launching the Jewish community center movement. He argued for the development of a worldwide voluntary organization that would be elected democratically and would work on behalf of Jewish interests economically, politically, and culturally. In 1968, 591
Karan, Donna with the help of his son-in-law, Ira Eisenstein, Kaplan opened the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia. This decision ensured independence for the Reconstructionist movement. Kaplan died at the age of 102 in 1983. Significance Kaplan was one of the most significant rabbis of the twentieth century. His ideas had a lasting impact on American Judaism through the rabbis Kaplan taught at JTS, through the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and through the many synagogues that follow the Reconstructionist philosophy. — Philip Cohen Further Reading Goldsmith, Emanuel, Robert M. Seltzer, and Mel Scult, eds. The American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan. New York: New York University Press, 1990. A collection of essays by noted scholars commenting on a variety of Kaplan’s intellectual interests, including the Bible, Jewish liturgy, process theology, and the role of women in Judaism.
Jewish Americans Kaplan, Mordecai. Judaism as a Civilization: Toward a Reconstruction of American-Jewish Life. New York: Schocken Books, 1967. In this reprint of his groundbreaking book of 1934, Kaplan challenges American Jewry to rethink its foundations and, accordingly, reconstruct Judaism to accommodate new historical realities. Pianko, Noam. Zionism and the Roads Not Taken: Rawidowicz, Kaplan, Kohn. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. Pianko’s book looks at the way three different thinkers, Kaplan among them, faced the challenges posed by Zionism. The overall point of the author is that each of these men developed a Zionism that was ethical in its structure. Scult, Mel. Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century: A Biography of Mordecai M. Kaplan. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993. A fine biography of Kaplan using letters, Kaplan’s unpublished diaries, and the author’s personal relationship with Kaplan. See also: Henry Berkowitz; Moshe Feinstein; Judah Leon Magnes; Henry Pereira Mendes; Joseph B. Soloveitchik; Isaac Mayer Wise.
Donna Karan Fashion designer, business executive, and philanthropist One of the foremost fashion designers in the world, Karan built a global corporation that sells womenswear, beauty products, menswear, childrenswear, fragrances, and accessories. She revolutionized fashion design with the first successful diffusion line of affordable designer clothing and her concept of seven easy pieces for a complete wardrobe. Born: October 2, 1948; Forest Hills, Queens, New York Also known as: Donna Ivy Faske (birth name) Areas of achievement: Fashion; business; philanthropy Early Life On October 2, 1948, Donna Karan (KAR-ehn) was born Donna Ivy Faske in Forest Hills, Queens, New York. Her father, Gabby Faske, was a tailor, and he died when Karan was three. Her mother, Helen Richie, nicknamed “Queenie,” was a showroom model and later a sales representative in New York City’s garment district. 592
Karan’s stepfather, Harold Flaxman, also worked in the fashion industry. As a child, Karan knew she wanted a career in fashion. At the age of fourteen, she found a job selling clothing in a neighborhood boutique. While in high school, she presented a fashion show. After graduating from Hewlett High School in 1966, she entered the celebrated Parsons School of Design, where she won numerous student awards. Her classmates included Bill Robinson, Willi Smith, and Louis Dell’Olio, who would become famous designers. In 1968, after two years at Parsons, Karan was offered a summer job by Anne Klein, a leading sportswear designer. Karan left Parsons before graduating, but later in 2003 Parsons awarded her an honorary doctorate. Karan worked at Anne Klein until 1969. In 1970, she married Mark Karan, who owned a Long Island boutique. Their daughter, Gabrielle, was born in 1974, and the couple was divorced in 1978. In 1971, Donna Karan returned to Anne Klein as an associate designer. When Klein died in 1974, Karan was
Jewish Americans named her successor and chief designer. In 1975, Parsons classmate and friend Dell’Olio, became her codesigner. Their popular designs made Anne Klein and Company profitable. Karan and Dell’Olio won the Coty American Fashion Critics Award, the industry’s top honor, in 1977 and 1981. In 1982, Karan presented her Anne Klein II collection, the first successful “bridge line” of moderately priced designer fashions, to be sold in department stores. In 1983, Karan married her second husband, sculptor Stephan Weiss, who died of lung cancer in 2001. In 1984, Karan won her third Coty Award and was elected to the Coty Hall of Fame. After ten years at Anne Klein, Karan founded her own design firm, the Donna Karan Company. She was the chief designer, and she and Weiss served jointly as the chief executives.
Karan, Donna by Weiss. Consisting of fourteen divisions, Karan’s company grossed $275 million in 1992. In 1993, the Milan office opened, and DKNY Men’s began. In 1994, the DKNY flagship store opened in London. In 1996, the Donna Karan International Company, which included the DKNY label, went public on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1997, the Donna Karan home accessories collection made its debut. There were fortyseven DKNY stores and sixteen Donna Karan New York stores worldwide. In 2001, Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the French luxury goods conglomerate, bought the Donna Karan International Company for $643 million, but Karan remained the chief creative director and retained control of her name. That year, a ten-thousandsquare-foot DKNY store opened on Madison Avenue in New York. In 2003, Karan became the first American to receive the Superstar Award from Fashion Group International. In 2004, the Council of Fashion Designers of America presented Karan a lifetime achievement award, and she was one of Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year in 2007. Through the years, Karan’s high-priced designs have appealed to the wealthy and famous. She designed her friend Barbra Streisand’s wedding gown, and Karan has dressed such film stars as Gwyneth Paltrow, Demi Moore,
Life’s Work In 1985, Karan’s new company launched her first collection, Seven Easy Pieces, which was a phenomenal success. The seven essential, interchangeable pieces consisted of a jacket, blouse or turtleneck, skirt, coat, leggings or pants, bodysuit, and dress. Designed with the workingwoman in mind, the simple but stylish pieces were a complete wardrobe, appropriate for day or evening and for all seasons or occasions. That year, the Council of Fashion Designers (CFDA) named Karan designer of the year. Karan introduced a swimwear collection in 1986. Donna Karan Hosiery, licensed with Seven Easy Pieces Hanes, debuted in 1987. The successful Anne Klein II collection (1983), the first “bridge” line, After ten years at Anne Klein, Donna Karan started her own led other designers to develop bridge colleccompany in 1984 and her new line, Seven Easy Pieces, in 1985. tions. In 1988, Karan launched her own bridge This first collection, which brought immediate critical acclaim and commercial success, was the beginning of Karan’s fashion empire. line, the DKNY, a casual line of affordably In developing this line, Karan considered how she needed a simple priced clothing for workingwomen inspired by system of dressing for all occasions, from casual and recreational the energy of the fast-paced New York lifestyle. activities to work and formal affairs. As a working mother, she DKNY led to other labels, including DKNY needed comfortable but stylish clothing that she could pack easily Jeans, DKNY Underwear, DKNY JEANS Jufor travel. She also wanted to feel confident, elegant, and beautiful niors, DKNY Kids, and DKNY Active. By the in her clothing, and she believed that other women, no matter their early 1990’s, the DKNY collection accounted dress size, must feel the same way. for almost 80 percent of the company’s total Based on this personal philosophy, Karan invented an entire sales. wardrobe based on seven, easily interchangeable pieces that were Karan introduced Donna Karan Eyewear in appropriate for day or night and all seasons: bodysuit, jacket or 1988 and Donna Karan Menswear, Donna blazer, coat, turtleneck or blouse, wrap skirt, pants or leggings, and dress. Made of stylish jersey, wool, or other comfortable materials, Karan Shoes, and Donna Karan Intimates in these mix-and-match separates were perfect for the modern career 1992. That year Karan was named CFDA’s woman. Especially popular were Karan’s leggings and her trademenswear designer of the year. The Donna mark black bodysuit, a one-piece knitted garment that substituted Karan Beauty Company, cosmetic and fragrance for a blouse. Both have become iconic 1980’s classics. division, New York, began in 1992, with her first signature fragrance and a perfume bottle design
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Karle, Jerome Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, and Uma Thurman. Other clients have included President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton, Larry Hagman, Warren Beatty, Michael Bolton, and Richard Gere. At the Academy Awards ceremony in March, 2010, Best Supporting Actress nominee Penelope Cruz, dressed in a crimson Donna Karan gown, was voted one of the Ten Best Dressed Stars. Significance Karan’s revolutionary concepts, such as Seven Easy Pieces and the bridge line, transformed the fashion industry and the way women dress. Her multimillion-dollar global empire continued into the twenty-first century. An artistic and marketing genius, Karan became a celebrity. She has used her extraordinary fame and resources generously for numerous philanthropic causes. Since 1993 she has cochaired the annual New York “Kids for Kids” events to benefit the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Since 1998, Karan has underwritten Super Saturday, an annual designer flea market-garage sale to benefit the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. On July 31, 2010, this event raised $3.3 million. In 2007, Karan founded the Urban Zen Initiative, dedicated to advancing holistic healing, preserving culture, and empowering children. In 2009, the foundation donated $850,000 to New York’s Beth Israel Medical Center to test the effects of yoga and meditation on patients in the cancer wing. —Alice Myers
Jewish Americans Further Reading Agins, Teri. The End of Fashion: The Mass Marketing of the Clothing Business. New York: Harper, 2000. This entertaining, landmark study of the fashion industry includes insider stories about how Karan and other major designers handled financiers and Wall Street. Illustrated. Includes bibliography and index. Diamonstein, Barbaralee. Fashion: The Inside Story. New York: Rizzoli, 1985. Includes an interview with Karan and Dell-Olio for Anne Klein. Illustrated. Golbin, Pamela. Fashion Designers. New York: WatsonGuptill, 2001. An informative overview of thirty-five iconic, post-World War II fashion designers, including Karan. Illustrated. Includes bibliography. Karan, Donna. Modern Souls. New York: Power House Books, 1995. A large pictorial book featuring beautiful photographs by Herb Ritts, the internationally renowned fine arts and fashion photographer. Sischy, Ingrid. Donna Karan. New York: Assouline, 2006. The author’s interview with Karan introduces this book of photographs, of magazine covers, and of family members and celebrities. Includes a chronology. _______. The Journey of a Woman: Twenty Years of Donna Karan. New York: Assouline, 2004. Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the founding of Karan’s company, this comprehensive biography covers her life and career. Illustrated with images by worldfamous photographers. See also: Kenneth Cole; Pauline Trigère.
Jerome Karle Scientist Karle, a renowned chemist, was awarded a Nobel Prize for pioneering a technique for using X-rays to investigate crystal structures. Born: June 18, 1918; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Medicine; science and technology Early Life Jerome Karle (jur-OHM kahrl) was the son of Eastern European immigrants to the United States, Louis Karfunkle and Sadie Helen Kun. Raised in New York by a family of artists, Karle participated in athletics and music, and it was his mother’s hope that he would be a pro594
fessional pianist. Karle enjoyed a balanced childhood, but at Abraham Lincoln High School he was encouraged in his greatest passion: science. Abraham Lincoln High School is famous for a high number of Nobel laureates among its alumni. A program in place during Karle’s school years allowed for early graduation for students taking extra classes. Sophie Wolf, a school staff member, encouraged students to study all areas of science, and she fostered a large group of young scientists. Among Karle’s fellows was Arthur Kornberg, who went on to codiscover the enzyme that builds deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Karle, too, would take an interest in biology. In 1933, Karle began attending New York City Col-
Jewish Americans lege. The college was tuition free, but it demanded that students take tough courses in everything from science to public speaking. Karle, hoping to go into medicine, graduated in 1937 and went to Harvard University to get a master’s degree in biology. At Harvard, he was rebuked by an anti-Semitic dean who did not want any more Jews attending, but Karle earned his master’s degree anyway and went on to the University of Michigan for a doctorate. There, Karle was denied a teaching assistantship solely because he was Jewish. However, one of Karle’s teachers protested, and Karle got the position. It was at Michigan that Karle met Isabella Lugowski, his future wife and research partner. Life’s Work By the time Karle received his doctorate in 1944, he already had made a significant scientific contribution. While working for the New York State Health Department, Karle invented a method for measuring the amount of fluorine in water. Fluoridation of drinking water is helpful in preventing tooth decay, and Karle’s process made it possible to deliver the treatment in an effective way: Karle’s achievement would be helpful in the widespread use of fluoridation starting in the 1950’s. Karle’s interest changed to physical chemistry in between his stints at Harvard and Michigan. After gaining a doctorate in physical chemistry, Karle and his wife worked briefly on the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic weapons, at the University of Chicago. There, Isabella devised a method for making pure plutonium chloride, but the two were not major players in the atomic bomb’s development. In 1944, Karle went back to the University of Michigan and worked for the Naval Research Laboratory. In 1946, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he joined the Naval Research Laboratory. There, Karle’s job was to study crystallography, the arrangement of atoms in a solid. Karle’s previous work had been studying gas-phase electron diffraction, and he had formulated his own theory about diffraction patterns. Working with solids instead of gases was a new experience, but fresh minds were what the field needed at that time. Scientists had long accepted that when an X-ray hits a crystal, only some of the resulting information is usable, making it difficult to determine the phases of the diffracted rays. Karle, along with his coworker Herbert Hauptman, saw no reason why this could not be challenged. Working together and using their knowledge of diffraction and mathematical models, they invented a method for using X-rays to directly observe crystal structure. Although this discovery occurred
Karle, Jerome in the early 1950’s, it was not until 1985 that Karle and Hauptman were awarded the Nobel Prize. Isabella, who was responsible for the practical application of Karle and Hauptman’s theory, was not awarded a prize, which Karle believed was unfair. The Karles expanded their work by finding a way to build a complete structure from a fragment of one crystal and by adapting their analysis method for other types of crystals. They retired in 2009. Significance Karle’s work has proved vital in the field of medicine, which originally had interested him. Not having earned the Nobel Prize until thirty years after his discovery, Karle was able to describe some of the positive effects of his work in his Nobel Prize acceptance. Direct analysis of crystals was necessary for the understanding of enzymes, the structures that trigger the body’s chemical responses. Karle’s method of creating structures from fragments also allowed the study of medicinal properties in rare or endangered organisms, which could not provide enough samples naturally. Even though he worked assiduously on research, Karle never lost his interest in younger generations, and he has taught for many years at the University of Maryland. — Jacob Davis Further Reading Hargittai, István. The Road to Stockholm. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. This book is about the Nobel Prize and the people who earn it. Both Karle and Hauptman are discussed. Huang, Lulu, Lou Massa, Isabella Karle, and Jerome Karle. “Calculation of Strong and Weak Interactions in TDA1 and RangDP52 by the Kernel Energy Method.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, no. 10 (March, 2009): 3664-3669. A research document from near the end of the service of Jerome and Isabella Karle with the Navy Research Academy. It is suitable for those acquainted with the technical language of chemistry. Karle, Jerome. “Recovering Phase Information from Intensity Data.” In Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 19811990, edited by Tore Frängsmyr and Bo G. Malmström. Singapore: World Scientific, 1992. Includes Karle’s Nobel lecture, which provides technical details about the process for which he earned the award and describes its subsequent uses. See also: Paul Berg; Roald Hoffmann; Ruldolph Marcus; Irwin Rose. 595
Karmazin, Mel
Jewish Americans
Mel Karmazin Business executive, entrepreneur, and investor An influential media executive in the radio business, Karmazin built Infinity Broadcasting into a profitable media company, merging it with CBS and later with Viacom. As chief executive officer of Sirius XM Radio, he took radio in innovative business directions. Born: August 24, 1943; New York, New York Also known as: Melvin Alan Karmazin (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; entertainment Early Life Melvin Alan Karmazin (KAR-muh-zihn) was born in New York City and grew up in a public housing project in Long Island, a second-generation American of Eastern European Jewish descent. His father was employed as a taxi driver, and his mother labored in a curtain-rod factory. While attending Haaren High School, Karmazin was a mail clerk and typist for the Irwin Zlowe Agency, a local advertisement shop. After high school graduation, Karmazin attended Pace University in Manhattan as a part-time evening student while he continued to work full time during the day. He received his bachelor’s degree in business in 1967 and then accepted a salary of $17,500 selling radio commercials for WCBS-AM. Over the next few years his commissions from advertisement sales increased so dramatically that his boss complained about his high earnings. In 1970, he was hired as a salesperson for Metromedia’s WNEW-AM and WNEW-FM. From 1975 to 1981, Karmazin served as the radio stations’ general manager. Two former Metromedia employees, Gerald Carrus and Michael Weiner, recruited Karmazin in 1981 to operate six radio stations for their company, Infinity Broadcasting. In his role as president and part owner, Karmazin drastically reduced administrative and staff costs, helped purchase other stations; and increased advertisement revenues. He became particularly noted for his ability to negotiate radio rights with New York sports teams. In 1985, Karmazin hired controversial talk-show host Howard Stern and began broadcasting Stern’s show nationwide. Despite having to pay the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hefty fines for broadcasting Stern’s offensive content, Infinity earned millions. The next year Karmazin, Carrus, and Weiner brought Infinity’s stock public, reversed the decision in 1988, and brought the stock public again in 1992. Karmazin hired another notorious talk-show host, Don Imus, in 1992 and 596
soon was broadcasting his program on a national scale. Over the next few years, the value of Infinity’s stock increased significantly. Life’s Work Karmazin proposed that Infinity purchase the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) from Westinghouse Electric Corporation but received a counterproposal from CBS to purchase Infinity. As part of a $4.9 billion merger deal, Karmazin became president of CBS Radio and was given authority over the radio stations. He immediately began reducing costs and consolidating, earning a reputation of being ruthless in his endeavors. Karmazin also convinced Westinghouse to eliminate its manufacturing division and to approve CBS as its corporate name. In 1997, Karmazin, then chairman and chief executive officer of CBS Station Group, began campaigning for Sumner Redstone, the leader of Viacom, to purchase CBS, but he was met with some resistance. Karmazin became chairman and chief executive officer of CBS Corporation in April, 1998. Continuing his earlier interests in obtaining sole distribution privileges for sports events, Karmazin brokered a four-billion-dollar deal for broadcasting rights with the National Football League from 1998 to 2006. The Federal Communications Commission relaxed television station ownership rules in August, 1999, allowing Redstone another opportunity to seek, and this time successfully broker, a Viacom-CBS merger. Beginning in May, 2000, Karmazin became chief operating officer of Viacom and second in command. While the two leaders of Viacom worked together for several years, they were not in harmony. Karmazin remained committed to corporate financial health and as such opposed major risk taking. Their differences led Karmazin to resign, with a more than thirty-million-dollar severance package, in May, 2004. Six months after leaving Viacom, Karmazin became the chief executive officer for Sirius Satellite Radio. Soon thereafter Karmazin acquired rights to have Sirius’s radios installed in new Ford and BMW cars, obtained programming rights to NASCAR, and signed Martha Stewart to work with Sirius. On July 29, 2008, Sirius Satellite Radio, Inc., merged with XM Satellite Radio Holdings, Inc., creating Sirius XM Radio. Complications with FCC requirements, falling auto sales, and plunging stock prices left Sirius in serious financial straits. In
Jewish Americans 2009, Liberty Media Corporation, owner of DIRECTV, agreed to invest $530 million in exchange for 40 percent of the common stock in Sirius. The agreement effectively prevented a takeover bid from rival company EchoStar. Karmazin remains optimistic that Sirius will succeed. Karmazin’s wife Sharon divorced her workaholic husband in 1994. The couple have two children, Craig and Dina Leslie Karmazin Elkins. Karmazin married his second wife, Terry, in 2000. Significance Karmazin was raised in modest circumstances and rose to become a wealthy business executive and leader in the radio industry. Recognition for his achievements has included induction into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame and the Radio Hall of Fame, the National Association of Broadcasters’ National Radio Award, and an International Radio and Television Society Foundation (IRTS) Gold Medal. Karmazin is the vice chairman of the board of trustees of the Paley Center for Media and serves on the board of directors of Autism Speaks. Karmazin is also a founder and supporter of the Prism Fund, which provides finan-
Karpeles, Leopold cial support to women and other minority owners of radio stations. —Cynthia J. W. Svoboda Further Reading Meyer, Nancy A. “Viacom Announces Plans to Buy CBS.” In Great Events from History: The Twentieth Century, 1971-2000, edited by Robert F. Gorman. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2008. Provides an overview of the merger of CBS and Viacom and discusses the two executive officers who orchestrated the merger. Siklos, Richard. “Can Mel Karmazin Reinvent Network TV?” BusinessWeek 3623 (April 5, 1999): 74-82. Reviews Karmazin’s efforts to create a media empire, CBS and Wall Street attitudes toward Karmazin. Wasserstein, Bruce. Big Deal: Mergers and Acquisitions in the Digital Age. New York: Warner Books, 2000. Overviews the wheeling and dealing in major media corporation mergers and the key players involved in these transactions. See also: Clive Davis; Carl Icahn; Sumner Redstone; Howard Stern.
Leopold Karpeles Czech-born military hero Karpeles put himself in danger protecting the American flag, rallying his fellow soldiers, and leading them into battle. He received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Battle of the Wilderness in northern Virginia. Born: September 8 or 9, 1838; Prague, Bohemia (now in Czech Republic) Died: February 2, 1909 Area of achievement: War Early Life Leopold Karpeles (LEE-oh-pohld CAR-pihl-ihs) was born in 1838 in Prague to a prominent Jewish family. Karpeles learned to ride horses on ranches outside the city, and he was baptized because it was required in order to attend Catholic school. The family taught Karpeles to be discreet about Judaism. He spoke five languages: English, French, German, Greek, and Czech. Karpeles came alone to the United States at age eleven in 1849. His older brother, Emile, had years before
moved to Galveston, Texas. Emile owned a small drygoods store and made Karpeles his apprentice. Karpeles grew bored with his new life and persuaded Emile to let him accompany supply convoys. Karpeles met a number of Texas Rangers on these trips, and he experienced combat for the first time. However, Karpeles abhorred the violence he saw some of these men commit against Native Americans and slaves. Karpeles became part of a movement helping slaves escape into Mexico. Karpeles grew apart from Emile, who was becoming increasingly bigoted and anti-Semitic. In 1861, Emile was a strong supporter of the Confederate cause. Karpeles, however, was a strong Union supporter, who idolized President Abraham Lincoln. Life’s Work The secession of Texas prompted Karpeles to move to Springfield, Massachusetts. He got a job working as a store clerk and began attending abolitionist meetings. He enlisted in August, 1862, as part of the 46th Massachusetts regiment. 597
Karpeles, Leopold At the end of training, Karpeles was promoted to corporal and requested to be color bearer. The Forty-sixth Massachusetts served in North Carolina as part of a campaign to disrupt enemy rail supply lines. Karpeles received a letter of recommendation for bravery and holding the line while under fire. He had enlisted for nine months, and he was discharged in July, 1863. A few months later, Karpeles reenlisted with the Fifty-seventh Massachusetts under Colonel William Frances Bartlett. Karpeles was promoted to sergeant and again served as the regiment’s color bearer. The first division marched hundreds of miles and reached the Battle of the Wilderness the morning of May 6, 1864. Located in northern Virginia, the battlefield was literally a wilderness, with forest, swamps, creeks, ravines, and thick fog. Artillery shells started a number of brush and forest fires. The Fifty-seventh Massachusetts was sent to the front to reinforce and rally the men already there. Of the 548 men of Karpeles’s regiment who went into battle, 54 were killed instantly, 29 were mortally wounded, 156 were injured, 12 were captured, and 10 went missing. Despite the severe casualties, they advanced beyond the Union line. Confederate artillery broke the right flank of the Union line, which began a chaotic retreat. Several members of the Fifty-seventh joined them. Karpeles climbed onto a tree stump and began shouting for the retreating men to re-form and fight the approaching enemy. He organized several men into formation and halted the chaotic retreat. During the battle of North Anna, later that month, Karpeles was shot in the leg while leading the advance across open terrain. He continued to march until the loss of blood forced him to hand the flag to a lieutenant colonel and go to the rear. The colonel was killed, something that Karpeles felt guilty about for the rest of his life. Karpeles remained hospitalized for five months before returning to his unit. Not long after, the leg wound reopened, leaving him in worse condition than before. He was discharged with a disability May 7, 1865. Karpeles met his future wife, Sara Mundheim, while recovering in a Washington, D.C., army hospital. Sara was the daughter of the city’s first Reform rabbi, and her family insisted that Karpeles convert to Reform Judaism before being married. Karpeles readily agreed. Their first child, Theresa, was born in December, 1870. Earlier that year, Karpeles had received the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of the Wilderness.
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Jewish Americans As death approached Sara after the birth of their third child, she made Karpeles promise to marry her sister, Henrietta. In 1875, Karpeles took a job with the Treasury Department as a clerk. He was active in many veterans’ organizations. Karpeles died February 2, 1909, and he is buried in Washington, D.C. Significance Karpeles was the first Jewish American to receive the Medal of Honor, and he was one of seven Jewish men to receive the Medal of Honor for actions during the Civil War. Karpeles risked his life fighting for his adopted country, and the freedom of thousands of slaves. He greatly admired and respected President Abraham Lincoln. Marching past him with the First Division of the Union Army carrying the American flag was one of the proudest moments of Karpeles’s life. Karpeles continued to be a moral, religious, and respected man throughout the rest of his life. —Jennifer L. Campbell Further Reading Anderson, John. The Fifty-Seventh Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion. 1896. Reprint. Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger, 2007. A detailed history of the regiment written by one of its officers. The surviving members provided oral histories and letters. Includes battle reports, orders, and a complete roster. Two chapters discuss the Battle of the Wilderness. Mikaelian, Allen. Medal of Honor. New York: Hyperion Books, 2002. Profiles of Medal of Honor recipients since the Civil War; Leopold Karpeles is discussed in chapter 2. Much of the information about him was provided by his daughter’s memoirs and his greatgranddaughter. Wilkinson, Warren. Mother, May You Never See the Sights I’ve Seen. New York: Harper and Row, 1990. A history of the Fifty-seventh Massachusetts from its creation in late 1863 through the end of the Civil War. Wilkinson discusses the regiment’s role in General Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign in 1864, including the Battle of the Wilderness, and includes information about nearly all 1,038 members of the regiment. See also: Julius Ochs Adler; Edward S. Salomon.
Jewish Americans
Katz, Alex
Alex Katz Artist Katz painted from real life in a time when figurative art was not popular. His style has some elements of abstract, pop, and minimalism, but he worked on the outskirts of the artistic community. Born: July 24, 1927; Brooklyn, New York Area of achievement: Art Early Life Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn in July, 1927, to immigrant parents. His father was born in Lida, a small town in Russia, where he studied to be a rabbi but later lost interest in working as a religious leader. He moved from his hometown to Berlin, where he lived for a short time before coming to the United States in 1922. Katz’s mother was also from Russia and spent time performing on the Yiddish stage in Russia and in the United States before she married. Katz’s parents were significant influences on developing his interest in art. As a child, Katz and his father would create watercolor paintings together. However, in 1944, Katz’s father was killed in a car accident. Katz attended P.S. 130 in Queens, but later he persuaded his parents to allow him to study at a vocational high school, where he could devote half of his day to studying art. While in high school, he was interested in advertisement images and aspired to be a commercial artist. Upon graduating from high school in 1945, he joined the Navy as a way to avoid the draft, but he served only for a short time following the end of World War II. When he returned home, he applied to and was accepted at Cooper Union, an art college located in lower Manhattan, where Katz continued with his advertising studies but spent more of his time painting because he found it interesting. After completing his second year at Cooper Union, he dropped his aspirations to become a commercial artist and focused all of his energies on painting. He studied at Cooper Union from 1946 to 1949 and then attended the Skowhegan School of Art in Maine until 1950. Life’s Work While in school, Katz decided to create only figurative art, and then he began searching for a style to go along with the subject matter. At the time, most of the emerging art was abstract in style, so Katz had no mentors who could teach him about painting from real life.
One of the artists who did inspire Katz was Jackson Pollock, whose drip paintings prompted Katz to find his own style of painting. From 1955 to 1960, Katz created collages as a disciplinary practice for himself. His phase of experimentation with collages was successful, because it allowed Katz to discover a personal style from which to create portraits and gave him the confidence to continue to pursue his career in figurative art. Katz’s first one-person show came in 1954 at the Roko Gallery in New York. As Katz began to settle into his style of painting, he moved closer to his subjects and started including details, such as gesture, dress, and facial expression. One of the first paintings in which this new tendency is apparent is Ada with White Dress (1958). His wife, Ada, became the subject of many of his paintings; aside from commissioned paintings, dancer pictures, and occasional landscapes, the subjects in Katz’s paintings are mostly members of his family and significant friends. His wife is one of his most frequent subjects, and his son, Vincent, also appears several times in his work. Katz was received well throughout the 1960’s, but he was never considered a mainstream artist. He was different from his peers at the time because of his decision to paint only in a figurative style. It was not until the 2000’s that Katz’s art gained widespread appreciation, and in 2007 he had a major solo show at the New York State Museum. It was at this time that Katz was recognized as one of the great American artists. His work and style are distinctive because of his use of bright and bold colors and because of the particular attention he pays to detail in his paintings. A common characteristic of his paintings is the sophisticated women subjects, although men do appear as subjects. Katz occasionally painted landscapes. Significance Although Katz was painting at the same time as some of the great postmodern artists, he was never associated with them because of his different style of art. At the time, the majority of popular art being created was abstract, pop, or minimalist; Katz held steadfastly to his figurative style. Some elements of popular art styles were incorporated into his paintings, but his works were never welcomed as readily as those of other artists until the 2000’s, when his work gained widespread acceptance. — Sarah Small 599
Katzenberg, Jeffrey Further Reading Battcock, Gregory. Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968. This book provides a collection of writings by and about the minimalists of the 1960’s. Includes photographs of paintings, sculptures, and performances. Blazwick, Iwona, Robert Storr, and Carter Ratcliff. Alex Katz. London: Phaidon, 2005. Ratcliff is a leading expert on Katz, and this book is a collection of much of the artist’s work. It also includes an interview between
Jewish Americans Katz and Storr and supplementary material on the artist. Kuspit, Donald B., and Alex Katz. Alex Katz: Night Paintings. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991. This book features Katz’s series of night paintings and includes an explanatory essay by Kuspit and interviews with Katz. See also: Jim Dine; Helen Frankenthaler; Lee Krasner; Sol LeWitt; Barnett Newman; Mark Rothko.
Jeffrey Katzenberg Business executive and entrepreneur With his innovative thinking and leadership, Katzenberg made significant contributions to the profitability of Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Studios. He was a cofounder, with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, of DreamWorks SKG, the first new major studio in Hollywood in several decades.
proved by him were the wildly successful trio of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Airplane! (1980), and Beverly Hills Cop (1984). When Michael Eisner, the president of Paramount Pictures, moved over to Walt Disney studios as chairman
Born: December 21, 1950; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Business; entertainment Early Life Jeffrey Katzenberg (KATZ-ehn-burg) was born in Manhattan in the last days of 1950. The son of a well-todo stockbroker and his wife, Katzenberg grew up in comfortable circumstances and attended private schools. Diminutive even into adulthood, he had the nickname “Squirt.” When still a young teenager, he worked in the successful mayoral campaign of John Lindsay and was hired by him subsequently for the mayor’s failed bid for the presidency in 1972. Katzenberg attended, but did not graduate from, New York University in the early 1970’s. Following that he became a talent agent and then joined the New York office of Paramount Pictures. He served as an executive assistant to the chairman Barry Diller and subsequently as the director for marketing. Life’s Work Katzenberg rose in the ranks and relocated to Los Angeles to become the vice president of programming for Paramount Television in 1977 while still in his twenties. He did well enough to be promoted to senior vice president of production for the studio’s film division in 1980 and then was promoted again to president of production for films and television in 1982. Among the films ap600
Jeffrey Katzenberg. (WireImage/Getty Images)
Jewish Americans in 1984, Katzenberg went with him to take charge of the Disney motion-picture division. He was tasked with revitalizing film production for adult audiences under the studio’s Hollywood, Miramax, and Touchstone labels. The films Katzenberg fostered included the hit comedies Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), and Three Men and a Baby (1987). By the time of his rancorous departure, Katzenberg had helped the studio diversify its product and rise from the doldrums of tepid “family-friendly” features to claim a place in the very top echelon of Hollywood. In the late 1980’s and 1990’s, he was especially instrumental in reviving Disney’s flagging animation fortunes by greenlighting such successful releases as The Little Mermaid (1989), The Lion King (1994), Aladdin (1992), Toy Story (1995), and Beauty and the Beast (1991), an Academy Award nominee for Best Picture. Perhaps his greatest coup was partnering Disney with the successful computer animation company Pixar. This collaboration has continued to result in one successful film after another. Ten years after Katzenberg’s arrival, Disney was the world’s most profitable film studio. Under his decade-long aegis profits reached some $8.5 billion, a sixfold increase. Despite, or possibly because of, his success at Disney, he and Eisner had a fractious falling out when Katzenberg was denied ascension to the company’s presidency after the accidental death of the incumbent, Frank Wells. Katzenberg then resigned or was forced out of Disney, and he promptly sued for substantial damages. Unpleasant charges and countercharges issued from both sides, and he was eventually awarded an out-of-court settlement of $280 million. In court, Eisner admitted having said about his once-close colleague: “I hate the little midget.” Katzenberg then joined with media mogul David Geffen and director Steven Spielberg in 1994 to form DreamWorks SKG, the first seemingly successful effort in decades to establish a major studio. The partners were each said to have contributed more than $33 million to finance the studio. The ambitious deals the company entered into included supplying television series to the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) for seven years, the Home Box Office (HBO) channel with a slate of up to one hundred films over ten years, and Microsoft with interactive computer game software.
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A Bold Leader Like his one-time mentor Barry Diller, Jeffrey Katzenberg is considered to be a visionary leader. Like Diller, Katzenberg was involved in efforts to start a fourth network when he was at Paramount Pictures. Although he did not succeed in that effort, he has continued to generate foresightful ideas, and since his early days in the media industry he has been known for his dogged persistence. One of his recognized talents is finding and finalizing film projects that prove to be successful; he was dubbed “Eisner’s Golden Retriever” for that very skill. During his tenure at Paramount and Disney, he was involved in major initiatives to revive those studios’profitability and was successful in diversifying their output. At DreamWorks SKG he was responsible for the expansion of the animation unit that eventually had facilities in many locations throughout the world. Besides the profitable films, Katzenberg has launched hit television series, among them The Golden Girls and Home Improvement. Part of Katzenberg’s modus operandi is costcutting; he is known as a frugal man with studio funds. He avoided paying huge star salaries by using talent whose stardom was dimming. In 2007, Entertainment Weekly named Katzenberg as one of the fifty smartest people in Hollywood. Highly ambitious, Katzenberg has always taken full advantage of the contacts he has made, going back to the time of his work with Lindsay. If he has had help getting a foot in the door, Katzenberg has delivered amply on his promise.
In the division of labor at DreamWorks, Katzenberg was in charge of animation, Spielberg oversaw live-action production, and Geffen directed the music production and interactive media. Increasingly utilizing computer animation, Katzenberg produced several successful films, notably the Shrek series. The first Shrek (2001) won an Academy Award. DreamWorks did not live up to its potential and apparently was close to filing for bankruptcy. In 2005, the studio was sold to the media giant Viacom. The animation division was spun off as a separate entity, under Katzenberg’s aegis, and has largely proved successful. Katzenberg has concentrated on developing 3-D and has plans to produce animated films using only that technology. Katzenberg is estimated to have amassed a fortune of some eight hundred million dollars. He is married to Marion Siegel, once a kindergarten teacher, and he is the father of twins, Laura and David. His son followed in his footsteps and has gone into television production. Katzenberg has been active in charitable giving, and he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2008. 601
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Significance The continuing evolution of entertainment media, particularly motion pictures, will be at least partly influenced by the vision of Katzenberg. He was one of the cadre of rapidly rising young executives who understood the psychology and power of mass communication, particularly television. He made use of that knowledge in producing and marketing “brand” films and programs that appealed to a mass audience. For instance, his revival of the seemingly tired Star Trek led to a revitalized series of films. The current popularity of animated features is largely because of his understanding that the genre was merely moribund and not completely dead, and successful animations continue. He has even been called the “inventor” of the modern animation film. Although Katzenberg has not always been right in his choices, he has prospered in setting the stage for the future of technology-driven multimedia. —Roy Liebman
Homewood, Ill.: Business One Irwin, 1991. An account of the Katzenberg-Eisner years at Disney and how their management practices revived an ailing studio. Kimmel, Daniel M. The Dream Team: The Rise and Fall of DreamWorks. Lanham, Md.: Ivan R. Dee, 2007. A well-reviewed book that examines the possible reasons why DreamWorks did not succeed. It includes an analysis of the founders’ various management styles. LaPorte, Nicole. The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2010. The story of the men involved with DreamWorks from its founding to its ultimate breakup. Stewart, James B. Disney War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. A perceptive account of the growing strife at Disney during the final years of the reign of Eisner.
Further Reading Grover, Ronald. The Disney Touch: How a Daring Management Team Revived an Entertainment Empire.
See also: Barry Diller; Michael Eisner; David Geffen; Mel Karmazin; Marcus Loew; David Sarnoff; Steven Spielberg; Warner brothers; Adolph Zukor.
Andy Kaufman Actor and entertainer An innovative comedian, Kaufman captivated audiences with his portrayal of eccentric characters with heavy accents. He so challenged his fans to reconsider the nature of comedy with his unusual performances that they considered the announcement of his death at thirty-five a hoax. Born: January 17, 1949; New York, New York Died: May 16, 1984; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Tony Clifton; Andrew Geoffrey Kaufman (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Andy Kaufman (KOWF-mehn) was a shy, precocious child who began seeing a psychiatrist when he was three years old. Before he entered kindergarten he had created an imaginary television broadcast from his bedroom. Several years later he began to perform magic tricks and comedy routines at children’s parties, and he became a paid performer by age fourteen. Kaufman lived in an 602
upper-middle-class, predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Great Neck, Long Island, where he attended public schools. He later claimed that he did not realize he was Jewish until he went to a junior college in Boston; to demonstrate his newly discovered identity, when he returned home for Passover, he read prayers with a Jackie Mason-style Jewish accent. Early on, Kaufman developed lifelong fascinations with Elvis Presley, professional wrestling, and the fine line between performance and reality. By the early 1970’s Kaufman was confusing, and sometimes delighting, comedy club audiences with his unique brand of improvisation. One of his favorite routines when he was still largely unknown was to begin as “Foreign Man,” a meek presence with a strong accent who received little respect from the audience, then suddenly launch into a compelling, audience-pleasing Presley imitation, only to return to “Foreign Man” to shock the audience into an awareness of how the performer had manipulated their perceptions. His appearance as “Foreign Man” on the inaugural broadcast of Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975,
Jewish Americans introduced Kaufman to a national audience that began to anticipate his unpredictable presence on fifteen more episodes of the live show.
Kaufman, Andy Throughout his short life, the enigmatic Kaufman preferred the challenges and opportunities of live performance and the even greater risks of improvisation in real settings. Attracted to the comic and dramatic possibilities of wrestling, Kaufman began a brief, ludicrous wrestling career during which he improvised wrestling matches with women from his audiences, provoked a fake longrunning feud with World Wrestling Federation wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler, and proclaimed himself World Inter-gender Wrestling Champion. In 1983 Kaufman’s girlfriend Lynne Margulies and Joe Orr began work on a documentary film about the actor’s adventures in the surreal world of professional wrestling. After Kaufman became ill, he urged Margulies and Orr to continue with the project, which includes documentary footage of wrestling matches and interviews with Taxi costars, close friends Williams and Zmuda, and Memphis wrestling legend Lawler,
Life’s Work Kaufman and his opening act and alter ego, the lounge singer Tony Clifton, gathered a following of young fans who appreciated the provocations of Kaufman’s experimental style, which was showcased in a series of live concerts, in guest appearances on variety shows, and in his television special Andy’s Funhouse (1977). To extend the confusion of Clifton’s identity, Kaufman’s sidekick and partner in mischief, Bob Zmuda, and, less often, Andy’s brother Michael sometimes performed as the obnoxious, minimally talented singer Clifton, thus making it possible for Kaufman and “Clifton” to share a stage. When interviewed, “Clifton” would often insult Kaufman and extend the hoax that “Clifton” had a mind of his own. The closest to mainstream performance and wide popularity Kaufman ever came during his lifetime was when his naïve, frightened “Foreign Man” evolved into the character of Latka Gravas, and Kaufman became a regular cast member on the highly regarded and extremely popular television situation comedy Taxi (1978-1983). Kaufman found the restraints of scripted television comedy oppressive, despite the fact that the fictional Gravas was given multiple personality disorder to allow Kaufman the chance to play various characters in Taxi episodes. Kaufman also demanded that Clifton be hired as a guest on the show, which resulted in an elaborate stunt in which Clifton became unruly and had to be removed from the set, an event that was reported in the press—to Kaufman’s great delight—as if Clifton were an actual person. One of Kaufman’s most memorable performances was at Carnegie Hall on April 26, 1979, when comedian Robin Williams, dressed in drag as Kaufman’s grandmother, watched the central performer from the side of the stage, not revealing his identity until the end of the show. An elderly woman (a hired actor) supposedly had a heart attack and died onstage, later to be revived by Kaufman, in a fake Native American ritual. Once the stage show ended, the bizarre “performance” continued, with Kaufman inviting the entire audience to board twenty waiting buses to join him for milk and cookies. To extend the performance in both time and space, Kaufman invited the hard-core fans to join him the next morning on the Staten Island Ferry. Andy Kaufman. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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among others. Released in 1989, I’m Popular Performance Art from Hollywood takes its title from Kaufman’s introduction of himself to Andy Kaufman always eschewed the label “comedian” and claimed (faa Memphis wrestling audience. cetiously) that he was a “song and dance man.” At other times, he admitted Because Kaufman was not a smoker, that he mostly wanted to “play with people’s heads.” Kaufman was greatly admired by fellow actors and comedians, who found his willingness to take followed a vegetarian diet, practiced risks on stage, without concern for popularity or crowd-pleasing, as rare, if yoga daily, and was a devoted folnot unique, among American performers of the 1970’s and 1980’s. Although lower of Transcendental Meditation, Kaufman became known to a large, mainstream audience through his many his contraction of a rare form of lung appearances on popular television shows such as Saturday Night Live, the sitcancer (initially diagnosed in Decemuation comedy series Taxi, and Late Night with David Letterman, in a crucial ber, 1983, but kept secret) was unexsense Kaufman is best understood as a radical performance artist. He incorpected. Because Kaufman was notoriporated failure into his routines and was often belligerent toward his audious for his elaborate hoaxes, some of ences. His short life was notable for its dedication to what he called “the new which involved sudden death, and beand the brave”; many misunderstood Kaufman’s death at thirty-five, thinking cause Kaufman had discussed the apit his most outrageous stunt. Kaufman was an innovative, subversive iconopealing prospect of faking his own clast whose shocking and completely unpredictable antics challenged the boundaries of comedy. death, many fans wrongly assumed that the announcement of Kaufman’s death at age thirty-five in May, 1984, was the actor’s most outrageous stunt. Further Reading Regrettably, it was not. Alexander, Scott, and Larry Karaszewski. “Man on the Although Kaufman remained close to his parents Moon”: The Shooting Script. New York: Newmarket throughout his life, and they consistently supported his caPress, 1999. Background material on the “antibiopic” reer, he never saw the daughter he had fathered while still about Kaufman; full script; paired photographs from a teenager. The child born to Kaufman’s high school girlthe film and documentary archives; interview with friend in 1969 was placed for adoption. In 1992, years afMiloš Forman conducted by the screenwriters. ter Kaufman’s death, Maria Colonna traced her biological Hecht, Julie. Was This Man a Genius? Talks with Andy parentage and discovered that Kaufman was her father. Kaufman. New York: Random House, 2001. This book began in 1978 as a profile assignment for Harper’s Significance magazine, and the writer spent a year tracking KaufKaufman blurred the separation between guerrilla man. Decades later she published this account of her theater and popular entertainment. His legendary refusal tape-recorded, often bizarre, interactions with Kaufto break character and his direct, often bizarre, and someman and Bob Zmuda. Ends with his mother’s poitimes hostile engagements with audiences challenged gnant recollection of Kaufman’s childhood. definitions of performance and the relationship between Zehme, Bill. Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of performers and their audiences. In the song “Man on the Andy Kaufman. New York: Delta, 2001. Based on inMoon” from its 1992 album Automatic for the People, the terviews with Kaufman’s family, friends, coworkers, band R.E.M. celebrated Kaufman’s otherworldliness, and others, this biography offers stories about the inwith references to his memorable Presley imitation and scrutable Kaufman from many perspectives. Includes other noteworthy aspects of his performing life. In 1995 photographs. NBC-TV broadcast A Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman, Zmuda, Bob, and Matthew Scott Hanson. Andy Kaufman which contained tributes to Kaufman’s inspiration, influRevealed: Best Friend Tells All. Boston: Little, Brown, ence, and artistic courage by many of America’s leading 1999. This memoir written by Kaufman’s best friend comedians. The innovative biopic Man on the Moon and coconspirator is filled with fascinating anecdotes (1999), produced by Taxi cast member Danny DeVito, but is not a fully developed biography. directed by Eastern European émigré Miloš Forman, and starring Jim Carrey in an award-winning performance inSee also: Woody Allen; Albert Brooks; Rodney Dantroduced Kaufman to another generation of fans who can gerfield; Judd Hirsch; Ricky Jay; Don Rickles; Ben access his original performances on syndicated television. Stiller; Gene Wilder. — Carolyn Anderson 604
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George S. Kaufman Playwright A successful playwright of the 1920’s and 1930’s, Kaufman began his writing career as a drama critic and editor and branched out into screenwriting and stage directing. Born: November 16, 1889; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Died: June 2, 1961; New York, New York Also known as: George Simon Kaufman (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater; journalism Early Life George S. Kaufman (KAWF-muhn) was born into a Jewish family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He attended public schools in Pittsburgh and Paterson, New Jersey. He graduated from high school in 1907. He sought work as a salesman, but he quickly discovered he was unsuited to the trade. He pursued legal studies and found no more enthusiasm for the law than he had for selling. Kaufman began to submit freelance material to FPA (Franklin P. Adams’s satirical column in the New York Evening Mail). Adams admired the young man’s work enough to recommend him as a potential columnist. On the basis of Adams’s recommendation, Kaufman was given a column of his own in the Washington Times in 1912. Thus began a long career in journalism. In 1917, he married Beatrice Bakrow (she died in 1945), and in that same year, he became a drama critic for The New York Times. He eventually was named drama editor and continued in that position until 1930. After almost a decade as a humorist, columnist, and critic, at the age of twenty-seven, he discovered his true calling, writing for the stage. Kaufman’s career as a playwright and as a collaborator began in 1918 with Someone in the House, cowritten by Larry Evans and W. C. Percival. The play was a failure, but Kaufman returned in 1919 with Someone Must Pay, and by the 1920’s a long string of hits would follow. Life’s Work For thirty-seven consecutive years, a play either written or directed by Kaufman would appear on Broadway. Dulcy was a central character in
Adams’s column, and in 1921 Kaufman and Marc Connelly collaborated on Dulcy, a comedy based upon the Adams character. Dulcy was Kaufman’s first success. He had six more collaborations with Connelly, among them To the Ladies (1922), Merton of the Movies (1922), and Beggar on Horseback (1924). Merton of the Movies was a satire about the burgeoning motion-picture business. Beggar on Horseback was a satire, based on an earlier play by Paul Apel, using the device of the dream to shift from reality to fantasy. The Butter and Egg Man (1925), a satire on theatrical production, was the only play Kaufman wrote without a collaborator. After his successes of the early 1920’s, Kaufman became attractive to major figures in the worlds of literature and the Broadway theater, and many were eager to work with him. He wrote June Moon (1929) with Ring Lardner, the sports and short-story writer. He collaborated with the popular novelist Edna Ferber on four occa-
George S. Kaufman. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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sions: Minick (1924), The Royal Family (1927), Dinner at Eight (1932), and Stage Door (1936). He and John P. Marquand adapted the latter’s novel, The Late George Apley (1937), for the stage in 1944. In 1930, Kaufman and Moss Hart, who would become the playwright most closely associated with him, wrote the first of their eight collaborations: Once in a Lifetime. Kaufman also acted a part in the play. Among their other works were You Can’t Take It with You (1936) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939). Kaufman won the Pulitzer Prize for the musical Of Thee I Sing (1931), a sequel to Strike Up the Band (1927). His writing partner was Morrie Ryskind, and he also worked with George and Ira Gershwin. Despite
Kaufman’s claims that he disliked music, he wrote the libretto for Let ’Em Eat Cake (1933). I’d Rather Be Right (1937), starring George M. Cohan as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, was a great success. Other works were The Band Wagon (1931), a revue written with Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz; First Lady (1935), a comedy-drama written with Katharine Dayton; and The Solid Gold Cadillac (1953), written with Howard Teichmann. By 1928, when he directed The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Kaufman had become a complete man of the theater. He went on to direct Of Mice and Men (1937), My Sister Eileen (1940), Guys and Dolls (1950)— for which Kaufman received the Tony Award as best director in 1951—and RoKaufman and Hollywood manoff and Juliet (1956). Kaufman’s sense of structure was so George S. Kaufman was essentially a man of the theater, but he also sure that he became known as a play worked on occasion in the motion-picture industry. His work reached a doctor. When the plays of other authors wider audience when many of his plays were adapted as films: for examwere about to open but were still clearly ple, Dinner at Eight (1932) in 1933, Stage Door (1936) in 1937, You Can’t flawed, Kaufman would be called in to Take It with You (1938) in 1938 and winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939) in 1942. He had a make critical last-minute revisions to profitable relationship with the Marx Brothers during the 1920’s. He make them stageworthy. He saved many wrote the libretto (collaborating with Irving Berlin) for The Cocoanuts productions. He was married for a second (1925), which elevated the Marx Brothers from vaudeville to the legititime on May 26, 1949. He and Leueen mate theater. It was adapted as the Marx Brothers’ first feature film in MacGrath, an actor with whom he collab1929, an early all-talking picture. He collaborated on Animal Crackers orated on several plays, were divorced in (1928), another Marx Brothers’ vehicle, made into a film in 1930. He 1957. wrote the screenplay for A Night at the Opera (1935), perhaps the Marx Brothers’ most memorable comedy. Groucho and Harpo Marx were known to be highly critical of their writers. However, both—especially Groucho—praised Kaufman’s work effusively. Kaufman had one directorial credit in Hollywood, The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947), starring William Powell. Kaufman has been portrayed as a taciturn, distant, and eccentric man, whose natural reticence was occasionally interrupted by a clever, mordant observation. The primary source for this portrait is Moss Hart’s autobiography Act One (1959). However, some have suggested that Hart’s portrait overly dramatizes Kaufman’s eccentricities. Because Kaufman’s personality was so interesting, he became a character in motion pictures himself. In the 1963 film version of Hart’s Act One, Kaufman is portrayed by Jason Robards. A 1994 film, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, takes as its main character the poet, short-story writer, critic, and screenwriter Dorothy Parker and as its setting the luncheon meetings of the Algonquin Round Table. Kaufman’s character is acted by David Thornton. Therefore, despite the fact that Kaufman was seldom comfortable outside New York City, he contributed much to Hollywood, first, through his plays that were adapted as outstanding films; second, through his screenwriting and his directing; finally, through the portrayals of his character by actors.
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Significance Kaufman’s range in writing and directing was broad, but he is best remembered for his satires, with their flashes of caustic wit and wordplay. In fact, many people who would probably never see a play on Broadway became familiar with his quips as they circulated in the national press. Kaufman was, in addition, famous for his membership in the Algonquin Round Table, a group of witty writers and show-business people who from 1919 to about 1929 met each day for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel. Their witticisms were usually so barbed that they called themselves “The Vicious Circle.” Other members of the group were Adams (Kaufman’s first champion), Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Robert E. Sherwood, Connelly, and Alexander Wool-
Jewish Americans cott, the model for Sheridan Whiteside, “the Man Who Came to Dinner.” Among this formidable company, Kaufman proved he could hold his own at the Round Table as well as at the writing desk. —Patrick Adcock Further Reading Appelbaum, Stanley, ed. The New York Stage: Famous Productions in Photographs. New York: Dover, 1976. More than one hundred photos from 1883-1939 from the Theatre and Music Collection of the Museum of the City of New York. Contains production photos and summaries of the action from Beggar on Horseback, Of Thee I Sing, Once in a Lifetime, You Can’t Take It with You, and The Man Who Came to Dinner. Gehring, Wes D. Film Clowns of the Depression. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007. Studies the Marx
Kaye, Danny Brothers’ film career. Touches upon their work with Kaufman. Goldstein, Malcolm. George S. Kaufman: His Life, His Theater. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. A detailed biography, 518 pages in length. Hart, Moss. Act One: An Autobiography. New York: Random House, 1959. In recounting his own career, Hart paints an affectionate and entertaining portrait of his innately shy, intensely private, and eccentric collaborator. Kantor, Michael, and Laurence Mason. The American Musical. New York: Bullfinch Press, 2004. Contains an analysis of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Of Thee I Sing. See also: Edna Ferber; Moss Hart; Ben Hecht; Lillian Hellman; Groucho Marx; Dorothy Parker.
Danny Kaye Actor and entertainer A popular entertainer from the 1940’s to the 1960’s, Kaye toured the world giving live performances and made a string of highly successful films. His later life was devoted to charitable causes, notably as ambassador at large for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Born: January 18, 1913; Brooklyn, New York Died: March 3, 1987; Los Angeles, California Also known as: David Daniel Kaminski (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; philanthropy Early Life Danny Kaye (kay) was born in 1913 to Ukrainian Jewish parents. He was their third child and the only one born a United States citizen. Hoping for a career as an entertainer, Kaye left school at thirteen and went to Florida to find work. He returned to New York to work as a busboy in the Borscht Belt, a resort area that catered to a predominantly Jewish clientele. By the time he was in his middle teens, he was working as a “tummler,” an all-around entertainer, telling jokes, singing, dancing, and acting in comedy skits in hotels in the Catskills at primarily Jewish establishments. At twenty years of age, he joined a dance act with two other dancers. One
night he accidentally tripped, and the audience howled with laughter. Kaye decided to incorporate a similar pratfall into the remainder of his performances with that troupe. Hoping to become a star, Kaye left the Catskills and began his film career in 1935 in a comedy short, Moon over Manhattan. Then, in 1937, Educational Pictures signed a contract with him to do a series of two-reel comedies, to act the part of various Russian characters with Imogene Coca and June Allyson, also unknowns. However, the studio shut down within months, and nothing much came of this. His first real break came in Broadway’s Straw Hat Revue (1939), in which he appeared for the first time as Danny Kaye, again opposite Coca. This role led to a featured song in Moss Hart’s Lady in the Dark (1941). The novelty number, “Tchaikovsky,” which required him to sing the names of about forty-five Russian composers in about fifty-five seconds, was a showstopper. This tongue-twisting, breakneck singing became a standard for Kaye, and the show opened the door to greater opportunities for him. In 1940, he married Sylvia Fine, a writer and a lyricist; she became his manager and was responsible for many of his routines and songs for the rest of his career. Using material they worked on together, in the early 1940’s Kaye played cabarets and nightclubs, in perfor607
Kaye, Danny mances featuring his gifts as a singer, a dancer, a comedian, and an impersonator. Life’s Work Kaye’s big break came in 1944 when Samuel Goldwyn cast him in the lead role in Up in Arms. Goldwyn, who thought Kaye looked too Jewish, asked him to get a nose job, which Kaye refused. Because the film was to be made in Technicolor, Goldwyn decided to alter Kaye’s ethnic look by dyeing his hair red, which Kaye maintained for the rest of his life as his trademark. Kaye was so successful in this film that some of his old educational films were edited into the film The Birth of a Star (1944). Kaye’s career took off and he made seventeen films, including The Kid from Brooklyn (1946); The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947); The Inspector General (1949);
Danny Kaye. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans Hans Christian Andersen (1952); White Christmas (1954); The Court Jester (1956); Merry Andrew (1958); and The Five Pennies (1959). The Court Jester includes the “vessel with the pestle” routine for which Kaye was renowned. A short-lived radio show, The Danny Kaye Show, aired for about a year in 1945-1946, but it was not properly supported by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and never succeeded, despite its great cast and writing staff. It was one of Kaye’s only failures, and it left him bitter. However, one of Kaye’s greatest moments came during a performance at the London Palladium in 1948. The attending members of the royal family moved out of their box seats, for the first time, into regular orchestra seats in order to get a better view of Kaye’s performance. For many years Kaye was considered one of the world’s most loved stars. He traveled around the globe giving one-man performances to soldout audiences, and his films were worldwide successes. However, as the 1960’s progressed, Kaye was no longer in demand for films, and so he moved to television, hosting The Danny Kaye Show, an hour-long variety series from 1963 to 1967. As his popularity continued to wane through the 1970’s, he appeared only a handful of times on television. In 1981, however, he played one of the few dramatic roles in his career, in the fact-based television film, Skokie. In it he played a Holocaust survivor trying to stop a Ku Klux Klan march through Skokie, Illinois, a role for which he received great praise. Kaye was honored with three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one each for radio, recording, and motion pictures. He was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and won two. He was also nominated for four Emmy Awards, winning one. In 1955, he received an honorary Academy Award for services to the motion picture industry, and in 1983 he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Screen Actors Guild. On a less serious note, in 1986, at the Welcome Back to
Jewish Americans Brooklyn Festival, Kaye was crowned King of Brooklyn. In the last years of his life, Kaye was a guest conductor with many orchestras. He was considered an excellent natural conductor, despite not being able to read music. He was also a great chef, a co-owner of the Seattle Mariners, a pilot, and a humanitarian. His private life was not always so happy. His long marriage to Fine was tempestuous, and he had many affairs, most famously with Eve Arden. There were rumors of a homosexual affair with Laurence Olivier, which Kaye’s family denies but Olivier’s widow, Joan Plowright, hinted at as being true. Kaye died in Los Angeles in 1987 of a heart attack, a complication of hepatitis contracted from a blood transfusion. Since his death, a Broadway-style revue, The Kid from Brooklyn (2006), and a smaller cabaret-style show, Danny and Sylvia: The Danny Kaye Musical (2001), both designed to showcase Kaye’s enormous talents, have played in regional American theaters.
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Humanitarian and UNICEF Ambassador Danny Kaye’s relationship with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) began in 1954, when he became their first celebrity spokesperson. In 1953, Kaye met Maurice Pate, executive director of UNICEF, on a flight from London to the United States. They struck up a conversation, and Pate asked Kaye if he would help make the general public more aware of UNICEF and its mission. Kaye agreed and began his lifelong role as UNICEF’s ambassador at large. He undertook a worldwide fact-finding and fund-raising trip, which was chronicled in the documentary film, Assignment Children (1954). For years he helped raise millions of dollars, making UNICEF a household name and encouraging the annual Halloween-season Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF campaign. An accomplished pilot, Kaye made a famous five-day tour of sixty-five cities as one of his fund-raising activities. In 1965, when UNICEF was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Kaye was chosen by the organization to accept the award on the organization’s behalf. He was also dedicated to assisting the symphony musicians’ pension fund, a charity that helps aged and indigent ex-musicians. Many of his performances as a guest symphony conductor were specifically designed as fund-raisers. Although he took conducting seriously, he also knew that to raise money he had to entertain the audience. So, at one performance he conducted the orchestra with his feet. At others he would conduct Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Flight of the Bumble Bee” using a fly swatter instead of a baton. Over the years Kaye donated more than ten million dollars to the organization. To honor Kaye for his humanitarian work, he was the recipient of many awards: the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (1982); a Danish Knighthood (1983); Kennedy Center Honors (1984); the Legion of Honor from France (1986); and, posthumously, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1987).
Significance Kaye was a great entertainer and fascinating raconteur. He was so famous that people all over the world recognized him, and he was often accosted on the street by people quoting his “vessel with the pestle” routine. He used his extraordinary ability to sing at breakneck speeds and to mimic accents to great comic effect in films and in his stage performances. He used his fame to become the first celebrity spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), a position he held until his death. —Leslie Neilan Further Reading Freedland, Michael. The Secret Life of Danny Kaye. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. Suggests that Kaye never lived up to his early promise as a performer; takes a negative view of Kaye’s career.
Gottfried, Martin. Nobody’s Fool: The Lives of Danny Kaye. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994. Looks at Kaye’s dark side, presenting him as a cold man, incapable of intimacy, driven, and unhappy. Spoto, Donald. Laurence Olivier: A Biography. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001. Alleges that Olivier and Kaye had a ten-year love affair. See also: Jack Benny; Milton Berle; Sid Caesar; Billy Crystal; Samuel Goldwyn; Moss Hart; Groucho Marx.
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Alfred Kazin Writer, educator, and scholar An influential literary critic, Kazin wrote several seminal studies on the history of American literature, numerous widely read book reviews and essays, and three highly praised works of autobiography. Born: June 5, 1915; Brooklyn, New York Died: June 5, 1998; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Literature; scholarship Early Life Alfred Kazin (AL-fruhd KAY-zuhn) was born in the Jewish section of Brownsville, on the far eastern edge of Brooklyn, New York. His father, Gedalia “Charles” Kazin, was a sporadically employed house painter, and his mother, Gita Fagelman, was a hardworking seamstress who spoke little English. Both were immigrant Jews from the Minsk area of Poland. The strong-willed Gita, because she was constantly at home working, had a large influence upon her son, Alfred Kazin. The kitchen became the center of the house, because that was where his mother’s dressmaking shop was located. His cousin, Sophie, a family boarder, was another important influence, exposing him to music and books. However, Kazin had an unhappy and solitary childhood, largely because of the cold relationship between his parents and because of his stuttering problem. He soon developed a deep love of reading. Kazin had a complex, ambivalent attitude toward his Jewish upbringing and Judaism as a religion. While he was proud of his Jewish heritage, he was also mostly uninterested in it. He was against the Zionist movement in the 1940’s, and he wrote in his later years that Judaism offered only “a summons to prayer, ritual, and obedience.” While Kazin was not an outstanding student, by the time of his senior year at Franklin K. Lane High School, he began to receive recognition by his teachers. In 1931, sixteen-year-old Kazin entered the City College of New York. The college would become famous for the large number of distinguished writers, scientists, and intellectuals it graduated during the 1930’s. Prominent among these graduates were a close group of writers and scholars, who, like Kazin, were first-generation offspring of poor, working-class, immigrant New York Jews. The group included such notable figures as the literary critic Irving Howe, the political essayist Irving Kristol, and the sociologists Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell, who 610
together would be called the New York Intellectuals. They were famous for their intense political discussions, Marxist beliefs, and passionate concern with ideas. Kazin avoided participating in these discussions, although he has been connected with them peripherally, and he was repelled by the combative and personal nature of their arguments. He chose to spend most of his time in the college’s library, working diligently on his English and history major. His lifelong aversion to strident “intellectual ideologies” dated from this time. Kazin did not enjoy his undergraduate years, disliking the long commute, the mediocre teaching, and the radical political atmosphere. In 1937, he enrolled in the history program at Columbia University to obtain his master’s degree. Life’s Work A decisive year in Kazin’s life was 1938. In the summer, Carl Van Doren, the distinguished literary editor and Kazin’s former teacher, casually suggested to Kazin, who had just graduated from Columbia and was unsure about his future plans, that he write a critical history of American modernism. Kazin readily agreed. In the fall of the same year, he met and quickly married Natasha Dohn, a research bacteriologist. Kazin spent the next four years of his life researching and writing his history at the reading room in the New York Public Library. He would later call this the happiest period of his life. The result was the 1942 book, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature, a 541-page comprehensive, dispassionate study of American prose writers and culture from 1890 to 1940, which closely examined the parallel development of realism and modernity. To Kazin, the most remarkable “single fact about our modern American writing—[is] our writers’ absorption in every last detail of their American world together with their deep and subtle alienation from it.” Critics were particularly impressed by the scope and depth of the research. The book offered discussions of more than one hundred American writers, ranging from the works of established authors, such as Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Stephen Crane, to pamphlets, manifestos, stories, and novels, written by small-town writers and commentators. This book was published to great acclaim, set a new standard for the field of American literary history and criticism, and established Kazin’s reputation. From this
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time on, he would remain extremely busy: workA Traditional Man of Letters ing as a magazine editor, writing extensive book reviews and essays for respected literary publiOne of Alfred Kazin’s greatest achievements was in continuing cations, giving lectures on literature, holding the long-established tradition of a man of letters. Kazin’s models temporary university teaching positions, penwere the noted critics Van Wyck Brooks and Edmund Wilson. Kazin’s writing style and content, as demonstrated in such works ning books, attending academic conferences, as Contemporaries (1962) and An American Procession (1984), iland receiving numerous prestigious research lustrated the chief characteristics of a traditional man of letters. grants. In 1951, A Walker in the City, the first of The writing was wide ranging, lucid, and well crafted, rigorously three autobiographical works, was published. avoiding the use of literary theory or academic jargon, frequently In 1963, Kazin published a collection of personal, and, at times, strongly opinionated. The books also were more than seventy essays on literature that he committed deeply to the value of literature and reading and to the had written in the 1950’s. The book was dediimportance of nontechnical criticism. In addition, the essays discated to the literary journalist Edmund Wilson, played a restless, critical intelligence and were frequently intended who was an important role model for Kazin, for a popular audience of informed readers, commonly appearing and demonstrates Kazin’s wide-ranging interin popular magazines. Finally, Kazin’s traditional approach was ests and relentless intellectual curiosity. The esinformed by the belief that a critic, through educated taste and feelings, knows more about literature than most other readers and has says run the gamut from nineteenth century the responsibility to help them understand the intellectual, biowriters such as Henry David Thoreau, William graphical, and social factors that contributed to its creation. Deans Howells, and Herman Melville to insightful remarks on Graham Greene, Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud, John F. Kennedy, and the function of criticism. In 1965, the second and Eliot, and the way they expressed their nontradivolume of his memoirs, Starting Out in the Thirties, aptional beliefs in their writings. peared. It vividly described his college days, his political Kazin died of prostate cancer on his birthday June 5, development, and the writing of On Native Grounds. In in 1998. He was survived by a son, a daughter, and his 1973, his long-awaited continuation of American literfourth wife, Judith Dunford. ary history, Bright Book of Life: American Novelists and Story Tellers from Hemingway to Mailer. Kazin’s generSignificance ally low opinion of American literature since the early Kazin was one of the most widely read and influential 1940’s was received negatively by critics. The final volliterary critics of the twentieth century. He remained conume of his memoirs, New York Jew, which covered the sistently devoted throughout his long career to the central years from 1939 to the 1970’s, appeared in 1978. It contenets of realism, as exemplified by such writers as Theotained candid profiles of such famous writers as Wilson, dore Dreiser and Frank Norris, which held that the direct and T. S. Eliot. In 1984, Kazin published An American impression of life was the most important quality of a Procession. The book charted the movement in Ameriwork of literature, and that literature was a direct outcan literature from faith in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s growth of one’s engagement with, and relationships power of individual self-reliance to the despairing triwithin, the world. Kazin deeply believed the primary duty umph of modernism and radical skepticism in the 1930’s, of a critic was to accurately capture the tone and issues of a adroitly using the historian and writer Henry Adams as a writer’s time by elucidating the biographical, social, and representative and unifying figure. The work received cultural factors which made their work unique. Kazin lukewarm reviews. was also one of the very first scholars of American literaIn 1996, Kazin published A Lifetime Burning in Every ture to provide a historical and biographical framework Moment, a candid selection of the journals he had kept for understanding its development and major themes. most of his life. They reveal him to have been an intro—Ronald Gray spective, melancholy, and self-doubting individual, who had always considered himself an outsider. In 1997, Further Reading Kazin’s last book, God and the American Writer, was Cook, Richard M. Alfred Kazin: A Biography. New Hapublished to great acclaim. This work was a unique literven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007. A compreary, theological, and political study of eleven writers hensive and informative biography of Kazin. from the New England Calvinists to Abraham Lincoln 611
Keitel, Harvey Kazin, Alfred. A Lifetime Burning in Every Moment: From the Journals of Alfred Kazin. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Kazin selected and edited these, at times, extremely revealing journal entries. Solotaroff, Ted. Alfred Kazin’s America: Critical and Personal Writings. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
Jewish Americans Solotaroff provides selections from Kazin’s writings, plus a detailed overview of his development. See also: M. H. Abrams; Harold Bloom; Stanley Fish; Irving Howe; Elaine Showalter; Lionel Trilling; Louis Untermeyer.
Harvey Keitel Actor An intense method actor, Keitel has created memorable characters in such unforgettable films as Taxi Driver (1976) and Pulp Fiction (1994). Born: May 13, 1939; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Full name: Harvey Johannes Keitel (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Harvey Keitel (HAHR-vee ki-TEHL) was born into a traditional Orthodox Jewish family. His father, Nikonar Keitel, was a Polish Jew who changed his first name to Harry upon immigration. His mother, Maritska, born LeClose, changed her name to Miriam Klein when she came to America from Maramures, Romania. In the ethnically diverse, immigrant New York City neighborhood
Harvey Keitel. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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of Brighton Beach, the Keitels owned a luncheonette. Harry also worked as a hat maker. Harvey Keitel had an older brother and an older sister. Keitel’s family observed the Jewish dietary laws of kashrut, keeping a kosher kitchen. To prepare Keitel for his Bar Mitzvah, Keitel’s paternal grandfather taught the boy how to read Hebrew books. In 1956, at sixteen, Keitel dropped out of high school and joined the United States Marine Corps. In boot camp, he still observed kashrut, giving away his milk whenever meat was served. The Marines deployed Keitel to Lebanon during a crisis in 1958 in violation of the rule, then in existence, not to send Jewish American soldiers to the Middle East. Keitel was honorably discharged in 1959. On his return to America, he read a book on Greek mythology and became fascinated with the world of ideas. Keitel worked as a shoe salesman for one year and as a court stenographer from 1960 to 1968. A colleague took him to acting classes in 1962. In 1965, Keitel volunteered to play the tough-guy lead, J. R., in Martin Scorsese’s first film. The film became Who’s That Knocking on My Door, released in 1967, after a gratuitous sex scene with Keitel was added. In 1965 and 1968, Keitel also acted in Off-Broadway productions. Embittered by the deep misery he perceived in the world, Keitel temporarily lost his Jewish faith. He spat twice on a mezuzah, a medallion containing a piece of the Torah that is traditionally kept on the doors of Jewish households. Later, he returned to his faith, occasionally mentioning this rebellious act.
Jewish Americans Life’s Work Keitel’s film acting career took off with his friend, Scorsese, who gave Keitel the major role of Charlie, a tough Italian American gangster ridden by guilt, in Mean Streets (1973). In 1974, Keitel began training in method acting at New York’s HB Studio. Keitel’s powerful performance as the pimp of Jodie Foster’s underage prostitute in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) solidified Keitel’s emerging reputation as a quality actor. In 1976, director Francis Ford Coppola clashed with Keitel’s more active vision of the role of Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now (1979). Two weeks into shooting, Coppola fired Keitel. This dampened Keitel’s career in Hollywood, so he turned toward European films. While acting in European films, Keitel met Italian American actor Lorraine Bracco. The two began a longterm relationship. In 1985, their daughter Stella was born. In 1988, Keitel played his first Jewish character, Judas Iscariot, in Scorsese’s film The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). This controversial film relaunched Keitel’s career in the United States, which flourished in the early 1990’s. Keitel starred opposite Jack Nicholson as Julius “Jake” Berman in The Two Jakes (1990). He gave an acclaimed performance as sympathetic sheriff Hal in Ridley Scott’s masterpiece Thelma and Louise (1991). He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the historic Jewish American gangster Mickey Cohen in Barry Levinson’s Bugsy (1991). Keitel’s support for young directors paid off well in his association with Quentin Tarantino. Keitel served as coproducer of Reservoir Dogs (1992) and played the violently loyal Mr. White. In Jane Campion’s masterpiece, The Piano (1993), Keitel awed critics as Victorian settler George Baines, who adopts the facial tattoos and culture of the indigenous Maoris of New Zealand, where the film is set. Keitel played clean-up specialist Winston “The Wolf” Wolfe in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994). In 1993, a bitter public custody battle erupted between Keitel and Bracco over their daughter after the couple ended their relationship on bad terms. Keitel continued to act in Hollywood, American independent, and European films. He went on to support new directors such as Vietnamese American Toni Bui, playing a returning Vietnam War veteran in Bui’s The Three Seasons (1999), set in Saigon. In 2001, Keitel starred in two independent films about the Holocaust. He played American Major Steve Arnold
Keitel, Harvey
Method Acting In 1974, Harvey Keitel was finally accepted at New York’s HB Studio. This acting school was founded on the principles of method acting developed by the Russian Konstantin Stanislavsky. Method acting demands that an actor be immersed in the psychological and the emotional make-up of the character to be portrayed, examining the character’s inner motivations. Keitel was trained by masters Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg. He quickly favored intense, dark characters. Characteristic of method acting and of the cinematic success it can bring was Keitel’s preparation to perform the role of pimp “Sport” Matthew for Jodie Foster’s girl prostitute Iris in Taxi Driver (1976). Keitel worked with a real pimp in preparing for the role. As a result, Keitel suggested the eerie dance sequence between Matthew and Iris, to suggest the nature of such a relationship that the pimp had outlined to Keitel. Critics lauded this performance for its haunting effect. Keitel pushed the limits of his method acting in the title role of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant (1992). He portrayed a mentally tormented Catholic policeman, who, in the end, found redemption through a good act. For his lifelong success in bringing intense and harrowing characters alive on screen, Keitel received the Stanislavsky Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival in 2002. It represents the ultimate honor in method acting.
investigating a German composer of the Nazi era in Taking Sides (2001). He gave a harrowing portrayal of fictional Nazi officer Eric Muhsfeldt in Tim Blake Nelson’s The Grey Zone (2001). The film dramatized the only Jewish revolt at the concentration camp at Auschwitz, with its tragic ending. That year, Keitel became father to a son, Hudson, with his girlfriend, Lisa Karmazin. On October 7, 2001, Keitel married Jewish Canadian actor Daphna Kastner in a Jewish wedding ceremony in Israel. On August 17, 2004, their son Roman was born. A versatile actor, Keitel handily portrayed the light role of FBI agent Sadusky in National Treasure (2004) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007). Significance Keitel established himself as a persuasive character actor with a wide range of intensely performed roles. He did so not with leading-man good looks but with outstanding method acting skills. His potent performances added depth to films. His early work for Scorsese emphasized troubled, tough characters, often in Italian Ameri613
Kern, Jerome can gangster milieu. His later characters generally had some extreme aspect to their personality. Keitel is noted for his support for young directors, such as Scott, Tarantino, and others, and this enabled them to launch their own successful filmmaking careers. Keitel’s character roles in their films enhanced their reception by critics. Although protective of his privacy, Keitel has granted some interviews that provide insight into his personality, his fears and struggles, and his dedication to acting. After a juvenile crisis of faith, Keitel returned to Judaism. —R. C. Lutz Further Reading Burnham, Clint. “Scattered Speculations on the Value of Harvey Keitel.” In Boys: Masculinities in Contemporary Culture, edited by Paul Smith. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996. Academic look at the type of masculinity that Keitel’s well-known characters represent.
Jewish Americans Caveney, Graham. Harvey Keitel. London: Bloomsbury, 1995. Reviews Keitel’s career as method actor up to his great triumphs in the early 1990’s. Clarkson, Wensley. Harvey Keitel: Prince of Darkness. London: Piatkus Books, 1997. Focuses on Keitel’s intense performance of dark, troubled characters. Emphasizes the influence of Keitel’s method acting and his conflicts with Hollywood personalities. Fine, Marshall. Harvey Keitel: The Art of Darkness. New York: Fromm International, 2000. Perceptive analysis of Keitel’s acting career as seen through close analysis of his films and their reviews. Addresses Keitel’s youthful struggle with his Jewish identity. Nelson, Tim Blake. The Grey Zone: The Director’s Notes and Screenplay. New York: Newmarket Press, 2003. Contains close observations on working with Keitel on this Auschwitz film, and how Keitel approached playing a Nazi officer. See also: Alan Arkin; Adrien Brody.
Jerome Kern Composer Composer of more than a thousand songs, including scores for more than sixty Broadway and Hollywood productions, Kern created the melodic romantic ballad that dominated popular music until the mid-twentieth century. Show Boat (1927), written with Oscar Hammerstein II, transformed musical comedy into modern musical theater. Born: January 27, 1885; New York, New York Died: November 11, 1945; New York, New York Also known as: Jerome David Kern (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; theater; entertainment Early Life Jerome Kern (juh-ROHM kurn) was the son of German Jewish immigrant Henry Kern and Fannie Kakeles Kern, a talented pianist of Bohemian ancestry. When he was ten, the family moved from New York to Newark, New Jersey, where his father became a merchandising executive. His father wanted Kern to work in business, but on his tenth birthday Kern was fascinated by the first musical he saw. Leaving Newark High School, he studied music, probably privately in Germany and later at the 614
New York College of Music. He was an able businessman, selling his rare book collection shortly before the 1929 stock market crash devalued such assets and in 1913 joining with Victor Herbert, Irving Berlin, and others to form the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) to protect composers’ royalties. He considered himself a Jewish composer, but, like his parents, he did not attend synagogue. In 1910, he married Englishwoman Eva Leale in an Anglican ceremony. Their only child, Elizabeth Jane (Betty), was born in 1918. In 1904, Kern was a junior partner in the T. B. Harms music publishing house. For years, business took him back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean. He looked for opportunities to place his own songs in existing productions. At that time, English musicals, focusing on strong visual effects rather than on coherent plots and developed characters, were often revised for American performance. In both England and the United States, producers and stars could add any songs they chose, despite irrelevance to the plot or to the characters. Kern’s classical training and his love for musicals enabled him to write for these light comedies and for the operettas that followed the stunning success of Franz Lehár’s The Merry
Jewish Americans Widow (1907). Kern’s music was used in many quickly forgotten shows, beginning with An English Daisy (1903) and Mr. Wix of Wickham (1904). His first popular success was “How’d You Like to Spoon with Me?” interpolated into The Earl and the Girl (1905). In The Girl from Utah (1914), he introduced his first lasting favorite, “They Didn’t Believe Me.”
Kern, Jerome ger Rogers, refilmed as Lovely to Look At (1952). Kern’s original film scores included Swing Time (1936), with Astaire and Rogers and lyrics by Dorothy Fields for “The Way You Look Tonight” and “A Fine Romance”; You Were Never Lovelier (1942), with Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth and songs “Dearly Beloved” and “I’m Old Fashioned”; and Cover Girl (1944), with Hayworth and Gene Kelly and the Ira Gershwin collaboration “Long Ago and Far Away.” “The Way You Look Tonight” and “The Last Time I Saw Paris” won Academy Awards in 1936 and in 1941. The latter is Kern’s only song not composed for a stage show or a film score. Written with Hammerstein after the Nazi occupation of Paris in World War II, it was interpolated into Lady Be Good (1941). In 1946, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) produced Till the Clouds Roll By, a supposedly biographic film. Robert Walker played Kern; Kern’s songs were sung by such stars as Judy Garland, Lena Horne, and Frank Sinatra. In 1949, Kern’s songs were used in Look for the Silver Lining, a biographic film about Marilyn Miller, starring June Haver. Kern suffered a stroke in 1937 but continued working. On November 2, 1945, he went to New York, planning to work on a proposed musical about western sharpshooter Annie Oakley (finally written by Irving Berlin as Annie Get Your Gun in 1946). On November 4, he visited his parents’ graves, as he always did when he was in New York. The next day he collapsed on a Manhattan street, dying six days later.
Life’s Work Kern’s most successful theatrical period began with his Princess Theater shows. Large New York theaters of the time needed stunning visual effects since they lacked good lighting and amplification, but the 299-seat Princess required small casts and orchestras, few chorus girls, and, to compensate, strong characters and plots. The most successful of these shows were Very Good Eddie (1915), Oh, Boy! (1917), Leave It to Jane (1917), and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918). Guy Bolton wrote the books. For the last three, comic novelist P. G. Wodehouse provided lyrics. By then, Kern was collaborating with famed producer Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., beginning with the tenth edition of the Ziegfeld Follies (1916). Still writing for many other shows, Kern provided music for Ziegfeld’s Sally (1920), with its hit song, “Look for the Silver Lining.” It featured Ziegfeld’s dancing superstar Marilyn Miller, who also starred in Sunny (1925), which produced the hit “Who?” For this, Kern collaborated with lyricists Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. In 1927, Ziegfeld produced the show for which Kern is best known, Show Boat, with hit songs “Make Believe,” “Ol’ Man River,” and “Why Do I Love You?” Although the stock market crash of 1929 drastically cut audiences and funds for Broadway productions, Kern’s shows thrived: The Cat and the Fiddle (1931); Music in the Air (1932); Roberta (1933), with the enduring “Yesterdays” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”; and Very Warm for May (1939), with the hit “All the Things You Are.” In the early 1930’s, Kern moved to Hollywood. Some stage shows were filmed: Show Boat (1929, 1936, 1951); Sally (1929); Sunny (1930); The Cat and the Fiddle (1933); Music in the Air (1934); and Roberta (1935), with Fred Astaire and GinJerome Kern. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Kern, Jerome Significance Kern significantly influenced the development of popular music and musical theater. George Gershwin (who, as a young man, served as Kern’s rehearsal pianist), Rodgers, and Cole Porter are among important popular composers who acknowledged Kern’s influence. Gershwin and Rodgers claimed he inspired their careers. Rodgers’s later work with Hammerstein shows the powerful effect of Show Boat in such musicals as South Pacific (1949) and Carousel (1945), where Rodgers and Hammerstein deal with racial prejudice and marital abuse and major characters die. Most early pre-Show Boat musicals are dated, and few have been successfully revived, but Show Boat has been frequently revised and revived. While Kern produced hundreds of forgettable tunes, many of his major songs survived even the rock-and-roll revolution, to be recorded by later singers as jazz standards. —Betty Richardson
Jewish Americans
SHOW BOAT In her best-selling novel Show Boat (1926), Edna Ferber described the lives of a riverboat captain, his family, and entertainers as they traveled the Mississippi River, providing entertainment for isolated river towns. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II saw their staged interpretation of the novel as a chance to integrate characters, action, and music and to explore subjects previously untouched in musicals. In their original versions (1927 and 1932 shows, 1936 film), their attack on racism is obvious. More subtly, they subvert the conventional musical comedy formula that romantic love and marriage solve all problems. Here, they cause problems. The show’s singer, Julie, illustrates both points. Revealed to have African American blood, she is married to a white man and performing with a white cast, both then illegal in the South. She and her husband are forced off the showboat. Removed from its security, her husband abandons her. A loving and generous woman but with few resources, she becomes an alcoholic. Magnolia, daughter of the boat’s captain and his overpowering wife, falls in love with a gambler, marries him, and bears his daughter. Her husband leaves her, returning two decades later, after she has achieved success on her own. Revivals have tended to soften Kern and Hammerstein’s attacks on racism and romanticism, but, however muted, Show Boat retains its timeless music, its rich texture, and its potent issues.
Further Reading Flinn, Denny Martin. Musical! A Grand Tour. New York: Schirmer Books,1997. Includes chapters on Princess musicals and Show Boat. Much material about Kern throughout. Green, Stanley. The World of Musical Comedy. 1980. 4th ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1984. Contains chapter on Kern. Appendix lists Kern’s Broadway shows, with casts and principal songs. Keyser, Herbert H. Geniuses of the American Musical Theatre: The Composers and Lyricists. New York: Applause, 2009. Includes chapters on Kern and on Rodgers’ collaborations with Hammerstein. Kreuger, Miles. Show Boat: The Story of a Classic American Musical. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Individual chapters give detailed descriptions of the Edna Ferber novel, the 1927 Ziegfeld production, the 1932 revival, the 1946 revival, and the three film versions. Lehman, David. A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs. New York: Schocken/Nextbook,
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2009. Knowledgeable, informal discussion of Jewish elements in American popular music, with considerable attention to Kern. Mordden, Ethan. Sing for Your Supper: The Broadway Musical in the 1930’s. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005. Extensive discussion of Kern’s later musicals. _______. Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008. Includes much information about Kern and about Kern and Ziegfeld collaborations. Last chapter includes information about Show Boat recordings and late twentieth century revivals. See also: Harold Arlen; Irving Berlin; Sammy Cahn; Edna Ferber; Lorenz Hart; Alan Jay Lerner.
Jewish Americans
King, Alan
Alan King Entertainer, actor, and activist King was a leading comedian and satirist who became an accomplished actor in film and on stage. Born: December 26, 1927; New York, New York Died: May 9, 2004; New York, New York Also known as: Irwin Alan Kniberg (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater; activism
the younger apprentice. King adopted Berle’s style of one-line gags, but not his farcical burlesque sight gags. Instead King appeared on stage nattily dressed with his trademark cigar and sneer, indicating that he was about to reveal something wrong with the world. Life’s Work King finally began to have some success as an opening act for singing stars, including Patti Page, Billy Eckstine, Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, and Frank Sinatra. King’s big break came in 1956 when he opened for Judy Garland. King continued to open for her performances, and he and Garland remained close friends until she died in 1969. Ed Sullivan saw King’s act and invited him onto Sullivan’s popular television show. King then became a frequent guest on variety shows in prime time and late night. King often substituted as host for Johnny Carson
Early Life Alan King was the son of Bernard Kniberg and Minnie Soloman, Russian Jewish immigrants. When King was five, the family moved from the lower East Side of Manhattan to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. King was the youngest of eight children. His father was a laborer in the garment business and a devoted Democrat who admired David Dubinsky, the leader of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the New Deal president. King attended Brooklyn Boys High School and Eastern District High School but dropped out. His entertainment career began when he was a child, working street corners for spare change from passers-by. At fourteen, King went on the famous Major Bowes Amateur Hour, a radio talent show, where he sang “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”—the liberal anthem of the Great Depression. Although King lost, Bowes put King on a national tour. He later formed a band in which he was the drummer. Still a teenager, King also played the Catskills borscht circuit (where Jews frequently went on vacation), Atlantic City’s famous Steel Pier, and nightclubs as a stand-up comedian, telling jokes about growing up in the poor Jewish ghettos of New York and satirizing the foibles of society. He was fired from one job for making a joke about the owners of the hotel that employed him. He worked in a burlesque theater in Canada. He also fought as a prize fighter, winning all bouts until an opposing boxer named King broke his nose. He quit to concentrate on his entertainment act, but changed his name to that of his last opponent in the ring, King. King admired and took advice from comedians Danny Thomas and Milton Berle. Berle took King under Berle’s wing. They often dined together at Mindy’s in New York, where Berle gave advice to Alan King. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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long-running Broadway production of The Impossible Years (1965) by Bob Fisher and Arthur Marx, the son of Groucho Marx. One of his last Danny Kaye once advised Alan King to be less Jewish in his roles was as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) comedy, but King rejected the advice and became one of the prefilm mogul Samuel Goldwyn, in the title role of mier purveyors of Jewish humor. His Brooklyn accent also revealed him to be a typical New Yorker. This contrasted with many an Off-Broadway production called Mr. Goldother Jewish entertainers and comedians, notably Jack Benny, wyn (2002). whom King idolized. However, he worked with a legion of other In 1962, King wrote his first book with KathJewish comics who relied on their ethnicity for humor. He filled in ryn Ryan, Anybody Who Owns His Own House the gap between Milton Berle and Billy Crystal. Unlike Berle, Deserves It. It was a compilation of satirical and however, King’s strength was not slapstick burlesque but stand-up comical observations from his monologues about satirical monologues, emphasizing his Jewish personality. In married and suburban life which Ryan edited. 1988, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture honored him His other books were Help! I’m a Prisoner in a with its first award for American Jewish Humor; the award was Chinese Bakery (1964) with Jack Shurman, The later named for him. King influenced other satirical monologists, Alan King Great Jewish Joke Book (2002), Is Sasuch as Robert Klein, David Steinberg, and Bill Cosby. lami and Eggs Better than Sex? (1985) with Mimi Sheraton, and the autobiographical Name Dropping: The Life and Lies of Alan King (1996) on the popular Tonight Show on the National Broadcastwith Chris Chase. ing Company (NBC). King was a regular performer at King’s last book, Matzo Balls for Breakfast, and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the legendary venue of SiOther Memories of Growing Up Jewish (2005), pubnatra and his Rat Pack. King then branched off into films lished posthumously, is actually a collection of rememand stage shows, playing both comedic and dramatic brances of more than eighty Jewish public figures. King roles. He also cowrote a number of comedy books and was compiling the work when he died, and television inmade comedy albums. He hosted a number of awards terviewer Larry King finished it for him. Alan King shows, including that of the Academy Awards and of the wrote the introductory comments for each section. Three Tony Awards. of the contributors—Rick Moranis, Barbara Walters, and King married his Brooklyn girlfriend Jeannette Sprung Billy Crystal— added their pieces after King died and in 1947. The couple adopted three children: Andrew, wrote instead remembrances of him. Robert, and Elaine Ray. King often made jokes about King was a member of the famous New York Friars’ family life in his monologues, and he delighted in satirizClub. The group, noted for its celebrity roasts, was a ing suburbia. Despite the jokes, King’s marriage lasted perfect association for King. He was one of the club fifty-seven years. abbots (leaders) and thus joined a celebrated list of theatSome of King’s films were major successes, includrical giants, including George M. Cohan, Sullivan, and ing Bye Bye Braverman (1968), a comedy in which he Sinatra. King attended almost all the roasts as a guest or played a rabbi. The director, Sidney Lumet, cast King in as a roastmaster. He was roasted himself in 1961. He other films, giving him a leading role in Just Tell Me was the master of ceremonies at a number of other FriWhat You Want (1980), in which he played an overbearars’ Club events. In January, 1961, he was one of the ing, obnoxious businessman having an affair with his emcees at President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural celesecretary. Because of his ethnic looks and New York acbrations. cent, King was often cast as an organized-crime gangster. King, a heavy smoker of cigars, suffered from smokMost of his film roles were serious rather than comedic. ing-related ailments and diseases. He had his jaw reHe also produced films, television dramas, and revues. placed in 1992. He died of lung cancer on May 9, 2004, at Shortly before his death, he appeared on the television Manhattan Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. show Funny Already: A History of Jewish Comedy. King never lost an opportunity for a joke nor was he Significance cowed by world-famous people. When Queen Elizabeth After dropping out of high school, King spent sixty II of England greeted him with, “How do you do, Mr. years in show business, as an actor, a writer, a producer, King?” he replied, “How do you do, Mrs. Queen?” and especially a comedian. He was also a political activKing also acted on the stage. He had the lead in the ist and philanthropist. Walters called King a philosopher
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Jewish Americans rather than a comedian. In 2001, he received the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. King was also known for his charitable work. He established the Alan King Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel. He was a major fund-raiser for a center for disturbed children near his home in Nassau County, New York. A political and social activist, King publicly supported candidates such as New York City mayor John Lindsay and New York senator Robert Kennedy. He criticized President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. A liberal Democrat, he became involved in causes for social justice. His friendship with singer-actor Harry Belafonte inspired him to join Belafonte in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1965 march for civil rights in Selma, Alabama. The assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., urged him to a deep commitment to social justice. —Frederick B. Chary
King, Carole Further Reading Dougherty, Barry. A Hundred Years, a Million Laughs: A Centennial Celebration of the Friars’Club. New York: Scribners, 2004. A history of the Friars with many references to King. Includes illustrations. King, Alan, ed. Matzo Balls for Breakfast, and Other Memories of Growing Up Jewish. New York: Free Press, 2005. A collection of essays about Jewish life in America by prominent personalities; a few articles reflect on King, King, Alan, and Chris Chase. Name Dropping: The Life and Lies of Alan King. New York: Scribners, 1996. King’s autobiography and stories about his many friends in the world of entertainment. See also: Woody Allen; Milton Berle; Billy Crystal; Danny Kaye; Robert Klein; Adam Sandler; Jerry Seinfeld; Barbara Walters; Henny Youngman.
Carole King Musician and singer-songwriter King, one of the most successful and prolific songwriters in pop music history, wrote more than four hundred songs. Born: February 9, 1942; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Carol Klein (birth name) Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment Early Life Carole King (KEH-rohl kihng) was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942 to Jewish parents Sidney and Eugenia Klein. Carole King’s father worked as a fireman before he retired and sold insurance; her mother was a schoolteacher. King’s younger brother was born mentally challenged and was placed in an institution. Her parents divorced when King was young, so she lived with her mother, but her father remained a part of her life. King’s family provided cultural opportunities for their talented daughter. Her home had a piano, which she learned to play at age four. Biographer Sheila Weller reported that King won a Shell Bank talent show before appearing on Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour, a national television program. King seemed destined for a career in music. She attended Shell Bank Junior High. Her mother requested an audition at the High School of Performing Arts, where King spent one semester before
Carole King Weaves a Legacy with TAPESTRY Carole King wrote scores of songs that were successfully recorded by notable artists. Many placed on the pop music charts as hit singles. However, at the urging of musician and friend James Taylor, King decided to release an album singing songs she either wrote or cowrote. With her solo album Tapestry, released in 1971, King moved her career from composer-songwriter to performer, and she earned international acclaim. Tapestry held the number one position on the music charts for fifteen consecutive weeks and continued to claim a slot on those hit charts for about six years, the longest time in history by a female artist. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recognized Tapestry with a Diamond Award for sales. In total, more than ten million units sold in the United States and more than twenty-five million sold globally. Tapestry received numerous recognitions, including four Grammy Awards for album of the year, record of the year for “It’s Too Late,” song of the year for “You’ve Got a Friend,” and best female pop vocal performance. All twelve songs on this album were written by King or were collaborations with Gerry Goffin or with Toni Stern. “It’s Too Late” climbed the charts to number one and “You’re So Far Away” logged in at number fourteen. Tapestry was reissued in 1999 with two additional songs.
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King, Carole returning to James Madison High School to be with her friends. In her teens she changed the spelling of her name from Klein to King. At age fourteen, King rode the subway to show her songs to record companies. King formed her first doo-wop band, the Co-Sines, in high school and played local gigs. She enrolled in Queens College, where she met other striving musicians, such as Paul Simon and Neil Sedaka. She also discovered Gerry Goffin, a chemistry major at Queens, who shared her love of music and of songwriting. The young couple married in 1959 and signed as a songwriting team with Al Nevins and Don Kirshner at Aldon Music in 1960. Goffin provided lyrics and King wrote the melodies. In the fall that same year, the Shirelles, an all-female group from New Jersey, recorded King and Goffin’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” Their song hit the pop music charts as number one within two weeks. This was just the beginning of future success for this young songwriting couple. Life’s Work From an early age, King seemed to know what direction she wanted her life to take. Even as a teen her personal experiences provided fodder for her songs. After
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Jewish Americans marriage, King held a daytime job as a secretary while husband Goffin worked as an assistant chemist to pay the bills. At night the two would collaborate on their music and songwriting, joining other Jewish musicians at the Brill Building that housed Aldon Music. Kirshner created a separate record label, Dimension, for the couple. King and Goffin wrote more than fifty songs, which were recorded by various artists of the time. “Go Away Little Girl” was a number one hit recorded by Steve Lawrence in 1962, and it was later sung by Mark Wynters (1962), the Happenings (1966), and Donny Osmond (1971). Little Eva took “Locomotion” to number one on the U.S. charts in 1962. Another well-known GoffinKing song, “Chains,” recorded by the Cookies, Little Eva’s backup singers in 1962, was later sung by the Beatles on their first album, Please Please Me (1963). Bobby Vee recorded “Take Good Care of My Baby” (1961), the Chiffons sang “One Fine Day” (1963), and the Drifters released “Up on the Roof” (1964). British musicians picked up Goffin-King songs and made them top sellers. Herman’s Hermits debuted with “Something Tells Me I’m into Something Good” (1964). The Animals released “Don’t Bring Me Down” in 1966, and it reached number six on the British music charts and ranked high on charts in Canada and in Germany. This was a successful era for the songwriting team of Goffin and King. In 1968, King and Goffin divorced. King was coming into a time of her own as a solo artist and a collaborator with other songwriters. In 1969, King was a backup singer for her friend James Taylor. He asked her to sing “Up on the Roof” on stage at one of his concerts. King, a shy, behind-the-scenes songwriter, stepped up to a welcoming audience. With Taylor’s encouragement, King played and sang her own songs on Tapestry, her first solo album. Tapestry became an instant success in 1971, staying on the charts for about six years and winning four Grammy Awards. Her popularity as a solo artist soared. In 1973, more than 100,000 fans attended a free concert given by King in New York’s Central Park. She continued to write and cowrite songs and to sing, releasing a total of twenty-five solo albums.
Jewish Americans King moved to Idaho to work with several environmental protection groups, including the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, a group committed to getting federal protection for some twenty million acres of wild forest in the northern Rocky Mountains. As an environmental activist, King has given testimony in the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., several times in support of the North Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA). She performs selected concerts and tours. Significance King, one of the most successful female singersongwriters of all time, was the first woman to win four Grammy Awards in a single year. Hundreds of artists have recorded her songs, many reaching positions on the hit music charts in various countries. In 1987, she and Goffin were honored as inductees into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The following year, 1988, they received the National Academy of Songwriters Lifetime Achievement Award. Two years later, in 1990, the duo joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with King in the nonperforming category as a songwriter. In 2002, the Songwriters Hall of Fame awarded King the Johnny Mercer
King, Larry Award for her history of creative work. The Long Island Music Hall of Fame recognized King in 2007 for her contribution to Long Island music heritage. — Marylane Wade Koch Further Reading “Carole King.” In Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll, edited by Holly George-Warren and Patricia Romanowski. 3d ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Provides a brief biography with key points in King’s career. Emerson, Ken. Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era. New York: Viking, 2005. A colorful history of the Brill Building, with anecdotes about King and Goffin. Weller, Sheila. Girls Like Us. New York: Washington Square Press, 2008. Details the lives of King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon in the 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s. See also: Neil Diamond; Marvin Hamlisch; Billy Joel; Barry Manilow; Randy Newman; Carly Simon; Paul Simon.
Larry King Journalist and broadcaster An award-winning radio and television personality, King has interviewed thousands—from celebrities to ordinary people who have become involved in extraordinary circumstances—in a direct but nonconfrontational manner. Born: November 19, 1933; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Lawrence Harvey Zeiger (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; journalism Early Life Larry King was one of two children born of Jewish parents. His father, Edward Zeiger, owned a restaurant and worked in a defense plant. His mother, Jennie, was an immigrant garment worker from Belarus. When King was seven years old, his mom called him “the mouthpiece” because he announced the makes of cars passing through an intersection in Brooklyn. He would attend baseball games, then go home and recount everything that happened as if he were a broadcaster. After his father
died at an early age, his mother went on public assistance, and King supported her after graduating from high school. In 1952, he married his high school sweetheart, but the union was annulled the following year. He married seven more times. An avid radio listener, at an early age King wanted to work on radio. One day, he met a Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) announcer in New York and mentioned his interest in being a radio broadcaster. King was advised to try the growing market in Florida, where those without experience were given a chance. He took a bus to Miami and applied for announcer jobs, at first without luck. Then he agreed to do maintenance work and other assignments for a small station, WAHR, in Miami Beach. On May 1, 1957, one of the announcers quit, and King was put on the air as a disc jockey from nine in the morning until noon. Just before going on the air, the manager asked him to change his name to something less ethnic, so he chose King, after seeing an ad in The Miami Herald for a liquor store. He later did newscasts and sportscasts. King went to work for WIOD, where he did midmorn621
King, Larry ing interviews from Pumpernik’s Restaurant in Miami Beach. Starting with a waiter at the restaurant, he would put a microphone in front of anyone who entered the restaurant. On his third day, he interviewed his first celebrity, singer Bobby Darin, who was in town for a concert. King soon became a Miami celebrity; his kindly interviewing style prompted interviewees to talk freely. He also wrote a weekly column for the Miami Beach Sun. and he was a late-night radio host for WIOD. His first television show was on WPST; in May, 1960, he was the host of Miami Undercover, a late-night Sunday television program featuring debates on public issues. One night, he interviewed comic actor Jackie Gleason. Afterward, they stayed up all night, while Gleason gave King career advice. King also worked for WTVJ as a television sports commentator. King’s career nose-dived when he was arrested on December 20, 1971, for grand larceny. A former business partner accused him, but charges were dropped on March 10, 1972. In the intervening time, King was fired from radio and television, and his weekly column stopped. He then moved to Louisiana, to provide color commentary for games by the Shreveport Steamers of the World Football League in the 1974-1975 season on radio station KWKH. Eventually, he was hired back at WIOD. Life’s Work King became a national celebrity in 1978, when Edward Little, head of Mutual Radio Network, hired King
Larry King. (WireImage/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans for a coast-to-coast program; he was replacing “Long John” Nebel upon his death. King knew Little when Little was general manager of WGAI. The show was broadcast from Monday to Friday, midnight to 5:30 a.m.; interviews lasted ninety minutes, and the interviews were followed by ninety minutes of call-in questions. Next, King offered ninety minutes of Open Phone America for anyone to call and talk on any subject. Finally, King wrapped up, stating his own opinions. In 1984, his program moved to late afternoons, but it was unable to penetrate that market. Shortly after the beginning of USA Today in 1983, King wrote a regular column for the national newspaper. In 2001, the column was discontinued, but it reappeared as a blog in 2008 and on Twitter in 2009. The big break came in June, 1985, when Cable News Network (CNN) hired King to do interviews for an hour in prime time on Larry King Live. His large spectacles and prominent suspenders and tie soon became trademarks that excited cartoonists and many fans. Westwood One simulcast his show on radio. King often prepared questions ahead of time and ad-libbed on the air; sometimes he went into an interview without advance preparation, surprising his guests with his ignorance. In 1984, he appeared in Ghostbusters, and he has been in thirty-one films, often appearing as himself. He is the author or coauthor of fifteen books. On February 24, 1987, King had a major heart attack, attributed to chain-smoking. Quintuple bypass surgery saved his life. In 1997, he had surgery to clear a clogged blood vessel. In 2009, surgery removed a plaque buildup in his heart. In 2010, following a highly public split and reconciliation with his seventh wife, King announced that he was ending his long-running show Larry King Live to spend more time with his young children. Significance After his heart surgeries, King wrote two books about his experience, and he started the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, which provides funds for those needing heart surgery but lacking necessary funds. He also contributed one million dollars for scholarships to the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University for disadvantaged students. About forty thou-
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sand people have been interviewed on his show. HOW YOU CAN HELP One of his guests, Sylvia Browne, gave him a psychic reading off the air; he believes in the In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf coast, Larry paranormal. King also has hosted many special King hosted a three-hour How You Can Help television special. programs, including award ceremonies. King urged donations for the people of New Orleans, who lacked King has been honored by those in the radio food, water, and shelter. Many celebrities donated funds for New and television industry. He won two Peabody Orleans. Singer Celine Dion, for example, offered one million dollars. New Orleans-born fitness personality Richard Simmons credAwards for excellence in broadcasting—for his ited King with collecting millions more in relief donations, so radio program in 1982 and for his television much that King should have a building named after him. King reprogram in 1992. On ten occasions, he won peated the special for the hurricane victims of Haiti in 2010. CableACE awards for best interviewer and for best talk show series. In 1997, his star was placed on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame. The Los Angeles Press Club conferred _______. Taking on Heart Disease. New York: St. Marthe President’s Award on him in 2006. Arizona State tin’s Press, 2004. King talks to nineteen celebrities University gave him the first Hugh Downs Award for who have survived heart attacks and asks them to reCommunication Excellence in 2007. The Radio and Telecount their experiences. vision News Association of Southern California awarded King, Larry, with B. D. Colen. “Mr. King, You’re Having him the Golden Mike Award for Lifetime Achievement a Heart Attack”: How a Heart Attack and Bypass Surin 2008. He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in gery Changed My Life. New York: Delacorte, 1989. 1989 and into the Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1996. In King wrote this book with New York’s Newsday 2002, the industry magazine Talkers named King the top science editor B. D. Colen. It has a foreword by television talk show host of all time and listed him as the C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon General of the fourth-greatest radio talk show host of all time. United States. — Michael Haas King, Larry, with Bill Gilbert. How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere: The Secrets of Good CommuniFurther Reading cation. New York: Crown, 1994. How to conduct sucKing, Larry. My Remarkable Journey. New York: Weincessful conversations and interviews. stein Books, 2009. An autobiography in which King reveals that his complex life is truly remarkable; he See also: Howard Cosell; Barbara Walters; Walter talks about his intention to have his body preserved Winchell. cryogenically.
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Jack Kirby Comic-book artist and writer Kirby’s style focused on an explosive sense of action, and he rewrote the rules for the comicbook narrative. He cocreated such iconic superhero characters as Captain America and Thor. Born: August 28, 1917; New York, New York Died: February 6, 1994; Thousand Oaks, California Also known as: Jack Curtiss; Lance Kirby; Curt Davis; Ted Grey; Fred Sande; Charles Nicholas; Jacob Kurtzberg (birth name) Areas of achievement: Art; entertainment Early Life Jack Kirby (KUR-bee) was born Jacob Kurtzberg on August 28, 1917, in the Bowery neighborhood of New York known as Skid Row, in which he would grow up. The son of an immigrant Austrian garment worker, Kirby attended Jewish school until the age of fourteen, when his artistic ability enabled him to enroll in the prestigious Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Kirby lasted a week at Pratt, but in 1935 art proved to be his ticket out of Skid Row, when he landed a job drawing “in-betweeners” for Max Fleischer Studios’ animated cartoons. When labor troubles struck Fleischer Studios, Kirby found work with the Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate in 1936, drawing comic strips. It was for Lincoln that he began using pen names, not to hide his Jewish heritage but to disguise the fact that he was working on multiple strips. He eventually settled on “Jack Kirby” because it sounded like the name of a professional cartoonist. While working for Lincoln, Kirby also became a part of the studio of Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, where Kirby produced a comic-strip interpretation of The Count of Monte Cristo (based on Auguste Maquet’s 1844-1845 book Le Comte de Monte-cristo) under his Jack Curtiss pen name. When Kirby’s strips began appearing in the newly created comic-book market, it was not long before Kirby was hired to produce original material for this new narrative form. Kirby was hired by Fox Syndicate in 1939, where he was introduced to the superhero narrative when he took over Fox’s star character, the Blue Beetle, one of the first comic-book superheroes. More important for the future of the industry was that, at Fox, Kirby partnered with Joe Simon. 624
Life’s Work Simon and Kirby quickly became a dynamic duo, and they soon found themselves working for publisher Martin Goodman’s newly created Timely Comics (later Marvel), a company that was struggling to catch up with National (later DC) Comics’ latest sensation, Superman. In early 1941, Simon and Kirby’s first superhero creation, Captain America, gave Timely its first million-selling costumed crusader. The pair had arranged a lucrative deal with Timely: In addition to their salaries, Simon and Kirby were to receive 15 percent of the profits. Soon it became clear to the pair that they were not getting the money that was owed them. So, they signed on with National/DC for a combined five hundred dollars a week. Their best-known work for National was the Boy Commandos series, which debuted in July, 1942. Drafted on June 7, 1943, Kirby spent three years serving in World War II. He returned to his partnership with Simon in 1946, first working for Harvey Comics and launching the romance-comic genre with the publication of Young Romance in September, 1947, for Crestwood. The pair even launched their own line of comics under the imprint Mainline Publications, a project that ended in financial disarray. Simon left comics in 1954 to work in advertising. Kirby continued to work, first with DC and then with Timely (then called Atlas), drawing science-fiction, horror, and monster tales. In 1961, Kirby helped change the rules of the comic-book industry again when he partnered with Marvel editor Stan Lee to produce Fantastic Four. The Lee-Kirby pairing created some of the most iconic characters of American popular culture: the X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and the Avengers. Kirby’s artistic style, with exaggerated action, immediacy, and intensity of storytelling, meshed well with Lee’s belief that heroes should be real people with real problems. With this compelling combination of talents, the superhero comic was reborn. Kirby’s method of laying out stories and his artistic style quickly became the Marvel way, as Lee pushed his entire “bullpen” of artists to emulate Kirby’s style. Kirby and Lee’s partnership turned Marvel into a multimilliondollar corporation. However, in 1970, Kirby’s frustration with Marvel’s refusal to give him proper credit as coplotter and cocreator of most of the stars in the Marvel universe led him to leave, once again, for DC. At DC, Kirby’s greatest contributions were the Fourth
Jewish Americans World titles, such as New Gods, and his take on the Superman continuity in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen. He would return briefly to Marvel in 1976 before leaving comics in 1979 to return to animation. Kirby worked with independent publishers in the 1980’s in order to bring about a new system of creative rights ownership, which allowed the comic’s creators, rather than the publishers, to own the rights to the characters the creators had crafted. This victory and other industry pressures resulted in Marvel returning much of Kirby’s original art to him in 1987. Kirby died of heart failure on February 6, 1994, at age seventy-six. Significance Kirby is called the king of comics not only because his style of storytelling helped to give birth to the superhero narrative in 1939 but also because his partnership with Lee reinvented the superhero narrative, invested it with a new life, and turned it into an art form. Kirby rewrote the static rules that bound the comic form to the page and allowed the story to break through the panel’s frame and “punch” the reader in the face. The characters he created—from the X-Men and Sergeant Fury to the Silver
Kissinger, Henry Surfer and Captain America—are icons and integral components of American popular culture. He cocreated an American mythology. —B. Keith Murphy Further Reading Evanier, Mark. Kirby: King of Comics. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2008. Evanier, Kirby’s friend and biographer, established this work as a definitive study of Kirby’s life and work. Morrow, John, ed. Kirby Five-Oh! Celebrating Fifty Years of the “King” of Comics. Raleigh, N.C.: TwoMorrows, 2008. A series of lists of the best of Kirby’s work, from covers to monsters. Ro, Ronin. Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution! New York: Bloomsbury, 2004. Ro examines how the working relationship between Lee and Kirby led to the rebirth of superhero comic books in the 1960’s. See also: Al Capp; Michael Chabon; Roy Lichtenstein; Ben Shahn.
Henry Kissinger German-born diplomat and statesman A leading diplomat who served as U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser, Kissinger was a proponent of realpolitik, pragmatic foreign policy. He was instrumental in establishing diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China and creating a better relationship with the Soviet Union. He helped to negotiate American withdrawal from Vietnam and to end the 1973 ArabIsraeli (Yom Kippur, or October) War between Israel and Egypt and Syria. Born: May 27, 1923; Fürth, Bavaria, Germany Also known as: Heinz Alfred Kissinger (birth name) Area of achievement: Government and politics Early Life Henry Kissinger (KIHS-ihn-jur) was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Germany in 1923. His parents, Louis and Paula Stern Kissinger, were strictly observant Orthodox Jews. Henry Kissinger’s father was a schoolteacher and his mother a homemaker famous for her kosher
meals. At age three, Kissinger attended services at the family’s Orthodox Neuschul Synagogue. The Kissingers tried to strike a balance between their firm Orthodox beliefs and cultural assimilation into gentile German society. Just before Kissinger turned ten, in 1933, the National Socialists (Nazis) came to power and began their vicious persecution of Jews. His father lost his state teaching job and Kissinger and his brother Walter were beaten by a gang of Hitler Youth. Kissinger’s mother organized the family’s immigration to America through sponsorship by an American cousin, and the family left Fürth on August 10, 1938, escaping the full horrors of Nazi rule that resulted in the murder of thirteen of their closest relatives in the Holocaust. In 1940, the family settled in Washington Heights, New York, and joined the Orthodox K’hal Adath Jeshurun Synagogue. To the great disappointment of his father, Kissinger and his brother drifted away from Orthodox Judaism. After working at a factory and taking night classes at City College, in February, 1943, Kissinger was drafted into the United States Army. He became a natu625
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Henry Kissinger. (©The Nobel Foundation)
ralized citizen on June 16, 1943. The Army sent Kissinger to Germany in November, 1944, where he proved a successful administrator in two conquered German cities in 1945 and 1946. After leaving the Army, Kissinger taught at the European Command Intelligence School in Bavaria for one year. In the fall of 1947, Kissinger was admitted to Harvard University. On February 6, 1949, Kissinger married Anneliese (Ann) Fleischer, a fellow Orthodox Jewish immigrant from Germany. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1950, his master’s degree in 1952, and his doctorate in government studies in 1954. In 1959, Kissinger became associate professor at Harvard, and his daughter Elizabeth was born; in 1961, his son David was born. In 1962, Kissinger became full professor and separated from Anneliese. They divorced in 1964. That year, Kissinger worked for Nelson Rockefeller’s failed presidential campaign, as he did in 1968. Life’s Work President-elect Richard Nixon chose Kissinger as his national security adviser, on the strength of Kissinger’s 626
Jewish Americans reputation as an energetic, intelligent, and creative foreign policy thinker. Kissinger took office on January 20, 1969. Both men were outsiders to Washington. Nixon trusted Kissinger to help him shape foreign policy, and Kissinger relished the confidence of Nixon. Kissinger established a working relationship with Anatoly Fyodorovich Dobrynin, Soviet ambassador to the United States, with the goal of reducing tensions between the two nuclear superpowers. Kissinger’s efforts were crowned with the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) by Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow on May 26, 1972. Enacting the popular American desire to end the nation’s engagement in the Vietnam War proved difficult for Kissinger. It took him more than a year to finally meet a serious North Vietnamese negotiator, Le Duc Tho, on February 21, 1970. Kissinger’s support for Nixon’s decision to secretly bomb North Vietnamese positions in Cambodia later haunted his reputation. Agreement with Nixon to launch a joint American and South Vietnamese strike into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese bases there on April 30, 1970, proved a domestic policy disaster. Finally, the Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973, ending U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. For this treaty, both Kissinger and Le were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize. Kissinger accepted but Le declined. On April 30, 1975, the North Vietnamese finally won the war once the Americans were gone. Kissinger persuaded Nixon to establish political relations with the People’s Republic of China. Beginning with a secret trip to Beijing in 1971, Kissinger prepared the ground for Nixon’s stay there from February 21 to 28, 1972. Nixon rewarded Kissinger’s work by appointing him secretary of state on September 22, 1973. Kissinger took the oath of office in the company of his parents and his children. He was the first non-native-born and Jewish person in this high office. Kissinger’s reputation was tarnished by his support for a right-wing coup in Chile on September 11, 1973. A great challenge came with the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on October 6, 1973. Kissinger brokered a cease-fire during a series of trips to the region dubbed “shuttle diplomacy.” Kissinger married Nancy Maginnes, an Episcopalian, on March 30, 1974. After the resignation of Nixon on August 9, 1974, Kissinger served President Gerald Ford. A new focus was Africa, where Kissinger sought to block the Soviet Union and Cuba from taking advantage of a power vacuum in Angola in 1975. Kissinger also op-
Jewish Americans posed the continuation of white rule in Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe in 1979. Kissinger’s tenure in government ended on January 20, 1977, when President Jimmy Carter took office. Kissinger continued his presence in American political circles as speaker, writer, and consultant, founding the firm of Kissinger Associates. He informally advised President Ronald Reagan on the Middle East in the 1980’s and briefly served on an advisory committee after the September 11, 2001, attacks. In 2006, Kissinger acknowledged advising President George W. Bush on Iraq policies. By 2010, he was considered a distinguished elder statesman.
Kissinger, Henry
Establishing Relations with Mao’s China While a professor at Harvard in the early 1960’s, Henry Kissinger became convinced that America should establish political relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), led by Mao Zedong since its foundation in 1949. Working in the Orthodox Jewish spirit of humility, Kissinger rejected the excesses of political absolutism that in this case rigidly forbade any American dealings with a Communist enemy. Instead, he persuaded President Richard Nixon to pursue an opening toward mainland China. Kissinger first met secretly with PRC Premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing in July, 1971, and again in October, 1971, which paved the way to his and Nixon’s stunning travel to China in February, 1972. At the price of downgrading America’s relationship with its strong ally, the Republic of China on Taiwan, Kissinger and Nixon forged a new relationship with mainland China. Eventually this led to a very strong American-Chinese economic and political partnership. Kissinger later advised American companies doing business in China. Communist China always remembered Kissinger’s groundbreaking diplomacy. He was an honored state guest at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Significance Kissinger was one of the most powerful, influential, and visible American statesmen of the later Cold War era. He furthered relaxation of tensions with the Soviet Union and launched American relations with Communist China. He discharged the duty of bringing America out of the Vietnam War, even at the price of leaving Indochina open to Communist aggression. As a naturalized immigrant Jew from Germany, Kissinger was an outsider who bridged the gap between academic knowledge and practical policy making. His childhood experience in Nazi Germany made Kissinger deeply suspicious of mass popular movements that may turn viciously on minorities, confirming his anti-Communism. As diplomat, Kissinger firmly believed in a hierarchical global system shaped by two or three superpowers. He sought to achieve peace through a balance of power that provided some gains for each adversary. He tried to solve crises through a match of limited force and vigorous diplomacy, enjoying success in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia. — R. C. Lutz
Further Reading Dallek, Robert. Nixon and Kissinger. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Thorough analysis of the two men’s remarkable relationship; some details on how Kissinger’s Jewish heritage influenced his political vision and actions as statesman. Includes illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index.
Hanhimäki, Jussi. The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2004. Critical assessment of Kissinger’s foreign policy, vision, and decisions. Sees Kissinger rooted too deeply in Cold War superpower thinking, neglecting local regional factors in various crises. Includes illustrations, notes, and index. Kurz, Evi. The Kissinger Saga: Walter and Henry Kissinger, Two Brothers from Fürth, Germany. London: Orion, 2009. Valuable in-depth portrayal of Kissinger’s Jewish family roots in Germany based on thorough historical research. The author managed to get Kissinger to speak on the record about his childhood for first time. Richly illustrated, with an index. Suri, Jeremi. Henry Kissinger and the American Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. Excellent biography of Kissinger with keen focus on his Jewish identity; presents and analyzes how his Jewish heritage and experience in Nazi Germany influenced his intellectual vision and his position as an American statesman. Includes illustrations, notes, and index. See also: David Halberstam; Paul Wolfowitz.
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Klein, Robert
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Robert Klein Stand-up comedian and actor Klein, a stand-up comedian, found his niche in offering pointed if gentle revelations about the foibles of family, work, religion, and school.
rather a laugh track dubbed in—made Klein eager to return to the live dynamic of nightclubs, college gyms, and theaters.
Born: February 8, 1942; Bronx, New York Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater
Life’s Work Now a nationally recognized comedian, Klein made numerous appearances on network variety shows and was a regular on The Tonight Show (he appeared on the show more than eighty times). Klein released two highly successful albums, both nominated for Grammy Awards: Child of the 50’s (1973), about growing up in the Bronx, and Mind over Matter (1974), a scathing indictment of the hypocrisies of the Richard Nixon White House. In 1975, the up-and-coming cable network Home Box Office (HBO) approached Klein with a proposal: performing a live concert presented without commercial interruption and without the censorship on mainstream network television. The show was a huge success, and the cable network’s highest rated show of the season. It became the inaugural program in a series of prestigious showcases for comedians. Over the next two decades, Klein did nine additional shows for HBO. Gifted with an impeccable sense of comic timing and a feel for sketch comedy, Klein in 1979 was offered a chance to costar in Neil Simon’s two-character musical They’re Playing Our Song, about the quirky and offbeat relationship between Academy Award-winning composer Marvin Hamlisch and lyricist Carole Bayer Sager (the team wrote the score). The play ran on Broadway for 1,082 performances, earning Klein a Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. Although Klein never abandoned his stand-up career, over the next two decades he pursued acting opportunities in theater; notably, he won an Obie Award as best actor for his performance in Wendy Wasserstein’s comic family saga The Sisters Rosensweig (1993), which chronicled the loves of three Jewish sisters across sixty years. From 1986 to 1988, Klein hosted Robert Klein Time on the USA Network, a talk-variety show that would become the template for late-night comedy-talk shows over the next decade. It was nominated for seven CableACE Awards (award for cable excellence). Klein also appeared in more than forty films, although never as the lead and invariably as the best friend or the father or the brother of the marquee name. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, however, Klein made hundreds of appearances in a variety of television shows, in both comic
Early Life Robert Klein (klin) was raised in the comfortable middle-class Jewish neighborhoods of post-World War II Bronx. Klein’s father was an avid raconteur and his mother loved films and theater. Klein was drawn to music; in high school, he sang with a neighborhood doowop group, the Teen Tones, which competed and won on the televised talent show Original Amateur Hour, hosted by Ted Mack. After graduating from high school in 1959, Klein dutifully entered the premedical program at Alfred University, a small liberal arts school near Rochester, New York. However, he struggled in his science courses, and with the approval of his parents, he transferred to political science and history. His heart, however, was in the university’s theater department. After graduation in 1962, he determined to make it as an actor, and Klein was accepted at Yale Drama School. Klein, nevertheless, was restless within the restrictions of theatrical performance. In 1965, he was given the opportunity to audition for a new avant-garde improvisational comedy troupe forming in Chicago, the now-legendary Second City. Klein was accepted, and when he returned to New York a year later, his improvisational skills had improved significantly. Although he landed a minor role in a Broadway musical, The Apple Tree (1966), Klein began to develop an act as a stand-up comedian. He worked in Manhattan nightclubs, notably the Improv, a prominent showcase for emerging comics. It was there that Klein met comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who saw great promise in the young comedian and in 1968 helped him secure his first national exposure, a coveted spot on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Over the next several years, Klein’s reputation as a nightclub comedian grew, but his big break came in 1970 when the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) selected him to host a summerreplacement series called Comedy Tonight. In between comic sketches, Klein offered his routines, largely about growing up in the 1950’s. The show earned Klein a national following, but its format—no studio audience, 628
Jewish Americans and dramatic roles, including recurring roles on Frasier, Grace Under Fire, The King of Queens, Sisters, and Mad About You. An episode of Family Ties, in which Klein played a nerdy high school flame of the mother, played by Meredith Baxter-Birney, who returns for a class reunion a millionaire, was nominated for an Emmy Award. Perhaps Klein’s most important work, however, was his dedication to promoting classic comedy on Comedy Central as the host of Dead Comics Society, which brought to a contemporary audience the comic talents of early silent-film pioneers, and his promotion of new talent as host of E!’s Stand-Up Sit-Down Comedy Challenge. In addition, he appeared regularly on Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Late Night with David Letterman, and other talk shows, games shows, and variety shows. In 2006, Klein turned to writing and released a critically praised anecdotal account of his Bronx childhood, The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue: A Child of the Fifties Looks Back.
Klein, Robert
CHILD OF THE 50’S In an era when Jewish performers often changed their names to distance themselves from their Jewish identity (among them Rodney Dangerfield, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, Joey Bishop, and Lenny Bruce), Robert Klein celebrated his upbringing in the Jewish neighborhoods of the Bronx. In nightclub routines, he did not tell jokes so much as witty stories about his youth, about public school education in the era of civil-defense drills, about the perils of being a Yankees fan, and about his own family, stories that were at once smart and engaging. Much like Jonathan Winters, whose sketch work Klein watched as a child on The Jack Paar Show, Klein created characters, shifted voices, and used physical and facial expressions. Like Jerry Seinfeld and Richard Lewis, perhaps the closest to Klein among younger comedians, Klein elevated ordinary experiences using a keen sense of irony. These wry observational sketches dominated Klein’s first album, Child of the 50’s, the best-selling comedy album of 1973, nominated for a Grammy Award, and considered among the classic comedy albums of postwar American pop culture. At a time when stand-up comics drew on current events to make incendiary political statements, Klein drew on experiences that tapped into universal feelings. Hence, his material maintains its appeal decades later.
Significance Klein is among the most underrated comedians of his generation. In 2004, when Comedy Central ranked the most influential stand-up comics in pop-culture history, Klein’s ranking—at number twentytwo—was significant. Never as edgy and profane as Lenny Bruce or as political and satirical as Mort Sahl, never as caustic as George Carlin or as volatile as Richard Pryor, Klein, at once cerebral and humane, found his niche in offering pointed if gentle revelations about the foibles of family, work, religion, and school. At the height of his popularity in the early 1980’s, his stand-up shows were known as high-energy performances (often accompanied by music) with the manic feel of improvisational sketch comedy. Klein never used profanity to shock his audience (his delivery was elegant and witty), he never endorsed drugs or alcohol, and he seldom used sex as a topic in his material. In fact, his greatest contribution might well be his status as the pioneer in cable television’s support of comedians. Klein was perfect for America’s living rooms: smart without being smartalecky and irreverent without being controversial. — Joseph Dewey
Klein’s genre of stand-up, including appropriate material, delivery, timing, pace, and audience interaction. Bloom, James D. Gravity Fails: The Comic Jewish Shaping of Modern America. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. Scholarly examination of the historic context of the Jewish American comic vision, includes references to film, literature, television, and music. Epstein, Lawrence J. The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians. New York: Perseus-PublicAffairs, 2002. Places Klein in the context of the postwar Borscht Belt comedians of the post-war. Helpful bibliography and a wide-ranging examination of many comedians who influenced Klein. Klein, Robert. The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue: A Child of the Fifties Looks Back. New York: Touchstone, 2006. Loving recollections of Klein’s upbringing in the Bronx (much of this material is drawn from his stand-up routines). Written with characteristic wit.
Further Reading Ajaye, Franklyn. Comic Insights: The Act of Stand-Up Comedy. Los Angeles: Silman-James, 2002. Explains
See also: Woody Allen; Lenny Bruce; Billy Crystal; Rodney Dangerfield; Alan King; Richard Lewis; Mort Sahl; Jerry Seinfeld; Henny Youngman. 629
Knopf, Alfred A.
Jewish Americans
Alfred A. Knopf Publisher An innovative publisher, Knopf developed the use of corporate structures and advertising to sell books to a broad public. He insisted on maintaining literary and production quality while seeking ways to keep prices low. Born: September 12, 1892; New York, New York Died: August 11, 1984; Purchase, New York Also known as: Alfred Abraham Knopf (full name) Area of achievement: Publishing Early Life Alfred A. Knopf (kuh-NUHPF) was born in New York City in 1892 to Samuel and Ida Jaffee Knopf. His
Alfred A. Knopf. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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father worked in advertising and finance. Knopf entered Columbia University in 1908 and graduated in 1912. He planned to enter Harvard Law School until a trip to England to meet novelist John Galsworthy changed his plans in favor of a career in publishing. Upon his return, his father helped him obtain a position with Doubleday publishers. There Knopf obtained rights to the works of Joseph Conrad and brought him to Doubleday as a client. It was also during this time that Knopf was first introduced to H. L. Mencken, whom he approached at the Baltimore Sun to promote Conrad. Knopf left Doubleday in 1914 to work for publisher Mitchell Kennerly. A year later Knopf tried to form a partnership with the publishing house Doran. After being rejected, he decided to start his own business. His father gave him an office, and with his fiancé, Blanche Wolf, he began Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf had met Wolf his senior year at Columbia, and she shared his passion for literature along with the more liberal ideas emerging from the World War I generation. They were married in 1916. Life’s Work Prior to World War I, the American publishing industry had focused on selling to the privileged classes of the East Coast. Knopf, however, brought to the business three important factors. First, he shared his father’s acumen for advertising, along with a flamboyant personality. Second, his time working with Kennerly’s experiments had given him new ideas regarding how a publishing firm should be operated. Third, he and his wife shared a strong sense of being part of a new generation that was much more egalitarian; the time was ripe to spread literature to all people. The influence of his visit to Galsworthy and his success with Conrad placed his initial focus on introducing foreign literature to the American public. Knopf emphasized Russian literature, and his wife designed the Borzoi colophon. The borzoi is a Russian wolfhound, and this symbol became one of the best recognized symbols in publishing. The Knopfs even owned some of the dogs themselves. Knopf competed with other new publishers of his generation such as Simon and Schuster, Harcourt and Brace, and Random House. One of his early successes was the acquisition from Houghton Mifflin of
Jewish Americans
Knopf, Alfred A.
Willa Cather, who won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize. No Price on Freedom He went on to introduce some of the biggest names in literature of the 1920’s, including T. S. Alfred A. Knopf once wrote, “I have always felt that a civilized Eliot and Ezra Pound, and helped make his person could take only one position with regard to censorship—to friend Mencken into one of the most influential be against it in every known form.” Knopf did not advocate complete free rein, but he believed that each publisher should regulate writers of the era. its products. He spoke of his growing fear that if the industry beKnopf fought industry trends to cheapen came too pornographic (as he believed it was), outside forces books. He joined a lawsuit in 1939 against the would step in to regulate the industry, thereby stifling the best in Macy’s department store, which was attemptcreative literature. ing to skirt antitrust laws by setting up “book Knopf’s relationship with H. L. Mencken best illustrates his atclubs.” During the Red Scare of the 1950’s, edititude. Though privately he sometimes expressed concerns over tor Angus Cameron was forced to resign from Mencken’s views, publicly he always defended his friend. In 1926, Little, Brown. Cameron was promptly hired by Knopf helped defend Mencken in a lawsuit brought against their Knopf. When congratulated on standing against magazine, The American Mercury, for exposing hypocritical pracMcCarthyism (the congressional hunt for Comtices among New York ministers. In that same year, Mencken munists and other subversives), Knopf denied achieved national notoriety by advocating for the rights of John Scopes, who was on trial for teaching evolution. The trial later inany bravery, saying politics had nothing to do spired the play Inherit the Wind (1955), in which the part of with his decision. Cameron worked for him beMencken is portrayed by the fictional character E. K. Hornbeck. cause he was a good editor. It was Knopf who later published Mencken’s diary (which had Despite his standards, Knopf sometimes bent been sealed for twenty-five years as stipulated in Mencken’s will), to the needs of business. Ignoring the rhetoric of revealing the depth of the writer’s anti-Semitic views. Their friendMencken that the Great Depression was a myth, ship is explained by their shared ideal that any opinion could be Knopf made adjustments to the production of voiced as long as it did not lead to oppression, and that talent his books to reduce costs during that time. should always be recognized, no matter its source. He also endorsed the Cheney Report of 1932, which was highly critical of the publishing industry and called for sweeping reforms. techniques to maintain the literary quality of the nineThe Knopfs had expected that their only son, Alfred teenth century. Sixteen authors published by Knopf won “Pat,” Jr., would inherit the business. However, he chafed the Nobel Prize, and twenty-six were given a Pulitzer for more independence in making decisions. Therefore, Prize. Although most readers indicate they do not care in 1958, he resigned and started his own company, who publishes a book, the Borzoi remains one of the best Atheneum Publishers. The increasing pace of mergers known symbols in publishing, and Knopf is widely put pressure on Knopf to follow the business trends of the known for its founder’s work to maintain high standards 1950’s. After his son’s resignation, he turned to his friend in the industry. Donald Klopfer at Random House, which had been purFrom the beginning Knopf set out to make his books chased by RCA. After Knopf made a deal to maintain distinctive. He paid close attention to typesetting, earncontrol of the books published under the Knopf name, ing praises from the Typophiles, who later printed his Random House purchased the company in 1960. personal memoirs. He also looked for distinctive cover After the death of his wife in 1966, Knopf continued designs and insisted on the highest-quality printing of his with her goal to promote minority writers, bringing Toni books, winning more awards from the American InstiMorrison to Knopf in 1973. Though he remarried, to tute of Graphic Arts than any other mass-market pubnovelist Helen Norcross Hedrick, he had lost his most lisher except Little, Brown. Because of the standards important business partner. Growing increasingly critiKnopf set for his books, he adopted modern business cal of the trends in publishing, he began to withdraw practices to keep down the prices. He divided his comfrom daily operations. He died of congestive heart failure pany into divisions that focused on producing, distributin 1984. ing, marketing, and selling the books. He employed advertising ideas that made direct, personal appeals to the Significance reader with attractive new art styles, and he is known for John Tebbel, from the Saturday Review, stated that introducing the idea of the “sandwich board”: He paid Knopf’s accomplishment was to use modern business 631
Koch, Ed people to walk about with large advertising signs hanging over their shoulders. — Kevin J. Knox Further Reading Knopf, Alfred A. Portrait of a Publisher, 1915-1965. New York: The Typophiles, 1965. _______. Publishing Then and Now, 1912-1964. New York: New York Public Library, 1964. These two books contain a collection of talks given by and notes made by Knopf. They contain his opinions of and his recollections of the publishing industry throughout his career. Madison, Charles Allan. Jewish Publishing in America: The Impact of Jewish Writing on American Culture. New York: Sanhedrin Press, 1976. This book helps explain the role Knopf played as a publisher, giving a brief summary of Knopf as the first Jew to break into mainstream American publishing. Tebbel, John. Between Covers: The Rise and Transformation of American Book Publishing. New York: Ox-
Jewish Americans ford University Press, 1987. This book follows the American publishing industry from its rise in antebellum America as a luxury reserved for the rich through the modern phase of corporate mergers, where the financial viability of a book is the chief concern. It places Knopf within the historical context of his contributions to publishing, and it chronicles his relationships (both good and bad) with other publishers, describes his innovations, and tells of the times when he followed the crowd in order to preserve his business. Wycherley, H. Alan. “Mencken and Knopf: The Editor and His Publisher.” American Quarterly 16, no. 3 (Autumn, 1964): 460-472. This article chronicles one of the strangest relationships in Knopf’s life. Though accused of being anti-Semitic, Mencken maintained a close professional relationship with Knopf throughout his life. See also: Walter Annenberg; E. L. Doctorow; Howard Fast; Joseph Heller; Norman Mailer; Suze Orman; Dorothy Parker; Ayn Rand.
Ed Koch Politician Koch brought New York City back from the edge of financial collapse, revived public morale, and confronted rising anti-Semitism in the city. Born: December 12, 1924; Bronx, New York Also known as: Edward Irving Koch (full name) Area of achievement: Government and politics Early Life The son of a Jewish immigrant furrier from the Bronx, Ed Koch (kahch) grew up mostly in Newark, New Jersey, graduating from South Side High School in 1941. His family then relocated to Brooklyn, and Koch attended the City College of New York for two years before being drafted into the Army during World War II. He earned two battle stars for fighting the Nazis in France and Germany in 1944 and 1945 with the 104th Infantry Division. After the war, he was assigned to a unit involved in implementing the de-nazification process in occupied Germany. Returning home in 1946, Koch earned a law degree from New York University in 1948 and opened a small private practice in Manhattan the following year. Koch 632
became active in Democratic Party politics in Greenwich Village in 1956. His first campaign for public office, a 1962 race for a state assembly seat, was unsuccessful, but the following year Koch triumphed in his campaign for district leader from southern Manhattan, unseating Carmine DeSapio, leader of the Tammany Hall political machine that had long dominated New York City. This projected Koch to national attention and launched his career in politics. His rise continued with his election, in 1966, to the New York City Council. During these years, Koch also traveled to Mississippi to help blacks register to vote and to mount legal challenges against racial discrimination. In 1968, Koch was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s seventeenth congressional district. As a member of Congress, Koch identified with many of the positions of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. He was especially outspoken with regard to the Vietnam War, which he vociferously opposed, and African American civil rights, which he vigorously supported. On some issues, however, he broke ranks with his colleagues. He opposed racial quotas, at a time when some
Jewish Americans in the Democratic Party were embracing them. He advocated the decriminalization of marijuana. In 1973, he clashed with New York City mayor John Lindsay over plans to build a housing project for forty-five hundred welfare recipients in the middle of Forest Hills, Queens, a mostly Jewish middle-class neighborhood.
Koch, Ed York, Daniel P. Moynihan, “[gave] New York City back its morale.” Tensions between the city’s black and Jewish communities, which began well before Koch entered Gracie Mansion, flared on occasion during the Koch years. During a 1978 visit to a Baptist church in Harlem, Koch was the target of anti-Semitic heckling. He criticized African American leaders who befriended the controversial black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, and he vocally opposed the 1988 presidential campaign of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, because of Jackson’s anti-Semitic remarks and hostility toward Israel. The mayor also maintained his opposition to racial preferences despite criticism from some black leaders. Koch ran for governor of New York in 1982, but he lost in the Democratic primary to Lieutenant Governor Mario Cuomo. Koch’s remark to a magazine interviewer that life in the suburbs and upstate was “sterile”
Life’s Work In 1977, Koch was among six candidates challenging New York’s mayor, Abraham Beame, in the Democratic primary. Koch took a tougher stance on crime than the other candidates, a position that attracted support after widespread rioting and looting during that summer’s citywide power blackout. Koch emerged victorious in the primary, and in November he was elected the city’s 105th mayor. He was reelected in 1981 with seventy-five percent of the vote, and again in 1985, with the support of seventy-eight percent of the electorate, the highest percentage ever received by a New York City mayoral candidate. During his years in Gracie Mansion, Koch came to be known both for his blunt rhetoric and for his nonideological approach to municipal problem-solving. Journalist Pete Hamill described him as “a combination of a Lindy’s waiter, a Coney Island barker, a Catskill comedian, an irritated school principal, and an eccentric uncle.” Koch is widely credited with restoring the city’s financial well-being after a period of turmoil and near-bankruptcy under the previous administration of Beame. Inheriting a six-billion-dollar short-term debt, Koch reduced spending, cut back on nonessential social programs, and balanced the budget. Other notable achievements of the Koch administration included a ten-year, five-billion-dollar housing program that established more than 150,000 housing units and the city’s first merit-based judicial selection system. Koch faced down striking subway and bus operators in 1980 by utilizing the Taylor Law, which prohibits state government employees from striking and penalizes their unions with rapidly escalating fines. He joined the tens of thousands of commuters walking over the bridges from the other boroughs to Manhattan each day, one of many such dramatic gestures over the years that helped rally public opinion to Koch’s side during moments of crisis. Public morale in the city had plummeted during the Beame administration, with the mayor depicted on the cover of Time magazine as a beggar. Koch’s Ed Koch. (AP/Wide World Photos) policies, in the words of the U.S. senator from New
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Koch, Ed
Jewish Americans
“How’m I Doing?” Ed Koch relished being the mayor of New York City. He was well-known for striding down the street and calling out to passersby, “How’m I doing?” The answer was most likely a resounding “great.” The city was awash in red ink when Koch took over from Abraham Beame, his predecessor. The deficit stood at one billion dollars, a staggering amount in 1978. In a get-tough manner, Koch instituted strict accounting practices designed to get the teetering budget back in balance. He forced the municipal unions to keep their finances in check and he vetoed any type of excessive spending. He cut city employment payrolls, and he pared back inefficient municipal services. With the support of federal loan guarantees, he put New York City’s finances in the black. He spent money wisely, bolstering the police department in order to cut down on urban crime and rehabilitating blighted neighborhoods, eyesores as well as breeding grounds for criminal activities. By 1983, New York City boasted a surplus of five hundred million dollars.
was widely regarded as a factor in costing him the election. In common with some of his predecessors, Koch spoke out strongly on a number of foreign policy issues. His criticism of President Jimmy Carter’s tilt against Israel played a role in Carter’s loss of New York State to challenger Senator Edward Kennedy in the 1980 Democratic presidential primary. After the Chinese government’s massacre of pro-democracy students at Tiananmen Square in 1989, Koch initiated the renaming of the corner in front of the Chinese Mission to the United Nations “Tiananmen Square.” When the street sign was taken away by unidentified vandals, Koch personally replaced it. The Koch administration was rocked in 1986 by a farreaching corruption scandal involving officials of the Parking Violations Bureau accepting bribes. Among the casualties of the scandal was Queens borough president Donald Manes, who committed suicide after being implicated in the affair. Although Koch himself was not involved in the scandal, the negative publicity undermined support for his administration. Many analysts believe that it contributed to his defeat by Manhattan borough president David Dinkins in the 1989 Democratic mayoral primary. After leaving political office, Koch remained active in the public arena in a variety of endeavors. He wrote a 634
number of books, from crime novels to memoirs, with such Koch-esque titles as Ed Koch on Everything (1994) and I’m Not Done Yet (2000), and two children’s books with his sister, based on episodes from their childhood. He hosted local radio and television programs, taught political science as an adjunct professor at several universities, and served for two years as the judge on the daily television series The People’s Court. Koch has been a partner in the Manhattan law firm of Bryan Cave, he has lectured widely, and he has written film reviews and a weekly commentary on political and social affairs. Koch’s endorsement is still avidly sought by both local and national political candidates. In the 2004 presidential election, he crossed party lines to endorse President George H. W. Bush, on the grounds that the war against terrorism took priority over the domestic issues on which he disagreed with the president. Koch campaigned for Bush’s reelection in heavily Jewish areas, particularly in Florida. As a member of the U.S. Congress and as mayor of New York City, Koch was a strong supporter of Israel and an advocate for Jews in the Soviet Union. After leaving public office, Koch pursued a high profile in Jewish affairs. He led the U.S. delegation to a 2004 international conference in Berlin on anti-Semitism, sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The following year, he was appointed by President Bush to serve on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, which oversees the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Significance Restoring New York City’s financial health was Koch’s most important achievement as mayor. At the same time, his blunt style and colorful personality endeared him to New Yorkers and played a crucial role in the important process of reviving public morale after a period of decline caused by rising crime and fiscal problems. — Rafael Medoff Further Reading Browne, Arthur, Dan Collins, and Michael Goodwin. I, Koch: A Decidedly Unauthorized Biography of the Mayor of New York City, Edward I. Koch. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1985. This strongly critical portrait of Koch, written while he was still in office, was intended as a rebuttal to Koch’s book, Mayor. Goodwin, Michael, ed. New York Comes Back: The Mayoralty of Edward I. Koch. New York: Powerhouse Books, 2005. A collection of essays by prominent
Jewish Americans New Yorkers assessing Koch’s leadership of New York City. Koch, Edward I., and Daniel Paisner. Citizen Koch: An Autobiography. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Koch, in his typically edgy style, fills in details about his early life, his political career, and his wide-ranging activities in the wake of his mayoral duties. Koch, Edward I., and William Rauch. Mayor. New York:
Koff, Syd Simon and Schuster, 1984. Presents Koch’s unique perspective on his mayoral career, through a series of interesting and informative anecdotes. See also: Bella Abzug; Abraham Beame; Michael Bloomberg; Jacob K. Javits; Fiorello Henry La Guardia; Bess Myerson; Abraham A. Ribicoff; Eliot Spitzer.
Syd Koff Athlete Koff was an inspiring figure both in her athletic accomplishments on the track and in her principled boycott of the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. Born: January 26, 1913; New York, New York Died: May 20, 1998; New York, New York Also known as: Sybil Cooper; Sybil Tabachnikoff (birth name) Area of achievement: Sports Early Life Syd Koff (sihd kawf) was born in New York in 1913. An item in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1928 told of a fifteen-year-old girl who proved to be such a “brilliant orator” in stumping for a local political candidate that many residents who heard her speak intended to vote for her candidate “regardless of politics.” The newspaper predicted that young Sybil Tabachnikoff, a talented artist, would soon “quit art for law school.” As it turned out, the loquacious teen ultimately chose neither art nor law, but instead she followed her passion to the world of track and field. As a teenager growing up on Manhattan’s lower East Side and later in Brooklyn, Koff surreptitiously took part in high school track and field events, out of view of her disapproving parents. Few East European Jewish immigrants regarded athletics as an appropriate or feasible profession for a young Jewish woman. While practicing on the beach at Coney Island in 1930, Koff was noticed by a member of Brooklyn’s Millrose Athletic Club, whose members included the famed Jesse Owens. Adopting the name Syd Koff to evade her parents’ scrutiny, Koff soon was competing successfully against Olympic medalists Lillian Copeland and Babe Didrikson. Koff won twenty-two medals in competitions in 1930 and 1931, and she was one of twelve athletes who qualified as
members of the first American team to the Maccabiah, the international Jewish athletic event held in Tel Aviv. Life’s Work Koff’s journey to British Mandatory Palestine took three weeks, by boat and train and by donkey cart and camel. Vying against competitors from fourteen countries, Koff led the United States to victory, in the process capturing gold medals in the one-hundred-meter dash, the high jump, the broad jump, and the javelin throw. Thrilled by Koff’s success, girls in Tel Aviv took to imitating her fashion sense: Many were soon seen wearing berets the way Koff did, tilted at a stylish angle. Koff returned to Tel Aviv in 1935 for the next Maccabiah, winning two more gold medals. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, still Koff’s biggest fan after twenty years, hailed her as “Bensonhurst’s One-Girl Track Team.” Koff began training for the 1936 Olympics amid a growing national debate over whether the United States should participate in a competition that would be held in Nazi Germany. Many American Jewish organizations, as well as Catholic groups, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and prominent political figures, called for a boycott of the Games as a protest against the Nazis’ persecution of German Jewry. They also argued that the Nazis would exploit the Olympics to improve their international image. The Amateur Athletic Association was divided, ultimately voting, by a narrow margin, to support participation. The American Olympic Committee, encouraged by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, favored participation in the Games and was unmoved by the opposition. Most athletes were unwilling to forgo an opportunity to compete in the world’s most prestigious sporting event. They also believed, or at least hoped, that the 635
Kohlberg, Jerome, Jr. Olympics could be separated from international political controversies. Ironically, Jewish track stars Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, who chose to go to the Olympics, were kept on the sidelines by their coaches, who were afraid that the inclusion of Jewish athletes would offend German leader Adolf Hitler. Koff and her colleague Copeland were among the handful of athletes who announced they would refuse to compete for spots on the Olympic team, as a protest against Nazi anti-Semitism. Koff never regretted her decision. “We knew what was going on (in Germany),” she said later. “There was no question of going to the Olympics, none at all. There was no hesitation, no regret, nothing at all.” Koff never had another opportunity to participate in the Olympics. Although she won the 1940 American Athletic Union national championship in track, which automatically qualified her for that year’s Olympics in Helsinki, the Games were canceled two weeks later when the Soviet Union invaded Finland. In the meantime, Koff had married and decided to set aside her athletic career in order to raise a family. In 1968, however, at age fifty-five, Koff resumed her train-
Jewish Americans ing. “Just when I thought I was through with track, the urge was so great that I took to my shoes again,” she said. Koff won numerous medals in Masters Track and Field meets and retired permanently only after a broken hip sidelined her in 1972. She died in New York City in 1998. Significance At a time when most athletes, and even the U.S. government, favored friendly relations with Nazi Germany, Syd Koff and a handful of other potential Olympians risked their athletic careers in 1936 in order to take a principled stand against Nazi anti-Semitism. —Rafael Medoff Further Reading Feldberg, Michael. Blessings of Freedom: Chapters in American Jewish History. Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 2002. A thorough recounting of Koff’s athletic career and her bold stand against participating in the 1936 Olympics in Germany See also: Max Baer; Moe Berg; Mark Spitz; Kerri Strug; Dara Torres.
Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. Business leader and philanthropist Kohlberg spearheaded the formation of the private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts (KKR) in 1976. KKR was the first investment firm to focus on leveraged buyouts to facilitate acquisitions. In this process, debt, rather than equity, was primarily used to finance the transaction. Born: July 10, 1925; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Business; philanthropy; scholarship Early Life Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. (JIH-rohm KOHL-burg), spent his early years in Westchester County, New York. He graduated from New Rochelle High School, located about twenty miles north of New York City. Kohlberg spent three years in the U.S. Navy in the latter years of World War II, achieving the rank of lieutenant. He then enrolled at Swarthmore College, outside Philadelphia, utilizing the G.I. Bill to finance his education. It was at Swarthmore, a small liberal arts college originally 636
founded by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), that Kohlberg learned important lifetime values. Kohlberg came to honor the principles of tolerance and selflessness espoused by Quakerism. These principles would guide him throughout his life and business career, especially in his dealings with his associates at Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts (KKR), the leveraged buyout firm Kohlberg founded, and in his creation of the Philip Evans Scholarship Foundation at Swarthmore. After graduating from Swarthmore, Kohlberg received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. The Harvard degree was also financed by the G.I. Bill, and led Kohlberg to later pursue strong support for continued educational funding for veterans. Life’s Work Kohlberg was an early pioneer in the private equity and leveraged buyout industries. He joined Bear Stearns in 1955. While working for Bear Stearns, alongside Henry Kravis and George R. Roberts, Kohlberg began a
Jewish Americans series of investments in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Described as “bootstrap” investments, the acquisition of Orkin Exterminating Company in 1964 was the first significant leveraged buyout (LBO) transactions. Through this process, sometimes referred to as “financial engineering,” company management was able to maintain control, take partial ownership, and eventually cash in. Numerous buyouts followed Orkin, and, while most of these were successful, these transactions led to tensions with Bear Stearns’s senior management, which did not favor LBOs. By 1976, tension between Bear Stearns and the trio had become so great that it became clear Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts would depart the company. Leaving Bear Stearns, Kohlberg founded the private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts, with partners Kravis and Roberts, on May 1, 1976. The firm was enormously successful, executing numerous profitable LBOs. However, by the mid-1980’s, tensions began to grow among the trio. In part, these differences emerged from the Swarthmore experience of Kohlberg; Kravis and Roberts had attended secular colleges. In 1984, Kohlberg became ill and was absent from KKR for nearly a year. During this period, Kravis and Roberts changed the operating philosophy of the firm. Originally, KKR would earn a profit only when the investors and management of bought-out companies did; KKR had become structured to make money even when investors did not. In 1987, Kohlberg resigned from KKR over these differences in strategy and philosophy. Instead, Kohlberg chose to return to his roots, acquiring small, middlemarket companies, and in 1987 he founded a new private equity firm, Kohlberg and Company. By the end of 2007, Kohlberg and Company had raised six equity funds, with approximately $3.7 billion in investor commitments. Retiring from Kohlberg and Company in 1994, Kohlberg
Kohlberg, Jerome, Jr. began to operate a series of debt investment funds under the banner of Katonah Debt Advisors and a publicly traded investment vehicle, Kohlberg Capital. Significance Kohlberg demonstrated that it is possible to be extremely successful and still maintain core values of honesty, tolerance, and selflessness. He never forgot his Swarthmore roots, or the fact that it was the G.I. Bill that got him through college. Kohlberg has fought vigorously for veterans’ benefits; in 2007, he started a veterans’ scholarship program. Even greater than his business accomplishments are his generous philanthropic contributions. —Ralph W. Lindeman Further Reading Bartlett, Sarah. The Money Machine: How KKR Manufactured Power and Profits. New York: Warner Books, 1991. This comprehensive volume represents the most thorough evaluation of KKR’s legacy. Relevant chapters include “Jerry” and “Early Days.” The book is generally favorable to Kohlberg and his ethical values. Burrough, Bryan, and John Helyar. Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Discusses contentious issues at KKR between Kravis and Kohlberg. Highlights KKR’s takeover of RJR Nabisco. Schwartz, Nelson D. “What ‘the Bear’ Meant for the Street.” The New York Times, March 30, 2008. Interesting article about Bear Stearns and the people the organization hired, including Kohlberg. See also: Marcus Goldman; Meyer Guggenheim; Michael Milken; David Sarnoff; George Soros.
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Walter Kohn Austrian-born physicist A Nobel Prize winner, Kohn was a pioneer in the field of density functional theory, which advanced the understanding of atomic bonds. Born: March 9, 1923; Vienna, Austria Area of achievement: Science and technology Early Life Walter Kohn was born to Salomon and Gittel Kohn in Vienna, Austria, on March 9, 1923. Salomon came from Hodonin, Moravia, and Gittel came from Brody, Poland. Walter Kohn’s maternal grandparents were Orthodox Jews who introduced Kohn to the values of traditional Judaism. The family was middle class, but the declining fortunes of Salomon’s business (selling fine-art postcards) eventually left them in need of money. Kohn attended public schools in Vienna, until the Anschluss in March, 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria. At age sixteen, Kohn was expelled from school. His sister escaped to England, and his father was forced to work without pay. Kohn enrolled in a Jewish school, the Chajes Gymnasium, where he first became interested in physics and math. In August, 1939, Kohn was able to follow his sister to England on a Kindertransport, which carried Jewish children out of the country to safety, just before World War II broke out. Kohn’s parents were unable to escape Austria and later died in Auschwitz, a concentration camp. In May, 1940, after British prime minister Winston Churchill’s order to intern all individuals with passports from enemy countries, Kohn was forced to travel through a sequence of British internment camps, where he attended lectures from interned scientists. He was sent to Canada in July, 1940, where he studied under the mathematician Fritz Rothberger. Life’s Work In 1942, Kohn was released, and he decided to enroll at the University of Toronto in its challenging mathematics and physics program. As a German citizen, Kohn was not permitted to enter the chemistry building, but he received a special dispensation to enter the program without the chemistry component. In Kohn’s junior year, he joined the Canadian army, and in his free time he researched and wrote a paper, published as “Contour Integration in the Theory of the Spherical Pendulum and the Heavy Symmetrical Top.” He was given an early bache638
lor’s degree in applied mathematics because of wartime conditions. After completing a master’s program in 1946, Kohn received a Lehman Fellowship to study at Harvard University. His thesis adviser, Julian Schwinger, asked Kohn to work on difficult three-body scattering problems, using function variational principles. Kohn eventually developed a system, known as Kohn’s variational principle for scattering, which he used for his thesis in 1948. Kohn continued at Harvard as a postdoctoral student for several years. After discussing problems in solid-state physics with his colleague John Hasbrouck Van Vleck, Kohn was invited to lecture on the subject in 1949. He was offered a job teaching solid-state physics at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1950, but he postponed the appointment to spend a year on a National Research Council Fellowship. In 1952, in collaboration with Res Jost, Kohn found a solution to the problem of S-wave scattering by a spherical potential. At Carnegie Tech Kohn contributed to the KKR (Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker) multiple scattering band theory, which described the energy band structure of electrons. In 1954, doing research at Bell Laboratories, Kohn began his thirteen-year professional partnership with Quin Luttinger, with whom he worked on effective mass theory, many-body theories, and superconductivity. In 1957, Kohn gave up his Canadian citizenship to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Kohn moved to the University of California, San Diego, in 1960. He began work on density functional theory (DFT) in 1963; his work in this field is often considered his most significant achievement. In 1964, he demonstrated that the total energy of a system operating under the principles of quantum mechanics could be determined once the electron density of the system was known. Kohn employed the Rayleigh-Ritz variational principle, a system much like those he had become familiar with in his graduate work at Harvard. He reduced the incredibly complex system to a theorem depending on only three spatial coordinates. This work was published as two Hohenberg-Kohn theorems. In collaboration with Lu Sham, Kohn refined his early work on DFT into the Kohn-Sham equations, which offer a simpler framework for calculating the many-body problem. In 1998, Kohn won a Nobel Prize for his work on DFT. In his later years, Kohn was involved in the creation of
Jewish Americans a program of Judaic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Kohn also agitated for an end to the University of California’s collaboration with U.S. nuclear facilities. However, he and other faculty members were unable to effect the university’s withdrawal from nuclear research. Significance Kohn’s work on DFT has informed solid-state physics calculations for decades and has proved invaluable for later researchers in many branches of chemistry. His scientific contributions to fields besides solid-state physics have been notable as well: In 1961, he received a Buckley Prize for his work on semiconductor physics. In addition, Kohn was awarded the National Medal of Science. In 1979, he became founding director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara. — C. Breault
Koppel, Ted Further Reading Broad, William J. “Forty-One Nobel Laureates Sign Declaration Against a War Without International Support.” The New York Times, January 28, 2003. Article provides insight into Kohn’s activism against war. Hanta, Karin. “From Exile to Excellence.” Austria Culture 9, no. 1 (January/February, 1999). Wide-ranging interview with Kohn that makes reference to his Austrian background. Scheffler, Matthias, and Peter Weinberger, eds. Walter Kohn. New York: Springer, 2003. An oral history of Kohn, based on interviews with friends and colleagues. See also: Richard Axel; Paul Berg; Stanley Cohen; Albert Einstein; Gertrude Belle Elion; Sheldon L. Glashow; Rudolph A. Marcus; Edward Teller.
Ted Koppel British-born journalist, newscaster, and writer A celebrated newscaster, Koppel developed a style that set the standard for anchoring and interviewing on late-night network television. Born: February 8, 1940; Nelson, Lancashire, England Also known as: Edward James Koppel (full name) Area of achievement: Journalism Early Life Ted Koppel (KAH-pehl) was born Edward James Koppel in Nelson, Lancashire, England, in 1940. He is the only child of German Jews. Koppel’s father, Edwin, was a factory tire worker; his mother, Alice, was a singer and pianist. Koppel’s parents fled from Germany to escape the Nazis in the 1930’s. Koppel was born during World War II, while England was one of the allied forces fighting against Germany. In 1950, he attended Abbotsholme boarding school for three years. Koppel was one of two Jews attending the school. Although he was in the religious minority, it was his German heritage that caused him to be treated as an outcast in school. Koppel’s father was interned for a year and a half in England as an enemy alien. This and the ill treatment by Koppel’s fellow boarding-school students seem to have
Ted Koppel. (Getty Images)
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Koppel, Ted influenced Koppel’s views on race and contributed to his desire to investigate such issues throughout his career. Koppel became interested in a career in journalism during his adolescence. He and his father listened to radio broadcasts by famed journalist Edward R. Murrow, which influenced Koppel’s desire to enter into the same field. Koppel’s style of interviewing seemed to form in his early years. While in boarding school, he developed his ability to listen, which became a key component of his live interviews. Koppel moved with his family to the United States in 1953. Upon his arrival, Koppel was struck by the differences between life in the United States and in England. One thing that surprised Koppel was the apparent abundance in the United States, compared to the rationing in Europe. Koppel earned two degrees: a bachelor’s degree in speech and dramatic arts from Syracuse University in 1960 and a master’s degree in mass communications from Stanford University in 1962. Koppel married Grace Anne Dorney in 1963, the same year he became a U.S. citizen. Koppel and his wife raised four children: three
Jewish Americans daughters and one son. In 2010, Koppel’s son, Andrew, died of an accidental overdose of drugs and alcohol.
Life’s Work Although Koppel is best known as a television reporter, his commercial broadcast journalism career began in radio in 1962. He spent one year at WMCA radio in New York before moving to the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) News in 1963. Koppel remained at ABC News and served as anchor for Nightline until he resigned in 2005. Koppel has held various roles throughout his career, including newscaster, chief diplomatic correspondent, anchor, managing editor, senior news analyst, moderator, reporter, contributing analyst, producer, and executive editor. He worked for various agencies and networks, including ABC News, Discovery, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and National Public Radio (NPR). Some of the shows Koppel has anchored or contributed to include Nightline (originally aired as The Iran Crisis: American Held Hostage), 20/20, ABC Saturday Night News, ABC World News Tonight, and BBC World News America. Koppel also served as moderator, anchor, host, reporter, and/or correspondent for several television specials, such as The Defining Late-Night News Reporting Koppel Report (various episodes for ABC), ABC News Close-up on Illegal Aliens: The First airing on November 8, 1979, The Iran Crisis: America Held Gate Crashers (1975), and The Media and Hostage was created to report on the American hostage crisis in Iran. It Human Rights (PBS, 1986). was the first time a news program was aired during late night. Ted Koppel joined the show in December of that year. In March, 1980, Throughout his career, Koppel covered America Held Hostage became Nightline, and Koppel remained in the both domestic and foreign affairs. In addianchor role for twenty-five years before departing in 2005. During his tion to providing coverage from a news stutenure, Koppel covered news stories and conducted live interviews asdio, Koppel traveled throughout the world to sociated with current events or popular topics. He went beyond the trareport from several key events. These inditional newscaster role and served as managing editor and, at times, cluded the Vietnam War, Iraqi wars, and the executive producer. These roles enabled Koppel to influence the news Civil Rights movement. Koppel has reported stories and select interviewees for the episode. on every presidential election held during Unlike some of his contemporaries, who appeared to be more interhis career and interviewed national and interested in ratings and demographics, Koppel applied discretion when national dignitaries, such as former president determining newsworthy items and gathering facts to establish accuRichard Nixon and presidential candidates racy and authority. His approach provided for factual representation rather than the promotion of ideas or embellishment. Without preMichael Dukakis, Pat Robertson, and Bill pared questions, Koppel interviewed guests and relied on his skills to Clinton. Other notable interviewees included craft a show that would resonate with a general audience. baseball manager Al Campanis, television Koppel established himself as a prominent journalist while at personality Mother Angelica, Philippine presNightline. Although many predicted that a late-night news show ident Ferdinand Marcos, Palestine Liberawould not succeed, Nightline continues to broadcast. Many credit tion Organization leader Yasser Arafat, rock Koppel’s artful ability to conduct live interviews and to determine star Gene Simmons, evangelists Jim and newsworthy events as the reasons for his enduring legacy to serious Tammy Faye Bakker, and Microsoft chairtelevised journalism. man Bill Gates.
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Jewish Americans Koppel conducted town-hall meetings with and covered the stories of ordinary people impacted by extraordinary circumstances, such as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) sufferer Ryan White, cancer survivors (Living with Cancer: Town Meeting, 2007), people impacted by racism (Back to Jasper: A Town Meeting on Racism and Bias Crime, 2003), and victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (Ready or Not: Lessons from the Storms, 2005). Throughout his career, Koppel received numerous accolades for his contributions to journalism and news reporting. These include Emmy Awards, Peabody Awards, the Alfred I. duPoint-Columbia University Award, Sigma Delta Chi Awards, Overseas Press Club Awards, and the George Polk Award from Long Island University. The first to receive the National Press Foundation’s Sol Taishoff Award in 1983, Koppel was inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame in 2003. Koppel also received several honorary degrees from distinguished universities such as the University of Southern California (USC), Brandeis University, and Johns Hopkins University. He has written books and articles on topics spanning local and global issues. Koppel has spoken or served as moderator on several occasions. He frequently speaks at his alma mater Syracuse University and has appeared as himself in television programs and films. Koppel provides commentary and coverage of news events and current issues through both the written and the broadcast forms of media. Intensely private, Koppel does not speak often publicly about his personal affairs. Significance Koppel’s approach to and style of programming influenced not only late-night news shows but also the industry as a whole. The techniques he applied to researching subjects, listening to the interviewee, and asking pene-
Koppel, Ted trating questions have resulted in Koppel being regarded as a significant figure in news journalism. Koppel’s role as anchor of Nightline enabled him to introduce topics through his own words, report on newsworthy items, and conduct live interviews with noteworthy individuals. Koppel’s role as managing editor of Nightline allowed him to influence the format and subject matter of the show. Several observers have commented that his approach and impact lent credibility to the relevance and accuracy of the information shared. Koppel’s focus on matters of race and equality, perhaps in honor of his faith and heritage and their impacts on his family, brought to light important issues domestically and abroad. His ability to report and to interview while in the midst of the action has provided compelling and memorable news coverage. —Caprice Nelson de Lorm Further Reading Koppel, Ted. Off Camera: Private Thoughts Made Public. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. A collection of Koppel’s 1999 journal entries, revealing thoughts and anecdotes about past and current events. Koppel, Ted, with Kyle Gibson. Nightline: History in the Making and the Making of Television. New York: Times Books, 1996. Traces the beginning of Nightline, along with stories about key interviews and the development of the show. Silverstein, Morton. “Ted Koppel Speaks Out.” Television Quarterly 35, nos. 3/4 (Spring/Summer, 2005): 31-39. An interview with Koppel that covers elements of his childhood, his career, and the beginning of Nightline. See also: David Halberstam; Larry King; Morley Safer; Daniel Schorr; Mike Wallace.
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Sandy Koufax Baseball player Koufax was the ace of the pitching staff of the Los Angeles Dodgers, a team that won four World Series in ten years. Born: December 30, 1935; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Sanford Braun (birth name); Sandy Koufax (full name) Areas of achievement: Sports; activism Early Life Sandy Koufax (KOH-faks) was born in Brooklyn in 1935, the oldest son of Evelyn and Jack Braun. Koufax’s father abandoned the family in 1938, and in 1944 Evelyn remarried. Irving Koufax adopted his wife’s young son, who took the name Koufax. Sandy Koufax had only limited contact with his biological father for the rest of his life. In high school, Koufax was a gifted basketball player whose natural athletic ability attracted the attention of a local baseball coach who convinced Koufax to
Sandy Koufax. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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pitch for a summer-league team, Koufax’s first attempt at baseball. He later attended the University of Cincinnati, where he joined the college basketball team but played little. Koufax tried out for the baseball team the following year. Although he pitched only thirty-one innings, Koufax recorded fifty-one strikeouts, a performance that attracted the attention of a number of major league scouts. Koufax did workouts for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers, which quickly signed the nineteen-year-old to a contract. Koufax demanded and got a fourteen-thousand-dollar signing bonus, enough to pay for his college education if his baseball career did not pan out. To make room on their roster for Koufax, the Dodgers had to send future Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda down to the minors. In 1958, the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. Life’s Work Koufax’s early career, from 1955 to 1960, was anything but successful. Although he had a blazing fastball, Koufax suffered from control problems that resulted in a high number of walks, hit batsmen, and wild pitches. Lacking confidence in Koufax, Dodger manager Walter Alston used Koufax only sparingly, and Koufax sometimes went weeks between starts. The long stretches of inactivity prevented Koufax from getting into any sort of rhythm, which in turn hurt his performance when he did get into a game. Although the Dodgers won the World Series in 1955, Koufax did not pitch during the series. His early career was also marred by health problems, including an ankle injury in 1958. Between 1955 and 1960, Koufax compiled a record of twenty-six wins and thirty losses, and at the end of the 1960 season he was asking the Dodgers to trade him. He also contemplated retiring from baseball altogether. After 1960, however, Koufax’s career turned around. He reported to
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spring training in excellent physical condition, A Perfect Game and he made two major adjustments to his pitching style. He shortened his windup to imOn September 9, 1965, Sandy Koufax was part of one of the prove his vision of the strike zone, and he most memorable baseball games ever played. The Los Angeles also tried not to throw the ball with all of his Dodgers hosted the Chicago Cubs. Cubs pitcher Bob Hendley threw a masterful complete game, giving up a single hit and allowstrength. By easing up only a slight amount, he ing only two Dodgers to reach base. The only Dodger run came on could still achieve the blazing speed for which a throwing error that was not reflected in Hendley’s game statistics. he was known, and he could also control his Hendley’s performance would be be rated superlative—had he not pitches much better, which reduced the number shared the mound with Koufax. That day Koufax pitched the sevof walks and wild pitches. In 1961, Koufax won enth perfect game in professional baseball history. He did not aleighteen games, broke Christy Mathewson’s low a single Cub to reach base, striking out fourteen batters, the National League record by striking out 269 batmost for any perfect game. For the entire game, Koufax threw only ters, and made his first appearance in the All113 pitches, seventy-nine for strikes. The two base runners allowed Star Game. He would appear in the All-Star by Hendley were the lowest number ever in a major league game Game every year for the rest of his career. The when both team stats are combined. The victory was also Koufax’s 1962 season started equally auspiciously for fourth no-hitter, breaking Bob Feller’s record of three in a career, and was also the fourth year in a row that Koufax had thrown a noKoufax when he threw the first of his four nohitter. hitters in his career, blanking the New York Mets. However, a serious hand injury limited his performance in the latter part of the season. Koufax recovered from the injury to have a with the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, Koufax refused to dominant season in 1963, throwing another no-hitter, play. Instead, Don Drysdale pitched for the Dodgers and winning twenty-five games (including eleven shutouts), lost the game. Koufax pitched on Sabbath days without striking out 306 batters, and posting a 1.88 earned run avobjecting, but he refused to play on such an important erage (ERA). Koufax led the league in all three statistics, Jewish holiday. winning him the triple crown for pitchers that year. For The 1966 season opened with Koufax involved in a his performance, Koufax won the National League’s dispute with the Dodgers. Unhappy that the Dodgers reMost Valuable Player Award and the Cy Young Award, fused to offer them more money, Koufax and Drysdale given to the league’s outstanding pitcher. Koufax’s 1963 together decided to “hold out,” refusing to play until the Cy Young was the first time a pitcher received a unaniDodgers renegotiated their contracts, the first time playmous vote for the award. The Dodgers capped the seaers had tried this tactic since Ty Cobb in 1913. They also son by winning the 1963 World Series, sweeping the hired a lawyer to do their negotiating, the first time playNew York Yankees. In 1964, Koufax again showed ers hired a representative. Although Koufax and Drysflashes of brilliance, throwing yet another no-hitter and dale did not receive as much money as they had hoped, compiling a nineteen-to-five record. His season was the Dodgers did relent and increased their pay rather than shortened again by injuries, including the first manifestarisk losing their two talented pitchers. Koufax was again tion of the elbow arthritis that eventually ended his outstanding. He won a career-high twenty-seven games, career. had a career-low 1.73 ERA, and won his third Cy Young Koufax’s plague of injuries continued in 1965. DurAward. Koufax led the Dodgers again into the posting spring training, his arm caused him pain, and only exseason, but the Dodgers were swept by the Baltimore tensive icing and painkillers permitted him to continue Orioles in the World Series. When the season ended, the season. Despite the injury, Koufax and the Dodgers Koufax, at the peak of his career, announced his retirehad another outstanding year. Koufax again threw a noment. The arthritis in his pitching elbow had grown hitter, this time a perfect game, again won the Triple worse, and, fearing a loss of ability and lifelong injury, Crown with twenty-six wins, 382 strikeouts, and a 2.04 Koufax decided to leave baseball on his own terms. In ERA, and again won a unanimous Cy Young Award. The 1972, in his first year of eligibility, Koufax entered the Dodgers won another World Series, defeating the MinHall of Fame. He subsequently worked as a television nesota Twins in an epic seven games. Koufax earned atsports commentator and held coaching positions in the tention during the World Series as much for not pitching Dodger organization. as for pitching. Because game one of the series coincided 643
Kramer, Larry Significance Koufax was a dominant pitcher in baseball history and arguably the best left-handed pitcher of all time. When he gained control of his fast pitches, he was almost unhittable. Outstanding during the regular season, Koufax was even greater in the postseason. In World Series games, he posted a 0.95 ERA and struck out more batters than innings pitched, a clear benchmark of pitching greatness. He was a great hero to Jewish Americans, who respected and honored his decision to not pitch on Yom Kippur in 1965, especially during a World Series. His exit from baseball generated mixed emotions. While some lamented the loss of a great baseball talent, others envied Koufax’s ability to decide the terms on which he left the sport. —Steven J. Ramold
Jewish Americans Further Reading Adelman, Tom. Black and Blue: Sandy Koufax, the Robinson Boys, and the World Series That Stunned America. Boston: Back Bay, 2007. Thrilling account of the 1966 World Series between the Dodgers and the Orioles. Adelman describes the battles between Koufax and the powerful Orioles lineup and his decision to retire after the Series ended. Koufax, Sandy, and Ed Linn. Koufax. New York: Viking, 1966. Koufax’s autobiography is the definitive history of his career and health challenges. Leavy, Jane. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy. New York: Harper, 2003. Unauthorized biography includes recollections from people who knew, worked with, or cheered for Koufax. See also: Hank Greenberg; Bud Selig.
Larry Kramer Activist, writer, and playwright A playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, Kramer was a leading activist on behalf of the gay community at the outbreak of the epidemic of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Born: June 25, 1935; Bridgeport, Connecticut Areas of achievement: Activism; social issues; theater Early Life Larry Kramer (KRAY-mur) was the second child of a Jewish family in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The family soon moved to Maryland, where Kramer attended local schools. After high school, he enrolled at Yale University in 1953. He joined a Jewish fraternity, Pi Tau Pi, and acknowledged his homosexual orientation. In 1957, he received his B.A. in English. He then took a job at Columbia Pictures, working in the story department, where he rewrote scripts. He wrote his first major screenplay, based on D. H. Lawrence’s 1920 novel, Women in Love, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1969. In 1973, Kramer wrote a musical based on Frank Capra’s film The Lost Horizon (1937). The earnings from this made him financially independent. 644
Life’s Work In 1973, Kramer wrote for the stage Sissies’ Scrapbook (retitled Four Friends), which marked his entry into a lifelong use of explicitly homosexual themes in his plays. The play was produced in New York at a small theater, Playwrights Horizons. Kramer was disillusioned when the producer closed the play, despite a favorable review of it in The New York Times. Kramer then turned to novel writing. Five years later, in 1978, his first novel, Faggots, was published. It proved highly controversial. Its setting was Manhattan and Fire Island, where Kramer was living at the time as part of the gay community. However, his depiction of that gay community was far from flattering: He depicted a superficial lifestyle, with constantly dissolving relationships. His underlying theme described the search for true love amid guilt, low self-esteem, and promiscuity. The gay community took it as a direct attack and an example of selfhatred. Book reviewers panned it; they could not believe the gay community was as unsavory as it was portrayed. Nevertheless, the novel proved popular and remained in print. Two years later, in 1980, Kramer became involved in the burgeoning acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) crisis, when many of his friends became sick. Together with a small group of men, he formed the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), mainly to help buy medi-
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cine and obtain treatment for AIDS sufferers. Kramer After the election of George W. Bush, Kramer delivdiffered fundamentally with most of the others, who ered a speech denouncing the “moral right.” He pleaded wanted to concentrate on fund-raising. Kramer believed with the gay community to engage with the new administhe major funding should be public and targeted New tration. The speech was worked into a book, The Tragedy York City mayor Ed Koch particularly. Kramer also of Today’s Gays, published in 2005. Again, the gay comspread the message that the best way to stop AIDS was munity was divided about Kramer’s approach, some for gay men to refrain from sex. The GMHC refused to finding it much too strident. go along with either approach and dismissed him as diBack in 1978, Kramer had begun to write an Amerirector in 1983. can history from a gay perspective. Called The American Kramer toured Europe, visiting Holocaust sites in PoPeople, the book was still, thirty years later, in a draft land and Germany, including Dachau. As a Jew, he was form of some four thousand pages. Will Schwalbe, an edstruck with the notion that the gay crisis over AIDS was a itor at Hyperion Books, was actively helping Kramer to new “holocaust.” As in the1930’s, victims and governorganize the material. ments were standing by and doing nothing. Returning to In 2001, Kramer nearly died. In fact, his death was reNew York, he began work on another play, The Normal ported in one news magazine. However, after several Heart (1985). He gave it a contemporary setting, with the protagonist nursing his sick partner, to the indifference of government agencies and a ACT UP gay organization. It was highly autobiographical and conveyed all of Kramer’s frustration, In March, 1987, Larry Kramer was invited to speak at a regular deepened by his Holocaust epiphany. The Normeeting of the New York Lesbian and Gay Community Services mal Heart ran during 1985, the longest-running Center. He spoke about forms of activism to fight acquired immuplay ever put on by the Public Theater. It was nodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and about his frustration with the Gay Men’s Health Crisis organization, which he had founded and then taken to Europe, Israel, and South Africa. then left. He asked anyone interested in direct action to attend a It later had a revival at the Public Theater. meeting to be held in two days’ time. A second play followed in 1988, Just Say About three hundred people turned up at the meeting and thus No: A Play About a Farce. Again, public figures was founded ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). It had a came under attack, especially Koch and the twofold mission: to protest inactivity and apathy in public bodies, Ronald Reagan administration. The New York especially the health industry and the government, and to gain acTimes panned it, and the play flopped. In 1989, cess to new and experimental drugs for AIDS sufferers. Kramer led Kramer published a collection of his public an active campaign that included sit-down protests, which usually statements, letters, and essays on the AIDS “holanded him in jail, and that forced the medical community to take locaust,” Reports from the Holocaust. The basic the epidemic more seriously. message was addressed to those in the gay comOne of the first protests was on Wall Street, where one hundred protesters were arrested. This followed a provocative op-ed article munity, pleading with them to work actively for by Kramer in The New York Times. Another protest was held at the gay rights and AIDS sufferers. He believed New York Stock Exchange, to call attention to the high price of many gay people, by not caring about these isBurroughs-Wellcome’s drug AZT, the only medicine available sues, were suggesting that their own lives were at the time for treatment of AIDS. Probably the most controverworthless. The volume was enlarged and resial protest was at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, vised in 1994. where there was an act of desecration. The general public’s reacKramer’s acclaimed play The Destiny of Me tion to this proved to be somewhat counterproductive to ACT UP’s opened in New York in 1992, running for a year cause. Off-Broadway at the Lortel Theatre. It was The media took a great deal of notice, as Kramer and his supnominated for a Pulitzer Prize and received two porters were media-savvy. However, the best-organized protest in Obie Awards. The play’s London run in 2002 Kramer’s view, at the campus of the National Institutes of Health in May, 1990, was almost ignored because of other events. The proearned the Evening Standard Critics’ Choice tests did, however, achieve a great deal in the 1990’s, though evenaccolade. It is as autobiographical as The Nortually the loose-knit organization divided internally and Kramer’s mal Heart, to which it is a sequel. It asks why role became less significant. Kramer, of all people, should be “chosen out” as an advocate for AIDS sufferers. 645
Kramer, Stanley hospitals refused to consider him for a transplant, he found a clinic willing to offer him a transplant for his liver, which was severely damaged by hepatitis B. His partner, David Webster, nursed Kramer, and he survived. Many people had assumed he had died of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that was in his body but which remained dormant. In 2001, Yale University agreed to give Kramer’s proposed Lesbian and Gay Studies a five-year trial period. At first, in 1997, Kramer had offered several million dollars for a Gay Center and a professorship, but Yale had declined. Through his brother, Arthur, and Arthur’s law firm, negotiations continued and agreement was reached. However, Yale closed down the program in 2006. Kramer brought out his first book of poetry, Brilliant Windows, in 1998. Significance Kramer was one of the first gay activists to fight for research and treatment of AIDS and HIV. He was also one of the first to challenge the gay community to take its destiny into its own hands. He believed this was the way for gays to learn respect for themselves and to move away from a shallow and promiscuous lifestyle. His attacks on the gay community often led to counterattacks, but his sense of mission and his Jewish sense of Holocaust caused him to fight on when others might have given up.
Jewish Americans His theatrical work established a gay theater, taking gay themes boldly to the public stage. —David Barratt Further Reading Crimp, Douglas. Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics. Boston: MIT Press, 2002. Crimp is a well-known AIDS activist and professor of sociology. Puts Kramer’s activism into a wider context. Johannson, Warren, and William A. Percy. “The Making of an AIDS Activist: Larry Kramer.” In Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. New York: Haworth Press, 1994. A view of Kramer in a book about outing, revealing the homosexuality of a person who wishes it to remain quiet. Mass, Lawrence, ed. We Must Love One Another or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. A series of essays by Kramer and about Kramer from colleagues, critics, and academics. Specter, Michael. “Larry Kramer, the Man Who Warned America About AIDS, Can’t Stop Fighting Hard and Loudly.” The New Yorker, May 13, 2002. A long profile of Kramer, covering his AIDS advocacy. See also: Susan Brownmiller; Betty Friedan; Allen Ginsberg; Tony Kushner; Grace Paley.
Stanley Kramer Film producer and director One of the earliest filmmakers to specialize in the investigation of social and political problems, Kramer demonstrated that such films could reach large audiences. Among his other innovations were bringing to the screen seven versions of Broadway plays and hiring stage actor Marlon Brando for his first Hollywood film. Born: September 29, 1913; New York, New York Died: February 19, 2001; Woodland Hills, California Also known as: Stanley Earl Kramer (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Stanley Kramer (KRAY-mur) was born in the section of New York City known as Hell’s Kitchen. His mother, Mildred, worked as a secretary in the New York office of 646
Paramount Pictures. Of his father nothing is known. His mother and Kramer lived with her parents, who were Jewish immigrants from Poland. Kramer considered his grandmother, though uneducated, bright and modern. His grandfather retired early from a position as salesman in the garment industry. Kramer credited his grandparents with instilling traditional values in him. He revealed little about his early years, and there is no substantial research that could throw light on the first three decades of his life. Anti-Semitism was common in his neighborhood. For protection he joined a gang that included other minorities, some of them African Americans. The gang’s behavior, Kramer admitted, was often improper, but although he had “close calls,” he was never arrested. He remembered remaining on the scene of property damage done by the gang, but he was not apprehended. The gang
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members did not steal, he insisted, for people in his neighborhood were not desperately poor, and those in need received help from the Democratic political machine. Kramer excelled as a student, graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School and gaining admittance to New York University (NYU) at the age of fifteen. He majored in business, although he did not think of himself as a future businessman. While at NYU he wrote an essay that attracted a representative from Twentieth Century-Fox, who offered him a paid internship in Hollywood in 1933, the year of his graduation. For most of the 1940’s he performed various researching, editing, and writing tasks. He was learning the ways of the film industry but was not making headway toward a substantial career. Not until he served in the Army Signal Corps, making training films in World War II, did it occur to him that he might become a film producer. Life’s Work Kramer formed a company with Carl Foreman, and by 1949 they acquired the funds needed for a film called Champion (1949), in which young Kirk Douglas starred as a boxer. The same year Kramer produced Home of the Brave (1949), Stanley Kramer. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images) the first Broadway play that he made into a film. The play was about anti-Semitism, which Kramer Beginning in 1955, Kramer began to direct the films had experienced in his boyhood, in the Army, and in Holthat he produced. In an early success, The Defiant Ones lywood, but because he desired his hero to be visually as (1958), a black man and a white man, played by Sidney “different” as the character felt, he cast him not as a Jew Poitier and Tony Curtis, were prisoners chained together. but as an African American. When Kramer was invited to the Moscow Film Festival One of Kramer’s most famous and controversial proin 1963, the U.S. State Department objected to the use of ductions was High Noon (1952). About this time the The Defiant Ones because the Curtis character was a racHouse Committee on Un-American Activities was atist, but Poitier agreed to appear at the festival with tempting to prosecute suspected Communists in the film Kramer, and the showing of the film became one of the industry, and the film’s scriptwriter and director were high points at a time when the Soviet Union and the among those targeted. Despite these and other probUnited States were striving to overcome the estrangelems with the film, it became one of Kramer’s great sucment between the two superpowers. cesses. Other controversial films included On the Beach In 1954, Kramer’s film, The Caine Mutiny, based (1959), which Kramer admitted was inferior to another on Herman Wouk’s best-selling 1951 book, appeared. film of that year, Hiroshima mon amour, directed by Kramer knew that he would need the cooperation of the Alain Resnais, on the subject of atomic warfare. Even as United States Navy to make the film, but Navy officials a producer-director Kramer was forced to cast Hollyinitially objected because, they claimed, the Navy had wood stars, not his own choices, but Gregory Peck and never had a mutiny. Eventually, however, he acquired a Ava Gardner in On the Beach helped to attract a much naval officer as technical adviser. As in Home of the larger audience than Resnais’s film enjoyed. Another Brave, Kramer omitted consideration of anti-Semitism, controversial film was Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), prominent in Wouk’s depiction of Nazi officers. 647
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in which Kramer found it necessary to cast Burt HIGH NOON Lancaster (an actor he appreciated but not for that role) when Laurence Olivier was unavailA film of great durability is High Noon (1952), which Stanley able. This film also experienced opposition from Kramer produced, with Fred Zinnemann as director. Both the State Department at the time of the 1963 Zinnemann and scriptwriter Carl Foreman were victims of antiMoscow Film Festival because of its negative Communist oppression at the time, and Foreman was blacklisted and found it necessary to leave the country. Kramer was criticized portrayal of Germans, who were at that time by United Artists officials for choosing to pair Gary Cooper and among international friends of the United States. the much younger and then inexperienced Grace Kelly and also for Asked about actors, Kramer confessed that selecting for another role Katy Jurado, also thought to be inexperihe did not like them particularly. He found Judy enced and much less attractive than Kelly. Nevertheless, the perGarland and Frank Sinatra uncooperative, but formances were top notch, and Cooper won the Academy Award as Kramer had great respect for the highly profesBest Actor. Kramer’s decision to shoot the film in black and white sional Spencer Tracy, who starred in Kramer’s was also questioned and so was the portrayal of Cooper’s character productions of Inherit the Wind (1960) and as a flawed ordinary man rather than as a Western superhero. A preGuess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967). In the view audience laughed at one of the film’s unusual features: a song latter racism is presented in an often humorous by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington, “Do Not Forsake Me, way, for the Tracy character must come to terms Oh My Darlin’” (also known as “The Ballad of High Noon”), but it also won an Academy Award. Kramer’s unpopular decisions all with a daughter who falls in love with an Afriturned out to make sense, and while High Noon was not chosen can American. Comedy prevails in only one best picture of 1952, it is regarded as a film classic that fully justiKramer work, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad fies these decisions. World (1963), a long, rambunctious film with dozens of stars. Kramer produced and directed films until 1979 and did some teaching thereafter. He lived Further Reading his last thirty-five years married to actor Karen Sharpe. Kramer, Stanley. A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: A Life From an earlier marriage he had one son and one daughin Hollywood. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997. In ter. The second marriage produced two more daughters. this book and in interviews Kramer revealed little Kramer died of pneumonia at the age of eighty-seven in about his early life and no details about his nearly 2001. decade-long activity in Hollywood before the war. The chapters focus on his best-known films and some Significance of his unsuccessful ones. The book provides insight Kramer was an unusual director in two ways: He prointo his relations with coworkers. duced films before he directed any, and in an era that Spoto, Donald. Stanley Kramer: Film Maker. New York: avoided the portrayal of discrimination, hatred, and prejPutnam, 1978. This book is one of Spoto’s numerous udice he specialized in such topics. He demonstrated the biographies of Hollywood celebrities. Although it is falseness of a prevailing view that audiences would not valuable as a biography of Kramer, the author falls support films with a serious message. He addressed the short of analyzing the ambivalence of his subject, for topic of anti-Semitism only indirectly, although he had Kramer seemed both to seek artistry and to risk it by felt the force of it, both in childhood and adult life. Six of submitting unnecessarily to Hollywood formulas, eshis films were nominated for best picture or best director pecially with respect to casting. or both, and participants in his films won numerous Stevens, George, Jr., ed. Conversations with the Great Academy Awards, although Kramer himself did not win Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the Amerany. In 1962, he won the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial ican Film Institute. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Award, given periodically to creative producers. Later 2006. Stevens’s interview with Kramer focuses on the criticism of his work sometimes charged him with being latter’s intentions, achievements, and difficulties as too absorbed in seeking popular success. His technical producer and director. skill has been questioned, but critics generally recognize his initiative in investigating topics often thought too See also: George Cukor; Stanley Donen; Arthur Freed; hazardous for the motion-picture screen. Ernst Lubitsch; Mike Nichols; Otto Preminger. —Robert P. Ellis 648
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Krasner, Lee
Lee Krasner Artist A skilled painter, Krasner made contributions to the art world that extended past her own artwork to the promotion of the career of her husband, the abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. Born: October 27, 1908; Brooklyn, New York Died: June 19, 1984; New York, New York Also known as: Lena Krassner; Lenore Krassner (birth name) Area of achievement: Art
Lenore and sometimes went by Lena, in the mid-1930’s she shortened her name to Lee, as a means of neutralizing her gender. She also dropped the second “s” from Krassner to Americanize it. Krasner changed her artistic style to abstraction in 1937, under the influence of Hofmann and her training at New York City’s Hofmann School of Fine Arts. She exhibited with the American Abstract Artists several times between 1939 and 1943.
Life’s Work In 1941, Krasner was an authority on New York’s art Early Life scene. John Graham, an art theorist and consultant, introLee Krasner (KRAS-nur) was the fourth of five childuced her to Jackson Pollock. Krasner’s and Pollock’s dren born to Joseph and Anna Krassner, Orthodox Jews paintings were selected for an exhibition Graham orgafrom the Ukrainian town of Shpikov near Odessa. Joseph nized at the New York firm McMillen, Inc. Graham’s inemigrated to the United States four years before his tent for the show was to illustrate that working American fourth child’s birth to escape anti-Semitism. In their shtel artists were just as good as avant-garde European artists. they assisted the rabbi with ritual observances. Once in Krasner struggled to develop a style that married her perthe United States, her father opened a grocery that sold sonal sensibilities with the artistic developments of the vegetables and fish, yet he was interested in literature, time. Her approach to painting mimicked her early trainphilosophy, politics, and studying the Talmud. His wish ing in Hebrew writing: She began each painting in the for his daughter was that she would marry a Jewish man. upper-right-hand corner, a Hebrew convention. After His religious books captivated her, especially their decomeeting Pollock, she praised his work. She connected rations and fonts. Her mother tended the shop and led the with it, and with him, both physically and intellectually. household in observing the rites of Judaism. Krasner atHis work threw hers into question; she believed her work tended services at the synagogue by her own volition. She applied to predominantly Jewish Washington Irving High School in 1921; after high school, she attended the Women’s Art School of Collage Cooper Union, graduating in 1929. She furthered her studies at the National Academy of Lee Krasner’s collages reignited her creativity and helped her Design in New York City until 1932, and then situate her needs and desires as an artist above those of her husthe abstract expressionist artist Hans Hofmann band, Jackson Pollock. She cut up pieces of Pollock’s abandoned canvases to work with and used them in about a dozen of her pieces was her mentor from 1933 to 1940. Krasner’s between 1953 and 1955. Though collage may be considered derivearly works were self-portraits in the Impresative by some critics, Krasner deliberately appropriated Pollock’s sionist style. While living with the artist Igor rejected works as a means of commenting on their relationship. Pantuhoff, she was introduced to the works of However, Krasner’s tendency to recycle work was not limited to Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Raoul Dufy. Pollock’s discarded canvases. This was a method to which she freShe was proud of her ability to support both quently turned, and she had incorporated pieces of previous works herself and a man, but Pantuhoff’s alcoholism in other mixed-media pieces as well. Krasner coped with Pollock’s and condescension grated on Krasner, and they self-destructiveness and blocked artistic flow by nurturing herself split after eight years together. In 1933, she with his scraps. Another interpretation of the use of these scraps earned an art teacher’s certification, which guarcomes from Krasner’s identity as a first-generation Jewish immianteed her employment in the coming years. grant. Cultures of poverty create philosophies and habits of thrift, and Krasner perceived value in Pollock’s discarded, yet expensive, She joined the Federal Art Project and was aspapers and canvases. signed to work as a mural painter under the direction of Max Spivak. Though she was born 649
Krasner, Lee lacked expression. In recognizing his genius, she chose to put her career aside and instead promote his work and career. Pollock’s achievements on canvas illustrated objectives she set for herself in her artwork. Pollock was attracted to Krasner’s self-confidence, cheerfulness, and pragmatism. Their strengths and weaknesses complemented each other, and soon Krasner became Pollock’s advocate, manager, and number one fan. Krasner created and maintained an environment that allowed Pollock to create masterpiece after masterpiece. She introduced him to her various circles, including artists, critics, and gallery owners. Her social networks helped Pollock achieve a level of success that he would not have found on his own. In August, 1942, Krasner moved into Pollock’s Greenwich Village apartment, a time and place that proved remarkably productive for him. In May, 1943, Krasner secured a $150-a-month stipend from Peggy Guggenheim for Pollock and decided to find a home in the country to separate Pollock from the bars where he liberally imbibed alcohol. They settled in a house in East Hampton, Long Island, about a hundred miles from Manhattan. After three years of living together, they married on October 25, 1945. At first, the only suitable studio space in the house was given to Pollock. Eventually Krasner got her studio space and began to paint. Determining their influence on each other’s work was difficult. Krasner turned to figurative pieces by 1947, but, in her quest for perfectionism, she destroyed them. She and Pollock did not have a family because time focused on raising children was not spent creating art— the artwork was more important—and Pollock was unfit for fatherhood. In the 1950’s Pollock’s work inspired Krasner less and less. She returned to Piet Mondrian and Hofmann for inspiration. Her work reflected a change of style, accenting geometrics painted in fresh colors. After 1953 she worked in collages and oils. Pollock died in a car crash on August 11, 1956. Besides cultivating Pollock’s legacy and administering his estate, Krasner worked as an artist and received the recognition she was due. Though she parted from organized Jewish practices as an adolescent, she supported Jewish charities such as the Israel Emergency Fund of the United Jewish Appeal and the Women’s Campaign for UJA-Federation. Feminist art historians showered her with attention in the 1960’s and 1970’s; they honored her for her own work, not for her identity as Mrs. Pollock. In 1983, the Museum of Mod-
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Jewish Americans ern Art featured Krasner’s work with a retrospective. After suffering with arthritis, she died of natural causes the next year. Significance Krasner was a first-generation abstract expressionist artist. She was the only woman included in this group of landmark American artists and one of two artists working in complete abstraction before World War II. Her work was rarely identified with the feminine. She refused Guggenheim’s offer to exhibit her work alongside that of other women artists in 1943. Her work and life remain enigmatic because little survives of her writings and letters and because of her all-encompassing devotion to Pollock’s career. Her choice of style, abstract expressionism, and her gender were barriers to success in her own time, although the perspective of today’s art historians has begun to redress that oversight. — Rebecca Tolley-Stokes Further Reading Engleman, Ines Janet. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. New York: Prestel, 2007. A joint biography of both artists concentrating on the ways in which their work influenced and reflected the other’s sensibilities. Hobbs, Robert Carleton. Lee Krasner. New York: Abbeville Press, 1993. Analyzes Krasner’s work through a feminist critique while chronicling her life through its various stages as she assumed and abandoned identities such as artist, lover, wife, and advocate. Landau, Ellen G. Lee Krasner: A Catalogue Raissoné. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995. Compilation of Krasner’s some 600 works in 267 plates, including exhibition history, provenance, and changes in title. Levin, Gail. “Beyond the Pale: Lee Krasner and Jewish Culture.” Woman’s Art Journal 28, no. 2 (Fall/Winter, 2007): 28-34. Article explores Krasner’s Jewish childhood and identity throughout her life. Wagner, Anne Middleton. Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism in the Art of Hesse, Krasner, and O’Keeffe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Analyzes the work and relationships three modern female artists had with spouses whose reputations and lives overshadowed theirs. See also: Judy Chicago; Helen Frankenthaler; Peggy Guggenheim; Louise Nevelson.
Jewish Americans
Kravitz, Lenny
Lenny Kravitz Musician A versatile and trend-setting performer, Kravitz integrates soul, hard rock, folk, ballads, funk, and reggae in his music. Born: May 26, 1964; New York, New York Also known as: Romeo Blue; Leonard Albert Kravitz (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music
Life’s Work In 1985, his parents divorced, and his relationship with his father became strained. Kravitz hired a manager who soon had several record labels bidding for his client. In January, 1989, he signed with Virgin Records, discarded the name “Romeo Blue,” and started recording as Lenny Kravitz. In 1987, he married The Cosby Show actor Lisa Bonet (her parents were African American and Jewish). They had a daughter, Zoe Isabella, in December, 1988. His debut album, Let Love Rule, released in September, 1988, had moderate success in the United States, but it was an instant hit overseas. It led to tour offers. Having played all the instrumental parts on his album, he needed to as-
Early Life Lenny Kravitz (KRA-vihts) was born on May 26, 1964, in New York City to Seymour “Sy” Kravitz, a National Broadcasting Company (NBC) television news producer, who was of Russian Jewish descent, and African American actor Roxie Roker, who played Helen Willis on the 1980’s television situation comedy The Jeffersons. Because Lenny Kravitz’s father was also a freelance jazz promoter, Kravitz was exposed to the company of jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald, to the music of Motown, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Wonder, and to his parents’ favorite music: jazz, rhythm and blues, opera, gospel, and blues. Kravitz knew he wanted to be a musician by the time he was five years old. His family relocated to Los Angeles in 1974. Kravitz joined the California Boys Choir, performing a classical repertoire, and he sang with the Metropolitan Opera. He began concentrating on rock music and artists such as Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis, John Lennon, and Bob Marley. He attended Beverly Hills High School and was accepted into its highly respected music program in 1978. By this time he played drums, guitar, piano, and bass. At age fifteen, he intended to pursue a music career. Influenced by rock star David Bowie, Kravitz straightened his hair, wore blue contact lenses, and adopted the name “Romeo Blue.” He graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1982, and instead of going to college, he persuaded his father to finance his first demonstration recording, which got him several record label offers. Some, though, wanted him to modify his musical style to make it more obviously African American and rhythm and blues. He refused, however, and he determined to make his own kind of music. Lenny Kravitz. (Redferns/Getty Images)
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Kravitz, Lenny semble a band to tour. He soon gathered a combo of drums, keyboard, guitar, and saxophone. He also wrote songs for other artists. He worked on a song for Madonna, “Justify My Love,” and rumors started that he and Madonna were having an affair. He and Bonet separated in 1991 and divorced in 1993. In the 1990’s, Kravitz’s career became more successful, as he wrote songs and produced albums for other artists such as French singer Vanessa Paradis, Slash, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, Mick Jagger, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, and Wonder. In 1999, he won the first of four consecutive Grammy Awards for the best male rock vocal performance. In 1995, his mother died of breast cancer at the age of sixty-six. Kravitz’s Greatest Hits album came out in 2000, and it became his most successful album, selling eleven million copies worldwide. It reached number two on the Billboard 200 chart. In 2001, in Miami, Florida, where he was recording, he matched the description of a bank robber and was arrested. When the bank teller confirmed Kravitz was not the robber, the musician was quickly cleared. In 2005, his father died the day before Kravitz was to begin touring with Aerosmith. Kravitz proceeded with the tour, saying his father’s death was a time of celebration because he was in heaven. Kravitz identified himself as a Christian by choice and a Jew, both of which were “all the same” to him. He said that because of his upbringing by parents of different faiths—as a child he attended a synagogue and a church—spirituality was important in his life. He said he was half Jewish and half black. However, he admitted his mother always told him that in the United States, one drop of black blood means that he is considered black. In the early 2000’s, he started Kravitz Design, a firm focusing on interior and furniture design, the career he says he would have chosen had he not become a musician. Kravitz also did some film work, culminating in a National Association for the Advancement of Colored
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Jewish Americans People (NAACP) Image Award nomination for outstanding supporting actor in a motion picture for his role as Nurse John in Precious (2009). In 2008, Milan, Italy, presented him with a key to the city in recognition of his work with the United Nations Millennium Campaign to end world poverty. Significance Kravitz is a singer and musician who often plays all the instruments on his recordings; he is a record producer, arranger, and songwriter. He produces elaborate music videos and stage performances. His records and albums have brought him numerous honors, including seven Grammy Awards, American Music Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, and Blockbuster Entertainment Awards. He has toured all over the world. His versatility has brought him financial success, worldwide recognition, and popularity. His diverse style presents a message of peace and inclusion that has earned the respect of his audiences and his fellow entertainers. —Jane L. Ball Further Reading Cooper, Carol, ed. Pop Culture Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race. New York: Nega Fulo Books, 2006. Critical essays including an interview with Kravitz and Bonet. Miller, Frederic P., et al., eds. Lenny Kravitz: Singer, Songwriter, Multi-instrumentalist, Record Producer. Beau Bassin, Mauritius: Alphascript, 2009. A biography that contains personal and professional details. Seliger, Mark, and Lenny Kravitz. Lenny Kravitz. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Arena Editions, 2001. Photos of Kravitz on tour, with family, and in outrageous fashions. Includes an interview by friend and photographer Seliger. See also: Randy Newman; David Lee Roth; Carly Simon; Paul Simon.
Jewish Americans
Kristol, William
William Kristol Journalist Through his editorship of The Weekly Standard and other media outlets, Kristol became one of the leading public figures of the neoconservative movement. Born: December 23, 1952; New York, New York Also known as: Bill Kristol Areas of achievement: Journalism; government and politics Early Life William Kristol (KRIHS-tuhl) was born to be a conservative. His father, Irving Kristol, was the godfather of neoconservatism, and his mother, Gertrude Himmelfarb, was a scholar on Victorian England, with a largely conservative interpretation of that era. William Kristol attended Manhattan’s elite Collegiate School. After only three years at Harvard University, he was awarded his B.A. in 1973, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He gained a Ph.D. in government from Harvard in 1979, and he taught politics and political philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1983 and at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government from 1983 to 1985. Many neoconservatives began as Democratic New Deal liberals, but during the 1960’s they reacted against what they saw as the radicalization of the Democratic Party. They opposed racial quotas, much of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, the loss of tradition in politics, and a perceived “softness” toward communism. Kristol’s early political involvements were in support of Democratic candidates: Hubert Humphrey for president in 1968, Henry “Scoop” Jackson for president in 1972, and New York’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan for U.S. senator in 1976. However, by the 1980’s, Kristol had turned his back on the Democrats, allying himself instead with the Republicans. Life’s Work In 1985, Kristol became chief of staff to William Bennett, secretary of education in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, the conservative Republican icon. Under the subsequent Republican administration of George H. W. Bush, Kristol served from 1989 to 1993 as the chief of
staff to Vice President Daniel Quayle, where Kristol was sometimes referred to as “Quayle’s brains.” In the early 1990’s, Kristol was a leading critic of President Bill Clinton’s health care plan, denying that there was any health care crisis and claiming that it would result in most Americans becoming dependent upon the federal government and its onerous regulations. At this time Kristol was also a major figure in the Project for the Republican Future, which was credited with giving the Republicans control of Congress in 1994. To publicize the neoconservative position, in 1995, Kristol, John Podhoretz, and Fred Barnes founded The Weekly Standard, with Kristol as the editor. Like so many opinion magazines, it failed to turn a profit and for many years it was subsidized by
William Kristol. (Getty Images)
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Kristol, William press baron Rupert Murdoch. With Robert Kaplan, in 1997 Kristol founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a Washington, D.C., think tank committed to increasing American influence in the world through a “Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.” Along with other neoconservatives, Kristol claimed that the Gulf War of 1990-1991, by leaving Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in power, did not go far enough. In 1998, Kristol, with others, publically appealed to Clinton to take a stronger stand against Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction. In the 2000 election, Kristol’s initial choice for the Republican nomination was Arizona senator John McCain, because of his greater foreign policy experience over George W. Bush, the eventual nominee. After the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, Kristol urged war against Iraq, arguing that it could have a transforming effect on the entire Middle East, and he predicted that any American involvement would be brief. When the war dragged on, he advocated a large increase in American troops, which finally occurred with the 2007 “surge.” In 2008, Kristol was an early supporter of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as the vice presidential nominee to Republican presidential nominee McCain. Given his conservative reputation, it was something of a surprise when Kristol became an opinion writer for the liberal New York Times in 2007. He also appeared regularly on Murdoch’s Fox News Sunday panels, a more congenial outlet for conservatives. Kristol, like most neoconservatives, was a strong advocate for Israel and for continued U.S. support for that nation. In 2006, he backed Israel in its war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and in 2009 he supported the Israeli war against the Gaza Strip’s Hamas regime. Because of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Kristol suggested that a war against Iran might prove to be necessary to protect Israel and American interests in the Middle East and elsewhere. In 2009, Kristol, along with Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, founded Keep America Safe, an organization committed to a strong military posture in a dangerous world, with a par-
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Jewish Americans ticular focus on the threat that Iran poses with its nuclear ambitions. Significance A second-generation neoconservative, Kristol became a leading spokesman for an aggressive American foreign policy, an advocate for the spread of American values worldwide, a defender of the United States-Israel relationship, and a critic of excessive activist or “liberal” government. Although never an elected officeholder, Kristol, through his long-term editorship of The Weekly Standard and other media activities, has exerted considerable influence on the Republican Party, in both policy and personnel matters. — Eugene Larson Further Reading Easton, Nina. Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. The author, writing from a liberal perspective, discusses several neoconservatives, including Kristol. Kaplan, Lawrence, and William Kristol. War over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission. New York: Encounter Books, 2003. The neoconservative defense of the war against Iraq, which promised to spread American values to the Middle East. Kristol, William, ed. The Weekly Standard: A Reader, 1995-2005. New York: Harper, 2006. Gives a comprehensive summary of Kristol’s, and neoconservatism’s, policy positions. Kristol, William, and E. J. Dionne, eds. Bush v. Gore: The Court Cases and the Commentary. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001. The authors, Kristol a conservative and Dionne a liberal, have collected a number of articles and legal opinions regarding the controversial 2000 election. See also: Carl Bernstein; David Halberstam; Seymour M. Hersh; Walter Lippmann; William Safire.
Jewish Americans
Kruger, Barbara
Barbara Kruger Artist, feminist, and photographer Kruger is a conceptual artist whose provocative work, appearing in print media, video, and public places, has challenged social, cultural, economic, and political norms. Her unexpected juxtapositions of images and text address such issues as consumerism, gender and racial stereotypes, violence, religion, and power. Born: January 26, 1945; Newark, New Jersey Areas of achievement: Art; social issues; women’s rights Early Life On January 26, 1945, Barbara Kruger (KREW-gur) was born to a working-class Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey. Her father found work as a chemical technician, and her mother was a legal secretary. They lived in a predominantly black neighborhood. When Kruger’s father became the first Jewish person ever employed at Shell Oil Company in Union, New Jersey, their family received anti-Semitic telephone calls. After attending Weequahic High School, Kruger entered Syracuse University, the School of Visual Arts, in 1964. When her father died in 1965, she returned to New Jersey. In 1966, she entered the Parsons School of Design in New York City, where she studied fine arts for a year. Her teachers included photographer Diane Arbus and painter Marvin Israel, formerly an art director at Harper’s Bazaar. Israel introduced Kruger to Richard Avedon and other photographers. Condé Nast Publications hired Kruger as a second designer for Mademoiselle magazine, and she was promoted quickly to chief designer in 1967. After four years at Mademoiselle, Kruger resigned but continued to work as a freelance picture editor and graphic designer at Aperture, House and Garden, and other magazines. In 1969, Kruger had started doing artwork. Like other women artists of the time, Kruger integrated traditional decorative crafts with fine art. She created large stitched and crocheted wall hangings of ribbons, beads, feathers, stuffing, sequins, paint, fur, and glitter. She was included in the 1973 Whitney Biennial Exhibition and had several solo exhibitions. Life’s Work Beginning to question the meaning of her art, Kruger created more abstract work in 1975. In 1976, she stopped doing art completely and moved to Berkeley, California,
where she attended film screenings, read theory and criticism, and took photographs later published in her book Picture/Readings in 1979. She taught as a visiting artist at numerous institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley, the Art Institute of Chicago, the California Institute of the Arts, and Ohio State University. In 1979, she began writing columns on film, music, and television for Artforum. That year, she also began developing her trademark style of black-and-white photographs of cultural images from mainstream sources that were juxtaposed unexpectedly with familiar phrases or slogans typeset in the Futura Bold Italic font against a red background. Beginning in the 1980’s, she exhibited her new work in museums and galleries. She was represented by Mary Boone Gallery beginning in 1986. At the same time, she did large-scale public projects worldwide, such as billboards, subway posters, bus placards, and display windows. She also put her art on T-shirts, tote bags, and other merchandise. Her art cleverly and directly addressed social, economic, political, and cultural issues. I Shop Therefore I Am (1987) was a popular piece on canvas shopping bags. It’s a Small World but Not If You Have to Clean It (1990) showed an image of a woman looking through a magnifying glass. Other art included Your Comfort Is My Silence (1981), Money Can Buy You Love (1985), In Space No One Can Hear You Scream (1987), and Super rich/Ultra gorgeous/Extra skinny/Forever young (1997). Beginning in the 1990’s, Kruger worked more with film, video, and sound. Her 2004 video installation Twelve consisted of four video screens showing private dialogues on themes such as obligation, friendship, family, love, identity, control, and opinion. In the twenty-first century, Kruger has continued to write, teach, and exhibit internationally, including solo shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2000), the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland (2005), Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2008), and Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York (2010). Significance One of the most influential artists of her time, Kruger was a pioneer in using advertising design and typography in fine art and showing that words could be considered art. She put her art on consumer products and in 655
Krugman, Paul places usually reserved for advertising, thus directly confronting the largest number of viewers with her thoughtprovoking work. Her numerous awards and honors have included a National Endowment for the Arts grant (1983-1984) and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Fifty-first Venice Biennale (2005). Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and other museums. —Alice Myers Further Reading Gorner, Veit, et al. Barbara Kruger: Desire Exists Where Pleasure Is Absent. Bielefeld, Germany: Kerber, 2007. This catalog documents Kruger’s famous 2004 video installation, Twelve, and her 2006 graphic installation at the Kestner Gesellschaft gallery in Hanover, Germany. Illustrated. Kruger, Barbara, et al. Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. This large catalog accompanying Kruger’s first comprehensive ret-
Jewish Americans rospective exhibition in 2000 includes seven scholarly essays. Beautifully illustrated. Bibliography and exhibition chronology. Kruger, Barbara, Alexander Alberro, et al. Barbara Kruger. New York: Rizzoli, 2010. This collection of essays covers her art and career during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Beautifully illustrated. Kruger, Barbara, and Kate Linker. Love for Sale: The Words and Pictures of Barbara Kruger. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1996. This survey covers Kruger’s career from the 1960’s to the 1980’s. Beautifully illustrated, including many full-page plates. Phillips, Lisa, and Barbara Kruger. Barbara Kruger: Money Talks. New York: Skarstedt Fine Art, 2005. This volume is a collection of Kruger’s works from the 1980’s that deal with the power and politics of money. Illustrated. See also: Judy Chicago; Jim Dine; Helen Frankenthaler; Eva Hesse; Lee Krasner; Louise Nevelson; Barnett Newman.
Paul Krugman Professor and author Krugman is a professor of economics and the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics for explaining the nature of international trade patterns and the geographic concentration of wealth by examining economies of scale and consumer demand for different kinds of goods and services. Born: February 28, 1953; Albany, New York Also known as: Paul Robin Krugman (full name) Areas of achievement: Economics; education Early Life Paul Krugman (KREWG-muhn) is the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Brest-Litovsk, Belarus, and a son of David and Anita Krugman. He was raised on Long Island and graduated from Bellmore’s John F. Kennedy High School. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Yale University in 1974, and he completed a Ph.D. in the same field at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977. Krugman has said that his interest in economics was sparked by the science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels, set in a future where 656
social scientists use “psychohistory” to manage a civilization that is destroying itself. For “psychohistory,” Krugman read economics. Life’s Work During 1982 and 1983, Krugman worked on staff for the Council of Economic Advisors in Ronald Reagan’s White House. He then taught at Yale, MIT, the University of California, Berkeley, the London School of Economics, and Stanford University before joining Princeton University’s faculty in 2000. By 2010, Krugman had written or edited more than twenty-five books, scores of academic papers, and hundreds of newspaper columns, many of which seek to explain the complexities of economics to nonspecialists. Krugman’s International Economics: Theory and Policy (1988), which was cowritten with Maurice Obstfeld, has been a long-standing international economics college textbook. Krugman is best known, however, as a public intellectual, who writes about politics and economics. His citation for the Nobel Prize saluted Krugman for explaining the nature of international trade patterns and the
Jewish Americans geographic concentration of wealth by examining economies of scale and consumer demand for different kinds of goods and services. Krugman occasionally comments on Jewish politics, as in 2003, when he said that Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s assertion that Jews rule the world by proxy was an anti-Semitic sop to appease Muslim critics of the George W. Bush administration’s policies. At the same time, however, Krugman wrote that Bush’s promotion of war in Iraq and his unconditional support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was damaging the United States in the Arab world. While Krugman said that Mahathir’s remarks were “inexcusable,” Krugman reaped a whirlwind of criticism from Jews for his excoriation of Bush’s Israeli policies. Some commentators also said that an article Krugman wrote for The New York Times Magazine in 1998 supported Mahathir’s assertion that Jewish speculators were responsible for a currency crisis at that time. Krugman was married to Robin L. Bergman, and that marriage ended in divorce. His second wife, Robin Wells, is an academic economist with whom he has collaborated on textbooks. Significance Krugman considers himself a liberal, and one of his best-known books for a general audience (as well as his New York Times blog) is titled The Conscience of a Liberal (2007). In addition to his academic publishing, Krugman publishes a steady stream of books for general readers, such as The Age of Diminished Expectations (1990), which analyzes increasing income inequity in the United States’ “new economy.” He became increasingly critical of the Bush presidency’s economic poli-
Kubrick, Stanley cies, as illustrated by his collection of columns, The Great Unraveling (2003). He frequently criticized the Bush administration’s policies that widened the gap between the rich and the poor. In 1999, The New York Times asked Krugman to write a twice-a-week column on business and economics, which often covers politics as well. Krugman is unabashed about his promotion of progressivism, a direction in which he would like to see the United States heading. —Bruce E. Johansen Further Reading Krugman, Paul. The Conscience of a Liberal. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. Krugman writes on economics and politics, especially on the damage done to the middle class during George W. Bush’s presidency. _______. The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. A collection of Krugman’s columns in The New York Times, with a focus on the impact of the Bush administration’s economic policies on the U.S. economy. _______. Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995. Explains economic theory to nonspecialists. MacFarquhar, Larissa. “The Deflationist: How Paul Krugman Found Politics.” The New Yorker, March 1, 2010. A wide-ranging personal profile of Krugman, covering the roots of his ideology and his family life. See also: Kenneth Arrow; Milton Friedman; Alan Greenspan; Paul Samuelson; Herbert Stein.
Stanley Kubrick Filmmaker and photographer Known for producing, screenwriting, supervision of photography, sound editing, and his attention to minute details, Kubrick directed a cluster of films that stand among the most memorable in American cinema. Born: July 26, 1928; New York, New York Died: March 7, 1999; Childwickbury Manor, near Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England Areas of achievement: Entertainment; photography
Early Life Just a year before Stanley Kubrick (KEW-brihk) was born, his father, a homeopathic physician, changed the family name from Kubrik to Kubrick and his given name from Jacob to Jacques/Jack. The child of Jewish immigrants from Galicia and Romania, Jacob married Gertrude Perveler (whose family had also emigrated from Austria) in a Jewish ceremony in 1927 in New York City, but the Kubricks raised their son and daughter in a secular home. An indifferent student, Stanley Kubrick attended neigh657
Kubrick, Stanley borhood public schools in the Bronx. When he was twelve, his father taught Kubrick to play chess, which became a lifelong fascination (and a source of income, when he played for quarters in Washington Square Park as a teenager). The following year, his father introduced his son to another lifetime interest when he bought the boy a Graflex camera. Bright and talented, the teenager soon became the official photographer for his high school. Photography and jazz occupied Kubrick’s attention far more than his studies. When he graduated from William Howard Taft High School in 1945, his grade average was too low to qualify for admission to a good college. While still in high school, Kubrick had sold some of his photographs to Look magazine, including a series of photographs of a teacher instructing an English class in
Stanley Kubrick. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Jewish Americans the works of William Shakespeare. After high school graduation, Kubrick continued with Look, first as an apprentice in 1946, then as a staff photographer in the late 1940’s. Postwar New York City brimmed with opportunities to see international cinema, and Kubrick became an avid filmgoer. As a young man, Kubrick had two brief marriages, each time to a Jewish woman: American Toba Metz (1948-1951) and Austrian-born dancer and designer Ruth Sobotka (1954-1957). Life’s Work Kubrick moved from still photography to filmmaking in the early 1950’s, first directing documentary shorts, then two short narrative features, Fear and Desire (1953) and Killer’s Kiss (1955), both financed by Kubrick’s family and friends. Kubrick later prevented his first feature from inclusion in retrospectives. However, its story of soldiers caught behind enemy lines signaled crucial interests. Although never in the armed services himself, Kubrick harbored an enduring fascination with the military and its effects on male aggression. The young director’s breakthrough came with The Killing (1956), a crime film with a nonlinear story line, which marked Kubrick, who cowrote the screenplay, as an innovator. Although not financially successful, the black-and-white feature attracted the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which financed Kubrick’s next film, Paths of Glory (1957). Set in World War I and filmed in Germany, Paths of Glory would later join the ranks of classic antiwar films. Christine Harlan, a member of a famous German theatrical family, played the only female speaking part (as Susanne Christian). Kubrick and Harlan married in 1957 and had an affectionate relationship that lasted until Kubrick’s death. They raised Harlan’s daughter by a former marriage and two daughters of their own. At MGM, Kubrick replaced director Anthony Mann shortly after production had begun on the historical epic Spartacus (1960). More a star vehicle for Kirk Douglas than a Kubrick project, Spartacus was an experience that soured Kubrick on Hollywood. Kubrick moved to England to film his adaptation of the infamous novel Lolita (1955). Although less provocative than Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Kubrick’s version of the story of a professor obsessed with a young girl nevertheless gained attention mostly for its salacious subject matter. Continuing to film in England, Kubrick created a dark
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Kubrick, Stanley
satire of the military mind: the comic masterCinema Auteur piece Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Both Unlike the work of a typical auteur, the films of Stanley Kubrick Lolita and Dr. Strangelove are animated by the seem superficially different, for they move across genres. Howgenius of actor Peter Sellers, playing multiple ever, on closer examination, Kubrick’s films share crucial comparts. monalities: a pessimistic view of human relations, with a tonal Kubrick spent five years developing the iconic preference for irony and satire over sentimentality; a dependence on visual storytelling, with formal composition of images high2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Confused by its lighted; central characters who discourage audience identification; oblique narrative, many viewers enjoyed the the creative, and often ironic, use of background music; a thematic film, shot in Super Panavision 70, as pure visual concern for the conflict between reason and the masculine libido spectacle. The expensively produced science(often in settings of war or technologically driven contexts); an fiction film engendered a cult following and an abiding curiosity about the role of the irrational unconscious in huongoing debate regarding its meanings. In the man behavior; and a fascination with the grotesque. Kubrick’s 1970’s, Kubrick released A Clockwork Orange working methods were legendary: long preproduction periods of (1971) and Barry Lyndon (1975), once again isolated preparation with an obsessive attention to detail; a routine with Kubrick adapting well-known novels, as of multiple takes in production with demanding expectations and was his habit throughout his career. Each film innovative solutions, especially regarding cinematography; and a had a striking visual design, a disreputable propostproduction control that sometimes extended beyond a final, intensive edit into screening situations. A private, idiosyncratic, briltagonist, and an ironic attitude. The violence of liant autodidact, Kubrick gave the world some of the most remarkA Clockwork Orange first earned it an X rating able films of the twentieth century, notably Dr. Strangelove: Or, in the United states; copycat violence in EnHow I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 2001: gland led Kubrick to withdraw the film from A Space Odyssey (1968), and The Shining (1980). circulation in Britain, and it was not rereleased until after his death. Kubrick’s two films from the 1980’s—The Shining (1980), a domestic horror film starring Significance an unforgettable Jack Nicholson, and Full Metal Jacket Despite being honored with only one Academy Award (1987), a critique of military training and its results in the (for Special Effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey), Kubrick Vietnam War—were both commercially successful and, is widely admired as one of the great American filmmaklike many Kubrick films, grew in stature with critics as ers of the second half of the twentieth century. Working time passed. One of several never-produced projects across many film genres, with a rare independence and from the 1980’s was a screenplay entitled Aryan Papers, an even more rare perfectionism, Kubrick brought a based on a novel, Wartime Lies (1991) by Louis Begley, skeptical, questioning sensibility and a technically adroit about a young Polish Jew who poses as a Catholic during professionalism to every film project. His early interest the Nazi occupation. Although this was Kubrick’s only in photography continued for a lifetime, as he produced project with an explicit Holocaust setting, critic Geoffrey visually driven narratives that became increasingly exCocks argues that all Kubrick’s films, and especially The pressionistic and increasingly infrequent. Born a New Shining, reflect the director’s ambivalent, and continuYorker, Kubrick remained a U.S. citizen in contact with ing, preoccupation with Nazi Germany and the HoloAmerican friends throughout his life; however, he lived caust. and worked in England from 1962 until his unexpected One of the most anticipated films in film history, Eyes death in 1999. Wide Shut (1999), starring the then-married superstars —Carolyn Anderson Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, was released after a Kubrick hiatus of more than a decade. Expectations were Further Reading high, perhaps unreasonably so, and the film about a conCocks, Geoffrey. The Wolf at the Door: Stanley Kubrick, temporary married couple confronting their sexual fantaHistory, and the Holocaust. New York: Peter Lang, sies had a lukewarm reception. Kubrick unexpectedly 2004. A unique approach to Kubrick’s films, concendied in his sleep only four days after screening the final trating on his unconscious; a rigorous examination of edit of Eyes Wide Shut. Although Kaddish was read at his the filmmaker’s Jewish roots and fascination with funeral, it was not a Jewish ceremony. 659
Kumin, Maxine Germany; extensive bibliography; color stills from films. LoBrutto, Vincent. Stanley Kubrick: A Biography. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1997. Based on numerous interviews (but not with Kubrick) and extensive archival research; includes black-and-white photographs, including some from Kubrick’s youth. Naremore, James. On Kubrick. London: British Film Institute, 2007. Thoughtful analyses of all of Kubrick’s films, published after his death; black-and-white photographs; filmography; index. Nelson, Thomas Allen. Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s
Jewish Americans Maze. New and expanded ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Argues that Kubrick’s films are united in an “aesthetic of contingency”; black-andwhite photographs; bibliography organized by film. Phillips, Gene D., ed. Stanley Kubrick: Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2001. A collection of sixteen interviews conducted with Kubrick between 1959 and 1987. See also: Cecil B. DeMille; Stanley Donen; Kirk Douglas; Stanley Kramer; Barry Levinson; Sidney Lumet; Arthur Penn; Otto Preminger.
Maxine Kumin Poet and educator Kumin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, has written about nature, her past, and the degrading treatment of animals raised for food. She and her family settled in a rural farmhouse, an area that gives her endless inspiration for her poems.
school in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. She wrote some poetry at a young age, but Kumin, who has characterized herself as a “jock,” was focused on becoming a swimmer. She worked out at the Broadmore Pool in Philadelphia,
Born: June 6, 1925; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Also known as: Also known as: Max; Maxine Winokur (birth name) Areas of achievement: Education; literature Early Life Maxine Kumin (MAKS-een KEW-mihn) was the youngest child and the only daughter of Peter Winokur, owner of a large pawnshop in South Philadelphia, and Belle “Doll” Simon, a homemaker. Kumin’s grandparents, on both sides, were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Although the family embraced Jewish traditions and attended a Reform temple in Philadelphia, they lived in a mostly Catholic neighborhood in the Germantown section of Philadelphia and celebrated Christmas like their Christian friends. Because the public school was a mile away and there was no bus, Kumin attended the school next to her house from kindergarten through second grade. It was a Catholic school, affiliated with the Convent of the Sisters of Saint Joseph. When Kumin was eight, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Hearing stories about the Holocaust, Kumin felt guilty about living a safe, privileged life. These feelings are reflected in several poems in The Nightmare Factory (1970), her third book of poetry. After her parents found a rosary in her pocket, Kumin was sent to public schools and graduated from high 660
Maxine Kumin. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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racing freestyle for the Women’s Athletic AssoLiving Within and Without the Halo ciation, and thought she was in line to compete in the Olympic Games. She was offered a chance When Maxine Kumin was gravely injured after her horse to tour with Billy Rose’s Aquacade when she Deuter bolted on July 21, 1998, bystanders believed she would die was eighteen, but her father would not allow it. or at the least be paralyzed. The C1 and C2 vertebrae of her neck Her poem, “Life’s Work,” blends the story of were broken, and so were eleven ribs. She had a punctured lung, her mother’s training to be a concert pianist liver and kidney damage, and multiple contusions. Kumin was immobilized in a device called a halo (axial traction) to prevent furwith her training to be a distance swimmer. ther damage to her neck and to facilitate healing. It was expected Both were not allowed to do what they wished she would be confined to the device for twelve weeks. For a person because, according to their fathers, a woman’s who enjoyed a physical life out of doors, this was a cruel prospect. place was neither in a concert hall nor competAt one point, Kumin considered suicide, but her family came to her ing in a sport. rescue. Her husband of fifty years handled the details of their life at In 1942, Kumin entered Radcliffe College, the farm and the animals. Her daughter, Judith, took a leave of abmajoring in history and literature. As a freshsence from her position with the United Nations to stay with her. man, she was placed in an advanced writing Judith got Kumin started on the diary detailing her recovery that class and submitted some poems to Wallace became Inside the Halo and Beyond (2000). Her son, Daniel, set up Stegner, then an instructor, for his comments. a television, so she could watch Red Sox games. Her daughter, He wrote that she should “Say it with flowers,” Jane, flew in from the West Coast to spoon-feed her. Supported by her family and friends, Kumin found the will to heal. Less than six but not try to write poetry. That ended her atmonths after the accident, she was in Florida, teaching a writing tempts at poetry for some years. Kumin became workshop. an activist, joining a group working with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), a labor group trying to establish a union at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, near Boston. came her mentor; she called him her “Christian academic When the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) notified daddy.” It was Holmes who obtained a part-time teaching her father that she was consorting with Communists, he position for her at Tufts. At the workshop Kumin met threatened to take her out of Radcliffe. Kumin said she Anne Sexton; they became friends, motivating and supwas staying and would pay her own way with scholarporting each other’s writing. Sexton also had young chilships and work study. She graduated in 1946, and on dren and lived nearby. They worked together on their June 29, 1946, she married Victor Montwid Kumin, a writing every day, often through long telephone converchemical engineer. Kumin received a master’s degree sations. Kumin published her first book of poetry, Halffrom Radcliffe in 1948, and that year had her first child. way, in 1961, in an edition of one thousand copies. Only three hundred copies sold, but the book was critically acLife’s Work claimed. Kumin continued to write, and in 1961 she and Between October, 1948, and June, 1953, Kumin had Sexton were selected for the Radcliffe Institute of Indethree children and was occupied with their care. The pendent Study, an experiment to provide married women family moved to Newton, a suburb of Boston, and Kumin an opportunity to study and possibly to publish. played the part of a suburban mom. To “save her sanity,” In 1963, the Kumins bought a neglected two-hundredshe began ghostwriting articles for medical journals and acre dairy farm in Warner, New Hampshire. The farm composing light verses for magazines. When pregnant was to be the Kumins’ summer retreat, but, inspired by with her third child, Kumin vowed that if she did not sell Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), Kumin was comone of these verses before her son was born, she would mitted to doing something positive for the environment. give up poetry. In her eighth month, her verses started She called the farm Pobiz, short for poetry business, but selling to magazines, such as Cosmopolitan, and to the farm became more than a getaway. It was a place to newspapers. She published a couple hundred light verse write poetry. The family moved to the farm permanently poems, but her commitment to her family always came in 1976. There, gardening became Kumin’s passion, first; her writing was “fit in.” along with rescuing and raising horses and preserving In 1957, Kumin joined a writing workshop at the Bosthe land. ton Center for Adult Education, taught by poet and Tufts Kumin continued writing, both poetry and prose. She University English professor John Holmes. Holmes be661
Kunitz, Stanley and Sexton wrote four children’s books together. Sexton’s suicide in 1974 was devastating to Kumin, but she continued to write. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Kumin uses traditional metrics and rhyme in her poetry. Form is critical to her as a device to keep emotions under control. Her poems are often about her family, including “The Pawnbroker,” about her father and her past. Kumin’s writing embraces a range of interests. Poems about the natural world, such as “Woodchucks,” which is heavily anthologized, are typical of Kumin. Some of them are startling in their cruelty as Kumin portrays the reality of the treatment of animals raised for food, as in “Taking the Lambs to Market.” In 1973, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Up Country: Poems of New England (1972). Over the years Kumin has taught poetry classes at various colleges and universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brandeis, and Princeton. She has directed a number of writing workshops, written poetry and prose, nurtured her family, and enjoyed her home in New Hampshire. Her writing has won many awards. She was appointed Library of Congress consultant in poetry in 1981; the position was later renamed U.S. Poet Laureate. In 1998, she had a life-threatening accident and almost died. Then seventy-three, Kumin recovered and continued to write, publish, teach, and tend to her family, animals, and land. Significance Kumin has published eighteen books of poetry, five novels, several children’s books, essays, and short sto-
Jewish Americans ries. Her body of work shows her commitment to nature; she was once called “Roberta Frost,” demonstrating her similarity to poet Robert Frost. However, Kumin goes beyond Frost in detailing both the beauty and the ugliness of nature by describing how people have defiled the planet. She also writes about faith and belief, family and parenthood, and bearing witness to contemporary events. —Marcia B. Dinneen Further Reading Brown, Deborah Lambert. “Maxine Kumin.” In Jewish American Women Writers, edited by Anne R. Shapiro. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. An overview of Kumin’s life and a critical survey of her poetry. Grosholz, Emily, ed. Telling the Barn Swallow. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1997. Collection of essays ranging from an exploration of Kumin’s life to critiques of her poetry. Kumin, Maxine. Inside the Halo and Beyond: The Anatomy of a Recovery. New York: Norton, 2000. Kumin’s journal of her recovery from a devastating accident. Includes reflections on her life and family. _______. “An Interview with Maxine Kumin.” Interview by Chard DeNiord. American Poetry Review 39, no. 1 (January/February, 2010): 39-45. Includes reminiscences about her life, her poetry, and the people she has known. See also: Stanley Kunitz; Adrienne Rich; Muriel Rukeyser; Gertrude Stein; Louis Untermeyer.
Stanley Kunitz Poet and educator Kunitz identified himself as a poet of nature, and he shared his love for the sea, the seasons, and the colors of the earth in his richly imaged poems. A celebrated mentor, he founded two educational centers for poets. Born: July 29, 1905; Worcester, Massachusetts Died: May 14, 2006; New York, New York Also known as: Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (full name) Areas of achievement: Literature; education Early Life Stanley Kunitz (KYEW-nihtz) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to Russian Jewish parents. His father, Solomon, a dress manufacturer, killed himself before 662
Kunitz was born. His mother, Yetta, immigrated to the United States from Lithuania; as a young woman, she worked in the sweatshops of New York’s lower East Side. After her husband’s suicide, she took over his dressmaking business. She remarried when her son was eight years old. Kunitz’s stepfather, Mark Dine, died five years later. The absent father is a recurring image in Kunitz’s poetry. Kunitz was the valedictorian of his class at Worcester Classical High School, and he got a scholarship to Harvard University. He won the prestigious Garrison Medal for Poetry in 1926, the year he graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in English. He completed his master’s degree at Harvard in 1927, intending to join
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the faculty. He stated in an interview that he was told that he “couldn’t hope to teach there because ‘Anglo-Saxons would resent being taught English by a Jew.’” After leaving Harvard, Kunitz went to work as a reporter on the Worcester Telegram and then as an editor for the H. W. Wilson Company in New York City. Kunitz made his living as a well-regarded editor of reference books for many years, sometimes freelancing from Connecticut or Pennsylvania while publishing his poetry. His earliest poems were collected in his first book, Intellectual Things, in 1930, the same year that he married poet Helen Pearce and bought a run-down hundred-acre farm in Connecticut. Kunitz was divorced from Pearce in 1937. He married Eleanor Evans in 1939, and he lived with her on a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Their daughter Gretchen was born in 1940. In 1943, at the age of thirtyeight, Kunitz was drafted and served in the U.S. Army until World War II ended in 1945. His second book of poems, Passport to the War, was published in 1944. Life’s Work With the help of his friend and fellow poet, Theodore Roethke, Kunitz was offered his first teaching position at Bennington College in 1946. He continued to teach for the next forty years; at first he worked in a series of short-term positions until he began a long-term association with Columbia University in 1963. Kunitz was a natural teacher who became an influence on a generation of American poets. In 1958, Kunitz divorced Evans and married painter Elise Asher. His third book of poetry, Selected Poems, 1928-1958, the first to appear in fourteen years, was published. The book includes many of the works from his first two books as well as new poems. Selected Poems, 1928-1958 won a Pulitzer Prize in 1959 and established Kunitz’s critical reputation. Kunitz felt most at home outside the city. He and Asher began spending summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and in 1962 they bought a house there. They spent the next forty years dividing their time between New York City and Provincetown. Kunitz was instrumental in organizing the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown in 1968 and Poets House in New York City in 1985. After a visit to Russia on a cultural exchange program in 1967, Kunitz began working
with Russian scholars to translate Russian and Eastern European poetry into English. Kunitz’s fourth volume of poetry, The Testing-Tree, was published in 1971, thirteen years after Selected Poems, 1928-1958. This volume marks a turning point to a new, freer form of poetry. His translation, Poems of Akhmatova, was published in 1973. A prose volume, A Kind of Order, a Kind of Folly: Essays and Conversations, appeared in 1975, and The Poems of Stanley Kunitz, 19281978 (1979) won the Lenore Marshall Prize for the best book of poetry published in the United States in that year. Then in his seventies, Kunitz began receiving more critical attention than at any time in his fifty-year career. He was appointed a consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress from 1974 to 1976. The first book-length criticism of his work was published in 1980. He was honored
Stanley Kunitz. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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A Poet of Nature Stanley Kunitz described himself as a poet of nature, and one of his major themes was the simultaneity of life and death. The cycle of life, regeneration, rebirth, and the garden and the colors of the Provincetown sea and sky are all present in “Touch Me,” the final poem in the Collected Poems (2000). In the poem Kunitz appeals to readers’ senses, commenting on the “whistling wind,” the “gunmetal sky,” and the “touch me” of the title, which brings his past into his present. Kunitz once declared that “one doesn’t live in the moment, one lives in the whole history of (one’s) being, from the moment (one becomes) conscious.” He deftly captures this fullness of life in his poetry, which is told in the rich images of nature.
at festivals and by literary journals. The many poets who had been influenced by Kunitz put together a volume of poems, essays, and sketches called A Celebration for Stanley Kunitz on His Eightieth Birthday (1986). Kunitz resigned from his regular teaching position at Columbia in 1985, the same year that Next-to-Last Things: New Poems and Essays was published. He remained a dynamic speaker for the rest of his life, actively promoting poetry through seminars, readings, and lectures until he was nearly a hundred years old. Many critics considered the quality of his poems to have improved with the passing years. Kunitz’s Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected won the National Book Award in 1995. The Collected Poems was published in 2000. Kunitz became tenth Poet Laureate of the United States in the fall of 2000 at the age of ninetyfive. A second tribute volume, To Stanley Kunitz, With Love from Poet Friends, was published on the occasion of his ninety-sixth birthday in 2002, with proceeds benefiting the Fine Arts Work Center. Kunitz had a near-fatal health crisis in 2003, from which he recovered with a sense of spiritual renewal. After his wife of forty-seven years, Asher, died in the spring of 2004, he found much inspiration and solace in his Provincetown garden. Kunitz’s hundredth birthday in 2005 was marked by celebrations in New York and in Provincetown and by the publication of The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden. Kunitz died of pneumonia on May 14, 2006, in New York. Significance By the end of his long life, Kunitz was considered the most distinguished and admired living American poet. 664
He was remarkable for remaining vital and writing some of his richest work at an advanced age. His later work conveys a religious feeling of reverence for life by means of an intense connection with nature rather than by means of a sectarian faith. Kunitz is significant not only for his own fine poetry but also for his service to poetry. His conviction that artists should not work in isolation led him to found two artistic communities, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Poets House in New York. His teaching was invaluable to many younger poets and his role as Poet Laureate and his busy reading schedule brought poets, poetry and the public together. —Susan Butterworth Further Reading Henault, Marie. Stanley Kunitz. Boston: Twayne, 1980. Considers the first fifty years of Kunitz’s career: biography, themes, forms, characteristics, translations, and prose writings. Kunitz, Stanley. Next-to-Last Things: New Poems and Essays. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1985. Kunitz speaks about his life and poetry in several autobiographical essays and an edited version of a 1982 Paris Review interview. Kunitz, Stanley, and Genine Lentine. The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. Photographs, conversations, poems, and reflections of, with, and by the poet, centering on his long life in the garden. Moss, Stanley, ed. A Celebration for Stanley Kunitz on His Eightieth Birthday. Riverdale-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Sheep Meadow Press, 1986. Includes poems, essays, sketches, and reminiscences by a large number of Kunitz’s colleagues, peers, and students. _______. To Stanley Kunitz, With Love from Poet Friends. Riverdale-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Sheep Meadow Press, 2002. A tribute to Kunitz on his ninety-sixth birthday. Orr, Gregory. Stanley Kunitz: An Introduction to the Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. A critical study of Kunitz’s poetry, images, and themes by a poet who was his student. See also: Allen Ginsberg; Maxine Kumin; Howard Nemerov; Adrienne Rich; Gertrude Stein; Mark Strand; Louis Untermeyer.
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William Kunstler Criminal and civil rights lawyer Kunstler was an outspoken and zealous civil rights lawyer who defended unpopular defendants and controversial causes. He used his immense legal skills and uncanny ability to generate publicity to defend his clients by putting the prosecution and the American judicial system on trial. Born: July 7, 1919; New York, New York Died: September 4, 1995; New York, New York Also known as: William Moses Kunstler (full name) Area of achievement: Law Early Life William Kunstler (KUHNST-lur) was born in New York City, the son of a proctologist, Monroe Bradford Kunstler, and Frances Mandelbaum. He had one brother, Michael, and one sister, Mary. Kunstler graduated from Yale University in 1941 and served in the Army in the Pacific during World War II, earning a Bronze Star. In 1948, after graduating from Columbia Law School, Kunstler and his brother opened a law firm. In the early 1950’s, Kunstler taught law at the New York Law School. In the mid-1950’s, Kunstler successfully represented a local leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who had been denied housing because he was black. Kunstler’s career as a civil rights lawyer was launched in 1956 when he represented a black journalist, William Worthy, Jr., who had been arrested because he did not have a passport when he returned from a trip to Cuba. Kunstler successfully challenged the law as being unconstitutional and the charges were dismissed in 1961. Life’s Work After the Worthy case, Kunstler intensified his focus on clients he saw as victims of government oppression and racism. He traveled frequently to the South, representing Freedom Riders, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others whose opposition to segregation led to arrests for breach of peace and disorderly conduct for protesting in places such as Birmingham, Alabama, and Biloxi, Mississippi. Kunstler was moved to join in some of these protests. Looking back, he would recall the 1960’s and 1970’s as a time of transformation, when he changed from a liberal into a radical. Kunstler was a director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1964 to 1972. In 1969, he
cofounded the Center for Constitutional Rights, and he was also active with the National Lawyers Guild. In 1968, Kunstler defended antiwar protesters in the most famous case of his career. The defendants, including Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Students for a Democratic Society leader Tom Hayden, would become known as the Chicago Seven. Their trial was presided over by U.S. District Court Judge Julius Jennings Hoffman. Kunstler and the other defense lawyers clashed repeatedly with the judge. Another defendant, whose case was separated from the Chicago Seven’s, was Black Panther Party cofounder Bobby Seale. At one point Seale was ordered by Hoffman to be gagged, chained, and bound to the counsel table. All the defendants were acquitted of the most serious charge of conspiracy to incite a riot. Five were convicted of lesser charges, but those were dismissed on appeal. While the jury was deliberating, Hoffman found Kunstler guilty of twenty-four counts of contempt of court, one for each time the judge concluded Kunstler showed disrespect and rudeness during the fivemonth trial, and he sentenced Kunstler to four years and thirteen days in prison. The charges were reversed two years later by an appellate court, which ordered a new trial. Kunstler was convicted of two counts of contempt, but he was not sentenced to prison. In other political cases, he represented black power activists Stokely Carmichael, antiwar activist Daniel Berrigan, and prisoners accused of rioting at the state prison in Attica, New York, in 1971. Kunstler, who was Jewish, was the brunt of withering vilification and repeated threats for his representation of several Muslims. In 1993 and 1994, he represented El Sayyida A. Nossair, who was accused of murdering Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the militant Jewish Defense League and Israel’s anti-Arab Kach Party. A jury in New York City found Nossair innocent of the murder charge. He also represented Nossair’s cousin, Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny, in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. Kunstler wrote several books, including Beyond a Reasonable Doubt? The Original Trial of Caryl Chessman (1961), The Case for Courage: The Stories of Ten Famous American Attorneys Who Risked Their Careers in the Cause of Justice (1962), and his autobiography, My Life as a Radical Lawyer (1994). Kunstler was married twice and had four children. His first marriage to Lotte Rosenberger ended in divorce in the mid-1970’s. They had two daughters, Karin and Jane. 665
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Significance In the turbulent civil rights and anti-Vietnam War era in America, Kunstler offered his clients not only effective legal representation but also a highly visible platform to express their radical political views, putting the established society, with its ingrown prejudices, on the defensive. In doing so, he was seen by many as disrespectful and disruptive. He is remembered, however, as a no-holds-barred, colorful, and dedicated advocate who used his role as an attorney to combat racism and political oppression and to advance the cause of equal justice. —Stephen F. Rohde
the Chicago Eight. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970. Complete with motions, rulings, contempt citations, sentences, and photographs. Epstein, Jason. The Great Conspiracy Trial. New York: Random House, 1970. Includes an account of the Chicago Seven trial, the background of the radical groups involved, a review of the legal issues, and a cultural history. Kunstler, William M. My Life as a Radical Lawyer. New York: Carol, 1994. With his typical candor, Kunstler recounts his early life and the famous cases of his fabled law career. Langum, David J. William M. Kunstler: The Most Hated Lawyer in America. New York: New York University Press, 1999. A biography that shows how Kunstler made a name for himself supporting unpopular causes.
Further Reading Clavir, Judy, and John Spitzer, eds. The Conspiracy Trial: The Extended Edited Transcript of the Trial of
See also: Gloria Allred; Alan M. Dershowitz; Abbie Hoffman; Jerry Rubin; Judy Sheindlin; Laurence Tribe.
His second marriage was to Margaret Ratner; they also had two daughters, Sarah and Emily. Kunstler died of heart failure at the age of seventy-six in 1995.
Ray Kurzweil Inventor, scientist, and writer Kurzweil developed computer programs to recognize patterns in sounds (speech recognition) and images (character recognition). He also designed musical synthesizers and wrote prolifically on artificial intelligence (AI) and the role of technology in the expansion and extension of human life. Born: February 12, 1948; Queens, New York Also known as: Raymond Kurzweil Areas of achievement: Science and technology; music Early Life Ray Kurzweil (KURZ-wil) was born to a well-educated secular Jewish couple who had left Austria before World War II and settled in Queens, New York. Since his father was a musician, and his mother was a visual artist, Kurzweil developed his creativity at an early age. He enjoyed reading science fiction and playing the piano, and he was also exposed to several spiritual traditions through the Unitarian community. He learned the basics of computer programming from his uncle, an engineer at Bell Laboratories, and his skills developed so rapidly that, while still in high school, he was able to create software that could analyze and compose music by style. 666
This accomplishment soon led to his 1965 appearance on Steve Allen’s nationally televised program, I’ve Got a Secret. On the show, Kurzweil played a composition on the piano, and his “secret” was that his computer program had composed the music. The project won first prize in the International Science Fair, and Kurzweil was one of forty Westinghouse Talent Search students received by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House. Kurzweil’s successes continued at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied with Marvin Minsky, one of the earliest researchers in the field of artificial intelligence. As a sophomore, he invented the Select College Consulting Program, which helped to match high school students with colleges. His program used a database of two million items, covering three thousand colleges, and was eventually sold to Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for $100,000. He completed a bachelor’s degree in computer science and literature in 1970. Life’s Work Kurzweil’s research and inventions continued to center around pattern recognition, regarded as one of the key elements of artificial intelligence. From music and data on colleges, he moved to another challenge: the task of
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Ray Kurzweil. (AP/Wide World Photos)
writing a program that could recognize printed letters. Known as optical character recognition (OCR), this had been addressed only partially, because existing programs could recognize characters only in a limited number of fonts, or graphical styles of letters. To work on OCR and related solutions, Ray established Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc., in 1974, resulting in the first omnifont OCR program. His chance encounter with a blind man on an airplane led Kurzweil to experiment with building reading devices for the visually impaired. Working toward this goal, he and his team created yet another useful device: the first CCD (charge coupled device) flatbed scanner, which could group signals from photoelectric light sensors. Together with increases in the accuracy and the speed of text-to-speech synthesis, the scanner and its OCR software were included in the Kurzweil Reading Machine, which premiered in 1976. Its research and development were supported by the National Federation for the Blind. Demonstrations of the device on television led to
further exposure, and popular musician Stevie Wonder purchased one of the machines for himself. In 1982, Kurzweil Music Systems was established, with Wonder as music adviser. Its initial product, the K250, was one of the first electronic instruments to imitate successfully the sound of acoustic instruments. At the same time, Kurzweil started Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Inc., to develop specialized speech-recognition software, primarily to handle the large vocabulary used in medicine. This resulted in Kurzweil VoiceMED (now Kurzweil Clinical Reporter), reducing processing time for filing diagnoses and prescriptions. Kurzweil continued to expand his sphere of activities and products in medicine and finance. Many of his ventures were eventually sold to other companies. While he remained involved in specific development projects, Kurzweil eventually turned his attention to the profound social implications of the technological revolution in which he continued to participate. In many articles, lectures, and books, he observed that rates of change 667
Kushner, Harold S. were accelerating far more quickly than had been predicted by linear models, and he theorized that developments in more than one area combine and create even more rapid changes. He called this the Law of Accelerating Returns, which contributes to an exponential explosion in capabilities, eventually leading to a technological singularity, when machine intelligence exceeds and is fused with human intelligence. While some have viewed this as a threatening scenario, Kurzweil is essentially optimistic, because he associates technological progress with the transcendence of human limitations, borne out in his own work. Significance The Kurzweil Reading Machine has helped generations of blind and visually impaired people around the world. Kurzweil’s other inventions, in the fields of music, medicine, finance, and computer science, have raised the level of entertainment, health, and prosperity of all who use his machines. As an author, he remains a provocative and controversial spokesperson for transhumanism, which supports the use of science and technology to improve human life. —John E. Myers Further Reading Brown, David. Inventing Modern America: From the Microwave to the Mouse. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
Jewish Americans 2002. Includes a chapter on Kurzweil’s invention of the optical reading machine for the blind in 1976. Illustrations, bibliography, and index. Jahoda, Gerald, and Elizabeth A. Johnson. “The Use of the Kurzweil Reading Machine in Academic Libraries.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 13, no. 2 (May, 1987): 99-103. Results of a survey of fifty academic libraries using the invention. Includes original questionnaire. Kurzweil, Raymond. The Singularity Is Near. New York: Penguin, 2006. A view of the future based on analysis and projections of trends, making use of Kurzweil’s theories on the acceleration of technology as well as on his identification of the human brain with massively parallel processors. Notes, index. Kurzweil, Raymond, and Terry Grossman. Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. Emmaus, Pa.: Holtzbrinck, 2004. Organized into chapters on specific ways to avoid illness and physical degeneration, its basic assumption is that every year that life can be extended (including extensions by methods currently available, such as nutrition) will eventually equate to much more than one year of progress in life extension at the current rate, eventually leading toward functional immortality. Bibliography, index. See also: Sergey Brin; Danny Elfman; Stephen Jay Gould; Edwin Herbert Land.
Harold S. Kushner Rabbi and writer Rabbi Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People, published in 1981, established his reputation as a popular spiritual adviser. Born: April 3, 1935; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Harold Samuel Kushner (full name) Area of achievement: Religion and theology Early Life Harold S. Kushner (KOOSH-nur) was born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 3, 1935. His father, Julius Kushner, was a successful shop owner, and his mother, Sarah Hartman, was a teacher. Harold Kushner was brought up in a traditional Jewish household, and his father, who was deeply religious and active in the life of the local synagogue, initially thought that his son would take 668
over the small children’s book and toy store that Julius had founded. In Kushner’s junior year at Columbia University, however, Kushner decided to become a rabbi. After receiving his undergraduate degree in 1955, he continued his studies at both Columbia and at the Jewish Theological Seminary, eventually receiving a doctoral degree from the latter institution in 1972. In 1960, after completing his preliminary rabbinical studies, Kushner married Suzette Estrada, and shortly thereafter he entered the U.S. military, spending the next two years as an Army chaplain at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. This was followed by four years as an assistant rabbi at Temple Israel in Great Neck, New York. In 1966, he became the rabbi at Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, a position he would hold for the remainder of his rabbinical career.
Jewish Americans In 1963, Kushner’s first child, Aaron Zev, was born, and shortly after the move to Natick a daughter, Ariel Ann, was born. At the time of his daughter’s birth, his three-year-old son was diagnosed with a fatal genetic disorder known as progeria, or “rapid aging” disease. The boy’s death eleven years later, at the age of fourteen, led Kushner to write the book that would bring a whole new direction to his life. Life’s Work Kushner’s career as a writer had begun in 1971 when a small Jewish company, Reconstructionist Press, published his work entitled, When Children Ask About God. This was followed by paperback edition by Schocken Books two years later and in 1974 by a volume of sermons entitled Commanded to Live, published by a small press in Connecticut. However, the publication of When Bad Things Happen to Good People in 1981 brought him both fame and critical acclaim. Written out of his deep personal angst following the death of his son, When Bad Things Happen to Good People built on themes already apparent in his earlier works, namely, the idea that God needs to be understood as limited in power and that while he does not cause personal tragedies he is present to assist those dealing with them. Although the author’s ideas received mixed reviews from scholars and theologians, the work struck a responsive chord with average readers, especially individuals who had experienced tragic events in their lives. It quickly became a best seller that has remained in print. Following the success of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Kushner continued to write on spiritual topics. His next work, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough, was published in 1986, followed by Who Needs God (1989), To Life! A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking (1993), How Good Do We Have to Be? A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness (1996), Living a Life That Matters: Resolving the Conflict Between Conscience and Success (2001), The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-Third Psalm (2003), Overcoming Life’s Disappointments (2006), Faith and Family: Favorite Sermons of Rabbi Harold S. Kushner (2007), and Conquering Fear: Living Boldly in an Uncertain World (2009). Kushner’s simple but insightful style combined with his skill for putting his advice into an everyday context account for the continuing popularity of his work. Kushner, who retired from rabbinical work in 1990, is
Kushner, Harold S. also well known as a speaker and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Christopher Medal in 1987 for When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough and the Clergyman of the Year award from the organization Religion in America in 1999. Significance Although he will almost certainly be remembered best for his initial best seller, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Kushner stands as one of the most popular religious writers of his time. Despite his Jewish roots, his works have been read and appreciated by individuals of a wide variety of religious traditions. He is frequently compared in this regard to such other popular twentieth century religious figures as Norman Vincent Peale, Joshua Liebman, Fulton Sheen, and Billy Graham. —Scott Wright Further Reading Garcia, Guy D. “Dear Rabbi—Why Me?” Time 120, no. 3 (July 19, 1982): 80. A review of When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Contrasts the reactions of professional theologians to those of average readers suffering personal tragedy to the author’s message. Kushner, Harold S. Conquering Fear: Living Boldly in an Uncertain World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Published twenty-eight years after Kushner’s initial success. Exemplifies Kushner’s continuing appeal as a popular religious writer. _______. When Bad Things Happen to Good People. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2004. A newer edition of the work, first published in 1981, that brought Kushner fame and best-seller status. Niebuhr, Gustav. “Staying With God for Better or Worse.” The New York Times, November 6, 1996, p. C1. A midcareer interview of Kushner that contains biographical background and Kushner’s thoughts on the reasons for his success. Starr, Mark. “God and Modern Man.” Newsweek 114, no. 17 (October 23, 1989): 74-75. A review of Kushner’s Who Needs God. Discusses the nature of Kushner’s theological positions and the reasons for his popular appeal. Contains positive statements regarding his work from well-known religious scholars Martin Marty and Harvey Cox. See also: Judah Leon Magnes; Sally J. Priesand; Isaac Mayer Wise.
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Tony Kushner Playwright Kushner became a prominent playwright with Angels in America, a seven-hour-long play that addressed such issues as homosexuality, social oppression, hypocritical politics, and Judaism. Born: July 16, 1956; New York, New York Also known as: Anthony Robert Kushner (full name) Areas of achievement: Theater; literature Early Life Tony Kushner (KOOSH-nur) was born to middleclass parents—both musicians—in New York in 1956. Two years after Kushner’s birth, he and his family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana. They may have moved because Kushner’s father inherited a lumberyard; his parents then devoted themselves to this business, no longer pursuing their creative ambitions. Lake Charles is outside the greater New Orleans area, so Kushner lived in
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distinctly suburban surroundings. Growing up as a Jew in the American South during the years of the civil rights protests and the arrival of desegregation—the most massive changes the region had seen for a century—affected Kushner’s vision of social justice and gave him imaginative access to rural and conservative America. Moreover, the residual anti-Semitism of certain aspects of Southern life, combined with the inescapable reality that Jews were far more privileged than African Americans, fostered Kushner’s American and unabashedly Jewish identity. Kushner excelled at Lake Charles High School, where he was on the debate team—possibly foreshadowing the argumentative, political soliloquies so prominent in his plays. Seeing his mother perform as Linda Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) opened his eyes to the possibility of theater, and Miller’s psychologically compelling drama, though far less experiential than Kushner’s, can be seen as a precedent for his work. An important mentor for Kushner was Gloria Wegener, who taught him both in high school and in a program at McNeese State University. It was in Wegener’s Latin class that Kushner wrote his first play, an untitled short sketch written entirely in the Latin language. Kushner’s high school study of Latin heightened his interest in the distant past, and in college—at Columbia University in New York— Kushner majored in medieval studies, with an emphasis on art and literature, studies that display themselves, for instance, in the medieval ancestry of the character of Prior Walter in Kushner’s play Angels in America (1991). Rather than going on to graduate school in the field, Kushner chose to attend New York University’s school of drama. He was influenced by playwrights quite different from Miller: such postmodern experimentalists as JoAnne Akalaitis and Richard Foreman. The philosophical interests of these artists and their link with contemporary interdisciplinary
Jewish Americans thought instilled in Kushner a sense of the possible breadth of theater, even though he was always far more interested in psychology and narrative than the New York avant-garde of this era.
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ANGELS IN AMERICA Though a gay playwright who came to prominence writing about gay issues, Tony Kushner is different from dramatists, such as Larry Kramer, who wrote exclusively about gay issues and wrote as advocates for the gay community. Though Kushner’s major theme in Angels in America—the ravages of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic and the bias and indifference that exacerbated it—was similar, Kramer was a protest author who wished to bring about immediate action, while Kushner wrote on broader “national themes” that sought to prompt an intellectual reconsideration. Anticipating Barack Obama’s declaration, at the 2004 Democratic Convention, that “we have gay friends in the red states and worship an awesome God in the blue states,” Kushner does not depict the Mormon Harper Pitt in a condescending way. (Mormons hold some fascination to Jewish writers, as seen in Norman Mailer’s 1980 book The Executioner’s Song). In fact, it is Harper and the gay African American nurse Belize who emerge as the drama’s most thoroughly rendered specimens of humanity and who spur on the second half’s unexpectedly optimistic conclusion.
Life’s Work After graduating from drama school, Kushner devoted himself to writing plays. Often, this was combined with hands-on directing and adaptation, as in the work he did for a summer theater program in Lake Charles. His first full-length play, A Bright Room Called Day (1985), was one of the few works produced in the 1980’s to make an explicit connection between the atmosphere surrounding the politics of the Ronald Reagan administration and those of the Adolf Hitler regime that came to power in 1930’s Germany. Using a recursive structure of foreground and background he repeated in his 2001 play Homebody/Kabul, Kushner produced a compelling political piece that was largely ignored by the mainstream press. In 1990, Angels in America was commissioned by the Centre Theater Group at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and subsequently previewed and workshopped at various regional theaters before premiering on Broadway in 1993, at which point it met with universal acclaim. The play was seven hours long, and the first part, Millennium Approaches (1991), established the play’s concepts and characters; the second part, Perestroika (1992), was being written hastily until its production. The hypocrisy of the 1980’s—both New York lawyer Roy Cohn and his disciple, the Mormon Joe Pitt, are closeted homosexuals who will not admit their sexual preferences, even though they support a conservative politics that often exhibits an antihomosexual bias— counterpoints the spiritual revelations experienced by Prior, a man suffering from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and abandoned by his lover, Lewis. Unlike many Jewish intellectuals of the generation preceding him, Kushner was not rigidly secular and modern in his outlook; though not professing an Orthodox creed, he was interested in spirituality and sought to enact an awareness of it on stage. The title Angels in America indicated Kushner’s wrestling with his spiritual heritage, and his reliance on the philosophy of the German Jewish literary critic Walter Benjamin, whose idea of the angel of history provided the inspiration for much of the symbolic role of angels in the play, indicated a
sensitivity to the sacred as a part of the Jewish American experience. Kushner’s subsequent work continued to explore his characteristic themes. Caroline, or Change (2003), a musical for which he wrote the book, explored the experiences of an African American maid in the pre-civil rights South and was inspired by Kushner’s boyhood in Lake Charles. Kushner’s penchant for timeliness was revealed in 2001, when his play Homebody/Kabul, concerning a British housewife and her strange relationship to turmoil in Afghanistan, was given extraordinary pertinence by the attacks of September 11. Kushner also wrote the screenplay for Munich (2005), a film about Israel’s pursuit of revenge against the terrorists who attacked Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. In 2003, Kushner married his longtime companion Mark Harris. Significance Kushner received kudos from such storied critics as Harold Bloom, who generally opposed identity politics and academic “queer theory” but found Kushner’s theatrical renditions of such issues praiseworthy. Kushner is a playwright of ideas and of character: Angels in America characters such as Harper Pitt, the troubled wife of Joe, and Belize, a former drag queen, are among the most unforgettable in American theater. Literary critic George Steiner once commented that Judaism and homosexual671
Kushner, Tony ity together made up the distinguishing aspects of the modern writer; he was thinking about artists who had one or the other attribute, although some, like Marcel Proust, had both. In his professional and personal life, Kushner exhibits pride in both his gay and his Jewish identities, defying their long centuries of marginality and oppression. —Nicholas Birns Further Reading Fisher, James. The Theater of Tony Kushner: Living Past Hope. London: Routledge, 2001. Excellent monographic treatment of Kushner, touching on the plays and manifesting an agile theoretical perspective. _______. Tony Kushner: New Essays on the Art and Politics of the Plays. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005. Anthology contains pieces written as academic essays. King, Emily. “The Overlooked Jewish Identity of Roy Cohn in Kushner’s Angels in America: American
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Jewish Americans Schmucko.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 27 (2008): 87-100. Kushner’s portrait of Cohn is among the central articulations of Jewishness in his oeuvre. Nielsen, Ken. Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. London: Continuum, 2008. A basic, elementary overview. Pederson, Joshua. “‘More Life’and More: Harold Bloom, the J Writer, and the Archaic Judaism of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.” Contemporary Literature 50, no. 3 (Fall, 2009): 576-598. This important piece addresses Kushner’s Judaism in spiritual, ethical, and ethnic terms. Vorlicky, Robert, ed. Tony Kushner in Conversation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. A collection of previously published interviews with Kushner, largely concentrating on Angels in America. See also: Paddy Chayefsky; Roy Cohn; Lillian Hellman; Larry Kramer; David Mamet; Arthur Miller; Wendy Wasserstein.
L Shia LaBeouf Actor A young talent, LaBeouf refined his acting skills in the Disney Channel’s Even Stevens series and took the reins as the hero the blockbuster Transformers film series. Born: June 11, 1986; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Shia Saide LaBeouf (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Shia LaBeouf (SHI-uh luh-BUHF) was born on June 11, 1986, in Los Angeles, California. The only child of Jeffrey LaBeouf and Shayna Saide, LaBeouf had an interesting upbringing. His mother, a dancer, is a Jewish American, the daughter of a stand-up comedian and the granddaughter of Holocaust victims. LaBeouf’s father is a Vietnam War veteran, who also worked as a Cajun circus clown. Growing up in the dangerous neighborhood of Echo Park in Los Angeles, LaBeouf and his family had a fair share of hardships. To make money, his mother sold jewelry and his father, a former heroin addict, operated small marijuana gardens. Following in his grandfather’s footsteps, LaBeouf began performing stand-up comedy acts in adult clubs around his neighborhood at the age of ten. He used his wages to support his parents, a practice he continues. In the beginning, LaBeouf was not interested in the performing arts, but he was focused on making money for the benefit of himself and his family. A friend of his appeared on the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and, after LaBeouf expressed interest in acting, his parents enrolled him in acting school. LaBeouf found an agent in the phone book’s Yellow Pages. Soon after, he auditioned for the agent and was signed. LaBeouf started out acting in a commercial for Oreos and had other roles in small films and in television. He eventually received his big break in a substantial role for the Disney Channel’s Even Stevens. Life’s Work In 2000, LaBeouf played the humorous younger brother in Even Stevens, developing a large fan base. During LaBeouf’s three years in this role, his father, who was then going through treatment at Alcoholics Anonymous,
stepped in as his on-set parent, and father and son developed a better relationship. The show earned LaBeouf an Emmy Award for outstanding performer in a children’s series. At the age of sixteen, LaBeouf received his first film role, starring in Holes (2003). The film helped the public see that he was more than a child actor, and it caused LaBeouf to realize his love for the profession. Gravitating away from juvenile roles, LaBeouf landed leads in The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005), Bobby (2006), and A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006), which won a Sundance Film Festival award for best ensemble cast. By the time he was twenty years old, LaBeouf had developed an impressive reputation in show business and began moving on to bigger projects.
Shia LaBeouf. (Getty Images)
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Laemmle, Carl In 2007, LaBeouf starred in the box office hit Disturbia, which was followed by Transformers (2007) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). Working with such impressive names as Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg, the road was paved for LaBeouf to continue his success. This was proved with his acting in Eagle Eye (2008) and the next Transformers installment in 2009. Working on such a diverse array of projects, from action hits to dramas, has shown just how adaptable LeBeouf is. For his intense role as an ambitious stock trader in 2010’s Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, a film about hedge fund speculators and murder, he learned everything he could about how the stock market works. Aside from acting, LaBeouf stays active in the entertainment industry. He started his own production company, called Grassy Slope Films, and he began a hip-hop record label, called Element. Significance LaBeouf broke the child-actor barrier and moved on to become one of Hollywood’s most successful young actors. With a trail of hit films and television series be-
Jewish Americans hind him, LaBeouf is headed into more complex and challenging roles. Starting out acting in order to raise money for his family, LeBeouf found that a career in show business fulfilled his passion. —Emily R. Vivyan Further Reading Keegan, Rebecca Winters. “The Kid Gets the Picture.” Time, July 5, 2007. An interview with LaBeouf about his early life, his parents, and various film and television projects he has successfully completed. Parsley, Aaron. “Shia LaBeouf: How I’m Getting Buff for Indiana Jones.” People, April 23, 2007. LaBeouf discusses training for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and elaborates on certain aspects of his personal life. Sachs, Adam. “He’s So Money.” GQ, April, 2010, 103150. Contains an interview with LaBeouf pertaining to his role in Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. Discusses how he prepared for the role and his blooming interest in the stock market. See also: J. J. Abrams; Adam Sandler.
Carl Laemmle German-born business executive and entrepreneur In the early 1900’s Laemmle led other independent film producers, many of whom were immigrants as Laemmle was, in successfully opposing the monopolistic East Coast Motion Picture Patents Company. He subsequently founded Universal Pictures, a major studio in the era of silent films. Born: January 17, 1867; Laupheim, Württemberg (now in Germany) Died: September 24, 1939; Beverly Hills, California Areas of achievement: Business; entertainment Early Life Carl Laemmle (LEHM-lee) was born in 1867 in a small village in southwestern Germany, near the former Jewish quarter of Laupheim. He was never close to his father, a land speculator, who was forty-seven when Laemmle was born, but the boy was devoted to his mother, Rebekka, who died shortly before his sixteenth birthday. By then the young Laemmle had been apprenticed for three years to a stationer in a village five hours from his home. Leaving Laupheim to join his older 674
brother in Chicago was the next step in seeking his fortune. For years Laemmle, uneducated and without a trained craft, moved from job to job, often working as a clerk or a bookkeeper. He even tried farming in South Dakota. In his late twenties, he married the daughter of the owner of a clothing company for which he worked in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for twelve years. Approaching forty and the father of two children, Laemmle moved to Chicago, where he saw his first film. In 1906, Laemmle opened his first film theater, a nickelodeon he named The White Front. In only two months, he launched his second theater, in a better neighborhood, where he charged a dime for admission. He was finally on his way to becoming a business success. Laemmle soon became a leader in a film exchange, comprised mostly of Jewish immigrants, who opposed the monopoly on patents held by Thomas Edison and his Americanborn colleagues, a group Laemmle dubbed The Trust. In the fall of 1909, Laemmle began producing films, under the name Independent Motion Picture Company of America (IMP). A publicist at heart, Laemmle exploited audiences’ interests in performers. He created the first
Jewish Americans film “star” in Florence Lawrence, who had previously been known only as the Biograph Girl, and he also lured Mary Pickford from Biograph. By the time Laemmle and his colleagues defeated The Trust in the courts, the independents were well on their way to creating a new film industry. Life’s Work In 1912, Laemmle merged his IMP studio with those of three other independent studio owners to form the grandly named Universal Motion Picture Manufacturing Company; by 1915 Laemmle was firmly in control of Universal Pictures. In the silent era, Universal became one of the largest film producers in America; nevertheless, Laemmle saw every picture. Laemmle’s skill at marketing served him well as a film mogul. He made the opening of Universal City a public event, which garnered such attention that he decided to make studio tours a permanent feature. Dubbed “Big U” within the industry, Universal was most famous for its silent action films, especially Westerns and serials, and comedies with a devoted following among rural audiences. However, the studio also produced some quality films, which Laemmle proudly labeled Universal Jewels and Universal Super Jewels. Actor and director Eric von Stroheim brought his fierce talent and sophistication to Blind Husbands (1919) and Foolish Wives (1922); the brilliant actor Lon Chaney starred in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925), memorable films that young studio manager Irving Thalberg had set into motion before leaving Universal for a storied career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Laemmle was violently opposed to sound film, and the slow conversion of Universal to sound in the late 1920’s kept the studio from the robust growth that other studios enjoyed in the 1930’s. Unlike the five studios that became known as The Majors, Universal did not invest in a theater chain, instead relying on independent exhibitors, another business mistake. Additionally, and somewhat ironically because of Laemmle’s role in the creation of the star system, Universal did not contract star performers, adding to the studio’s inability to prosper at the same pace as its aggressive competitors. Known as Uncle Carl in the film industry, Laemmle took the Hollywood practice of nepotism to an extreme, with dozens of relatives on the Universal payroll. In 1929, he named Carl, Jr., chief of production on his twenty-first birthday. Although the appointment met with much skepticism, the young Laemmle soon produced the hit talking picture Broadway (1929), followed by the moving antiwar
Laemmle, Carl drama All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). During the younger Laemmle’s short tenure, Universal produced a cluster of horror films, including Frankenstein (1931), Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932), and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), directed respectively by James Whale, Tod Browning, Karl Freund, and Whale. These formed the enduring legacy of the studio’s contribution to the golden age of the studio system and to American genre film. Laemmle was among dozens of film executives who were members of the Los Angeles B’nai B’rith and among a minority who regularly conducted a Passover seder at their homes and actively observed religious holidays. In contrast to the Jewish moguls who cut all ties with their Eastern European roots, Laemmle stayed in contact with his former home. Every year (of peacetime) he visited his native village of Laupheim. After World War I, he sent provisions to destitute villagers; during the Nazi era, he sponsored hundreds of Jews who wished to immigrate to America and lobbied on behalf of the Jew-
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Laemmle, Carl ish refugees who had fled Germany on board the SS St. Louis. Laemmle’s wife Recha died in January, 1919, during the national influenza epidemic. In 1936, Laemmle sold his interests in Universal and died of cardiovascular disease only three years later.
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Defeating the Trust and Founding Universal After several decades working in a variety of jobs, Carl Laemmle discovered films in 1905. Like many working-class immigrants, he was immediately fascinated and he proceeded to build a career around this seductive new entertainment. First as a theater owner, then as the leader of a film exchange, Laemmle opposed the lock on film exhibition held by a group of Thomas Edison’s colleagues. Through hundreds of legal actions and a variety of ingenious methods, Laemmle defeated the monopoly. He and several partners formed their own production company, which eventually became Universal Pictures under Laemmle’s sole direction. In 1915, Laemmle built Universal City, which became a model for the self-contained world of the new Hollywood studio system. At “Big U,” Laemmle oversaw a huge physical plant, numerous employees (many of them relatives), and a production schedule that specialized in serials and inexpensively made genre films. Laemmle hired a group of talented immigrant directors, including Eric von Stroheim, E. A. Dupont, Edgar Ulmer, and Karl Freund, who added luster to Universal’s pictures. Laemmle dragged his feet on the move to sound, and consequently the studio did not maintain his silent-era status. However, under the supervision of his son, Carl Laemmle, Jr., Universal produced some memorable films in the early to mid-1930’s, including the horror films for which the studio is most remembered.
Significance The oldest of the silent-film moguls and the most personally conservative, German immigrant Laemmle was a businessman at heart, with his bookkeeper’s eye always on the bottom line. Diminutive in size but large in energy and ambition, “Uncle Carl” built Universal Pictures into a robust production factory during the early years of Hollywood. Beginning in 1915 and continuing for decades, Universal led the industry in the production of serials and inexpensively made genre films. Its Westerns and comedies delighted audiences, especially in the Midwest, where Laemmle had first entered the film business as an exhibitor and later became the leader of a film exchange. Although Universal’s horror films stand as the studio’s most enduring legacy, these classics, inspired by German narratives and the stylistics of German expressionism, were a small percentage of the studio’s massive output between 1915 and 1936. —Carolyn Anderson
Further Reading Dick, Bernard F. City of Dreams: The Making and Remaking of Universal Pictures. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1977. The first half of this careful study concentrates on the studio that “Uncle Carl” built; many black-and-white photographs; excellent bibliography. Drinkwater, John. The Life and Adventures of Carl Laemmle. London: W. Heinemann, 1931. Laemmle, unsuccessful at writing his own memoir, turned to Drinkwater to compose this biography, which brims with personal details.
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Edmonds, I. G. Big U: Universal in the Silent Era. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1977. Includes many rare photographs of Laemmle’s IMP years and of the Universal studio in its early manifestations. Gabler, Neal. An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Crown, 1988. Wellresearched, readable social history of the early studio system; chapter two focuses on Laemmle, the eldest of the Jewish moguls. Koszarski, Richard. Universal Pictures: Sixty-Five Years. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1978. Heavily illustrated, this slim volume documents the museum’s retrospective exhibition of the studio in 1977 and 1978. Weaver, Tom. Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931-1946. 2d ed. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007. A definitive study of Universal’s most memorable genre. See also: George Cukor; Arthur Freed; Samuel Goldwyn; Ernst Lubitsch; Joseph L. Mankiewicz; Louis B. Mayer; Irving Thalberg.
Jewish Americans
La Guardia, Fiorello Henry
Fiorello Henry La Guardia Politician A popular Republican mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1945, La Guardia was an ardent supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and led his city’s recovery efforts during the Great Depression. Born: December 11, 1882; New York, New York Died: September 20, 1947; New York, New York Also known as: Fiorello Enrico La Guardia (birth name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; social issues Early Life Fiorello Enrico La Guardia (fee-oh-REH-lo ehn-REEkoh lah-GWAHR-dee-ah) was born in Greenwich Village, New York. His parents, Achille La Guardia (a nonpracticing Roman Catholic) and Irene Coen Luzzato (a Jew), were working-class Italian immigrants who emigrated to the United States in 1880. La Guardia’s father, a member of the U.S. Army until 1898, was stationed with his family in rural South Dakota and Arizona during the 1890’s. Raised an Episcopalian, La Guardia had his middle name changed from Enrico to its English equivalent, Henry. His cultural background facilitated his fluency in Italian and Yiddish, and he subsequently learned French, Croatian, and German. Because of his linguistic skills, La Guardia joined the U.S. Consular Service in 1900, serving in U.S. consulates in Budapest, Trieste (his mother’s hometown), and Fiume in Austria-Hungary until 1906. After returning to New York City, La Guardia worked as a translator for the U.S. Immigration Service on Ellis Island while taking classes at the New York University Law School. After graduation in 1910, La Guardia practiced law, specializing in the legal protection of immigrant Jewish garment workers, which laid the foundation for his political career. Nevertheless, the majority of the electorate in New York City identified La Guardia with his Italian, rather than his Jewish, cultural roots. Regardless, his popularity among immigrant communities transcended cultural, linguistic, and religious lines. Life’s Work A supporter of progressive reform, La Guardia began his political career in 1916 when he was
elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, defeating incumbent Michael Farley, who had the support of the Tammany Hall political machine. Taking office on March 4, 1917, La Guardia represented an ethnically diverse group of constituents in East Harlem. He spent little time in Washington, D.C., however, because of World War I. La Guardia served with the U.S. Army’s Air Service, commanding a bomber unit on the Italian front against Austria-Hungary. On December 31, 1919, La Guardia resigned from his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives to serve as the president of the New York City Board of Aldermen. In the 1922 elections, La Guardia won reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives. Holding office from March 4, 1923, to March 3, 1933, La Guardia represented the people in East Harlem. A vocal opponent of the 1924 Immigration Act, which severely restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe, La Guardia also supported labor legislation. With Republican Sena-
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La Guardia, Fiorello Henry tor George Norris, La Guardia cosponsored the 1932 Norris-La Guardia Act, which made yellow-dog contracts (documents signed by workers promising they would not join a labor union as a condition of employment) nonbinding in federal court. La Guardia was also critical of American military intervention in Latin America. Defeated by incumbent Jimmy Walker in his first bid to be mayor of New York City in the 1929 elections, La Guardia also lost his congressional seat in the 1932 elections to James Lanzetta. Following Walker’s resignation in the wake of a corruption scandal in 1932, La Guardia, a vocal opponent of organized crime and corruption, was elected mayor of New York City in 1933, holding office from 1934 to 1945. A supporter of Roosevelt’s New Deal, La Guardia obtained vast sums of money for relief and recovery during the Great Depression. With the able assistance of urban planner Robert Moses, La Guardia oversaw the expansion of the city’s infrastructure, building bridges, roads, tunnels, and an airport. La Guardia’s extensive public works and support of high wages and benefits for workers, however, placed a strain on the city’s finances. In 1945, he declined to run for a fourth term as governor. After serving as director of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in 1946, La Guardia died of pancreatic cancer at home in 1947. Significance La Guardia is widely acclaimed as one of New York City’s most successful and popular mayors. His Jewish and Italian heritage facilitated his linguistic skills, which augmented his political acumen. One of the earliest American critics of Adolf Hitler, La Guardia saw the potential menace of the radical Nazi social experiment. Although his development strategies and social programs placed a heavy financial burden on the taxpayers, La Guardia revitalized the city and restored faith in the political system. Although his political style often bordered
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Jewish Americans on authoritarian, his reform programs met the needs of his constituents. La Guardia Airport was renamed in his honor in 1947. —Michael R. Hall Further Reading Bayor, Ronald H. Fiorello LaGuardia: Ethnicity and Reform. Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1993. This biography emphasizes La Guardia’s role as an entertaining reformer who fought corruption and the economic depression. Brodsky, Alyn. The Great Mayor: Fiorello LaGuardia and the Making of New York City. New York: Truman Talley Books, 2003. A well-researched study of La Guardia, this resource praises his accomplishments while pointing out his authoritarian and often erratic political style. Jeffers, H. Paul. The Napoleon of New York: Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2002. A well-written biography of La Guardia that emphasizes his personality and public image. The author explains how La Guardia was able to meet the challenges of the Great Depression. Kaufman, Herbert. “Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Political Maverick: A Review Essay.” Political Science Quarterly 105, no. 1 (Spring, 1990): 113-122. Informative and insightful review of Thomas Kessner’s biography of La Guardia. Comparisons are made with Robert A. Caro’s seminal study of Robert Moses, New York City’s influential urban planner during La Guardia’s tenure. Kessner, Thomas. Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989. In this impressive study, Kessner asserts that La Guardia had a tremendous impact on New York City but created more problems than he solved. See also: Bella Abzug; Bernard Baruch; Michael Bloomberg; Jacob K. Javits; Ed Koch; Bess Myerson.
Jewish Americans
Lake, Ricki
Ricki Lake Actor and activist From her beginnings as a zaftig Jewish teenager battling prejudice in the cult classic Hairspray (1988) to her decade-long role as talk-show host, Lake has challenged stereotypical views of women and womanhood. Born: September 21, 1968; Hastings-on-Hudson, New York Also known as: Ricki Pamela Lake (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; activism; social issues Early Life Ricki Lake, the elder of two daughters of homemaker Jill Felice and pharmacist Barry Kenneth Lake, was born in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, on September 21, 1968. Ricki Lake was raised in a traditional Jewish home by supportive parents. At the age of seven, Lake saw a local production of Annie (1977) and was smitten with the desire to become an actor. Sweet-natured and outgoing, the girl became known at local cabarets and clubs. She attended Hastings Elementary School, Farragut Middle School, and the first two years of Hastings High School before transferring to the Professional Children’s School in New York City to take classes in acting and singing. Lake enrolled at Ithaca College for her freshman year, but she stayed only two semesters. She took a leave of absence from her school when a call from her agent came, suggesting that she audition for the part of Tracy Turnblad in independent filmmaker John Waters’s musical Hairspray (1988), a role which she easily won. This proved to be a major turning point in the young woman’s career, and she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 1989 as best female lead. Life’s Work After Hairspray, Lake built an extensive list of credits as an actor. She was cast for the part of Holly Pelegrino in China Beach (1989-1990) and the role of Stephanie Heffernan in The King of Queens (20002001). She appeared in the films Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) and Cookie (1989), Cry-Baby (1990), Inside Monkey Zetterland (1992), Cabin Boy (1994) and Serial Mom (1994), Mrs. Winterbourne (1996), Cecil B. Demented (2000), and the 2007 remake of Hairspray with John Travolta.
The role for which she was best known, however, was as host of her own talk show, The Ricki Lake Show, which ran from 1993 to 2004. Lake observed that her weight was limiting the number and kinds of roles she was offered. Wanting a change, she lost 125 pounds and auditioned for a show that was being developed by Garth Ancier in association with Sony Pictures Television. She managed to win out over one hundred other candidates and started filming on September 13, 1993. Lake met illustrator Robert Sussman at a Halloween party in October of 1993 and got married three weeks later. She was nominated for an Emmy Award, for outstanding talk show host, in 1994, and even though she did not win, she was buoyed by the accomplishment. On her
Ricki Lake. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Lamarr, Hedy talk show, Lake counseled, scolded, and celebrated a wide variety of guests and addressed a legion of social problems. Topics ranged from homelessness and domestic abuse to juvenile violent crime. This show lasted for an impressive eleven seasons and ended only when Lake decided not to renew her contract with Sony on May 25, 2004. Her entertainment career was not Lake’s only interest. Her experiences giving birth to her two sons by former husband Sussman—Milo Sebastian on March 22, 1997, and Owen Tyler on June 18, 2001—inspired her to create her groundbreaking documentary on childbirth, The Business of Being Born (2008). A chance reading of P’nenah Goldstein’s screenplay Loving Leah inspired Lake to offer the work to the Hallmark Hall of Fame, who released the love story of a secular, Jewish bachelor and a Hasidic rabbi’s widow as a made-for-television film on January 25, 2009. The film examines the sharp divide between the customs of the Orthodox community and the secular Jewish community. Lake’s role in the film, that of Gerry, a Reform rabbi, is also an enlightening view of Lake’s commitment to Judaism, the faith of her birth. Lake has continued to work steadily in television and film. In 2009, she acted as the Headmistress on the VH1 reality show Charm School, and she guest-starred on Drop Dead Diva in 2010. Significance Like many women, Lake struggles with her weight, but she does not let her weight define who she is. Despite troubling memories of childhood sexual abuse, Lake has
Jewish Americans found healing in celebrating what her body—for all of its perceived flaws—is capable of. As a Jewish woman of faith, Lake finds meaning in the traditions and history of her ancestors. She also has continued to act as an advocate for alternatives to hospital-based childbirth, publishing a resource book for prospective and expectant mothers, Your Best Birth (2009), and founding the Web site http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com. —Julia M. Meyers Further Reading Kohn, Victoria. “A Day in the Life of Ricki Lake: Friends, Frenzy, and Yodeling on the Set of John Waters’s CryBaby.” Premiere 3, no. 8 (April, 1990): 105-109. Kohn looks at the light side of Waters’s independent film Cry-Baby from the perspective of star Lake. Shattuc, Jane. The Talking Cure: TV Talk Shows and Women. New York: Routledge, 1997. Shattuc’s volume describes a new trend in television: the talk show “confessional.” Hosts such as Lake and Oprah Winfrey act as counselors for the troubled for the amusement of live audiences and television viewers. Waldron, Robert, Ricki! The Unauthorized Biography of Ricki Lake. New York: Boulevard Books, 1995. Waldron’s “unauthorized” biography is an uneven but thorough retelling of Lake’s rise to popularity, her struggles with her weight and self-esteem, and her relationships with her family. See also: Roseanne Barr; Larry King; Barbara Walters.
Hedy Lamarr Austrian-born entertainer and inventor Lamarr starred in dozens of films during the golden age of Hollywood, and she coinvented a communications method, involving the basic technology used in cellular telephones, that was utilized successfully during World War II. Born: November 9, 1914; Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Austria) Died: January 19, 2000; Orlando, Florida Also known as: Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; science and technology 680
Early Life Hedy Lamarr (HEH-dee la-MAHR) was born November 9, 1914, in Vienna, the only child of Emil and Gertrude Kiesler. Lamarr lived a secure life as the daughter of the director of the Bank of Vienna. Lamarr’s mother was a concert pianist, but she gave up her career to raise her daughter. Lamarr’s family was Jewish, but in later life, particularly after immigrating to the United States, religion became less important to Lamarr. She did not renounce her Judaism, but she did not practice it. Lamarr’s exotic looks made her a natural for the film industry. She started with a bit part in a silent film when she was fifteen, and by the time she was seventeen, she
Jewish Americans
Lamarr, Hedy
had made the film that changed her life, Ecstasy (1933). She first refused the director’s request that she run naked across the screen, but she relented when he promised to film the nude sequence from a great distance so that it would appear more an illusion than real. She agreed, then she insisted that everyone but the cameraman leave the set. It was not until she saw the final film footage with her parents that she realized she had been misled, and a telephoto lens had been used. Ecstasy became a sensation in Europe, but it was banned in the United States. In 1933, at age nineteen, she married Fritz Mandl in Vienna. He was a wealthy munitions manufacturer. Two years later she left him because she found his pro-Adolf Hitler leanings frightening and because she disliked his controlling temperament. She escaped by drugging her maid’s coffee, then driving the maid’s car to the railroad station and boarding a train for Paris. From Paris she moved to London. That first marriage would lead to five more, all ending in divorce, and the longest lasting but seven years. Lamarr had numerous affairs over the years, including a few brief encounters with women. Even so, she operated on her own strict moral code, which Hedy Lamarr. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) forbade her to enter a sexual liaison for the purpose of advancing her career, because, she believed, that mount Studios to star in Samson and Delilah (1949), would be prostitution. Her openness about her sexuality which many consider the best performance of her career. led some to say she was ahead of her times. Lamarr became restless and wanted artistic control Despite being unable to sustain a marriage, she enover her work. MGM had a contractual obligation to use joyed being a mother and raised her three children with her in a fixed number of films, and too often they were love and tenderness. She adopted one son, James, with dismal flops. The only way around the problem was to her second husband, Gene Markey. With third husband, select and to produce her own films. She won a release Anthony Loder, she had a second son, Anthony, and from her contract to produce and to star in the films a daughter, Denise. She became a naturalized United Strange Woman (1946) and Dishonored Lady (1947); States citizen in 1953, but she always considered Austria in the latter she persuaded her about-to-be-ex-husband home. John Loder to be her costar. Neither film was a box-office hit, but both earned a profit. Life’s Work While raising money for another project, L’eterna However humiliated Lamarr felt about Ecstasy, it is femmina (1954), to be filmed in Rome, she met and marwhat brought her to the attention of Louis B. Mayer, Holried Texas oilman W. Howard Lee, a marriage that lasted lywood film mogul of the studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer seven years. Her sixth and final marriage was to Lewis J. (MGM). He gave her a contract and brought her to HollyBoies, one of the lawyers she engaged while divorcing wood, where he changed her name to Hedy Lamarr. Lee. She soon felt hampered by the “studio” practices in One thing that always bothered Lamarr was the conHollywood at the time. Studios had actors under contract ventional wisdom that a woman could not be both beautiand thus limited their opportunities. Lamarr was an asful and intelligent. She was quoted as saying, “Any girl tute bargainer, however, and she was able at times to circan be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and cumvent the system to her own advantage. With skillful look stupid.” manipulation, she convinced Mayer to loan her to Para681
Lamarr, Hedy Lamarr was not stupid. Her superior intellect enabled her to, with George Antheil, invent a means of scrambling radio signals that was used in World War II. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Lamarr became heavily involved in the war effort with volunteer work in the United Service Organization (USO) clubs and selling war bonds. Though the technology used in her invention is still widely utilized, she and Antheil never profited from their efforts because their patents expired. Regarded by many as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” Lamarr sometimes felt that her stunning looks took too large a toll on her personal life. She reveled in her role as a mother, and she regretted her inability to create a lasting marriage. She married impulsively, which led to poor choices and sometimes to financial ruin. However, she always bounced back. When The Sound of Music was filmed in 1965, the mansion that served as the Von Trapp family home was owned by Lamarr. Established after Lamarr’s death of natural causes at eighty-five, the Hedy Lamarr Foundation was created to provide educational and inspirational information to promote self-discovery and social accountability. Significance Lamarr wanted to be known for more than her extraordinary beauty, and she continually strove to improve her acting skills. She left a body of work that included about thirty films, some of them considered cinema classics, including Samson and Delilah, Algiers (1938), Crossroads (1942), Ziegfeld Girl (1941), Comrade X (1940), and Boom Town (1940). Her range extended from torrid dramas to lighthearted comedies and musicals. Perhaps her most significant contribution occurred off screen, when she coinvented a technique called spread spectrum. That invention, for which she was issued a patent, allowed the Allied forces of World War II to scramble radio communication signals to avoid enemy interception. —Norma Lewis
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The Invention of Spread Spectrum Though women everywhere would have traded almost anything for Hedy Lamarr’s film-star status and beauty, she was more than an actor and more than a pretty face. Highly intelligent, she had learned a lot about the mechanisms of remotecontrolled torpedoes by listening to business discussions while she socialized with her first husband, Fritz Mandl, a munitions maker and Nazi sympathizer. During World War II, torpedoes were easily intercepted because the enemy could pick up the frequencies involved in deploying them. Lamarr believed that distributing the remotecontrol device over several frequencies would make it undetectable. Born Jewish in Austria, she deeply opposed Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. When she met like-minded George Antheil, the classical pianist and composer, the two teamed up to invent a communications method called spread spectrum, or frequency hopping. Patents were issued, and the technology was a rudimentary form of that used in cellular telephones.
Further Reading Gomery, Douglas. Hollywood Studio System: A History. London: British Film Institute, 2005. A history of the system in place during Lamarr’s career that kept actors under contract to the studios, thus limiting their ability to manage their own careers. Hill, Devra Z. What Almost Happened to Hedy Lamarr. San Antonio, Tex.: Corona Books, 2008. Hill, one of the few writers granted access to the screen icon, reports previously unknown episodes in Lamarr’s life. Jewell, Richard B. The Golden Age of Cinema: Hollywood, 1929-1945. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2007. Describes the film industry during the time Lamarr was at the peak of her career. Lamarr, Hedy. Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman. New York: Macfadden-Bartell, 1966. Fascinating and unabashed account of her six marriages and her many affairs. See also: Lauren Bacall; George Cukor; Samuel Goldwyn; Louis B. Mayer; Irving Thalberg.
Great Lives from History
Category Index List of Categories Activists and Social Reformers . . . . . . . . . XIII Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIII Architects and Designers . . . XIV Artists and Art Collectors. . . XIV Athletes and Coaches . . . . . XIV Business Executives . . . . . XIV Cartoonists . . . . . . . . . . XIV Comedians and Satirists . . . XIV Composers and Songwriters . . . . . . . . . XV Conductors and Bandleaders. . . . . . . . . XV Criminals . . . . . . . . . . . XV Critics . . . . . . . . . . . . . XV Dancers and Choreographers. . . . . . . XV
Directors . . . . . . . . . . . . XV Economists . . . . . . . . . . XV Educators and Scholars . . . . XVI Entrepreneurs . . . . . . . . . XVI Fashion Designers . . . . . . XVI Feminists . . . . . . . . . . . XVI Historians . . . . . . . . . . . XVI Journalists and Broadcasters . . . . . . . . XVI Lawyers and Judges . . . . . XVI Magicians . . . . . . . . . . . XVI Mathematicians . . . . . . . . XVI Military Leaders and Soldiers . . . . . . . . . . XVI Musicians . . . . . . . . . . XVII Philanthropists . . . . . . . . XVII Philosophers . . . . . . . . . XVII
Photographers . . . . . . . . XVII Playwrights . . . . . . . . . XVII Poets . . . . . . . . . . . . . XVII Politicians and Government Officials . . . XVII Producers . . . . . . . . . . XVII Psychologists . . . . . . . . XVIII Publishers . . . . . . . . . . XVIII Religious Leaders . . . . . . XVIII Scientists and Inventors . . . XVIII Screenwriters . . . . . . . . XVIII Singers . . . . . . . . . . . XVIII Sociologists and Anthropologists . . . . . XVIII Supreme Court Justices . . . XVIII Women . . . . . . . . . . . XVIII Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . XIX
Activists and Social Reformers Felix Adler, 10 Saul Alinsky, 28 Ed Asner, 63 Susan Brownmiller, 185 Daniel De Leon, 273 Andrea Dworkin, 307 Paul Michael Glaser, 436 Emma Goldman, 457 Samuel Gompers, 468 Sidney Hillman, 545 Abbie Hoffman, 551 Larry Kramer, 644 Gerda Lerner, 716 Harvey Milk, 813 Bess Myerson, 829 Maud Nathan, 831 Ernestine Rose, 972 Jerry Rubin, 992 Hannah Solomon, 1115 Henrietta Szold, 1182 Lillian D. Wald, 1220
Actors Stella Adler, 16 Alan Arkin, 51 Bea Arthur, 56 Ed Asner, 63 Lauren Bacall, 74 Theda Bara, 82 Roseanne Barr, 86 Milton Berle, 110 Theodore Bikel, 127 Jack Black, 129 Fanny Brice, 166 Matthew Broderick, 170 Adrien Brody, 174 George Burns, 199 James Caan, 203 Eddie Cantor, 211 Billy Crystal, 253 Jamie Lee Curtis, 259, 262 Rodney Dangerfield, 265 Larry David, 267 Sammy Davis, Jr., 271 Kirk Douglas, 297 Fran Drescher, 300 Richard Dreyfuss, 302
Peter Falk, 348 Fyvush Finkel, 368 Carrie Fisher, 376 Paul Michael Glaser, 436 Jeff Goldblum, 450 Elliott Gould, 477 Charles Grodin, 493 Monty Hall, 505 Goldie Hawn, 519 Judd Hirsch, 547 Dustin Hoffman, 553 Amy Irving, 569 Al Jolson, 577 Danny Kaye, 607 Harvey Keitel, 612 Alan King, 617 Robert Klein, 628 Shia LaBeouf, 673 Ricki Lake, 679 Hedy Lamarr, 680 Richard Lewis, 728 Peter Lorre, 750 Groucho Marx, 784 Marlee Matlin, 790 Walter Matthau, 792
XIII
Jewish Americans Elaine May, 794 Bette Midler, 811 Paul Muni, 827 Paul Newman, 842 Leonard Nimoy, 849 Sarah Jessica Parker, 880 Mandy Patinkin, 882 Molly Picon, 894 Natalie Portman, 900 Gilda Radner, 917 Harold Ramis, 920 Carl Reiner, 935, 937 Winona Ryder, 1003 Adam Sandler, 1030 William Shatner, 1068 Alicia Silverstone, 1096 Ben Stiller, 1162 Lee Strasberg, 1167 Sam Wanamaker, 1229 Cornel Wilde, 1258 Gene Wilder, 1263 Debra Winger, 1268 Henry Winkler, 1269 Architects and Designers Dankmar Adler, 9 Gregory Ain, 18 Marcel Breuer, 162 Frank Gehry, 418 Louis I. Kahn, 584 Paul László, 692 Daniel Libeskind, 735 Richard Meier, 799 Robert Moses, 825 Richard Neutra, 836 Rudolph Schindler, 1041 Artists and Art Collectors Judy Chicago, 224 Jim Dine, 289 Jules Feiffer, 354 Helen Frankenthaler, 396 Milton Glaser, 434 Adolph Gottlieb, 476 Peggy Guggenheim, 498 Philip Guston, 501 Eva Hesse, 544 Al Hirschfeld, 549 Alex Katz, 599 Jack Kirby, 624
Lee Krasner, 649 Barbara Kruger, 655 Ibram Lassaw, 690 Sol LeWitt, 729 Roy Lichtenstein, 737 Louise Nevelson, 839 Barnett Newman, 841 Larry Rivers, 962 Mark Rothko, 988 Maurice Sendak, 1062 Ben Shahn, 1066 Leo Stein, 1147 Arthur Szyk, 1183 Athletes and Coaches Senda Berenson Abbott, 1 Red Auerbach, 65 Max Baer, 78 Moe Berg, 103 Larry Brown, 182 Benny Friedman, 404 Hank Greenberg, 486 Nat Holman, 557 Sarah Hughes, 564 Syd Koff, 635 Sandy Koufax, 642 Jason Lezak, 731 Sid Luckman, 754 Renée Richards, 949 Barney Ross, 982 Mark Spitz, 1138 Kerri Strug, 1176 Dara Torres, 1197 Kevin Youkilis, 1298 Business Executives Walter Annenberg, 40 Steve Ballmer, 80 Bernard Baruch, 89 Carl Byoir, 201 Mark Cuban, 255 Clive Davis, 269 Michael Dell, 275 Barry Diller, 287 Edwin Einstein, 317 Michael Eisner, 321 Larry Ellison, 333 Theo Epstein, 340 Max Factor, 345 David Geffen, 416 XIV
Marcus Goldman, 459 Samuel Goldwyn, 465 Meyer Guggenheim, 496 Leona Helmsley, 529 Carl Icahn, 567 Mel Karmazin, 596 Jeffrey Katzenberg, 600 Jerome Kohlberg, Jr., 636 Carl Laemmle, 674 Edwin Herbert Land, 684 Herbert Lehman, 707 Marcus Loew, 746 Louis B. Mayer, 797 Michael Milken, 815 William S. Paley, 875 Jay A. Pritzker, 913 Sumner Redstone, 925 Julius Rosenwald, 981 Helena Rubinstein, 999 Haym Salomon, 1026 David Sarnoff, 1033 Dore Schary, 1035 Bud Selig, 1059 George Soros, 1125 Arthur Hays Sulzberger, 1180 Irving Thalberg, 1192 Felix M. Warburg, 1231 Warner brothers, 1233 Lew Wasserman, 1235 Adolph Zukor, 1304 Cartoonists Al Capp, 214 Jules Feiffer, 354 Rube Goldberg, 447 Art Spiegelman, 1132 Arthur Szyk, 1183 Comedians and Satirists Woody Allen, 31 Roseanne Barr, 86 Jack Benny, 99 Milton Berle, 110 Victor Borge, 152 Albert Brooks, 175, 177 Lenny Bruce, 187 Art Buchwald, 195 Sid Caesar, 204 Billy Crystal, 253 Rodney Dangerfield, 265
Category Index Al Franken, 394 Larry Gelbart, 421 Andy Kaufman, 602 Alan King, 617 Robert Klein, 628 Tom Lehrer, 709 Jerry Lewis, 725, 728 Groucho Marx, 784 Elaine May, 794 Mike Nichols, 847 Don Rickles, 951 Joan Rivers, 960 Mort Sahl, 1018 Adam Sandler, 1030 Jerry Seinfeld, 1055 Sarah Silverman, 1093 Howard Stern, 1150 Jon Stewart, 1154 Henny Youngman, 1300 Composers and Songwriters Samuel H. Adler, 14 Herb Alpert, 36 Harold Arlen, 53 Burt Bacharach, 76 Irving Berlin, 112 Elmer Bernstein, 119, 121 Sammy Cahn, 208 Leonard Cohen, 230 Betty Comden, 244 Aaron Copland, 246 Neil Diamond, 282 Bob Dylan, 309 Danny Elfman, 323 Irving Fine, 367 Arthur Freed, 400 Kinky Friedman, 407 George Gershwin, 423, 426 Philip Glass, 439 Adolph Green, 484 Marvin Hamlisch, 507 Yip Harburg, 511 Lorenz Hart, 513 Jerry Herman, 536 Bernard Herrmann, 538 Jerome Kern, 614 Carole King, 619 Tom Lehrer, 709 Frederick Loewe, 747 Barry Manilow, 772
Randy Newman, 845 Shulamit Ran, 922 Lou Reed, 928 Steve Reich, 933 Richard Rodgers, 968 Sigmund Romberg, 970 Arnold Schoenberg, 1043 Sholom Secunda, 1054 Carly Simon, 1100, 1106 Stephen Sondheim, 1118 Jule Styne, 1178 Kurt Weill, 1244 Conductors and Bandleaders Leonard Bernstein, 121 Aaron Copland, 246 Lukas Foss, 387 Boris Goldovsky, 461 Benny Goodman, 470 Marvin Hamlisch, 507 Lorin Maazel, 759 André Previn, 908 Artie Shaw, 1070 Criminals David Berkowitz, 107 Ivan Boesky, 148 Louis Buchalter, 193, 194 Mickey Cohen, 232 Meyer Lansky, 688 Michael Milken, 815 Jackie Presser, 907 Abraham Reles, 941 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, 977 Arnold Rothstein, 990 Dutch Schultz, 1047 Bugsy Siegel, 1087 Eliot Spitzer, 1141 Abner Zwillman, 1307 Critics M. H. Abrams, 5 Harold Bloom, 135 Stanley Fish, 374 Irving Howe, 562 Pauline Kael, 582 Alfred Kazin, 610 Elaine C. Showalter, 1082 Susan Sontag, 1120 Lionel Trilling, 1203 XV
Dancers and Choreographers Sammy Davis, Jr., 271 Eliot Feld, 361 Jerome Robbins, 964 Anna Sokolow, 1110 Directors J. J. Abrams, 2 Woody Allen, 31 Judd Apatow, 45 Peter Bogdanovich, 145 Albert Brooks, 175, 177 Joel and Ethan Coen, 228 George Cukor, 257 Cecil B. DeMille, 277 Stanley Donen, 295 Stanley Kramer, 646 Stanley Kubrick, 657 Barry Levinson, 721 Ernst Lubitsch, 752 Sidney Lumet, 756 Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 774 Michael Mann, 777 Mike Nichols, 847 Arthur Penn, 886 Sydney Pollack, 897 Otto Preminger, 904 Rob Reiner, 937 Steven Spielberg, 1134 Ben Stiller, 1162 Billy Wilder, 1260 Frederick Wiseman, 1280 William Wyler, 1291 Economists George Akerlof, 20 Kenneth Arrow, 55 Ben Bernanke, 115 Arthur Burns, 197 Milton Friedman, 409 Alan Greenspan, 491 Paul Krugman, 656 Harry Markowitz, 782 Eric Maskin, 787 Robert B. Reich, 930 Robert Rubin, 994 Jeffrey D. Sachs, 1008 Paul Samuelson, 1028 Herbert Simon, 1102
Jewish Americans Herbert Stein, 1145 Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1159 Harry Dexter White, 1254 Educators and Scholars Senda Berenson Abbott, 1 M. H. Abrams, 5 Allan Bloom, 133, 135 Noam Chomsky, 226 Stanley Fish, 374 Abraham Flexner, 380 Nathan Glazer, 442 Will Herberg, 534 Horace Kallen, 588 Gerda Lerner, 716 Ruth Rubin, 996 Elaine C. Showalter, 1082 Henrietta Szold, 1182 Laurence Tribe, 1200 Lionel Trilling, 1203 Lillian D. Wald, 1220 Immanuel Wallerstein, 1225 Louis Wirth, 1273 Entrepreneurs Madame Alexander, 23 Steve Ballmer, 80 Michael Bloomberg, 139 Sergey Brin, 168 Michael Dell, 275 Barry Diller, 287 Larry Ellison, 333 Max Factor, 345 Estée Lauder, 693 Larry Page, 871 Helena Rubinstein, 999 Shubert brothers, 1084 Isidor Straus, 1169 Levi Strauss, 1171 Fashion Designers Kenneth Cole, 242 Donna Karan, 592 Ralph Lauren, 696 Pauline Trigère, 1202 Feminists Gloria Allred, 34 Susan Brownmiller, 185
Judy Chicago, 224 Andrea Dworkin, 307 Lillian Faderman, 346 Shulamith Firestone, 372 Betty Friedan, 402 Emma Goldman, 457 Erica Jong, 579 Maud Nathan, 831 Tillie Olsen, 861 Adrienne Rich, 947 Ernestine Rose, 972 Elaine C. Showalter, 1082 Susan Sontag, 1120 Gloria Steinem, 1148 Naomi Wolf, 1283 Historians Salo Baron, 84 Daniel J. Boorstin, 150 Robert William Fogel, 383 Peter Gay, 414 Oscar Handlin, 510 Aaron Lansky, 686 Gerda Lerner, 716 Moses Rischin, 956 Studs Terkel, 1190 Barbara W. Tuchman, 1206 Journalists and Broadcasters Julius Ochs Adler, 12 Mel Allen, 29 Carl Bernstein, 117 Wolf Blitzer, 130 Margaret Bourke-White, 154 Art Buchwald, 195 Abraham Cahan, 207 Robert Capa, 213 Howard Cosell, 250 Matt Drudge, 305 Alfred Eisenstaedt, 319 Susan Faludi, 350 Dorothy Fuldheim, 411 David Halberstam, 503 Nat Hentoff, 533 Seymour M. Hersh, 540 Marvin Kalb, 586 Larry King, 621 Ted Koppel, 639 William Kristol, 653 XVI
Walter Lippmann, 742 Seth Lipsky, 744 Al Michaels, 809 Arthur D. Morse, 824 Mordecai M. Noah, 852 Daniel Pearl, 885 Norman Podhoretz, 896 Morley Safer, 1010 William Safire, 1013 Daniel Schorr, 1046 Sime Silverman, 1095 I. F. Stone, 1164 Abigail Van Buren, 1215 Mike Wallace, 1222 Barbara Walters, 1226 Walter Winchell, 1265 Lawyers and Judges Gloria Allred, 34 Louis D. Brandeis, 160 Stephen G. Breyer, 164 Benjamin N. Cardozo, 216 Roy Cohn, 240 Alan M. Dershowitz, 280 Susan Estrich, 342 Abe Fortas, 384 Felix Frankfurter, 398 Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 431 Arthur J. Goldberg, 446 William Kunstler, 665 Judy Sheindlin, 1075 Magicians David Copperfield, 248 Harry Houdini, 560 Ricky Jay, 573 Mathematicians Paul Joseph Cohen, 234 Emmy Noether, 854 Abraham Robinson, 966 Military Leaders and Soldiers Julius Ochs Adler, 12 Jeremy Michael Boorda, 149 Leopold Karpeles, 597 Uriah P. Levy, 723 Mickey Marcus, 779
Category Index Hyman G. Rickover, 954 Maurice Rose, 975 Tibor Rubin, 997 Edward S. Salomon, 1025 Mordecai Sheftall, 1073 Musicians Herb Alpert, 36 Victor Borge, 152 Misha Dichter, 284 Lukas Foss, 387 Boris Goldovsky, 461 Benny Goodman, 470 Jascha Heifetz, 523 Itzhak Perlman, 892 André Previn, 908 Lou Reed, 928 David Lee Roth, 984 Artie Shaw, 1070 Gene Simmons, 1098 Isaac Stern, 1152 Paul Wittgenstein, 1281 Philanthropists Rebecca Gratz, 482 Meyer Guggenheim, 496 Carl Icahn, 567 Jerome Kohlberg, Jr., 636 Jerry Lewis, 725 Michael Milken, 815 George Soros, 1125 Joel Spingarn, 1137 Isidor Straus, 1169 Felix M. Warburg, 1231 Philosophers Bruno Bettelheim, 125 Allan Bloom, 133 Noam Chomsky, 226 Abraham Joshua Heschel, 542 Horace Kallen, 588 Ayn Rand, 923 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, 1116 Photographers Diane Arbus, 47 Richard Avedon, 70 Margaret Bourke-White, 154
Robert Capa, 213 Alfred Eisenstaedt, 319 Robert Frank, 393 Nan Goldin, 455 Barbara Kruger, 655 Annie Leibovitz, 711 Man Ray, 769 Irving Penn, 889 Herb Ritts, 958 Cindy Sherman, 1078 Alfred Stieglitz, 1156 Weegee, 1242 Garry Winogrand, 1272 Playwrights S. N. Behrman, 92 Paddy Chayefsky, 222 Jules Feiffer, 354 Bruce Jay Friedman, 406 Larry Gelbart, 421 Adolph Green, 484 Lorenz Hart, 513, 515 Ben Hecht, 521 Lillian Hellman, 527 George S. Kaufman, 605 Larry Kramer, 644 Tony Kushner, 670 Alan Jay Lerner, 713 David Mamet, 767 Arthur Miller, 817 Clifford Odets, 858 Neil Simon, 1103 Wendy Wasserstein, 1238 Poets Joseph Brodsky, 172 Allen Ginsberg, 428 Louise Glück, 444 Maxine Kumin, 660 Stanley Kunitz, 662 Emma Lazarus, 698 Philip Levine, 719 Howard Nemerov, 832 Dorothy Parker, 877 Adrienne Rich, 947 Muriel Rukeyser, 1001 Delmore Schwartz, 1052 Mark Strand, 1165 Louis Untermeyer, 1211 Louis Zukofsky, 1303 XVII
Politicians and Government Officials Bella Abzug, 6 Abraham Beame, 90 Judah Benjamin, 97 Ben Bernanke, 115 Sol Bloom, 137 Michael Bloomberg, 139 Barbara Boxer, 158 Emanuel Celler, 219 William S. Cohen, 237 Samuel Dickstein, 286 Morris Michael Edelstein, 314 Edwin Einstein, 317 Rahm Emanuel, 336 Russ Feingold, 356 Dianne Feinstein, 358 Barney Frank, 389 Al Franken, 394 Barry Goldwater, 463 Alan Greenspan, 491 Jacob K. Javits, 571 Henry Kissinger, 625 Ed Koch, 632 Fiorello Henry La Guardia, 677 Lewis Libby, 732 Joe Lieberman, 739 Golda Meir, 801 Ruth Messinger, 805 Howard Metzenbaum, 807 Harvey Milk, 813 Henry Morgenthau, Jr., 819, 822 Bess Myerson, 829 Ed Rendell, 942 Abraham A. Ribicoff, 945 Samuel I. Rosenman, 979 Edward S. Salomon, 1025 Charles Schumer, 1050 Stephen J. Solarz, 1113 Arlen Specter, 1127 Henry Waxman, 1240 Paul Wellstone, 1250 Harry Dexter White, 1254 Paul Wolfowitz, 1285 Producers Jerry Bruckheimer, 189 Larry David, 267 Clive Davis, 269 Arthur Freed, 400
Jewish Americans Samuel Goldwyn, 465 Mark Goodson, 473 Carl Laemmle, 674 Norman Lear, 700 Sydney Pollack, 897 Shubert brothers, 1084 Aaron Spelling, 1130 Steven Spielberg, 1134 Irving Thalberg, 1192 Psychologists Bruno Bettelheim, 125 Joyce Brothers, 180 Jerome Bruner, 191 Albert Ellis, 329 Publishers Walter Annenberg, 40 Alfred A. Knopf, 630 Dorothy Schiff, 1040 Religious Leaders Henry Berkowitz, 108 Moshe Feinstein, 360 Louis Finkelstein, 370 Robert Gordis, 475 Irving Greenberg, 488 Abraham Joshua Heschel, 542 Mordecai Kaplan, 591 Harold S. Kushner, 668 Norman Lamm, 683 Isaac Leeser, 705 Judah Leon Magnes, 760 Henry Pereira Mendes, 804 Jacob Neusner, 835 Sally J. Priesand, 911 Solomon Schechter, 1037 Gershom Mendes Seixas, 1058 Abba Hillel Silver, 1092 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, 1116 Marc H. Tanenbaum, 1186 Isaac Mayer Wise, 1275, 1277 Scientists and Inventors Richard Axel, 72 Seymour Benzer, 101 Paul Berg, 105 Hans Albrecht Bethe, 124
Michael S. Brown, 183 Stanley Cohen, 235 Mildred Cohn, 238 Carl Djerassi, 291 Gerald M. Edelman, 312 Albert Einstein, 315 Gertrude Belle Elion, 325 Richard P. Feynman, 365 Donald A. Glaser, 433 Sheldon L. Glashow, 437 Maurice Goldhaber, 452 Daniel S. Goldin, 454 Stephen Jay Gould, 480 Paul Greengard, 489 David Gross, 495 Herbert A. Hauptman, 517 Roald Hoffmann, 555 H. Robert Horvitz, 558 Jerome Karle, 594 Walter Kohn, 638 Ray Kurzweil, 666 Edwin Herbert Land, 684 Leon M. Lederman, 704 Rudolph A. Marcus, 780 J. Robert Oppenheimer, 863 Stanley B. Prusiner, 914 Isidor Isaac Rabi, 916 Frederick Reines, 939 Judith Resnik, 944 Irwin Rose, 974 Albert Sabin, 1006 Carl Sagan, 1015 Jonas Salk, 1022 Béla Schick, 1039 Edward Teller, 1187 Harold E. Varmus, 1218 Steven Weinberg, 1246 Rosalyn Yalow, 1294 Screenwriters J. J. Abrams, 2 Jules Feiffer, 354 Larry Gelbart, 421 Barry Levinson, 721 Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 774 Elaine May, 794 Dore Schary, 1035 Aaron Sorkin, 1123 Matthew Weiner, 1248 XVIII
Singers Theodore Bikel, 127 Leonard Cohen, 230 Sammy Davis, Jr., 271 Neil Diamond, 282 Bob Dylan, 309 Danny Elfman, 323 Eddie Fisher, 378 Kinky Friedman, 407 Art Garfunkel, 413 Billy Joel, 574 Al Jolson, 577 Carole King, 619 Lenny Kravitz, 651 Tom Lehrer, 709 Barry Manilow, 772 Matisyahu, 788 Bette Midler, 811 Phil Ochs, 857 Mandy Patinkin, 882 Ruth Rubin, 996 Sholom Secunda, 1054 Dinah Shore, 1080 Beverly Sills, 1089 Carly Simon, 1100, 1106 Barbra Streisand, 1174 Mel Tormé, 1195 Sophie Tucker, 1208 Sociologists and Anthropologists Daniel Bell, 93 Franz Boas, 143 Nathan Glazer, 442 Will Herberg, 534 Immanuel Wallerstein, 1225 Louis Wirth, 1273 Supreme Court Justices Louis D. Brandeis, 160 Stephen G. Breyer, 164 Benjamin N. Cardozo, 216 Abe Fortas, 384 Felix Frankfurter, 398 Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 431 Arthur J. Goldberg, 446 Women Senda Berenson Abbott, 1 Bella Abzug, 6
Category Index Stella Adler, 16 Madame Alexander, 23 Gloria Allred, 34 Mary Antin, 43 Diane Arbus, 47 Hannah Arendt, 49 Bea Arthur, 56 Lauren Bacall, 74 Theda Bara, 82 Roseanne Barr, 86 Judy Blume, 141 Margaret Bourke-White, 154 Jane Bowles, 156 Barbara Boxer, 158 Fanny Brice, 166 Joyce Brothers, 180 Susan Brownmiller, 185 Hortense Calisher, 210 Judy Chicago, 224 Mildred Cohn, 238 Betty Comden, 244 Jamie Lee Curtis, 259 Fran Drescher, 300 Andrea Dworkin, 307 Gertrude Belle Elion, 325 Nora Ephron, 338 Susan Estrich, 342 Lillian Faderman, 346 Susan Faludi, 350 Dianne Feinstein, 358 Edna Ferber, 363 Shulamith Firestone, 372 Carrie Fisher, 376 Helen Frankenthaler, 396 Betty Friedan, 402 Dorothy Fuldheim, 411 Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 431 Louise Glück, 444 Nan Goldin, 455 Emma Goldman, 457 Rebecca Gratz, 482 Peggy Guggenheim, 498 Goldie Hawn, 519 Lillian Hellman, 527 Leona Helmsley, 529 Eva Hesse, 544 Sarah Hughes, 564 Amy Irving, 569 Erica Jong, 579 Pauline Kael, 582
Donna Karan, 592 Carole King, 619 Syd Koff, 635 Lee Krasner, 649 Barbara Kruger, 655 Maxine Kumin, 660 Ricki Lake, 679 Hedy Lamarr, 680 Estée Lauder, 693 Emma Lazarus, 698 Fran Lebowitz, 702 Annie Leibovitz, 711 Gerda Lerner, 716 Marlee Matlin, 790 Elaine May, 794 Golda Meir, 801 Ruth Messinger, 805 Bette Midler, 811 Bess Myerson, 829 Maud Nathan, 831 Louise Nevelson, 839 Emmy Noether, 854 Tillie Olsen, 861 Suze Orman, 865 Cynthia Ozick, 868 Grace Paley, 872 Dorothy Parker, 877, 880 Molly Picon, 894 Natalie Portman, 900 Sally J. Priesand, 911 Gilda Radner, 917 Shulamit Ran, 922 Ayn Rand, 923 Judith Resnik, 944 Adrienne Rich, 947 Renée Richards, 949 Joan Rivers, 960 Ernestine Rose, 972 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, 977 Ruth Rubin, 996 Helena Rubinstein, 999 Muriel Rukeyser, 1001 Winona Ryder, 1003 Dorothy Schiff, 1040 Judy Sheindlin, 1075 Cindy Sherman, 1078 Dinah Shore, 1080 Elaine C. Showalter, 1082 Beverly Sills, 1089 XIX
Sarah Silverman, 1093 Alicia Silverstone, 1096 Carly Simon, 1100 Anna Sokolow, 1110 Hannah Solomon, 1115 Susan Sontag, 1120 Gertrude Stein, 1143 Gloria Steinem, 1148 Barbra Streisand, 1174 Kerri Strug, 1176 Henrietta Szold, 1182 Dara Torres, 1197 Pauline Trigère, 1202 Barbara W. Tuchman, 1206 Sophie Tucker, 1208 Abigail Van Buren, 1215 Lillian D. Wald, 1220 Barbara Walters, 1226 Wendy Wasserstein, 1238 Debra Winger, 1268 Naomi Wolf, 1283 Rosalyn Yalow, 1294 Anzia Yezierska, 1296 Writers Sholom Aleichem, 21 Nelson Algren, 25 Mary Antin, 43 Hannah Arendt, 49 Sholem Asch, 59 Isaac Asimov, 60 Paul Auster, 67 Saul Bellow, 95 Judy Blume, 141 Jane Bowles, 156 Joseph Brodsky, 172 Albert Brooks, 175 Susan Brownmiller, 185 Hortense Calisher, 210 Michael Chabon, 220 Paddy Chayefsky, 222 Larry David, 267 E. L. Doctorow, 293 Andrea Dworkin, 307 Stanley Elkin, 327 Harlan Ellison, 331 Nora Ephron, 338 Howard Fast, 353 Edna Ferber, 363 Shulamith Firestone, 372
Jewish Americans Carrie Fisher, 376 Jonathan Safran Foer, 381 Betty Friedan, 402 Bruce Jay Friedman, 406, 407 Joseph Heller, 524 Mark Helprin, 531 Erica Jong, 579 Justin Kaplan, 589 Larry Kramer, 644 Fran Lebowitz, 702 Jonathan Lethem, 718
Norman Mailer, 762 Bernard Malamud, 765 Tillie Olsen, 861 Suze Orman, 865 Cynthia Ozick, 868 Grace Paley, 872 S. J. Perelman, 890 Chaim Potok, 902 Ayn Rand, 923 Philip Roth, 985 Carl Sagan, 1015 J. D. Salinger, 1020
XX
Maurice Sendak, 1062 Rod Serling, 1064 Sidney Sheldon, 1076 Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1108 Susan Sontag, 1120 Gertrude Stein, 1143 Leon Uris, 1212 Nathanael West, 1252 Elie Wiesel, 1256 Naomi Wolf, 1283 Herman Wouk, 1288 Anzia Yezierska, 1296
Great Lives from History
Great Lives from History
Volume 3 Norman Lamm – Solomon Schechter
Editor
Dr. Rafael Medoff The David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Washington, D.C.
Salem Press Pasadena, California
Hackensack, New Jersey
Editor in Chief: Dawn P. Dawson Editorial Director: Christina J. Moose Photo Editor: Cynthia Breslin Beres Development Editor: Tracy Irons-Georges Research Supervisor: Jeffry Jensen Manuscript Editor: Constance Pollock Production Editor: Joyce I. Buchea Acquisitions Manager: Mark Rehn Graphics and Design: James Hutson Administrative Assistant: Paul Tifford, Jr. Layout: Mary Overell
Cover photos (pictured left to right, from top left): Henry Kissinger (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images); Paul Newman (©CinemaPhoto/CORBIS); Lauren Bacall (©Sunset Boulevard/CORBIS); Woody Allen (CBS/Getty Images); Sammy Davis, Jr. (Redferns/Getty Images); Sandy Koufax (Getty Images)
Copyright © 2011, by Salem Press, a Division of EBSCO Publishing, Inc. All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews or in the copying of images deemed to be freely licensed or in the public domain. For information address the publisher, Salem Press, at
[email protected]. ∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-1992 (R1997).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Great lives from history Jewish Americans / Rafael Medoff, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58765-741-2 (set : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-742-9 (vol. 1 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-743-6 (vol. 2 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-744-3 (vol. 3 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-745-0 (vol. 4 : alk. paper) 1. Jews—United States—Biography. 2. Jews—Canada—Biography. 3. Jews—United States— History. 4. Jews—Canada—History. I. Medoff, Rafael, 1959E184.37.A137 2011 973′.04924—dc22 2011003492
printed in canada
Contents Key to Pronunciation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lv Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . lvii Norman Lamm . . . Edwin Herbert Land Aaron Lansky . . . Meyer Lansky . . . Ibram Lassaw . . . Paul László . . . . . Estée Lauder . . . . Ralph Lauren . . . . Emma Lazarus . . . Norman Lear . . . . Fran Lebowitz . . . Leon M. Lederman . Isaac Leeser . . . . Herbert Lehman . . Tom Lehrer . . . . . Annie Leibovitz . . Alan Jay Lerner . . Gerda Lerner . . . . Jonathan Lethem . . Philip Levine . . . . Barry Levinson . . . Uriah P. Levy. . . . Jerry Lewis . . . . . Richard Lewis . . . Sol LeWitt . . . . . Jason Lezak . . . . Lewis Libby . . . . Daniel Libeskind . . Roy Lichtenstein . . Joe Lieberman . . . Walter Lippmann . . Seth Lipsky. . . . . Marcus Loew. . . . Frederick Loewe . . Peter Lorre . . . . . Ernst Lubitsch . . . Sid Luckman . . . . Sidney Lumet . . .
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683 684 686 688 690 692 693 696 698 700 702 704 705 707 709 711 713 716 718 719 721 723 725 728 729 731 732 735 737 739 742 744 746 747 750 752 754 756
Lorin Maazel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 759 Judah Leon Magnes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 760 Norman Mailer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 762
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Bernard Malamud . . . David Mamet. . . . . . Man Ray . . . . . . . . Barry Manilow . . . . . Joseph L. Mankiewicz . Michael Mann . . . . . Mickey Marcus. . . . . Rudolph A. Marcus . . Harry Markowitz . . . . Groucho Marx . . . . . Eric Maskin . . . . . . Matisyahu . . . . . . . Marlee Matlin . . . . . Walter Matthau . . . . . Elaine May . . . . . . . Louis B. Mayer. . . . . Richard Meier . . . . . Golda Meir . . . . . . . Henry Pereira Mendes . Ruth Messinger . . . . Howard Metzenbaum . Al Michaels . . . . . . Bette Midler . . . . . . Harvey Milk . . . . . . Michael Milken . . . . Arthur Miller . . . . . . Henry Morgenthau, Jr. . Henry Morgenthau, Sr. . Arthur D. Morse . . . . Robert Moses. . . . . . Paul Muni . . . . . . . Bess Myerson . . . . .
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765 767 769 772 774 777 779 780 782 784 787 788 790 792 794 797 799 801 804 805 807 809 811 813 815 817 819 822 824 825 827 829
Maud Nathan . . . . Howard Nemerov . Jacob Neusner . . . Richard Neutra . . . Louise Nevelson . . Barnett Newman . . Paul Newman . . . Randy Newman . . Mike Nichols . . . . Leonard Nimoy . . Mordecai M. Noah . Emmy Noether . . .
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831 832 835 836 839 841 842 845 847 849 852 854
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Jewish Americans Phil Ochs . . . . . . . . Clifford Odets . . . . . Tillie Olsen . . . . . . . J. Robert Oppenheimer. Suze Orman . . . . . . Cynthia Ozick . . . . .
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857 858 861 863 865 868
Larry Page . . . . . Grace Paley. . . . . William S. Paley . . Dorothy Parker . . . Sarah Jessica Parker Mandy Patinkin . . Daniel Pearl . . . . Arthur Penn . . . . Irving Penn . . . . . S. J. Perelman . . . Itzhak Perlman . . . Molly Picon . . . . Norman Podhoretz . Sydney Pollack . . . Natalie Portman . . Chaim Potok . . . . Otto Preminger . . . Jackie Presser . . . André Previn . . . . Sally J. Priesand . . Jay A. Pritzker . . . Stanley B. Prusiner .
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871 872 875 877 880 882 885 886 889 890 892 894 896 897 900 902 904 907 908 911 913 914
Isidor Isaac Rabi . . . Gilda Radner . . . . . Harold Ramis. . . . . Shulamit Ran . . . . . Ayn Rand. . . . . . . Sumner Redstone. . . Lou Reed . . . . . . . Robert B. Reich . . . Steve Reich. . . . . . Carl Reiner . . . . . . Rob Reiner . . . . . . Frederick Reines . . . Abraham Reles . . . . Ed Rendell . . . . . . Judith Resnik . . . . . Abraham A. Ribicoff . Adrienne Rich . . . .
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916 917 920 922 923 925 928 930 933 935 937 939 941 942 944 945 947
Renée Richards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 949 Don Rickles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 951 Hyman G. Rickover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 954 Moses Rischin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 956 Herb Ritts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 958 Joan Rivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 960 Larry Rivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 962 Jerome Robbins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 964 Abraham Robinson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 966 Richard Rodgers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 968 Sigmund Romberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 970 Ernestine Rose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 972 Irwin Rose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 974 Maurice Rose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 975 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . 977 Samuel I. Rosenman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 979 Julius Rosenwald. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 981 Barney Ross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 982 David Lee Roth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 984 Philip Roth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 985 Mark Rothko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 988 Arnold Rothstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990 Jerry Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 992 Robert Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 994 Ruth Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 996 Tibor Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 997 Helena Rubinstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 999 Muriel Rukeyser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1001 Winona Ryder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1003 Albert Sabin. . . . . Jeffrey D. Sachs. . . Morley Safer . . . . William Safire. . . . Carl Sagan . . . . . Mort Sahl . . . . . . J. D. Salinger . . . . Jonas Salk. . . . . . Edward S. Salomon . Haym Salomon . . . Paul Samuelson . . . Adam Sandler. . . . David Sarnoff . . . . Dore Schary. . . . . Solomon Schechter .
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1006 1008 1010 1013 1015 1018 1020 1022 1025 1026 1028 1030 1033 1035 1037
Category Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXIII
liv
Key to Pronunciation Many of the names of personages covered in Great Lives from History: Jewish Americans may be unfamiliar to students and general readers. For all names, guidelines to pronunciation have been provided upon first mention of the name in each essay. These guidelines do not purport to achieve the subtleties of the languages in question but will offer readers a rough equivalent of how English speakers may approximate the proper pronunciation.
Vowel Sounds Symbol Spelled (Pronounced) a answer (AN-suhr), laugh (laf), sample (SAM-puhl), that (that) ah father (FAH-thur), hospital (HAHS-pih-tuhl) aw awful (AW-fuhl), caught (kawt) ay blaze (blayz), fade (fayd), waiter (WAYT-ur), weigh (way) eh bed (behd), head (hehd), said (sehd) ee believe (bee-LEEV), cedar (SEE-dur), leader (LEED-ur), liter (LEE-tur) ew boot (bewt), lose (lewz) i buy (bi), height (hit), lie (li), surprise (sur-PRIZ) ih bitter (BIH-tur), pill (pihl) o cotton (KO-tuhn), hot (hot) oh below (bee-LOH), coat (koht), note (noht), wholesome (HOHL-suhm) oo good (good), look (look) ow couch (kowch), how (how) oy boy (boy), coin (koyn) uh about (uh-BOWT), butter (BUH-tuhr), enough (ee-NUHF), other (UH-thur)
Consonant Sounds Symbol Spelled (Pronounced) ch beach (beech), chimp (chihmp) g beg (behg), disguise (dihs-GIZ), get (geht) j digit (DIH-juht), edge (ehj), jet (jeht) k cat (kat), kitten (KIH-tuhn), hex (hehks) s cellar (SEHL-ur), save (sayv), scent (sehnt) sh champagne (sham-PAYN), issue (IH-shew), shop (shop) ur birth (burth), disturb (dihs-TURB), earth (urth), letter (LEH-tur) y useful (YEWS-fuhl), young (yuhng) z business (BIHZ-nehs), zest (zehst) zh vision (VIH-zhuhn)
lv
Complete List of Contents Volume 1 Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Publisher’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Editor’s Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Key to Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
Lauren Bacall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Burt Bacharach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Max Baer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Steve Ballmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Theda Bara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Salo Baron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Roseanne Barr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Bernard Baruch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Abraham Beame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 S. N. Behrman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Daniel Bell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Saul Bellow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Judah Benjamin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Jack Benny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Seymour Benzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Moe Berg. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Paul Berg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 David Berkowitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Henry Berkowitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Milton Berle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Irving Berlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Ben Bernanke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Carl Bernstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Elmer Bernstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Leonard Bernstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Hans Albrecht Bethe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Bruno Bettelheim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Theodore Bikel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Jack Black . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Wolf Blitzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Allan Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Harold Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Sol Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Michael Bloomberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Judy Blume. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Franz Boas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Peter Bogdanovich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Ivan Boesky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Jeremy Michael Boorda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Daniel J. Boorstin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Victor Borge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Margaret Bourke-White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Jane Bowles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Senda Berenson Abbott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 J. J. Abrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 M. H. Abrams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Bella Abzug. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Dankmar Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Felix Adler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Julius Ochs Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Samuel H. Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Stella Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Gregory Ain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 George Akerlof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Sholom Aleichem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Madame Alexander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Nelson Algren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Saul Alinsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Mel Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Woody Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Gloria Allred . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Herb Alpert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Lyle Alzado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Walter Annenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Mary Antin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Judd Apatow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Diane Arbus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Hannah Arendt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Alan Arkin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Harold Arlen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Kenneth Arrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Bea Arthur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Sholem Asch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Isaac Asimov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Ed Asner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Red Auerbach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Paul Auster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Richard Avedon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Richard Axel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 lvii
Jewish Americans Barbara Boxer . . . Louis D. Brandeis . Marcel Breuer . . . Stephen G. Breyer . Fanny Brice . . . . Sergey Brin. . . . . Matthew Broderick. Joseph Brodsky . . Adrien Brody. . . . Albert Brooks . . . Mel Brooks. . . . . Joyce Brothers . . . Larry Brown . . . . Michael S. Brown . Susan Brownmiller . Lenny Bruce . . . . Jerry Bruckheimer . Jerome Bruner . . . Louis Buchalter . . Art Buchwald . . . Arthur Burns . . . . George Burns. . . . Carl Byoir . . . . .
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158 160 162 164 166 168 170 172 174 175 177 180 182 183 185 187 189 191 193 195 197 199 201
James Caan. . . . . . Sid Caesar . . . . . . Abraham Cahan . . . Sammy Cahn . . . . . Hortense Calisher . . Eddie Cantor . . . . . Robert Capa . . . . . Al Capp . . . . . . . Benjamin N. Cardozo Emanuel Celler . . . . Michael Chabon . . . Paddy Chayefsky . . . Judy Chicago . . . . . Noam Chomsky . . . Joel and Ethan Coen . Leonard Cohen . . . . Mickey Cohen . . . . Paul Joseph Cohen . . Stanley Cohen . . . . William S. Cohen . . Mildred Cohn . . . . Roy Cohn. . . . . . . Kenneth Cole. . . . . Betty Comden . . . . Aaron Copland . . . .
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203 204 207 208 210 211 213 214 216 219 220 222 224 226 228 230 232 234 235 237 238 240 242 244 246
David Copperfield Howard Cosell . . Billy Crystal . . . Mark Cuban . . . George Cukor . . Jamie Lee Curtis . Tony Curtis . . . .
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248 250 253 255 257 259 262
Rodney Dangerfield Larry David . . . . Clive Davis . . . . . Sammy Davis, Jr.. . Daniel De Leon . . Michael Dell . . . . Cecil B. DeMille . . Alan M. Dershowitz Neil Diamond . . . Misha Dichter . . . Samuel Dickstein. . Barry Diller . . . . Jim Dine . . . . . . Carl Djerassi . . . . E. L. Doctorow . . . Stanley Donen . . . Kirk Douglas . . . . Fran Drescher . . . Richard Dreyfuss. . Matt Drudge . . . . Andrea Dworkin . . Bob Dylan . . . . .
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265 267 269 271 273 275 277 280 282 284 286 287 289 291 293 295 297 300 302 305 307 309
Gerald M. Edelman . . . Morris Michael Edelstein Albert Einstein . . . . . . Edwin Einstein . . . . . . Alfred Eisenstaedt . . . . Michael Eisner . . . . . . Danny Elfman . . . . . . Gertrude Belle Elion . . . Stanley Elkin . . . . . . . Albert Ellis . . . . . . . . Harlan Ellison . . . . . . Larry Ellison . . . . . . . Rahm Emanuel . . . . . . Nora Ephron . . . . . . . Theo Epstein . . . . . . . Susan Estrich . . . . . . .
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312 314 315 317 319 321 323 325 327 329 331 333 336 338 340 342
Category Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III lviii
Complete List of Contents
Volume 2 Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxv Key to Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxvii Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxix Max Factor . . . . . . Lillian Faderman . . . Peter Falk. . . . . . . Susan Faludi . . . . . Howard Fast . . . . . Jules Feiffer . . . . . Russ Feingold . . . . Dianne Feinstein . . . Moshe Feinstein . . . Eliot Feld . . . . . . . Edna Ferber . . . . . Richard P. Feynman . Irving Fine . . . . . . Fyvush Finkel . . . . Louis Finkelstein . . . Shulamith Firestone . Stanley Fish . . . . . Carrie Fisher . . . . . Eddie Fisher . . . . . Abraham Flexner. . . Jonathan Safran Foer . Robert William Fogel Abe Fortas . . . . . . Lukas Foss . . . . . . Barney Frank . . . . . Leo Frank . . . . . . Robert Frank . . . . . Al Franken . . . . . . Helen Frankenthaler . Felix Frankfurter . . . Arthur Freed . . . . . Betty Friedan . . . . . Benny Friedman . . . Bruce Jay Friedman . Kinky Friedman . . . Milton Friedman . . . Dorothy Fuldheim . .
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345 346 348 350 353 354 356 358 360 361 363 365 367 368 370 372 374 376 378 380 381 383 384 387 389 391 393 394 396 398 400 402 404 406 407 409 411
Larry Gelbart . . . . . George Gershwin. . . Ira Gershwin . . . . . Allen Ginsberg . . . . Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Donald A. Glaser. . . Milton Glaser. . . . . Paul Michael Glaser . Sheldon L. Glashow . Philip Glass . . . . . Nathan Glazer . . . . Louise Glück . . . . . Arthur J. Goldberg . . Rube Goldberg . . . . Jeff Goldblum . . . . Maurice Goldhaber. . Daniel S. Goldin . . . Nan Goldin . . . . . . Emma Goldman . . . Marcus Goldman . . . Boris Goldovsky . . . Barry Goldwater . . . Samuel Goldwyn . . . Samuel Gompers . . . Benny Goodman . . . Mark Goodson . . . . Robert Gordis . . . . Adolph Gottlieb . . . Elliott Gould . . . . . Stephen Jay Gould . . Rebecca Gratz . . . . Adolph Green . . . . Hank Greenberg . . . Irving Greenberg . . . Paul Greengard . . . . Alan Greenspan . . . Charles Grodin . . . . David Gross . . . . . Meyer Guggenheim . Peggy Guggenheim . Philip Guston. . . . .
Art Garfunkel Peter Gay . . . David Geffen . Frank Gehry .
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413 414 416 418
David Halberstam Monty Hall . . . . Marvin Hamlisch. Oscar Handlin . .
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lix
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421 423 426 428 431 433 434 436 437 439 442 444 446 447 450 452 454 455 457 459 461 463 465 468 470 473 475 476 477 480 482 484 486 488 489 491 493 495 496 498 501
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503 505 507 510
Jewish Americans Yip Harburg . . . . . . . Lorenz Hart . . . . . . . Moss Hart . . . . . . . . Herbert A. Hauptman . . Goldie Hawn . . . . . . . Ben Hecht . . . . . . . . Jascha Heifetz . . . . . . Joseph Heller . . . . . . . Lillian Hellman. . . . . . Leona Helmsley . . . . . Mark Helprin . . . . . . . Nat Hentoff. . . . . . . . Will Herberg . . . . . . . Jerry Herman . . . . . . . Bernard Herrmann . . . . Seymour M. Hersh . . . . Abraham Joshua Heschel Eva Hesse . . . . . . . . Sidney Hillman. . . . . . Judd Hirsch. . . . . . . . Al Hirschfeld . . . . . . . Abbie Hoffman. . . . . . Dustin Hoffman . . . . . Roald Hoffmann . . . . . Nat Holman . . . . . . . H. Robert Horvitz . . . . Harry Houdini . . . . . . Irving Howe . . . . . . . Sarah Hughes. . . . . . .
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511 513 515 517 519 521 523 524 527 529 531 533 534 536 538 540 542 544 545 547 549 551 553 555 557 558 560 562 564
Jerome Karle . . . . . Mel Karmazin . . . . Leopold Karpeles . . Alex Katz. . . . . . . Jeffrey Katzenberg . . Andy Kaufman . . . . George S. Kaufman . Danny Kaye . . . . . Alfred Kazin . . . . . Harvey Keitel. . . . . Jerome Kern . . . . . Alan King . . . . . . Carole King . . . . . Larry King . . . . . . Jack Kirby . . . . . . Henry Kissinger . . . Robert Klein . . . . . Alfred A. Knopf . . . Ed Koch . . . . . . . Syd Koff . . . . . . . Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. . Walter Kohn . . . . . Ted Koppel . . . . . . Sandy Koufax . . . . Larry Kramer. . . . . Stanley Kramer. . . . Lee Krasner . . . . . Lenny Kravitz . . . . William Kristol. . . . Barbara Kruger . . . . Paul Krugman . . . . Stanley Kubrick . . . Maxine Kumin . . . . Stanley Kunitz . . . . William Kunstler . . . Ray Kurzweil. . . . . Harold S. Kushner . . Tony Kushner . . . .
Carl Icahn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567 Amy Irving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569 Jacob K. Javits Ricky Jay . . . Billy Joel . . . Al Jolson . . . Erica Jong . .
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571 573 574 577 579
Pauline Kael . . . Louis I. Kahn. . . Marvin Kalb . . . Horace Kallen . . Justin Kaplan . . . Mordecai Kaplan . Donna Karan . . .
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582 584 586 588 589 591 592
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594 596 597 599 600 602 605 607 610 612 614 617 619 621 624 625 628 630 632 635 636 638 639 642 644 646 649 651 653 655 656 657 660 662 665 666 668 670
Shia LaBeouf. . . . . . . . Carl Laemmle . . . . . . . Fiorello Henry La Guardia . Ricki Lake . . . . . . . . . Hedy Lamarr . . . . . . . .
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673 674 677 679 680
Category Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIII
lx
Complete List of Contents
Volume 3 Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . liii Key to Pronunciation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lv Norman Lamm . . . Edwin Herbert Land Aaron Lansky . . . Meyer Lansky . . . Ibram Lassaw . . . Paul László . . . . . Estée Lauder . . . . Ralph Lauren . . . . Emma Lazarus . . . Norman Lear . . . . Fran Lebowitz . . . Leon M. Lederman . Isaac Leeser . . . . Herbert Lehman . . Tom Lehrer . . . . . Annie Leibovitz . . Alan Jay Lerner . . Gerda Lerner . . . . Jonathan Lethem . . Philip Levine . . . . Barry Levinson . . . Uriah P. Levy. . . . Jerry Lewis . . . . . Richard Lewis . . . Sol LeWitt . . . . . Jason Lezak . . . . Lewis Libby . . . . Daniel Libeskind . . Roy Lichtenstein . . Joe Lieberman . . . Walter Lippmann . . Seth Lipsky. . . . . Marcus Loew. . . . Frederick Loewe . . Peter Lorre . . . . . Ernst Lubitsch . . . Sid Luckman . . . . Sidney Lumet . . .
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683 684 686 688 690 692 693 696 698 700 702 704 705 707 709 711 713 716 718 719 721 723 725 728 729 731 732 735 737 739 742 744 746 747 750 752 754 756
Lorin Maazel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 759 Judah Leon Magnes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 760 Norman Mailer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 762
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Bernard Malamud . . . David Mamet. . . . . . Man Ray . . . . . . . . Barry Manilow . . . . . Joseph L. Mankiewicz . Michael Mann . . . . . Mickey Marcus. . . . . Rudolph A. Marcus . . Harry Markowitz . . . . Groucho Marx . . . . . Eric Maskin . . . . . . Matisyahu . . . . . . . Marlee Matlin . . . . . Walter Matthau . . . . . Elaine May . . . . . . . Louis B. Mayer. . . . . Richard Meier . . . . . Golda Meir . . . . . . . Henry Pereira Mendes . Ruth Messinger . . . . Howard Metzenbaum . Al Michaels . . . . . . Bette Midler . . . . . . Harvey Milk . . . . . . Michael Milken . . . . Arthur Miller . . . . . . Henry Morgenthau, Jr. . Henry Morgenthau, Sr. . Arthur D. Morse . . . . Robert Moses. . . . . . Paul Muni . . . . . . . Bess Myerson . . . . .
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765 767 769 772 774 777 779 780 782 784 787 788 790 792 794 797 799 801 804 805 807 809 811 813 815 817 819 822 824 825 827 829
Maud Nathan . . . . Howard Nemerov . Jacob Neusner . . . Richard Neutra . . . Louise Nevelson . . Barnett Newman . . Paul Newman . . . Randy Newman . . Mike Nichols . . . . Leonard Nimoy . . Mordecai M. Noah . Emmy Noether . . .
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831 832 835 836 839 841 842 845 847 849 852 854
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Jewish Americans Phil Ochs . . . . . . . . Clifford Odets . . . . . Tillie Olsen . . . . . . . J. Robert Oppenheimer. Suze Orman . . . . . . Cynthia Ozick . . . . .
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857 858 861 863 865 868
Larry Page . . . . . Grace Paley. . . . . William S. Paley . . Dorothy Parker . . . Sarah Jessica Parker Mandy Patinkin . . Daniel Pearl . . . . Arthur Penn . . . . Irving Penn . . . . . S. J. Perelman . . . Itzhak Perlman . . . Molly Picon . . . . Norman Podhoretz . Sydney Pollack . . . Natalie Portman . . Chaim Potok . . . . Otto Preminger . . . Jackie Presser . . . André Previn . . . . Sally J. Priesand . . Jay A. Pritzker . . . Stanley B. Prusiner .
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871 872 875 877 880 882 885 886 889 890 892 894 896 897 900 902 904 907 908 911 913 914
Isidor Isaac Rabi . . . Gilda Radner . . . . . Harold Ramis. . . . . Shulamit Ran . . . . . Ayn Rand. . . . . . . Sumner Redstone. . . Lou Reed . . . . . . . Robert B. Reich . . . Steve Reich. . . . . . Carl Reiner . . . . . . Rob Reiner . . . . . . Frederick Reines . . . Abraham Reles . . . . Ed Rendell . . . . . . Judith Resnik . . . . . Abraham A. Ribicoff . Adrienne Rich . . . .
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916 917 920 922 923 925 928 930 933 935 937 939 941 942 944 945 947
Renée Richards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 949 Don Rickles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 951 Hyman G. Rickover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 954 Moses Rischin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 956 Herb Ritts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 958 Joan Rivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 960 Larry Rivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 962 Jerome Robbins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 964 Abraham Robinson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 966 Richard Rodgers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 968 Sigmund Romberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 970 Ernestine Rose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 972 Irwin Rose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 974 Maurice Rose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 975 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . 977 Samuel I. Rosenman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 979 Julius Rosenwald. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 981 Barney Ross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 982 David Lee Roth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 984 Philip Roth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 985 Mark Rothko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 988 Arnold Rothstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990 Jerry Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 992 Robert Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 994 Ruth Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 996 Tibor Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 997 Helena Rubinstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 999 Muriel Rukeyser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1001 Winona Ryder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1003 Albert Sabin. . . . . Jeffrey D. Sachs. . . Morley Safer . . . . William Safire. . . . Carl Sagan . . . . . Mort Sahl . . . . . . J. D. Salinger . . . . Jonas Salk. . . . . . Edward S. Salomon . Haym Salomon . . . Paul Samuelson . . . Adam Sandler. . . . David Sarnoff . . . . Dore Schary. . . . . Solomon Schechter .
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1006 1008 1010 1013 1015 1018 1020 1022 1025 1026 1028 1030 1033 1035 1037
Category Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXIII
lxii
Complete List of Contents
Volume 4 Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lxxi Key to Pronunciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lxxiii Complete List of Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . lxxv Béla Schick . . . . . . . Dorothy Schiff . . . . . Rudolph Schindler . . . Arnold Schoenberg . . . Daniel Schorr . . . . . . Dutch Schultz . . . . . . Charles Schumer . . . . Delmore Schwartz . . . Sholom Secunda . . . . Jerry Seinfeld . . . . . . Gershom Mendes Seixas Bud Selig . . . . . . . . Maurice Sendak. . . . . Rod Serling . . . . . . . Ben Shahn . . . . . . . William Shatner. . . . . Artie Shaw . . . . . . . Mordecai Sheftall . . . . Judy Sheindlin . . . . . Sidney Sheldon . . . . . Cindy Sherman . . . . . Dinah Shore. . . . . . . Elaine C. Showalter . . . Shubert brothers . . . . Bugsy Siegel . . . . . . Beverly Sills . . . . . . Abba Hillel Silver. . . . Sarah Silverman . . . . Sime Silverman . . . . . Alicia Silverstone . . . . Gene Simmons . . . . . Carly Simon. . . . . . . Herbert Simon . . . . . Neil Simon . . . . . . . Paul Simon . . . . . . . Isaac Bashevis Singer . . Anna Sokolow . . . . . Stephen J. Solarz . . . . Hannah Solomon . . . . Joseph B. Soloveitchik . Stephen Sondheim . . . Susan Sontag . . . . . .
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1039 1040 1041 1043 1046 1047 1050 1052 1054 1055 1058 1059 1062 1064 1066 1068 1070 1073 1075 1076 1078 1080 1082 1084 1087 1089 1092 1093 1095 1096 1098 1100 1102 1103 1106 1108 1110 1113 1115 1116 1118 1120
Aaron Sorkin . . . . . . George Soros . . . . . . Arlen Specter . . . . . . Aaron Spelling . . . . . Art Spiegelman . . . . . Steven Spielberg . . . . Joel Spingarn . . . . . . Mark Spitz . . . . . . . Eliot Spitzer. . . . . . . Gertrude Stein . . . . . Herbert Stein . . . . . . Leo Stein . . . . . . . . Gloria Steinem . . . . . Howard Stern . . . . . . Isaac Stern . . . . . . . Jon Stewart . . . . . . . Alfred Stieglitz . . . . . Joseph E. Stiglitz . . . . Ben Stiller. . . . . . . . I. F. Stone . . . . . . . . Mark Strand. . . . . . . Lee Strasberg . . . . . . Isidor Straus. . . . . . . Levi Strauss . . . . . . . Barbra Streisand . . . . Kerri Strug . . . . . . . Jule Styne . . . . . . . . Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Henrietta Szold . . . . . Arthur Szyk . . . . . . .
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1123 1125 1127 1130 1132 1134 1137 1138 1141 1143 1145 1147 1148 1150 1152 1154 1156 1159 1162 1164 1165 1167 1169 1171 1174 1176 1178 1180 1182 1183
Marc H. Tanenbaum Edward Teller . . . . Studs Terkel. . . . . Irving Thalberg . . . Mel Tormé . . . . . Dara Torres . . . . . Laurence Tribe . . . Pauline Trigère . . . Lionel Trilling . . . Barbara W. Tuchman Sophie Tucker. . . .
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1186 1187 1190 1192 1195 1197 1200 1202 1203 1206 1208
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Louis Untermeyer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1211 Leon Uris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1212
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Jewish Americans Abigail Van Buren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1215 Harold E. Varmus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1218 Lillian D. Wald . . . . Mike Wallace . . . . . Immanuel Wallerstein. Barbara Walters . . . . Sam Wanamaker . . . Felix M. Warburg . . . Warner brothers . . . . Lew Wasserman. . . . Wendy Wasserstein . . Henry Waxman . . . . Weegee . . . . . . . . Kurt Weill . . . . . . . Steven Weinberg . . . Matthew Weiner . . . Paul Wellstone . . . . Nathanael West . . . . Harry Dexter White . . Elie Wiesel . . . . . . Cornel Wilde . . . . . Billy Wilder . . . . . . Gene Wilder . . . . . Walter Winchell. . . . Debra Winger . . . . . Henry Winkler . . . . Garry Winogrand . . . Louis Wirth . . . . . . Isaac Mayer Wise . . . Stephen Samuel Wise .
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1220 1222 1225 1226 1229 1231 1233 1235 1238 1240 1242 1244 1246 1248 1250 1252 1254 1256 1258 1260 1263 1265 1268 1269 1272 1273 1275 1277
Frederick Wiseman . Paul Wittgenstein . . Naomi Wolf . . . . . Paul Wolfowitz . . . Herman Wouk . . . William Wyler . . .
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1280 1281 1283 1285 1288 1291
Rosalyn Yalow . . Anzia Yezierska. . Kevin Youkilis . . Henny Youngman .
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1294 1296 1298 1300
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Louis Zukofsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1303 Adolph Zukor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1304 Abner Zwillman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1307 Appendixes Chronological List of Entries . . Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . Web Site Directory . . . . . . . Mediagraphy . . . . . . . . . . Literary Works . . . . . . . . . Libraries and Research Centers . Organizations and Societies . . Indexes Category Index. . . Geographical Index Personages Index. . Subject Index . . .
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XXXIII . . XLI . XLIII . XLIX
Great Lives from History
Jewish Americans
Lamm, Norman
Norman Lamm Rabbi and religious leader Lamm was an influential rabbi and religious leader who studied Modern Orthodox Judaism. He promoted unity among the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jewish groups. Born: 1927; Brooklyn, New York Area of achievement: Religion and theology Early Life Norman Lamm (lam) was born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New York, into a religious family that included Lamm’s grandfather, Rabbi Yeshoshua Baumol. Even as a child, Lamm excelled in religious studies. He attended Brooklyn’s Haredi Mesivta Torah Vodaath, a rabbinical school for Jewish studies. This yeshiva school was notable for its concentration on Haredi Judaism, the most conservative form of Orthodox Judaism. Its beliefs and practices were based on the unbroken traditions that could be traced back to Moses. When searching for a place of higher education, Lamm settled on Yeshiva College, which was part of Yeshiva University, in New York City. He did very well at Yeshiva and was even named the valedictorian of secular studies at his college. Lamm graduated from the school with a chemistry degree in 1949. Lamm continued his scientific studies and attended the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn for postgraduate work. However, he was soon persuaded by the president of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Samuel Belkin, to look at a career in religious studies. Belkin talked Lamm into becoming a faculty member at Yeshiva. Lamm’s rabbinical studies were completed in 1951; he studied under Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, a Modern Orthodox scholar. Life’s Work After joining Yeshiva University’s faculty and becoming a rabbi, Lamm began a long and distinguished career in Jewish religious studies. He worked as a rabbi for a few New York Jewish centers, and he was elected president of Yeshiva University in 1976. Lamm’s term was especially important. He raised the endowment offered to the school and also helped improve the school’s academic performance. Lamm has spent his life practicing and encouraging Modern Orthodox Judaism, one of the most classical forms of the religion. Nevertheless, his well-known activities have focused on promoting Jewish unity, despite
the fact that he parts ways with some key aspects of Reform Judaism. Lamm greatly disagrees with the belief that a person can be considered Jewish if his or her father was a Jew; tradition claims that lineage is passed on through the mother. Even though he does not back all the beliefs of the Reform Jews, Lamm still worked tirelessly to ensure that both Orthodox and Reform Jews continued to talk to each other. Lamm acknowledges the validity of non-Orthodox rabbis, even if he disagreed with their teachings. These beliefs made headlines in the early 1990’s when the prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Shamir, consulted Lamm to help solve a feud over who could be considered a Jew. Lamm, despite his own beliefs, decided that maintaining a position of diplomacy and civility between the sides would be the best course of action. The eventual plan involved creating a panel that would analyze carefully those who wanted to become Jewish while maintaining strict rules. When the issue became important again in the late 1990’s, Lamm was once again involved. He supported a group of Orthodox, Conservative, and Progressive rabbis who wanted to create a joint program for conversion to the Jewish faith. As Lamm’s age has advanced, he has stepped down from his influential positions. He left his post as president at Yeshiva University in 2005, and he was replaced by former attorney Richard Joel, a layman. Lamm continued on as chancellor of Yeshiva. Significance Few rabbis can say they have done as much for Orthodox Judaism and Jewish unity as Lamm. Even as a devout Modern Orthodox Jew, Lamm still worked hard to ensure that all forms of Judaism, from Conservative to Orthodox to Reform, were unified around the world. His importance in ensuring this unity was recognized even by Israeli leader Shamir, when Lamm was consulted about issues regarding Judaism in the 1990’s. Lamm has continued to write about his beliefs and his experiences, and he has continued his contribution to the work of Yeshiva University. — Jill E. Disis Further Reading Berenbaum, Michael. “Bridging the Gap.” The Jewish Journal, December 12, 2002. Article about the selec683
Land, Edwin Herbert tion of a new president for Yeshiva University discusses Lamm’s tenure and his skillful leadership. Lamm, Norman. A Hedge of Roses. New York: Feldheim, 1980. This book explores Jewish marriage and married life from the perspective of Orthodox Jewish laws as per Norman’s account. _______. The Royal Table: A Passover Haggadah. Jersey City, N.J.: Ktav, 2010. One of Lamm’s works about the Passover Haggadah, one of the most important Jewish liturgical books, and its importance for the Jewish community and especially Jewish families. This book includes the text of the Haggadah and commentary from Lamm. _______. The Shema: Spirituality and Law in Judaism.
Jewish Americans Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2000. Commentary by Norman about the Shema, an important prayer in Judaism. Norman gives his views about the prayer in this edition. _______. Torah Umadda: The Encounter of Religious Learning and Worldly Knowledge in the Jewish Tradition. New York: Jason Aronson, 1994. An examination of Jewish religious studies in relation to science and the secular world. See also: Henry Berkowitz; Louis Finkelstein; Harold S. Kushner; Judah Leon Magnes; Sally J. Priesand; Isaac Mayer Wise.
Edwin Herbert Land Inventor, scientist, and businessman A scientist and inventor, Land had an interest in polarized light. He developed the first commercially viable polarizing lens, codeveloped three-dimensional still photography, conducted research into color vision, and invented instant photography. Born: May 7, 1909; Bridgeport, Connecticut Died: March 1, 1991; Cambridge, Massachusetts Areas of achievement: Science; business Early Life Edwin Land was born on May 7, 1909, in Bridgeport Connecticut, to Harry and Martha F. Land. He had one sister, Helen. To escape persecution, Land’s father and grandparents left Russia during the reign of Czar Alexander II and settled in New York City. As a boy, Land attended the Norwich Academy, where he was an exemplary student. He was already interested in optics and was fascinated by kaleidoscopes and other optical apparatuses. He read the textbook Physical Optics (1905) by Robert W. Wood of Johns Hopkins University and became interested in polarization. At the age of thirteen, Land went to summer camp where he was shown an Iceland spar crystal. The camp director demonstrated how the crystal removed glare from a table reflection. While Land was at camp, a nearcollision between a car and a wagon set him to wondering if the polarizing properties of the crystal could be used to reduce the glare of car headlights, which would 684
reduce the dangers of nighttime driving. This would remain an interest for Land throughout his life. In 1926, Land entered Harvard University to study physics, but he was so impatient to do research that he left school at the end of the year. He subsequently did much of his research on polarization at the New York Public Library. He also found an unlocked laboratory at Columbia University and used its facilities to conduct his experiments. Land met Helen Maislen, who became his research assistant. They were married in 1929. Land returned to Harvard in 1929 and also applied for a patent for his polarizing filter. In February,1932, he presented his research results at a physics department symposium. In June, 1932, Land’s eagerness to pursue research again prompted him to leave Harvard, this time just one semester short of graduating. He never finished his degree. Life’s Work After Land left Harvard, he partnered with George Wheelwright to found the Land-Wheelwright Laboratories. Together, they worked on developing a polarizer that would be economical enough to produce commercially. Kodak was their first customer, when, in 1934, the company ordered polarizing filters for its cameras. Another customer was the American Optical Company, which purchased laminated polarized lenses for use in its sunglasses. After Land’s initial success, he gave press confer-
Jewish Americans
Land, Edwin Herbert
Edwin Herbert Land. (Library of Congress)
ences to tout the uses of the polarizing material. LandWheelwright Laboratories was reorganized and renamed the Polaroid Corporation in August, 1937. At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, Land demonstrated the polarizing material to the public. He was convinced that polarized car headlights would cut glare and reduce road accidents, but the automobile companies never purchased the polarizers. In 1940, the Polaroid Company moved from Boston to Cambridge. In 1943, Land was vacationing with his family in New Mexico. His daughter asked why she could not yet see a photo that they had taken earlier that day, which set Land to wondering how to make instant photographs. He began work on the project immediately, and on February 21, 1947, he demonstrated his new camera at a meeting of the Optical Society of America. The first Polaroid camera produced sepia-tone photographs and was a tremendous success with the public when it was released in November, 1948. In 1952, Polaroid offered black-and-white photographs, but it was not
until April, 1972, with the release of the SX-70, that instant color photographs became available. During World War II (1939-1945), Land was involved in intelligence work and research into human vision. He worked alongside Joseph Mahler on the development of the Vectograph, a three-dimensional still photograph used for aerial reconnaissance. In 1954, he served on the steering committee of the Technological Capabilities Panel. Land was instrumental in the development of the U-2 spy plane camera. Land made significant philanthropic gifts to the community. During the 1960’s he started an inner-city program for youths and made anonymous financial donations to educational institutions, such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1980, Land founded the Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where scientists continue to work on light-related research. Land retired from Polaroid at the age of seventy-three and died in 1991 at the age of eighty-one. 685
Lansky, Aaron Significance Land’s work with polarized light led to improvements in photography and to the creation of glare-reducing laminates for sunglasses and other applications. He contributed to the defense of America through his work in photographic technology, which was applied to reconnaissance. However, Land’s creation of the Polaroid instant camera is his most widely known invention. Over the course of his career, Land received more than 530 patents, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1977. He received numerous other awards for his service, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and the National Medal of Science in 1967. —Karen S. Garvin Further Reading Earls, Alan R., and Nasrin Rohani. Polaroid. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2005. Covers Land’s success with in-
Jewish Americans stant photography as well as his lesser-known involvement in photographic aerial reconnaissance and top-secret Cold War projects. McElheny, Victor K. Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Describes Land’s career from the years before Polaroid to the release of the SX-70 camera and Land’s eventual departure from Polaroid. Olshaker, Mark. The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experience. New York: Stein and Day, 1980. Olshaker’s biography covers the Polaroid Corporation, Land’s inventions, and their impact on society. Wensberg, Peter C. Land’s Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Wensberg worked with Land for twenty-four years at the Polaroid Corporation and offers an inside look at the man behind the instant image. See also: Ray Kurzweil.
Aaron Lansky Historian After realizing that many books written in Yiddish were being destroyed, Lansky founded the Yiddish Book Center, an organization that has collected and preserved more than one million volumes. Born: July 17, 1955; New Bedford, Massachusetts Area of achievement: Education Early Life Aaron Lansky (AYR-uhn LAN-skee) was born on July 17, 1955, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to observant Jewish immigrants Sidney and Edith Lansky. Aaron Lansky became interested in Yiddish after hearing his mother and grandmother speak it, but he was never taught the language in childhood. Lansky told author Nicholas Basbanes that books were treated reverently in his household, a practice he traces back to the Jewish tradition of respect for prayer books. In 1973, Lansky enrolled at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He was deeply moved by a class on the Holocaust and undertook an independent study on Jewish culture with anthropology professor Leonard Glick. The course led Lansky to the conclusion that learning Yiddish was necessary to understand the experiences of earlier Jews. 686
Hampshire College, like almost every American college of the time, listed no courses in Yiddish. Lansky contacted Jules Piccus, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who agreed to teach him the language. Over the next three years Lansky studied Yiddish vocabulary and grammar; the first book he read in the language was Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Der Sotn in Gorey (1935; Satan in Goray, 1955). In 1977, Lansky graduated, earning a B.A. in modern Jewish history. He then pursued graduate studies in East European Jewish culture at McGill University in Montreal, writing a thesis on the work of Sholem Yankev Abramovich, a significant figure in the development of Yiddish literature. Life’s Work While pursuing his master’s degree, Lansky came across two accounts that led him to begin his lifelong project of preserving Yiddish texts. The first was a number: He learned that forty thousand to fifty thousand books were believed to have been published in Yiddish between 1864 (when Abramovich’s first novel was printed) and 1939 (when World War II began). The second detail was a story Lansky heard about a local Jew who had died, leaving behind nine hundred books in Yiddish, which the man’s family discarded. Many Jewish children born in
Jewish Americans the United States, like Lansky, had not been taught Yiddish by their parents or grandparents; the younger Jewish generation often threw out these foreign-language texts. Concerned about the diminishing number of books in Yiddish, Lansky asked his rabbi if Lanksy could keep a stack of Yiddish books that the rabbi planned to destroy. The rabbi began collecting Yiddish books from owners who wanted to dispose of them and passing the books on to Lansky. Eventually, Lansky’s apartment and the home of his parents were crowded with Yiddish books, collected through the rabbi’s efforts and Lansky’s searches. Lansky devised a plan to create an institution dedicated to the preservation of Yiddish texts, and a McGill professor named Ruth Wisse encouraged him to pursue it. Lansky took a leave of absence and, in 1979, established the National Yiddish Book Exchange, soon renamed the Yiddish Book Center. Unable to secure significant funding from Jewish American organizations— Lansky claimed he was told Yiddish was a “dead language”—he used his savings to rent storage space and send out letters requesting support. Lansky was told there were around seventy-five thousand Yiddish books extant in the United States, and that finding them all would take at least two years. Within six months, he passed that number, thanks to the support of alma mater Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, the University of Massachusetts, and other institutions. In the early years of the Yiddish Book Center, Lansky spent a great deal of time traveling to retrieve books or collecting them from dumpsters and abandoned structures. His volunteer network expanded after he was profiled in a 1981 New York Times piece and grew further over the following years. In 1984, Lansky rented space in an old factory, this time large enough to hold more than 350,000 books. The Yiddish Book Center is not designed to amass a huge number of books in one collection, however; in 1997, it held only twenty-five thousand texts in a permanent collection, selling duplicate books to colleges and libraries.
Lansky, Aaron The redistribution of these books to universities has encouraged the growth of many courses of study in Yiddish, the kind of classes that were unavailable to Lansky back in 1973. In 1996, the Yiddish Book Center relocated to a large plot on the grounds of Hampshire College. Significance Lansky’s Yiddish Book Center has been a major force in the preservation of Yiddish books, by collecting them and selling them to other Yiddish collections. Lansky received a National Jewish Book Award for his autobiographical account Outwitting History and a 1989 grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Lansky’s projects have not been restricted to gathering books; he interviewed many elderly Jewish book contributors and preserved their memories on tape, and he also produced a radio program in which well-known actors recounted stories by acclaimed Jewish authors. — C. Breault Further Reading Basbanes, Nicholas. A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books. New York: Henry Holt, 1995. This long, well-written study of people who love books contains a chapter about Lansky’s efforts to save Yiddish books. Brawarsky, Sandee. “Preserving Yiddish One Book at a Time.” The Jewish Journal, October 7, 2004. Story chronicles Lansky’s quest to preserve Yiddish books, calling him the “Yiddish Indiana Jones.” Lansky, Aaron. Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books. New York: Algonquin Books, 2005. A lively, anecdotal account of Lansky’s work, provided by the man himself. See also: Sholom Aleichem; Sholem Asch; Isaac Bashevis Singer.
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Lansky, Meyer
Jewish Americans
Meyer Lansky Organized crime figure Lansky actively promoted the Mafia’s involvement in gambling, in the United States and in Cuba. Born: July 4, 1902; Grodno, Poland, Russian Empire (now Hrodna, Belarus) Died: January 15, 1983; Miami Beach, Florida Also known as: Maier Suchowljansky (birth name) Areas of achievement: Crime; entertainment; law Early Life Born in Poland in 1902, Meyer Lansky (MI-ur LANskee) immigrated with his family to the United States in 1911, and they settled in New York City. Growing up in the tough and poverty-stricken Five Points neighborhood, Lansky was in trouble at an early age and was associated with gangs by the time he was a teenager. According to legend, Lansky met his longtime associate, Lucky Luciano, at school when Luciano tried to bully Lansky for money. Instead of paying, Lansky brawled with Luciano, who, impressed with his mark’s bravery and
Meyer Lansky. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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toughness, became a close friend. While in high school, Lansky met Bugsy Siegel, who also became a close friend and a future partner in organized crime. The advent of Prohibition, which made the sale of alcohol illegal in the United States, provided the opportunity for the three criminals to make their fortune. In addition to bootlegging, the Luciano-Lansky gang was brazen about stealing illegal whiskey from other gangs and selling it, making a quick and pure profit. The gang also charged local businesses protection money, with Siegel administering the beatings or murders necessary to collect their fees. Compared to other New York gangs, however, the Luciano-Lansky gang was rather small and insignificant. That changed in 1931 when Luciano became estranged in his relationship with Joe Masseria, the head of the Masseria crime family. Luciano and Lansky took control of the Masseria crime family, fending off potential rivals, including Salvatore Maranzano, the head of a rival crime family. Luciano and Lansky killed Maranzano and established themselves as a powerhouse of New York organized crime. Content to let Luciano take the lead and become the face of the organization, Lansky preferred to be the decision-maker behind the scenes. Lansky, as a Jew, was also an outsider in the Italian Mafia, so he had to accept the role of secretive manipulator rather than that of direct controller. Life’s Work Lansky immediately began to change how organized crime operated. In 1931, the same year that Luciano and Lansky rose to power in the Mafia, the federal government convicted famed gangster Al Capone of tax evasion and sent him to prison. Recognizing that bootlegging was attracting too much attention and might soon end anyway (Prohibition ceased in 1933), Lansky began plans to diversify the Mafia’s business. In addition to its traditional sources of revenue, such as extortion and prostitution, Lansky envisioned a major commitment to legal gambling. Gambling offered organized crime several advantages. It was considered a nonviolent form of making money and therefore attracted less negative attention. Because most gambling was not legal in the United States, the mob’s major gambling operations would have to be located in other countries, again out of sight of most Americans. Because gambling in other countries was perfectly legal, crime families invest-
Jewish Americans
Lansky, Meyer
ing their money in operations there seemed to The Commission make them more “legitimate.” Lansky began by taking over localized illegal gambling in places Meyer Lansky’s greatest accomplishment, albeit a criminal such as New Orleans and by muscling in on the one, was the organization of mob families into a nearly corporate few forms of legalized gambling in America, existence that balanced authority, provided a means of settling disespecially horse racing. Lansky also persuaded putes, and maintained peace among the various rival crime famiseveral organized crime families to invest in a lies. When Lucky Luciano killed Salvatore Maranzano in 1931, Lansky organized the crime families with a governing body, and venture promoted by his friend Siegel. In 1931, Luciano served as its head. Known to the Federal Burreau of Investhe state of Nevada made gambling legal if local tigation (FBI) as the national crime syndicate and to mobsters as counties wished to make it so. Siegel proposed the Commission, Lansky’s organization served as a virtual board to create a lavish new hotel and casino, the Flaof directors for organized crime. Major decisions or actions remingo, in a dusty desert town called Las Vegas, quired the Commission’s approval, changes in leadership had to where the mob could engage in gambling lereceive the Commission’s blessing, and the Commission kept the gally and openly. Siegel opened the Flamingo peace for decades by settling disputes without violence that atin 1946, much later than planned. Construction tracted public and law-enforcement attention. Those who defied costs had skyrocketed, and Siegel did not keep the Commission’s decisions faced possible execution by the Comgood records of his expenses. At first, the Flamission’s hit men, nicknamed Murder, Incorporated, headed by mingo was a disaster and lost money, which Lansky’s boyhood friend, Bugsy Siegel. The Commission proved so flexible that it even survived the absence of Luciano, who was alienated his backers. Although Lansky tried to arrested and sentenced to thirty years in prison in 1936. The Comprotect his friend, the crime bosses held Siegel mission finally failed in the 1970’s when competition over the responsible for their losses. Siegel was killed by growing narcotics trade flared into a major mob war among the a mob assassin in 1947, and organized crime major crime families. took over the Flamingo and other gambling ventures in Las Vegas that eventually brought in millions of dollars. Stung by the financial failures in Las Vegas, fled into exile in Spain. The mobsters also had to flee Lansky turned his attention elsewhere. In 1946, he enwhen the Castro regime seized and nationalized the tered into an agreement with Cuba’s corrupt dictator foreign-owned casinos. The Mafia lost massive amounts Fulgencio Batista to permit organized crime to expand its of money in the Cuban debacle; Lansky supposedly lost gambling operations into Cuba. Batista granted the mob seven million dollars, most of his assets. Forced to rely full control of all casinos and horse racing in Cuba in exagain upon criminal activity, especially narcotics smugchange for regular kickbacks and bribes. Cuba had no gling, in the United States, organized crime lost much of laws against gambling and, with the Cuban government its power and prestige in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and as its protector, organized crime would have a secure Lansky’s standing as a leading figure in the Mafia diminbase of operations beyond the reach of American law, ished accordingly. He became so irrelevant that the Fedonly ninety miles from Florida. Lansky and other moberal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stopped conducting sters soon refurbished the old casinos in Havana, Cuba’s surveillance on him in 1971. In 1973, Lansky gained capital, and began to construct new ones. Lansky insome brief attention when he fled to Israel to avoid vested large sums of his own money in the Montmartre charges of tax evasion, but he was deported back to the Club and the Hotel Nacional, which became the most United States. A jury acquitted him of the charges in prestigious establishments in Havana. Cuba also became 1974. The government believed that Lansky possessed the main hub for heroin smuggling, which organized and controlled vast sums of organized-crime money but crime also promoted as a business after Prohibition could never prove it. Lansky lived in a small, quiet neighended. Lansky organized the entire operation, becoming borhood in Florida, never giving any indication that he one of the first criminals to take advantage of the secrewas wealthy or influential in the mob. When he died of tive Swiss banking laws to hide the mob’s transactions. lung cancer in 1983, the FBI still believed he had milOrganized crime’s control of Cuba, however, proved lions of dollars hidden in banks around the world, but he to be short-lived. Batista’s corrupt rule generated considleft only his modest home and a small amount of cash as erable opposition, and in 1959 Communist rebel groups his only legitimate assets. led by Fidel Castro toppled the Batista regime, and he 689
Lassaw, Ibram Significance Because of Lansky’s organizational skills, the Mafia enjoyed its most lucrative era. In the aftermath of Prohibition and government crackdowns, organized crime faced declining profits and internal warfare over territory and sources of income. Lansky managed to smooth over the internal dissent and to direct organized crime toward new sources of revenue that attracted less attention from law enforcement and the government. Without Lansky, the future of organized crime might have been substantially different. Warring among themselves for territory, the Mafia families would have invited unwanted scrutiny from the FBI, and organized crime might have faced a difficult or even diminished existence. —Steven J. Ramold Further Reading Eisenberg, Dennis. Meyer Lansky: Mogul of the Mob. New York: Paddington Press, 1979. Written just be-
Jewish Americans fore Lansky’s death, this biography is an excellent depiction of the gangster’s life, from his early years, his role in developing Las Vegas, and his subsequent downfall. English, T. J. Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It in the Revolution. New York: William Morrow, 2007. A colorful history of organized crime’s investment in Cuba, the book emphasizes the personalities of the mobsters involved in the downfall of the criminal empire in Havana. Fried, Albert. The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. An account of the Jewish mobsters who operated alongside their more famous Italian counterparts, placing Lansky into the context of his contemporaries. See also: Louis Buchalter; Mickey Cohen; Arnold Rothstein; Dutch Schultz; Bugsy Siegel; Eliot Spitzer.
Ibram Lassaw Egyptian-born sculptor and artist A celebrated abstract sculptor, Lassaw took metal and design to a new level. He created giant sculptures for religious buildings and artworks for museum showcases in Europe and America. Born: May 4, 1913; Alexandria, Egypt Died: December 30, 2003; East Hampton, New York Areas of achievement: Art; entertainment Early Life Ibram Lassaw (IH-brahm LAS-aw) was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1913. He traveled around Marseilles, Naples, Tunis, Malta, Constantinople, and the Crimea. His father killed a czarist police officer in self-defense and had to leave Russia. Lassaw finally moved permanently to the United States in 1921. Lassaw began studying clay at age twelve, but he had modeled clay ever since he was four. He won first prize for sculpting a piece of clay in kindergarten class. Lassaw attended the Brooklyn Children’s Museum sculpture class five years after arriving in the United States, studying under Dorothea Denslow; he continued his education at the Clay Club and the Beaux Arts Institute of Design in the 1930’s. By the time he was a teenager, he had made thirty-three volumes of collected photographs and art690
works to help him learn about and compare works from different time periods. In college, Lassaw studied medicine at City College of New York to please his parents, but he simultaneously studied at the Beaux Arts Institute of Design to pursue art for himself. In 1933, Lassaw joined the Federal Arts Project, then the Civil Works Authority, and finally the Works Progress Administration. He still lived with his parents in Greenwich Village and decided it was time to move out, even though it would be costly. His parents feared that his career as a sculptor would leave him a poor, struggling artist. During this time his artwork was exhibited at the Whitney Annual and the Carnegie International, but the public did not buy his pieces. He was drafted into the Army in 1942 and discharged in 1944 to study on the GI Bill. In order to support himself, he taught and found part-time jobs. Afterward, in the 1950’s, Zen Buddhism began to inspire Lassaw’s work, and he started to use organic and geometric poles in his artwork. He then taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1965 to 1966, and at Southampton College in New York, from 1966 to the mid-1970’s. He lived with his wife, Ernestine, an artist who gave up her career when they were married, and they had a daughter.
Jewish Americans Life’s Work Lassaw’s first major contribution was the founding in 1936 of American Abstract Artists, an organization that promoted nonrepresentational art and the artists who worked in the field. He was president from 1946 to 1949. Lassaw’s artwork was shown in the United States and in Europe and was featured at the 1954 Venice Biennale. Lassaw had a one-man show in 1951 at the Kootz Gallery in New York: He continued to have shows there in 1952, 1954, and 1958. Lassaw also worked with a few architects. He created sculptures such as Pillar of Fire for the façade of the Jewish temple of the Congregation Beth El in Massachusetts that was twenty-eight feet tall. Pillar of Fire and Pillar of Cloud used materials such as chromium, silicon, manganese, bronze, and copper; to bring out the bright colors, the metals were treated with acid, salts, and alkalis. Architect Philip Johnson also asked Lassaw to build a wall sculpture for Johnson’s famous Glass House in Connecticut. Music helped inspire Lassaw’s work. He would listen to records nonstop during a project that would sometimes be reflected in his end product. Lassaw’s work continues to reappear in magazines, such as ARTnews, and other print vehicles. Lassaw died at home at the age of ninety in 2003. Significance Lassaw created some sculptures that represent religion. He made the Pillar of Fire for Percival Goodman, the architect of the Temple Beth El in Massachusetts. The pillar represents the fire that led the Israelites out of Egypt by night in the book of Exodus. In Ohio, for the
Lassaw, Ibram House of Theology of the Franciscan Fathers, he designed and created a baldachin, a ceremonial canopy, nineteen feet high. Lassaw said all art is religious, and his work never interfered with his religious beliefs. — Kate Leifheit Further Reading Campbell, Robertson. “Ibram Lassaw, Ninety, a Sculptor Devoted to Abstract Forms.” The New York Times, January 2, 2004, p. 7. This is an article about Lassaw after his death in 2003. Goosen, E. C., R. Goldwater, and I. Sandler. Three American Sculptors: Ferber, Hare, Lassaw. New York: Grove Press, 1959. This book talks about three sculptors, Herbert Ferber, David Hare, and Lassaw. It has pictures of their artwork and concludes with a short biography of each artist. Grossman, Emery. Art and Tradition. New York: T. Yoseloff, 1968. This book provides information about Jewish artists in the United States. Harrison, Helen A. “Guided by ‘Instinct and Intuition,’ Still Pursuing New Kinds of Art.” The New York Times, October 26, 2003, p. 1. This article discusses Lassaw’s artistic inspirations, as he gave a tour of his studio in the modest wood-shingled house where he had lived for fifty years. Lassaw, Ibram. Ibram Lassaw: Detwiller Visiting Artist. Easton, Pa.: The Gallery, 1983. This book is about the techniques, inspirations, and styles of Lassaw’s artwork. See also: Philip Guston; Alex Katz; Louise Nevelson.
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Paul László Hungarian-born designer and architect A creative and artistic designer, László brought his European training and resources to all-inclusive architecture and interior design projects in his adopted home of Los Angeles. Known for his use of color, comfort, and luxury, László was popular with the political and Hollywood elite, demanded complete control, and made each project unique. Born: February 6, 1900; Debrecen, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Hungary) Died: March 27, 1993; Santa Monica, California Also known as: Paul Laszlo; László Pál (birth name) Area of achievement: Architecture and design Early Life Paul László (LAS-low) was born to a prosperous and cultured Hungarian family in Debrecen, where his grandparents were furniture manufacturers. He fought with the Hungarian artillery at the Italian front in World War I before completing his education in Vienna. He developed his architectural and interior design skills working for Cologne-based Fritz August Breuhaus, followed by Berlin-based Leo Nachtlicht. In early 1924, László opened his decorating business in Vienna, and in 1927 he moved the practice to Stuttgart. He almost always designed and controlled every element of his work, a practice he maintained throughout his career. By the mid1930’s his business was thriving, and he had clients throughout Europe. A brush with the Gestapo, the secret police of Nazi Germany, in 1936 convinced him to move to the United States, where his reputation preceded him. Upon arrival in New York City, László headed directly for Los Angeles. Despite knowing little English, he soon had commissions. He initially established office space on Wilshire Boulevard, and in 1941 he moved to Rodeo Drive, where he designed every detail of the building, its elegant showroom, the fabrics and furnishings, and the landscaping. Furniture and modern art objects of his own design were available for sale as well as his services as an architect and a designer. During World War II, László enlisted in the U.S. Army and served stateside. Members of his family in Hungary—including his parents, Ignác László and Regina Soros; some of his siblings; and additional extended family—were killed in the Holocaust. 692
Life’s Work László became closely associated with the California modern style and defined it in his own terms. He was unapologetic about adapting the style to reflect greater warmth and charm, bringing a European elegance and tradition to soften classic modern design tenets. He became known for his bold use of color and texture, and this gave his homes variety and distinctive character. He loved Los Angeles from the start, and he acknowledged its demands in his designs: accommodating irregular lots, frequently vertical; using glass to draw attention to spectacular views; adding deep roof overhangs to provide shade; making the orientation away from the street; and integrating the pool and garden in the rear. He also loved the company of Hollywood celebrities and welcomed them and their relatives to his client roster. László identified himself as an industrial designer rather than as an architect. To the dismay of some of his architectural colleagues, he considered decorating as integral to the project as the architectural design. To achieve his goal of simplicity with elegance, László designed furniture and furnishings to balance the home. He paid particular attention to the home’s owner in order to reflect his or her taste and, in some cases, to determine his or her ability to pay for luxuries. László worked with a group of skilled craftsmen and, after the war, had many of his furnishings manufactured in Europe. Concurrent with his residential work, László’s commercial ventures ranged from offices and department stores to theaters, hotels, and casinos. Notable projects included Bullock’s department stores in Beverly Hills, Pasadena, and Palm Springs; Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills; Orbach’s in New York City; Robinson’s in Newport Beach, California; Fashion Square shopping mall in Scottsdale, Arizona; Hall’s department stores in Kansas City, Missouri; the Beverly Hills Hotel, including the Rodeo Room and several bungalows; the Stardust Hotel dining room in Las Vegas; and interior offices of several Los Angeles businesses. Recognizing the increasing importance of the automobile in the 1930’s, László in 1939 extended the marquee of the Crenshaw Theatre to the side so that theatergoers could be let off and picked up under cover, with the automobile parked in the adjoining lot. Additionally, for brief periods, László did commercial design work of mass-produced pieces, mostly for Herman Miller in New York, Brown-Saltman in California, Haywood-Wakefield in Boston, and Ficks Reed in
Jewish Americans Ohio. László had a long and productive career, continuing to work up until two years before his death at age ninety-three. Significance A superb craftsman, László was an inventive designer, creating homes and businesses distinct, unique, and appropriate to their owner and purpose. His attention to every detail, including the integration of custom furniture and furnishings, succeeded in making small spaces appear larger, large spaces more comfortable, and expensive elements more tasteful. —Amy H. Crain Further Reading Gebhard, David, and Harriette Von Breton. Los Angeles in the Thirties: 1931-1941. 2d ed. Los Angeles, Calif.: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1989. Provides context for
Lauder, Estée the architectural profession, the Southern California location, and the social and economic aspects of the time. Gebhard, David, and Robert Winter. Architecture in Los Angeles: A Compleat Guide. Salt Lake City, Utah: Peregrine Smith Books, 1985. Detailed explanation with photographs of key identifying features of architect and architecture. Maneker, Roberta. “Decorator-Designer Paul László.” In Modern Americana: Studio Furniture From High Craft to High Glam, edited by Todd Merrill and Julie V. Iovine. New York: Rizzoli, 2008. A book that focuses on László as a designer, as he considered himself. See also: Dankmar Adler; Gregory Ain; Marcel Breuer; Frank Gehry; Milton Glaser; Daniel Libeskind; Rudolph Schindler.
Estée Lauder Hungarian-born entrepreneur and inventor Lauder was a leader in the international cosmetics industry. Her product-development skills and her marketing genius made her one of the most respected and wealthy cosmetic tycoons in the industry. Born: July 1, 1908; Queens, New York Died: April 24, 2004; New York, New York Also known as: Josephine Esther Mentzer (birth name) Areas of achievement: Business; philanthropy Early Life Estée Lauder (ES-tay LOW-dur) was born Josephine Esther Mentzer on July 1, 1908, in Queens, New York. The youngest of seven children, she was raised by her father, Max Mentzer, a Czechoslovakian immigrant, and her mother, Rose Schotz Rosenthal Mentzer, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant. Her father owned and operated a hardware store where Lauder obtained her first sales experiences. Raised Jewish in a predominantly Italian neighborhood, she attended P.S. 14 Elementary School and Newton High School, both located in Queens. She was first introduced to cosmetics by her maternal uncle, John Schotz, a chemist, who created beauty products professionally. She was also greatly influenced by her sister-in-law, Fanny Leppel Rosenthal, who managed a
department store. On January 15, 1930, Lauder married Joseph Lauter. Sometime during the 1930’s, the couple officially changed their last name to Lauder. In 1933, Lauder gave birth to their first son, Leonard. As a new mother, Lauder stayed home to raise her infant son. While at home, she also spent time in her kitchen, trying to improve her uncle’s beauty product formulas. Once she felt she had perfected the formulas, Lauder introduced the products to clients at the House of Ash Blondes Beauty Salon, located on Manhattan’s upper West Side. By the mid-1930’s, she had customers all over Manhattan. As she continued to improve and to increase her product line, she also focused on developing marketing techniques, many of which had never been used before in the cosmetics industry. First, she ensured her products were available in attractive packaging. When showing beauty products to prospective clients, she found enormous value in providing free makeup demonstrations. Finally, she gave her customers free cosmetic samples as a way of introducing them to new products. In 1939, Lauder divorced her husband and moved to Miami Beach, Florida, where she continued to sell her cosmetics and to expand her product line. In 1942, she remarried Joseph Lauder and returned to New York City. In 1944, she gave birth to their second son, Ronald. 693
Lauder, Estée Life’s Work In 1946, Lauder and her husband founded Estée Lauder, Inc. They were the company’s only two employees; Lauder focused on product development and marketing, and her husband managed the finances. The business operated out of their home, and Lauder carried her products to department stores and to beauty salons in order to sell them and build a client base. In 1946, Saks Fifth Avenue ordered a large quantity of Lauder’s products, including Super Rich All Purpose Cleansing Oil, Crème Pack, and Skin Lotion. The success of this large order led to orders from other upscale department stores, including Nieman Marcus, Marshall Field’s, and Bonwit Teller. By the late 1940’s, Lauder’s cosmetics were an established brand exclusively sold in department stores. Lauder continued to pay close attention to the marketing of her products. She traveled nationwide in order to
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Jewish Americans handpick her sales teams and to train them. She also continued to give away free gifts with every purchase and to provide free beauty demonstrations. Lauder also branded her products with beautiful packaging in a color she called Lauder Blue. As the company grew, it became necessary to have the products manufactured in factories instead of by Lauder herself. In order to maintain complete control of the formulas, Lauder insisted that after the cosmetics were made at the factory level, a Lauder family member would always add an additional secret ingredient. This business strategy ensured that Lauder’s products would never be imitated by competing companies. In 1953, Lauder introduced her first fragrance, Youth-Dew. An instant success, the product earned more than fifty thousand dollars in first-year sales. In 1955, the sales of Youth-Dew exceeded more than five thousand dollars a week. Lauder followed Youth-Dew with several other popular fragrances, including Beautiful and White Linen for women and Aramis for men. In 1968, Lauder introduced Clinique, a hypoallergenic line of skin care and fragrances designed for young women. As part of the marketing strategy, Lauder promoted Clinique in such a way that the consumer did not know that it was made by Estée Lauder, Inc. Lauder went into semiretirement in 1973, stepping down as the company’s president and handing over the title to her son, Leonard. She then became chairman of the company’s board of directors. She also maintained an active role in product development and in marketing. In 1979, Lauder introduced Prescriptives, a line of antiaging products geared toward women in their thirties and forties. When Lauder’s husband died in 1984, Lauder went further into retirement. In 1990, the company introduced two additional product lines, Origins Natural Resources for skin care and Sensory Therapy, a line of antiaging products. In 1995, Estée Lauder, Inc., went public, with first-year profits exceeding sixty-one million dollars. Lauder spent her retirement years entertaining her friends with extravagant parties and working fervently with her philanthropic causes. She continued to support the Estée and Joseph Lauder Foundation, established in 1962 by Lauder and her husband. The foundation regularly supported the Memorial SloanKettering Hospital in New York City and the University of Pennsylvania’s Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies. She also supported New York City parks, the Whitney
Jewish Americans Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. Lauder died on April 24, 2004, at her home in Manhattan. Significance Lauder’s hard work, determination, and marketing genius revolutionized the cosmetics industry. Detail driven, Lauder maintained tight control over every aspect of her business, from the development to the marketing of every product. For decades, she was the primary developer of all of the company’s product lines. She pioneered the cosmetics counter found in upscale department stores. Her marketing innovations, including the free gift with every purchase and the free makeup demonstration, have become industry standards. Lauder’s creative marketing strategies influenced and reshaped the entire cosmetics industry. — Bernadette Zbicki Heiney
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Building the Estée Lauder Empire Estée Lauder’s most significant lifetime achievement was the creation of her cosmetics company, Estée Lauder Companies, Inc. Founded in 1946 by Lauder and her husband, Joseph, the company was originally operated by only the two of them. Lauder singlehandedly developed and marketed the first cosmetics sold by the company, and she continued to play a significant role in all of the company’s product lines for more than four decades. Her innovative marketing strategies, which included the free gift with every purchase, the free makeup demonstration, and the cosmetics counter, catapulted her company to international status. In 1960, the company obtained its first international account with Harrods of London. In 1961, an Estée Lauder company office was opened in Hong Kong, and in 1981 the company was the first to have its products sold in the Soviet Union. On November 17, 1995, Estée Lauder Companies, Inc., went public, with a year-ending profit of more than sixty-one million dollars. In 1997, the company employed more than fifteen thousand people and earned approximately $3.4 billion in sales. In 2008, the company employed more than twenty-thousand people and earned more than eight billion dollars in sales. Today, with twenty-seven brands on the market, Estée Lauder Companies, Inc., continues to be an innovative leader in the international cosmetics industry.
Further Reading Evans, Harold, Gail Buckland, and David Lefer. They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine, Two Centuries of Innovators. New York: Back Bay Books, 2006. Chronicles fifty American entrepreneurs and their contributions to American business. Israel, Lee. Estée Lauder: Beyond the Magic, an Unauthorized Biography. New York: Macmillan, 1985. Includes a critical look at Lauder’s relationship with her Jewish heritage. Landrum, Gene N. Profiles of Female Genius: Thirteen Creative Women Who Changed the World. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1994. Evaluates thirteen successful entrepreneurial American women and their contributions to American business. Analyzes the character traits these women have in common.
Lauder, Estée. Estée: A Success Story. New York: Random House, 1985. Recounts Lauder’s life and rise to power as a leader in the international cosmetics industry. Scranton, Philip. Beauty and Business: Commerce, Gender, and Culture in Modern America. New York: Routledge, 2001. Explores the definition of beauty in the context of American culture and how that definition is influenced by social and business factors. See also: Madame Alexander; Max Factor.
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Ralph Lauren Fashion designer and philanthropist Lauren started his fashion empire with a line of men’s neckties in 1967 and expanded to clothing, home furnishings, luggage, and accessories—a complete lifestyle. Born: October 14, 1939; Bronx, New York Also known as: Ralph Rueben Lifshitz (birth name) Areas of achievement: Fashion; philanthropy Early Life Ralph Lauren (LOHR-ehn) was born Ralph Rueben Lifshitz on October 14, 1939. His parents, Frank Lifshitz and Frieda Fraydl, already had three children: Theresa, nine, Lenny, seven, and Jerry five. The family lived in a Jewish neighborhood of the Bronx in New York. Lauren’s grandfather, father, and aunt emigrated from Pinsk in Eastern Europe to the United States in 1920. Both of Lauren’s parents were from prominent Jewish families. Frank was a house painter by trade but considered him-
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self an artist. In addition to painting he was an actor and a writer of Yiddish theater. Frieda ran the family, making sure that they remained kosher and attended synagogue every Saturday. She hoped that Lauren would continue the family tradition and become a rabbi. Lauren attended Yeshiva Rabbi Israel Salanter from third through eighth grade, graduating in 1953. He had an after-school job and used the money to buy expensive suits. Lauren was determined to dress stylishly no matter the expense, even at age twelve. When Lauren turned sixteen, his brother Jerry suggested changing the family’s surname. Jerry was in the Air Force Reserve and became tired of people mocking his last name. The two discussed it, eventually settling on Lauren. Lauren graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1957, listing his future career as “millionaire” in the school yearbook. He studied business at the City College of New York, dropping out after two years. He served in the United States Army from 1962 to 1964. Lauren met Ricky Anne Low-Beer at a New York eye doctor’s office, where she worked as a receptionist. The two married six months later, on December 20, 1964. While working for a tie manufacturer, Lauren began designing his own ties. Ties in the early 1960’s were narrow, around two and a half inches wide. Lauren’s ties were colorful and four inches wide. Lauren approached manufacturing companies with his designs, and Beau Brummel agreed to produce them. Lauren wanted his line of ties to have a name that sounded British and tweedy. He eventually settled on Polo. In 1967, with his designs and a fiftythousand-dollar loan from Norman Hilton, Lauren entered the fashion world. Life’s Work Lauren’s theory that tie fashions would shift radically away from the narrow designs of the early 1960’s proved both correct and profitable. Polo ties were all handmade and sold for fifteen dollars. Other designer ties at the time cost only a fraction of that, around five dollars. Initially, Bloomingdale’s tried to get Lauren to produce narrower ties, but the store changed its mind when the wide ties caught on. Lauren’s company sold $500,000 worth of ties in his first year alone. In 1968, he created his first menswear line with wide-collared shirts and widelapelled suits. Lauren’s clothes were soon sold in
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boutiques within stores such as Neiman Marcus Polo Ralph Lauren Company and Bloomingdale’s. His designs were more vibrant than traditional preppy attire but less In 1967, Ralph Lauren started his Polo clothing company, sellflamboyant than the hippie styles. Lauren and ing four-inch-wide neckties for fifteen dollars. That first year he Ricky’s son Andrew was born in 1969, followed sold $500,000 worth of ties. Lauren soon added a complete mensby another son, David, two years later. The couwear line, followed by one for women. His designs gained notoriety during the 1970’s and appeared in the feature films The Great ple’s daughter, Dylan, was born in 1974. Gatsby (1974) and Annie Hall (1977). During the 1980’s and In 1971, Lauren introduced a women’s tai1990’s, Lauren continued to expand his fashion empire to include lored shirt, soon followed by an entire line, and several different clothing lines for men, women, boys, girls, and he opened his first stand-alone store, located in babies. The company also sells lines of eyewear, luggage, sheets, Beverly Hills. His famous mesh short-sleeve towels, accessories, paint, cologne, furniture, and, beginning in shirt with the polo-player logo on the left breast 2009, watches. Lauren does not sell just products; he sells a lifewas released in 1972, and it was available in style. However, the designer has critics. Some in the fashion industwenty-four colors. Lauren designed Robert try feel that his designs are unoriginal; others consider them highRedford’s wardrobe for the 1974 remake of The priced knock-offs. In 2010, the company was criticized for a print Great Gatsby and the wardrobe for Woody ad that featured a model whose image had been digitally altered, Allen and Diane Keaton for Annie Hall in 1977. making her skinnier than biologically possible. The company apologized for the over-editing and for presenting distorted images Lauren expanded his label to include cologne of women’s bodies, The company insists that it has taken precau(1978), boyswear (1978), girlswear (1981), lugtions to make sure that its print ads measure up to the high quality gage (1982), eyewear (1982), home furnishings and sterling integrity represented by Lauren’s name. (1983), and handbags (1985). Lauren opened his first international store in London in 1981. He also created athletic wear, a denim line, and the Polo flag sweater in the 1980’s. During the Significance next decade, Lauren further expanded his brand with varLauren grew up in the Bronx in the years following ious lines, including Polo Golf (1990), Double RL (1993), the Great Depression. Both sides of his family were Polo Sport (1993), Purple Label (1994), Polo Jeans prominent members of the Eastern European Jewish (1996), and RLX (1998). The company went public for community. Lauren started his fashion empire with a line the first time in 1997. Two years later, Lauren opened a of wide neckties in 1967, and in 2010 his worth was restaurant in Chicago. He opened a second in Paris, listed as $4.6 billion. In addition to his influence on the offering classic American cuisine, in 2010. Lauren has fashion and design world, Lauren is a philanthropist. also designed clothes for the U.S. Open tennis tournaIn 2001, he donated the funding for the Ralph Lauren ment, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Olympic team. In 2007, Center for Cancer Care and Prevention located in East Lauren became the corporate sponsor of the Black Watch Harlem, New York. The center is community based, fopolo team. cusing on education, outreach, and new approaches to Lauren was diagnosed with a noncancerous brain tupatient care. Lauren also created a series of Pink Pony mor in 1987. In April of that year, the tumor was surgiproducts, and ten percent of their profits go to the Pink cally removed, and he made a full recovery. During the Pony Fund. The fund works to educate and to treat 1990’s, Lauren had an affair with Kim Nye, a model for women with breast cancer, especially those in communihis Safari fragrance. Photographs of the couple were ties around the world that may not have access to highpublished in Spy magazine. Lauren has said that his relaquality medical care. Lauren and his wife also donated tionship with Nye is his one regret in life. money for the Ralph and Ricky Lauren Center for the Lauren and his wife own several homes, including a Performing Arts at the Lexington School for the Deaf in Fifth Avenue apartment in New York, a cattle ranch in New York. Colorado, a home in Jamaica, a beach house on Long Is—Jennifer L. Campbell land, a home in Connecticut, and an estate in Katonah, New York. They also own a private jet. Lauren has an exFurther Reading tensive antique car collection that in 2005 was on display Gross, Michael. Genuine Authentic: The Real Life of in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. In 2010, Forbes magaRalph Lauren. New York: Harper, 2004. An unauthozine estimated Lauren’s wealth to be $4.6 billion. 697
Lazarus, Emma rized biography of Lauren, including an extensive, detailed discussion of Lauren’s Jewish heritage and ancestors. Lauren, Ralph. Ralph Lauren. New York: Rizzoli, 2007. A pictorial history of Lauren, his family, and his designs. McDowell, Colin. Ralph Lauren: The Man, the Vision, the Style. London: Cassell Illustrated, 2005. An authorized biography of Lauren. Sources include inter-
Jewish Americans views with his family and friends. Explores the inspiration behind his designs. Trachtenberg, Jeffrey. Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique. Boston: Little, Brown, 1988. A biography of Lauren, detailing the highlights of his life and focusing on his business empire. See also: Kenneth Cole; Donna Karan.
Emma Lazarus Poet and social reformer Lazarus wrote the sonnet “The New Colossus,” which is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. After the Russian pogroms of 1881, she worked actively to help Jewish Russian refugees in the United States. Born: July 22, 1849; New York, New York Died: November 19, 1887; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Literature; social issues Early Life Emma Lazarus (EH-muh LA-zuh-ruhs) was the fourth daughter in a Jewish family of seven children, six girls
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and one boy. Her father, Moses, was a prosperous sugar merchant descended from Sephardic Jews who had put down roots during colonial times, and he provided his family with material comforts in the fashionable sections of New York and Newport, Rhode Island. Her mother, Esther Nathan, belonged to a New York family of German Jews whose members were prominent in the legal profession. Lazarus and her siblings were educated at home by hiring private tutors, who taught them mythology, music, European literature, and the languages German, French, and Italian. Protected by their father from the harsher aspects of city life, Lazarus and her siblings grew up in a privileged world of wealth and culture. Her father and sister Josephine recognized Lazarus’s gift for poetry early, and when Lazarus was only seventeen he arranged for the private publication of Poems and Translations Written Between the Ages of Fourteen and Sixteen (1866), Lazarus’s first published collection. Even then, Lazarus did not define herself by conventional female roles, but she sought to establish a literary identity of her own in the world of American letters. When she was about eighteen, she met the noted poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson at a mutual friend’s home. She was already familiar with Emerson’s work, and at his request she sent him her volume of poetry. Although he considered it important, he suggested that she write about less gloomy subjects, since she did not have the power or grand style to achieve tragedy in her work. He offered to mentor her in poetry, and for some years he analyzed and judged the poems she sent him, often with extravagant praise. His was an important influence on her work. With her work regularly appearing in literary magazines, Lazarus became well known in her time, publishing essays in the most important literary magazine of her era, Lippincott’s. Her early poetry belonged to the Romantic movement, reflected in her early short poems of freedom and loss.
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Life’s Work Raising Jewish Consciousness Although Lazarus’s family held long-standing membership in the oldest synagogue in Between November, 1882, and February, 1883, Emma Lazarus New York, she grew up in a primarily secular atspoke directly to American Jews in an essay that appeared in The mosphere. Her Judaism may have influenced American Hebrew under the title, “An Epistle to the Hebrews.” This grew into fifteen articles, published serially. Newly dedicated her fascination with the German Jewish poet, to the cause of preserving Judaism because of her knowledge of the Heinrich Heine, and she published a translation Russian atrocities against it that were taking place at the time, she of his works, Poems and Ballads of Heinrich called on American Jews to understand present and future political Heine, in 1881. Lazarus wrote an essay about conditions so that they might retain their identities. In letter eight, Heine that appeared in The Century in Decemshe proposed that Palestine, rather than America, become a haven ber, 1884, in which she recognized in his work a for Jews so that they could establish their own country without havdepth of humanity, a mystic imagination, and a ing to give up their valued religious laws by assimilation, thus berelentless resistance to every kind of bondage, coming one of the early Zionists. In the last letter, Lazarus acwhich she attributed to his Jewish heritage. knowledged that anti-Semitism could also find fertile soil to grow Lazarus also recognized in Heine, who had in America, although her country aspired to “liberty and justice for been baptized and educated in Catholic orders, all.” Taken together, her letters attest to her newly awakened Jewish sensibility and her desire to claim it as her own. The same Jewa sympathy for Jews that was similar to her ish solidarity is evident in her collection of poetry titled Songs of a own. Semite, published by The American Hebrew in 1882. Songs of a In addition to writing about Jews, Lazarus Semite included “The Dance to Death,” a drama in verse form took an active role in helping the Jewish immiabout medieval persecutions of the Jews. In five acts, this powerful grants adapt to their new country. She visited play delineates the martyrdom of the Jews of Nordhausen in 1349, immigrant relief workers on Ward’s Island, for when they were accused of causing the Black Plague and senwhich nothing in her background had prepared tenced to be burned alive. Lazarus dedicated the work to the writer, her. There she found many graduates of RusGeorge Eliot, who had also championed the Jews in her own novel, sian universities, scholars of Greek and HeDaniel Deronda. While she lived, Lazarus used her considerable brew, and refugees familiar with all the princiinfluence to promote progressive ideas on the past and the future of pal European languages. At the age of thirtyJews. At a time of widespread anti-Semitism she championed the Jews, becoming an important advocate for a cause that had yet to three, Lazarus recognized her heritage, and it reach its most desperate need in the mid-twentieth century. changed her life. She engaged in a heated public debate, her poetry grew in technique and power, and she went to work. She helped establish Jewish agricultural communities and provided the rope, she wrote “By the Waters of Babylon,” a lovely initial inspiration for the Hebrew Technical Institute for summation of her ideals, an example of her most mature the purpose of training new immigrants in vocational style, and the last of her poems she would see published. skills. She was a tireless fund-raiser for these causes, yet She returned to New York on July 31, 1887, and died on it was her writing that attracted the most attention on beNovember 19 that same year. half of her people. In 1883, at the age of thirty-four, Lazarus went to EnSignificance gland and France with her younger sister, Annie, with Lazarus is primarily remembered for her sonnet, “The the intent of winning the support of intellectual EuroNew Colossus,” engraved on the Statue of Liberty. She pean leaders for Jewish causes. However, she was overoriginally contributed the sonnet to an auction held in orwhelmed by the literary and social traditions she found, der to raise money for the statue’s pedestal, and after her and her trip focused on these. She returned to the United death, a friend arranged for it to be etched into the pedesStates with her sister in the late summer and resumed her tal of the statue. In 1945, the poem was relocated to be writing and her involvement in social causes. In the folplaced in its entirety over the statue’s main entrance. lowing year, she fell ill with the cancer that was to end her During her life, moreover, Lazarus sought to establish a life, and in 1885 her father, to whom she was close, died. name in the world of American letters without relying on Two months after her father’s death, she returned to Euan identity as wife, mother, or caretaker, like other Amerrope with her sister, Josephine, visiting England, The ican Jewish women writers of her period. Just as she creHague, Paris, Pisa, Florence, and Rome. While in Eu699
Lear, Norman ated a new role for women, she was also one of the early Zionists to imagine a new land for Jews. —Sheila Golburgh Johnson Further Reading Lichtenstein, Diane. “Words and Worlds: Emma Lazarus’s Conflicting Citizenships.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 6, no. 2 (Fall, 1987): 247-263. A close reading of Lazarus’s work demonstrates that the poet used her writing to resolve her American and Jewish identities in the last decade of her life. Also raises the issue of Lazarus’s gender identity, another facet of the poet’s unique public image.
Jewish Americans Merriam, Eve. The Voice of Liberty: The Story of Emma Lazarus. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1959. Though highly fictionalized, this book brings to life the times in which Lazarus lived and illuminates the experiences that led to her emergence as a Jewish spokeswoman. Vogel, Dan. Emma Lazarus. Boston: Twayne, 1980. Thorough and clear biography, offering a well-organized overview of the poet’s life and work. See also: Betty Friedan; Emma Goldman; Erica Jong; Susan Sontag; Gloria Steinem.
Norman Lear Television writer and producer Lear is a television writer and producer who created several extremely influential television series, including All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Good Times, and Maude. Born: July 27, 1922; New Haven, Connecticut Also known as: Norman Milton Lear (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Norman Lear (leer) was born on July 27, 1922, in New Haven, Connecticut, to parents Jeanette and Herman Lear. Herman was anything but a typical father. When Lear was only nine years old, Herman was sent to jail, to be released just a year before Lear’s Bar Mitzvah. The experience left Lear with little connection to his father. Despite the trouble in his immediate family, Lear had as a role model his uncle Jack, Herman’s brother, who was a press agent. Lear’s grandfather Shya also left an impression on Lear at a young age. He recalled how Shya wrote letters to the president of the United States, and Lear would run to the mailbox to pick up responses from the White House. After graduating from high school, Lear went to Emerson College in Boston. As World War II began to impact the lives of Americans, Lear dropped out of college and joined the Army Air Force in 1942. He served a three-year stint in the Army as a radio operator and gunner in the Mediterranean, eventually earning an Air Medal for the more than fifty combat missions in which he participated. 700
Norman Lear. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Life’s Work Creating ALL IN THE FAMILY When Lear left the Air Force, he started working in public relations, a job that lasted unIt was not until early 1971 that Norman Lear would create his til 1949. Not much is known of his early career magnum opus, a situation comedy, or sitcom, called All in the Famyears, but it was during this time that he began ily. Lear originally had trouble getting the concept off the ground, after pitching an idea for a sitcom about a blue-collar family to the honing his writing skills. He started off by writAmerican Broadcasting Company (ABC). Although the network ing comedy and was eventually enlisted to write turned down the show after two pilot episodes were shot, Lear cona variety show called The Ford Star Review. Untinued to try to make it work. He finally succeeded on his third try fortunately, Lear did not succeed, and the show and sold the concept to the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). was cancelled after its first season in 1951. The show was not an immediate hit, although it did win several However, this early flub did not discourage Emmy Awards for its first season, including the coveted outstandLear. He almost immediately began working ing comedy series award. After finishing thirty-fourth in its time on The Colgate Comedy Hour, another variety slot its first season, All in the Family shot up to become the numbershow that would serve as competition to The Ed one show for the next five seasons. It continued to perform well, Sullivan Show on Sunday nights. Lear’s work staying within the top twelve for the remainder of its run, and the on the comedy hour paid off: The show lasted main character, Archie Bunker—played by Carroll O’Connor— became an iconic television character. Bunker was named the five years. greatest television character of all time by Bravo, a cable television After his early success in comedy, Lear often network, in 2005. worked in different genres, although most of his work stayed in television. In 1959, he wrote and created a television series called The Deputy, a Western starring Henry Fonda. During the Dinner, The Powers That Be, and 704 Hauser. Although 1960’s and early 1970’s, Lear tried his hand at full-length critics gave Lear’s shows glowing reviews, none caught pictures: the Dick Van Dyke vehicles Divorce Amerion with audiences. can Style (1967), for which Lear received an Academy Even with his public success waning, Lear did well in Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and other enterprises. He acquired a production company Cold Turkey (1971). called Act III Communications, which produced such Lear is well known for his 1971 smash television hit films as The Princess Bride (1987) and Fried Green ToAll in the Family. This situation comedy, or sitcom, was matoes (1991). In 1997, he also created a new children’s based on a British television series called Till Death Do television show called Channel Umptee-Three, which Us Part that was released six years earlier. Although Lear became the first of its kind to satisfy the Federal Commuhad difficulty pitching the project to television companications Commission’s requirements for educational nies, he was finally successful in persuading the Coprogramming for children. Despite good reviews from lumbia Broadcasting System (CBS) to take a chance on critics, the show did not last long. However, it did set the the series. It was slow to pick up an audience, but the stage for other learning programs and television stations show did exceptionally well at the Emmy Awards and that followed. soon became the highest-rated show on television in its time slot. Lear continued to churn out hit televiSignificance sion sitcoms throughout the 1970’s. His biggest sucLear’s legacy will not soon be forgotten. Several of cesses included Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The the television shows he created, including All in the FamJeffersons, Good Times, and Maude. ily, are seen in syndication on television. Many networks, During the 1980’s, Lear was swept up in a fight to prosuch as Me TV and TV Land, still broadcast these shows tect constitutional freedoms. In 1982, he founded People and others created by Lear. The All in the Family spinfor the American Way, an organization that advocated offs The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Maude successful Bill-of-Rights guarantees. It became an influential group spawned popular spinoffs of their own, such as Gloria that pushes for free speech in the media. and Checking In. All in the Family had an intense impact Lear was unable to reproduce the same amount of sucon U.S. culture, and it has been parodied in shows such as cess he enjoyed in the 1970’s, although he attempted nuFamily Guy and has received mentions in numerous merous times. In the 1990’s, he tried once again to create films. For all of Lear’s accomplishments, it is clear that successful television shows, coming up with Sunday 701
Lebowitz, Fran his work in television has been his most influential. He almost single-handedly carried a genre—that of the situation comedy—throughout the 1970’s. — Jill E. Disis Further Reading Campbell, Sean. The Sitcoms of Norman Lear. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006. This book describes much of Lear’s work in television during the 1970’s, including his creation of several sitcoms, such as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, and Maude. It is less about Lear and more about the characters he created. Josefsberg, Milt, Norman Lear, and Garry Marshall.
Jewish Americans Comedy Writing for Television and Hollywood. New York: HarperCollins, 1987. A book to which Lear contributed an introduction talks about writing comedy for television and film. The book contains contributions not only from Lear but also from other successful television and film writers who have worked extensively in comedy. “Lear, Norman (Milton) (1922).” In Contemporary Authors. Detroit: Thompson Gale, 2007. A biography of Lear’s life. See also: J. J. Abrams; Bea Arthur; Larry David; Larry Gelbart; Sarah Jessica Parker; Rob Reiner; Aaron Spelling.
Fran Lebowitz Writer and social commentator The author of two highly regarded books of essays, Lebowitz chronicled New York City in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Her urbane wit and caustic commentary made her a popular personality and an icon of the New York literary world. Born: October 27, 1950; Morristown, New Jersey Also known as: Frances Ann Lebowitz (full name) Areas of achievement: Literature; journalism Early Life Fran Lebowitz (LEE-boh-wihts) was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Morristown, New Jersey, on October 27, 1950. Her father owned a furniture store, and her mother was a homemaker. Lebowitz spent her childhood reading voraciously because, she claimed, she was not good at anything else. She particularly loved the Nancy Drew book series, and her first attempt at writing, as a young girl, was a Nancy Drew-style mystery. Never a distinguished student, Lebowitz often exhibited an attitude that got her in trouble with authority figures. The principal of her public school suggested that she might be better off elsewhere, and she enrolled in a private preparatory school, from which she was expelled in her senior year. Later in her life, Lebowitz and some friends wrote pornography under the name Robert Paine Cook, the name of the headmaster who expelled her from school. As a result of her expulsion, her parents sent her to live with relatives in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she worked for Head Start, a federal program that provides 702
education and nutrition services for children from lowincome families, and she passed her General Education Development (GED) tests to earn the equivalent of a high school diploma. As soon as she turned eighteen, she moved to New York City, where she intended to become a professional writer. In order to support herself, Lebowitz worked odd jobs, including driving a taxi. Her first professional job, in 1972, was writing for a small music-oriented magazine, Changes. For her first article she was paid fifteen dollars. A nasty but funny review of Andy Warhol’s new film, Women in Revolt, which she hated, caught the eye of Glenn O’Brien, then editor of Warhol’s magazine Interview. On the basis of this piece, he offered her a job writing a column for Interview. Life’s Work Although initially disliked by Warhol, who thought that she wrote generic New York Jewish humor, Lebowitz was given a column, “The Best of the Worst,” in which she sought out terrible films and reviewed them seriously. Successful in this, Lebowitz was given another column, “I Cover the Waterfront,” for which she wrote on topics of her choice. While working for Interview, Lebowitz also wrote columns for Mademoiselle and Vogue. Lebowitz’s big break came when Laurie Colwin, an editor at E. P. Dutton, read one of the “I Cover the Waterfront” articles. She convinced Dutton to sign Lebowitz and got her a cash advance large enough that she could
Jewish Americans quit Interview and concentrate on a book of essays. This led to the 1978 publication of Metropolitan Life, a New York Times best seller. Metropolitan Life was a collection of essays observing the unique fashion-club-literary world of New York City in the 1970’s. It was satiric and critical while being funny. The book made Lebowitz a star and a sought-after celebrity. Her second collection, Social Studies, published in 1981, was another collection of scathing social commentary, lampooning everyone and everything that annoyed Lebowitz. Again, this was highly successful and cemented her fame as a humorist. Following these successes, Lebowitz battled with severe writer’s block. Selfproclaimed to be the most slothful human being on the planet, Lebowitz did not publish another book until 1994. Mr. Chas and Lisa Sue Meet the Pandas, illustrated by architect Michael Graves, a children’s book, received mixed reviews. In 1994, Lebowitz began work on Exterior Signs of Wealth, a novel about artists and the wealthy in New York from the 1970’s until the book’s completion. However, because Lebowitz believes writing to be the most difficult activity and she cannot discipline herself to write, the publication date was not announced. Often compared to Dorothy Parker, Lebowitz is a frequent guest at New York events. She loves fashion and art and is a regular at couture shows and gallery openings. In the 1990’s, she appeared many times on David Letterman’s late-night show and continues to lecture on college campuses. She had a recurring role as a judge on Law and Order. Famed for her love of smoking and her refusal to quit, Lebowitz was honored in 2002 when famed restaurateur Brian McNally opened Café Lebowitz in New York; it closed in 2004 because of the ban on smoking. In 1997, Lebowitz became a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, which awarded her a “best-dressed woman” award in 2007, honoring her signature hand-tailored, traditionally male, suits. Significance Lebowitz chronicled a short but iconic time in New York City’s history. Both a participant and an observer, Lebowitz imbued her essays with a critical and loving glimpse of a bygone New York. Her intellectual and erudite views have made her a sought-after commentator. She appeared in four installments of Ric Burns’s eightpart documentary New York (1999). Considered the quintessential New York wit, Lebowitz has remained an important social and literary critic. — Leslie Neilan
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Fran Lebowitz. (Getty Images)
Further Reading Alexander, Dorothy. “Fran Lebowitz: A Humorist at Work.” The Paris Review127 (Summer, 1993). Lebowitz discusses her writing process and many other topics in this interview. Hackett, Pat, ed. The Andy Warhol Diaries. New York: Grand Central, 1991. This volume contains a unique view of New York City seen through Warhol’s eyes. There are numerous mentions of Lebowitz and accounts of events that they both attended. Lebowitz, Fran. Metropolitan Life/Social Studies. Paris: Edition 7L, 2003. Lebowitz’s first two books of essays in a slipcased, hardcover edition with illustrations by Karl Lagerfeld. Metcalf, Fred, ed. Modern Humorous Quotations. 2d ed. New York: Penguin, 2002. This collection quotes Lebowitz in more than thirty categories. See also: Nora Ephron; Lillian Hellman; Erica Jong; Tony Kushner; Dorothy Parker; Susan Sontag. 703
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Leon M. Lederman Scientist and mathematician Among his scientific achievements, Lederman discovered the muon neutrino, a cornerstone in the evolution of elementary particles, and the bottom quark, a key ingredient in the theory of quantum chromodynamics. Born: July 15, 1922; Bronx, New York Also known as: Leon Max Lederman (full name) Area of achievement: Science and technology Early Life Born to Jewish parents who immigrated from Russia to the United States, Leon Max Lederman (LEH-durmehn) received constant encouragement from his father to obtain a good education. He went to public school in New York City and graduated from James Monroe High School. In 1943, he received his bachelor of science degree in chemistry from the City College of New York. After serving for three years in the U.S. Army during World War II, he studied physics at Columbia University, earning his master’s degree in science in 1948 and his Ph.D. in physics in 1951. Lederman then received an appointment as a faculty member at Columbia. At Columbia, Lederman taught physics and conducted elementary particle research using the synchrocyclotron particle accelerator at Columbia’s NEVIS Laboratory. While working with a team of Columbia researchers at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island in 1956, Lederman discovered the neutral K-meson (kaon), which he had predicted from theory. In 1958, he was promoted to professor of physics at Columbia and took a sabbatical leave to do research at the Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland. Life’s Work Lederman devoted his professional career to elementary particle research and science education. In 1962, Lederman and coresearchers Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger discovered the muon neutrino, a subatomic particle with no detectable mass and no electric charge that travels at the speed of light and accompanies the production of muons (particles similar to electrons but about two hundred times more massive). Since the electron neutrino was already known, this discovery proved that there was more than one type of neutrino. It helped lead to the recognition of different families of subatomic par704
ticles, including leptons and quarks. For this discovery, Lederman, Schwartz, and Steinberger were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988. In 1963, Lederman proposed the idea that led to the establishment of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. In 1977, he discovered the subatomic particle known as the bottom quark, and later proposed the existence of the top quark, which was discovered in 1995. In 1979, Lederman was appointed as the director of the Fermilab. In addition to leading a broad spectrum of innovative experiments, he helped make Fermilab a center for Latin American physicists and engineers, helping to create user groups in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Bolivia. He retired from Columbia University and Fermilab in 1989. After serving as the Frank L. Sulzberger Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago for a brief period of time, Lederman became the Pritzker Professor of Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he pursued his interests in promoting science education in American schools. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in 1986, a three-year, statewide residential public school for gifted children, which is located in Aurora, Illinois. He also organized a Teachers’ Academy for Mathematics and Science in 1990, designed to retrain teachers in Chicago public schools in effective teaching of science and mathematics. In 1991, Lederman was appointed president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Two years later he published his popular book The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? In a delightful manner, he explores the pursuit for finding the missing link in elementary particle physics, the Higgs boson (“God” particle). He has published more than two hundred papers. In addition to receiving the Nobel Prize, Lederman has been awarded the National Medal of Science (1965), the Elliot Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute (1976), the Wolf Prize in Physics (1982), the Enrico Fermi Prize (1993), the Abelson Prize of the AAAS (2000), the American Institute of Physics Compton Medal for leadership in physics (2005), and the William Benton Medal for Distinguished Public Service (2008). Significance Discoveries by Lederman helped establish a new scheme for classifying families of subatomic particles
Jewish Americans known as the standard model, which provides a reasonably comprehensive picture of the fundamental building blocks of nature. With six types of elementary leptons, one of them being the muon neutrino discovered by Lederman, Schwartz, and Steinberger, and five types of quarks, one of them being the bottom quark discovered by Lederman, it was conjectured by Lederman and other elementary particle physicists that the symmetry of nature suggested the existence of a sixth quark. This conjecture led to the discovery of the top quark in 1995. Neutrinos have been used to analyze systems ranging from the structure of the atomic nucleus to the energy of supernova. The six leptons, the six quarks, and the particles that mediate the fundamental interactions in nature (strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravity) form the core of the standard model. —Alvin K. Benson Further Reading Hargittai, Magdolna. Candid Science IV: Conversations with Famous Physicists. London: Imperial College Press, 2004. Contains thirty-six interviews with wellknown physicists, including Lederman, Steven Weinberg, and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, that explore their scientific contributions and philosophies about the
Leeser, Isaac relationship between the scientific community and the world. Lederman, Leon M. The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. An entertaining book that covers the history of experimental physics, from 430 b.c.e. to the Superconducting Supercollider. _______. Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2004. Explores the relationship among symmetry, nature, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the unification of forces. Provides a tour of physics from Newtonian physics to quarks and superstrings, with some connections to the environment and modern cosmology. Lincoln, Don. The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Describes the inner workings of the Large Hadron Collider that runs between France and Switzerland, its use in better understanding the standard model of elementary particle physics, and the efforts to discover the Higgs boson. See also: Hans Albrecht Bethe; Albert Einstein; Donald Glaser; David Gross; Frederick Reines.
Isaac Leeser German-born religious leader, writer, and translator Leeser was a prominent nineteenth century Jewish leader, whose preaching, journalism, and significant English scriptural translations fortified Jewish educational efforts. He served as a hazan, a catechist, a publisher, a public speaker, and president of Maimonides College. Born: December 12, 1806; Neuenkirchen, Westphalia, Prussia (now in Germany) Died: February 1, 1868; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Areas of achievement: Education; journalism; religion and theology Early Life Isaac Leeser (I-zak LEE-zur) was one of three children born to working-class parents. They both died when he was a teenager, before he enrolled in the Muenster Gymnasium, a secondary school. It was in Muenster that Leeser was persuaded by a local rabbi to champion Con-
servative over Reform Judaism. Like many in his generation, Leeser was attracted to the opportunity for a fresh start in the United States, enhanced by the welcome extended by his uncle in Richmond, Virginia. He happily found in his new home a welcome haven for Judaism, but not one without perils of discrimination and scarcity of resources known elsewhere. Jews risked losing their identity in the prosperous melting pot in which Christianity was the main ingredient and Judaism a novelty. Life’s Work Leeser’s apologetic stance for Conservative Judaism was well served by his writing skills, first put to work in rebutting an anti-Semitic article in the London Quarterly Review. With the help of connections, he became a hazan (an official) at Mikveh Israel synagogue in Philadelphia, a position he held from 1829 until 1850. Despite his many disagreements with the congregational board 705
Leeser, Isaac about liturgical and administrative matters—chief of which was their objection to his introduction of preaching—Leeser thrust himself into work with the Hebrew Sunday school being formed by prominent educationalist Rebecca Gratz. Leeser continued his literary and educational career with the translation and publication in 1830 of Joseph Johlson’s Unterricht in der Mosaischen Religion (1819; Instruction in Mosaic Religion, 1830). Leeser revised Johlson’s manual to reflect more Orthodox views, but the publication did not reach the young audience for which he intended it, being more suitable for adults. Leeser modeled his catechism on one by Eduard Kley, who published his Catechismus der Mosaischen Religion, an early effort at the reinterpretation of Judaism characteristic of the era, in Berlin in 1814. Again, Leeser revised certain of Kley’s answers but found it otherwise an attractive model for use in the Philadelphia Sunday school program. Language barriers, not conceptuality, posed problems for use of the catechism in English, which was a second language for many Jewish youth in the school. Both Leeser’s catechism and his Hebrew Reader (1838) afforded children textbooks for training in language and beliefs, and The Hebrew Reader saw decades of use. Several other of Leeser’s book translations into English from Hebrew and from a variety of European languages enhanced classroom teaching, among them Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine (1850), by Joseph Schwarz, and Jerusalem (1783), by Moses Mendelssohn. Leeser further championed education by helping found Hebrew schools in Philadelphia and the short-lived rabbinical seminary, Maimonides College (1867-1873), of which he was faculty president and professor of homiletics. Among his scriptural translations, apologetic, and liturgical works produced across his career, Leeser published five volumes of translated Torah, The Law of God (1845); the first English translation of the Hebrew Bible by a Jew, often called the Leeser Bible (1853); a theological work titled The Jews and the Mosaic Law (1834); the ten-volume Discourses on the Jewish Religion (1867); The Form of Prayers According to the Custom of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews (1837); and an Ashkenazic prayer book (1848). His Bible translation meant to give English-speaking Jews recourse to a more authentically Jewish text than the King James version to which they often had to resort, with its vocabulary canted toward Christian presuppositions. His The Occident and American Jewish Advocate was a monthly journal designed to strengthen Jewish intellec706
Jewish Americans tual life and promote the sharing of editorial opinion. Aside from his publications, Leeser believed the introduction of preaching to synagogue services (a trend already present in Germany) was among his most important labors. Leeser also spent some time touring American Jewish communities, lecturing on sources of communal identity, and helping to create several Jewish benevolent and social service organizations. Leeser never married and lived in a scholar’s genteel poverty. He died at the age of sixty-one in 1868. Significance Preaching, teaching, and writing were the three primary means Leeser chose to strengthen Jewish selfunderstanding in mid-nineteenth century America. Any innovations he introduced in his career were not for the sake of accommodation to modernity but to enhance Jewish life. In Leeser’s estimation, American modernity and pluralism were a mixed blessing for Jews and did not keep him from championing the return of a Jewish state. —William P. McDonald Further Reading Berlin, George L. Defending the Faith: Nineteenth Century American Jewish Writings on Christianity and Jesus. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. The chapter “Isaac Leeser: A Traditionalist’s Approach” summarizes the apologetic aims of Leeser’s writings. Fierman, Floyd S. Sources of Jewish Education in America Prior to 1881. El Paso, Tex.: Temple Mt. Sinai Publication Fund, 1960. Important background for assessing Leeser’s influence on teaching children their Jewish heritage, namely, the educational systems and emphases in place at the time Leeser began his career through the decades immediately following his death. Sarna, Jonathan D., and Nahum M. Sarna. “Jewish Bible Scholarship and Translations in the United States.” In The Bible and Bibles in America, edited by Ernest S. Frerichs. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988. The authors recount Leeser’s contributions as a biblical translator, examining the rationale for his biblical work and its fruits in a legacy of American Jewish biblical scholarship. Sussman, Lance J. Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1995. This is a thoroughly researched biography of Leeser, placing him in context as a shaper of American Judaism. Details of his background and his
Jewish Americans legacy are included, as well as a wealth of bibliographical resources for further study. Whiteman, Maxwell. “The Legacy of Isaac Leeser.” In Jewish Life in Philadelphia, 1830-1940, edited by Murray Friedman. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1983. This article places Leeser
Lehman, Herbert specifically in his Philadelphia context, the site of his most prolific educational activity. See also: Henry Berkowitz; Moshe Feinstein; Louis Finkelstein; Judah Leon Magnes; Joseph B. Soloveitchik; Isaac Mayer Wise.
Herbert Lehman Politician, philanthropist, and financier Lehman was a partner in the family investment banking firm, Lehman Brothers. After a successful career in private life, he served as the governor of New York from 1933 to 1942 and as its senator from 1949 to 1957. Born: March 28, 1878; New York, New York Died: December 5, 1963; New York, New York Also known as: Herbert Henry Lehman (full name) Area of achievement: Government and politics Early Life Herbert Lehman (LEE-man) was born on March 28, 1878, the son of Meyer Lehman, a founder of Lehman Brothers investment banking and the Cotton Exchange. As a youth, Lehman attended Sachs Collegiate Institute, an elite private school for Jewish boys in New York that reflected his family’s considerable wealth and their German Jewish ancestry. While there, he thrived on the rigorous curriculum and strict discipline for which the school, modeled on the European tradition, was famous. After Sachs, Lehman enrolled in Williams College, a small liberal arts school located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1899. In 1908, he joined the family banking firm, a position he held for two decades. When the United States entered World War I, Lehman volunteered for the Navy before quickly shifting branches, receiving a commission in the U.S. Army in August, 1917. He served in a variety of capacities, but most noteworthy was his stint in the purchase, traffic, and storage division in Washington, D.C. Outfitting and supplying the American Expeditionary Force in Europe was one of his principal functions in this logistical wing of the Army. Throughout, he performed a variety of functions for the Army’s general staff, making him an indispensable figure in Washington. He received the Distinguished Service Medal for his actions. He left the military in April, 1919, and returned to Lehman Brothers.
After the war, Lehman, a lifelong member of the Democratic Party, attracted the attention of several New York politicians. His growing friendship with members of New York’s notoriously corrupt Tammany Hall political machine did nothing to tarnish his reputation as a man of honesty. Future Democratic Party presidential nominee, New York governor Alfred A. Smith, utilized Lehman as a valued campaign worker. When Smith became the national Democratic Party’s choice for president in 1928, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) ran for and won New York’s vacated gubernatorial slot. Roosevelt encouraged his trusted friend Lehman to run along with him as lieutenant governor. Elected to public office, Lehman stepped down from the family business. Life’s Work Lehman served as lieutenant governor from 1929 to 1932, all the while earning a reputation for cutting government waste and for settling labor disputes through skilled mediation. His business acumen served him well in the political arena, making him a trusted confidant of FDR and an increasingly popular figure with the electorate. When Roosevelt received the national Democratic Party’s nod for president in 1932, Lehman found himself the favorite for the vacated governorship. Lehman easily won the race, and his popularity helped him win three reelection bids. In his long tenure as governor, Lehman maintained his close ties with President Roosevelt, a fact that accounted for much of Lehman’s state-level success. Fully embracing Roosevelt’s national reform efforts to lift the nation out of the Great Depression, Lehman helped forge what some have called the “little New Deal” in New York. The liberal social welfare programming he pushed through the state legislature in Albany transformed New York’s political system. From child welfare laws, to old-age pensions, to workman’s compensation statutes, the New York governor worked tirelessly on behalf of constituents. Despite all of the new programs, 707
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Defeating McCarthyism In the early 1950’s, Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy commenced a campaign to root out communist subversives in America. Herbert Lehman found McCarthy’s campaign an assault on intellectual freedom and of dubious validity. He argued that McCarthyism undermined liberalism since it labeled any left-of-center political views “communist.” Lehman regularly challenged McCarthy on the Senate floor, especially as his accusations grew more grandiose. On one occasion, Lehman was so incensed that he demanded to see a document McCarthy was reading. Playing to the crowd, McCarthy urged the New York senator to approach his desk for a better look. Calling McCarthy’s bluff, Lehman asked to peruse the document. Rather than let Lehman read it, McCarthy changed the subject, revealing that the “classified” letter from which he quoted did not measure up to his claims. Lehman had made his point. The New Yorker became a central figure in the drive to censure McCarthy for conduct unbecoming of a senator. This move helped bring about the downfall of McCarthy, and it revealed Lehman’s political tenacity. Rather than submit to McCarthy at the height of his power, Lehman stood firm in his convictions, underscoring the basis of his successful career.
Lehman turned New York’s budgetary deficit into a surplus before he left office. New Yorkers enjoyed better roads, improved public housing, and stable labor relations, all without the flamboyance and flash of Lehman’s predecessors. With such an impressive record governing what was then America’s most populous state, it comes as little surprise that Lehman’s political star would continue to rise. When America entered World War II, President Roosevelt urged the New York governor to head the Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operations organization that would eventually become the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Lehman accepted the post, resigning as governor with just a few months left in his fourth term. Under Lehman’s direction, the UNRRA provided all manner of relief for warravaged nations, including food, clothing, and medical supplies. He served in that capacity until 1946. Following his time with the UNRRA, Lehman, in 1946, ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the United States Senate. At the age of seventy-one, Lehman won the 1949 special election to complete the remainder of New York Senator Robert Wagner’s unexpired term. The freshman senator from New York came to Washington as Cold War tensions rose. Lehman demonstrated his fidelity to the liberal principles he supported as New York’s governor by advocating many of the Fair Deal reforms champi708
oned by President Harry Truman. He became an early and vocal advocate of sweeping civil rights legislation, a fact that made him unpopular with Senate conservatives. A devoted liberal, he stood by his principles when political expediency dictated otherwise. Rarely backing from a fight, he became one of the earliest and most vocal critics of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s questionable tactics in uncovering subversives in American government. Lehman’s U.S. Senate career ended on January 3, 1957. He chose not to seek reelection.
Significance Although retired from political life, Lehman remained active in Democratic politics and in the philanthropic initiatives he had supported throughout his life. Although he lacked the charisma of more flamboyant politicians, he was always respected for his convictions. A champion of progressive liberal legislation, he revolutionized New York politics before heading to Washington in support of even broader reforms. His United States Senate colleagues considered him the conscience of the Senate. During both world wars, he left his employment to serve his country, proving a genius at handling the logistical challenges in supplying American servicemen in World War I and the victims of Axis atrocities in World War II. For his lifetime of achievement, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President John F. Kennedy. Lehman died as he was preparing to leave his New York City home to receive the award. — Keith M. Finley
Further Reading Birmingham, Stephen. Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York. Syracuse University Press, 1996. Profiles some of New York’s most famous German Jewish families, including Lehman’s, who arrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Provides insight into New York’s thriving Jewish community, which helped shape Lehman’s character. Finley, Keith M. Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938-1965. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008. Reveals Lehman’s efforts to bring about substantial civil rights legislation.
Jewish Americans Ingalls, Robert P. Herbert H. Lehman and New York’s Little New Deal. New York: New York University Press, 1975. Although not a biography, this book highlights the role that Lehman played in saving New York from economic disaster during the Great Depression. Nevins, Allan. Herbert H. Lehman and His Era. New York: Scribner, 1963. Biography that proves especially helpful in understanding the family context in which Lehman grew up.
Lehrer, Tom Oshinsky, David M. A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Lehman figures prominently throughout this detailed analysis of the rise and fall of Senator Joseph McCarthy. See also: Bella Abzug; Abraham Beame; Michael Bloomberg; Jacob K. Javits; Ed Koch; Fiorello Henry La Guardia; Henry Morgenthau, Jr.; Charles Schumer; Eliot Spitzer.
Tom Lehrer Songwriter and mathematician A brilliant mathematician and educator, Lehrer parlayed his hobby of composing and performing satirical songs into a professional career as an entertainer. His witty melodic output—mostly completed between the early 1950’s and the mid1960’s—greatly influenced humorists that followed. Born: April 9, 1928; New York, New York Also known as: Thomas Andrew Lehrer (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music; mathematics Early Life Tom Lehrer (LAYR-ur) was the son of a Jewish necktie manufacturer. A precocious child, Lehrer started playing classical piano at the age of seven, but he soon switched his focus to popular music, with particular interest in Broadway show tunes. He began composing original songs before his tenth birthday. An early graduate from Connecticut’s Loomis Chaffee School, Lehrer was accepted as a math major at Harvard University in 1943. At Harvard he wrote witty original tunes and humorous new lyrics to existing melodies to entertain friends and classmates. Lehrer received his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude at age eighteen. He earned his master’s degree in 1948 and was honored with membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He entered the Harvard doctoral program (he spent ten years in doctoral studies at Harvard and Columbia University without obtaining the advanced degree) and simultaneously taught classes at Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Wellesley. In 1951, Lehrer and several university colleagues staged the Physical Revue at Harvard, in which they per-
formed many of the songwriter’s compositions. A local hit, the performance spurred popular demand and inspired Lehrer to record and self-produce his first album, Songs by Tom Lehrer (1951), which included such tunes as “The Old Dope Peddler,” “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie,” and “I Hold Your Hand in Mine.” The album went through several printings on Lehrer’s own label, and word of mouth served as a catalyst for his abbreviated career as an entertainer. Life’s Work During the early 1950’s, Lehrer began performing in northeastern nightclubs. In 1953, he was hired at Baird Atomic, a technical company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1955 and served with the National Security Agency until 1957. After his discharge, he resumed his teaching and performing careers, with newly composed songs added to his repertoire. He toured Great Britain, where—in contrast to the United States—his songs were played on BBC Radio and proved quite popular; he also toured Australia and New Zealand. In 1959, he released two albums, for which he wrote self-deprecating liner notes: More of Tom Lehrer and An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, a live version of the same material, complete with hilarious stage patter to accompany such songs as “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” “In Old Mexico,” and “The Masochism Tango.” By 1960, he had ceased touring and settled into teaching and graduate studies at Harvard again. Two years later, he left Harvard to teach at MIT, where he remained a math professor for the next decade. When a version of the groundbreaking British television comedy series That Was the Week That Was premiered on American television in the mid-1960’s, Lehrer 709
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Jewish Americans tosh, who in 1980 had produced Tomfoolery, a successful revue featuring twenty-eight of Lehrer’s songs. Significance An intellectual, irrepressible satirical songwriter over a dozen-year period in the 1950’s and 1960’s, Lehrer stopped writing when national tastes in humor changed from lighthearted to serious. His songs have remained popular, as evidenced by several rereleases of his collected works on CD since the late 1990’s, which have introduced him to new generations of comedy-lovers. Many contemporary performers—including satirists “Weird” Al Yankovic and Mark Russell, Simpsons’s voice actor Harry Shearer, and comedian Greg Proops—have acknowledged a debt to or an appreciation of Lehrer’s politically incorrect style and consistently inventive lyrical abilities. — Jack Ewing
Tom Lehrer. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
became a regular contributor of witty topical songs to the show. Though he did not appear on the program, he produced some of his most memorable and most controversial work during this period, including “National Brotherhood Week,” “Send the Marines,” “So Long, Mom (I’m Off to Drop the Bomb),” and the infamous “Vatican Rag.” The songs were later collected on the album That Was the Year That Was (1965). In 1967, he played briefly in Scandinavia. In 1968, 1970, and 1972, he campaigned for liberal American political causes. In 1972, Lehrer secured a position at the University of California, Santa Cruz, home of the school mascot, Sammy the Banana Slug. There he taught math and musical theater—and contributed children’s songs to the PBS series The Electric Company—until retiring in 2001. Since the late 1960’s, he has toured infrequently. In 1998, he performed before Queen Elizabeth in England during a celebration to honor Cameron Mackin-
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Further Reading Kercher, Stephen E. “Putting on the Shpritz: Postwar Jewish American Satire and Parody.” In Vol. 2 of Jews and American Popular Culture, edited by Paul Buhle. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood, 2006. As part of a comprehensive study of the effects of Jewish immigrants upon American society over more than a century, this chapter contains an examination of the contributions to pointed national humor, particularly after World War II, by such Jewish comedians as Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Sid Caesar, and Lehrer. Lehrer, Tom. Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer with Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle. New York: Random House, 1991. This illustrated songbook contains the words, piano accompaniments, and guitar chords for thirty-four of Lehrer’s best and most subversive compositions of political and social satire. Pease, Steven L. The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement: The Compendium of a Culture, a People, and Their Stunning Performance. Sonoma, Calif.: Deucalion, 2009. This book details the spectacularly high rate of success of Jews—less than 1 percent of world population and just 2 percent of American population—in earning a disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes, Pulitzer Prizes and other distinctions in all fields of endeavor. Provides hundreds of examples from Bella Abzug to Fred Zinnemann, including Lehrer. See also: Albert Brooks; Lenny Bruce; Art Buchwald; Larry David; Larry Gelbart; Mort Sahl; Aaron Sorkin.
Jewish Americans
Leibovitz, Annie
Annie Leibovitz Photographer and writer Leibovitz is known for her penetrating photographic portraits of celebrities, including actors, musicians, athletes, politicians, artists, and royalty. Born: October 2, 1949; Westbury, Connecticut Also known as: Anna-Lou Leibovitz (full name) Areas of achievement: Art; photography Early Life On October 2, 1949, Annie Leibovitz (LEE-boh-vihtz) was born into a Jewish family in Westbury, Connecticut. Her father, Samuel, was a career Air Force officer, and her mother, Marilyn, was a dance teacher. Leibovitz had five siblings, and the close-knit family lived on different military bases during her childhood. Between 1951 and 1961, they lived in Illinois, Ohio, Connecticut, Alaska, Colorado, Texas, Mississippi, and Maryland. She appreciated photography from an early age. There were regular family portraits, and her parents enjoyed making eight-millimeter films. In 1967, Leibovitz graduated from Northwood High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, and entered the San Francisco Art Institute to study painting. In the summer of 1968, she traveled to Fuchu, Japan, where her mother attended University of Hawaii Extension Institute. In Japan, Leibovitz bought her first camera, a Minolta SR-T 101, and took photos on a Mount Fuji climb. After returning to the San Francisco Art Institute in the fall, she attended a photography class at night and changed her major to photography. She was influenced by the work of photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank. Leibovitz spent part of her junior year on a kibbutz in Israel and further developed her skills by recording the experience in photographs. In 1970, she presented her portfolio to Jann Wenner, who, in 1967, had launched the music periodical Rolling Stone in San Francisco. Wenner hired Leibovitz and assigned her to photograph Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane band, for the cover of the November 12, 1970, issue of Rolling Stone. Her Rod Stewart portrait was the cover of the December 24, 1970, issue. Her next assignment was the legendary Beatle John Lennon, who appeared on the cover of the January 21, 1971, issue. In 1971, Leibovitz graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute. During 1971, her Rolling Stone covers included Peter Fonda,
Elton John, George Harrison, Ike and Tina Turner, and the Beach Boys. Life’s Work In 1972, she photographed the Rolling Stones band for a Truman Capote article. Other covers included Alice Cooper, Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead, Van Morrison, and David Cassidy. In 1973, she was appointed chief photographer at Rolling Stone. In 1975, the Rolling Stones commissioned her to document their American tour: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards appeared on the July 17, 1975, cover. Leibovitz worked for Rolling Stone through 1982 and left to work at Vanity Fair magazine in 1983. She had done 142 Rolling Stone covers, a gallery of the top contemporary popular musicians. One of her most famous portraits is the photograph of a nude Lennon embracing and kissing a fully clothed Yoko Ono on December 8, 1980, just hours before he was shot by a crazed fan. This picture was the cover of the January 22, 1981, Rolling Stone. In 1983, she had her first major solo exhibition, which toured the United States and Europe. The companion book, Annie Leibovitz: Photographs, was a best seller. In 1984, the American Society of Magazine Photographers named her Photographer of the Year. She was the official portrait photographer for the World Cup Games in Mexico in 1985. In 1986, Leibovitz began doing advertising photography. Her portraits for an American Express ad campaign earned her a Clio Award and a Campaign of the Decade Award from Advertising Age in 1987. In the following years, she created successful campaigns for clients such as the Gap, the Milk Board, Honda, Disney, and Dior. Leibovitz had a romantic relationship with the writer Susan Sontag from 1989 until Sontag’s death in 2004. They collaborated on Women (1999), photographs of women of different races, occupations, and ages. In October, 2001, Leibovitz’s daughter, Sarah Cameron, was born. In May, 2005, a surrogate mother gave birth to Leibovitz’s twin daughters, Susan and Samuelle. In 1991, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., exhibited more than two hundred of Leibovitz’s photographs. It was just the second time that the gallery had honored a living photographer with such an exhibition. Photographs: Annie Leibovitz 1970-1990 (1991) accompanied this retrospective show. Her photographs of American athletes at the 1996 Summer Olympics in 711
Leibovitz, Annie Atlanta, Georgia, were published in Olympic Portraits (1996). In October, 2005, the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) named Leibovitz’s 1980 Rolling Stone photo of Lennon and Ono the best magazine cover of the past forty years, and her photo of a pregnant Demi Moore, which appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, won second place. In contrast to the contentious relationships established by paparazzi, Leibovitz has a collaborative relationship with her celebrity subjects, who trust her to capture creatively their unique personalities. She was chosen exclusively to take the long-awaited first photographs of baby Suri, the daughter of actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, for the October, 2006, issue of Vanity Fair. In 2009, Leibovitz took the official portrait of the Barack Obama family. Her 2006 photograph of golfer Tiger Woods appeared on the cover of the February, 2010, issue of Vanity Fair. In addition, that month, she did a selfportrait, posing with ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, for a Louis Vuitton ad campaign. Other advertising projects include Candie’s and Hewlett-Packard.
Jewish Americans
Celebrity Portraits Annie Leibovitz is legendary for her celebrity portraits, iconic images that capture the subjects’ personalities through Leibovitz’s distinctive style of lighting, posing, and composition. While still in college, she started photographing famous people for Rolling Stone magazine. In 1970, her first assignment was rock star Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane band, followed by musicians Rod Stewart and John Lennon. In 1973, she became the chief photographer for the magazine, for which she did 142 covers and photo essays on events such as President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974 and the Rolling Stones’ 1975 concert tour. In 1983, she started working for Vanity Fair and then for Vogue in 1998. She has produced thousands of provocative, memorable photographs of a wide range of famous people, including politicians, actors, musicians, supermodels, royalty, athletes, writers, dancers, and artists. She photographed a nude John Lennon embracing a fully clothed Yoko Ono hours before he was murdered on December 8, 1980. Pregnant actor Demi Moore appeared nude on the August, 1991, cover of Vanity Fair. Actor Whoopi Goldberg was photographed lying in a bathtub filled with milk. Artist Keith Haring painted himself to resemble his artwork. Other subjects have included the George W. Bush cabinet, dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, composer Philip Glass, Bill Gates, Queen Elizabeth II, and Barack Obama and his family.
Significance One of the most celebrated photographers in the world, Leibovitz has received numerous honors, including the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award in Applied Photography (1990), the Library of Congress designation as a Living Legend (2000), and France’s Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2006). Leibovitz’s Jewish identity is evident in much of her work, such as her 1969 photos of life in a kibbutz in Israel and her coverage of the war between Lebanon and Israel in 1982 for Rolling Stone. She has also published photographs of family events following traditional Jewish customs. Leibovitz has exhibited in major museums and galleries, including the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 2006, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) presented a documentary, Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens. During decades of photographing celebrities, Leibovitz evolved into a worldfamous celebrity herself. —Alice Myers 712
Further Reading Carter, Graydon, and David Friend. Vanity Fair, the Portraits: A Century of Iconic Images. New York: Abrams, 2008. Beautifully illustrated with three hundred portraits, this picture book includes iconic photos taken by Leibovitz. Leibovitz, Annie. Annie Leibovitz at Work. New York: Random House, 2008. In this readable, personal account of her career and artistic development, Leibovitz tells the stories behind her shoots, from Richard Nixon’s resignation to Barack Obama’s campaign. Beautifully illustrated. _______. A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005. New York: Random House, 2006. In addition to celebrity portraits, there are landscapes and private images of Leibovitz’s family, children, and friends. More than three hundred photographs. _______. Photographs, Annie Leibovitz, 1970-1990. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. This oversize pictorial volume provides a retrospective of Leibovitz’s portraits, primarily for Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone, plus some previously unpublished photos. Includes 242 photos.
Jewish Americans Leibovitz, Annie, and Susan Sontag. Women. New York: Random House, 1999. More than two hundred photographs show a wide range of women of different ages, races, and backgrounds in various settings. Includes Sontag’s essay on photography. Rectanus, Mark W. Culture Incorporated: Museums, Artists, and Corporate Sponsorships. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. The chapter,
Lerner, Alan Jay “Sponsoring Lifestyle: Travels with Annie Leibovitz,” discusses her collaboration with American Express on a museum exhibition. Illustrated. Bibliography and index. See also: Diane Arbus; Richard Avedon; Nan Goldin; Herb Ritts; Cindy Sherman.
Alan Jay Lerner Playwright and lyricist Lerner wrote the book and lyrics to classic Broadway and Hollywood musicals, including Brigadoon (1947) and My Fair Lady (1956). Although he collaborated with many composers, including Kurt Weill and André Previn, Lerner’s work with Frederick Loewe resulted in some of the most beloved songs in musical theater history. Born: August 31, 1918; New York, New York Died: June 14, 1986; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Music; theater Early Life Alan Jay Lerner (LUR-nur) was the second of three sons of Joseph J. Lerner, cofounder of Lerner’s, a chain of women’s clothing stores, and Edith Adelson Lerner. He grew up in an affluent Jewish family. When he was five, Lerner began piano lessons, saw his first musical, and developed a desire to become involved in musical theater. He attended private schools, including Choate, where he coedited the yearbook with the future U.S. president John F. Kennedy. Lerner’s developing skill in music led to summer school at Juilliard, studying piano and music theory. He enrolled at Harvard University, where his love of boxing prompted him to go out for the boxing team; a mishap resulted in permanent damage to his left eye. At Harvard he wrote lyrics for the university’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals, student-written shows, in 1938 and 1939. Following graduation from Harvard in 1940, Lerner composed advertising copy for the Lord and Thomas agency in New York City. Stultified, he quit in 1942 and began writing for radio shows. He also wrote lyrics for the Lambs Club annual show. In August of 1942, while lunching at the club, he was approached by Frederick Loewe, who asked him to write a musical with him.
Life’s Work Lerner’s first effort with Loewe was updating and writing new songs for The Patsy (1925). Their version, titled Life of the Party (1942), played in Detroit and was not highly regarded, but Lerner and Loewe discovered they worked well together and planned to write a Broadway show. That show, What’s Up? (1943), lasted sixty-three performances. Their next effort, The Day Before Spring (1945), did better. Then they wrote their first hit. Inspired by the work of Scots author James M. Barrie, Lerner conceived the idea of a village in the highlands of Scotland that appears every one hundred years. When “two weary hunters,” both Americans, happen upon that village on that specific day, they discover Brigadoon. Lerner’s libretto became the musical Brigadoon, which opened on Broadway on March 13, 1947, and established Lerner and Loewe as a major Broadway writing team. When Loewe took time off, Lerner sought a new collaborator. Lerner teamed with Kurt Weill for Love Life (1948). Lerner included some unusual touches, including a minstrel-show finale and a vaudeville-style format, which did not please the critics. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times saw the show as “cute, complex, and joyless.” Future plans for collaboration ended with Weill’s death in April, 1950. Lerner had other projects, including the filming of Brigadoon. He had been communicating with film producer Arthur Freed, who engaged Lerner to write the script for a musical film starring Fred Astaire. Freed introduced Lerner to composer Burton Lane, and the Lerner and Lane duo created Royal Wedding (1951), a box-office success. Lerner’s next venture into film was An American in Paris (1951), with the music of George Gershwin. Although Lerner’s song “Too Late Now” from Royal Wedding did not win an Academy Award in 1952, An American in Paris won Best Picture, and Lerner received an Academy Award for his screenplay. 713
Lerner, Alan Jay By then, Lerner wanted to return to Broadway and had an idea, gleaned from rereading the stories of Bret Harte, about the Wild West, in particular the Gold Rush. He persuaded Loewe to return to work, and they crafted Paint Your Wagon (1951). Reviews were mixed concerning Lerner’s book, but the songs, such as “I Still See Elisa” and “They Call the Wind Maria,” were praised. Lerner’s most renowned show was written with Loewe. My Fair Lady (1964) was a project that took years, but the results made theater history. Reviews of the show were enthusiastic, and the show received a number of awards, including the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and a Tony Award for best musical of the year. My Fair Lady ran more than six years, closing after 2,717 performances.
Jewish Americans
Again with Loewe, Lerner wrote an adaptation of Colette’s 1945 novella Gigi (1958). The musical film won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Lerner won Academy Awards as writer of the Best Screenplay based on material from another medium and, with Loewe, for best song, the title song “Gigi.” Returning to Broadway, the pair collaborated on Camelot (1960) based on T. H. White’s 1958 book The Once and Future King. For the libretto Lerner focused on Arthur’s dreams, the dissolution of the Round Table, and his troubled marriage. Particularly significant for Lerner was how his play Camelot became a part of the presidency of his former Choate and Harvard classmate, Kennedy. When Jacqueline Kennedy was interviewed after the president was assassinated, she stated how Kennedy loved the musical, particularly Lerner’s lyric: “Don’t let it be forgot that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.” After Camelot, Loewe, once again, retired, and Lerner looked for a new composer. An attempted collaboration with Richard Rodgers failed, and Lerner approached Lane, who agreed to work on the new project: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever opened on October 17, 1965 and lasted for 280 performances. Lerner collaborated with André Previn on Coco (1969), based on the life of couturier Coco Chanel. The musical had some success because Katharine Hepburn played the title role. In 1971, Lerner wrote an adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita with John Barry; the show closed before Broadway. Lerner wrote an adaptation of Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s 1943 book The Little Prince, with Loewe, but the 1974 film was not a success. Lerner’s next project was with Leonard Bernstein; they planned for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to premier at the new John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, for the 1976 Bicentennial. However, the show never gelled and was a failure. Lerner wrote Carmelina (1979) with librettist Joseph Stein and composer Lane; it closed after seventeen performances. Lerner’s final musical, his thirteenth, with yet another composer, Charles Strouse, Dance a Little Closer, opened on May 11, 1983, Alan Jay Lerner (standing at piano) and longtime collaborator, Frederick and closed the same night. Loewe. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) 714
Jewish Americans Lerner’s personal life reads like a soap-opera plot. He married eight times and had four children. His first marriage was to Ruth Boyd on June 26, 1940; his eighth, on August 12, 1981, was to Liz Robertson who outlived him. All marriages, except the last, ended in divorce, some more contentious than others. Lerner was working on his fourteenth musical when he died of lung cancer; he was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Significance Since age five Lerner had loved musicals, and as an adult, he was able to create some of the most beloved, as both playwright and lyricist. Many said his success in writing lyrics was due to his musical training. Rather than writing intricate, clever rhymes that called attention to the words, he wrote lyrics that conveyed the spirit of the song itself. As critic Clive Barnes wrote, Lerner “could make words cling to melodies like ivy to a wall.” A prolific writer, Lerner wrote the book and lyrics for thirteen stage musicals and the scripts for six films and for two books: an autobiography, The Street Where I Live (1978), and The Musical Theatre (1986). Although he collaborated with a number of composers, his major works were with Loewe. —Marcia B. Dinneen
Lerner, Alan Jay
MY FAIR LADY Based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion (1912), My Fair Lady (1956) is one of the finest musicals in American theater history. Writing the score took a lot of effort. Previously, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had declared making the play into a musical was impossible. When Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe first started discussing the project, they were stymied and let it slide for two years. Finally, they saw the possibility of developing the libretto from the 1938 film version. For the character of Henry Higgins, Lerner chose Rex Harrison, despite the fact that he was not a singer. Lerner and Loewe considered Mary Martin for Eliza, but, remembering that Shaw stipulated in his stage directions that Eliza be eighteen, they auditioned Julie Andrews, who was the ingenue lead in Broadway’s The Boy Friend (1954). When My Fair Lady opened on March 16, 1956, it enthralled both critics and fans, won awards, and set box-office records. The cast album became the best-selling album in the history of Columbia Records. My Fair Lady was made into a film in 1964 and earned more awards, including an Academy Award for best film; Harrison won for best actor.
Further Reading Citron, Stephen. The Wordsmiths: Oscar Hammerstein 2nd and Alan Jay Lerner. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Focused more on Lerner’s creative work than on his life.
Jablonski, Edward. Alan Jay Lerner: A Biography. New York: Holt, 1996. Includes biographical information as well as background on the musicals. Lerner, Alan Jay. The Street Where I Live. New York: Norton, 1978. Lerner focuses on three musicals: My Fair Lady, Gigi, and Camelot, with detailed information on each, and includes lyrics from the three shows. See also: Betty Comden; George Gershwin; Ira Gershwin; Adolph Green; Marvin Hamlisch; Lorenz Hart; Jerry Herman; Frederick Loewe; Richard Rodgers; Stephen Sondheim.
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Gerda Lerner Austrian-born educator and scholar A lifelong political and social activist, Lerner is best known for her pioneering work in academia. She created the field of women’s history, shaping a groundbreaking curriculum that reconsidered Western history from a female perspective. Born: April 30, 1920; Vienna, Austria Also known as: Gerda Hedwig Kronstein (birth name) Areas of achievement: Education; scholarship Early Life Gerda Lerner (GUR-dah LUR-nur) was born into privilege as Gerda Kronstein. Her father, Robert, was a successful pharmacist in Vienna. Her mother was a painter of modest achievement who never realized her ambitions because Jewish tradition demanded she focus only on raising her family. Indeed, although raised Jewish, Lerner was keenly aware of the patriarchal nature of Judaism. At thirteen, when she was to commit to her faith through the ritual Bat Mitzvah, she declined, telling her father that she did not even believe in God. Although the family was thoroughly assimilated into Viennese culture, her father, early on, feared the rise of
Adolf Hitler in neighboring Germany. When he shared his concerns with his eldest daughter, Lerner, only sixteen but already a committed socialist, joined the growing Jewish underground resistance efforts. Following the unification of Germany and Austria in 1938 (known as the Anschluss), just before antiemigration laws barring Jews from leaving the country were passed, Lerner’s father took his younger daughter and went into temporary exile, leaving Lerner and her mother to contend with the occupation soldiers. Jews were no longer allowed to own property, and the Kronstein property was thus confiscated. In an attempt to coerce the father to return to Vienna to sign over the property to the Third Reich, Lerner and her mother were imprisoned for more than six weeks before Nazi bureaucrats freed Lerner but sent the mother to the concentration camps (she would survive but would never reunite with her family). Determined not to end up a victim of the Nazi oppression, Lerner agreed to an arranged marriage to secure a visa to the United States. She arrived in New York City in 1939.
Life’s Work Lerner embraced the exhilarating freedom of her adopted America. She taught herself English while she worked as a sales clerk and a waitress. At night, she wrote fiction based on her imprisonment. She divorced, and in 1941 she married Carl The Field of Women’s History Lerner, a promising avant-garde theater and film director. The family moved to Hollywood. From Gerda Lerner’s perspective in the mid-1960’s, the discusLerner happily devoted herself to her children, sion of women in standard history courses at both graduate and una son and daughter. Given her husband’s afdergraduate level consisted primarily of introducing a handful of filiation with the Communist Party, however, significant women who only supported the larger historic narrative being shaped by men. Marginalized by centuries of historians, Lerner maintained an interest in political activwomen had no sense of their story. Her visionary argument deism, most prominently in a decade-long effort to manded that contemporary historians radically shift from such stop nuclear weapons. With the unfolding of the conservative assumptions and that contemporary women accept House Committee on Un-American Activities the responsibilities and challenges of being a vital part of history. hearings, which were focused on finding ComFor Lerner, gender—more than economic class, ethnic identity, or munist Party members and other subversives, esracial background—shaped how events were read as history. For pecially in the entertainment community, howcenturies denied access to education, to real political power, and to ever, both Lerner and her husband distanced cultural prominence through biases institutionalized by Christianthemselves from the party. For a time, Lerner’s ity, women appeared to have done little until the contemporary era. husband was blacklisted in Hollywood. Lerner argued passionately that such was not the case. In creating As her two children grew older, Lerner grew women’s history as a field of study, Lerner inspired student historians to turn to the record and meticulously uncover and relate the restless. Approaching forty, she began to write a experiences of women, in order to present a more complete and acnovel centered on Sarah and Angelina Grimké, curate reading of history. two controversial nineteenth century Quaker sisters from South Carolina who moved to Mas-
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Jewish Americans sachusetts and became abolitionists and pioneering suffragists. To help her research methodology, Lerner took a night class in history at the New School for Social Research in Greenwich Village in 1958. She found that she thrived in the academic environment; she went on to complete her bachelor’s degree in 1963. She never abandoned her interest in women in history; indeed, in her senior year Lerner was asked to teach a course devoted exclusively to women’s history, the first such class ever offered at an American university. After graduation, she went to Columbia University and completed first her master’s degree and then her Ph.D. in American history. Her dissertation used the information she collected for the abandoned novel on the Grimké sisters. A revised version of that dissertation would be Lerner’s first academic publication. Although she worked briefly in Hollywood while she researched her dissertation (she cowrote the script for one of her husband’s notable film projects, 1964’s Black Like Me), once she had completed the degree she returned to New York intent on developing a curriculum that specifically examined women’s history. Initially she took the project to Columbia University, but the idea was coolly received. Undeterred, in 1966, she accepted a position at Long Island University, and there she designed undergraduate courses in women’s history. Ambitious to extend the range of the field she was creating, Lerner moved to Sarah Lawrence College, a prestigious liberal arts school just north of New York. There she established the first master’s program in women’s studies. She remained there for more than a decade (19681979), in that time publishing what has become a seminal textbook in women’s history, The Woman in American History (1971) and a half dozen other titles, including The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (1979). In 1976, Lerner’s husband died, and she never remarried. In 1980, she accepted an endowed chair in American history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Although she was past sixty, her vigor never diminished. She created a groundbreaking doctoral program in women’s history, and she was an adviser to dozens of similar programs being set up across the United States. In 1980, she helped establish a national Women’s History Month. In 1981, she became the first woman in more than half a century to serve as president of the Organization of American Historians. Her work received numerous honors, notably in 1995 the Käthe Leichter Prize, awarded by the Austrian Ministry of Women’s Affairs to the most distinguished achievement by an Austrian Jewish intel-
Lerner, Gerda lectual in exile. In 2002, she became the first woman to receive the Bruce Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Historical Writing, presented by the Society of American Historians. Lerner retired in 1991, serving as professor emerita and staying, well into her eighties, very much an active presence in the field that she had created. Significance When Lerner first studied history, the long record of Western civilization was based on the notion that men were more rational and of superior intelligence to women, who, guided by emotions, were valuable primarily in a supportive role, as nurturers restricted to the domestic sphere. Women were hardly mentioned in history books. In fact, in Lerner’s graduate career, she studied only under men. Women were essentially denied their past, their history. That this argument appears patently flawed to a contemporary audience is largely the result of Lerner’s indefatigable campaign across more than three decades to establish the legitimacy of studying women and their involvement in history. She argued her case with passion and wit in a steady stream of academic publications and to a generation of students, many of whom took up the investigation of women’s history. She believed that women must understand their role in history if they are ever to achieve the full entitlement that is at the heart of feminist doctrine. —Joseph Dewey Further Reading Howe, Florence, ed. The Politics of Women’s Studies: Testimony from Thirty Founding Mothers. Albany, N.Y.: The Feminist Press of CUNY, 2000. An anthology of first-person accounts of the first generation of academics and their students who pioneered women’s studies in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Helpful context to understand the radical concept of women’s studies and the biases these women encountered. Lerner, Gerda. Fireweed: A Political Autobiography. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003. Invaluable account of Lerner’s tumultuous adolescence in Vienna, her Jewish upbringing, her work with the resistance movement against Hitler, her eventual imprisonment, her escape to America, and her decision to join the Communist Party. _______. Why History Matters: Life and Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Lerner’s eloquent and personal assessment of the value of studying history. This is Lerner’s direct speculation about the relationship between being a historian and being 717
Lethem, Jonathan Jewish, and how the patriarchal structure of Judaism initially propelled her to investigate women’s history. Mumford, Laura Stemple. Transforming Women’s Education: The History of Women’s Studies in the University of Wisconsin System. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. Comprehensive overview of
Jewish Americans the historic doctoral program shaped under Lerner’s direction. Includes Lerner’s mission statement and data on the reception the program received and its influence nationwide. See also: Hannah Arendt; Daniel J. Boorstin; Peter Gay; Barbara W. Tuchman.
Jonathan Lethem Novelist Lethem transformed his youthful obsession with comic books and science fiction into quirky, genre-bending novels. Born: February 19, 1964; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Jonathan Allen Lethem (full name) Area of achievement: Literature Early Life In his autobiographical essay “Lives of the Bohemians,” Jonathan Lethem (LEH-thehm) describes growing up as the child of 1960’s bohemians in New York. His father, Richard Lethem, was an artist, and his mother, Judith Frank, was involved with anti-Vietnam War activism. Purchasing a row house in a run-down, ethnically diverse neighborhood of Brooklyn, his parents held art workshops, took part in protests, and offered living space to other artists and activists. While his counterculture parents promoted ideals of peace and equality, young Lethem encountered bullying and racial tension in school and in the neighborhood, experiences he drew on for his autobiographical novel The Fortress of Solitude (2003). His mother developed a brain tumor and died when Lethem was in his early teens. During this difficult period, Lethem took refuge in science fiction, viewing the original Star Wars (1977) film twenty-one times during one adolescent summer, as described in his essay “13, 1977, 21.” In later adolescence, he became obsessed with film director Stanley Kubrick and science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, whose dystopian visions influenced the writing of Lethem’s first novel. Lethem attended Bennington College as a studio art major but dropped out after two years. He moved to Berkeley, California, where he began writing short stories while working in bookstores. His debut novel was released in 1994, just as Lethem turned thirty. 718
Life’s Work Gun, with Occasional Music (1994), Lethem’s first published novel, playfully combines the futuristic satire of Dick with the hard-boiled detective style of Raymond Chandler, but Lethem adds some touches uniquely his own as his detective hero battles genetically enhanced kangaroos, talking babies, and karma police. Critics noted Lethem’s inventiveness and humor. Science fiction elements dominated in Lethem’s next two books: Amnesia Moon (1995), a dystopian road novel, and Girl in Landscape (1998), an homage to the classic Western film The Searchers (1956). Lethem returned to more familiar ground with 1999’s Motherless Brooklyn, a crime novel featuring Lionel Essrog, a detective afflicted with Tourette’s syndrome. First-person narrator Essrog vividly describes his struggle to control verbal and motor tics as he searches for the killer of his detective agency boss. Set in contemporary Brooklyn, the novel was notable for its rich language and vividly evoked setting. Motherless Brooklyn received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. His next novel brought Lethem even closer to home. In The Fortress of Solitude, Lethem evoked a Brooklyn of memory, the Gowanus/Boerum Hill neighborhood of the 1970’s and 1980’s, before gentrification. Lethem told an interviewer that the novel was autobiographical in setting, an evocation of the streets of his past. It tells the story of Dylan Ebdus, a nerdy, comic book-reading Jewish kid, and his unlikely friendship with Mingus Rude, a streetwise black kid. All the cultural touchstones of Lethem’s childhood are there: soul music, street games, superheroes, graffiti art. Lethem also addresses the darker aspects of Brooklyn life, such as racial bullying, crime, and drugs. Characteristically, he brings a genre motif into an essentially realistic novel by introducing a mysterious ring that gives its wearer superhero powers. Some critics thought the mixture did not work, but most praised
Jewish Americans the novel’s energy and imagination. The Fortress of Solitude became a best seller, establishing Lethem as one of America’s most successful literary writers. In 2005, he received a prestigious “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. Lethem followed his success with a short-story collection and two more novels: You Don’t Love Me Yet (2007), about the struggles of an alternative rock band, and Chronic City (2009), a satirical meditation on celebrity. He also returned to his childhood obsession with Omega the Unknown, a pioneering 1970’s comic written by Steve Gerber, and wrote a revival of the character in a graphic novel illustrated by Farel Dalrymple. Significance In “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism,” a 2007 article published in Harper’s, Lethem passionately defended the hybridization and cross-pollination of art, citing examples ranging from Bob Dylan and William S. Burroughs to T. S. Eliot and William Shakespeare. The contemporary writer, Lethem argued, cannot escape being influenced by the creations of the past; what matters is to assimilate these influences into a vibrant new creation. In his rich body of fictional work, with its samplings drawn from comic books, science fiction, detective stories, and rock and soul music, Lethem has created an energetic fusion of the past and the future, of high art and pop culture. —Kathryn Kulpa
Levine, Philip Further Reading Gaffney, Elizabeth. “Jonathan Lethem: Breaking the Barrier Between Genres.” Publishers Weekly 245, no. 13 (March 30, 1998). An early interview with Lethem, with an emphasis on his science fiction works. Kramer, Jerome V. “Home Boy: Motherless Brooklyn’s Jonathan Lethem Returns to the Street Where He Grew up for His New Novel, The Fortress of Solitude.” Book 30 (September/October, 2003). An in-depth profile of Lethem with a focus on his Brooklyn roots. Lethem, Jonathan. The Disappointment Artist. New York: Doubleday, 2005. In this collection of personal essays, Lethem discusses his family, his childhood, and his artistic obsessions, from Marvel Comics to Star Wars to Philip K. Dick. Singer, Marc. “Embodiments of the Real: The Counterlinguistic Turn in the Comic-Book Novel.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 49, no. 3 (Spring, 2008). A critical study of novels inspired or influenced by comic books includes analysis of Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude, along with works by Michael Chabon and Rick Moody. Zeitchik, Steven. “A Brooklyn of the Soul: Jonathan Lethem.” Publishers Weekly 250, no. 37 (September 15, 2003). In this interview, Lethem discusses The Fortress of Solitude and how his Brooklyn neighborhood shaped his formative years. See also: Sholom Aleichem; Michael Chabon; Stanley Elkin; Jonathan Safran Foer; Bernard Malamud; Philip Roth.
Philip Levine Poet Levine champions in his poetry a segment of the American population that has little voice, the working poor. Born: January 10, 1928; Detroit, Michigan Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Philip Levine (luh-VEEN) was born in Detroit, Michigan, at a time when anti-Semitism was a growing force in American society. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was educated in the public schools of Detroit, but perhaps even more so on the streets of Detroit, where
he was subject to bullying from those who were prejudiced against Jews. He developed a left-wing political orientation at a young age, and he was fascinated by those who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). In the 1950’s, he worked in the automobile factories of Detroit and at a bottling company, while he attended night school at Wayne University (later called Wayne State University), where he began to write poetry. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1950 and his master’s degree in 1955. Levine understood the factory workers with whom he worked and resolved early to find meaning in their lives and to give expression to those caught in the industrial machine with no one to speak for them. 719
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An Original Voice Philip Levine has spent his career forging an original voice to express his convictions. His first two books were somewhat traditional in form and relatively limited in expression. He developed his distinctive style during the 1960’s, when the United States was struggling with civil rights issues, which Levine equated with the dehumanization of factory workers. His youthful experiences as a Jew and a factory worker had a lasting impact on his poetry. His third book, They Feed They Lion, published in 1972, inspired by the race riots in Detroit in the 1960’s, marks the emergence in Levine’s work of an expressive form that he has repeated and refined over his poetic career. He has exhibited a severe skepticism regarding traditional American ideals and expressed the many types of alienation found among the working poor. He has given voice to the voiceless, working territory that had seldom been mined in American poetry. Levine’s distinctive poetry champions a segment of American life that rarely appears in popular literature.
While still at Wayne University, he became intrigued with the Spanish poet, Federico García Lorca. When he was in his twenties, Levine left Detroit to teach part time at the University of Iowa, where he also attended the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop and was fortunate to study with the poets Robert Lowell and John Berryman. He received a master’s degree from Iowa in 1957, where his students included Gary Soto, whose work is often thought influenced by Levine. The poems Levine wrote at the University of Iowa and the connections he made there led to his receiving a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, after which he joined the faculty of Fresno State College in 1958. He remained there for more than thirty years, during which time he taught literature and writing and continued to publish collections of his poetry. During the 1960’s, Levine’s fascination with Spanish literature and culture caused him to move to Spain with his family for a period of time. This had a profound influence on his poetry; subsequently, the history and culture of Spain became the subjects of some of his work. Although Levine was born in the same generation as the Beat poets, and read his poetry publicly with such icons of the Beat movement as Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, he was not considered part of the movement. The Beat poets were influenced by many strains of poetic tradition, including proletarian protest in the style of the Marxist poetry of the 1930’s, which Levine did share. He did not share, however, the exaltation of cerebral and emotional ecstasy in the style of the French poet, Arthur 720
Life’s Work Levine is a prolific poet, publishing regularly since his first book, On the Edge, came out in 1963. He is one of the few poets closely tied to a city, Detroit, where he grew up, and one of the few to identify strongly with ethnic and working-class issues. His most explicitly autobiographical work is 1933, published in 1974, which contains many portraits of family members and describes the physical geography of Detroit. It is noted by being sentimental and nostalgic, and it includes portraits of remarkable people involved in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). This was followed by The Names of the Lost (1976), dedicated to Buenaventura Durruti, a leader of the anarchist movement during that war. The volume contains the elegy “For the Fallen,” written in Durruti’s honor. Like many Latin American and Spanish poets, Levine has a social conscience, moral indignation, and an ability to identify with those trapped for life in relentless, unfulfilling labor. Ashes, published in 1979, earned Levine both the American Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Prize. This collection contains many of his explicitly religious poems, many of which explore his Jewish roots. It includes thirteen poems from an earlier book and thirteen new ones, which invoke industrial images of his Detroit childhood, working-class family tensions, and travels in Spain. Ashes opens with the poem “Father,” in which the poet finds his dead parent in the poet’s own tears of mourning and dismisses his father. By the end of the book, however, Levine is much more positive. The concluding poem, “Lost and Found,” reunites father and son and the middle-aged poet with the child he once was, recognizing an enduring human bond. Levine writes with an informal clarity that mimics the cadences of natural conversation with a certain tautness; not a word is superfluous. His poems establish a pattern: They are primarily long poems with short lines and few stanza breaks, and they are usually summed up in the last few lines. Significance At a time when poetry increasingly was influenced by academic trends and criticism, Levine freed his poems from dogma. His work has been both praised and criticized for its simple diction and the natural rhythms of his
Jewish Americans narratives. His themes deal with issues of consequence: death, courage, loyalty, and love. He finds the great mysteries of life hidden in ordinary events and in objects of daily routine. —Sheila Golburgh Johnson Further Reading Levine, Philip. The Bread of Time: Toward an Autobiography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Instead of writing a literary autobiography, Levine assembled a collection of autobiographical essays written at different times during his life. This contains an honest account of his struggles to emerge from the rough world of lower-middle-class Detroit and become a fine poet. Although this volume has been criticized for being less than factual, it constitutes an imaginative retrospective of his life and emphasizes his lifelong commitment to poetry and his leftist convictions. Includes excellent essays on his teachers John Berryman and Yvor Winters.
Levinson, Barry _______. So Ask: Essays, Conversations, and Interviews. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. Collection of pieces by and interviews with Levine traces the poet’s development over many years. Mills, Ralph J., Jr. Cry of the Human: Essays on Contemporary American Poetry. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975. Sensitive discussion of Levine’s work, in which the author registers acceptance of pain, failure, and defeat in a resigned voice. Molesworth, Charles. The Fierce Embrace: A Study of Contemporary American Poetry. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1979. Devotes a great deal of space to Levine, concluding that he connected the Spanish revolutionaries with Detroit’s working class during a stay in Barcelona. Both cities represent an ideal destroyed. See also: Allen Ginsberg; Maxine Kumin; Howard Nemerov; Adrienne Rich; Gertrude Stein; Mark Strand; Louis Untermeyer.
Barry Levinson Film and television writer, director, and producer One of the most influential Jewish filmmakers of the past thirty years, Levinson has enjoyed unrivaled success as an accomplished writer, director, and producer of box-office hits and award-winning films. Born: April 6, 1942; Baltimore, Maryland Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Barry Levinson (LEHVihn-suhn) is one of two children born to Jewish Russian parents, Violet and Irvin. Levinson was raised in the Forest Park section of Baltimore. Irvin was a successful businessman, who owned Baltimore’s first discount appliance warehouse. Levinson has admitted candidly in interviews that, while growing up, his biggest ambition in life was to avoid working for his father in the family business. Early on, it was evident that Levinson was not interested in academics, and he often failed classes while attending Forest Park High School. He graduated with a class rank of 460, dead last among his peers. After graduating from high school in 1960, Levinson attended Baltimore Junior College (now called Baltimore City Community College), and he found part-time work selling used cars and encyclopedias.
In the summer of 1963, Levinson moved to Washington, D.C., and enrolled in a broadcast journalism program at American University. Levinson also found parttime employment at a local television station as a floor director. His work experiences offered him the freedom to write and direct small promotional spots. While working the late-night shift, he became captivated by watching old films, taking an interest in classic films and the characteristic differences among various directors. For the first time in his life, Levinson had found something to be passionate about; this private education proved to be one of the great learning curves of his life. Without finishing his degree, on a whim, Levinson moved to Los Angeles in 1967. His father, weighing the slim probabilities of success, told Levinson he would be back within a month. Life’s Work After arriving in Los Angeles, Levinson was coerced by a friend to take acting classes. Even though he did not want to be an actor, Levinson became fascinated with the improvisation. Through this method, Levinson devised ideas for creative character development. Participating in these acting classes led Levinson to meet Craig T. Nelson and Rudy De Luca. Together they formed a stand-up 721
Levinson, Barry comedy act, performing in local comedy clubs. In 1969, Levinson landed his first professional writing job on a local television show called The Lohman and Barkley Show, a ninety-minute weekend variety program. Levinson, along with Nelson and De Luca, moved on to write for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) comedy The Tim Conway Show (1970). Levinson and De Luca continued their writing partnership in England as sketch writers for The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine (19711972) and then The Carol Burnett Show (1974-1976). As part of a panel of comedy writers on Burnett’s hit series, Levinson went on to win two Emmy Awards. Levinson’s big break came when he was hired, along with De Luca, to help cowrite the screenplay for the Mel Brooks feature film Silent Movie (1976) and the followup picture, High Anxiety (1977). Working on these films gave Levinson an enormous step up from sketches to large-format screenplays, and it afforded Levinson the chance to experience, firsthand, every aspect of the filmmaking process. Essentially, it was an apprenticeship in directing, in which Levinson listened to and learned from Brooks. Over the next several years, Levinson formed a writing partnership with his wife, Valerie Curtin, and the duo churned out screenplays for . . . And Justice for All (1979), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay; Inside Moves (1980); and Best Friends (1982). Levinson’s screenplays and working partnerships did little to satisfy the thirst he had for more. He turned to his Baltimore roots to write Diner (1982), which he also directed. The screenplay earned him his second Oscar nomination and critical praise. At the same time, in 1982, Levinson’s brief marriage to Curtin ended amicably. After his divorce, Levinson directed The Natural (1984) and Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), and he returned to
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Baltimore-inspired material as writer-director on Tin Men (1987). The box-office hit Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) demonstrated that Levinson was indeed able to direct big commercial films that turned high profits. His success almost seemed to intensify when he chose to gamble and work on a challenging project that other directors, such as acclaimed filmmaker Sydney Pollack, were passing on. The script did have its problems, but Levinson believed it was worth the risk. The film was Rain Man (1988), an instant classic that raked in more than five hundred million dollars and took home Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. This catapulted Levinson to the forefront of Hollywood’s best directors. Levinson wrote, directed, and produced Avalon (1990), an autobiographical film tribute to Jewish Russian immigrants making their way in America, dealing with dynamic shifting changes in family relationships brought about in the wake of World War II with the advent of television. Levinson won a best screenplay award from the Writers Guild of America. He then directed a film about the personal side of a gangster in Bugsy (1991), and he won a Golden Globe Award for best picture. The only indications of a career slump came with disappointing boxoffice showings for Toys (1992) and Jimmy Hollywood (1994), although the downturn was only temporary. In 1993, Levinson made his return to television as director of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) series Homicide: Life on the Street, earning a third Emmy Award for best direction in a drama series. As a director and producer, Levinson had added success with Disclosure (1994); Sleepers (1996), for which he also wrote the adapted screenplay; Wag the Dog (1997); and Sphere (1998). For his fourth Baltimore-based story installment, Levinson wrote and directed Liberty Heights (1999), a coming-of-age tale with themes related to the issues of racial division and the Jewish experience of growing up in Baltimore. A man who wears many hats in the enterDINER Launches Levinson’s Career tainment industry, Levinson acted as executive producer for the critically acclaimed During his early conversations with Mel Brooks, Barry Levinson Home Box Office (HBO) series Oz (1998regaled the funnyman with many amusing stories about Levinson’s 2003), and the films The Perfect Storm (2000) youthful adventures in Baltimore. Brooks, finding the stories hilariand Analyze That (2002). Levinson returned ous, encouraged Levinson to write a story about the characters from for his third time with Robin Williams, both his hometown. After years of kicking ideas around in his head, Levinson sat down and completed writing his story in the unbelievably writing and directing the political comedy short span of three weeks. The screenplay was Diner, and it became Man of the Year (2006). Levinson directed Levinson’s directorial debut. Although the film did not do well at the Robert De Niro in What Just Happened box office, critics picked up on Levinson’s unique eye for engaging (2008) and was the executive producercomedy and the misunderstandings of youth. director for the prime-time Emmy Awardnominated Home Box Office (HBO) film
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Jewish Americans You Don’t Know Jack (2010). Levinson has also written three books: Levinson on Levinson (1993), Baltimore: Life in the City (2001), and the novel Sixty-Six (2003), which he plans to make into a feature film. Significance Levinson has had such critical and commercial success that he can choose his own projects. He found a balance between his personal quartet of films about Baltimore and his big-budget studio pictures by taking risks and allowing his passions to guide his career endeavors. Levinson has broadened the scope of rewarding entertainment within the confines of a commercially driven, cookie-cutter industry with his successful films about his youth, family life, and religious background, growing up in Baltimore. — Kyle Bluth
Levy, Uriah P. Further Reading Carter, Bill. “Pure Baltimore, Right Down to the Steamed Crabs.” The New York Times, January 24, 1993. Article that follows Levinson and his authentic production of the television series Homicide: Life on the Street, which takes place in Baltimore. Levinson, Barry. Avalon, Tin Men, Diner: Three Screenplays. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990. Collection of screenplays by Levinson that chronicle life in Baltimore. _______. Levinson on Levinson. Edited by David Thomson. Boston: Faber & Faber, 1992. Levinson relates details on his long and successful career, from television writer to screenwriter, producer, and director. See also: J. J. Abrams; Judd Apatow; Mel Brooks; Jerry Bruckheimer; Sydney Pollack.
Uriah P. Levy Military leader and philanthropist Levy rose to the highest rank in the U.S. Navy, and he was instrumental in the reform movement to abolish corporal punishment in the Navy. A pioneer preservationist, he helped save Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s estate in Virginia. Born: April 22, 1792; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Died: March 26, 1862; New York, New York Also known as: Uriah Phillips Levy (full name) Areas of achievement: Military; philanthropy Early Life Uriah P. Levy (yew-RI-ah pee LEE-vi) was born on April 22, 1792, the third child of Michael and Rachel Phillips Levy. A fifth-generation American, Levy’s Sephardic Jewish ancestors on his paternal side were among the first Jewish settlers in the colonies, arriving in 1645. His grandfather on his maternal side left Germany in 1756 and fought with the Philadelphia militia during the American Revolution. Levy developed an early infatuation with the sea, encouraged by his father, a prosperous merchant engaged in maritime trading. Levy was also extremely patriotic. John Paul Jones, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Thomas Jefferson were his lifelong heroes. At the tender age of ten, Levy ran away from home to serve as a cabin boy on a trading ship. Three years
later he returned to Philadelphia for his Bar Mitzvah, as he had promised. From 1806 to 1810, he apprenticed to merchant-ship owner John Coulter of Philadelphia, with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. At the age of nineteen, Levy was part owner and master of schooner George Washington. The following year, when the War of 1812 broke out, Levy enlisted in the U.S. Navy, in which he would serve until his death fifty years later. During the War of 1812 Levy served as sailing master on the USS Argus. The Argus seized more than twenty British merchant ships, until the British frigate Pelican killed the Argus’s captain in combat and sank his ship. The surviving crew, including Levy, spent the next sixteen months at Dartmoor Prison in England. He was released shortly after the War ended. Soon Levy was embroiled in another type of battle, combating anti-Semitism in the part of fellow officers. In 1816, when Levy was a sailing master on the USS Franklin, a drunken officer launched into an anti-Semitic tirade, and Levy responded forcefully enough to be challenged to a duel. Refusing at first, Levy finally decided to accept the challenge. When the duel ended his opponent was dead. Subsequently, Levy was indicted by a grand jury but was judged innocent. The duel also did not interfere with his commission as lieutenant, which was granted in 1817. 723
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copy of the statue was donated to New York City in 1833 for which Levy, in return, was awarded the symbolic key to the city. Jefferson soon occupied Levy’s actions in Uriah P. Levy’s lifelong devotion to Thomas Jefferson far exother ways. While visiting Monticello for the ceeded standard patriotic service to the United States. He commisfirst time in 1836, Levy found it to be rapidly sioned artistic statues of Jefferson, presented to New York City deteriorating. He bought it, restored it, and (1833) and Congress (1834). He devoted considerable time and opened it to visitors as a tribute to Jefferson. It money to purchasing and restoring Jefferson’s self-designed estate at Monticello. In his will, Levy left Monticello to the American was also used as a vacation home. people to be used as an agricultural school for orphans of Navy In 1837, Levy was finally assigned to active warrant officers. This was to honor Jefferson’s view that the duty and promoted to commander of the USS citizen-farmer remained closest to nature and basic incorruptible Vandalia. While happy to be restored to acnatural values. Levy, a New York City real-estate tycoon, thought tive duty, Levy commissioned himself to anof what Jefferson might have done with his estate, namely train a other duty: the abolition of what he considered new generation of scientifically oriented citizen-farmers. as a barbaric practice. While commanding the Levy and Jefferson were both devoted to the Enlightenment Vandalia he instituted his own discipline sysprinciples of religious freedom and separation of church and state. tem based upon embarrassment rather than the Levy’s battling of six courts-martial was not just personal. It was lash. Because he used his noncorporal punishan all-out war against religious bigotry on the national level. Morement system on a young seaman, Levy was over, his campaign against corporal punishment, such as flogging in the Navy, brought up images of torture used in the Inquisition court-martialed in 1842 and dismissed from and punishment meted out to slaves. Such a barbarity seemed antithe Navy. Two weeks later President John Tythetical to the Eighth Amendment and Enlightenment punishment ler reversed the court-martial’s verdict. Shortly principles defined by Cesare Beccaria in the eighteenth century, thereafter Levy was promoted to captain; howwhich were held dear by Jefferson. ever, the Navy responded by not assigning him to active duty. In the meantime, Levy wrote articles and gave speeches protesting the practice of flogLife’s Work ging. He had a powerful ally in New Hampshire senator During his fifty years of naval service, Levy would John Hale. In 1850, Hale attached an antiflogging rider face six courts-martial for minor offenses. In 1819, while to the Naval Appropriations Bill, limiting the use of the serving aboard the United States, third-lieutenant Levy lash. Flogging was finally outlawed in 1862, the year of got into an exchange with the ship’s lieutenant. Levy was Levy’s death. Levy’s real estate wealth continued to accourt-martialed and dismissed from the Navy. Two years celerate, and he began to become involved in philanlater, on the advice of the secretary of the Navy, President thropic activities related to Jewish American life. He James Monroe reversed the conviction. In 1821, Levy served as first president of the Washington Hebrew Conwas given command of a gunboat, appropriately named gregation in Washington D.C., and, in 1854, he sponRevenge. In 1825, Levy joined the USS Cyane as the secsored the B’nai Jeshurun Educational Institute in New ond lieutenant, but he was soon transferred to a desk job York. in the Philadelphia Naval Yard. Levy rejected the transIn 1855, after appealing for thirteen years for a comfer, went on leave, and moved to New York City. In the mission, Levy was informed by the Board of Naval Offibooming metropolis, he invested his life’s fortune in real cers that he was being dismissed for the good of the estate. Making the right investments at the right time, Navy. An enraged Levy hired a lawyer and petitioned Levy soon became wealthy. Congress for a hearing. In 1858, a Congressional Court Desiring to continue seeing the world, Levy moved to of Inquiry restored Levy’s captaincy. Several months Paris for two years. There he commissioned a statue of later he was given command of the warship Macedonian, his boyhood hero Jefferson by the celebrated French which was part of the U.S. Mediterranean squadron. In sculptor Pierre-Jean David d’Angers. Levy attempted to 1860, Levy was promoted to commodore, the highest donate the magnificent work to Congress in 1834; howrank in the Navy, with status as flag officer of the Mediever, Congress did not accept it until 1874. It is the only terranean squadron. privately donated artwork in the Capitol Rotunda. A At the start of the Civil War, President Abraham Lin-
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Jewish Americans coln installed Levy on the Court-Martial Board in Washington. Levy’s six prejudiced courts-martial made him the nation’s leading expert on the subject and added the weight of experience when he published his “Rules and Regulations” for the U.S. Navy. Levy died on March 26, 1862, at his home in New York. He was buried in the Beth Olom Cemetery in Queens, New York, with full military honors. Significance Levy was the first American Jew to reach the Navy’s highest rank, that of commodore. In six separate courtsmartial he was subject to intense anti-Semitism, similar to that in the Dreyfus affair in France at the turn of the twentieth century. He was an instrumental force in ending corporal punishment in the form of flogging in the U.S. Navy. A pioneer architectural preservationist, he saved Jefferson’s Monticello from inevitable destruction and furthered Jefferson’s legacy by donating a statue of Jefferson to the Capitol Rotunda. This is the only work of art in the Rotunda donated by an individual. During World War II, a naval destroyer was named for
Lewis, Jerry him; also named for him are the Jewish Chapels at Norfolk Naval Base and the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. —Irwin Halfond Further Reading Dye, Ira. Uriah Levy: Reformer of the Antebellum Navy. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. This first major biography is based on British and American naval records as well as on documents from relevant local archives. Felton, Harold W. Uriah Phillips Levy. New York: Dodd and Mead, 1978. A short but readable portrayal of Levy’s life and works. Leepson, Marc. Saving Monticello: The Levy Family’s Epic Quest to Rescue the House That Jefferson Built. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003. A detailed study of the role of Levy and his descendants in preserving Monticello. See also: Julius Ochs Adler; Leopold Karpeles; Mordecai Sheftall.
Jerry Lewis Entertainer, actor, and philanthropist Lewis is known for his slapstick form of comedy and his comedic characterizations in films. As national chairman of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, he has used his time and energies to raise huge sums of money for charity. Born: March 16, 1926; Newark, New Jersey Also known as: Joey; Joseph Levitch (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; philanthropy Early Life When he was five years old, Jerry Lewis was belting out songs in the Catskills. His parents, Danny and Rachel Levitch, were radio entertainers who during summers performed on the Borscht Belt circuit, where Jewish performers entertained mostly Jewish vacationers, under the name of Lewis. His paternal grandfather was a rabbi, which could explain Lewis’s later admiration for the first “talkie” film, The Jazz Singer (1927). While his parents were on the road, Lewis usually stayed in Newark with his maternal grandmother. Lewis attended public schools. He later boasted that
Irvington High School expelled him when he punched the principal. In any case, he had little choice but to leave school and begin to work the circuit when his grandmother died in 1941. The teenager worked as a waitercomedian. On the Borscht Belt he perfected his “record act,” thereby honing his talent for satirical mimicry. During the record act, Lewis would play a record and pretend that he was the singer, amusing audiences with his exaggerated facial expressions and motions as he mouthed the lyrics. In 1944, Lewis appeared on a bill with Frank Sinatra in New York City. On the strength of his growing popularity, he married the singer Esther Calonico, who used the stage name Patti Palmer. His first son, Gary, was born in 1945 and later became a rock-and-roll singer. Lewis had five more sons. Lewis met his best friend and partner, Dean Martin, through the circle of actors who met casually in midtown New York. Martin, ten years older, offered Lewis a position in his act. Although each was moderately successful, their first shows together in the New York area were disastrous. The pair resorted to manic vaudeville routines and kept their bookings. They played the Capitol Theater 725
Lewis, Jerry with Xavier Cugat and Tex Beneke. Then, they played the Roxy with the Andrews Sisters, a popular singing trio. Martin and Lewis’s slapstick act impressed audiences, and soon the “bobby-soxers”—teenage girls who followed the hottest acts from concert hall to club, and to roadhouses along the Jersey Palisades—were squealing for the pair. Martin played the easygoing singer perpetually harassed by Lewis, the hyperactive little brother type. In 1948, Martin and Lewis performed on Ed Sullivan’s first television show, Toast of the Town. Television was a strong showcase for Lewis, but then he was offered a film contract by producer Hal Wallis and Paramount Film Company. Life’s Work Lewis was only twenty-three when he moved his family to Beverly Hills, California. Martin and Lewis hosted four episodes of The Colgate Comedy Hour on television with the easy humor of brothers. Then Wallis and Paramount forced the duo into a series of formula comedies at
Jerry Lewis. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans the killing pace of two each year while the men still were touring. Martin’s spirit dwindled, and Lewis became addicted to painkillers, after suffering a serious back injury. (Later, he weaned himself from a steroid addiction, arising from the same cause.) In 1951, Martin and Lewis made the semiautobiographical The Stooge. In it, Lewis plays an impossibly inept youth and Martin portrays a drunken egoist. Once a girl kisses him, the Lewis character becomes a man who decides that his loyalty to the Martin character will not blind him to his mentor’s faults. Lewis leaves the act, and Martin flops when he attempts to go solo. The Martin character apologizes, Lewis joins him, and the two conclude the film by singing a love song to their “girls.” The song ends with the words “I love you,” and, strangely, the men turn from the women and sing the line directly to the camera. Lewis worked on the script, although his name does not appear in the writers’ credits. Wallis refused to release the film until 1953. In 1956, Martin walked away from the partnership. In 1959, Paramount asked Lewis to sign another seven-year contract. Lewis negotiated a contract that gave him ten million dollars and 60 percent of the net over the seven-year period, the best exclusive contract negotiated to that date by any actor. At this time, Lewis found a measure of peace in donating his time to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, which named him its national chairman in 1959. While directing the film The Bellboy in 1960, Lewis became known for his use of the video assist, in which a director can view a short video of a film take right after the scene is concluded. The video assist technique is used by almost every filmmaker. A string of comedies followed The Bellboy, including The Ladies’ Man (1961), The Errand Boy (1961), The Patsy (1964), and the well-regarded The Nutty Professor (1963). When Paramount dropped his contract, Lewis was forty and entering the most fruitful stage of his career. He began to host the annual Labor Day Telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. He grew a beard, taught film direction at the University of Southern California, and chatted on The Dick Cavett Show. The actor encouraged talented young directors such as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. After his father died and his youngest son turned twenty-one, Lewis and his wife, Patti, divorced in 1980. Three years later, he married SanDee Pitnick; they adopted a baby, Danielle Sarah, in 1992. In one of his last films, Cracking Up, which he
Jewish Americans wrote and directed, Lewis abandoned his disguises and exaggerated expressions. The 1983 film, originally called Smorgasbord, was acclaimed simultaneously as a masterpiece of postmodernism and of slapstick. In addition, during 1983 he starred in Scorsese’s King of Comedy, playing an irascible comedian who was stalked and kidnapped by a fan, played by Robert De Niro. Lewis found his best roles during the 1990’s in small films such as Arizona Dream (1993) and in a five-part arc of Wiseguy, a television drama. Although Lewis has struggled with cancer, serious heart problems (including two heart attacks), and viral meningitis, he has not neglected the Muscular Dystrophy Association and its money-raising telethon.
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Volunteer for Youth Jerry Lewis began to fund-raise for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) almost as soon as the organization was established by Paul Cohen in the late 1940’s. His first Labor Day Telethon in 1966 lasted all night and, urged on by Lewis, viewers pledged one million dollars. Because the MDA board had only six slots to show numbers of dollars raised, Lewis exultantly painted the numeral one on the board. Lewis can no longer work all night, but today, a quarter of a million volunteers assist him. Lewis and other celebrities who appear on the telethon are volunteers, too. The MDA puts more than three-quarters of donations directly into service for those who suffer from muscular dystrophy. Donors to Lewis’s annual Labor Day telethon support more than three hundred research projects for a cure and effective treatment. The organization provides summer camps for thousands of children with neuromuscular disorders, and the MDA educates the public about neuromuscular disease. The organization lobbies with Congress for funds to assist those who suffer from muscular dystrophy. Critics have accused Lewis of exploiting those who suffer from the disease. However, Lewis has spent most of his life in a campaign that has raised more than a billion dollars to alleviate the pain of children.
Significance Lewis carried the American tradition of slapstick comedy into the late twentieth century. His fealty to his Borscht Belt past brought forward new interpretations of slapstick’s cheerful anarchy from two successive generations of filmmakers. His status as an auteur in the tradition of Charlie Chaplin is founded in the poignant aspects of his comedic characterizations. While often dismissed in the United States as a lightweight jokester, Lewis found in Europe respect for his directing and his absurdly comedic portrayals. He was praised by French critics in the esteemed film journal Cahiers du Cinéma, and in 2006 France awarded Lewis the Légion d’honneur, noting that he was the “French people’s favorite clown.” During his long career in entertainment, Lewis has been an unfailing supporter of his favorite charity, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, raising almost a billion dollars for research. —Christine Lutz Further Reading Dale, Alan. Comedy Is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Survey of the comedic technique of slapstick, with several references to Lewis.
Lewis, Jerry, and Herb Gluck. Jerry Lewis in Person. New York: Athenaeum Books, 1982. This autobiography is somewhat less revealing of the actor than of his films. Nevertheless, Gluck elicits comments from Lewis that illuminate his decency and his toughmindedness. Lewis, Jerry, with James Kaplan. Dean and Me. New York: Doubleday, 2005. Lewis claimed to have begun this book on the day that Martin died. The book expresses indirectly Lewis’s guilt over the broken friendship, probably the most significant relationship of his adult life. See also: Milton Berle; Albert Brooks; George Burns; Sid Caesar; Billy Crystal; Andy Kaufman; Danny Kaye; Alan King; Carl Reiner.
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Richard Lewis Comedian and actor Lewis is famous for totally confessional comedy. Rather than telling jokes, Lewis makes his life the subject of his comedy. By sharing with the audience truthful stories about his family, neuroses, and therapy sessions from a comic vantage point, he turns his pain into his audience’s pleasure. Born: June 29, 1947; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: The King of Pain; Richard Philip Lewis (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Richard Lewis was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 29, 1947, and he was raised in Englewood, New Jersey. His father, a kosher caterer, worked long hours and was rarely home. Lewis’s mother, a homemaker who acted in local theater, took little interest in her son. The household was filled with arguing and emotional abuse. At camp when he was twelve, Lewis made friends with Larry David, who would prove instrumental in Lewis’s later career. In 1969, Lewis graduated from Ohio State University in communications and marketing, and he started work as a copywriter for a New Jersey ad agency, Contemporary Graphics. At the same time, he began writing jokes for Morty Gunty. Initially afflicted with stage fright, Lewis credits his father’s death as the catalyst that began Lewis’s standup career in 1972, with his first appearance at the Improv in New York. Life’s Work Lewis’s first big break was appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1974, which was followed by becoming a regular on The Sonny and Cher Show in 1976. From early on, Lewis did not want to do joke-based comedy. He never wanted to tell people what they should think was funny, and he found his greatest inspirations in the comedy of Lenny Bruce and Rodney Dangerfield, who talked about themselves. Taking this model, Lewis’s standup became confessional. He mined material from his personal struggles and experiences. His performance style was also widely different from most comedians. He never memorized or rehearsed gags. Instead, he would come on stage with pages of notes. Laying these out on a piano, the only prop on stage, Lewis simply started talking. Occasionally, he would 728
look at the notes for inspiration. No two performances were ever alike. In 1977, Lewis wrote and starred in the cult classic Diary of a Young Comic, which aired in the Saturday Night Live timeslot. Although not completely autobiographical, the film mirrors Lewis’s experiences in the story of a young comic figuring out how to perform as he travels across America. By the time he reaches California he has decided simply to talk about himself. It was the first of Lewis’s many film appearances, among them Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), Drunks (1995), and Leaving Las Vegas (1995). In 1982, he made the first of more than fifty appearances on David Letterman’s show. Lewis credits Letterman with making Lewis a household name and freeing him from monologue comedy by inviting him simply to sit and talk. Lewis continued this style, doing standup performances only for live audiences. Four of Lewis’s shows aired on cable television: I’m in Pain (1985), I’m Exhausted (1988), I’m Doomed (1989), and Wreck in Progress Tour (1999). Both I’m Exhausted and I’m Doomed earned CableACE Awards. In 1989, Lewis performed to a sellout crowd at Carnegie Hall in New York City. In 1989, Lewis starred in his first television series, Anything but Love, with Jamie Lee Curtis. The show lasted four seasons and was a critical success. It was canceled because the network believed the show had not attracted a large enough audience, despite typically pulling in twenty-four million viewers an episode. During these years, Lewis was abusing alcohol and drugs. His life spiraled out of control, and in 1994 he entered an emergency room suffering from cocaineinduced hallucinations. For the next four years Lewis did not perform and fought to achieve the sobriety that he has maintained. His struggle with his addictions was chronicled in his memoir, The Other Great Depression (2000), in which he credits his Jewish beliefs for helping to save his life. Since achieving sobriety, Lewis’s career has revived. He has acted on numerous television shows, notably Curb Your Enthusiasm, with David. On this improvisational sitcom, Lewis plays himself. Significance Named by GQ as one of the fifty most influential humorists of the twentieth century, Lewis perfected confessional comedy. Drawing on his pain and insecurities, he
Jewish Americans connects with his audiences on a personal level. He reveals the truth about himself, while remaining funny. Unlike comedians who mock their personas, in his standup, Lewis presents himself seriously. His audiences are taken along on his manic journey to discover what went wrong in his life. Never abandoning his persona, always dressing in black and pacing the stage like a caged animal, Lewis has stayed true to his comedic vision. He uses a laptop instead of notes on paper and he no longer requires a grand piano on stage, but his source material is the same. Although sober and happy, he still regales his audiences with his problems and neuroses, hoping that they will laugh and feel better about their own lives. —Leslie Neilan Further Reading Ajaye, Franklyn. Comic Insights: The Art of Standup Comedy. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2002. This book contains interviews with comedians, in-
LeWitt, Sol cluding Lewis, and information about how to manage a standup career. Knoedelseder, William. I’m Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Standup Comedy’s Golden Era. New York: PublicAffairs, 2009. This book chronicles two years in the history of Los Angeles’s Comedy Store and the role of Mitzi Shore in the careers of many comedians, among them Lewis. Lewis, Richard. The Other Great Depression: How I Am Overcoming, on a Daily Basis, at Least a Million Addictions and Malfunctions and Leading a Spiritual (Sometimes) Life. New York: Plume Books, 2000. In his autobiography Lewis discusses the problems that fueled his alcoholism and drug addiction and explains how he achieved sobriety after decades of addiction, crediting his return to Judaism and spirituality. See also: Woody Allen; Lenny Bruce; Rodney Dangerfield; Larry David.
Sol LeWitt Artist In the 1960’s, LeWitt redirected the field of abstract art into conceptual art, which elevates the content of the artist’s mind above the artwork. Born: September 9, 1928; Hartford, Connecticut Died: April 8, 2007; New York, New York Also known as: Solomon LeWitt (full name) Areas of achievement: Art; philosophy Early Life Sol LeWitt (sawl leh-WIHT) was the only child of Russian Jewish immigrants in Hartford, Connecticut. His father, Abraham, born in Turkey in 1871, was originally an engineer but became a physician in 1900 with a medical degree from Cornell University. He was involved in the founding of Mount Sinai Hospital in Hartford in 1923 and subsequently served as its medical chief of staff. After he died on August 11, 1934, his widow, Sophie, a nurse, and an aunt raised LeWitt in New Britain, Connecticut. LeWitt showed an early aptitude for art, and as a teenager he studied at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford. After graduating from New Britain High School in 1945, he entered Syracuse University, where he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1949. He continued to study traditional art, first for a semester as a graduate student at the University of Illinois, then on his own in Europe.
LeWitt was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1951. Even though the Korean War was on, he saw no combat, but he was stationed in California, Japan, and Korea, mostly designing recruitment and propaganda posters. He moved to Manhattan when he left the Army in 1953, briefly attended the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, then worked until 1954 as a designer for Seventeen magazine. During this period, the sequential photography of Eadweard Muybridge began to influence him. In 1955 and 1956, LeWitt created graphic architectural designs for I. M. Pei, and then LeWitt worked odd jobs until 1960, when he found employment at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). Life’s Work LeWitt’s first major exhibit was in 1963 at St. Mark’s Church, and his first solo exhibit was in 1965 at the John Daniels Gallery, both in New York City. With immediate praise and support from critics who appreciated radical art forms, he soon became influential within the New York art world. Because he had shifted from painting toward sculpture in the 1950’s, his exhibited works were mostly three-dimensional, based as much on geometry as on any artistic tradition. Besides creating art itself, LeWitt also assured himself a lasting place in the philosophy of art by writing 729
LeWitt, Sol about conceptualist theory. In 1967, he published “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” which he followed in 1968 with the important thirty-five-point manifesto, “Sentences on Conceputal Art.” His theory of the significance and the production of art is mostly subjectivist but also emotivist, in Robin G. Collingwood’s sense that genuine art exists only as ideas or feelings in the mind or heart of the artist rather than as the physical material the artist may put forward for anyone to see. Conceptual art is concerned mainly with clarity, openness, and simplicity, which is often associated with minimalism. Art objects, LeWitt believed, are essentially just basic structures without the admixture of complicated emotions, meanings, or cognitive aspects. Such structures are primarily mental but may also take physical form. LeWitt taught from 1964 to 1967 at MOMA, from 1967 to 1968 at Cooper Union, and from 1969 to 1970 at the School of Visual Arts and New York University. In 1971, he began to divide his time between New York and Italy, and in 1975 he bought a house in Spoleto, Italy. He married Carol Androccio in 1982, with whom he had two daughters, Sofia and Eva. In the late 1980’s, they moved to Chester, Connecticut, where he was an active member of Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek, a Reform synagogue whose building he codesigned with architect Stephen Lloyd. LeWitt’s generosity within the artistic community was legendary. He freely made himself available as a mentor or facilitator for other artists. He distrusted and avoided the limelight, not only because he naturally was modest and self-effacing but also because he believed that the public should focus on artistic products rather than on the lives of artists. LeWitt died in 2007 at the age of seventy-eight of complications from cancer. Significance LeWitt’s artwork and concepts demonstrate that the simple is not always simplistic, that the illogical is often logical, and that minimal creations can give rise to complex aesthetic appreciation, reflection, and expression.
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Jewish Americans His art might be regarded as having emerged more or less reasonably in the wake of Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Duchamp, and Kazimir Malevich, but he denied the influence of any tradition. His direct influences were contemporary, mostly people he knew personally, such as the artists Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Dan Flavin and the critic Lucy Lippard. LeWitt’s creativity derived more from practical architecture and design than from what is usually called fine art. Moreover, LeWitt cited musical forms, especially Baroque forms in the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, as having inspired many of his ideas for paintings, drawings, sculptures, structures, and installations. —Eric v. d. Luft Further Reading Cross, Susan, and Denise Markonish, eds. Sol LeWitt: One Hundred Views. North Adams, Mass.: Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, 2009. An exhibit catalog that considers LeWitt’s place in the history and the development of abstract art. Garrels, Gary, et al., eds. Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2000. A detailed exhibit catalog and an insightful, multifaceted appraisal of LeWitt’s life, work, and influence. Kimmelman, Michael. “Sol LeWitt, Master of Conceptualism, Dies at Seventy-Eight.” The New York Times, April 9, 2007. Extensive obituary that sets LeWitt’s conceptualist and minimalist theories in the context of other movements in twentieth century American art. Lippard, Lucy R., ed. Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. New York: Praeger, 1973. Contains LeWitt’s “Sentences on Conceptual Art” and provides fascinating vignettes, mostly from insiders, of the era and milieu in which LeWitt evolved as a major force in American art. See also: Jim Dine; Helen Frankenthaler; Eva Hesse; Alex Katz; Barnett Newman; Mark Rothko.
Jewish Americans
Lezak, Jason
Jason Lezak Olympic swimmer Lezak turned in the fastest one hundred meters of swimming in the history of the sport (46.06 seconds), as he closed for a U.S. medley relay team in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Born: November 12, 1975; Irvine, California Also known as: Jason Edward Lezak (full name) Area of achievement: Sports Early Life Jason Lezak (LEH-zak), of Polish and Slovak heritage on his father’s side, was raised in a Jewish family in Irvine, California. The word “Lezak” means “to recline,” a popular reference to a lounge or a lawn chair in Polish. As a young man, Lezak was outstanding in several sports, including water polo, soccer, basketball, baseball, soccer, and swimming. He began to compete in swimming at age five with the Irvine Novaquatics, Lezak’s home team for most of his life. Although Lezak received a swimming scholarship to the University of California, Santa Barbara, he was not among the best swimmers at the college level as a freshman and sophomore. By his junior year, however, he placed fifth and sixth nationally in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) ratings in the fiftyand one-hundred-yard freestyle events. Finishing his eligibility as a college swimmer, Lezak turned professional in 1998. He graduated a year later with a B.A. degree in business and economics. Life’s Work During 2000, Lezak competed in his first Olympic Games, winning a gold medal in the four-hundred-meter freestyle relay and a silver medal in the four-hundredmeter medley relay. During the 2004 Olympic trials in Long Beach, California, Lezak broke the U.S. national record in the one-hundred-meter freestyle, qualifying in that event and in the fifty-meter freestyle sprint. Unusual among swimmers, Lezak did not become a world-class champion until after he was twenty-five years of age. Lezak has a history of turning in his best performance after insults to him or his team. At the 2004 Olympic trials, Gary Hall, Jr., an eight-time Olympic medalist, called him a “professional relay swimmer” before they were matched in the individual one-hundredmeter freestyle. Lezak then beat Hall with a time of 48.17, the third-fastest in the world at that time and a U.S.
record. Lezak won in the finals of the one hundred meters in 48.41. Hall, meanwhile, fumbled his start and ended up in third place. After that race, Lezak and Hall shook hands in the pool in an amiable fashion. Hall then narrowly beat Lezak in the fifty-meter freestyle. At the 2004 Games, Lezak won a bronze medal in the four-hundred-meter freestyle relay. He failed to qualify in the individual one-hundred-meter freestyle, however, because he did not take the preliminary heats seriously. His time was not fast enough to advance to the finals. Lezak finished fifth in the fifty-meter freestyle at the 2004 Olympics, however. At the 2008 Olympic trials, Lezak broke the U.S. record in the one-hundred-meter freestyle at 47.58. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he won gold medals in the fourhundred-meter medley relay and the four-hundred-meter freestyle relay, plus a bronze medal in the one-hundredmeter freestyle, tying with Brazilian swimmer César Cielo with a time of 47.67. At the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, the six-footfour Lezak, at age thirty-two, was the oldest on the U.S. team. He was part of the medley relay team that won a gold medal, and his final sprint of 46.06 erased a French lead of Alain Bernard, holder of the world record in the one hundred meters. The U.S. team also set a world record of 3:29.34. Because the record for the final one hundred meters was set in a relay, not from a standing start, it did not count as a record. Several observers credited Lezak’s astounding final leg on that relay as the most memorable single performance of the Games, during which Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in swimming. Lezak, who admitted that he had gone nearly sleepless the night before, wondered where his strength had come from. A consummate competitor, Lezak was spurred by Bernard’s bragging prior to the race that the French would “smash” the American team. Lezak said that the medley relay at the 2008 Olympics was the second-best day of his life, after his wedding. In April, 2004, Lezak married Danielle DeAlva, whom he met in high school. DeAlva was working as an emergency-room nurse in Anaheim when Lezak swam his most famous race. Significance By the summer of 2008, Lezak held or shared three world records and five U.S. records. During the 2008 Olympic Games at Beijing, his 46.06 anchor leg on the 731
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winning U.S. four-hundred-meter freestyle relay earned him worldwide fame. In 2006, he was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. In 2009, as a salute to his Jewish heritage, Lezak skipped the world swimming championships to compete in Israel’s Maccabiah Games, an international meet for Jewish athletes held each four years. —Bruce E. Johansen Further Reading Dillman, Lisa. “Anchor Jason Lezak’s Stunning FourHundred-Meter Relay Performance Proves He’s a
Team Player.” Los Angeles Times, August 12, 2008. On-the-scene description of Lezak’s most famous race. Phelps, Michael. Beneath the Surface. Champaign, Ill.: Sports Publishing, 2005. Phelps reflects on his teammates, including Lezak. Siegman, Joseph M. Jewish Sports Legends: The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. 4th ed. Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2005. Lezak is profiled, along with other well-known Jewish athletes. See also: Sarah Hughes; Mark Spitz; Dara Torres.
Lewis Libby Presidential aide and attorney A lawyer in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., Libby held prominent positions in the U.S. State Department, the Department of Defense, and the administration of George W. Bush. He was instrumental in the growth of the neoconservative movement, and his career in public service ended when he was convicted of making false statements to a grand jury about the release of classified information.
bers on trial in New Haven, and protests by the Students for a Democratic Society, which shut down the campus and cut short the spring semester of 1970 by several weeks. Surprisingly, Libby’s early political orientation leaned left. He volunteered for Michael Dukakis’s Democratic
Born: August 22, 1950; New Haven, Connecticut Also known as: Scooter Libby; Irving Lewis Liebowitz, Jr.; Irve Lewis Libby (full name) Areas of achievement: Law; government and politics Early Life Lewis Libby (LIH-bee) was born in New Haven, Connecticut, a midsized metropolitan area located about fifty miles from New York City, and he was reared in Miami, Florida. His father, Irving Lewis Liebowitz, was an affluent New York City investment banker. Libby was a hyperactive toddler, behavior that caused his father to nickname him “Scooter.” Later, Libby demonstrated early academic success. He was cocaptain of the debate team at Phillips Academy, an exclusive New England boarding school located in Andover, Massachusetts, and he graduated magna cum laude from Yale University in 1972. His matriculation occurred during a time of social upheaval, including Yale’s conversion to a coed student body in 1969, riots in support of six Black Panther Party mem732
Lewis Libby. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Jewish Americans campaign for Massachusetts governor in 1975, and Libby was vice president of the Yale College Democrats. Two Yale courses affected Libby’s future career: creative writing, which inspired him to write a novel, and political science, which connected him to the future deputy of the U.S. Department of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz would later play a key role in Libby’s public service career. After Yale, Libby enrolled at Columbia University Law School, graduating as Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar in 1975. Life’s Work Libby joined Schnader, Harrison, Segal, and Lewis, a Philadelphia general practice and litigation law firm, in 1976 as a litigation associate, and he was admitted to the bar of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in October of that year. Libby left the firm in 1981 for a position with Wolfowitz at the U.S. State Department policy planning office. Libby specialized in Asian politics, and he grew close to the neoconservative movement that was germinating among senior staff members of the Ronald Reagan administration. The theory, espoused by Irving Kristol in a 1979 essay, “Confessions of a True, SelfConfessed ‘Neoconservative,’” supported the projection of U.S. military power around the world to spread democracy. Libby became a strong proponent of the theory throughout his government service career. Libby returned to private practice in 1986, joining the Philadelphia law firm of Dickstein Shapiro as a partner. Libby met his wife, Harriet Grant, an associate with the firm, and they married in the early 1990’s. Wolfowitz again recruited Libby in 1989 to work for him as undersecretary for defense policy. During his tenure at the Pentagon, Libby worked with Wolfowitz, writing Defense Planning Guidance for Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, including coordinating a review of military strategy for the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Libby and Wolfowitz made significant contributions to neoconservatism at this time through the 1992 Wolfowitz Doctrine, a moniker for the fiscal years 1994 to 1999 Defense Planning Guidance. The doctrine supported the end of containment, favoring unilateralism and preemption to prevent other countries from achieving superpower status. Although top secret, the report was leaked to The New York Times on March 7, 1992, and it was widely criticized. However, many of its recommendations were incorporated into the Bush Doctrine, which was President George W. Bush’s policy of preemptive war.
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Strengthening the Vice Presidency Lewis Libby played a significant role in helping move the office of the vice president of the United States from its traditional supporting role to being a major player in creating domestic and foreign policy. Dick Cheney’s office had a significantly larger staff than previous vice presidents, and it had a strong hand in influencing energy, budgetary, and foreign policies. Libby was the vice president’s most trusted adviser; Libby summarized his overall relationship with Cheney as, “I give him the best distillation I can of what the arguments are, and my best advice on what position would be best for the government to take.” In the run-up to the war in Iraq launched by the administration of George W. Bush, Libby became involved in a scandal over the release of classified information. In 2009, Cheney defended his aide, telling the Weekly Standard that President Bush, who later commuted Libby’s sentence, should have pardoned Libby: “He was the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice, and I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon.”
Libby became managing partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander and Ferdon in 1993, but, in 1995, he joined the firm Dechert as a managing partner of litigation and chair of its Public Policy Practice Group. Libby served as legal adviser to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China. In 1999, the committee produced an influential classified government document that reported on China’s covert actions in the United States during the previous two decades. In 1996, Libby veered away from politics and law, fulfilling his creative-writing aspirations. He published The Apprentice (1996), a murder mystery set in 1903 Japan. In the book, an apprentice managing a remote inn becomes involved in intrigue with a group of travelers trapped by a blizzard and a smallpox epidemic. The book was published in paperback in 2002 and reprinted in 2005. Libby cofounded the Project for the New American Century with a number of notable neoconservative advocates, including William Kristol and Donald Kagan, in 1997. The think tank advocated a U.S. foreign policy based on military strength to support the United States’ continued superpower status. Through the late 1990’s, the project issued a number of reports and statements advocating regime change in Iraq. Upon the election of George W. Bush to the presi733
Libby, Lewis dency, Libby joined the White House as chief of staff to Cheney, who had been elected vice president. Libby managed a close-knit staff of fifty people, including experts in national security and domestic policy. He was part of the senior strategy discussions, attended daily White House briefings with President Bush, and served as part of the president’s national security advisory team. He was later tagged as a potential successor to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Libby was heavily involved with Cheney, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, who were advocating a neoconservative-based American foreign policy. The group, drawing on their activities in the 1990’s as part of the Project for the New American Century, convinced Bush to adopt a preemptive stance to neutralize threats from Iran, North Korea, and Iraq, three countries labeled the “axis of evil.” This policy became the basis for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In February, 2002, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sent former U.S. diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Niger to investigate British intelligence reports that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had sought to procure yellowcake uranium, a key ingredient in the production of nuclear weapons. Wilson found no evidence to corroborate this report; nevertheless, President Bush announced in his 2003 state of the union address: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa.” On May 6, 2003, New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof questioned the veracity of President Bush’s claim, writing that an unnamed ambassador found faulty evidence for the intelligence reports. In response to the article, Libby initiated an investigation into the identity of the unnamed ambassador. Libby learned through classified documents that Wilson had made the trip and that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA officer. In June, 2003, in an article in The Washington Post and in the online New Republic magazine, Wilson published a critique of the office of the vice president’s portrayal of Iraq’s weapons capabilities. Libby then met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, to whom he disparaged the CIA’s selective leaking of intelligence matters in the context of the Wilson trip. Libby discussed Wilson’s wife’s employment with the CIA and implied that she had used her family connections to plan her husband’s trip. On July 6, 2003, Wilson contributed a commentary column to The New York Times entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” The piece criticized the administration’s selective use of faulty intelligence to justify the war in 734
Jewish Americans Iraq. Over the following week, Libby had a series of discussions with Miller and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine about Plame’s CIA role. On July 14, 2003, Robert Novak, a syndicated columnist, reported about Plame and a CIA front company she worked for in a column entitled “Mission to Niger.” Throughout the rest of the summer, a number of reports surfaced in the media accusing the administration of leaking Plame’s identity in retaliation for Wilson’s published criticisms. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began a criminal investigation of the public disclosure of Plame’s covert employment. Libby was interviewed by FBI agents and denied that he discussed Plame’s affiliation with Miller, Cooper, and Novak. The U.S. Justice Department convened a grand jury in January, 2004, and Libby continued to make misleading statements in his official testimony. The grand jury investigation failed to find a clear violation of federal law. However, Libby’s testimony led to his indictment on five counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice. Libby resigned as Cheney’s chief of staff on October 28, 2005, and he was convicted on March 6, 2007. He was sentenced to thirty months in prison and fined $250,000. President Bush later commuted Libby’s prison sentence, and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals permanently disbarred Libby in March, 2008. Libby became a senior fellow at the conservative think tank the Hudson Institute, where he focuses on issues related to terrorism in Asia. Significance Libby played a major role in moving neoconservatism from academia to the mainstream and making it the basis for the Bush Doctrine. The doctrine radically changed the traditional U.S. foreign policy stance of containment. Its aggressive support for nation building was at the core of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The failures of neoconservatism played a significant role in the Republican Party’s loss of control of the U.S. Congress in the midterm elections of 2006 and in the election of Barack Obama in the presidential contest of 2008. —Jamie Patrick Chandler Further Reading Libby, Lewis. The Apprentice. St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1996. Libby’s novel about a group of travelers stranded at a remote Japanese inn during a smallpox epidemic. Mirkinson, Jack. “Libby ’72 Leaned Left Before Serving
Jewish Americans as Cheney’s Chief of Staff.” Yale Daily News 5 (November, 2005). A discussion of Libby’s formative years and early political ideology. Wilson, Joseph C. “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” The New York Times, July 6, 2003. A critique of the justifi-
Libeskind, Daniel cation of the Iraq War that accelerated Libby’s involvement in the Plame scandal. See also: Rahm Emanuel; Kinky Friedman; Robert B. Reich; Paul Wolfowitz.
Daniel Libeskind Polish-born architect In a series of visionary designs for urban public spaces in Europe and the United States, architectural theorist Libeskind emerged as one of the most innovative and controversial architects of the new century. His idiosyncratic vision manipulates spaces and voids, which is a challenge to traditional perceptions of public buildings. Born: May 12, 1946; Uód., Poland Area of achievement: Architecture and design Early Life The early life of Daniel Libeskind (LEE-buhs-keend) was shaped by the Holocaust. His parents, native Poles, met and married in exile; both had been arrested in Russia fleeing Adolf Hitler’s occupation of Poland. After the war, they returned to Libeskind’s father’s hometown of Uód.—but little remained of his family, deported to concentration camps where they had died. Determined to give Libeskind and his older sister the gift of music, the parents, despite the hardships of life in postwar Poland, gave their son an accordion (they feared securing a piano might provoke anti-Semitic resentment). The boy proved remarkably adept at the keyboard work. When he was eleven, his parents immigrated to Tel Aviv, Israel, where Libeskind began piano lessons. Two years later, in 1959, he won a scholarship that enabled him to study in New York, and the family moved to the Bronx. The family became citizens in 1965. Even as Libeskind wavered in his commitment to piano (for him, it lacked intellectual satisfaction), while enrolled at the Bronx High School of Science, he discovered a love of the abstract conceptual world of mathematics. Before he had graduated from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Arts, he had decided to study architecture, an endeavor he saw as at once musical and mathematical, creative and intellectual. He graduated in 1970, and then, in 1972, he completed a master’s degree in architectural theory from Essex University in Colchester, England. Unable to thrive in the competitive
environment of architectural firms, Libeskind returned to the university where, over the next twenty years, he held numerous academic appointments (notably a sevenyear stint in the 1980’s as the director of Cranbrook Academy of Art, outside Detroit, and endowed chairs at the University of Toronto and at the University of Pennsylvania). In passionate discourse in classrooms and in provocative publications, Libeskind established a reputation as one of the foremost theorists on the relationship between abstract concepts and their execution into public spaces. Life’s Work In 1988, on the strength of that reputation, Libeskind, although he had never designed a building, was invited to submit a design for a museum commemorating the history of the Jewish presence in Berlin, Germany. His proposal, a complex design based on a reconception of the Star of David, won the competition. Although disputes over the purpose of the building would delay its opening for more than a decade, the Jewish Museum garnered Libeskind international praise for the startling design that captured both the dignity of the Jewish people and the horrors of the Holocaust. Most notable were rooms alongside the museum’s main exhibition rooms. Called the Voids, the empty, unheated rooms illustrated the concept of “absence” and gave visitors a chance to reflect on the millions murdered during the Nazi regime. In 2001, on the strength of the Berlin design, Libeskind became the first architect to win the Hiroshima Art Prize, given annually to an artist whose vision best embodies the concepts of peace and of tolerance. Suddenly thrust into the spotlight, Libeskind received over the next several years commissions to design other public buildings, including the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England (2002), the Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen (2004), the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco (2008), and, perhaps most significant, the Felix Nussbaum Haus in Osnabrück, Germany (1998), a museum that exhibited the paintings of a German Jewish 735
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Memory Foundations Of the eight finalists for the development of Ground Zero, Daniel Libeskind was the only one who walked the site to feel its compelling power. His grandly conceived design of interlocking sites centered on a museum of the event itself, a fragile glass cube perched above a seventyfoot drop (called the Void) that looked down to the bedrock foundations of the towers (called the Footprints), and a bit of the original slurry wall that survived the attack, a suggestion of the durability of the American spirit. In addition, the site offered two memorial spaces for meditation, Ground Zero and the Park of Heroes, which commemorated the police, firefighters, and rescue workers who died the day of the attack. To commemorate the day itself, Libeskind designed at the entrance to the site a Wedge of Light. Every September 11, during the morning hours from 8:46 to 10:28, bracketing the time when the first plane struck the towers and the second tower collapsed, the structure would frame a triangle of pure sunlight. The rest of the complex—office buildings, residences, arts center, and shopping concourses—would have subtle architectural allusions to both the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty, each a celebration of New York’s spirit. The site would be anchored by a sweeping glass skyscraper, dubbed the Freedom Tower, that at 1,776 feet (symbolic of the year of America’s independence) would have been the tallest office building in the world. Although extensively revised, the original design, commemorating grief, memory, and catastrophe and attesting to the soaring American spirit of vitality and recovery, testifies to Libeskind’s signature vision of designing public spaces that use reconceived shapes as eloquent expressions of a culture’s profound emotions.
artist whose stark canvases were created while he was in hiding from the Nazis in Belgium before his arrest and his subsequent murder in Auschwitz. The terrorist attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center in September, 2001, deeply affected Libeskind. He cherished the memory of arriving at New York City from Israel and seeing the Manhattan skyline. As an architectural student at Cooper Union, he had watched, mesmerized, as the twin towers were completed. Initially asked to help judge submissions for designs for a public memorial at the sixteen acres known as Ground Zero, Libeskind submitted his own ambitious concept for a site. The design was typical of Libeskind—ambitious, intellectual, uncompromising—a juxtaposition of a massive skyscraper, meditation gardens, and a museum, a theater, and office spaces. In February, 2003, amid much controversy (the blue-ribbon panel chose a different design but New York’s governor, George Pataki, on behalf of the victims, overturned the recommendation), Libeskind’s design was announced as the winner. He would serve as master site coordinator. 736
That began years of acrimonious negotiations among rival architects, politicians, real estate developers, media, victim advocacy groups from 9/11, city-resident advocates, transit authorities, civil engineers, bankers, and financiers, each with a vision for what had become the most hallowed site in postwar American history. During the process, Libeskind, charismatic and articulate, became a celebrity even as his grand design was significantly modified. Since then, Studio Daniel Libeskind has become a much-soughtafter firm, completing award-winning commissioned works, including the Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany; residential developments in Singapore, Copenhagen, and Warsaw; and performing arts centers in Dublin, Toronto, and Boston.
Significance Although in comparison to other architects and urban designers of his generation, Libeskind has completed relatively few commissions, the striking sweep of his vision and the intellectual challenge of his designs position his work among the most exciting expressions of deconstructionism (a term the maverick Libeskind dismisses as too limiting). It means that he takes traditional shapes and reconfigures them into jarring formations that are then juxtaposed against more conservative forms. Dismissed by critics as a quixotic theoretician whose designs are overprogrammed and impractical, Libeskind conceptualizes structures—with tilted hallways, interlocking box shapes, zigzagging rooms, elaborate staircases, and sliced towers—that offer a visceral impact and that are engaging, even to those without the architectural background to appreciate his theoretical daring. His edifices, always imposing, even monumental, possess an ethical and moral gravitas, a vision that argues that public buildings bear the responsibility of the abstract ideas that inform them. —Joseph Dewey
Further Reading Goldberger, Paul. Counterpoint: Daniel Libeskind. New York: Springer/Birkhäuser Basil, 2008. Wide-ranging look at Libeskind’s public works, drawn from conversations that explore his interests in art, music, philosophy, and architecture.
Jewish Americans Libeskind, Daniel. Breaking Ground: An Immigrant’s Journey from Poland to Ground Zero. New York: Penguin/Riverhead Trade, 2005. Although Libeskind recollects his early years in Poland, this is largely an account of his often frustrating experience as master site developer for Ground Zero. Includes thirty-two pages of illustrations, many from the original Memory Foundations plans. Libeskind, Daniel, Jeffrey Kipnis, and Anthony Vidler. The Space of Encounter. New York: Universe, 2001. Handsomely illustrated look at Libeskind’s major projects, with accompanying text that explores the concepts behind his designs.
Lichtenstein, Roy Rodiek, Thorsten. Daniel Libeskind. Berlin: Wasmuth, 2001. An account of the design and the construction of the Nussbaum Haus written by the museum’s director. Wolf, Connie, et al. Daniel Libeskind and the Contemporary Jewish Museum: New Jewish Architecture from Berlin to San Francisco. New York: Rizzoli, 2008. Examines the impact of Libeskind’s faith on his architectural work. See also: Dankmar Adler; Frank Gehry; Louis I. Kahn; Richard Meier; Robert Moses; Richard Neutra; Rudolph Schindler.
Roy Lichtenstein Artist Lichtenstein, a prominent figure in the pop art genre, used images and techniques from common popular media, such as comic books and commercial posters, to create striking and bold designs in paintings, prints, and sculpture. Born: October 27, 1923; New York, New York Died: September 29, 1997; New York, New York Also known as: Roy Fox Lichtenstein (birth name) Area of achievement: Art Early Life Roy Lichtenstein (LIHK-tehn-stin) was born to Milton and Beatrice Lichtenstein in New York City, growing up as part of a middle-class Jewish family. His mother worked in the home, and his father sold real estate. He attended the Benjamin Franklin High School for Boys. Although art was not taught there, he enjoyed drawing and listening to music, particularly jazz; sometimes he drew portraits of jazz musicians. Before graduating from high school, he began taking Saturday classes at Parsons The New School for Design. His interest in art, which had begun as a hobby, intensified. After high school, Lichtenstein enrolled in summer classes at the Art Students League of New York and studied painting there with Reginald Marsh. That fall he began studies at the school of fine arts at Ohio State University in Columbus. In 1943, he entered the Army and drew maps of troop movements. At the end of the war, he studied in France and then returned to Ohio State University to complete his bachelor of fine arts degree in 1946. He
remained as a graduate student and art instructor at the university and earned a master’s degree in 1949. An important influence was his teacher Hoyt L. Sherman, who was interested in modern art and who researched visual perception. Sherman would occasionally flash a projected image in a darkened room for just a tenth of a second and then ask his students to draw their impressions of the image. Life’s Work After teaching at Ohio State University, Lichtenstein moved to Cleveland, where he worked at graphic design and drafting and occasionally visited New York City. From 1957 to 1960, he taught at State University of New York, Oswego. During this period, he experimented with applying modern art styles, including cubism and expressionism, to American subject matter. He also worked with quotation, bringing themes and ideas from earlier periods into new contexts. His own style started to emerge as he incorporated techniques and compositional ideas from his experiences in commercial art and industrial design. Ten Dollar Bill, his 1957 lithograph, is regarded as a forerunner of his mature pop art style, because of its use of an everyday object and its compositional elements. Partly in response to his young son’s enthusiasm for cartoons, Lichtenstein began to use characters from Disney Studios and from other cartoons as material for his paintings. In 1960, Lichtenstein left Oswego to teach at Douglass College of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick. During this period, Rutgers was 737
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ment’s aesthetic differences with abstract expressionism, which had previously dominated the modern art scene, were clear. InRoy Lichtenstein’s transformation of comic strip panels is his beststead of creating nonrepresentative art, the known style, even though he moved on to other techniques soon after pop artists took representation to extremes, his rise to fame. Lichtenstein incorporated the obvious stylistic features of comic strips, including their limited palette and their strong transforming mundane and familiar images lines defining flat shapes. As he magnified the images, he went into and objects, such as Lichtenstein’s comic great detail. Significantly, he included the Ben-Day dot patterns used panels, Warhol’s supermarket products, billby comic book publishers to conserve ink when printing on newsprint. boards, and magazine advertisements. In Usually these patterns are not noticed by viewers, but, when magnified the mid-1960’s Lichtenstein left teaching to scale, they added an element of abstraction to Lichtenstein’s pieces. and began to exhibit internationally. The patterns became filled spheres stretching across broad areas of the Although Lichtenstein was primarily a compositions. His paintings were not exact copies of the original comic painter, he also made prints and sculpture. book art, and the original artists were usually not credited. Although He eventually stopped his more overt use of Lichtenstein later worked with a much wider variety of subjects and of material from comic book panels, although materials, the paintings derived from comic book art became his iconic he retained elements from this style. Anstyle. Along with Andy Warhol’s soup cans, Lichtenstein’s work came to be viewed as representative of the pop art movement. other important style that he developed was the depiction of large brushstrokes, which were represented as flat areas and bold lines filled with solid colors or patterns. These home to a community of modern artists who blurred the strokes were paced on plain backgrounds, sometimes distinctions among various art forms. One of the key figwith the characteristic beady patterns taken from newsures in this group was Lichtenstein’s colleague, Allan print techniques. Lichtenstein sometimes included his Kaprow, who created arts “happenings” that blended vibrushstroke style in large sculptures with intersecting sual and performance arts. Similar efforts had been made planes bearing the painted strokes on two-dimensional by participants in Europe’s Dada movement after World surfaces. He continued to develop his style and work unWar I (1914-1919), but this American group was distintil his death from pneumonia on September 29, 1997. guished by its interest in using material from everyday life. At the time, American composer John Cage was doSignificance ing this in music. This harmonized with Lichtenstein’s Even after his death, Lichtenstein’s reputation contindirection in visual art. ues to expand, as solo and touring exhibitions continue to In addition to offering his artistic influence, Kaprow feature his work, and prints of his pieces are included in provided Lichtenstein with a valuable professional conart history texts as examples of pop art. A month after he nection when in, 1961, he introduced Lichtenstein to died, Kiss II, which he had created in 1962, was sold to Ivan Karp, director of the Leo Castelli Gallery. Karp then Tokyo’s Fujii Gallery for more than six million dollars. introduced Lichtenstein to Andy Warhol, whose own His works are held in permanent museum collections, instyle was evolving along similar lines. Castelli’s gallery cluding the Guggenheim Museum in New York City; the started selling Lichtenstein’s paintings and provided him National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Muwith a stipend so that he could produce more work. In seum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; the Museum 1962, some of these pieces were included in Lichtenof Modern Art in New York City; Museum Ludwig in stein’s first one-man show at the same gallery. This show Cologne, Germany; the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, was pivotal, and its success allowed Lichtenstein to conSwitzerland; the Israel Museum in Jerusalem; and the tinue in his new style, expanding to other forms of comOsaka Maritime Museum in Japan. His public sculpics, such as the war and romance genres. While some tures can be seen throughout the United States and in questioned the validity of Lichtenstein’s practices, others Singapore, Paris, Barcelona, Zurich, Tokyo, and other noted the consistency between Lichtenstein’s work and cities. that of Warhol and perceived their connections to the Lichtenstein is deeply associated with pop art, one of British pop art movement. the most important art movements of the twentieth cenMomentum built rapidly, with Lichtenstein viewed as tury. Along with Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper a leader of the American pop art movement. This moveJohns, Claes Oldenburg, and others, he destroyed barri-
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ers between fine art and mass duplication. His characteristic painting techniques included the magnification and transformation of details (dot patterns from newsprint and brushstrokes in painting). — Alice Myers Further Reading Bader, Graham. Roy Lichtenstein. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009. A comprehensive collection of writings about Lichtenstein’s art, including the artist’s own assessment in 1995. Illustrated. Bibliography and index. Corlett, Mary L. The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1948-1997. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2002. This first complete catalog of the artist’s prints includes sixty black-and-white and 389 color illustrations.
Hendrickson, Janis. Roy Lichtenstein. London: Taschen, 2006. Beautifully illustrated with glossy color reproductions, this readable overview clearly explains Lichtenstein’s art and process. Chronology. Hickey, Dave. Roy Lichtenstein: Brushstrokes, Four Decades. New York: Mitchell-Innes and Nash, 2002. An exhibition catalog tracing the development of the artist’s brushstroke style from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. Illustrated. Lichtenstein, Roy. Lichtenstein: Girls. New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2008. Catalog of a 2008 exhibition of Lichtenstein’s famous Girl paintings of 1961, which helped establish him as a pop artist. More than 130 illustrations. See also: Jim Dine; Al Hirschfeld; Lee Krasner; Sol LeWitt; Barnett Newman; Larry Rivers; Mark Rothko.
Joe Lieberman Politician and lawyer A long-term member of the U.S. Senate, Lieberman has chaired pivotal committees and become one of the most powerful senators of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He is known for acting as the Senate’s “moral conscience,” for championing U.S. foreign policy measures in support of Israel, and for his legislative career as a “political maverick.” Born: February 24, 1942; Stamford, Connecticut Also known as: Joseph Isadore Lieberman (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; law Early Life Joe Lieberman (LEE-bur-mehn) is the only son of Henry Lieberman and Marcia Manger. His sisters are Ellen and Rietta. Joe Lieberman’s father owned a small liquor and spirits store in Stamford, Connecticut. Lieberman attended Stamford High School, graduated in 1960, and entered Yale University in the fall of that year. At Yale Lieberman became politically active, supporting President John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier” initiatives and serving an internship in the office of U.S. Senator
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Lieberman, Joe Abraham Ribicoff. Lieberman supported the Civil Rights movement, and during the autumn of 1963, he volunteered to assist in registering African American voters in Mississippi. In 1964, Lieberman was awarded bachelor of arts degrees in economics and in political science, and he was admitted to Yale Law School, from which he graduated in 1967. He began legal practice in New Haven. In 1965, he married Betty Haas, and they had two children: Matthew, born in 1967, and Rebecca, born in 1969. Lieberman observes Orthodox practices.
Jewish Americans
gained national prominence by being the first member of Congress to denounce President Bill Clinton’s words and actions during the Monica Lewinsky scandal as being morally reprehensible, falling just short of calling for a vote of censure. Lieberman’s stance was considered highly significant, given Clinton’s close association with Lieberman on the Democratic Leadership Council. Despite his adamant views on presidential morality and the need for the chief executive to set an example for the American public, Lieberman was more moderate when it came to the impeachment and trial process. He worked behind the scenes with Republican Senator Slade Gorton Life’s Work from Washington State to fashion a compromise to avoid In 1970, Lieberman entered politics and unseated the an embarrassing and divisive impeachment trial; their efveteran legislator Ed Marcus for the Connecticut State forts failed. On February 12, 1999, Lieberman voted to Senate. Lieberman rose to become State Senate majority acquit Clinton on both articles of impeachment. leader in 1974, and he served until 1980, when he made At the 2000 Democratic Party national convention, an unsuccessful run for the U.S. House of Representapresidential nominee Al Gore selected Lieberman as his tives. In 1981, he divorced Haas and, in 1983, marrunning mate. The strategic move was the subject of deried Hadassah Freilich Tucker, the daughter of Samuel bate, but most scholars observed it as having a positive Freilich, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and a Holocaust surimpact on the Democratic effort. In choosing Clinton’s vivor. She had a son, Ethan, from a previous marriage, early congressional critic to run on the ticket, Gore diswho would also later join the rabbinate. In 1988, she and tanced himself from the administration’s scandals, and Lieberman had a daughter, Hana “Hani” Rachel. Lieberman was skilled in communicating with voters in In 1982, Lieberman overwhelmingly won election as an unpretentious, down-to-earth manner. On the other attorney general of Connecticut and, in 1988, ran and hand, Lieberman was outdone in the debate with Rewon a hard-fought contest against incumbent Lowell publican vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney, and Weicker for a U.S. Senate seat. Lieberman was reelected Lieberman’s emphasis on moving the Democratic Party by a substantial margin in 1994 and by almost as great a to a centrist position (which irritated some liberal Dempercentage in 2000. On September 3, 1998, Lieberman ocrats) might have hurt the ticket. Certainly, though, Lieberman’s selection was an audacious move and initially provided a lift for the Democratic campaign. LieberSupport for Israel and the War on Terrorism man was among those who actively pushed Gore to contest energetically Joe Lieberman is foremost among the senators who have consistently the count in the vote count in Florida voted for measures supporting the state of Israel and taking a tough line during the presidential election of against terrorism and foreign states perceived as harboring international terrorist groups. As chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and 2000. Governmental Affairs, from 2001 to 2003 and again beginning in 2007, After the Democrats lost the elecLieberman was in the forefront of the effort to establish a Cabinet-level Detion in the Electoral College despite partment of Homeland Security. In 2002, Lieberman acted as sponsor for winning a plurality of popular votes, the Iraq Resolution, which authorized U.S. military intervention in Iraq, Lieberman was seen as a front-runner and he has remained a staunch opponent of withdrawal of troops from that for the party’s nomination in 2004. country until political stability is achieved. He has chastised the Obama The Connecticut senator announced administration for a perceived slackening of commitment toward the U.S.his candidacy in 2003 but slumped Israeli alliance. In 2010, Lieberman proposed legislation to deprive members badly as his centrist views and his of proscribed terrorist groups of their U.S. citizenship and advocated strong support for the war in Iraq alienated action, including possible attacks, against Yemen (for harboring al-Qaeda many liberal Democrats. Lieberman cells that have attacked American targets) and Iran (to prevent the country’s atomic program from developing a nuclear weapons arsenal). performed poorly in the New Hampshire primary election, gathering only 740
Jewish Americans 8.6 percent of the vote. On February 3, 2004, he withdrew from consideration. During the 2006 Democratic senatorial primary election, it was clear that Lieberman had lost touch with his party base, and he lost to the left-leaning Ned Lamont. Lieberman announced, however, that he would run as an Independent in the general election against Lamont and the Republican candidate, Alan Schlesinger, reasoning that, on the statewide level and in a three-way race, he could pull more votes than his rivals. He proved correct: Lieberman retained his Senate seat by nearly 50 percent of the vote. In 2008, he further strained his relationship with the Democratic Party by supporting Republican John McCain over Democrat Barack Obama. However, in large part due to President Obama’s intervention on his behalf, Lieberman retained his committee chairmanships. He was dropped from only one inconsequential committee and kept on (under the sobriquet of “Independent Democrat”) as a member of the Democratic caucus. Lieberman has published six books: The Power Broker (1966), The Scorpion and the Tarantula (1970), The Legacy (1981), Child Support in America (1986), In Praise of Public Life (2000), and An Amazing Adventure (2003). Significance Along with President Clinton, and Senators Gore, Sam Nunn, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Congressman Richard Gephardt, and others, Lieberman ranks among the most influential members of the Democratic Leadership Council (New Democratic Alliance) that was instrumental in pulling the Democratic Party away from left-leaning tendencies and toward a political “middle road,” arguably igniting the Democratic resurgence of the 1990’s. His inclusion as the first Jewish candidate on a major party ticket in 2000 marked a significant point of history and a possible foundation stone for the Obama campaign of 2008. —Raymond Pierre Hylton
Lieberman, Joe Further Reading Baker, Peter. The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton. New York: Berkley Books, 2000. Goes into some depth about the role played by Lieberman during the Lewinsky scandal and the Clinton impeachment trial, and links it to Lieberman’s subsequent selection as Gore’s running mate. Lieberman, Joseph I., with Michael D’Orso. In Praise of Public Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. This work is a combination autobiography and philosophical statement, with references to Lieberman’s personal life, to events that tied into significant decisions he made, and to initiatives he undertook as a legislator. Lieberman, Joseph I., and Hadassah Lieberman. An Amazing Adventure: Joe and Hadassah’s Personal Notes on the 2000 Campaign. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003. Unusual cowritten election campaign account from the perspective of the vice-presidential nominee and his spouse. This is partially autobiographical. Simon, Roger. Divided We Stand: How Al Gore Beat George Bush and Lost the Presidency. New York: Crown, 2001. Includes a cogent analysis of the rationale behind Lieberman’s selection for the 2000 Democratic ticket, but is not as extensive in its coverage of the Connecticut senator’s participation in and effect on the campaign. Toobin, Jeffrey. Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election. New York: Random House, 2001. The author paints Lieberman as acting, in some respects, as a liability to the Gore campaign. See also: Bella Abzug; Barbara Boxer; Dianne Feinstein; Barney Frank; Al Franken; Howard Metzenbaum; Charles Schumer; Henry Waxman; Paul Wellstone.
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Lippmann, Walter
Jewish Americans
Walter Lippmann Journalist Cofounder of The New Republic and author of several books of widely respected, intellectual analyses of the American political scene, Lippmann was a renowned journalist and presidential adviser. Born: September 23, 1889; New York, New York Died: December 14, 1974; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Journalism; government and politics Early Life The son of German Jewish parents, Walter Lippmann (LIHP-man) grew up in Manhattan, where he would spend most of his life. In 1906, he did undergraduate work at Harvard University. There, he was exposed to and greatly influenced by the socialist thought of the time, and he became one of the cofounders of the university’s Socialist Club. It was also while at Harvard that he began his career as a journalist, serving as the editor of the university’s Harvard Monthly. Lippmann graduated from Harvard with a Phi Beta Kappa key and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and languages in 1909, and two years later he eased into the world of professional journalism as secretary to the wellknown progressive journalist Lincoln Steffens. The following year Lippmann actively participated in the presidential campaign of Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1912 sought to return to the White House as the candidate of the Progressive Party. The following year, Lippmann published the first of his many acclaimed works, A Preface to Politics (1913), and—with Herbert Croly—founded The New Republic. At the age of twenty-five, Lippmann was already acquiring the reputation of an astute and thoughtful observer of early twentieth century America and on a fast track to becoming one of the era’s most famous journalists. A decade later, during one of the most trying periods in American history, between World War I and World War II, he established himself as a major political commentator. Life’s Work Although he supported Roosevelt in the 1912 campaign, in 1916 Lippmann become an equally ardent supporter of the winner of that presidential election, Woodrow Wilson, when Wilson led the United States into World War I on the side of the French and the British, who by then had been fighting imperial Germany, the 742
Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire for two years. Lippmann was also changing ideological directions during this period of his life, for by the end of the war he had rejected his earlier socialist leanings to become a strong internationalist, both in his writing as a journalist and as a member of the inner circle of the White House, where he served as an assistant to Wilson’s secretary of war, Newton Baker. In fact, it was probably his belief in the importance of international solutions to the horrors of World War I, at a time when the country was taking a deeply isolationist approach to foreign policy, that caused Lippmann to comment on the rudderless nature of American politics in his book Drift and Mastery (1914). That same isolationist tide made him a staunch critic of public opinion as a basis for policy making—a view he expressed in the two highly controversial books he published during the 1920’s, Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public (1925). Meanwhile, after the war, Lippmann returned to his journalist roots, leaving The New Republic in 1920 to join the New York World, a landmark New York City newspaper that was founded on the eve of the Civil War and lifted to prominence during its years of control by Joseph Pulitzer in the late nineteenth century. In its last two years of existence, Lippmann also served as its editor; however, in 1931, the newspaper folded, and Lippmann moved to the New York Herald Tribune. There, under the banner “Today and Tomorrow,” for the next three decades, Lippmann wrote a nationally and internationally syndicated column that firmly established him as a champion of liberal democracy and of accurate, objective journalism and as the premier commentator on American politics of his time. Significance Lippmann is one of the rare individuals of the twentieth century who at different times in their lives played important roles on several different stages. In the world of politics, while in his late twenties, he worked closely with President Wilson at the end of World War I in drafting the famous Fourteen Points peace program, was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and was one of the authors of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The United States never became a signatory to the League of Nations because isolationists took control of the Senate following the 1920 presidential and congressional elections. In his later life
Jewish Americans Lippmann became an informal adviser to many presidents, and he never hesitated to risk his access by criticizing policies he felt ill informed. Thus, he became a public critic of the Vietnam War during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, who only a short time before (September 14, 1964) had awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As a journalist, throughout his long career at the New York Herald Tribune, he often courageously demonstrated his nonpartisan approach to political commentary by criticizing President Harry Truman’s 1950 decision to fight the Korean War, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hunt for Communists and other subversives during the 1950’s, and the handling of the Vietnam War during the 1960’s. Finally, as a writer and a publisher, Lippmann left a deep imprint on American history, not only by founding the respected and long-running journal The New Republic, but also by criticizing slipshod journalism. His commentaries on the conduct of foreign policy are still being studied by college students. —Joseph R. Rudolph, Jr.
Lippmann, Walter
Challenging the Public’s Wisdom Walter Lippmann’s greatest achievement was also his least popular one at the time: challenging the value of public opinion to policy makers at a moment when, after World War I, the public had become disillusioned with the “war to make the world safe for democracy.” At the end of that brutal fight, French and British diplomats at the Paris Peace Conference carved up the Ottoman Empire’s Middle East holdings to expand their own empires. The result in the United States was a sharp turn back toward isolationism—that is, minimizing U.S. foreign policy commitments—that was exploited for partisan purposes and subsequently given legislative status by neutrality legislation enacted during the interwar years. Joined by only a few, though notable, others, such as diplomat and historian George F. Kennan, Lippmann argued in his books of the 1920’s and his newspaper articles of the 1930’s that policy issues—and especially foreign policy matters—had become too complex to permit a democracy based purely on the public’s opinion. The real danger, he believed, was that the public would be driven by slogans, not informed judgment; would tend toward the conservative rather than the creative path; and would say no in critical moments. It was a view confirmed too well by subsequent events. On the eve of Germany’s 1939 invasion of Belgium, a national poll asked the American people what their country should do if Germany violated Belgium’s internationally underwritten neutrality and thereby went to war against Britain and France. Three percent said the United States should do everything possible to aid Britain and France. One percent sided with aiding Germany. Ninety-six percent said that the government should do everything possible to stay out of the war, significantly tying President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s hands until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, propelling the United States into World War II.
Further Reading Blum, D. Steven. Walter Lippmann: Cosmopolitanism in the Century of Total War. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984. Detailed biography ideal for advanced research. Carnes, Mark, ed. Invisible Giants: Fifty Americans Who Shaped the Nation but Missed the History Books. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. An easy first stop for additional research, putting Lippmann in the company of significant contributors to various dimensions of American life, such as Arthur Goldberg and Frank Woolworth. Harrison, Stanley L. Twentieth Century Journalists: America’s Opinionmakers. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002. Puts Lippmann in the company of journalistic and literary giants, such as Henry Luce and Ernest Hemingway. Lippmann, Walter. The Phantom Public. 1925. Reprint. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1993. Per-
haps Lippmann’s most controversial work, its critique of the limits of public opinion as a guide to action was widely influential in shaping the political debate inside government on the wisdom of the democratizing foreign policy. _______. Public Opinion. 1922. Reprint. New York: Free Press, 1965. Lippmann’s most famous work, assessing how citizens make decisions in a democracy. Steele, Ronald. Walter Lippmann and the American Century. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1999. Chronicles Lippmann’s development in the context of the journalistic and intellectual currents of his time. See also: Carl Bernstein; David Halberstam; Seymour M. Hersh; William Safire; Daniel Schorr.
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Lipsky, Seth
Jewish Americans
Seth Lipsky Journalist and editor As founding editor of the Forward, Lipsky reinvigorated American Jewish journalism. As founding editor of The New York Sun, he carved out an important niche for conservative alternative journalism in New York City.
transformation of his political and cultural views from liberal to conservative. He returned home from Asia with the opinion that the United States was fighting a just war and that the South Vietnamese deserved American support.
Born: June 16, 1946; Brooklyn, New York Area of achievement: Journalism
Life’s Work Lipsky began working at the Detroit bureau of The Wall Street Journal in 1971. In 1974, he was transferred to Hong Kong, first to work on the staff of a Wall Street Journal sister publication, Far Eastern Economic Review, and then with The Wall Street Journal, for which he helped cover the fall of South Vietnam. He was a member of the start-up team that launched The Wall Street Journal Asia in 1976, becoming its managing editor in 1978. In the years to follow, he continued to rise through the hierarchy of The Wall Street Journal. From 1980 to 1982, he served in New York as an associate editor of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, then for two years as a foreign editor, before being named senior editor. In 1984, he became a member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, for which he was based in Brussels to oversee the editorial pages of the European edition and, eventually, the Asian edition. In the winter of 1982, as he was about to assume the foreign editorship of The Wall Street Journal, Lipsky traveled to Israel and immersed himself in reading about the Middle East and Zionist history. He began to develop a deeper interest in Israel’s cause and, in particular, an appreciation for the life and thought of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, founder of the nationalist Revisionist Zionism movement. In July, 1982, Lipsky returned to Israel to interview Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the first major interview Begin gave after the outbreak of the war in Lebanon. Lipsky would later remark that during this period he began to see “the Jewish story” as a compelling enough topic to transform his lifelong dream of starting his own newspaper into the idea of starting his own Jewish newspaper. The opportunity to do so presented itself in 1989, when Lipsky won the backing of the Forward Association to launch the Forward as an English-language weekly successor to the famed Yiddish-language newspaper known as the Jewish Daily Forward. Although the original Forward nominally had been socialist, it subscribed to a brand of pro-labor anticommunism that Lipsky felt could coexist with the free-market principles he espoused at The Wall Street Journal. In his first year as editor of the Forward, he was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Early Life Seth Lipsky (sehth LIHP-skee) was born in Brooklyn in 1946, and his independent streak and his passion for journalism were already evident during his teenage years in New Marlboro, Massachusetts, where the Lipskys were one of two Jewish families. He served for a time as editor of the student newspaper at Mount Everett Regional High School, in the early 1960’s, but he and his friends launched a more freewheeling paper of their own, sustaining it through their four years there. As an undergraduate at Harvard University, Lipsky served on the editorial staff of the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, while also working part time for his hometown weekly, The Berkshire Courier, and the local daily, The Berkshire Eagle, and as a stringer for Time magazine. He covered the anti-Vietnam War turmoil on campus and also managed to score a short but memorable interview with Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1967, when the Six-Day War erupted, Lipsky rushed to Israel, arriving in late June, and he gained his first foreign dateline, from Gaza, on the front page of The Berkshire Eagle. After graduating with a B.A. in English literature and a rapidly growing journalistic resumé, Lipsky, inspired by the Civil Rights movement, took a job on the staff of a small pro-integration daily newspaper in Alabama, The Anniston Star. He covered local figures of national prominence, including Alabama governor George Wallace, police chief Bull Connor, and the federal judge who integrated Alabama schools, Frank Johnson. Lipsky was also sent on assignments further afield, including the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, in Chicago. Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1969, Lipsky was assigned to be Pentagon correspondent for the magazine Army Digest. In 1969, he volunteered for Vietnam to gain an assignment at the U.S. Defense Department’s newspaper Pacific Stars and Stripes, arriving in Vietnam in 1970. He spent ten months covering combat. Lipsky’s experiences in Israel and in Vietnam marked the beginning of the 744
Jewish Americans for editorial writing. He would serve as editor for the next ten years, establishing the once-dwindling paper as the premier voice in Jewish journalism and an important voice in American journalism generally. Forward articles, especially its investigative reports, were often quoted by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and, increasingly in the age of the Internet, by newspapers around the globe. Beginning in 1995, Lipsky and a group of partners exercised Lipsky’s option to acquire a 50 percent interest in the paper, bringing in capital to expand and to deepen its coverage. Lipsky cultivated a group of talented young news and cultural reporters whose years at the Forward launched them on notable journalistic and literary careers. They included Jeffrey Goldberg, Jonathan Rosen, Philip Gourevitch, Eli Lake, Ira Stoll, and Lucette Lagnado. David Twersky, a longtime political activist in Israel who had returned to the United States, became the Forward’s man in Washington and quickly established the paper as a significant presence in the capital. Although far from dogmatic in his political views, Lipsky was nonetheless too conservative for some members of the newspaper’s board of directors. The partnership that founded the English-language Forward in 1990 fell apart over political differences in 2000. The partnership’s formal goal of restoring the Forward to daily publication was abandoned, and Lipsky and his partners sold their interest. The end of Lipsky’s reign at the Forward did not, however, end his quest to launch a daily. When he left the Forward, he resumed that plan, but this time on a broader basis. Instead of a Jewish daily, he and a group of supporters decided to create a general-interest, center-right daily newspaper in New York City that would serve as a serious alternative to both The New York Times and its tabloid competitors. Lipsky’s aim was, as he put it, “to capture not only the serious news but the culture, the fun, and the fizz of New York.” The first issue of the New York Sun came out in April, 2002, and, as editor, Lipsky once again developed a loyal following. The paper, with its trademark penchant for scoops and investigative reporting, often focused on Israel and its critics, as well as on high-quality reporting on the arts and religious affairs. A collapsing capital market forced the New York Sun to halt publication of its print edition in 2008, although its name and some assets were acquired by Lipsky, and the paper continues in electronic form. Lipsky has published three books—two anthologies of articles from The Wall Street Journal and a 2009 volume, The Citizens’ Constitution: An Annotated Guide,
Lipsky, Seth
Independent Reporting The independent reporting featured in Seth Lipsky’s Forward set it apart from other Jewish weekly newspapers. Many Jewish weeklies are organs for local Jewish organizations, and most others rely almost entirely on wire service reports for their news. The Forward’s engagement of a team of independent, full-time reporters was thus an almost revolutionary development in the world of American Jewish journalism. That independence made it possible for the Forward to undertake investigative reporting on the foibles of Jewish leaders, the complexities of Israel-U.S. relations, and other hotbutton topics. Scoops such as a Jewish federation’s plan to give an award named for Isaiah to Yasir Arafat, and the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s effort to hire as its director of research a scholar who had compared the rise of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir to the rise of Adolf Hitler, attracted national interest and led to policy reversals in both instances. Its coverage also built a loyal and fast-growing nationwide readership.
which was widely and favorably reviewed, with The Wall Street Journal calling Lipsky’s passion for the Constitution “a tonic for political depression” and the American Thinker describing it as “an essential volume for an educated citizenry.” In 2010, Lipsky was honored by the American Jewish Historical Society with the Emma Lazarus Award, whose past honorees include such figures as Henry Kissinger, Elie Wiesel, and George Shultz. Lipsky and his wife, journalist and author Amity Shlaes, have four children and reside in New York City. He continues to edit the online New York Sun and to write, on Jewish and general subjects, for a variety of publications. Significance Lipsky’s years at the Forward helped revive independent Jewish journalism, which largely had been dormant since the heyday of the Yiddish press decades earlier. With the New York Sun, he introduced a lively and intellectually engaging conservative voice into the city’s news media. Both newspapers exhibited a flair for investigative journalism that sympathizers and critics found refreshing. —Rafael Medoff Further Reading Lipsky, Seth. “Abraham Cahan, the Forward, and Me.” Commentary (June, 1997): 42-47. Lipsky talks about 745
Loew, Marcus his encounter with Cahan and Isaac Bashevis Singer on the topic of immigration. _______. “Conrad Black—the Strands of Honor.” New York Sun, July 17, 2007. Lipsky’s defense of newspaper magnate Black, who helped Lipsky develop the New York Sun. Taranto, James. “Our Constitutional Moment.” The Wall
Jewish Americans Street Journal, November 13, 2009. In this interview, Lipsky talks about the grandeur of the U.S. Constitution. See also: Abraham Cahan; Seymour M. Hersh; Arthur Hays Sulzberger.
Marcus Loew Entrepreneur, business executive, and investor Late in the nineteenth century, Loew realized the potential of motion pictures. He invested successively in penny arcades, in nickelodeons, and eventually in lavish theaters to exhibit films. To ensure a steady stream of films for his venues, he ultimately purchased several production companies that evolved into one of Hollywood’s great studios. Born: May 7, 1870; Queens, New York Died: September 5, 1927; Glen Cove, New York Also known as: Max Loew Areas of achievement: Entertainment; business; theater Early Life Marcus Loew (MARK-uhs loh) was one of five children born to immigrant parents: a Viennese waiter, Herman, and his German-born wife, Ida. Loew dropped out of school early to help provide for his family, and he worked at a variety of jobs: as a newsboy and street vendor, as a printer and mapmaker, as a clothing store clerk, and as a furrier. While still employed in the fur-manufacturing business in 1894, he married Caroline “Carrie” Rosenheim, who bore him twin sons, David and Arthur. A buyer of furs, Loew in 1899 traveled to Chicago, where he met fellow Jewish fur merchant and future film impresario Adolph Zukor. The two men, in conjunction with David Warfield, an actor and friend of Marcus, began investing in penny arcades in New York. The penny arcades featured a variety of coin-operated machines, including hand-cranked peep shows, that allowed viewers to watch film clips. By 1903, these proved so successful that the enterprise, called the Automatic Vaudeville Company, had expanded to other Eastern Seaboard cities. Two years later, the business, called the People’s Vaudeville Company, began converting to nickelodeons. These were low-budget storefront operations that, for five cents per customer, presented continuous shows blending live 746
vaudeville acts and short silent films—enlivened by musical accompaniment from piano, organ, or accordion— from early morning to midnight. Nickelodeons were popular with working-class and immigrant audiences and profitable for Loew and his partners. Life’s Work Throughout the early twentieth century, Loew continued to expand his network of film-vaudeville houses. The name of his business changed several times: to Loew’s Consolidated Enterprises, Loew’s Theatrical Enterprises, and eventually to Loew’s Incorporated. He grew wealthy and built a magnificent family estate on more than forty acres in Glen Cove, New York. Following World War I, when motion pictures supplanted vaudeville as entertainment, Loew quickly adapted to changing times. He began building theaters primarily to show films. The new Loew theaters—such as the flagship Loew’s State on Broadway in downtown New York City—were a far cry from the dingy arcades and nickelodeons and were intended for an upscale crowd. Gone were the nickelodeon’s hard benches and chairs, replaced by cushioned seating to accommodate thousands of viewers. The ambience was luxurious, with crystal chandeliers, plush carpeting, gilt and marble, commissioned murals, and sweeping staircases. The new theaters were a public sensation and hugely profitable. Capitalizing on his success, Loew embarked on a nationwide theater-building spree during the 1920’s, erecting structures in major metropolitan communities across the United States. By 1924, he operated more than one hundred deluxe film houses and was the nation’s dominant theater owner. To ensure a steady supply of films for his theaters and to better control costs associated with their production and distribution, Loew in the early 1920’s invested in filmmaking. In 1920, he spent three million dollars to acquire modestly successful Metro Pictures of Hollywood.
Jewish Americans He then purchased, for four million dollars, the financially troubled Goldwyn Productions’ modern studio facilities and forty-acre back lots. Finally, for less than $100,000, he bought Louis B. Mayer Productions. In 1924, these three entities were merged into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Mayer was named vice president and general manager of the new conglomerate, and boy genius Irving Thalberg was put in charge of production. MGM began turning out a string of hits, beginning with He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and The Big Parade (1925), and became a dominant force in Hollywood. Loew, however, would not live to fully enjoy the fruits of success: He died of a heart attack at age fifty-seven, leaving a thirty-milliondollar estate to his wife and children. Significance For his important contributions to the film industry, Loew posthumously was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Though Loew’s name is still synonymous with palatial film houses, his various enterprises rose and fell after his death. The Loew’s theater chain changed hands numerous times from the 1970’s onward. Some individual theaters have been demolished. Others have closed and sit empty. Still others have been refurbished or converted to various uses, such as live entertainment centers or churches. In the twentyfirst century, nearly two hundred Loew’s theaters remain, many of them cineplexes, with more than 2,200 screens. Likewise, MGM—producers of numerous cartoons, sophisticated musicals, and such classic films as The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939)— began to fade in influence by the early 1960’s. Its facili-
Loewe, Frederick ties (studios, film libraries, name, and other assets) have been bought, sold, or parceled out several times. In 2004, Sony Corporation of America and other investors acquired MGM. —Jack Ewing Further Reading Bingen, Steven, Stephen X. Sylvester, and Michael Troyan. M-G-M: Hollywood’s Greatest Backlot. Santa Monica, Calif.: Santa Monica Press, 2010. This behind-thescenes history of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contains interviews with many actors and film crew members and numerous photographs of filmmaking during the golden age of Hollywood. Gabler, Neal. An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Anchor, 1989. An entertaining illustrated account of the efforts of Jewish entrepreneurs such as Loew, the executives, producers, writers, talent agents, theater operators, publicrelations mavens, and others who created the studio and star systems that dominated the domestic filmmaking business for the first half of the twentieth century. Melnick, Ross, and Andrea Fuchs. Cinema Treasures: A New Look at Classic Movie Theaters. Minneapolis, Minn.: MBI, 2004. This profusely illustrated volume focuses on the history, cultural influence, and architecture of film theaters, including many constructed under the direction of Loew. See also: Michael Eisner; David Geffen; Jeffrey Katzenberg; Sumner Redstone; David Sarnoff; Warner brothers; Adolph Zukor.
Frederick Loewe German-born musician and composer With lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, Loewe composed the music to classic Broadway and film musicals. Born: June 10, 1901; Berlin, Germany Died: February 14, 1988; Palm Springs, California Also known as: Fritz Loewe Areas of achievement: Music; theater Early Life Frederick Loewe (FREH-duh-rihk loh) was born into a show-business family. His father, Edmund, was a famous operetta tenor, and his mother, Rosa, was an actor.
Both parents were Viennese. Loewe grew up in Berlin and attended a Prussian military school. As a child, he learned to play the piano by ear. Later, Loewe took formal piano lessons at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, and at age thirteen he performed as a piano soloist with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. In 1923, he won the Hollander Medal, awarded to the most promising student at Stern. Loewe, who described himself as a “wunderkind,” was a guest soloist for symphony orchestras all over Europe. When he was fifteen, he wrote a song, “Katrina,” that became a hit, selling two million copies of sheet music. Loewe traveled to the United States with 747
Loewe, Frederick his father and mother in 1924; unfortunately, his father died suddenly, leaving Loewe and his mother penniless. Loewe, who spoke limited English, tried to continue as a musician in America, but financial needs led to a number of disparate activities, ranging from playing the piano at Town Hall to prizefighting, teaching horseback riding in New Hampshire, and working as a cowboy in Montana. He returned to New York in 1931 and met Ernestine Zwerlaine, daughter of a famous Viennese architect. They married the same year. Trying to make a living with music, he played piano in different venues in New York City. Singer Kitty Carlisle first met Loewe in New York in 1934, when he played piano in the orchestra for her first Broadway show. Loewe’s ambition, as he told Carlisle, was to write a great Broadway show. In 1935, one of his songs was included in the show Petticoat Fever. The following year his song “A Waltz Was Born in Vienna,” with lyrics by Earle T. Crooker, was in a revue and later included in Salute to Spring, produced by the St. Louis Municipal Opera in 1937. Loewe’s song was a hit and resulted in a
Frederick Loewe. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans commission for Loewe and Crooker to write the score for an operetta titled Great Lady (1938). The show closed after twenty performances. Seeking to establish connections in show business, Loewe joined a New York City theatrical club called The Lambs. He continued to write songs, mostly for the annual Lambs show; he also tried to resurrect his career as a concert pianist with a recital in Carnegie Hall, which was not well received. In 1942, when Loewe was asked to write some songs for the 1925 comedy The Patsy, he needed a lyricist since Crooker was not available. At The Lambs one day, he happened to walk by Alan Jay Lerner and asked if Lerner would like to write a musical with him. The collaboration resulted in some of the twentieth century’s greatest musicals. Life’s Work The team wrote the score in twelve days. Titled Life of the Party, it opened in October, 1942, and ran nine weeks. Loewe and Lerner worked well together and were asked to write What’s Up? (1943). This, too, was not a success, but their next effort, The Day Before Spring (1945), did better. Critics liked Loewe’s music, and the show ran for five months. They finally had a hit with Brigadoon, which opened March 13, 1947, garnering glowing reviews. Brooks Atkinson, critic for The New York Times, described Brigadoon as a true musical play, weaving the elements of plot, music, and dancing into a single “enchanting” production. The show, set in Scotland about a village that appears from the mist every one hundred years, won the New York Critics Circle Award as the best musical of 1947. Loewe’s music included the classic “Almost Like Being in Love,” which became a popular hit. Their next musical, Paint Your Wagon, was set during the California Gold Rush and opened November 12, 1951. It was not as successful as Brigadoon, although Loewe wrote some beautiful, melodic songs, such as “Another Autumn” and “I Talk to the Trees.” The rousing title song and the raucous “Hand Me Down That Can o’ Beans” demonstrated Loewe’s ability to “mix it up” musically. It was their next collaboration that realized Loewe’s dream to write a great musical. There had been various efforts to convert George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion (1913) into a musical. Rodgers and Hammerstein had tried; Loewe and Lerner succeeded. My Fair Lady opened on March 15, 1956; it closed on September 29, 1962, after 2,717 performances. The show has played all over the world, and its score has been recorded in dozens of languages. Their next
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collaboration was not for Broadway but for GIGI Hollywood. Prompted by film producer Arthur Freed, Many consider My Fair Lady (1956) to be the greatest achieveLerner became interested in writing a musical ment of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, but Loewe wrote adaptation of Colette’s novella Gigi (1944; Enother successful shows, including the 1958 film musical Gigi. The film won a total of nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, glish translation, 1952). Lerner and Loewe, foland Loewe won an Academy Award for the title song. Set in Paris lowing their usual method of creating a score, around the 1900’s, Gigi is based on the story by French novelist began by discussing where songs were needed, Colette. Starring Leslie Caron as Gigi, the story centers on a young what each song was to be about, and the mood woman being brought up to be a high-class courtesan; she falls in of the song. Once Lerner provided the song title, love with Gaston, played by Louis Jourdan, a rich playboy, and he Loewe wrote the melody; Lerner then crafted discovers he loves her. The other major character is Gaston’s uncle the lyrics. They spent three months searching for Honoré Lachaille, a roué who delights in being a perpetual bachea song idea for the title song. One day, Lerner, lor. Music hall star Maurice Chevalier played the part. One song, as usual, was sitting with Loewe, who was at the “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight,” that had been written for My Fair piano, trying different melodies. When Loewe Lady and not used fit nicely in Gigi. When the film was reworked hit upon the perfect melody, Lerner fell over a into a musical for Broadway in 1973, Loewe came out of retirement to write four new songs with Lerner. coffee table in his excitement. That song, “Gigi,” won an Academy Award. The final collaboration of Loewe and Lerner for the theater was the musical Camelot (1960), and upbeat ditties. He was able to write for singers with based on the novel The Once and Future King (1958), outstanding voices, such as Goulet, and for those who by T. H. White. The story of King Arthur, Guenevere, could not sing, such as Rex Harrison, who played Henry and Lancelot had ample occasion for wonderful muHiggins in My Fair Lady. Loewe’s music has never lost sic, and Loewe supplied it. Lancelot’s solo “If Ever I its popularity, and the shows he and Lerner wrote are ofWould Leave You,” sung on Broadway by baritone Robten revived. ert Goulet, was a showstopper and became Goulet’s sig—Marcia B. Dinneen nature song. The cast album was number one in the country for more than sixty weeks. Although Loewe had Further Reading retired, he and Lerner collaborated once more for the Holden, Stephen. “Frederick Loewe Dies at Eighty-Six.” film musical The Little Prince, based on the 1943 book The New York Times, February 15, 1988, p. A1. A by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Although Loewe had writlengthy obituary with biographical and career details. ten a beautiful score, the film, released in 1974, was not Jablonski, Edward. Alan Jay Lerner, a Biography. New well received. York: Holt, 1996. Includes biographical information Once he had achieved financial stability, Loewe did on Loewe and specifics on how the team collaborated. not feel committed to work hard. He enjoyed his life. Lees, Gene. The Musical Worlds of Lerner and Loewe. Gambling, young women (he and his wife separated in Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Lees at1947 and divorced in 1957), and his home in Palm tempts to fix some of the discrepancies in accounts of Springs suited him. He also went back to playing the piLoewe’s life. ano, not for the public but for himself. He had a serious Suskin, Steven. “Frederick Loewe.” In Show Tunes. New heart attack in 1958 that encouraged a quiet lifestyle. York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Includes deLoewe died of heart failure and is buried at Desert Metailed information on the musicals for which he commorial Park in Cathedral City, California. posed the music, including a list of songs for each. Significance See also: Leonard Bernstein; Betty Comden; George Loewe struggled for years to become a success as a Gershwin; Ira Gershwin; Adolph Green; Lorenz Hart; composer. Once he teamed up with Lerner, he achieved Jerome Kern; Alan Jay Lerner; Richard Rodgers. his goal. Loewe’s music ranged from ballads to waltzes
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Peter Lorre Actor A Hungarian-born stage actor in 1930’s Europe, Lorre fled Germany for England, then Hollywood, playing supporting roles in renowned British and American films. Lorre’s physical appearance and ability to convey quiet menace made him skilled at combining elements of comedy and of horror in his performances. Born: June 26, 1904; Rószahegy, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Rumomberok, Slovakia) Died: March 23, 1964; Hollywood, California Also known as: Ladislav Loewenstein; László Löwenstein (birth name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Peter Lorre (LOH-ree) was born László Löwenstein in Rószahegy. His father, Alois, was an army lieutenant and bookkeeper; Lorre’s mother Elvira died unexpect-
Peter Lorre. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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edly in 1908, and Alois remarried. The family moved to Vienna, Austria, in 1910. In middle school Lorre was invited to appear in a little theater production in Vienna, inspiring him to become an actor. Alois insisted Lorre also prepare for a more conventional career, so at fourteen he enrolled in business school; he worked briefly as a bank clerk, promising Alois he would not quit, but he behaved disrespectfully toward his supervisor and was fired. The teenage Lorre was essentially homeless, but he enjoyed socializing with other aspiring actors and artists, talking about the arts and about psychiatry, which he studied independently. He joined the Stegreiftheater, an improvisational theater group; he was also able to attend plays for free by acting as a shill, cheering and applauding to create excitement in the audience. Lorre soon began to win stage roles. After playing many small parts, he won his first major role in the 1929 Berlin production of Marieluise Fleisser’s Pioniere in Ingolstadt (1928; Pioneers in Ingolstadt), directed by Bertolt Brecht, with whom Lorre maintained a long personal and professional association. Lorre’s performance as a sexually naïve teenager was critically acclaimed and led to more prominent roles. While appearing in Pioniere in Ingolstadt Lorre met the Austrian actor Celia Lovksy. She introduced Lorre to film director Fritz Lang, who promised Lorre a role in his first sound film. Lorre waited two years for Lang to start filming; meanwhile, Lorre continued to work in theater. His first film appearance was as an extra in the silent film, Die verschwundene Frau (1929; The Missing Wife). Life’s Work In Lang’s film M (1931) Lorre played Hans Beckert, a Berlin man compelled to murder young children. The film follows the sometimes plodding police investigation, the impact of the unsolved crimes on average people, and the frustration of criminal gangs as increased police vigilance interferes with their business. The film was well received and made Lorre a star. He made several more German films, but in 1933, as Adolf Hitler’s Nazi government began to threaten Jews working in film and theater, Lorre moved with Lovsky to Paris. Lorre later said he informed the German film company, Universum Film Ag (UFA), that there was “no room in Germany for two murderers” such as Hitler and
Jewish Americans himself. He was invited to meet film director Alfred Hitchcock in England and made his first film for Hitchcock, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), learning English for the role of a quiet but cruel criminal mastermind. Lorre and Lovsky were married in England in June, 1934. On the strength of his work with Lang and Hitchcock, Lorre was offered an American film contract, and he and Lovsky moved to California. Unlike many Germans fleeing the Nazi regime, Lorre adapted happily to American life. However, he had hoped to play a wider variety of film roles, and American studios had difficulty casting him. After several months he agreed to play a psychopathic villain in Mad Love (1935) if he could star in a film version of Fyodor Dostoevski’s novel, Prestupleniye i nakazaniye (1866; Crime and Punishment, 1886). Between 1935 and 1941, Lorre appeared in twenty-one more films; in eight of these he starred as Mr. Moto, a Japanese detective. Lorre had the opportunity to play a more interesting supporting role as Joel Cairo, a slightly effeminate, cutthroat treasure-seeker in The Maltese Falcon (1941), directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart. After two minor comedy-horror films, Lorre again worked with Bogart and British actor Sydney Greenstreet (who had also appeared in The Maltese Falcon) in Casablanca (1943), playing Ugarte, a softspoken but murderous dealer in stolen documents. He then had a supporting character role in the comedy Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), directed by Frank Capra and starring Cary Grant. From the 1930’s through the 1950’s, Lorre also made countless radio appearances, acting in horror stories or as a guest on variety shows, and he guest-starred on television dramas and comedy programs. Lorre wrote and directed one film, Der Verlorene (1951; The Lost One), a dark comment on guilt and denial in postwar Germany. Shot in Germany, the film stars Lorre as Karl Rothe, a doctor who worked for the Nazis, murdered his fiancé, and escaped prosecution, but has forgotten the crime. Years later, when a Gestapo agent reminds Rothe that he owes his freedom to Nazi intervention, Rothe’s subconscious compels him to murder more women rather than face the truth. Lorre’s plans for an English version were aborted after the film was poorly received in Germany. Lorre and Lovsky separated in 1940; they divorced in 1945 so Lorre could marry actor Karen (Kaaren) Verne.
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Lorre as Hans Beckert Decades after its release Fritz Lang’s 1931 black-and-white film M is still considered a masterpiece for its plotting, social commentary, use of visual cues to unseen events, and use of sound. In his first speaking film role, Peter Lorre’s performance as Hans Beckert cemented his reputation as a superb actor, conveying the threat a psychopath brings to an entire city simultaneously with the man’s self-loathing and the pathos in his utter inability to stop himself. Lorre had to embody an implacably evil character built largely through images and sounds the audience sees and hears while the actor remains offscreen. Lorre evokes fear through his soft voice when he speaks to a doomed child and through his mobile features as he makes faces in a mirror. Lorre’s rubbery face and shocking outburst in his final scene are unforgettable, as Beckert pleads with a crowd of thieves and petty criminals for his life, comparing his helpless compulsion to kill with their choice to do wrong. This type of performance would become a signature for Lorre, who was adept at playing multifaceted characters: His psychopaths elicited sympathy, and his criminals could be as charming as they were brutal.
Lorre and Verne separated five years later. They divorced in July, 1953, and Lorre married Annemarie Brenning, with whom he already had an infant daughter, Catharine, his only child. Brenning filed for divorce in 1963; the two were still legally married when Lorre died of a stroke at his Los Angeles home in March, 1964. Significance Lorre appeared in seventy-nine films and in numerous stage, radio and television productions. Known for his small stature, protruding eyes, and soft voice, he was physically and emotionally versatile and a dedicated professional, able to collaborate with writers and directors to create a range of distinctive, complex characters. Although he performed alongside horror film stars such as Vincent Price and Boris Karloff, he was also cast in classic dramas, mysteries, comedies, and spoofs of the horror genre. Lorre often appeared in key supporting roles and worked with such lions of classic film and theater as Lang, Capra, Hitchcock, Huston, and Brecht. Lorre’s superb talent combined with his spooky appearance and voice to make him an enduring cultural icon. His public image was so distinctive it was still recognizable in 2005, when he was caricatured as a talking maggot in director Tim Burton’s animated film Corpse Bride. —Maureen Puffer-Rothenberg 751
Lubitsch, Ernst Further Reading Svehla, Gary J., and Susan Svehla, eds. Peter Lorre. Baltimore: Midnight Marquee Press, 1999. Critical survey of Lorre’s films also includes chapters on his radio performances and on cartoon versions of him. Thomas, Sarah. “A ‘Star’ of the Airwaves: Peter Lorre, ‘Master of the Macabre’ and American Radio Programming.” The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 5, nos. 2/3 (2007): 143-155. Argues that radio drama had a greater impact than film on the public’s perception of Lorre. Youngkin, Stephen D. The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. Draws on a wide range of sources to examine Lorre’s
Jewish Americans life in great detail, from his early stage career, critical success in films, and personal life, through his declining health and later disillusionment with the film industry. Youngkin, Stephen D., James Bigwood, and Raymond G. Cabana, Jr. The Films of Peter Lorre. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1982. Biography and comprehensive look at Lorre’s film appearances, with credits, plot summary, brief commentary, and excerpts from reviews for each film. See also: Alan Arkin; Lauren Bacall; Peter Falk; Harvey Keitel.
Ernst Lubitsch German-born film director and producer An important filmmaker in Germany, Lubitsch immigrated to the United States to become famous for directing sophisticated and witty comedies. Born: January 28, 1892; Berlin, Germany Died: November 30, 1947; Los Angeles, California Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Ernst Lubitsch (urnst LEW-bihch) was born in Berlin, Germany, the only child of Simon Lubitsch, a successful tailor, and his wife. Lubitsch helped in his father’s shop while he attended the Sophien-Gymnasium, where he performed in school plays, often acting the roles of old men. His father found Lubitsch totally unsuited to work on the shop floor, so he made him the bookkeeper. At sixteen, the boy determined to become an actor. During the day, he kept his father’s books; at night, he played low comedy in vaudeville, cabarets, and music halls. Though he rejected his father’s men’s clothing business, it obviously had an effect upon him. In his films, his characters are always elegantly dressed. In 1911, at age nineteen, Lubitsch was accepted as an apprentice at the Deutsches Theater on the Schumannstrasse, with the famous Max Reinhardt as mentor. He traveled abroad with Reinhardt’s company, playing small roles in classic plays. His theater work paid very little, so in 1912 he sought additional income by working at the Bioscope film studios in Berlin as a handyman. There he discovered his true medium. In 1913, he began acting in films and rapidly became the foremost screen comedian in Germany. 752
From 1914 to 1919, Lubitsch both directed and acted in twenty-seven short films, playing Meyer, a comic Yiddish clerk (drawing, in part, upon his own clumsiness and inadequacies in his father’s shop). His character fit the sly, greedy stereotype and, several decades later, would have been considered anti-Semitic and grossly offensive, but, at the time, broad ethnic humor was perfectly acceptable and extremely popular. This was a generation before Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. From 1919 on, Lubitsch moved largely from acting to directing. He directed fourteen features, trying his hand at every genre; foremost among the films of this period are 1919’s satirical Die Austernprinzessin (The Oyster Princess) and the historical epics 1919’s Madam DuBarry (Passion in the United States) and 1920’s Sumurun (One Arabian Night in the United States). In 1923, his reputation was such that he was invited to Hollywood to direct Rosita, a grand-scale costume drama featuring the major star Mary Pickford. Thereafter, all his pictures were made in America, and soon other prominent German directors were following him to Hollywood. Life’s Work Lubitsch’s career reached its height during his years in California, as did his personal life. In 1922, on his second trip to America, he married Helene Kraus. Their marriage ended in 1930. In 1933, he became a naturalized American citizen. In 1935, he was married again, to Vivian Gaye. That marriage ended in divorce in 1944 but produced a daughter, Nicola. After filming Rosita, Lubitsch continued to direct si-
Jewish Americans lent pictures, including The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927), starring Ramón Novarro and Norma Shearer. During this period, he directed other silent-film stars—among them Pola Negri, Clara Bow, and John Barrymore. In these years, he also began to produce films. The Love Parade (1929) and Monte Carlo (1930) were his first talking pictures. He immediately introduced innovations in filming. He freed the camera from its static position by filming scenes for which the dialogue was dubbed in later. The Love Parade and Monte Carlo were among early Paramount musicals featuring Maurice Chevalier and/or Jeanette MacDonald. Their best remembered pairing would come in 1934 in MetroGoldwyn-Mayer’s The Merry Widow. Lubitsch treated their musical numbers not as set pieces but as a natural part of the plot. During the next two decades, Lubitsch directed a succession of critically and commercially successful films: Trouble in Paradise (1932), Ninotchka (1939), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), To Be or Not to Be (1942), Heaven Can Wait (1943), and Cluny Brown (1946). One of his few dramatic films during this period, Broken Lullaby (1932), was especially admired for its skillful camera use but failed to achieve the success of his comedies. Some of the biggest Hollywood stars of the period between World War I and World War II were happy to work with him: Lionel Barrymore, Miriam Hopkins, Herbert Marshall, Kay Francis, Charles Laughton, Gary Cooper, Fredric March, and Marlene Dietrich. Early in the shooting of That Lady in Ermine (1948) with Betty Grable, Lubitsch suffered a heart attack. Otto Preminger was called in to complete the filming. On November 30, 1947, Lubitsch suffered another, and this time fatal, attack. Although Preminger had done the bulk of the work on the film, as a tribute to the great director, Lubitsch receives sole credit on the screen. Significance Lubitsch’s comedies usually feature clever, sophisticated dialogue, but he is a master of the visual effect that may express a key point, or even the entire theme of the picture, without a spoken word. In 1932, Paramount released If I Had a Million, an omnibus film made up of eight sketches directed by seven different directors. Lubitsch directed the two shortest sketches, “The Street Walker” and “The Clerk.” The premise is that a rich man who thinks he is about to die decides to give a million
Lubitsch, Ernst dollars each to eight people whose names he randomly selects from the telephone directory. In a five-minute, almost wordless sequence, Laughton plays a timid clerk who, upon realizing that he is a millionaire, walks through four different doors, each taking him one rung higher up the company ladder. He finally reaches the pinnacle. He says not a word to the president, Mr. Brown, but gives him what is called a raspberry. In “The Street Walker,” upon receiving her million dollars, Wynne Gibson as the courtesan goes directly to the finest hotel in the city and takes the best room. She goes to bed in her underwear, then sits up and thinks for a moment. With a look of sheer pleasure, she removes her stockings and draws the covers back over her. She will not be going out again tonight. Lubitsch’s comedies exist in a whimsical world of his own creation. For example, in backward Marshovia, setting for The Merry Widow, a trial is solemnly conducted after the judge orders the onlookers to remove their goats from the courtroom. Next, the ladder that the accused, Chevalier, used to climb the widow Sonia’s wall is presented as evidence, and the guard dog that was bribed with salami is called as a witness. No one in the courtroom bats an eye. These scenes represent the comic legacy of Lubitsch. —Patrick Adcock
The Lubitsch Touch Ernst Lubitsch perfected a directorial style in his witty, sophisticated comedies that was so recognizable it came to bear his name. His handling of sexual attraction and its accompanying tensions (in an era when no overt sexual behavior was permitted on the screen) was also deft. His unique treatment of comedic material can perhaps best be illustrated by means of comparison, using two of his representative films. Lubitsch’s 1934 version of The Merry Widow was succeeded by another version in 1952, featuring Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s reigning female star, Lana Turner. His Ninotchka (1939) was remade in 1957 as Silk Stockings, a musical starring Fred Astaire. The 1950’s films, unlike their predecessors, feature lavish Technicolor, and each has its individual strengths. However, most screen historians agree that neither can match the frothy charm of a Lubitsch production. For The Merry Widow, Lubitsch made convincing lovers of Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier, who reportedly disliked each other, and, in Ninotchka, he achieved what few others would have even attempted. He coaxed not only a comedic performance but also an excellent one out of the enigmatic screen siren Greta Garbo.
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Luckman, Sid Further Reading Barnes, Peter. To Be or Not to Be. London: British Film Institute, 2002. A detailed study of Lubitsch’s 1942 film, preceded by brief biographical information and a cursory review of the director’s career. Paul, William. Ernst Lubitsch’s American Comedy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Emphasizes the sexuality as well as the sociological and stylistic significance of Lubitsch’s comedies. Poague, Leland A. The Cinema of Ernst Lubitsch. Cranbury, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1978. Analyzes thirteen of Lubitsch’s films from the point of view of his auteurism—that is, the director’s vision as expressed in his work. Thomas, Lawrence B. The MGM Years. New York:
Jewish Americans Columbia House, 1971. Survey of Metro-GoldwynMayer musicals from 1929 to 1971. Briefly treats The Merry Widow and Lubitsch, but more extensively its stars, Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. Weinberg, Herman G. The Lubitsch Touch: A Critical Study. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968. The author is Lubitsch’s unofficial biographer. The first half of the book is an extended definition of the “Lubitsch touch.” The second half is a mélange of excerpts from the screenplay of Ninotchka, interviews with collaborators, tributes, and a brief reminiscence by his daughter. See also: Theda Bara; Cecil B. DeMille; Samuel Goldwyn; Al Jolson; Hedy Lamarr; Otto Preminger; Dore Schary; Irving Thalberg.
Sid Luckman Professional football player Luckman revolutionized the modern game of football. He was the first of the T-formation quarterbacks, and, along with Washington Redskin quarterback Sammy Baugh, he was considered the greatest of his time at that position. Born: November 21, 1916; Brooklyn, New York Died: July 5, 1998; Aventura, Florida Also known as: Sidney Luckman (full name) Area of achievement: Sports Early Life Sid Luckman (LUHK-man) was the second of three sons born to German Jewish immigrants Meyer and Ethel Luckman. He also had an older sister. Luckman’s father owned a trucking company, which the sons eventually inherited. Growing up in Prospect Park, Luckman had his first experience with the game at age eight when his father gave him a football and taught him to throw. Luckman attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, where he became an outstanding student and athlete. Luckman’s first encounter with fame occurred in 1934 when he led the high school team to a 13-0 victory over a Brooklyn College team, scoring both touchdowns on runs and kicking the one extra point. Though Luckman, named to the all-city team as a halfback, and the Erasmus Hall squad were often overmatched, Luckman’s athletic prowess and his good scholarship came to the attention of numerous college football programs. Luckman was 754
offered scholarships by more than forty colleges and initially planned to enter the United States Naval Academy in Maryland. However, following a football encounter between Navy and Columbia University during Luckman’s senior year, Navy athletic director and former Notre Dame lineman “Rip” Miller introduced Luckman to Columbia coach Lou Little. Luckman was so impressed by the coach that, despite the fact that Columbia provided no athletic scholarships, he decided to enroll at the university. Luckman worked his way through school as a painter and a dishwasher for college fraternities. Life’s Work Luckman played three years with the Columbia varsity football team, from 1936 to 1938. As a triple-threat running and passing back and punter (he played defense also), Luckman was named to the Associated Press AllAmerica third team in his junior year and finished third in Heisman Trophy voting following his senior year in 1939. He was honored with a “gold football” award by the Jewish organization B’nai Brith for his All-America status. During his college career, Luckman threw twenty touchdown passes, an impressive number for that era. He also played shortstop for the college baseball team. Luckman graduated in June, 1939, with a bachelor’s degree from Columbia, and a month later he married Estelle Morgolin, a young woman he had met at Erasmus High School. They had three children during their forty-two years of marriage.
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Sid Luckman. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Following graduation Luckman initially planned to join his brothers in the trucking business. However, he was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers professional football team and traded to the Chicago Bears, which offered him a two-year contract. Coach George Halas gave him a salary of around $5,500, which was among the “most attractive ever offered a freshman player.” The offer was too good to decline, and Luckman became a Bear. At just under six feet tall and 190 pounds, Luckman was stocky but not particularly large for the tailback and quarterback positions Halas had in mind for him. However, Luckman appeared perfect for the new T-formation Halas had instituted for the team. Unlike other formations, the “T” utilized a passing quarterback with three running backs lined up behind him, forming the shape of a “T.” Luckman proved perfect for the role. He was con-
sidered the outstanding T-formation quarterback of his time, with more than 350 play variations stored in his memory. By the time Luckman retired, following the 1950 season, he had thrown 137 touchdowns, averaging more than one per game; in 1943, he threw twenty-eight touchdown passes in ten games, a record that stood for sixteen seasons. He completed more than 50 percent of his passing attempts (904 of 1,744) during his career, one in which he often was a “two-way” player as a defensive back. His career highlights included leading the Bears to four league championships between 1940 and 1946 and being named to the All-NFL team five times. Prior to the 1944 season Luckman enlisted in the Merchant Marines, and he was stationed at Sheepshead Bay, New York. Serving on an oil tanker, Luckman endured eight months 755
Lumet, Sidney of hazardous sea duty, while during shore leave he played football with the Bears. Following his retirement, Luckman remained associated with both the Bears team and Halas. He later headed a packaging company, Cellu-Craft Products, in Chicago. Luckman wrote two books that summarized his outlook on football: Passing for Touchdowns (1948) and Luckman at Quarterback: Football as a Sport and a Career (1949). He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1960 and to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1965. He died in the hospital in 1998 at the age of eightyone. Significance Luckman was not the first prominent Jewish quarterback to play for a professional team or to have an impact on the league; Benny Friedman preceded him by more than a decade. However Luckman arguably revolutionized the professional passing game with his role as the central figure in the newly developed T-formation. By modern standards, Luckman’s role as a passing quarterback was limited; professional football in his era was primarily a running game, with the T-formation allowing
Jewish Americans for three potential running backs. Luckman’s role was to coordinate the running backs while using his passing skills to keep the defense off balance, illustrating the potential value of the new formation. —Richard Adler Further Reading Davis, Jeff. Papa Bear: The Life and Legacy of George Halas. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. Biography of the Chicago Bears owner and coach. Luckman’s professional career was developed by Halas, and that story is told in this biography. Encyclopedia Judaica. 2d ed. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale Cengage, 2006. Vol. 13. Provides a short biography as well as a summary of the highlights of Luckman’s college and professional careers. Goldman, David. Jewish Sports Stars: Athletic Heroes Past and Present. Minneapolis: Kar-Ben, 2006. Summary of Luckman’s career, including highlights of his most significant performances. See also: Lyle Alzado; Red Auerbach; Moe Berg; Hank Greenberg; Bud Selig.
Sidney Lumet Film director, actor, and producer Lumet is a prolific film director who, for fifty years, has made nearly a film per year, working continuously and efficiently to turn out a body of work notable for the high quality of performances by his actors. Born: June 25, 1924; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Sidney Lumet (lew-MEHT) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Eugenia Wermus, a dancer who died when Lumet was young, and Baruch Lumet, a native of Poland who moved to the United States to be a writer, a director, an actor, and a producer for the Yiddish stage. Sidney Lumet’s father appeared in Woody Allen’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask (1972) and in his son’s films The Group (1966) and The Pawnbroker (1964). Thus, Lumet was born into the world of entertainment, and from age four he was on radio, in theater, and in film. He studied at New York’s Professional Children’s School and appeared to critical 756
acclaim in Sidney Kingsley’s Dead End Kids production of Dead End (1935) as well as in both the stage and the 1939 film adaptation of One Third of a Nation. After spending three years in the United States Army as a radar repairman during World War II, which included deployments to India, China, and Myanmar (then Burma), Lumet returned home disinterested in acting. He taught briefly at the laboratories of Philco in Philadelphia (with the skills he had developed from repairing radars for the Army) before resolving to follow in his father’s footsteps as a producer and a director. Lumet joined the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1950, interested in the then-new medium of television, and went on to direct hundreds of episodes for the television series You Are There (1953-1957), I Remember Mama (1948-1957), and Danger (1950-1955), replacing Yul Brynner. As a show centered on psychological suspense, Danger provided Lumet with an opportunity to hone his skills at drawing out effective performances from his actors. However, he was also fortunate at the time to work with then-unknowns Charlton Heston,
Jewish Americans Lee Grant, Rod Steiger, James Dean, Jack Lemmon, Cloris Leachman, and Paul Newman. He would later work with Newman and Steiger in two of his most memorable films: with Newman in The Verdict (1982) and with Steiger in The Pawnbroker. Lumet quickly developed an extremely efficient and fast method for shooting television scripts, a critical skill during the hectic days of early live television. This not only earned him recognition and plaudits as a director but also served him well in his move to directing big-screen films. Lumet described the approach in his book Making Movies (1995), which film critic Roger Ebert described as having “more common sense in it about how films are actually made than any other I have read.”
Lumet, Sidney Serpico (1973) or a would-be bank robber in Dog Day Afternoon (1975); and Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, and Dean Stockwell in Lumet’s adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (1962) all provided highly acclaimed film performances, owing at least in part to Lumet’s directing insights. In his lifelong promotion of social justice as shown through the arts, Lumet has also explored specifically Jewish themes in Bye Bye Braverman (1968), Daniel (1983), and A Stranger Among Us (1992). Lumet has been called the last of the neorealists. That is, he aims to make the film medium as unobtrusive as possible so that the transparency allows the lives and actions of the characters to come across as clearly as possible. This focus allows depictions in his films of characters with irrepressible passions for justice, dignity, human worth, and family. Pacino in Serpico, as the real-life po-
Life’s Work Lumet formed an Off-Broadway acting troupe in 1947 with Brynner and Eli Wallach. This led to numerous theatrical productions and Henry Fonda selecting Lumet to direct the Fonda-produced film Twelve Angry Men in 1957. Nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Adapted Screenplay, the film established Lumet’s credibility as a film director and has since been ranked among the best courtroom dramas of all time. Since that success, Lumet has directed nearly one film per year, with approximately half of those films being adaptations. He is well-known in the film industry for his ability to produce efficiently, even on a massive project such as the three-hour Prince of the City (1981), which completed shooting in only fifty-two days. Lumet credits rehearsals as key to this efficiency, which allows him to capture scenes in as few as one or two takes. Besides his deliberately economic approach to filmmaking, Lumet is also known for inspiring superb performances from his actors. In more than forty films, seventeen of his actors have received Academy Award nominations, with four winning: Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, and Beatrice Straight in Paddy Chayefsky’s Network (1976) and Ingrid Bergman in Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Even without Academy Award wins, Newman as a washed-up lawyer in The Verdict; Steiger as a Holocaust survivor in The Pawnbroker; Judd Hirsch, Christine Lahti, and River Phoenix as an underground family on the run from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Running on Empty (1988); Al Pacino as a justice-obsessed police officer in Sidney Lumet. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Lumet, Sidney lice officer who sought to expose New York police corruption, exemplifies this. The authenticity of the actions of the characters in Lumet’s films has been well received. In 2005, he received a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award and acknowledgment as one of the most important American directors of all time. Significance Lumet’s significance as a director is not simply in his economy of production or in his prompting of memorable performances from actors but in his consistent vision and the promotion of films that inspire. In his best works, Lumet shows characters of all types and personalities who yearn for what is best. They may reach this goal or be defeated (as the story demands). If his films focus on difficult situations, this is less because life is inherently difficult and more because under such circumstances human nature best expresses its deep yearning for justice and a better world. Taking film to be an art, Lumet keeps a steady keel on the tempestuous conditions in the stories he depicts to reveal the richness of life. —Michael Gaiuranos Further Reading Bowles, Stephen E. Sidney Lumet: A Guide to References and Resources, Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979. Though limited to pre-1980 films by Lumet, this book of biographical and critical essays is still useful for contextualizing Lumet’s work in general. Boyer, Jay. Sidney Lumet. New York: Twayne, 1993. Part of the Twayne series about filmmakers, this book offers critical details of Lumet’s work and biographical information about the director.
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The Art of Great Performances Sidney Lumet’s background as both a stage actor and a director seems to have provided him with key insights into translating the intimacy of great stage performances onto film in a way that few other directors have ever managed. Many times in Lumet’s films, actors have risen to levels of personal-best performances. This occurs in part because Lumet understands the difference between how a character feels and how the audience feels about the character. Time and again (for example, in 1964’s The Pawnbroker, in 1988’s Running on Empty, and especially in 1962’s Long Day’s Journey into Night), tension is raised by directing actors in emotionally charged situations to remain subdued. This makes the characters compelling to a degree infrequently experienced by audiences. Lumet understands that, in histrionics, less is more.
Cunningham, Frank R. Sidney Lumet: Film and Literary Vision. 2d ed. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. This expanded edition of the 1991 publication includes new discussions of Murder on the Orient Express, The Appointment (1969), A Stranger Among Us, and other films. The chapters “A Cinema of Conscience” and “The Loner and the Struggle for Moral Culpability” are especially useful. Lumet, Sidney. Making Movies. New York: Knopf, 1995. Called one of the most insightful books into filmmaking by critic Roger Ebert, this also shows Lumet’s vision of the world and art that drives him to direct films. See also: Judd Apatow; George Cukor; Stanley Donen; Kirk Douglas; Judd Hirsch; Harvey Keitel; Stanley Kramer; Paul Newman; Mike Nichols; Sydney Pollack; Steven Spielberg; Billy Wilder.
M Lorin Maazel French-born conductor Maazel was a child prodigy in the United States who matured into a musical success in Europe. He is noted for his immense skill and precision as a conductor, the combination of innate ability and a lifetime of practice. Born: March 6, 1930; Neuilly-sur-Seine, France Also known as: “Little Lorin”; Lorin Varencove Maazel (full name) Area of achievement: Music Early Life Lorin Maazel (LOH-rihn MAH-zehl) was born March 6, 1930, to Jewish American parents Lincoln and Marie Maazel. Both were studying music in Neuilly, a suburb of Paris, France, when their son was born. Music ran in the family: Lincoln was a singer and an actor (who appeared in the George Romero film Martin in 1977); Marie was an experienced pianist; Lorin Maazel’s paternal grandfather Isaac had performed for years as the first violinist with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York; Maazel’s uncle, Marvin, had been a piano prodigy. As Maazel recounted in a later interview, he first demonstrated his musical gifts at the age of five, when Lincoln witnessed his son using his hands to keep time with a musical recording. At the age of eight, Maazel made his professional debut, conducting the University of Idaho orchestra in a performance. He was soon dubbed “Little Lorin” and became a sensation in the United States after performing at the New York World’s Fair. By all accounts, he kept time precisely. At age fifteen, he showed his ability as a performer by playing violin with the Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra. In 1941, after a series of popular performances, Maazel was asked by Arturo Toscanini to conduct the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) Symphony. The orchestra’s professional musicians allegedly appeared with lollipops in their mouths at rehearsal to mock Maazel, but he soon impressed the group by quickly detecting the first wrong note. Much later in life, Maazel would find himself conducting the Arturo Toscanini Philharmonic once again. Maazel’s popularity waned as he grew older, and he attended high school in Pittsburgh. He attended the Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh in 1945, where he pursued a broad range of study, encompassing philosophy and mathematics as well as music. In 1948, he quit school to work as a violinist and apprentice conductor in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He remained in the latter job until 1951. Life’s Work After a brief period spent conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Maazel left the United States for Europe, where he believed there were opportunities for a conductor of his talent. Despite the lack of recognition from European audiences unfamiliar with his career as a child prodigy, Maazel began building a new reputation with concerts in Sicily (1953), Naples (1954), and Florence (1955), where the audience rewarded his efforts with long standing ovations. In 1960, Maazel became the first American conductor, and youngest conductor overall, to appear at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany. By 1962, he was the second-most-popular conductor in Europe. In 1962, Maazel toured twelve U.S. cities, receiving praise from critics who regarded him as a virtuoso conductor. His style was noted not only for the precision that had marked his childhood career but also for the depth of emotion and feeling in Maazel’s interpretation of classic pieces. In 1963, Maazel embarked on a tour of the Soviet Union, conducting the Leningrad and Moscow Symphony Orchestras to great popular acclaim. On August 1, 1965, Maazel was appointed chief conductor of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, a post he held until 1971. The job required him to establish a residence in Berlin and live there seven months out of the year. Maazel also began directing the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1965, and he continued to do so for the next decade. He became the associate conductor of the New Philharmonia Orchestra in London in 1970, and later he moved on to direct the Cleveland Orchestra in 1972. The orchestra’s musicians, who preferred another candidate as conductor, almost unanimously opposed Maazel’s appointment, but they were overruled by the managers of the orchestra. Contrary to the negative expectations expressed by the orchestra, Maazel spent an extremely suc759
Magnes, Judah Leon cessful decade directing the musical ensemble. His introduction of modern pieces into the orchestra’s repertoire proved a popular choice with critics and the public. Maazel was appointed conductor emeritus for the Cleveland Symphony in 1982. Maazel took a job as music director with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1986, conducting there for ten years. From 1988 to 1990, he was the music director of the National Orchestra of France. After being disappointed in his ambition to become the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Maazel distanced himself from that organization in 1989. In 2002, he began his tenure as the New York Philharmonic’s music director, where he continued until 2008. In 2004, he returned to the orchestra bearing the name of the man who gave Maazel as a child a chance to prove himself in front of professionals: the Arturo Toscanini Philharmonic. Significance Though his early career was viewed as precocious by the American press, Maazel’s talent was phenomenal from the start. He faced down skeptical musicians throughout his career, drawing critically lauded perfor-
Jewish Americans mances from unfamiliar orchestras with surprising regularity. His prodigious work ethic is matched by his serious temperament, and he brings great energy to his orchestras’ performances. — C. Breault Further Reading Norris, Christopher. “Review: Porgy and Bess.” Tempo 118 (September, 1976). Norris’s review of Porgy and Bess (1935) praises Maazel’s “disciplined freedom,” acclaim typical of critics commenting on Maazel’s tenure with the Cleveland Orchestra. Parker, Craig. “Review: Schuman’s Symphony No. 7.” American Music 6, no. 3 (Autumn, 1988): 352-353. A review of a recording made by Maazel with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, with the performance lavishly praised. Tommasini, Anthony. “Lorin Maazel Celebrates Himself by Conducting His Own Music.” The New York Times, March 3, 2005. Review of a concert that Maazel conducted of music that he composed. See also: Leonard Bernstein; Misha Dichter; Lukas Foss; Itzhak Perlman; André Previn; Isaac Stern.
Judah Leon Magnes Religious leader and educator A rabbi, Magnes embraced the rich diversity of Judaism and strongly supported cultural Zionism. He was a cofounder of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and its first chancellor. Born: July 5, 1877; San Francisco, California Died: October 27, 1948; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Education; social issues; activism Early Life Judah Leon Magnes (JEW-dah LEE-ahn MAG-nehs) was born in San Francisco to David Magnes and Sophie Abrahamson. His parents had met and married in San Francisco, having emigrated to California from Poland and Prussia, respectively. Magnes spent his boyhood in Oakland, California. Hoping to become a rabbi and scholar, he entered Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1894. After ordination in 1900, he attended the University of Heidelberg in Germany, earning a Ph.D. in 1902. He returned to teach at Hebrew Union College for 760
a year. His first rabbinical position began in 1904 at Temple Emanu-El, a Reform synagogue in New York City. While in Germany, he encountered Zionism (the belief that Jews should form a nation in Palestine that would be free of anti-Semitism). He became a Zionist, although his reasons for supporting Zionism differed significantly from those held by many European Zionists. He believed that Zionism should establish a vital Jewish cultural presence in Palestine, but he was less supportive of forming a modern nation-state under Jewish control. Unlike many European Zionists, Magnes believed that one could be a Zionist and a good Jew but never move to Palestine. Life’s Work In New York, Magnes combined Zionism with his mission of drawing attention to the richness of Jewish culture and ritual. From 1905 to 1908, he served as secretary to the Federation of American Zionists, an umbrella organization that brought together different branches of Zionism and Judaism. In 1908, in New York City, he created Kehillah, an organization for American Jews of all
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backgrounds. In Kehillah, Magnes cultivated his argument that Jews can be good citizens of any political nation but should retain their links to the Hebrew and the Yiddish languages and to the cultural and the religious legacies of their ancestors. Although his vibrant speeches, his Zionist activism, and his intellectual leadership made Magnes a major Jewish American leader, his great range of interests was a poor match for serving a particular synagogue. In 1910, he resigned as rabbi of Temple Emanu-El since his eclectic vision of Judaism differed from the congregation’s beliefs. After serving from 1911 to 1912 as rabbi of B’nai Jeshurun, a Conservative synagogue in New York, Magnes again resigned. Supporters hired him to lead the new Society for the Advancement of Judaism, making him a universal spokesperson for the cultural Zionism and the Jewish faith that he loved. For Magnes, World War I (1914-1919) confirmed his belief that political nationalism tended to cause international violence, and he condemned the war. Most American Jews rejected his outspoken pacifism. His popularity in the United States plummeted. When the war ended, Britain had control of Palestine, and Magnes decided to leave the United States and move his family to Jerusalem. Magnes became involved in the creation of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a long-standing Judah Leon Magnes. (Library of Congress) Zionist dream. By 1925, he led the committee that directed the fund-raising and the development of the university. From 1925 to 1935, he was its first chanSignificance cellor. Although Magnes had no experience leading a Opinions differ on whether Magnes was a naïve idealuniversity, he held strong views about the importance of ist or a prophetic human rights advocate. However, most open inquiry and dialogue in a Jewish educational instiagree that he was a complex man with a deep love of Jututional. Magnes firmly argued that the Hebrew Univerdaism. Magnes linked his belief in democracy to his exsity must be a site of vigorous debate and dissent, similar perience of living as an American Jew in a pluralistic soto American universities. ciety. He argued that Jewish values required supporting Throughout his years in Palestine, Magnes’s views on full human and political rights for all Palestinians, but he Zionism often contradicted the beliefs of other Zionists. never articulated a clear political model for reaching this He argued that if Palestine became an independent coungoal. Significantly, his personal example of dissent and try, it must be binational (led by both Arab and Jewish its importance to Jewish ethics influenced the growth of citizens). During World War II (1939-1945), as most Zithe Hebrew University as a site of open debate and intelonists pushed harder than ever for a Jewish-led nation, lectual diversity. Magnes continued to challenge their views. When the — Beth Kraig United Nations split Palestine into two separate nations and war resulted between Jews and Arabs in 1947-1948, Further Reading Magnes exhausted himself in an effort to halt both the Brinner, William M., and Moses Rischin, eds. Like All the partition and the violence that followed. Just before his Nations? The Life and Legacy of Judah L. Magnes. Aldeath, he was vigorously advocating that Jews must aid bany: State University of New York Press, 1987. This the Arab people who were displaced by the war. 761
Mailer, Norman set of essays covers every aspect of Magnes’s life. Especially valuable are chapters comparing Magnes to other American Zionists and evaluating his commitment to a binational Palestine. Goren, Arthur A., ed. Dissenter in Zion: From the Writings of Judah L. Magnes. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982. Arranged chronologically, this collection is enhanced by the editor’s detailed discussions of each phase of Magnes’s life. Kotzin, Daniel P. “An Attempt to Americanize the Yishuv: Judah L. Magnes in Mandatory Palestine.” Israel
Jewish Americans Studies 5, no. 1 (Spring, 2000): 1-23. Clear discussion of why Magnes envisioned Palestine’s future as pluralistic rather than Jewish-dominated. _______. “Transporting the American Peace Movement to British Palestine: Judah L. Magnes, American Pacifist and Zionist.” Peace & Change 29, nos. 3/4 (July, 2004): 390-418. This article explains the influence of organized American pacifism on Magnes’s Zionist activism in Palestine. See also: Golda Meir; Leon Uris.
Norman Mailer Writer, novelist, and journalist A preeminent novelist of the post-World War II generation, Mailer had a significant impact on the development of journalism and creative nonfiction. Born: January 31, 1923; Long Branch, New Jersey Died: November 10, 2007; New York, New York Also known as: Norman Kingsley Mailer (full name) Areas of achievement: Journalism; literature Early Life Although born in Long Branch, New Jersey, where his mother’s family owned a seashore resort business, Norman Mailer (MAY-lur) spent his early formative years in Brooklyn, New York. In Advertisements for Myself (1959) he describes himself as a “nice Jewish boy” and a physical coward who gradually willed himself to be an aggressive and ambitious literary figure, modeling himself after the macho style of Ernest Hemingway. Mailer’s first love, however, was technology. He loved to build model airplanes, and though as an undergraduate at Harvard he developed a strong interest in becoming a writer, he majored in aeronautical engineering—in part to appease his parents, who worried that he would not be able to make a living by his pen. Nevertheless, Mailer proved to be a precocious writer, producing notable short stories before he graduated from college. After service in the military in World War II, he published a critically acclaimed and best-selling novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948). Married to Beatrice Silverman by the time his war novel made him famous, Mailer at the age of twenty-five felt success had come too early—years before he was able to develop a style that was not merely an imitation of 762
the writers he admired: Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James T. Farrell, and John Dos Passos. Although Mailer would develop into a writer who would repudiate the simplistic social realism of his first
Norman Mailer. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Jewish Americans published novel, his early work reflects a lifelong belief that the novelist must examine society in all its ramifications. He resisted, for example, the label Jewish novelist because he believed it stereotyped him. He rarely wrote at any length about his childhood, family, or neighborhood, preferring instead to treat Jewish characters in The Naked and the Dead, for example, as just one strain in a diverse America. While Mailer never denied or was ashamed of his Jewish heritage, both his early and later works reveal a writer who wants to transcend his origins—often in a conspicuous and flamboyant way, as he does in The Gospel According to the Son (1997), a novel written from Jesus’ point of view.
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Conflating History and the Novel The Armies of the Night (1968) epitomizes Norman Mailer’s blend of fiction and nonfiction, and it is a work that demonstrates the strengths and the limitations of both genres. Mailer provides an inside look at how the March on the Pentagon was organized and executed. He also offers insightful portraits of fellow writers Robert Lowell and Paul Goodman as well as a candid exposé of his own excessive behavior. In his raucous encounter with an anti-Semite, Mailer makes a rare use of his Jewish sensibility, turning the scene not into an examination of how he regards his ethnic background but rather into a sudden and visceral reaction to someone who wants to deny his humanity as a Jew. In the first part of The Armies of the Night, entitled “The Novel as History,” Mailer demonstrates how a novelist attempts to take possession of events and to filter them through his own sensibility. Then the journalist/historian in Mailer reverses course in the second part, “History as Novel,” with a sobering account of the March on the Pentagon as seen by other witnesses and as the press reported it. This second part balances the subjectivity of the first part, but it also reveals that the objective, historical account has its own limitations, since the historian and journalist are observers rather than participants and cannot render the first-person feel for events and personalities that distinguishes “The Novel as History.”
Life’s Work After the resounding success of The Naked and the Dead, Mailer seemed to flounder. He believed he had no original voice and that so far he had only imitated the styles of his illustrious predecessors. His second novel, Barbary Shore (1951), received mixed to negative reviews from critics who found his allegory about the Cold War (set in a Brooklyn rooming house) rather murky. Mailer’s third novel, The Deer Park (1955), received better reviews, but critics suggested that he still had not fulfilled the promise of his first novel. Set in Hollywood and its environs, The Deer Park explored the world of producers, stars, and directors in the climate of the blacklist era—a period when anyone associated with Communists or leftist causes could lose a lucrative career because of accusations of un-American (disloyal or treasonous) activities. In this novel Mailer presented, although he did not emphasize, the Jewish background of certain Hollywood moguls. Other novels, such as An American Dream (1965) and Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), received mixed reviews, with some critics praising Mailer’s innovative style and others deploring his elevation of a murdererhero in An American Dream, a work that came close to Mailer’s own traumatic history. He divorced his first wife and stabbed his second wife, Adele, at a party meant to announce his quixotic campaign for mayor of New York City. The penknife inflicted a serious wound but did not kill her, and Mailer, after more than two weeks in Bellvue Hospital, received a suspended sentence for an assault
charge. The marriage to Adele ended not long after the stabbing, and Mailer, after several stormy marriages that ended in divorce, married Norris Church, by whom he had a son, one of eight children by his other marriages. Mailer and Church sometimes worked together on writing projects. Mailer forged a new kind of genre in The Armies of the Night (1968)—what he called a “nonfiction novel”—in which he appeared as “Mailer,” a shrewd observer of the March on the Pentagon (one of the major protests against the Vietnam War) as well as a drunken buffoon. Suddenly, Mailer emerged as a writer at the full height of his powers, treating himself like a full-fledged fictional character. This work is also remarkable for a scene in which Mailer allows his Jewish identity full play—particularly in a jail scene when he confronts a rabid neo-Nazi who calls Mailer names and excites Mailer’s own rage against anti-Semites. This new persona of Mailer as public personality, fictional character, and writer-hero of his own prose resulted in a succession of superb reportorial books: Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1969), a probing account of the Democratic and Republican conventions; Of a Fire on the Moon (1971), an account of the Apollo mission to the moon; and The Fight (1975), in which Mailer covered the 763
Mailer, Norman legendary Muhammad Ali-George Foreman heavyweight title match in Zaire. Surprisingly, however, his crowning achievement— The Executioner’s Song (1979)—expunged his distinctive voice from the narrative. Instead of brooding over the fate of Gary Gilmore, who insisted he should be executed for the brutal murder of a gas station attendant, Mailer allowed the story to tell itself through the voices of Gilmore, his beloved Nicole, other family members, and those who came into contact with a very troubled Gilmore. The themes of this epic work that spans the American continent in two parts—“Western” and “Eastern” voices—echoed Mailer’s perpetual concern with violence, heroism, and male identity. Although Mailer produced notable books after The Executioner’s Song, especially Harlot’s Ghost (1991), a mammoth novel about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery (1995), a study of Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of John F. Kennedy; and The Castle in the Forest (2007), a novel dealing with the early years of Adolf Hitler, none of these works quite achieved the brilliance of his books in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Significance No survey of postwar American fiction and journalism would be complete without a discussion of Mailer’s work. He brought a novelist’s sensitivity to the reporting of public events, beginning with his coverage of the 1960 Democratic convention that nominated John F. Kennedy. Mailer concentrated on Kennedy’s style as much as on his policies, suggesting the presidential candidate had the charisma of a great box-office actor. Such comments presaged the shift in American politics to matters of image, of how a candidate presented himself for office, especially on television, which had begun to dominate the way political campaigns were reported. As a novelist Mailer broke ground in the 1950’s and 1960’s with work that challenged censorship and conventional notions of what constitutes a hero or protagonist. Although Mailer’s effort to publish explicit sex
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Jewish Americans scenes in The Deer Park met fierce publisher resistance, he persevered in later novels such as the scatological Why Are We in Vietnam?, which built on the work of novelists such as William S. Burroughs in Naked Lunch (1959) and anticipated other provocatively sexual novels like Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint (1969). —Carl Rollyson Further Reading Bloom, Harold, ed. Norman Mailer. New York: Chelsea House, 2003. Part of this publisher’s “critical views” series, the book contains an insightful introduction by Bloom as well as a representative sampling of the best critical essays on Mailer’s work. Dearborn, Mary. Mailer: A Biography. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. A sound and sensitive book that identifies Mailer’s main strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Contains more about Mailer’s personal life than other biographies. Manso, Peter. Norman Mailer: His Life and Times. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. An oral biography that includes valuable interviews with Mailer’s family, friends, and associates. Mills, Hilary. Mailer: A Biography. New York: Random House, 1982. An early biography of Mailer and still a solid factual account of his career up to the late 1980’s. Mills dutifully describes the reception of Mailer’s work but contributes little in terms of literary analysis. Rollyson, Carl. Norman Mailer: The Last Romantic. New York: iUniverse, 2008. A thorough revision of Rollyson’s 1991 biography, bringing the story of Mailer’s life and career up to date. More than the other biographies of Mailer, this one includes significant passages of literary criticism that link the life and the work. See also: Nelson Algren; Saul Bellow; Paddy Chayefsky; Jonathan Safran Foer; Joseph Heller; Bernard Malamud.
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Bernard Malamud Writer Affirming the value of suffering in his fiction, Malamud describes ordinary people who struggle with difficult circumstances and ultimately discover their moral selves. Born: April 26, 1914; Brooklyn, New York Died: March 18, 1986; New York, New York Also known as: Peter Lumm (pseudonym) Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Bernard Malamud (bur-NARD MAL-ah-mood) grew up in a home of meager circumstances. His father, Max, a Russian Jewish immigrant, ran a small grocery store in Brooklyn. His mother, Bertha, also a Russian Jewish immigrant, suffered from schizophrenia and died in an institution when Malamud was in high school. His younger brother, Eugene, inherited this mental illness. Malamud’s family life was a source of motivation and inspiration for his work. Going to school, Malamud encountered a compelling and prosperous world, one that contrasted markedly with the simple, humble, limited grocery store. Delighted with books, art, and music, he thrived, attending two of the best public schools in New York City. Public School 181, which was out of his district, required his investment of travel time and money. Educationally renowned, Erasmus High School offered Greek as well as Latin. At both schools, Malamud met Jewish classmates of the upper middle class and became popular with them, their parents, and his teachers. He loved films and entertained his friends, at first by summarizing and elaborating on their plots and then by inventing his own stories. At Erasmus High School, telling everyone he would be a famous writer, he participated in theater, published literary editions of the school newspaper, and won an essay competition sponsored by Scholastic Publishing Company. Though he was busy away from home, his family life made an indelible impression on him. His works are replete with images of his father in the store, a place that would become the metaphoric monastic cell for spiritual growth. Malamud graduated from City College in Manhattan in 1936. Soon he earned a master’s degree in English from Columbia University. Between graduation and marriage, he worked various jobs, including clerking, taking the census, and teaching night school. In each position he
carved out time to write and submit works for publication. In 1945, he married Italian Catholic Ann DeChiara and began a family. Their lives were improved when in 1949 he was engaged to teach freshman writing at Oregon State College, in Corvallis, Oregon, a position that provided money, time for regular writing and material for another of his novels. Life’s Work After moving to Oregon, Malamud began The Natural (1952). He would then publish short stories every year and a new novel about every three years for the rest of his life. Drawing on stories from the Bible, myths and legends, and utilizing irony, paradox, satire, allegories, fables, parables, and symbol, Malamud describes his characters’ crucial decisions and implies their consequences. Constructing the plot of The Natural around the heroics of the Knights of the Round Table, Malamud creates a protagonist, baseball player Roy Dobbs, who, with
Bernard Malamud. (©Jerry Bauer)
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The Dignity and Endurance of Jewish Suffering Bernard Malamud’s art presents the redemptive nature of suffering and the beauty of the ordinary life. Like his characters, Malamud knew struggle. Growing up in poverty, he longed to infuse art into life and meaning into suffering. Through diligent effort, first to move beyond his circumstances and then to develop his art, he learned to uncover meaning and significance in the mundane suffering of everyday people. Through patient and careful revision, he recast words and images, enabling them to evoke a character’s inner strength and discerning intelligence. While Malamud’s characters function dramatically to create suspense, move plot, and demonstrate change, they also define moral values. He peoples his fiction with characters who through self-analysis and reflection come to recognize the simple truths of their lives. This truth, articulated by Morris Bober in The Assistant (1957) when challenged by Frank Alpine, expresses his belief and captures the understanding arrived at by Malamud’s Jews. In words he fears cannot do justice to his feeling, Bober tells Alpine, “I suffer for you. . . . You suffer for me.” In his simple life and character, the emblematic Morris defines what it means to be human and embodies the beauty of goodness.
his handcrafted bat, Wonder Boy, is tested. Choosing to throw a crucial game and rejecting the woman who offers redemptive love, Dobbs fails the test. In his next novel, The Assistant (1957), Malamud creates a parable, drawing on personal experiences and elucidating the growth-producing potential of suffering. Frank Alpine, a drifter from the West, who comes to a Brooklyn grocery store, robs a Jew, Morris Bober. Alpine then finds in the person of the grocer a father figure who demonstrates and explains the ways suffering and poverty can direct the mind to what is important. In an implicit condemnation of materialism, this story, whose model character considers himself unfavorably judged by society, presents an emblem of a moral person who does what is right and influences others. His words and example provoke the self-centered Alpine to change his goals and values. In this novel, Malamud perfected his style and demonstrated his ability to depict a moment of revelation. Malamud won the Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the Daroff Memorial Fiction Award of the Jewish Book Council of America for The Assistant in 1958. In 1959, he won the National Book Award for his stories collected in The Magic Barrel. 766
Jewish Americans A New Life (1961) followed The Assistant. Here an English teacher at a small Western college hopes to forget his sad past and start anew, taking advantage, he thinks, of new opportunities in the West. While the change he envisions does not take place, he accepts what is offered; in so doing, he effects a positive, beneficial transformation of his life. The Fixer (1966) established Malamud’s reputation. The novel enlarges on the theme of personal salvation achieved through suffering, in this case the imprisonment of Russian Jew Yakov Bok, who spends two and a half years in prison when unjustly accused of murdering a Gentile. In his isolation and humiliation, Bok accesses hidden strength and dignity and develops compassion for all other people as well, recasting himself, like Bober, as a Christlike figure. Malamud won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for this novel in 1967, becoming affluent when it was made into a film. He continued his teaching career at Bennington College in Vermont. In Dubin’s Lives (1979) Malamud shows how an aging biographer renews and transforms his life, infusing it with fresh love and moral energy. Malamud explored different compelling themes in other stories and novels, including Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition (1969), The Tenants (1971), God’s Grace (1982). In 1983 he won the gold medal for fiction from the American Academy and Institute for Arts and Sciences. He died of heart disease in 1986. Significance Malamud is today recognized as one of the great Jewish American writers of the twentieth century and one of America’s moral writers of the first order. Though he would not have identified himself as a Jewish American writer, he did assert that all people are Jews. For him the Jew represented the struggling human, a person working within a variety of limitations, trying to overcome physical and/or metaphorical imprisonment. His stories detail, often with humor and pathos, the many ways a person’s direction comes to be understood. Though his characters are often Jews, or representative Jews, they move toward a Christian redemption and express the transformation of an ordinary life. Malamud asserted that a story should include a revelation, and in his fiction, characters earn a revelation, one that enables them to overcome their circumstances. Through plot and
Jewish Americans story, dialogue and image, he creates characters and situations that explicate human life and present its surprising beauty. —Bernadette Flynn Low Further Reading Abramson, Edward. Bernard Malamud Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1993. A close analysis of themes and style of Malamud’s novels and stories. Astro, Richard, and Jackson J. Benson, eds. The Fiction of Bernard Malamud. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1977. Critical essays on fiction and heroes in the works of Malamud, including a bibliographic checklist. Davis, Philip. Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life. Oxford,
Mamet, David England: Oxford University Press, 2007. Draws on personal papers, interviews, and works to create a comprehensive study of the man and his accomplishment. Field, Leslie A., and Joyce W. Field, eds. Bernard Malamud: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1975. A collection of essays exploring various themes in Malamud’s works. Smith, Janna Malamud. My Father Is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Presents an intimate picture of Malamud based on private papers and his daughter’s memories. See also: Sholom Aleichem; Paul Auster; Saul Bellow; E. L. Doctorow; Howard Fast; Joseph Heller; Norman Mailer; Philip Roth; Leon Uris.
David Mamet Playwright Mamet has been a dominant influence in theater for more than thirty years. His theories of writing, acting, and directing all ultimately sprang from his response to the disintegration of his Jewish faith, and also to his reengagement with the faith he had lost.
drama. After two years there, he took off his junior year to attend the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York, studying Sanford Meisner’s approach to acting. After returning to Goddard the following year, he began to write plays and was awarded his bachelor’s degree in 1969.
Born: November 30, 1947; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: David Alan Mamet (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life David Mamet (MAM-eht) was born in a Jewish community on Chicago’s South Side. His parents, Bernard Morris Mamet, a labor lawyer, and Lenore June Silver, a teacher, divorced when David Mamet was ten years old. He and his younger sister, Lynn, went to live with their mother in Olympia Fields. His mother married an former colleague of Mamet’s father, and in 1958 Mamet, who disagreed sharply with his stepfather, moved in with his father on Lake Shore Drive in downtown Chicago. There, Mamet attended Yiddish theater and began working at the Hull House Theater, watching productions and reading plays in a local bookshop. Mamet worked at Second City, doing theater sketches and improvisations, and also attended Francis W. Parker School, where he participated in theater activities. Hoping to get into acting, Mamet enrolled in Goddard College in Vermont to study literature and
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On the strength of his first play, Camel, written in 1962 while he was at Goddard, Mamet was hired to teach acting at Marlboro College in Vermont. While there, in 1970, he wrote Lakeboat, for his students to perform. The following year he was back at Goddard, teaching drama and forming the St. Nicholas Company in 1973, an ensemble acting group composed of his students. Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago, a collection of vignettes about two sets of couples in Chicago, was performed in 1974. In 1977, Mamet’s American Buffalo won him an Obie Award and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for the best American play in 1977. American Buffalo marked Mamet’s move from an episodic structure to a play in two acts that concerns three grifters who plan to rob a coin collector. Mamet moved to New York and continued writing plays, including children’s plays, and received a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts. He won the Outer Critics Circle Award and another Obie Award for Edmond (1975), a bleak play about a white man who destroys himself with his hatred of African Americans and homosexuals. He followed it up with his Pulitzer Prizewinning play, Glengarry Glen Ross (1983), an ensemble play focusing on three real-estate salesmen struggling to survive.
Mamet’s Language One of the more controversial aspects of David Mamet’s work is his use of language—both in his own speech and in the dialogue of his characters. Mamet’s interest in words originated at home with his father’s demands that he choose the exact word with which to express himself. Through word games at dinner, Mamet came to distrust words—a conviction reflected later in his characters, whose seemingly simple exchanges cloak internal intensity and emotion stressing the conflicting impulses in the individual. Mamet’s dialogue, designated “Mamet speak,” adapts the speech patterns of the Chicago street, including slang, obscenities, repetitions, explosiveness, and raw and broken phrases, and rejects sophisticated and complex words as deceptive and untrustworthy. He sees his short, blunt statements as conveying more than is said, and he substitutes the reality of action for talking. Mamet enjoys the secret language or code words of specialized groups, for example, the language of the confidence men, whom he sees as survivors or betrayers in a deceptive world. Mamet’s use of the con in several of his plays tells the viewers, through the characters’ actions, that the jargon used in the con signifies betrayal and the absence of ethics.
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Life’s Work With the success of Glengarry Glen Ross, Mamet established himself as a leading American dramatist. He began to pursue possibilities in writing screenplays, an endeavor he had begun in 1981, with the screenplay for Bob Rafelson’s film, The Postman Always Rings Twice. He then penned the script for The Verdict (1982), directed by Sidney Lumet. Mamet’s screenplay for Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1985) underwent a succession of rewrites, but the film was successful, in no small part because of Mamet’s cynical characterization and dialogue. He had already begun writing House of Games (1987), the first film he was to direct, and it reflected his preoccupation with deception and betrayal. Mamet transferred his austere production code of withholding information and exposition from stage to screen. Mamet’s second film, Things Change (1988), explores similar themes of mistaken identity and of false information in the form of a Mafia satire. During the same year, Mamet finished writing Speed-the-Plow (1988), a cynical dissection of the treacherous world of Hollywood he had discovered while working there. In 1992, Mamet’s play, Hoffa, the account of the union leader who disappeared, was produced, and his play, Oleanna, concerning a student who accused her professor of rape, appeared and was loudly criticized for his demeaning depiction of women. Extremely controversial, the play was marred by fights among audience members during its performance. Criticism of the film made in 1994 resulted from Mamet’s method of direction wherein the use of limited dialogue and action seemed unsuccessful. Continuing his films about cons, Mamet, in 1997, completed the screenplay of The Spanish Prisoner, which proved to be his second highest grossing film at $10.2 million. Mamet’s characteristic themes of delusion, deception, and the con pervade the film’s corporate environment and spur appropriate character behavior of distrust and betrayal. Wag the Dog (1997), a screenplay cowritten by Mamet, was enormously popular during the Clinton administration scandal. Mamet’s other films in the late 1990’s included The Winslow Boy (1999); The Heist (2001), which grossed $23.5 million; and State and Main (2000). Additionally, Mamet has written five novels, children’s books, eleven books of essays, including those on drama, directing films, and life in Vermont, where he lived for a number of years. He has
Jewish Americans written episodes for television programs, Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law, and has worked on The Unit, a popular television series. In the late 1980’s, Mamet felt the need to renew his Judaism. He began to study Hebrew, to take an active role in his synagogue, and to establish a Jewish life. Divorced from Lindsay Crouse, he married Rebecca Pidgeon, who converted to Judaism. The intensity of his spiritual and intellectual values soon was expressed in his art. While his essays about his early life in Chicago and his play The Disappearance of the Jews, produced in 1983, dealt with Jewish identity, his new works, beginning with the film, Homicide (1991), reflected a newly found aggressive “tough Jew” attitude. Other works confronting Jewish issues included The Cryptogram (1994), concerning his childhood and his family’s attempt at assimilation; The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the real-life lynching of Leo Frank, a Jew, in Atlanta, Georgia; and The Old Neighborhood (1997), a dramatization of his reinvolvement with his Jewish past. Romance (2005), a courtroom satirical comedy laced with racial epithets and obscenities, was followed by The Wicked Son (2006), Mamet’s tough-Jew response to anti-Semitism. Significance The diverse achievements of Mamet have expanded into almost every aspect of American culture. An emotionally abused child of a Jewish lawyer who associated his own victimization with that of individuals preying on others in search of the American dream, Mamet recognized the ruthless, predatory behavior of people who practice deceit through manipulation of language. Decrying the absence of honesty and of credibility throughout America’s institutions, Mamet wrote, produced, and directed powerful plays and films, depicting moral cor-
Man Ray ruption in business, entertainment, and educational systems. Mamet’s innovations in drama, including Mamet speak (interrupted and overlapped edgy dialogue), are powerful representations of unethical and immoral behavior running rampant through business enterprises. The fact that Mamet has saturated his works with characters who succumb to self-interest and refuse to live honestly entitles him to be studied and remembered. —Mary Hurd Further Reading Callens, Johan, ed. Crossings: David Mamet’s Work in Different Genres and Media. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. Scholarly discussions of Mamet’s ventures into film and television; also measures his plays against the films. Mamet, David. Make-Believe Town: Essays and Remembrances. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1997. These twentyfour essays concerning drama, poker, and contemporary anti-Semitism, among other topics, provide interesting examples of Mamet’s preoccupations and of his writing. Nadel, Ira. David Mamet: A Life in the Theatre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Detailed and insightful biography of Mamet that delves into his family life, marriages and children, his Jewishness, and his writing. Price, Steven. The Plays, Screenplays, and Films of David Mamet: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Collection of significant critical material, featuring controversies about and assessments of Mamet’s body of work. See also: Paddy Chayefsky; Ben Hecht; Lillian Hellman; Tony Kushner; Sidney Lumet; Neil Simon.
Man Ray Photographer and artist Man Ray was the only American artist to become a leader in the international Dada and surrealist movements, producing important works in photography, painting, film, assemblage, and writing. Born: August 27, 1890; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Died: November 18, 1976; Paris, France Also known as: Emanuel Rabinovitch; Emmanuel Radnitzky (birth name) Areas of achievement: Photography; art
Early Life Man Ray was born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. His father, Melach (later known as Max), and his mother, Manya (Minnie), worked in the garment industry and opened a home-based tailoring shop after their move to Brooklyn in 1897. The eldest of four children, Man Ray assisted with the family business. A Bar Mitzvah portrait of the artist dates to 1903. It is believed that the name Man Ray evolved from an abbreviation of his nickname 769
Man Ray Manny and the surname Ray, which was adopted by his family because of anti-Semitism. As seen in signatures on his work, the artist was using Man Ray as early as 1911. He had little formal training. He studied drafting in high school and was offered a scholarship to study architecture. Nevertheless, he chose to attend art classes at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York. He had more training when he worked as a draftsman and a graphic designer. In 1912, he enrolled at the Ferrer Center, also known as the Modern School, where he studied under the painters Robert Henri and George Bellows. The following year he moved to an artists’ colony in Ridgefield, New Jersey. Man Ray developed an early interest in avant-garde art. He frequently visited Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery, 291, and, like many of his contemporaries, he was influenced by the work of European modernists at the Armory Show. While at Ridgefield, Man Ray came into contact with others who shared his literary and artistic interests. He met Belgian poet Adon Lacroix, with whom he had a brief marriage beginning in 1914. He also encountered French artist Marcel Duchamp, who became a lifelong friend.
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Jewish Americans Life’s Work In 1915, Man Ray returned to New York, where he and Duchamp became recognized leaders of the avant-garde. Together they attended art collector Walter Arensberg’s salons. In 1920, Man Ray and Duchamp became founding members of the Société Anonyme, America’s first museum for contemporary art. Promoters of the radical Dada group, Man Ray and Duchamp collaborated in 1921 to chronicle the movement. Man Ray’s involvement with avant-garde circles encouraged experimentation with a variety of media. Although the artist disassociated himself from his background, references to his childhood—irons, textiles, dress forms, and sewing equipment—were recurring images in his work. This is evident in The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows (1916), a painting in which abstract tailor’s patterns and irons appear in silhouette. Using airbrush techniques for soft-toned works he called aerographs, he created La Volière (1919; Aviary or Brothel), depicting a wire dress form. About this time he also produced wrapped constructions such as L’Énigme d’Isidore Ducasse (1920; The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse), where he concealed a sewing machine and an umbrella with fabric and string. In 1921, he left for Paris, the city that would become his home for the next two decades. He was embraced in Dada and later surrealist circles, which included artists and literary figures such as Duchamp, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, and André Breton. Like Duchamp, Man Ray created “readymades”—constructions from altered found objects. His famous Cadeau (1921; Gift), an iron with a menacing row of fourteen tacks, was featured in his first solo show in Paris. Object to Be Destroyed (1923; later editions were titled Objet indestructible or Indestructible Object), consisted of a metronome with a photo of an eye attached to the pendulum. Even before his arrival in Paris, Man Ray had experimented with the expressive potential of photography. In 1922, he created his first Rayographs, photograms made by placing objects directly onto photosensitive paper. Later in the decade he experimented with print solarization, where introduction of light during the development process produced otherworldly outlines of forms. In Le Violon d’Ingres (1924; The Violin of Ingres), he photographically superimposed sound holes onto an image of his nude model’s back, evoking the likeness of a musical instrument. He continually manipulated and juxtaposed familiar objects to dislocate them from their everyday settings. This denaturalization of reality led to his prominence
Jewish Americans among surrealists. His work was exhibited in Paris at the first surrealist exhibitions in 1925 and 1926. Between 1923 and 1929 Man Ray also made avant-garde films. Le Retour à la raison (1923; The Return to Reason) used sequences of his cameraless photographic images. Innovative works such as Emak Bakia (1926; Leave Me Alone), L’Étoile de mer (1928, Starfish), and Les Mystères du château de dé (1929, Mysteries of the Château of Dice) became icons of early experimental cinema. In the early 1920’s, he supported himself with portrait and fashion photography. He photographed personalities such as Gertrude Stein, Marcel Proust, Duchamp, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Cocteau. He also became a leading fashion photographer for publications such as Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. He took an imaginative approach, bringing avant-garde art into the mainstream of the fashion world. Paris Vogue published his iconic Noire et blanche (1926, Black and White), in which he juxtaposed an African mask with a woman’s head. For Harper’s Bazaar in 1936 he posed a model below the backdrop of his most famous painting, À l’heure de l’observatoire—Les Amoureux (c. 1934; Observatory Time—The Lovers,), depicting bright red lips floating in the sky. Forced to flee Paris in 1940 because of the pending Nazi invasion, he spent the war years in Los Angeles. During this time, he was prolific, creating and exhibiting paintings and assemblages. In 1946, he married dancer and model Juliet Browner; in 1951, they returned to Paris, where he remained for the rest of his life. Significance An innovative and influential artist, Man Ray was widely acclaimed. Although he was versatile in many media, he is most recognized for his groundbreaking photography. His innovations with Rayographs and solarization, films, fashion photos, and portraits made him a significant figure in avant-garde art circles and in the celebrity world. Continually challenging boundaries, he revolutionized the relatively new medium of photography into an expressive art form. Photographers who studied with him included Berenice Abbott, Lee Miller, Curtis Moffat, Jacques-André Boiffard, and Bill Brandt. An American expatriate who spent most of his adult
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Rayographs Among Man Ray’s achievements was his development of the Rayograph, a photogram in which an image is made by placing an object directly onto photosensitive material and exposing it to light. This cameraless technique actually dates to the early years of photography. In the 1830’s, William Henry Fox Talbot created “photogenic drawings” by positioning plants on sensitized paper and setting them in sunlight. In the following decade, this method was used by Anna Atkins for images called cyanotypes. Man Ray discovered this process by accident. While in the darkroom he placed objects onto photographic paper and mistakenly exposed them. He noticed that reverse images began to form. With further experimentation he realized that he could control the exposure and manipulate everyday objects to create unexpected and enigmatic imagery. Jean Cocteau compared the procedure to painting with light. Although Man Ray was not the first to discover this process, he gave it a new name and used it in an innovative, expressive way. His Rayographs appeared in Vanity Fair in 1922. Others were published that same year in Les Champs délicieux (1922; Fields of Delight). Rayographs contributed to Man Ray’s reputation as surrealism’s eminent photographer.
life in Paris, Man Ray distanced himself from his early life. His autobiography Self Portrait (1963) altered or omitted most references to his childhood and background. Consciously cultivating ambiguity, he defined himself by his self-constructed Dadaist and surrealist artistic persona. Ironically, his life was a paradox of simultaneously pursuing personal obscurity and artistic recognition. — Cassandra Lee Tellier Further Reading Baigell, Matthew. Jewish Art in America. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. Discusses Jewish American artists and the importance of their work in the history of art. Examines various responses to religious and ethnic heritage. Grossman, Wendy. Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Catalog for exhibition organized by International Arts and Artists, Washington, D.C. Discusses Man Ray’s engagement with African art and the role photographs played in shaping perceptions of these objects. Klein, Mason. Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. Pub771
Manilow, Barry lished in conjunction with exhibition organized by the Jewish Museum. Considers how the artist’s life and career were shaped by his Jewish immigrant experience and his lifelong evasion of his past. Mundy, Jennifer, ed. Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia. London: Tate Museum, 2008. Catalog of exhibition at the
Jewish Americans Tate Modern. Examines the influence of these seminal figures on the development of avant-garde art. See also: Judy Chicago; Jim Dine; Helen Frankenthaler; Lee Krasner; Louise Nevelson; Larry Rivers; Mark Rothko.
Barry Manilow Singer, musician, songwriter, and entertainer Manilow’s music, which he writes, plays, and sings, is acclaimed worldwide. A consummate performer, Manilow has been popular onstage since the 1970’s. Born: June 17, 1946; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Barry Alan Pincus (birth name) Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment
agency failed, Manilow started working in the mail room at the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). There he made contacts and started playing piano at the CBS recording studios. Manilow developed a reputation as a pianist and began creating arrangements for singers. He and a friend, Marty Panzer, began writing songs. At that point Manilow decided against pursuing a career in advertising and enrolled in the New York College of Music; he would later take evening courses in orchestration at The Juilliard School. Focused on a career in music, Manilow seized any opportunities to come his way. He met Bro Herrod, a director at CBS who was reviving an old melodrama, The Drunkard (1934). Herrod hired Manilow to play piano for the rehearsals; however, Manilow wrote additional songs, turning The Drunkard into a musical. He also started playing piano with a jazz trio and began coaching singers. One of those singers was Jeanne Lucas. She and Manilow created an act, and when Lucas was offered a
Early Life Barry Manilow (MAN-ih-loh) is the only child of Harold Kelliher, a truck driver, and Edna Manilow, a secretary. Her parents refused consent for the marriage until Kelliher legally changed his name to Pincus, his paternal grandmother’s maiden name. However, Manilow’s name was changed legally before his Bar Mitzvah. His parents divorced when Manilow was a baby, and he grew up living with his mother and her parents, who had emigrated from Russia. As a child, Manilow liked to sing along with the songs on radio, and at age seven he started accordion lessons. When his mother remarried, her husband, William E. Murphy, introduced Manilow to jazz music. According to Manilow, jazz “Mandy” sounded silly on the accordion. He easily learned to play a neighbor’s piano and convinced his “Mandy” was a song Barry Manilow did not want to record. It mother to purchase an eight-hundred-dollar was written by others: Scott English wrote the lyrics, and Richard Wurlitzer. Playing that piano was, according to Kerr wrote the music. Originally, the song was about a dog named Brandy. “Brandy” had been a hit in Great Britain, and Clive Davis, Manilow, the beginning of his life. president of Arista Records, insisted that the song would work for Encouraged by his mother, he became profiManilow in attracting a young audience. Manilow did not like the cient at the piano and began creating his own arupbeat tempo; he slowed it down and changed the song to a ballad. rangements. During his sophomore year in high “Mandy,” with its new name, was included on Manilow’s second school, he organized a band, and music became album, Barry Manilow II (1974). Much to Manilow’s amazement, his passion. During high school, he met Susan when he sang “Mandy” on tour, the audience loved it. When the Deisler; they married in 1964. The marriage song began to be played heavily on the radio, listeners who had was annulled a year later. Following graduation never heard of Manilow suddenly discovered him. By December in 1961, Manilow determined music was not a of 1974, it was heading up the charts, and by the first week of 1975, career option and decided on advertising. He “Mandy” was the number-one record in the country “Mandy” got a job at an advertising agency and enrolled made Manilow a star. in evening classes at City College. When the ad 772
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job singing at the Holiday Inn in Richmond, Illinois, Manilow left his job at CBS to take a chance on a career in music. After two days, they were fired. Back in New York, Manilow eked out a living playing piano for various singers. His skill at sight reading and his ability to arrange music made him a popular choice. Various jobs, including playing piano in Chicago and a gig with Lucas at the Downstairs at the Upstairs nightclub, kept him busy. During the day, Manilow was the musical director for the WCBS-TV series Callback. He also arranged music for Ed Sullivan Productions. To earn money Manilow began writing jingles for commercials; some became classics, such as the State Farm commercial and his catchy Band-Aid advertisement. Life’s Work Late in 1970, Manilow was hired to play piano for an auditioning singer at the Continental Baths, an openly gay Turkish bath. There he met singer Bette Midler, who was at the beginning of her career. Although initially engaged as a rehearsal pianist, Manilow became her accompanist, arranger, and music director, beginning an association that lasted three years. Her sold-out concert in Carnegie Hall in 1972 was Manilow’s first chance to conduct an orchestra hired to play his own arrangements. He also coproduced an album that won a Grammy Award for Midler as best new artist. In October, 1972, Manilow sang three of his songs Barry Manilow. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) on a demonstration tape. Irv Beigel, president of Bell Records, heard the tape and offered Manilow a singwrote music, and had a succession of top-ten singles, ining contract. To promote his first album Manilow toured cluding the upbeat “It’s a Miracle,” “I Write the Songs,” with Midler. Never sure of himself as a performer, Mani“Looks Like We Made It,” and “Even Now.” He put tolow began to develop a stage presence and received his gether a television special that earned an Emmy Award in first standing ovation for “Could It Be Magic” at Red 1977. That year he also won a Tony Special Award for his Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. Although Manilow’s sold-out concert Barry Manilow on Broadway. In 1978, principal job during Midler’s 1973 tour was music direcfive of his albums were simultaneously best sellers, and tor, his twenty-minute spot became popular with audiin 1979 he won the Grammy Award for “Copacabana.” ences. The next step in his career was a solo tour that By the 1980’s Manilow was popular worldwide. His began in March, 1974, in Boston. Manilow was also 1983 open-air concert at Blenheim Palace in England atworking on his second album for Bell, but changes at tracted more than forty thousand fans. Manilow redisBell resulted in new personnel and a new name: Arista. covered his affinity for jazz and recorded 2:00 AM ParaClive Davis, the new president, was less interested in dise Café (1984). He wrote his autobiography in 1987, Manilow’s “quality” songs and more interested in reachand his critically praised concert series, Barry Manilow ing a young audience and making the Top Forty. Davis at the Gershwin, in 1989 was sold out. In the 1990’s, suggested that Manilow record “Mandy.” It became the Manilow continued to tour, record, and write. Manilow’s number-one record in the country in 1975 and launched musical Copacabana, based on his hit song, premiered in Manilow’s career. Great Britain in 1994. His 1996 appearance on the Arts During the second half of the 1970’s, Manilow toured, 773
Mankiewicz, Joseph L. and Entertainment network’s Barry Manilow: Live by Request attracted an estimated 2.4 million viewers. In the 2000’s, Manilow experienced a resurgence in popularity. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2004, he signed a sixty-million-dollar contract with the Las Vegas Hilton that was renewed through 2007. His album The Great Songs of the Fifties (2006), the first of a series of “decades” albums, sold 156,000 copies its first week, reaching number one on Billboard’s rankings in 2006, his first number-one album since 1977. In 2006, Manilow won another Emmy Award, this time for Barry Manilow: Music and Passion. His next album, The Greatest Songs of the Sixties, released in October, 2006, sold 202,000 copies the first week. Appearances in 2004 and 2006, as guest artist and mentor, on the popular television show American Idol exposed Manilow to an entirely new audience. The tireless singer recorded another successful album, The Great Love Songs of All Time (2010), and opened a show at Las Vegas’s Paris Hotel and Casino in March, 2010. Significance Manilow is a multitalented musician: accomplished pianist, award-winning arranger, popular songwriter, and
Jewish Americans entertainer. Success did not come immediately, and it was different from what Manilow, who never considered himself a singer, envisioned. His career, covering four decades, took off in the 1970’s, and his music and personal style exhibited a staying power that astonished many. Having sold more than fifty million records worldwide, Manilow is a superstar. —Marcia B. Dinneen Further Reading Ali, Lorraine. “Barry Hot.” Newsweek, February 14, 2005: 56-57. Provides background and explains why Manilow continues to be a “master entertainer.” Butler, Patricia. Barry Manilow. London: Omnibus, 2002. A detailed biography with photographs. Updates a previous edition and includes an extensive list of sources. Manilow, Barry. Sweet Life: Adventures on the Way to Paradise. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987. This chatty autobiography includes photographs and a discography. See also: Neil Diamond; Billy Joel; Carole King; Bette Midler; Paul Simon; Mel Tormé.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz Writer, director, and producer Mankiewicz won dual Academy Awards, for Best Screenplay and Best Director, two years in a row for his work on Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950). Born: February 11, 1909; Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Died: February 5, 1993; Bedford, New York Also known as: Joseph Leo Mankiewicz (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Joseph L. Mankiewicz (MAN-keh-vihtz) was the third child of Franz Mankiewicz and Johanna Blumenau, German Jewish immigrants who kept their ties with Germany alive with frequent visits and Franz’s foreign language teaching. When Joseph Mankiewicz was four, his family moved to New York, which would become his intellectual and emotional home for a lifetime. The family frequently changed residences, as Franz acquired new educational degrees and more desirable teaching posi774
tions. Franz, a brilliant linguist, was an intimidating presence in the home; Johanna, although bright, was uneducated and was described by her son as speaking four languages ineptly. From childhood, Mankiewicz excelled in his studies, finishing junior high at age eleven, even though he had missed almost a year of school because of illness. Too young to enter high school, he went to Berlin with his mother for a year. Herman, Mankiewicz’s brother who was twelve years older, was working in Berlin as a journalist at the time; he impressed his younger brother with what seemed an exciting profession and a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Herman had had a Bar Mitzvah, but Mankiewicz had no religious training and later would disassociate himself from all religions (marrying three gentile women who followed various faiths). On returning to New York, Mankiewicz dashed through Stuyvesant High School in three years (as had his brother and sister before him). He entered Columbia University when he was only fifteen, planning for a ca-
Jewish Americans reer as a psychiatrist. When his grades in science courses were uncharacteristically poor, the young scholar changed his major to English, a logical choice, since Mankiewicz, like his father and older brother, loved words. Both Mankiewicz’s honors tutor at Columbia and his father urged the bright young man to become a teacher (a profession Mankiewicz’s sister followed). After college graduation, Mankiewicz returned to Berlin with plans for postgraduate work, but he found his older brother’s connections in journalism and in films irresistible. Mankiewicz worked as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, as a translator of intertitles for silent films produced by the German studio Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft, or UFA (distributed by Paramount Pictures in the United States), and as a Berlin stringer for the entertainment newspaper Variety. After four months of learning about the American film business from abroad, Mankiewicz joined Herman at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood. In the late 1920’s the new talking pictures required an infusion of writers. Although only twenty years old, Mankiewicz began working as a dialoguist, and soon he became a successful screenwriter at Paramount Pictures. What would become a brilliant film career had begun. Life’s Work Moving to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1934 as a screenwriter, Mankiewicz soon became a producer, working in various genres with top studio directors and stars. His fourteenth production, the delightful comedy The Philadelphia Story (1940), was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture. His last film at MGM, the religious drama The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), was the only American film in which his second wife, celebrated Viennese actor Rosa Stradner, appeared. Although his time at MGM moved Mankiewicz’s career to new levels of influence and achievement, it was short-lived. Mankiewicz left following a dispute with MGM head Louis B. Mayer regarding Judy Garland (one in a series of Mankiewicz’s lovers). The next studio stop for the ambitious, talented (and still young) man was Twentieth Century-Fox, where Mankiewicz produced the best work of his career. In the mid-1940’s, Ernst Lubitsch, a justly famous German emigré director and Mankiewicz’s idol, was forced by illness to abandon a Fox project, Dragonwyck (1946). Mankiewicz, who had written the screenplay, took Lubitsch’s place. Man-
Mankiewicz, Joseph L. kiewicz subsequently directed ten more films at Twentieth Century-Fox, usually based on his screenplays, often claiming that he became a director to protect his screenplays from the brutality of insensitive studio hacks. In the tense drama No Way Out (1950), for which Mankiewicz won the B’nai Brith Award, the writer-director examined racial prejudice and introduced his most significant acting discovery: Sidney Poitier. After directing his highly praised screenplay adaptation of William Shakespeare’s 1599-1600 political play Julius Caesar (1953) for MGM, Mankiewicz formed his own production company, Figaro. In the first Figaro film, The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Humphrey Bogart played Mankiewicz’s alter ego: a sardonic, world-weary film writer-director whose guidance turns an inexperienced woman into a star. In the early 1950’s, riding high after winning four Academy Awards in two years, Mankiewicz moved his family to New York. The famous film writer-producerdirector longed to apply his formidable talent to the Broadway theater, a dream that was never realized. Directing a production of La Bohème (1896) at the Metro-
Joseph L. Mankiewicz. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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Creating Memorable Films From the dawn of the “talkies” to the early 1970’s, Joseph L. Mankiewicz was a successful Hollywood screenwriter, then producer and director. The versatile and efficient Mankiewicz worked across popular genres, but his greatest achievements were in social satire. Like many of Mankiewicz’s classic screenplays, The Letter to Three Wives (1949) features a conflict between high and low culture, revealed in ironic situations. One of the wives, a successful writer of radio soap operas, is married to a poorly paid schoolteacher. His running comments escalate into a diatribe against commercial, badly written drama, reflecting both Mankiewicz’s attitudes and those of his schoolteacher father. According to their son, Christopher, Mankiewicz’s second wife, Rosa Stradner, was the model for Margo (played unforgettably by Bette Davis) in All About Eve (1950): talented, charming, insecure, intimidating, mercurial. Mankiewicz’s sibling rivalry with his older brother Herman, who won an Academy Award for cowriting Citizen Kane (1941) lies beneath the struggle between an established person and a young usurper in many of Mankiewicz’s films: the tension between Margo and Eve in All About Eve; the rivalry between Julius Caesar and Marc Antony in Cleopatra (1963) and the competition between Sebastian’s mother and his cousin in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Mankiewicz’s abiding interest in human behavior was evident in all his screenplays, but his fascination with psychiatry found its clearest expression in Suddenly Last Summer, in which the threat of lobotomy motivates the drama.
politan Opera in 1962 was Mankiewicz’s only accomplishment in the New York theater world that he so admired. In Hollywood, Mankiewicz directed a cluster of films with different studio distribution arrangements, reaching across various genres, including his first musical, Guys and Dolls (1955), improbably starring Marlon Brando, and the political drama The Quiet American (1958), unfortunately starring Audie Murphy. Lured with a princely salary, the purchase of Mankiewicz’s struggling production company, and the promise (never fulfilled) of producing his complex screenplay based on Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet (1962), Mankiewicz reluctantly replaced Rouben Mamoulian as director of the lavish epic Cleopatra (1963). Filmed in Rome, Cleopatra swallowed three years of Mankiewicz’s life and vast amounts of Twentieth Century-Fox’s dollars. The experience of working on script rewrites at night and filming with a huge cast during the day left Mankiewicz exhausted and bitter. The film’s excesses harmed his reputation, while its stars, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, profited from massive publicity surrounding their 776
scandalous on-set romance. Mankiewicz directed only three more films after Cleopatra, but he received his fourth career Academy Award nomination for Best Director with his last film, Sleuth (1972). Mankiewicz received a cluster of important honors in his last decades, including a 1981 tribute by the Directors Guild of America (for which he had served as president in 1950 and 1951) and a Career Golden Lion at the 1989 Venice Film Festival. He suffered from writer’s block and did not produce any work the last twenty-one years of his life. He died of heart failure in 1993, just days before he would have turned eighty-four.
Significance Although the director of twenty theatrical films, a two-time Academy Award winner for Best Director, and the producer of twenty films, Mankiewicz is best remembered as the writer of forty-eight screenplays, all but one of them adaptations and many of them memorable for their sophistication, wit, and humane outlook. Mankiewicz’s creation of complex, strong women characters made his scripts appealing to the top female stars of the Hollywood studio system. Stylistic trademarks included the use of flashbacks and multiple, often conflicting points of view expressed in stories driven by beautifully written dialogue that explored tensions between high and low culture, the perils of artifice in daily life, and the rivalries that drive many relationships. —Carolyn Anderson
Further Reading Dick, Bernard F. Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Boston: Twayne, 1983. Thoughtful biography, with black-and-white photos; filmography. Geist, Kenneth L. Pictures Will Talk: The Life and Films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz. New York: Scribner’s, 1978. Written with the qualified support of Mankiewicz, but denounced after its publication, this biography includes many personal details and dozens of blackand-white photos. A filmography includes black-andwhite film stills. Lower, Cheryl Bray, and R. Barton Palmer. Joseph L. Mankiewicz: Critical Essays with an Annotated Bibliography and a Filmography. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001. Lower is the first researcher to have access
Jewish Americans to Mankiewicz’s private files. The extensive annotated filmography is arranged chronologically. Mankiewicz, Joseph L., and Gary Carey. More About “All About Eve.” New York: Random House, 1972. A lengthy introduction, based on an interview Carey
Mann, Michael conducted with Mankiewicz, is followed by the screenplay of the writer-director’s most celebrated film. See also: George Cukor; Arthur Freed; Stanley Kramer; Stanley Kubrick; Ernst Lubitsch; Dore Schary.
Michael Mann Film director and television producer As the creator and the producer of such television series as Miami Vice and as the writer and the director of such films as Heat (1995), Mann reinvigorated tired police genres with new energy. Born: February 5, 1943; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: Michael Kenneth Mann (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment
lona and Melbourne. Mann returned to the United States in 1971 and made the documentary Seventeen Days down the Line (1972). He married his second wife, the painter Summer Mann, with whom he had three daughters. Life’s Work Mann began writing for television series in 1975, including three episodes of Starsky and Hutch and four episodes of Police Story. He also directed an episode of Police Woman. During 1976 and 1977, Mann worked for Dustin Hoffman on the screenplay for what would become Straight Time (1978). Mann’s research at Folsom Prison would influence his work on The Jericho Mile (1979), his first television film, and Thief (1981), his first
Early Life Michael Mann grew up in Chicago, the second son of Jack and Esther Mann. Michael Mann’s father, a Ukrainian immigrant who fled the Russian Revolution, served in World War II and was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge. After the war Mann’s father operated a grocery store before competition forced it to close. Following high school graduaMann’s High Point of HEAT tion in 1961, Mann majored in English at the University of Wisconsin. Seeing G. W. The thin line between upholders of the law and criminals, between Pabst’s Die freudlose Gasse (1925; The Joyheroes and villains, in Michael Mann’s films and television series is less Street) in a film class inspired him to benever more obvious than in Heat. A moderate critical and commercial success in 1995, its reputation has grown since then. Heat contrasts the come a filmmaker. After graduating in 1965, lives of Los Angeles police detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and Mann enrolled in the London International master criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro). While the stress of Film School. his job shatters Hanna’s marriage, McCauley is a loner who refuses to Following film school, Mann learned about allow any distractions into his life. Then a developing romance with a film production while working in Twentieth young woman (Amy Brenneman) proves that he cannot isolate himCentury Fox’s London office, where he coself from emotions. Mann’s heroes strive to be existential outsiders ordinated budgets and found locations for with no weaknesses, only to discover, time and again, that they are hufilms. His marriage to a fellow University of man. The film also demonstrates how Mann can be as obsessive as his Wisconsin student ended during this time. characters: Heat is a remake of his L.A. Takedown, a 1989 television Their daughter, Ami Canaan Mann, is a difilm. The writer-director was determined his story would receive the rector. In 1968, National Broadcasting Comexpansive treatment it deserved. Heat includes several stunning set pieces, especially a violent armored-car heist and a bloody bank robpany (NBC) News hired Mann to film interbery, which spills out onto the streets and involves civilians. No Amerviews with striking students and workers ican film of the 1990’s matched the tight marriage of theme and techin Paris for the news magazine First Tuesnique, the spark-plug visceral energy, and the ambiguous moral day. He spent 1969 and 1970 making televioutlook of Mann’s masterpiece, Heat. sion commercials. His short film Jaunpuri (1971) won awards at film festivals in Barce-
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Mann, Michael feature film. The Jericho Mile, written and directed by Mann, is widely considered one of the best made-fortelevision films. It centers on a prisoner serving a life sentence who finds meaning and redemption, a major Mann theme, through long-distance running. During this period, Mann worked more in television than in film, creating three series. Vega$ is a privateinvestigator drama that ran from 1978 to 1981. A team of police detectives is the focus of the flashy Miami Vice (1984-1989). Crime Story (1986-1988) centers on Chicago police during 1963. In the 1980’s, Mann took tentative steps in his development as a film director, making three films that had little impact at the box office. The Keep (1983) is an offbeat horror film about Nazis guarding a mysterious Romanian fortress in 1942. The story of a safecracker who wants to leave the world of crime to spend more time with his family, Thief is a more typical Mann endeavor, establishing the theme of tortured heroes torn between good and evil. The first film to feature novelist Thomas Harris’s serial killer, Hannibal Lecter, Manhunter (1986) also explores this theme. The film focuses on a Federal Bureau of Investigation profiler called out of retirement to track down a serial killer. The promise shown by Mann was fulfilled in the following decade, beginning with an unlikely project, an adaptation of an 1826 James Fenimore Cooper novel. The Last of the Mohicans (1992) examines the difficult choices faced by its hero. In Mann’s acknowledged masterpiece, Heat (1995), work proves more important than private life. His marriage falling apart because of his commitment to his job, a Los Angeles police inspector becomes even more engaged in his duties to avoid the chaos of his private life. The life of the hero of The Insider (1999) is turned upside down when he decides to expose the wrongdoing of his employer, a tobacco corporation, on Sixty Minutes. Mann’s interest in outsiders continued with Ali (2001), his portrait of boxer Muhammad Ali. An ordinary man is compelled to take drastic action in Collateral (2004), in which a Los Angeles taxi driver confronts a hired assassin. Mann then made a misstep in trying to bring his most successful television series to the big screen: Miami Vice (2006) was greeted unkindly by critics and was a boxoffice disappointment. Public Enemies (2009), the story of Depression-era gangster John Dillinger, was slightly better received. Significance Mann’s films distinguish themselves by being sophisticated without being pretentious. In an era of cin778
Jewish Americans ema that emphasizes special effects, explosions, and big guns, Mann’s work is decidedly masculine but without macho posturings. The protagonists of Mann’s films resemble those in the works of Herman Melville and Ernest Hemingway, with their adherence to personal codes of conduct and their efforts to remain true to themselves when caught up in extreme circumstances. Mann is a true auteur, who has created a substantial body work carrying his personal stamp: that of the plight of characters involved in overcoming obstacles in their paths. Although Mann began his career in entertainment as a writer, his films have a strong visual style. He uses light and shadows to convey the psychological states of his characters; he uses physical space, whether the virgin frontier of early America or the concrete canyons of cities, to help define character. He is an adept director of actors, obtaining exceptional performances from Brian Cox in Manhunter; Daniel Day-Lewis and Wes Studi in The Last of the Mohicans; Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Heat; Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, and Michael Gambon in The Insider; and Marion Cotillard and Stephen Lang in Public Enemies. Seen by the motionpicture establishment as primarily a genre filmmaker, Mann has received few plaudits for his work, though he was nominated for Academy Awards for cowriting, directing, and producing The Insider. Mann is unique for being equally successful in television and in motion pictures. In addition to being one of the most popular television series of the 1980’s, Miami Vice was applauded for its cinematic style, in terms of quick-cut editing, frequent camera movements, and a distinctive color palette. It also paved the way for the use of popular music in television dramas, with background songs that reflected the psychological states of the characters. The heroes of Miami Vice, undercover police officers posing as and often identifying with criminals, are representative of the complex, tormented souls who inhabit Mann’s stylized, masculine world. —Michael Adams Further Reading Feeney, F. X. Michael Mann. London: Taschen, 2006. Biographical sketch and chronology followed by analysis of films through Collateral. Heavily illustrated. James, Nick. Heat. London: BFI, 2002. Detailed analysis of Mann’s masterpiece. Describes differences between Heat and Mann’s movie L. A. Takedown (1989). Includes biographical sketch.
Jewish Americans Rybin, Steven. The Cinema of Michael Mann. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2007. Analysis of Mann’s films through Miami Vice portrays him as an auteur and responds to his critics. Steensland, Mark. The Pocket Essential Michael Mann. Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England: Pocket Essen-
Marcus, Mickey tials, 2002. Concise overview of Mann’s television and film career through Ali. See also: Woody Allen; Judd Apatow; Peter Bogdanovich; Jerry Bruckheimer; Stanley Kramer; Sydney Pollack; Steven Spielberg.
Mickey Marcus Military leader and soldier In 1948, Marcus joined the newly formed Israeli army as a military adviser, and he was later appointed commander of the Jerusalem front with a rank of general. Born: February 22, 1901; New York, New York Died: June 11, 1948; Abu Ghosh, Israel Also known as: Michael Stone; David Daniel Marcus (full name) Area of achievement: Military Early Life Mickey Marcus (MAR-kuhs) was born on Hester Street on the lower East Side of New York City, the son of Mordechai and Leah Goldstein Marcus, immigrants from Romania. Marcus grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, a tough neighborhood where gangs and antiSemitism were a part of life. His father died when Marcus was a child, leaving Michael, the family’s oldest son, as Marcus’s mentor. To help protect elderly people from local toughs, Michael became the leader of a selfdefense group, in effect a Jewish “gang,” and he frequently boxed at a local gym, where he was accompanied by Marcus, who eventually established himself as a boxer. The older brother became known as Big Mike, while Marcus acquired the nickname of Little Mike or Mickey. Following graduation from Boys High School in Brooklyn, Marcus entered West Point Military Academy, graduating with the class of 1924. During his four years at the academy, Marcus lettered in both football and boxing, completing his military obligation as a lieutenant in the infantry. In 1927, Marcus married Emma Hertzenberg; their marriage would last until Marcus’s death in 1948. During these years, Marcus began the study of law, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1927 and a juris doctor degree the following year from Brooklyn Law School. In 1929, Marcus was appointed assistant attorney in
the Department of Justice, serving in the Southern District of New York until 1934. Among the attorneys with whom Marcus worked was Thomas E. Dewey, later to serve as governor of New York and to run twice for U.S. president. On January 2, 1934, Fiorello Henry La Guardia was sworn in as the reform mayor of the city. Among the mayor’s first acts was to appoint Marcus as deputy commissioner of corrections. La Guardia specifically addressed Marcus following the oath, stating that Marcus should fire that day every deputy in the Department of Corrections. Three weeks later, Marcus personally led a police squad at the Welfare Island penitentiary, arresting sixty-eight racketeers who had been running the prison. Among the crime rings that Marcus and Dewey shut down that same year was one run by crime figure Lucky Luciano. Life’s Work Marcus served as deputy commissioner of corrections under Austin McCormick until 1939, becoming acting head of the department in November of that year when McCormick resigned. In April, 1940, Marcus was appointed by La Guardia as full-time commissioner. Despite his civilian status during these years, Marcus had maintained his position as a reserve in the Army field artillery. In 1939, he had been appointed judge advocate for his National Guard unit and later to the position of provost marshal. With increasing evidence that World War II would eventually involve the United States, the twenty-seventh division of the National Guard was federalized in 1940 and sent to Louisiana for training. A lieutenant colonel, Marcus was in charge of special troops during the training period. Following the attack at Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the division was sent to Hawaii, where Marcus established a ranger school for his troops. Rather than being sent into combat as he preferred, however, Marcus was posted back to Washington, where, because 779
Marcus, Rudolph A. of his legal background, he was appointed to the position of chief of planning in the civil affairs division for the War Department. Marcus worked his way to England in May, 1944, managing to jump with the Army airborne division that landed in France on D day. As a civil affairs officer in the years immediately following the war, Marcus became fully aware of the Nazi atrocities, and he became a strong advocate for a Jewish state. After resigning from the military in 1947, he was recruited by the fledgling Israeli Defense Forces and entered Palestine using the name Michael Stone early in 1948. He spent many of the following months touring areas of potential fighting, making recommendations to the Jewish troops, and producing a training manual. Israel declared its independence in May, 1948, and Marcus devised a series of tactics designed to slow the approach of Arab armies. When the capital, Jerusalem, was surrounded by Arab armies, Marcus devised an alternate route he called the “Burma Road” as a means to relieve the city. Following celebrations on June 11, however, Marcus was shot and killed by an Israeli sentry who mistook him for an enemy soldier. Significance During the early months of Israel’s war for independence, the newly established state had few experienced officers. Marcus applied his military training and military experience not only for the relief of what was arguably the most important city in Israel but also for devel-
Jewish Americans oping an overall command structure for the Israeli army, the Haganah. Knowing that the troops were not sufficiently prepared or trained to immediately face experienced Arab armies, Marcus developed and implemented a training manual for Israeli soldiers. He instituted a “hitand-run” method of fighting, which provided time for training Israeli soldiers while preventing the Arab armies from carrying out major operations. Further Reading Berkman, Ted. Cast a Giant Shadow: The Story of Mickey Marcus Who Died to Save Jerusalem. Carpinteria, Calif.: Manifest, 1999. An extensive biography of Marcus, which covers not only his contributions to Israel but also his outstanding military career in the service of the United States. Gilbert, Martin. Israel: A History. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. A history of Israel from 1948 to the present. Sections dealing with the war of independence describe the role played by Marcus. Morris, Benny. Nineteen Forty-Eight: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. A history of the Israelis’1948 war of independence. Discusses Marcus’s tactics for the relief of Jerusalem. —Richard Adler See also: Julius Ochs Adler; Hyman G. Rickover; Edward S. Salomon.
Rudolph A. Marcus Canadian-born scientist A Nobel Prize-winning chemist, Marcus is known for his work on electron transfers within chemical systems. He also described the form of interaction between the driving force of an electron transfer and the rate of the reaction as being parabolic. Born: July 21, 1923; Montreal, Quebec, Canada Also known as: Rudolph Marcus; Rudolph Arthur Marcus (full name) Area of achievement: Science and technology Early Life Rudolph A. Marcus (MAR-kuhs) was born July 21, 1923, in Montreal. In an autobiographical piece written by Marcus upon receiving the Nobel Prize, he described 780
his childhood interest in mathematics, which turned to a fascination with chemistry in his teenage years. After graduating from Baron Byng High School, he enrolled at McGill University, where two of his uncles had also earned their degrees. Marcus studied chemistry first as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student at McGill. Life’s Work In 1946, Marcus earned his Ph.D. and became a junior research officer at the National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa. While at NRC, Marcus was inspired to return to school to earn a second postdoctoral degree, this time in the theoretical rather than the experimental branch of chemistry. In 1949, he obtained a research fellowship
Jewish Americans from the University of North Carolina (UNC). His early work there led Marcus to a study of transition state theory in chemistry, which soon resulted in his first great discovery. In 1951, Marcus devised an addition to the old transition state theories that led to a new, unified theory known as Rice-Ramsperger-Kassel-Marcus (RRKM). He merged the statistical techniques utilized by the original RRK theory with Eyring’s transition state theory, creating a method that allowed him to estimate unimolecular reaction rates using details about the potential energy surface. That same year, Marcus was married to Laura Hearne, with whom he had three children. He attempted to join the UNC faculty but was rejected, and so he left for the Polytechnic Institute at Brooklyn, where he worked as a faculty researcher. After studying electrostatics until 1955, Marcus applied the concepts he had learned in that field and in his lifelong interest in mathematics to the field of electron transfer. New, precise radioactive tracer techniques had led to innovations in the study of electron transfer between molecules, and many chemists were puzzled at the sluggish reaction rates in the electrons they were able to observe. It was this problem that attracted Marcus’s attention. Marcus focused on the so-called “redox” process that occurs when two molecules exchange outer-sphere electrons without breaking chemical bonds: one molecule gains electrons (known as reduction) and the other gives up electrons (known as oxidation). Marcus’s theory provides several rules that describe and predict the effects of one electron transfer on the energy of each molecule. He predicted that electrons could travel only between two states of equal energy, and both molecules must undergo an energy increase to reach this state. He created a quadratic equation predicting this energy change and discovered that it took the form of a parabola when graphed. The area of the parabola illustrating that a larger driving force creates a slower reaction became known as “the inverted region.” Marcus also discovered, in the words of the Nobel’s Swedish Academy, a link between “electron transfer speed and the free energy change of the reaction, its driving force.’” After introducing the theory in 1956, Marcus contin-
Marcus, Rudolph A. ued to publish on the subject until 1965. He received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1992 for his work on electron transfer problems. The Marcus theory of electron transfer has had a wide range of effects on other fields, and it has been applied to atomic, proton, and group transfers. It predicts many different natural phenomena, such as corrosion, photosynthesis, and polymer conductivity. It was eventually expanded to address inner-sphere electron transfers by Noel Hush, who formulated the Marcus-Hush theory. In 1958, Marcus earned his U.S. citizenship. After completing a series of papers on electron transfer, Marcus became a faculty member at the University of Illinois. In 1976, he joined the University of Oxford briefly as a visiting professor, and in 1978 he was appointed Arthur Noyes Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. Significance The Marcus theory, with its prediction of a parabolic form, was initially controversial, because its predictions were difficult to test in laboratories of the 1950’s. However, following experimental validation in 1980’s, Marcus’s theory became the dominant model for electron transfer. It has had a widespread impact on subsequent studies and has been praised as the most elementary and significant discovery in the field of electron transfer. In addition to winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Marcus received the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1985 and the National Medal of Science in 1989. —C. Breault Further Reading Feldman, Burton. The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy and Prestige. New York: Arcade, 2000. A fascinating history of the Nobel Prize that contains references to Marcus. Marcus, Rudolph. Theories of Chemical Reactions Rates: Selected Papers of Rudolph A. Marcus. Hackensack, N.J.: World Scientific, 2008. Collection of important papers crafted by Marcus. Requires technical understanding of chemistry and physics. See also: Paul Berg; Roald Hoffmann; Walter Kohn; Irwin Rose.
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Harry Markowitz Economist and investor Markowitz was known for developing modern portfolio theory and effectively being the intellectual founder of the mutual-fund industry. Markowitz received a Nobel Prize in 1990 for his work in the economic field. Born: August 24, 1927; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: Harry Max Markowitz (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; economics Early Life Harry Markowitz (MAHR-koh-wihts) was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1927, the only child of grocery store owners. During his young years, Markowitz enjoyed a variety of activities, including playing baseball, football, and the violin. He also developed an interest in physics, astronomy, and philosophy, including that of David Hume and of Charles Darwin. Markowitz found Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) particularly interesting for the way it organized facts and explored varying possibilities. After graduating from high school, Markowitz entered the University of Chicago. He enrolled in the university’s advanced-track bachelor’s-degree program, from which he graduated in just two years. The program was focused on students reading original materials instead of aggregated information in textbooks. Markowitz chose to continue his graduate studies at the University of Chicago, specializing in economics. After debating which area of economics to pursue, Markowitz settled on the economics of uncertainty, an expansive field that explores risk and probability, among other concepts. During this time, Markowitz was given the opportunity to study under several renowned economists, including Milton Friedman and Leonard Savage. While a student in Chicago, Markowitz was invited to become a student member of the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, a small research group. When it came time to choose a dissertation topic, Markowitz consulted his thesis adviser, the economist Jacob Marschak. Marschak encouraged Markowitz to combine two of his fields of interest and find out how to apply mathematical methods and calculations to making decisions in the stock market. Marschak noted that studying the stock market using mathematics had been a favorite topic of Cowles Commission founder Alfred Cowles. While researching his dissertation, Markowitz realized that the theory he was studying failed to explore 782
the tremendous impact risk had on investing money in the stock market. Markowitz’s discovery of this flaw was one of the first steps in developing a theory that would explain how to allocate one’s investments during times of uncertainty. This theory would be published by the Journal of Finance in 1952. Life’s Work Markowitz’s work in economic research led him to work at RAND, a company that does research and analysis, shortly after graduation. While working for RAND, Markowitz met the American mathematician George Dantzig. Dantzig helped Markowitz continue to develop his economic theories using mathematics. Most of his early work focused on applying mathematical techniques to practical business problems. Markowitz also furthered his education by obtaining a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and working for the Cowles Foundation at Yale University. He also went on to teach about finance at universities such as Baruch College in New York and the University of California, San Diego. Markowitz’s major achievement was winning the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1990, with his colleagues William Sharpe and Merton Miller, for writing about investment. The theory was something Markowitz had been working on since the 1950’s, and he had published a book on the topic in 1959: the ability to figure out how and when to split up stock holdings in order to maximize profits. The theory Markowitz created, called modern portfolio theory, essentially taught people how to outguess the stock market. Winning a Nobel Prize was not Markowitz’s only accomplishment. In 1989, Markowitz won the John von Neumann Theory Prize from the Operations Research Society of America and the Institute of Management Sciences for his efforts in economics. Outside mathematical and economic research, Markowitz cofounded a company called California Analysis Center, Inc., which would later become CACI International. The company developed SIMSCRIPT, a simulation programming language. SIMSCRIPT has been used in multiple computer systems, mostly within the fields of manufacturing and transportation. Meanwhile, CACI International is an important information technology company based in Virginia and has been recognized by several publications as an important business service.
Jewish Americans Markowitz also created GuidedChoice.com, which provides managed 401k accounts and investment advice. He assists those in retirement by teaching them the best way to distribute their wealth and assets.
Markowitz, Harry
Developing Modern Portfolio Theory While Harry Markowitz investigated several economic research topics, his best-known work is that in the field of modern portfolio theory. Markowitz’s theory disproved the notion that stock-market investors needed to diversify their portfolios as much as possible. Instead, Markowitz, along with two other economic researchers, put forth the idea that a calculated method of determining when and how to diversify stock holdings would yield greater profits and put investors at much less risk for losing money. While this theory has been challenged by behavioral economists, Markowitz and his team proved the theory’s worth when they won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1990 for their work on investment. This theory and Markowitz’s writings about it also contributed to the development of the mutual-fund industry. This industry is an important part of many stock exchanges.
Significance Markowitz’s work, along with that of his colleagues, changed investing and corporate finance. Investors and other stock-market enthusiasts heavily subscribe to Markowitz’s theories on money management and the stock market. His ideas about the efficiency of financial markets and the trade-off between risk and return were revolutionary. His insights led to the creation of the mutual-fund industry, which groups money from several investors in a collective investment scheme. Today, mutual funds are a large part of stock-exchange trading. Markowitz also had several concepts named after him, including the Markowitz Efficient Portfolio: one which is calculated mathematically to get the best rate of return for a set amount of risk. Markowitz also coedited The Theory and Practice of Investment Management (2002), a textbook used in college classrooms. Despite his work on modern portfolio theory, Markowitz’s theories have been challenged by proponents of behavioral economics, a field that explains the economic decisions people make with social and emotional factors. —Jill E. Disis
Further Reading Bernstein, William. The Intelligent Asset Allocator: How to Build Your Portfolio to Maximize Returns and Minimize Risk. New York: McGraw Hill, 2001. Includes a cogent discussion of Markowitz’s portfolio theory. Farrell, Christopher. “Three Wise Men of Finance.” BusinessWeek 3903 (October, 2004). An article that effectively summarizes the theories of Markowitz, Merton, and Sharpe and explains why it was so important that they won the Nobel Prize. Markowitz, Harry M. Portfolio Selection: Efficient Diversification of Investments. Malden, Mass.: Black-
well, 1991. Markowitz describes his original theory on portfolios and investment, for which he won the Nobel Prize. Markowitz, Harry M., Merton H. Miller, and William F. Sharpe. The Founders of Modern Finance: Their Prize-Winning Concepts and 1990 Nobel Lectures. Charlottesville, Va.: Research Foundation of ICFA, 1991. A collection of theories from Markowitz and his fellow Nobel Prize-winning economists. Includes several of the lectures they gave when receiving the award. Markowitz, Harry M., William F. Sharpe, and G. Peter Todd. Mean-Variance Analysis in Portfolio Choice and Capital Markets. San Francisco: Wiley, 2000. Assesses the usefulness of the theory of mean-variance portfolio analysis and how it is utilized in the management of portfolios. Sharpe, William F. Investors and Markets: Portfolio Choices, Asset Prices, and Investment Advice. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. A book for investment professionals, although it is useful for investors and those interested in stock portfolios. See also: Kenneth Arrow; Milton Friedman; Alan Greenspan; Paul Krugman; Jeffrey D. Sachs; Herbert Stein; Joseph Stiglitz.
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Marx, Groucho
Jewish Americans
Groucho Marx Comedian and actor Marx, the most recognizable of the Marx Brothers team, started his career in vaudeville. His first talkie film, The Cocoanuts (1929), solidified his comedic persona as a fast-talking, wisecracking flimflam man. Born: October 2, 1890; New York, New York Died: August 19, 1977; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Groucho; Julius Henry Marx (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Groucho Marx was born on October 2, 1890, into a multiethnic enclave in the upper East Side of Manhattan. The eldest son in the family died at the age of three; Marx’s two other older brothers, Leonard and Adolph,
Groucho Marx. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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eventually took the stage names Chico and Harpo; his younger brothers, Milton and Herbert, took the names Gummo and Zeppo. Marx’s mother, Minnie, had a brother in vaudeville who was a star, and she wanted her children to follow in his footsteps. While Chico took piano and Harpo the harp, Groucho was given singing lessons. He was forced to leave school at age twelve to help support his family. He became a voracious reader to compensate for his missing education. The family moved to La Grange, Illinois, to break into the Midwest vaudeville circuit. While Chico used an Italian accent in the act, Groucho started out with a German accent until World War I, when it became advisable to drop the accent. The Marx Brothers returned to New York as stars for sixty consecutive weeks at the Palace Theatre. They combined comedy and music in such plays as The Cinderella Girl (1918) and I’ll Say She Is (1923). Their play The Cocoanuts (1925), which was a hit on Broadway, helped Marx transition from stage to film. Life’s Work The first Marx Brothers film was Humor Risk (1921), which was silent. It was a bust and has since disappeared. While Groucho Marx and his brothers continued to star on Broadway with the play Animal Crackers (1928), they also began work on their first film, The Cocoanuts, based on their stage play. The Cocoanuts came out in 1929. Marx played Mr. Hammer, a hotel owner trying to take advantage of the land boom in Florida during the 1920’s. In addition to his brothers (Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo), the film introduces Margaret Dumont as Mrs. Potter. The classic Marx image of thick mustache and bushy eyebrows (both grease-painted), glasses, cigar, tailcoat, and leering look made cinematic history. Marx’s quick and sarcastic banter started the film as he confronted disgruntled employees and continued on with Chico and Mrs. Potter. The film was filled with classic lines such as Groucho stating, “Here’s a viaduct leading over the mainland,” to which Chico replied, “All right. Why a duck?” The conversation deteriorated
Jewish Americans from there. The film was a social critique of the land boom that fostered great wealth in the 1920’s and ended in the stock market crash of 1929. Although the film was a success, Marx lost a great amount of money in the crash. He was the money keeper for the family, which is how he got his nickname Groucho. The money handler for an acting troupe was in charge of the “grouch” bag, thus Marx adopted the name Groucho. He always felt a sense of responsibility for the loss of family funds in 1929, and money was a bogeyman for him for the rest of his life. Marx’s next film was based on another of their stage plays, Animal Crackers (1930). The story poked fun at the social elite who were, in the eyes of many, responsible for the crash. Mrs. Rittenhouse (Dumont) threw a party for the returning explorer Captain Spaulding (Marx). The film introduced the song “Hooray for Captain Spaulding,” which became Marx’s theme song in the 1950’s. The plot of an art theft became secondary to Marx’s one-liners, such as, “Well, you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen and that’s not saying much for you,” or, “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know.” Interspersed among the one-liners and music were references to contemporary literature, the stock market, and other relevant events. Marx also did something unusual for film at the time, when the actors around him froze so he could come toward the camera to speak to the audience. This approach was picked up by Mel Brooks and Woody Allen in their films. Marx and his brothers were also getting a reputation for unpredictability on the set, where many of their best lines were ad-libbed, throwing off their fellow actors and frustrating directors. The brothers’ next film was Monkey Business, which dealt with gangsters and stowaways on a luxury liner. The film came out in 1931, when organized crime was coming into public awareness. Marx’s female interest in the film was Thelma Todd, who died a few years later. Her death was connected to mob activity. Monkey Business was well received and was the first Marx Brothers script written strictly for film. They followed up their success with Horse Feathers, an attack on colleges and their obsession with football. It was released in 1932, when Americans were shifting their interest from baseball to the football of Notre Dame and Knute Rockne. Marx played Professor Wagstaff, who took over a failing college and decided to revive it through a successful football program. The film also criticized Prohibition and organized crime. Marx sang one of his best songs, “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It,” and the film ended with a
Marx, Groucho
Hosting YOU BET YOUR LIFE As a solo performer, Groucho Marx is best known as the host of the long-running quiz show You Bet Your Life. It began as a radio program that aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in 1947 and then shifted to the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1949. Marx received the best comedian of the year award for the show in 1949. You Bet Your Life moved to the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) in 1950, being simulcast on both radio and television. The program was renamed The Groucho Show in 1960 and ran until 1961. Announcer George Fenneman was Marx’s straight man, and “Hooray for Captain Spaulding” was Marx’s theme song. Marx was the master of double entendres, and he made famous such phrases as “Say the secret word” and “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?”—which was used when a contestant was doing poorly on the game show.
totally zany football game. The film was a major hit on college campuses in the 1970’s. Marx’s next film was Duck Soup, which came out in 1933, the same year that Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Marx played Rufus T. Firefly, the new leader of Freedonia, which was under threat from its neighboring country. Marx dealt with devious diplomats and inept spies. It was a scathing attack on the world’s rush toward war and included the rapturous musical piece “To War,” which portrayed a national hysteria for destruction. Audiences at the time did not appreciate the film’s criticism, but Duck Soup found appreciative audiences on college campuses during the Vietnam War era. Marx and his two brothers (Chico and Harpo) waited two years before their next film. They moved from Paramount Pictures to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and were given a new start with Night at the Opera (1935), which became their iconic film. Marx played Otis P. Driftwood, a questionable theatrical agent who got involved in opera. The film comprised a series of classic scenes, such as the contract signing with the sanity clause, the overstuffed stateroom, and the turning of the opera house into a baseball field. Although there was the usual criticism of the upper class and its snooty entertainment, the emphasis was more on good-natured absurdity and fun. Night at the Opera was Marx Brothers’ biggest financial success. Marx’s later films would never match the success of Night at the Opera. A Day at the Races (1937) came close, with Marx as a horse doctor who is mistaken for a 785
Marx, Groucho medical one. The brothers tried to go back to their roots by taking a story first to the stage and then to film. The strategy met with mild success. The following year they tried a new approach by adapting a play not written for them, Room Service (1938). The film was widely praised by critics but it met with a lukewarm response from audiences. Over the next ten years, from 1939 to 1949, Marx and his brothers appeared in five more films, which continued to decline in audience interest and made the Marx brothers undistinguishable from other comics, such as Bud Abbot and Lou Costello or the Three Stooges. In 1949, the Marx brothers released their last film, Love Happy, with an appearance by the young Marilyn Monroe, and their film career as a group came to an end. While Chico and Harpo never moved beyond films, Marx reinvented himself, and he made several films without his brothers, including one with Frank Sinatra. Marx’s future success, however, was not to be in cinema but in radio and television. While appearing on a radio program with Bob Hope, Marx showed a knack for adlibbing that one producer saw as a gold mine. Marx was approached to host the quiz show You Bet Your Life, which ran on radio from 1947 to 1959 and on television from 1950 to 1961. Marx was a staple of 1950’s television, and, in the 1960’s, he made random appearances in film and on television. He did not fade into history; he made a comeback in 1972 with a one-man show at Carnegie Hall, which was released as an album, An Evening with Groucho, and which received a Grammy Award for best comedy album. In 1974, he was awarded an honorary Academy Award, which he accepted on behalf of his brothers and Dumont as well as himself. His last television appearance came in 1976 on a Bob Hope special. Marx died the following year on August 19, 1977, from pneumonia.
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Jewish Americans Significance Marx’s face and voice have become iconic. Marx glasses and with attached nose and mustache appear every Halloween. He has been impersonated by everyone from television actors Alan Alda in M*A*S*H and Gabe Kaplan in Welcome Back, Kotter to the animated characters of Bugs Bunny and the Vlasic Pickle stork. Marx’s influence on comedians such as Woody Allen and others was pivotal. To put it in Marx’s words, “I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.” Marx and his wiseacre mustached character, however, will never be forgotten. —David R. Stefancic Further Reading Adamson, Joe. Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo. New York: Touchstone, 1974. A good biography of all four brothers. Anobile, Richard. Hooray for Captain Spaulding! New York: Darien, 1974. An overview of Animal Crackers. _______. Why a Duck? New York: Darien, 1971. A look at almost all the Marx Brothers’ films. Gardner, Martin. The Marx Brothers as Social Critics. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2009. The book puts the Marx Brothers and their films in the context of American history. Marx, Groucho. The Groucho Phile. New York: Wallaby, 1977. A Groucho history and photo album. _______. Memoirs of a Mangy Lover. New York: Bernard Geis, 1965. His last autobiography. Zimmerman, Paul, and Burt Goldblatt. The Marx Brothers at the Movies. New York, Putnam, 1968. A study in filmmaking. See also: Woody Allen; Alan Arkin; Eddie Cantor; Mark Goodson; Monty Hall; Al Jolson.
Jewish Americans
Maskin, Eric
Eric Maskin Economist Maskin laid the foundation for mechanism design theory, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2007. His contributions extend beyond the world of economics and into other fields, such as politics and health care. Born: December 12, 1950; New York, New York Also known as: Eric S. Maskin; Eric Stark Maskin (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; economics Early Life Eric Maskin (EHR-ihk MAS-kihn) was born on December 12, 1950, in New York City and spent much of his childhood in Alpine, New Jersey. His family was Jewish, but Maskin had no formal religious training. Despite his lack of religious conviction, Maskin remarked later that he was attracted to the “rich” Jewish culture. Having learned the clarinet, he listened to klezmer (the music of Ashkenazic Jews), and he developed a liking for latkes, chopped liver, and matzo balls, Jewish delicacies prepared by his grandmother. Maskin attended Tenafly High School in Tenafly, New Jersey, graduating in 1968. He enrolled at Harvard University, where he proved to be an exceptional student. He graduated from Harvard after many years with bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in mathematics. Maskin almost immediately moved into the field of research, first working as a fellow at the University of Cambridge in 1976 before teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1977 to 1984. Maskin continued teaching for much of his career, moving to Harvard in 1985 to teach mathematics and economics. In 2000, Maskin transferred to Princeton University. Life’s Work Although Maskin taught, he focused on economics research, too. One of Maskin’s major projects was mechanism design theory, which tries to answer the question of how to create a procedure or game that will achieve a desired outcome. While the theory was based in Maskin’s home field of economics, he claims it can be ascribed to many different practices, from politics to taxation to voting procedures. Maskin even states that mechanism design theory can be used to create an “international agreement on clean air”
or a new health care system. The theory even goes so far as to attempt to compromise public goods with private wants and desires. Maskin’s theory received national attention and international recognition in 2007, while he was still an economics professor at Princeton, when he won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Of particular note was the fact that Maskin’s win came early in his career, as opposed to others who win the award for projects that have spanned a lifetime of work. Maskin was commended for his efforts at laying the groundwork for the theory and for trying to create a theory that satisfied both social and individual needs. Maskin’s work has not been limited to mechanism design theory, however. He has also worked with the economics of incentives, contract theory, game theory, and more. Maskin has continued to study politics, coalition formation, and electoral rules. Maskin has also been acknowledged for his thoughts on the idea of software patents, which he claims hold back innovation instead of promoting it. He has claimed that the computer industry has been extremely innovative even though software patents have not been strong. Significance Maskin’s work is still relatively new in comparison to theories that have been debated and discussed for years, but that does not mitigate the importance of his accomplishments. Mechanism game theory may be still in its early stages, but many professors and researchers have hopes that it can one day solve problems even outside the field of economics. Maskin has been acknowledged in other ways for his work. He is a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the European Economic Association. He also has done work with the British Academy and even acted as the president of the Econometric Society, which is home to many distinguished economists. —Jill E. Disis Further Reading Maskin, Eric. Recent Developments in Game Theory. North Hampton, Md.: Edward Elgar, 1999. Discusses Maskin’s work in game theory, another field that he has researched extensively. Maskin, Eric, and Andrais Simonovits, ed. Planning, 787
Matisyahu Shortage, and Transformation: Essays in Honor of János Kornai. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000. A book compiled and edited by Maskin that contains several theoretical interpretations of the work of the economist János Kornai. Tabarrock, Alex. “What Is Mechanism Design? Explaining the Research that Won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics.” Reason, October 16, 2007. An article
Jewish Americans that attempts to explain the intricacies of Maskin’s work and the collaboration between him and his fellow Nobel Prize winners. See also: George Akerlof; Kenneth Arrow; Ben Bernanke; Milton Friedman; Alan Greenspan; Paul Krugman; Jeffrey D. Sachs; Paul Samuelson; Joseph Stiglitz.
Matisyahu Singer and entertainer Matisyahu is an American Hasidic reggae songwriter and musician. His eclectic music style mixes traditional Jewish topics with reggae, hip-hop, and rock-and-roll sounds and beats. Born: June 30, 1979; West Chester, Pennsylvania Also known as: Matthew Paul Miller (birth name) Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment Early Life Matisyahu (mah-tihs-YAH-hew) was born Matthew Paul Miller in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on June 30, 1979, to devout Jewish parents. His family would eventually settle in White Plains, New York, where he was raised. He was brought up as a Reconstructionist Jew, and he attended Hebrew school at Bet Am Shalom, which was housed at a synagogue located in White Plains. At the sacred Jewish circumcision ceremony performed when he was only eight days old, Matisyahu was given his legal Hebrew name, which was forgotten by his family. In Hebrew school it was simply assumed to be Matisyahu, because of its connection to Matthew; Matisyahu is a Hebrew and a Yiddish pronunciation of the biblical name Matthew. Growing up, he became enthralled with various types of music, including reggae and hip-hop. In 1996, Matisyahu took part in a semester-long program that offered students firsthand exploration of their Jewish heritage in Israel, including an appreciation of religious music styles. His experiences there positively changed his feelings toward Judaism, so that he eventually decided to adopt Orthodox Judaism in 2001. He finished high school at a wilderness program in Bend, Oregon, where he continued to invest time in learning about music. He performed for more than a year in Soulfori, a band in Bend, and he eventually joined a Jewish band, Pey Dalid. He even spent some of his youth as a self-proclaimed 788
“Phish-head,” following the jam band Phish on its U.S. tour. Life’s Work Matisyahu signed his first record deal with JDub Records, a not-for-profit record label that promotes Jewish musicians. He released his first album, Shake Off the
Matisyahu. (Getty Images)
Jewish Americans Dust . . . Arise, in 2004. This major label debut album was produced by American bass legend Bill Laswell. Matisyahu’s songs are almost entirely in English with a few words of Hebrew and Yiddish added throughout. His unique music style mixes reggae and hip-hop sounds, including beatboxing, coupled with the traditional Jewish hazzan practice of chanting prayerful lyrics. In fact, Matisyahu’s style has been compared to that of another talented Jewish music artist, Jew da Maccabi, an Orthodox Jew from Florida who combines religious lyrics with a musical sound derived from traditional American hiphop beats. At the Bonnaroo Music Festival held in Manchester, Tennessee, in 2005, Trey Anastasio, formerly of the jam band Phish, invited Matisyahu to showcase his talents as a guest on his set. This exposure led to an increased cult following of the young artist, helping to propel his career forward. That same year, Matisyahu recorded his first live album, Live at Stubb’s, which was taped at a concert in Austin, Texas. This album eventually went gold in the United States, further substantiating Matisyahu as a talented artist. Throughout 2005 and 2006, Matisyahu toured tirelessly in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Deeply connected to his Jewish religious faith, he even made live performances in Israel, including in a show as the supporting act for the British rock legend Sting in the summer of 2006. Eventually, Matisyahu broke into the mainstream U.S. charts with the live version of his song “King Without a Crown.” This song landed him the number seven spot on the Billboard American modern rock chart in 2006. The accompanying video and album, Youth, produced by Laswell, were released on March 7, 2006. A little over a week later, on March 16, Youth became Billboard magazine’s number one digital album. Eventually, Youth went on to reach the gold mark in the United States. In August, 2009, Matisyahu’s third studio album,
Matisyahu Light, was released, along with the live extended play Live at Twist and Shout. His hit single “One Day” topped out at number twenty-one on the Billboard modern chart and number thirty-eight on the Billboard American rock chart in 2009. He later made a remix of this track with rapper Akon; this remix was officially adopted as one of the theme songs for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. Significance Fusing faith with rap, Matisyahu evolved into a stylistic singer and entertainer. Since 2000, he has become a mainstay in the global music scene. His unique music style, which combines various genres, including reggae, rap, rock, and even religious Jewish chants, offered a vibrant new sound that propelled him from underground artist to large-venue headliner. As he matures, his music evolves, with its organic and original sound captivating audiences from all walks of life and of faith. —Paul M. Klenowski Further Reading Cohen, Debra Nussbaum. “Matisyahu’s New Spiritual Groove.” The Jewish Week, November 28, 2007. In this interview, Matisyahu talks about his religious journey and his daily life with his wife and two children. Matisyahu. “M on M—Hasidic Reggae Superstar.” Kosher Spirit Magazine (Fall, 2005). Matisyahu answers questions about his name, his religious philosophy, success, and looking Jewish. Sanneh, Kelefa. “Dancehall with a Different Accent.” The New York Times, March 8, 2006. Concert review examines Matisyahu’s appropriation of reggae music. See also: Bob Dylan; Lenny Kravitz.
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Matlin, Marlee
Jewish Americans
Marlee Matlin Actor, author, and activist Matlin used her deafness to bring power to her performance in Children of a Lesser God (1986) as a deaf student who becomes romantically involved with a teacher. Born: August 24, 1965; Morton Grove, Illinois Also known as: Marlee Beth Matlin (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; literature Early Life Marlee Matlin (MAHR-lee MAT-lihn) was born on August 24, 1965, the third child and only girl of Don and Libby Matlin, and she grew up in the Chicago suburb of Morton Grove. At eighteen months of age Marlee Matlin was found to be profoundly deaf, probably because she had contracted the disease roseola infantum. It was not until she was an adult that the real cause was learned: a genetically defective cochlea. Both sets of her Jewish grandparents immigrated from Europe to escape persecution. Her mother’s parents came from a small village between Uód. and Warsaw in Poland; her father’s parents came from Belarus, then part of Russia. Because the family took pride in its heritage, Matlin enjoyed a traditional Jewish childhood, complete with Shabbat dinners and holiday celebrations. She has said that studying for her Bat Mitzvah further connected her to her faith, despite the difficulty of having to learn to speak the words phonetically. That was typical of the way the Matlins dealt with their daughter’s deafness. Though it was the norm at the time to place deaf children in an institution or even send them away to a boarding school for deaf students, the Matlins insisted that their daughter have a mainstream education. She learned to speak, lip-read, and sign, giving her the ability to move easily between the hearing and the hearing-impaired worlds. Throughout her childhood, she had both hearing and deaf friends. Matlin graduated from John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, Illinois, then studied criminal justice at William Rainey Harper Community College in nearby Palatine. Theater was Matlin’s favorite childhood activity. At the age of eight, she performed the role of Dorothy in a production of The Wizard of Oz, based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, staged by the Center on Deafness. At twelve, she was a member of the Traveling Hands Troupe, a theatrical company of children and young teens who danced and signed the lyr790
ics. While visiting Chicago, Henry Winkler and his wife Stacey attended a performance. Matlin’s stage presence convinced him she was star material, and he kept in touch, later becoming her mentor. She lived with the Winklers during her first two years in California. Life’s Work Though she had been acting since childhood, Matlin became an overnight sensation in 1987 when she won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Actress for her debut film, Children of a Lesser God (1986). She was twenty-one, then the youngest woman to receive the best actress award, and one of only four to receive it for a first cinematic effort. Her career may have been in high gear, but her personal life was in shambles. Caused in part by a romantic but troubled relationship with her costar, William Hurt, her drug and alcohol abuse escalated to the extent that she entered the Betty Ford Center for rehabilitation just two days after receiving the Golden Globe Award. The program was successful, Matlin has remained sober, and, despite concerns to the contrary, it did not harm her career. Matlin’s deafness has not kept her from appearing in more films and in television series. Along with one-time appearances on dozens of series, her television work has included recurring roles in various long-running series, including Reasonable Doubts, The West Wing, and Picket Fences. She hosted a segment of Extreme Makeover, Home Edition, and was a Dancing with the Stars competitor. Her love of children led to her work with Baby Einstein, Nickelodeon, and Sesame Street, among other children’s programming. She enjoys producing films for television, and she operates her own company, Solo One Productions. While she is best known for her screen and television roles, acting is not her only interest. Because her parents always made her believe she could do anything she chose to do, she grew up confident in her abilities. This is demonstrated in Larry Smith’s It All Changed in an Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure (2010). Matlin’s six-word contribution reads: “I’ve done it all except hear.” She’s always eager to reach out to deaf children and help them cope in a hearing world. Toward that end she has written children’s books with deaf protagonists, including Deaf Child Crossing and Nobody’s Perfect. Her work for the deaf has included serving on the
Jewish Americans board of trustees for Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the world’s only university for the deaf. She strives to remain neutral on the more contentious issues that divide the community, such as cochlear implants. Some believe the hearingimpaired should rely only on lip-reading and/or signing. Matlin has been criticized for sometimes speaking with her voice, notably when she was a presenter at the Academy Awards. Matlin aborted her own plans for a law enforcement career, but she married a Los Angeles police officer, Kevin Grandalski, in 1993. She remains close to her good friend and mentor Winkler, and the Winkler family hosted her outdoor wedding at their home. Matlin and Grandalski have four children, Sarah, Brandon, Tyler, and Isabelle. The interfaith family celebrates both Jewish and Christian holidays. There is no other work she considers as important as raising her children to be caring, responsible adults. Significance The film and television industry is competitive, and one in which perfection is not only expected but also demanded. Matlin, a profoundly deaf actor, turned that assumption upside down. Rising above that challenge and succeeding in show business were not enough for Matlin. She is a tireless advocate for the deaf community, and she is proud to have played a significant role in the passage of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990. This legislation, sponsored by Senators John McCain of Arizona and Tom Harkin of Iowa, made it mandatory that all new television sets over nineteen inches have built-in closed captioning circuitry. Keenly aware of how much closed captioning had opened up the world to her, she campaigned for the bill and testified in Congress. The bill was approved and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush. —Norma Lewis Further Reading Klein, Stanley, and John Kemp, eds. Reflections from a Different Journey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004. A collection of inspiring accounts of people who grew up with various medical and physical challenges and how they overcame obstacles on the way to success. Includes a foreword by Matlin.
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Succeeding Against the Odds Marlee Matlin appeared in numerous productions of the theater group Center on Deafness in the Chicago area. She could not hear the music she danced to, and, though she was able to speak, her deafness distorted her speech. She wanted to become a professional actor, but how many roles could there possibly be a deaf performer? At twenty-one she landed the lead in Children of a Lesser God (1986). Her character, like herself, was profoundly deaf. Unlike herself, the character was filled with deep rage. It was the most intense work she had ever done, and her stellar performance stunned all who saw it. She first won the Golden Globe Award, then was nominated for the Academy Award. Her competition included some of the biggest names in Hollywood: Kathleen Turner, Jane Fonda, Sigourney Weaver, and Sissy Spacek. This was Matlin’s first film, and she was an unknown and deaf. No one was more surprised than she was when she won. Though uncertain if she could successfully compete with hearing actors, she knew she had to try. Her parents had instilled her with confidence. She put that confidence to the test and went on to have a solid career that included Emmy Award nominations for her television work and eventually her own production company. She once said that “handicaps are not in the eyes or ears, but in the mind.” That upbeat attitude has made her feel more empowered than challenged.
Matlin, Marlee, with Betsy Sharkey. I’ll Scream Later. New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2009. An autobiography that details Matlin’s triumph over deafness, her romantic involvements, her struggle with addiction, her successes in Hollywood, and ultimately her grounded family life with her husband and four children. Rappaport, Jill. Mazel Tov: Celebrities’ Bar and Bat Mitzvah Memories. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007. Details the heartwarming story of Matlin’s Bat Mitzvah and of her struggle to learn the words phonetically, then speak them. The event made her proud of her Jewish heritage and further grounded her in her faith. Overcome by emotion, her tears splashed on the Torah. See also: Adrien Brody; Jamie Lee Curtis; Fran Drescher; Winona Ryder; Paul Wittgenstein.
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Jewish Americans
Walter Matthau Actor and entertainer A clever actor with a rubbery face, Matthau had roles that ranged from dramatic to comic. Born: October 1, 1920; New York, New York Died: July 1, 2000; Santa Monica, California Also known as: Walter John Matthow (birth name); Walter John Matthau (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Walter Matthau (MA-thow) was born October 1, 1920, to Melas Matthow from Kiev, Ukraine, and Rose Berolsky from Lithuania. Matthau’s parents had settled in the lower East Side of New York after immigrating in the early 1900’s. They had one older son, Henry, born in 1918. Melas left his family in 1923. Overbearing, stern, and mentally unstable, Rose worked in sweatshops but struggled financially; as a result, both boys lacked secu-
Walter Matthau. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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rity and self-confidence. Matthau did odd jobs to help, and he began gambling, setting up games in which he could increase his small earnings. The gambling would become a lifelong addiction. Matthau’s schooling was comparatively stable. He attended Public School 25, Junior High 64, and Seward Park High School. Bright and inquisitive, he began reading, memorizing, and quoting the works of William Shakespeare by age seven. He also had an enduring love for classical music, especially that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Matthau’s activities in high school included running track, speaking at student assemblies, performing for other students, reciting literature, and writing poetry. Matthau’s theater involvement began early. He appeared in various local productions, starting at age four. He was especially involved in the Yiddish theater, at which time he taught himself Yiddish, sold refreshments, and learned through observation. His first important role was in The Dishwasher, which opened on December 1, 1931, at the Second Avenue Theater. While working in small parts, Matthau had the chance to study with Michael Rosenberg, whom Matthau credited with developing his comic timing. To make a living, Matthau also worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Project Administration. In April, 1942, Matthau joined the United States Army Air Corps to save his brother from the draft. During Matthau’s time in France and England, where he worked as a gunner and a radio operator, Matthau gained the rank of sergeant, but he lacked leadership abilities. He was discharged on October 15, 1945. There were three romantic involvements in the early part of Matthau’s life. Anna Berger, a platonic girlfriend from the neighborhood, was influential in encouraging his acting. His first major love affair was with Charlotte Haverly, whom he met while in the military. They dated on and off for several years. His first marriage was to Geraldine (Geri) Grace Johnson. He met Geri at the Dramatic Workshop (where he changed the spelling of his last name), and they married in 1948. They had two children, David on November 2, 1953, and Jenny on August 2, 1956.
Jewish Americans Life’s Work Matthau’s first professional acting jobs were at summer playhouses, from 1946 to 1949. This work led to twelve Broadway shows in four years. He won a Drama Critics’ Circle Award in 1951 and received positive reviews. His first significant role was in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, which ran for more than four hundred performances, beginning on October 13, 1955. While he was working on Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Matthau met Carol Marcus Saroyan. She played a small part in the play and was the understudy for Jayne Mansfield. Though he was still married to Geri, Matthau and Saroyan began attending social events together. He divorced his wife in 1959, and later that year, on August 21, 1959, Matthau married Saroyan. Matthau played many supporting roles on stage, in television, and in film after Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? His early film roles included Bigger than Life (1956), A Face in the Crowd (1957), and Voice in the Mirror (1958). He also continued in smaller film roles, including Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1957), Onionhead (1958), and King Creole (1958). In 1959, Matthau tried directing, with the film Gangster Story. Matthau won a Film Daily Award for a role he claimed as one of his favorites, a sheriff in Lonely Are the Brave (1962). In 1961, Matthau went back to stage acting with Once There Was a Russian. The play was a flop, but it opened the door for him to once more become a more active stage persona. On October 18, 1961, he opened A Shot in the Dark. The play lasted for 389 performances and won Matthau a Tony Award as best actor, featured or supporting. Matthau’s personal life was also going well. His marriage to Saroyan thrived, and on December 10, 1962, she gave birth to their son, Charles. The two roles that established Matthau as a major actor followed within a few years of his first Tony Award. In 1964, he landed the role of Oscar Madison in Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, which earned him his second Tony Award and established him as a solid, money-making lead actor. This win was followed by an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in the film The Fortune Cookie (1966) opposite Jack Lemmon. In the following years, Matthau accepted a plethora of film roles. Some of the most memorable films include Hello, Dolly! (1969) with Barbra Streisand, Pete ’n’Tillie (1972) with Carol Burnett, and The Sunshine Boys (1975) with George Burns. The
Matthau, Walter hits continued with films such as The Bad News Bears (1976), Little Miss Marker (1980), I Ought to Be in Pictures (1982), Dennis the Menace (1993), and Grumpy Old Men (1993). His final film role was in Hanging Up (2000). During his last years, Matthau suffered from serious health problems. He was on dialysis for kidney failure, he had congestive heart failure, and he had damaged vertebrae in his back. On June 30, 2000, he experienced a massive heart attack and was taken to the St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. Matthau died on July 1, 2000, and was buried in Los Angeles. Significance Matthau’s costars and directors often commented on his intensity in learning the acting craft. He would ask questions about how a part should be played until he was sure he could become the character. This ability to take on varied roles led to a versatile career, which included Matthau’s appearances in dramas, comedies, romances, thrillers, crime stories, family films, adventures, musicals, and fantasies. He could be a generous teacher to younger actors who wanted to learn and a harsh critic of
Friendship of a Lifetime: Matthau and Lemmon Walter Matthau’s ability to work well with other actors earned him many roles during his career. Probably the most famous pairing, though, was with Jack Lemmon. Matthau and Lemmon worked extensively together in ten films: The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Odd Couple (1968), Kotch (1971), The Front Page (1974), Buddy Buddy (1981), Grumpy Old Men (1993), Grumpier Old Men (1995), The Grass Harp (1995), Out to Sea (1997), and The Odd Couple II (1998). In 1974, the pair appeared onstage in Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock (1924), and both had cameo roles in JFK (1991). Their collaborations also include a video clip of their 1971 Academy Award presentation to Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin (1992) and the documentary The Gentleman Tramp (1972). In addition, the Academy Awards were kind to the pair, often showcasing them as hosts and presenters and acknowledging their skill as a team with Matthau’s 1967 win for Best Supporting Actor for The Fortune Cookie and a 1972 nomination for Best Actor for Kotch. Further, Lemmon and Matthau shared a David di Donatello best foreign actor award for The Front Page, Golden Globe nominations for four films, Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards for two films, and Golden Laurel Awards for two films. These best friends kept their costars, film crews, directors, and audiences laughing for years, until poor health stole them from the silver screen.
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May, Elaine those he believed lacked talent. However, he was well liked by most of his colleagues, and his ability to make people laugh was unparalleled. —Theresa L. Stowell Further Reading Costello, Ben. Jack and Walter: The Films of Lemmon and Matthau. Chandler, Ariz.: Five Star, 2009. This easy-to-read book provides details about the films that Matthau did with Lemmon. It also includes brief biographies of the authors and a strong collection of photographs. Edelman, Rob, and Audrey Kupferberg. Matthau: A Life. New York: Taylor, 2002. This biography counters many of the stories that Matthau made up about his background. It provides an interesting view of the real man through both biography and interviews with his childhood friends, his colleagues, and his sons.
Jewish Americans Hunter, Allan. Walter Matthau. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984. This unauthorized biography provides interesting insights into Matthau’s life from friends and colleagues. Hunter includes some of the outlandish stories Matthau told journalists about his life. Matthau, Carol. Among the Porcupines: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 1992. Matthau’s wife writes her autobiography but includes amusing anecdotes about her relationship with him. Includes a nice collection of personal photos. Rubinstein, Leslie. “One Fortunate Cookie (Walter Matthau).” American Film 8 (July/August, 1983): 34. This is a short simple biography of the actor’s life. Easy to read but limited in content. See also: Alan Arkin; Charles Grodin; Adam Sandler; Neil Simon.
Elaine May Actor, writer, comedian, and director May partnered with Mike Nichols in improvisational comedy routines first created with the Compass Players in Chicago and later performed with great success on Broadway, on national television, and in record albums in the late 1950’s. After that, she used her comic skills as an actor, a playwright, a screenwriter, and a director. Born: April 21, 1932; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Also known as: Esther Dale; Elaine Berlin (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Elaine May was born Elaine Berlin in 1932. Her father, Jack, was a well-known actor, writer, and director in the Yiddish theater; her mother, Ida, performed the functions of a producer. May made her theater debut as a baby in her father’s arms; at age three she was playing toddler roles, soon after appearing with her father in a radio parody of Fanny Brice’s Baby Snooks Show. By the time May was ten she had attended more than fifty schools, as the family traveled the Yiddish theater circuit. As a child May played a boy in a tragic drama, but her career as Benny ended when she began to develop breasts at age eleven. That same year, her father died, and May and her 794
mother moved to Los Angeles. After the challenge of live theater, the talented teenager found school boring. Restless, she quit when she was fourteen, read voraciously at home, and married Marvin May, an engineer, when she was sixteen. The Mays parted soon after their daughter, Jeannie, was born in 1949. Eager to continue her education, May was disappointed to discover that California colleges would not accept a student without a high school diploma. Hearing that such admission was possible at the University of Chicago, the teen mother left her daughter with her grandmother and hitchhiked to the Windy City. May never officially enrolled at University of Chicago, but she attended classes, sometimes correcting professors, and found soulmates among the quick-witted, iconoclastic students who formed improvisational workshops. In a band of clever young people, May was first among equals, ready to play any role onstage or off. Known for her sharp tongue, her sexual adventurism, and her complete disregard for consumer comforts, she displayed a willingness to experiment that matched and often outstripped that of her male colleagues. A bohemian group gathered around David Shepherd, a wealthy, idealistic New Yorker with Marxist loyalties, who financed the formation of the Playwrights Theatre Club in 1953 and later the Compass Players, a political cabaret that in-
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cluded May and would make Chicago the nation’s premier location for improvisational comedy. Life’s Work The Compass Players moved to St. Louis, then later returned to Chicago, where some of the members formed the Second City Troupe, which would become the most celebrated and long-lasting improvisational comedy group in the United States. In 1957, still in their twenties, two of them, May and Mike Nichols, tried their luck in New York. They were a hit at the Sunday audition night at the Blue Angel; within months they had appeared on national television (unsuccessfully on The Jack Paar Show and successfully on The Steve Allen Show and Omnibus). Their comedy sketches were articulate, urbane, and so flawless that audiences often doubted that large parts of their routines were improvised. The first Nichols-May album, Improvisations to Music (1958), was adlibbed in a recording studio; four more Elaine May. (CBS/Getty Images) carefully produced albums followed. In October, 1960, An Evening with Mike black comedy (considerably shortened and sweetened Nichols and Elaine May, simply staged and brilliantly by Paramount Pictures) that May also wrote and directed, performed, opened on Broadway. The show was a smash; soon followed by her expert direction of The Heartbreak it could have continued profitably for years, but May Kid (1972), for which May’s daughter, Jeannie Berlin, found the repetition of set pieces boring. She ended the won numerous awards for her poignant portrayal of an show in 1961, after slightly more than one season. abandoned Jewish bride. May’s next film project, writing May entered into a brief marriage with lyricist Sheland directing Mikey and Nicky (1976), absorbed several don Harnick and, shortly after, married her analyst, Dayears of her life and strained her already tense relationvid Rubenfine. Hired to write a screen adaptation of ship with Paramount Pictures. A story of friendship and Evelyn Waugh’s acerbic novel The Loved One (1948), betrayal between two small-time crooks, the film starred May produced a screenplay many considered stellar; real-life buddies John Cassavetes and Peter Falk. The however, it was refused by the studio, beginning an often project became an elaborate exercise in improvisation, strained relationship between May and Hollywood. Remuch to the chagrin of the crew and producer. May diturning to the theater, she wrote A Matter of Position rected the cameras to roll for a million feet of film, an ex(1962), casting Nichols in the lead and Arthur Penn as ditravagance that presented an editing dilemma that lasted rector. May quarreled with both men when they wanted more than two years. The film, which was held for a full changes and fired Penn, replacing him before the (short) reedit and rerelease in 1986, has an intensity and verisimPhiladelphia run. In the mid- to late-1960’s May wrote ilitude rarely matched, but it left May’s reputation tarseveral more plays and directed others; she appeared in nished. Ishtar (1987) was May’s Waterloo as a HollyThe Office Off-Broadway and played eccentric, insecure wood writer-director. Produced by her friend Warren women with great imagination in two Hollywood comeBeatty and costarring Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, the dies: Enter Laughing (1966) and Luv (1967). film follows the exploits of a fifth-rate song-and-dance In the early 1970’s May returned to Hollywood to team, who find themselves embroiled in international incostar, with Walter Matthau, in A New Leaf (1971), a 795
May, Elaine trigue in a desert country named Ishtar. With massive cost overruns, many because of May’s insistence on multiple takes, the project became the most expensive musical ever made and a synonym for flop. May found her greatest success in Hollywood writing for others’ comedies: Heaven Can Wait (1978), Tootsie (1982), The Birdcage (1996), and Primary Colors (1998), for which she was nominated for a Best Screenplay Academy Award. In 1996, May and her partner returned with Nichols and May: Take Two, a much-admired public television special that coincided with the rerelease of their now-classic record The Best of Nichols and May. In 2000, the duo received a Career Tribute from the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. May has remained committed to her first and deepest love, the theater. In 1998, she starred in one-acts cowritten with Alan Arkin. She wrote Adult Entertainment (2002), an Off-Broadway satire that starred her daughter Berlin. May also used her exceptional comedic talent in supporting roles in films, such as Small-Time Crooks (2000).
Jewish Americans
Bringing a New Woman’s Voice into American Comedy Beginning in the 1950’s, with her startlingly original work in improvisational comedy in Chicago, Elaine May broke through the barriers that faced American women in comedy. She embraced the aggressive choices required of improvisational actors and relished challenging, worldly roles, often playing psychiatrists, employers, doctors, and various folks in charge (including the pushy mother). Offstage in Chicago, she was a generous mentor to other women actors, an endlessly creative author of comic scenarios, and a tireless leader of workshops. She is a technically proficient actor, playing all parts truthfully and challenging her colleagues to do likewise. Her collaboration with Mike Nichols began with the Compass Players in Chicago, where they faced each other as brilliant equals and created some of the most sophisticated, inventive, and popular comedy of the era, eventually moving to Broadway, television, and records, to the pleasure of an ever-widening audience. It was May who grew bored when the improvisation in their comedy routines diminished; they disbanded their act in 1961. May would go on to a less commercially successful career than that of Nichols, but she has continued to take comic risks in a series of screenplays and theater pieces, often directing her own work and sometimes acting with great invention, commitment, and courage.
Significance May has brought a fierce intelligence, a restless willingness to experiment, and a Jewish sense of humor to projects that range from improvisational theater to Broadway plays and Hollywood motion pictures. Her perfectionism and disdain for the accoutrements of celebrity have made her an awkward and sometimes unsuccessful fit with the expectations of commercial entertainment. A line of twenty-first century female comic actor-writers stand in her debt, for May was the first American woman to combine these talents successfully. —Carolyn Anderson Further Reading Blum, David. “The Road to Ishtar.” New York (March 16, 1987): 35-43. Published before the opening of the long-delayed, grossly over-budget comedy, Blum reports on the “bad word of mouth” circulating. Includes production details and color photographs. Coleman, Janet. The Compass. New York: Alfred A.
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Knopf, 1990. Lively, authoritative history of the groundbreaking Chicago improvisational comedy group (Compass Players) that included May as a central, inspirational presence. James, Caryn. “The Fireworks of Elaine May.” The New York Times, February 24, 2006. Admiring essay written in connection with “The May 4-Pack,” a retrospective of the four films May directed, screened at Lincoln Center. Schuth, H. Wayne. Mike Nichols. Boston: Twayne, 1978. Consideration of Nichols’s films, with attention to his early comedy work with May. Thompson, Thomas. “Whatever Happened to Elaine?” Life (July 28, 1967): 55-59. Thompson asks the question many wondered, as former partner Mike Nichols enjoyed great commercial and artistic success; blackand-white photographs. See also: Alan Arkin; Dustin Hoffman; Walter Matthau; Mike Nichols; Arthur Penn.
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Mayer, Louis B.
Louis B. Mayer Business executive Taking over the helm at Metro Pictures in 1924, Mayer built his studio into the most famous and financially successful one of its time. During his tenure at MetroGoldwyn-Mayer (MGM), he helped found the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and produced several American film classics. Born: July 12, 1884; Dymer, Russian Empire (now Dumier, Ukraine) Died: October 29, 1957; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Lazar Meir; Lazar Mayer; Eliezer Meir (birth name); Louis Burt Mayer (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment
(MGM) in 1924. The company included a theatrical chain (Loews Theaters) and a robust distribution system. This quickly made MGM one of the five major studios, alongside Fox Studios, Paramount Pictures, Radio-KeithOrpheum Pictures (RKO), and Warner Bros. These companies, through a system of vertical integration control (production, distribution, exhibition), carved a monopolistic niche for themselves before running afoul of federal antitrust laws in the late 1930’s. Life’s Work Mayer directed the company from 1924 to 1951. Under his leadership, MGM became Hollywood’s leading studio. Though not an artistic person, Mayer was an adroit businessman who recognized talent and catered to public taste. From his days in Havermill, Mayer was committed to exhibiting wholesome entertainment. His
Early Life Louis B. Mayer (MAY-ur) was born to Jacob Mayer and Sarah Meltzer, and he had three brothers and a sister. The family fled Russia for England in 1886. They later immigrated to New Brunswick, Canada. Louis B. Mayer moved to Boston in 1904 and married Margaret Shenberg the same year. He became an American citizen on June 12, 1914. The couple had two daughters, Irene (later married to film producer William Goetz) and Edie (later married to producer David O. Selznick). Producing motion pictures was a fledgling industry when Mayer came to the United States. Although motion pictures were considered lowerclass entertainment, Mayer saw their potential. With several other immigrant Jewish associates as investors, he acquired the lease for a small burlesque theater in Havermill, Massachusetts. He rehabilitated the theater and reopened it a year later. From these beginnings, Mayer acquired enough income to build the Colonial Theater in 1910, a venue for vaudeville stars and later for motion pictures. By 1913, Mayer had formed companies operating theaters in Pennsylvania and New York. By many accounts, he acquired considerable wealth by showing The Birth of Nation (1915). This convinced Mayer about the profits to be made in producing films, and he created Metro Pictures Corporation. Two years later, he moved to Los Angeles and founded the Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation. His first film was Virtuous Wives (1918). From this point, he successfully parlayed several partnerships into the creation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Louis B. Mayer. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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public employment, script currency, and increased taxes. Mayer joined with William Randolph Hearst, Harry Chandler, and others in Louis B. Mayer was a leader in shaping the studio system of raising $500,000 to support the Republican canHollywood’s golden age. This revolutionized the film industry and didate, Frank Merriam. MGM produced fake brought about the assembly-line filmmaking of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Secure with his partners and associates, Mayer had the newsreels showing unemployed workers headability to identify talent, acquire it, and keep it. Like other Jews in ing to California in anticipation of Sinclair’s show business (notably the Warner brothers), he possessed an unvictory. canny knack for tapping into Middle American values. This could By the late 1940’s, MGM was experiencing be seen in the films he produced, especially in the Depression years a marked drop in box-office receipts. Many of when MGM films scored so well at the box office. The films prothe studio’s genres seemed dated. Since the late duced by his studio are classics of American cinema, including: 1930’s, the U.S. Department of Justice had been The Merry Widow (1934), The Thin Man (1934), A Tale of Two Citinvestigating monopolistic practices within the ies (1935), Naughty Marietta (1935), San Francisco (1936), Boys film industry. Because of lingering Depression Town (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939), and The Wizard of Oz unemployment and the onset of World War II, (1939). His ascendancy occurred with creation of the studio systhe studios won a brief reprieve. This ended tem; Mayer’s abrupt exit from filmmaking was a sign of the system’s demise. with the United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948), ordering studios to divest their theatrical holdings. At the same time, television was beginning to cut into the studios’ audistudio represented high production quality, sophisticaences. In the postwar period, the contract system was coltion, glamour, middle-class values, and sentimentality. lapsing as actors wanted options to appear on radio and At some point, most of the major actors, directors, art dion television without studio interference. rectors, costume designers, screenwriters, composers, The consequences were severe for Mayer. Unable to and lyricists passed through MGM’s lot. Mayer had a pawin a major Academy Award for several years. MGM ternalistic but effective managerial style. hired Dore Schary away from Radio-Keith-Orpheum The 1930’s were MGM’s heyday in many ways. Films Pictures (RKO). The younger Schary wanted the studio were produced on an assembly-line basis and in a gamut to reflect changing postwar tastes. Mayer was still comof genres: classical works, musicals, comedies, and dramitted to sentimental-style films. When Mayer called the mas. Icons of American film emerged from the studio: New York corporate office, threatening to terminate Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Jeanette Schary, the company fired Mayer. He left MGM on May MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, 30, 1951. Mayer quickly drifted out of the public eye. He Nelson Eddy, Katharine Hepburn, William Powell, and died from leukemia on October 29, 1957. Joan Crawford, which led to the observation that MGM had “more stars than are in the heavens.” Significance Mayer also was a founder of the Academy of Motion Few figures epitomized the American Jewish immiPicture Arts and Sciences, which presented its first Acadgrant story the way Mayer did. Basically a self-educated emy Awards in 1929. Mayer secured the Best Picture man, he came to symbolize the glitter and glamour of Academy Award for his studio’s musical, The Broadway Hollywood’s golden era. More than any other film execMelody (1929). utive of his time, Mayer became the image of the cajoling During these years, Mayer was enormously powerful “film mogul.” A conservative man both culturally and in the California Republican Party. A deeply conservapolitically, his departure from MGM reflected the new tive man who was wary of labor unions, Mayer was a postwar film industry realities. Bigger than life in many friend of President Herbert Hoover. He also had Ida ways, this sentimental man consistently remembered his Koverman, executive secretary of the state Republican immigrant origins and Jewish roots. Party, on his studio’s payroll. In 1934, Mayer and other — Michael W. Rubinoff Hollywood moguls viewed Upton Sinclair’s gubernatorial campaign with alarm. The former socialist writer Further Reading was touting an agenda to End Poverty in California Altman, Diana. Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the (EPIC), which included state-run collectives, massive Origins of the Studio System. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol,
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Jewish Americans 1992. A revisionist attempt to credit Mayer with fighting organized crime’s efforts to penetrate the film industry. Altman makes Mayer out to be a martyr, though self-preservation might have been his prime motivation. Carey, Gary. All the Stars in Heaven: Louis B. Mayer’s M-G-M. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1981. A friendly revisionist biography that is a balance between Mayer’s achievements and his personal flaws. Though lacking an academic flair, the book is entertaining because it portrays Mayer’s personal side. Crowther, Bosley. Hollywood Rajah: The Life and Times of Louis B. Mayer. New York: Holt, 1960. 2d ed. Longtime New York Times film reviewer Crowther is highly critical of Mayer, perhaps reflecting general industry sentiment at the time. This book is dated by five decades of subsequent disclosures revealing Mayer to be more complex than previously discussed. Eyman, Scott. The Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. This biography portrays Mayer as a pragmatic industrialist who rose from a humble background to ultimately manage the sprawling MGM empire. The passage of time has allowed Eyman to offer details not found in previous works. Mayer is shown to be an ac-
Meier, Richard tor himself in how he dealt with his stars. In the process, Mayer defined the studio era and fell when the studio system was dismembered. Gabler, Neal. An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Anchor, 1989. Wellwritten, popular approach to understanding Mayer and his fellow moguls through an American Jewish prism. The Hollywood Jews (Mayer, Adolph Zukor, Harry Cohen, Carl Laemmle, and more) did not see themselves as ethnic group caretakers. However, they did care about their image and how it played against the tides of America from 1919 through 1945. Marx, Samuel. Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-Believe Saints. New York: Random House, 1975. Insider account of the rivalry existing between producer Mayer and director Irving Thalberg. Marx began with MGM in 1930 and thus wrote this breezy account from knowing the two men and the many Metro employees of the period. See also: Lauren Bacall; Cecil B. DeMille; David Geffen; Samuel Goldwyn; Al Jolson; Jeffrey Katzenberg; Joseph L. Mankiewicz; Steven Spielberg; Irving Thalberg; Lew Wasserman.
Richard Meier Architect and artist Meier is an internationally recognized architect, who developed a consistent, distinctive modern style noted for its white surfaces and geometrical designs. Born: October 12, 1934; Newark, New Jersey Also known as: Richard Alan Meier (full name) Areas of achievement: Architecture and design; art Early Life Richard Meier (MI-ur) was born in Newark, New Jersey, on October 12, 1934, into a middle-class, liberal Jewish family, and he grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey. He could have entered the family’s tanning business, but early on he took an interest in architecture. At Central High School he took classes in art and art history, and in his home basement studio he drew or made models of ships, planes, and houses. To follow current trends, he read Architectural Forum and House Beautiful. One
summer he worked as an intern at a local architectural firm and saw how drawings were translated into buildings. The following summer he worked as an apprentice house carpenter, learning how blueprints were turned into buildings. In 1952, Meier chose to attend Cornell University instead of Harvard University or Yale University because Cornell offered architecture as an undergraduate program. In addition, he bypassed the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) because Cornell was more design oriented. He also studied painting and subsequently became a designer, a sculptor, and a creator of collages. After graduating in 1957, Meier began a series of apprenticeships at Davis, Brody, and Wisniewski (19581959); Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (1959-1960), where he learned how a large corporate firm worked; and Marcel Breuer and Associates (1960-1963). Between his first two jobs, Meier toured Europe, 799
Meier, Richard where he saw buildings of Le Corbusier, whose work he had studied at Cornell. Meier admired the white purist masterpieces of Le Corbusier with their brutal but delicate, unfinished, precast concrete construction. The formal properties of Le Corbusier’s work of the 1920’s and 1930’s are evident in Meier’s work. Life’s Work In 1963, Meier set up his own practice and began his teaching career at Cooper Union, New York, later also teaching at Princeton University, Harvard, and Yale. His early works were private houses, notably the Smith House (1967-1967), the Saltzman House (1967), and the Douglas House (1971-1973), the last a strongly vertical, white structure situated on a steep wooded hillside overlooking a river. These homes were built in the prevailing modernist style: the designs stressed artificial and abstract treatment of geometric forms and space, tectonic clarity, layered composition, and strong verticals and horizontals. Already Meier’s characteristic white, pristine surfaces, free of ornament, are the dominant impression. Although well situated in their sites, the houses stand in sharp contrast to nature. Meier’s inclusion in the 1969 exhibition The New York Five at the Museum of Modern Art brought his work to attention in the United States. In 1972, the book Five Architects included Meier (along with Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, and John Hejduk) as among the “whites,” who stood for the rational, constructional approach to the modernism of Frank Lloyd Wright, De Stijl, and Le Corbusier, versus the “grays,” or the emerging postmodernist movement around Robert Stern and associated with Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. Meier’s growing reputation led to major institutional commissions, including the Atheneum in New Harmony, Indiana (1975-1979); the Bronx Developmental Center, New York (1970-1977); the Hartford Seminary, Connecticut (1978-1981); the Museum für Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt, Germany (1979-1985); the High Museum of Art, Atlanta (1980-1983); and the Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, Islip, New York (1993-1999). In his youth, Meier went to temple on Fridays, and when he married Katherine Gormley, a Catholic, in 1979, their wedding service had both a rabbi and a priest. The family celebrated the major Jewish holidays as well as Christmas; their children were raised Jewish but did not attend Hebrew school. (Meier and Gormley eventually divorced.) Early in his career, Meier helped install exhibits in the Jewish Museum, one of which was Recent 800
Jewish Americans American Synagogue Architecture (1963). For Meier, religion and its purpose can be expressed in architecture that affects all people, regardless of their denomination. The organization of churches for different faiths, however, need to be different in order to provide, for example, for a baptistery or confessionals. Synagogue design often deals with the conflicting requirements of the space (to serve for worship and for holding banquets) and the need to differentiate between Shabbat and Yom Kippur. The pure white geometric forms of his architecture suggest little relationship to Jewish religious thought. The high point of Meier’s career was receiving the commission to design the Getty Center in Los Angeles (1984-1997). On a 110-acre hilltop site, the Getty Center campus appears as a shining city on a hill, the Acropolis, or the whitewashed villages of the Mediterranean. For the Getty, Meier created a cluster of buildings, with a variety of interior and exterior spaces, opening out on all sides to vistas of the Pacific Ocean and of mountains. Meier wrote that his architecture is a preoccupation with “space whose order and definition are related to light, to human scale, and to the culture of architecture. Architecture is vital and enduring because it contains us; it describes space, space we move through, exist in, and use.” Meier’s design vocabulary has remained unchanged, and his work is among the most consistent and instantly recognizable of modern architects. Obvious is his almost obsessive use of white surfaces and abstract manipulation of space, form, light, and surface details. Meier has been influenced by and collaborated with his friend the painter Frank Stella; and Meier’s style has affinities with the “California Light and Space” artists of the mid1960’s, who manipulated artificial and natural light to make light tangible. His facades are geometrically articulated by grids of windows, doors, balconies, columns, white panels, pipe railings, ramps, and terraces. His facades also reflect the collages that he creates as well as the eye of the abstract painter and sculptor. While the austerity and complexity of his buildings are modern, their calmness evokes another era. For Meier, the history of architecture is not something to be rejected but rather a source of ideas and methods. He reinterprets and reassembles the conventional, pure architectural forms. The infusion of natural or artificial light into his interiors creates spaces that dazzle the eye, with the intensity of the white surfaces; light makes his spaces expressive and perceptible. Meier has won numerous architecture awards, including the Pritzker Prize
Jewish Americans (1984) and the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects (1989). Significance Meier has enjoyed international success as an architect. His work is of the highest consistency and integrity and is instantly recognizable. Characteristic is his use of white surfaces and his abstract manipulation of geometric forms. He extends the spatial and formal experiments of the early twentieth century modern masters Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Wright. In his commitment to a visual aesthetic of modern abstraction, his architecture achieves a pristine purity and clarity of vision and style. —Thomas McGeary Further Reading Blazer, Werner. Richard Meier: Details. Basel: Birkhäuser, 1996. Illustrated book examining the concepts and aesthetics of Meier’s creative detailing of his buildings.
Meir, Golda Meier, Richard. Building the Getty. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. Contains Meier’s reflections on his career and describes his experiences in building the Getty Center. Pogrebin, Abigail. Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish. New York: Broadway Books, 2005. Profile of Meier in which he discusses his Jewish background. Richard Meier, Architect, 1964/1984-2004/2009. 5 vols. New York: Rizzoli, 1984-2009. In this ongoing set, each volume covers a span of years, provides a catalog of Meier’s projects and buildings, and contains designs, photographs, and brief introductions to each project. Richard Meier: The Architect as Designer and Artist. New York: Rizzoli, 2003. Illustrated exhibit catalog of Meier’s collages, sculpture, furniture, and tableware. See also: Frank Gehry; Milton Glaser; Paul László; Richard Neutra; Rudolph Schindler.
Golda Meir Ukrainian-born politician Meir helped lay the groundwork for the founding of a sovereign Israeli state, and she became Israel’s first female prime minister. Born: May 3, 1898; Kiev, Ukraine, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine) Died: December 8, 1978; Jerusalem, Israel Also known as: Goldie; Golda Mabovitch; Goldie Meyerson; Goldie Mabovitch (birth name) Area of achievement: Government and politics Early Life Golda Meir (GOHL-dah mi-IHR) was born Goldie Mabovitch in 1898 in Kiev, Ukraine. Her parents, Moshe Yitzhak and Blume Neiditch, had moved from Pinsk to Kiev, but within a few years they discovered that they could not earn enough money to support their family. In 1903, Moshe left for the United States, and Blume took the children to her parents’ home in Pinsk. In 1906, Blume and her three daughters joined Moshe in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Meir flourished in Milwaukee, attending the Fourth Street Grade School and graduating as valedictorian when she was fourteen, but she went against
Golda Meir. (Library of Congress)
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Life’s Work In 1928, Meir took a position as the secretary of the Women’s Labor Council in the Histadrut (General Federation of Jewish Labor). In the 1930’s, Meir traveled to Europe and to the United States as an emissary of the Histadrut, and in 1938 she attended the Evian Conference called by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss the Jewish refugee problem. In 1947, the United Nations voted for an independent Jewish state, and Meir was one of only two women to sign Israel’s declaration of independence. In 1948, she returned to the United States, where she raised seventy-five million dollars in a few weeks for the state of Israel (she was to raise hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of her career). While in the United States, she learned that David Ben-Gurion had named her the Israeli ambassador to Russia. In 1956, she became Israel’s foreign minister, a post she held for nine years. She also Hebraized her name from Meyerson to Meir in 1956. In 1966, diagnosed with lymphoma, Meir decided to resign as foreign minister, but she continued as the secretary-general of her political party, Mapai. The Six-Day War (June 5-10, 1967) factionalized the Mapai Party, and Meir made it her task to reunite it as the Labor Party. Israel emerged victorious from this “lightning war,” and in 1968 Meir was finally able to retire to her home in Tel Aviv. Her first retirement was short-lived, lasting just more than a year. On February 26, 1969, Levi Eshkol, the prime minister of Israel, died suddenly of a First Female Prime Minister of Israel heart attack. Because regular elections would not be held until October, 1969, and the two Although Golda Meir stated that she did not believe her gender strongest candidates were Moshe Dayan, the directly impacted her political career, much of her autobiography defense minister, and Yigal Allon, the deputy is concerned with her struggle to raise two children and to maintain that career. She was one of only two women to sign Israel’s Declaprime minister, Labor Party leaders decided ration of Independence, and she was the second woman to serve as to choose a compromise candidate as interim prime minister in the modern world. Her commitment to Zionism prime minister. After days of debate, the central and her willingness to dedicate her life to the realization of a sovercommittee of the Labor Party selected Meir as eign nation helped create the modern state of Israel. A U.S. poll its leader, choosing her by party caucus rather taken in the early 1970’s revealed that she was the most admired than by national elections. She was sworn in as woman in America. Like many women leaders, however, she prime minister on March 7, 1969. She was sevwas propelled into office by the untimely death of another leader. enty years old when she assumed this position, At the time of her election by the Knesset (Israel’s legislature), she and many Israelis considered her only a carewas considered a stopgap candidate who would hold office only taker leader. until a permanent candidate could be elected the following OctoMeir faced formidable challenges during her ber. Meir, however, proved to be a tough-minded prime minister who led Israel for five years, from 1969 to 1974, when she resigned first months in office. A few days after she was in the wake of the Yom Kippur War. There is little doubt that she sworn in as prime minister, a terrorist bomb exopened doors for other women heads of state, although she has ploded in the cafeteria at Hebrew University, been criticized for not doing more to support other women politiand the confrontation with Egypt at the Suez cians. Canal escalated. In October, 1969, Meir appealed directly to U.S. President Richard Nixon
her father’s wishes when she enrolled in high school. The conflict over her education caused her to move to her older sister’s home in Denver, Colorado, when she was just sixteen years old. She reconciled with her parents and returned to finish her high school education in 1915, followed by a year of study at the Milwaukee State Normal School. When war came to Europe, Meir joined the Poalei Zionists in Milwaukee, committing herself to labor Zionism and Jewish relief. In 1917, she accepted a teaching position at the Folks Schule in Milwaukee, where she became dedicated to the Zionist movement. She decided to move to Palestine as soon as possible. On December 24, 1917, she married Morris Meyerson, a young man she had met while in Denver. Shortly after the wedding, in 1918, she traveled to serve as one of the delegates to the American Jewish Congress in Philadelphia. Meir and her husband had agreed to immigrate to Palestine when they married, but they were unable to leave until 1921. After a three-year sojourn on Kibbutz Merhavia, in 1924, Meir and her husband moved to Tel Aviv and then to Jerusalem, where their two children, Menachem and Sarah, were born. Her husband did not enjoy life on the kibbutz, and Meir did not enjoy being a housewife. Although they never divorced, they eventually separated.
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Jewish Americans for military aid in a high-profile visit to Washington, D.C., setting the stage for increasingly close ties with the United States. Her ten-day visit to the United States included a visit to her high school in Milwaukee, but the real purpose of the trip included “a specific request for twenty-five Phantoms and eighty Skyhawk jets” and loans of two hundred million dollars a year for five years. Shortly after her successful visit to the United States, the Labor Party won in national elections. Meir remained as prime minister for the next four years. On October 6, 1973, Egyptians, who had been armed by the Soviet Union, attacked Israeli positions, crossing the Suez Canal and moving up the Sinai peninsula. Syria launched an attack from the Golan Heights, and Israel once again was at war and in danger of military defeat. On November 11, 1973, Egypt and Israel signed a ceasefire and disengagement agreement. Even though she was returned to office in December, Meir blamed herself for not mobilizing the reserves and making a preemptive strike. She stated that she would “never again” be the person she was prior to what came to be called the Yom Kippur War; therefore, on April 10, 1974, Meir announced that she had decided to resign. She retired and began writing her autobiography. She lived for four years after her resignation, dying of cancer in 1978 at the age of eighty. Significance Meir participated in the founding and the establishment of the state of Israel, and then she spent the remainder of her life in service to that state. Always a consensus builder, she included representatives of 90 percent of the opposition parties in her government, and she often held informal meetings with her cabinet, meeting in the kitchen of her home, in preparation for the official cabinet meetings. After becoming prime minister, she quickly emerged as a supremely confident and forceful leader on the
Meir, Golda global stage, leading her nation through a war and the peace negotiations that followed. —Yvonne J. Johnson Further Reading Burkett, Elinor. Golda. New York:HarperCollins, 2008. Well-written and researched biography of Meir that examines her motivations and her ideals. Mann, Peggy. Golda: The Life of Israel’s Prime Minister. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1971. Ends before the Yom Kippur War but is interesting for its detailed coverage of the first three years of Meir’s administration. Meir, Golda. A Land of Our Own: An Oral Autobiography. Edited by Marie Syrkin. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973. Includes interviews of Meir and excerpts from speeches; a preview of her longer autobiography. _______. My Life. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975. Details Meir’s life from her childhood to her resignation as prime minister of Israel. Slater, Robert. Golda: The Uncrowned Queen of Israel. New York: Jonathan David, 1981. Combines an extensive photographic history with a biography that focuses on the later years of Meir. Syrkin, Marie. Golda Meir: Israel’s Leader. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1969. Well-written biography but ends soon after Meir took office as prime minister. Thompson, Seth. “Golda Meir: A Very Public Life.” In Women as National Leaders, edited by Michael A. Genovese. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1993. An overview of Meir’s life with a focus on the impact of gender on her public and political life. See also: Bella Abzug; Henry Kissinger; Joe Lieberman.
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Henry Pereira Mendes British-born rabbi, theologian, and writer Mendes served as rabbi to the influential Sephardic congregation Shearith Israel in New York, where he worked to improve Jewish charities and promote Orthodoxy and Jewish education in the United States. He founded the Jewish Theological Seminary and wrote several books promoting Jewish culture and Zionism. Born: April 13, 1852; Birmingham, England Died: October 21, 1937; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Religion and theology; education; social issues Early Life Henry Pereira Mendes (HEHN-ree puh-REH-rah MEHN-dehs) was born in Birmingham, England, in 1852. Although of Portuguese descent, the Mendes family held important positions in the Sephardic Jewish community throughout the British Empire. Mendes’s family had been closely tied to rabbinical scholarship and leadership for several generations. Mendes’s father, Abraham Pereira Mendes, was a rabbi in a congregation in Birmingham, England, and Mendes’s grandfather and two uncles served Sephardic congregations in British colonies in the Caribbean region. Given this impressive family background and his later work in promoting ritual observance in America, it is likely Mendes was raised in a traditional Orthodox environment and continued this perspective into adulthood. Mendes’s earliest instruction came from his father, but he began formal studies at Northwick College and University College in London, as he prepared for the rabbinate. After he completed his education at age twentytwo, family connections and notoriety helped open doors for Mendes. In 1875, he began his rabbinical career by serving as the leader for the newly established Sephardic congregation in Manchester, England. Mendes worked in this position from 1875 to 1877. In 1877, Mendes was invited by Congregation Shearith Israel, a well-established Sephardic community in New York City, to serve as rabbi. He accepted and quickly assumed leadership of the congregation, establishing a Torah school and serving on philanthropic boards and charity organizations in New York. Mendes eventually married one of his former students, Rosalie Piza, in 1890. Life’s Work Shearith Israel is the oldest Jewish community in the United States, established by Portuguese Jews in the sev804
enteenth century. As rabbi to this esteemed community, Mendes worked to build close relationships with other Sephardic congregations in the United States and abroad. In 1881, for instance, Mendes worked to reestablish a synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, which had once been the site of a thriving community of Sephardic Jews in the eighteenth century. Mendes also dedicated a new Sephardic synagogue in Philadelphia in 1909. As late as 1933, after his official retirement from Congregation Shearith Israel, Mendes praised a New York City Jewish day school for its adherence to Sephardic ritual and tradition. Mendes was also instrumental in unifying diverse groups of Orthodox Jews from both Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions. He embraced what biographer Eugene Markovitz has termed “Modern Orthodoxy,” which insisted on strict adherence to Talmudic traditions and ritual, while encouraging greater engagement with the modern world and avoiding Jewish isolationism. Mendes endorsed Jewish learning and tradition, and he also promoted secular education (in 1884, Mendes earned an M.D. from the New York University Medical School). Mendes organized several distinctly Jewish charities while rabbi of Shearith Israel, including New York’s Young Women’s Hebrew Association (founded in 1902) and the New York Guild for the Jewish Blind (1908). In addition, he worked alongside other members of the clergy and public officials to alleviate social problems in New York. Mendes served on the board of the Guild for Crippled Children (founded 1896,) the Crippled Children’s East Side Free School (founded 1901), and Montefiore Hospital (founded 1884). He also helped establish Jewish schools in New York and encouraged the creation of nurses’ training programs in the city. Alongside his philanthropic work, Mendes was instrumental in strengthening Orthodox Judaism in America. During his lifetime, reformers challenged fundamental tenets of traditional Judaism, abandoning Jewish dietary laws, ritual observance, Zionism, and liturgical forms. Mendes welcomed modernization and reform when addressing social problems and charitable organizations, but he argued that Judaism’s traditional worship was essential and timeless. Thus, Mendes was a counterweight to the prevailing pattern of reform in late nineteenth century American Judaism, exemplified in the creation of the Pittsburgh Platform in 1885. When reformer Isaac Mayer Wise created the Union of American
Jewish Americans Hebrew Congregations in 1873, Mendes responded by organizing a group of traditionalist rabbis to ensure that Jewish education and kosher standards were upheld in the United States (this led to Mendes’s formation of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America in 1898). Likewise, the opening of reformers’Hebrew Union College in 1875 prompted Mendes to seek an alternative seminary for Orthodox students. Mendes organized and led the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (initially housed at Congregation Shearith Israel), which opened in 1887. Mendes continued to promote Orthodox and Sephardic traditionalism until his death in 1937. Significance While other Jewish immigrants to the United States, including many of his fellow rabbis, urged abandoning Orthodox practices for the sake of Americanization, Mendes insisted that Jewish tradition could be nurtured, even strengthened, in the United States. His writings, notably The Jewish Religion Ethically Presented (1904), present biblical history and Jewish ritual to both Jewish and gentile readers. In Looking Forward (1900), Mendes aimed for a broad audience in arguing for the centrality of Zionism in Jewish culture, a point that was vigorously denied in Reform Judaism’s 1885 Pittsburgh Platform.
Messinger, Ruth Above all, Mendes’s career focused on reconciling Orthodox Judaism with American pluralism and expressing Sephardic tradition while promoting wider engagement with other Jewish communities and the American public at large. —Justin Nordstrom Further Reading Ben-Ur, Aviva. Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Discusses Mendes’s perspectives on Sephardic schools and gives significant attention to Shearith Israel. Markovitz, Eugene. “Henry Pereira Mendes: Architect of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 55, no. 3 (March, 1966): 364-384. Describes Mendes’s response to Reform Judaism and to organization of Orthodox institutions. Mendes, Henry Pereira. The Jewish Religion Ethically Presented. 1904. Reprint. Charleston, S.C.: Nabu Press, 2010. Mendes’s overview of Jewish history, culture, and tradition exemplifies his view of Orthodoxy. See also: Henry Berkowitz; Harold S. Kushner; Sally J. Priesand; Isaac Mayer Wise.
Ruth Messinger Activist and educator Messinger had an impact on New York City politics by serving on the City Council and by being Manhattan Borough president. After leaving politics, she became president of the American Jewish World Service, a faith-based humanitarian organization, which she helped to grow. Born: November 6, 1940; New York, New York Also known as: Ruth Wyler (birth name) Also known as: Ruth Wyler Messinger (full name) Areas of achievement: Activism; social issues Early Life Ruth Messinger (MEHS-ihn-jur) was born to Wilfred and Marjorie Goldwasser Wyler. Messinger grew up on the upper West Side of Manhattan. In 1962, she received her bachelor’s degree from Radcliffe College, where she met and married Eli Messinger, with whom she had three children. Together they moved to Oklahoma, where
Messinger received a master of social work degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1964. They divorced, and she later married Andrew Lachman. On her return to New York City, Messinger raised her children and became involved in a number of professional activities. In the mid-1970’s, she began an extensive career in New York City politics. In 1977, she ran for New York City Council from the upper West Side of Manhattan and won a seat. In 1990, Messinger became Manhattan Borough president. In 1988, she was being mentioned as a mayoral contender. Altogether she served on the New York City Council from 1978 to 1990 and as Manhattan Borough president from 1990 to 1998. Life’s Work Messinger’s politics were always liberal, and she championed numerous liberal causes. She cast the tiebreaking vote on the 1986 City Council gay rights bill. She opposed real estate development when she believed 805
Messinger, Ruth it would have negative consequences on different ethnic and social groups. She always showed consistent regard for disadvantaged New Yorkers. She ran against Rudy Giuliani in 1997 as the first woman to win the nomination for the office of mayor of New York City. From the outset, she was not favored to win the election. As had been predicted, Giuliani won a second term by a substantial margin. As her term as Manhattan Borough President was about to expire, Messinger found herself without public office for the first time in twenty years. In her concession speech, Messinger said, “I got into this race because I love this city and I worry about its future. These issues and the real people touched by them have been important to me all my life. They are part of my personal commitment to social and economic justice.” She told The New York Times, “All I know is that I will continue—professionally and, small p, politically— to work on the issues that I talked about in this campaign.” Unemployment did not last long. Within a year after she left public life, in 1998, Messinger found employment in the Jewish community that matched her interests and her temperament and enabled her to work on issues that had long concerned her. She took on the role of president and chief executive officer of American Jewish World Service (AJWS). Of this shift out of public life, she commented to Clyde Haberman of The New York Times in 1999: “Am I sorry I didn’t win the election? Sure. Am I very satisfied that I found another place to make a difference and continue to pursue justice? Yes.’’ Messinger found a position that fit her political personality. The AJWS was founded in Boston on May 1, 1985. Larry Phillips and Larry Simon, along with a group of rabbis, Jewish communal leaders, activists, businesspeople, and scholars, created the first American Jewish organization whose purpose was to address and provide a Jewish voice in the fight against world poverty and its pernicious ramifications. Messinger took a small and well-meaning charity and transformed it into a significant, well-funded organization that employed at least sixty-six professionals and manifested the Jewish passion for justice in a number of effective and creative ways. Fond of citing Abraham Joshua Heschel’s statement: “When terrible things happen in a democracy, some are guilty and all are responsible,” Messinger has said, “I
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Jewish Americans take the responsibility of which he spoke very seriously.” Under her leadership, the AJWS has taken action in a number of crises around the world, providing, for example, flood relief in Mozambique in 2000 and tsunami relief in South Asia in 2004. In 2006, Messinger formed a partnership with the Save Darfur Coalition. The AJWS helped to organize a national antigenocide rally in Washington, D.C. Since then the AJWS has become an important bulwark against genocide. Under Messinger’s administration, the AJWS has become a significant provider of grants that support hundreds of organizations fighting poverty around the world. It also provides opportunities for Jews who wish to engage in serious volunteer work helping the disadvantaged. The AJWS seeks to transform its volunteers by educating them in relevant Jewish texts and tying that learning to social action. Significance Messinger made important contributions to New York City politics during her many years in office. However, the abrupt end to her career in New York politics thrust her into the world of Jewish activism. Her role as president of the AJWS revolutionized the organization. She made the AJWS into a broad, successful engine of tikkun olam (repairing the world) and gave an effective Jewish voice that seeks to marry Jewish texts and social action to a broad number of international causes, from tsunami relief to protesting genocide in Darfur. —Philip Cohen Further Reading Gail. “The Truth About Ruth.” The New York Times, July 10, 1997. An analysis of Messinger’s chances in the mayoral election, citing sexism as one of the cause of the failure of her campaign to capture the imagination of the electorate. Klein, Joe. “The Road to City Hall.” The New Yorker (November 3, 2007). Klein describes Messinger and her campaign for mayor of New York. Messinger, Ruth, and Jerry Fowler. “Hold China Accountable on Darfur.” The Nation (July 21, 2008). Messinger scolds China on its poor human rights record. See also: Bella Abzug; Barbara Boxer; Ed Koch; Bess Myerson; Charles Schumer.
Jewish Americans
Metzenbaum, Howard
Howard Metzenbaum Politician As a member of the Ohio legislature and the U.S. Senate, Metzenbaum championed the rights of working people, by opposing trusts (including the reserve clause in Major League Baseball), by improving the workplace environment, and by creating consumer protection statutes. Born: June 4, 1917; Cleveland, Ohio Died: March 12, 2008; near Fort Lauderdale, Florida Also known as: Howard Morton Metzenbaum (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; law
House and then the Ohio Senate, 1943 to 1951. For the next two decades, Metzenbaum successfully pursued careers in law, business, and publishing; raised four daughters with his wife, Shirley; and built a split-level mansion in suburban Shaker Heights. With friend and business partner, Alva T. “Ted” Bonda, Metzenbaum founded the American Parking Corporation of America (APCOA), a company that improved airport parking first at Cleveland Hopkins Airport, then throughout much of North America; the two men sold APCOA to International Telephone and Telegraph in 1966. A lifelong Reform Jew, Metzenbaum belonged to the Anshe Chesed community, known as Fairmount Temple (previously known as Scovill Avenue Temple and Euclid Avenue Temple).
Early Life Life’s Work Howard Metzenbaum (HOW-urd MEHTS-ihn-bom) When Stephen Young decided not to run for reelecwas born in Cleveland, Ohio, son of Anna Klafter and tion to the U.S. Senate in 1970, Metzenbaum reentered Charles Metzenbaum. From extremely poor beginnings, political life to run as his successor. Internecine battles Metzenbaum grew up on Cleveland’s east side in the prewithin the left wing of the Democratic Party had proliferdominantly Jewish Glenville neighborhood. He graduated ated after Senator Robert Kennedy’s assassination in from Glenville High School in 1935. Entrepreneurial 1968, and they were nowhere better exemplified than from his earliest years, Metzenbaum fetched groceries for his neighbors for tips. In Columbus, on an academic scholarship to attend Ohio State University, he earned his living expenses through selling flowers at Ohio Stadium on football Saturdays and throughout the year on High Street, the main thoroughfare of the campus, He traveling the state during the summers to sell personal hygiene products door-to-door. Graduating from Ohio State with a bachelor’s degree in 1939 and a law degree in 1941, Metzenbaum passed the Ohio bar and returned to Cleveland to practice law. A social reformer who was influenced by and supportive of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal (welfare and work programs designed to help the U.S. economy, which was reeling from the Great Depression), Metzenbaum quickly developed a reputation as an eloquent, tenacious lawyer for a number of labor unions, most significantly the Communication Workers of America (CWA). A rising star in the Ohio Democratic Party, Metzenbaum served two terms each in the Ohio Howard Metzenbaum. (AP/Wide World Photos) 807
Metzenbaum, Howard during the 1970 Democratic senatorial primary race between Metzenbaum and former astronaut John Glenn, both of whom were personal friends with members of the Kennedy family and with other significant figures within liberal Democratic circles. Although Kennedy’s widow, Ethel, campaigned for Glenn and was at his side as primary returns came in on election night, Metzenbaum narrowly defeated Glenn. However, he lost to the Republican candidate, Robert Taft, in the general election. Metzenbaum returned to work at his law firm and operated the Sun Newspapers conglomerate in suburban Cleveland. When Senator William Saxbe resigned to become U.S. attorney general in 1974, Democratic Governor John J. “Jack” Gilligan appointed Metzenbaum to fill the remaining months of his term. The principal combatants of the 1970 primary repeated their battle in 1974 but with different results. Glenn’s “Gold Star mothers” speech is often considered the best speech of his political career. In a debate in which Metzenbaum noted his own business and professional accomplishments, he regarded Glenn’s military and aerospace experiences as being on the federal dole, suggesting he never had to work for a living. Glenn’s response was to suggest that Metzenbaum look at wounded soldiers in the wards of veterans’hospitals or into the eyes of Gold Star mothers who have lost their sons in battle and tell them that they did not hold a job. Glenn won the primary, 54 percent-46 percent, and handily won the general election as well in 1974. Metzenbaum ran successfully against Taft in 1976, and he retained his seat through successful election campaigns in 1982 and 1988. The relationship between Ohio’s two liberal Democratic senators, testy at best since the 1974 election, improved in 1983 when Metzenbaum endorsed Glenn for the presidency. Although Glenn’s presidential candidacy did not survive the 1984 Democratic primaries, the two men reforged their political friendship, and Glenn subsequently campaigned for Metzenbaum, especially in the 1988 campaign when Republican challenger George Voinovich accused Metzenbaum of supporting child pornography. Although he never chaired a Senate committee or held a formal Democratic Party post, Metzenbaum spent his two decades in the Senate supporting working-class and consumer causes. His Worker Adjustment and Retrain-
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Jewish Americans ing Notification Act requires advance notice of plant closings for workers, and his sponsored and cosponsored legislation includes gun control laws, nutrition labels on food products, and safety standards for infant formula. Metzenbaum died at the age of ninety in March, 2008. Significance Even though Metzenbaum served on the boards of Brandeis University and several nationwide Jewish organizations, his Reform Jewish identity was largely a private matter. However, he remained the target of antiSemitic comments throughout his career. Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings called Metzenbaum “the senator from B’nai B’rith” in 1981, and the Republican National Committee suggested that he had provided legal counsel to the Communist Party. Both accusations were soon retracted, and Metzenbaum’s ultimate legacy is his performance as an active consumer advocate who created federal legislation to protect the lives of American citizens. —Richard Sax Further Reading Diemer, Tom. Fighting the Unbeatable Foe: Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, the Washington Years. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2008. Diemer, for years a political correspondent with Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer, details Metzenbaum’s two decades in the U.S. Senate as a consumer advocate and a leader of the left wing of the Democratic Party. Patterson, Samuel C., and Thomas W. Kephart. “The Case of the Wayfaring Challenger: The 1988 Senate Election in Ohio.” Congress and the Presidency 18 (Autumn, 1991): 105-120. Details Metzenbaum’s victory over George Voinovich. Sternsher, Bernard. “The Glenn Revolution: Voter Behavior in Northwest Ohio, 1970-1988.” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 62 (Summer/Autumn, 1990): 39-53. Explains how a relatively conservative state continued to elect and reelect Glenn and other liberal Democrats, even during the Reagan Revolution. See also: Bella Abzug; Russ Feingold; Dianne Feinstein; Joe Lieberman; Abraham A. Ribicoff; Charles Schumer; Arlen Specter.
Jewish Americans
Michaels, Al
Al Michaels Journalist and broadcaster A popular sportscaster, Michaels is best known for calling the United States-versus-Soviet Union ice hockey match in the 1980 Winter Olympics. Born: November 12, 1944; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Alan Richard Michaels (full name) Areas of achievement: Journalism; sports Early Life The son of Jay Michaels and Lila Ross, Al Michaels had two younger siblings, David and Susan. As children, Michaels and his brother played at putting on mock television shows. Michaels grew up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and coincidentally his family moved to Los Angeles in 1958, the same year the Dodgers ball club moved to Los Angeles. Michaels attended Arizona State University, whose long list of distinguished alumni include the famous sportscaster Curt Menefee; sports figures such as football player “Doc” Blanchard, basketball coach Pat Riley, and baseball star Dallas Green; actors James Dean and Tom Poston; and a number of government officials, including governors and senators. Michaels graduated with a bachelor’s degree in broadcasting in 1966. He minored in journalism and was on the staff of the university paper, The State Press. In 1966, he married Linda Anne Stamaton, and they had two children, Jennifer and Steven. In 1968, Michaels and his wife moved to Hawaii, where he broadcast sporting events and honed his skills by learning to pronounce the names of Hawaiian players. He broadcast for the Hawaiian Islanders minor league baseball team and the University of Hawaii’s football and basketball teams. In 1969, he was Hawaii’s Sportscaster of the Year. In 1971, Michaels was hired to broadcast games on radio station WLW for the Cincinnati Reds. His first television job was rather prosaic: interviewing and choosing women to appear on Chuck Barris’s game show The Dating Game. His wife helped to arrange travel and served as chaperone on the dates of the winners. Life’s Work Michaels comes from a television background. His father was an agent who worked out the American Football League’s television deal in 1960. His
mother worked in television, arranging contestants for game shows. Their children’s careers in the media seemed foreordained. Michaels’s brother produces and directs sports shows, and he has worked on the coverage of six Olympic Games, one more than Michaels has announced. Michaels’s sister is a writer for cable television shows, including the History Channel and the Discovery Channel. The legacy continued to the next generation; both of Michaels’s children work in television. Jennifer works in publicity for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS); Steven works for Asylum Entertainment, a production company. In 1977, Michaels began with the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), where he remained until 2006. He joined Howard Cosell on the nationally televised Monday Night Baseball, and Michaels’s was one of the voices of ABC’s Monday Night Football. Michaels has covered eight World Series and nine Super Bowls. One of his friends, fellow broadcaster Curt Gowdy, Jr., called
The Miracle on Ice The Soviet Union team that competed in ice hockey in 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid, New York, was regarded as the best amateur team in the world. The U.S. team was not expected to be a credible challenge. Most of the American players were in their early twenties, mainly collegiate players. Only one had played on the 1976 Olympics squad. The Soviet team was composed of older players who had played together for a much longer period. While still technically amateurs, they had jobs, including serving in the military, which allowed them to play hockey full time. They had run up an impressive record in exhibition games against the professional American National Hockey League, with five wins and only one loss. They had beaten the American squad overwhelmingly in head-to-head competition before the Olympics. When the two squads met in the semifinals on February 22, there seemed to be little hope for the American team. However, at the beginning of the third period, the United States was behind by only one goal. The U.S. team tied the score on a power play midway through the period and then scored again less than two minutes later, with ten minutes to go. The American team held off a furious Soviet onslaught, and as the game was coming to a conclusion Al Michaels and his coannouncer Ken Dryden counted off the seconds. At the finish, Michaels made the call, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” It was a comment that will be remembered forever in the history of sports.
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Michaels, Al Michaels a “consummate professional and perfectionist.” Gowdy’s father met Michaels when the elder Gowdy broadcast an Arizona State football game, and Michaels became a friend of the family. Over the years, Curt Gowdy, Jr., has worked with Michaels in many broadcasts, particularly baseball games and the Kentucky Derby. Michaels has also acted on television, either as himself or in dramatic roles, in such shows as Hawaii Five-O, Coach, and Spin City. Michaels is known for his intelligence and his thorough preparation. He constantly reviews his work, even in the midst of broadcasts. With his great success on Monday Night Football, ABC asked him to take over broadcasting the National Basketball Association (NBA) network games in 2003, hoping to raise the ratings for the telecasts that dropped after Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls retired. Michaels broadcast an NBA game for the first time on Christmas Day, teaming with color analyst Glenn Anton “Doc” Rivers. The team was a success and started a new sports venue for Michaels. When ABC gave up Monday Night Football, to be carried by ABC’s Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN), the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) moved national over-the-air broadcast football to Sunday night and offered Michaels the opportunity to be part of its team. After some thought, he decided to ask ABC to release him, and he joined NBC, which acquired his contract by giving ABC the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The competition between the networks was intense. Rumors said the deal depended on money and special bonuses for Michaels, including a private jet. Michaels denied this, stating that monetary awards had never determined his future. He said he did not regret leaving behind the Super Bowls on ESPN: “Two more skins on the wall was not a deciding factor.” Michaels was at the microphone during the 1989 World Series game three in San Francisco between the Giants and the Oakland Athletics. When the game was interrupted by an earthquake, Michaels turned reporter and gave an impromptu account of the quake’s effects as it was happening. The video line was cut because of the temblor, and only Michaels’s voice could be heard by the viewers. Michaels did not know if he was on the air or not.
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Jewish Americans After the bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the Sporting News turned to Michaels for comment. All sports events had been canceled, and Michaels said that, while it would have been difficult for him to broadcast immediately after the events, sports must go on to prove the terrorists had not won. Significance Michaels was the first broadcaster to cover all four major championship series and games in American sports: baseball, basketball, football, and ice hockey. In 2009, voters in USA Today poll chose the team of Michaels and John Madden as the best of the network National Football League broadcasters. Michaels’s signature moment was his call of the 1980 Olympic ice hockey game between the United States and the Soviet Union, when he announced the American victory with his legendary call, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” Michaels’s assignment to broadcast the 1980 Olympic hockey games was serendipitous. He had broadcast only one hockey game before that, at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan. However, the other ABC Olympic broadcasters had even less experience. So the job fell to Michaels. — Frederick B. Chary Further Reading Posnanski, Joe. “It’s Not as Easy as It Looks: Vancouver 2010.” Sports Illustrated 1112, no. 8 (February 22, 2010): 54. Describes the relationship and broadcasting preparation of Michaels and his coanchor, Bob Costas, for the Vancouver Winter Olympics and contrasts their styles. Rushin, Steve. “All Al, All the Time.” Sports Illustrated 100, no. 19 (May 10, 2004): 15. An analysis of Michaels’s career and his broadcasting highlights. Ventre, Michael. “Michaels’s Success Doesn’t Just Hinge on Miracles.” Variety 390, no. 11 (April 28, 2003): A22. A description of Michaels’s career, style, and preparation for broadcasting. Contains comment by Curt Gowdy, Jr., and an illustration. See also: Mel Allen; Howard Cosell.
Jewish Americans
Midler, Bette
Bette Midler Singer and actor Midler has commanded the stage in concert venues with her brilliant voice and comedic flair, and she has dominated the box office for three decades with her award-winning performances in films. Born: December 1, 1945; Honolulu, Hawaii Also known as: The Divine Miss M Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music
that included both singing and comedy routines. Enormously popular with the bathhouse audiences, Midler began getting offers to perform on television and in nightclubs. As her show became more popular with mainstream audiences, Midler began calling herself the Divine Miss M. Life’s Work In 1972, Midler released her debut album, The Divine Miss M, for which she earned a Grammy Award for best new artist. In total, she had three hit singles from the album, including, “Friends,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” and “Do You Want to Dance?” In 1973, she released her second album, simply titled Bette Midler. She returned to Broadway in 1975 for the production of Clams on the Half Shell Revue. From 1975 to 1978, Midler provided the voice of Woody the Spoon in the Public Broadcasting Service’s children’s show, Vegetable Soup. In 1979,
Early Life Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 1, 1945, Bette Midler (bet MIHD-lur) was the daughter of Fred, a house painter for the United States Navy, and Ruth, a seamstress and homemaker. Midler’s mother named her after the actor Bette Davis, believing that the film star pronounced her name “Bet.” Midler and her three siblings were raised in Aiea, a rural and poor area of Hawaii. They were the only Jewish family in a predominantly Asian neighborhood. Midler, who discovered that she loved to perform in front of an audience at an early age, sang “Silent Night” in the first grade. When she was twelve years old, she saw the stage show Carousel (1945) and decided that she wanted to be a theater performer. After she attended the University of Hawaii as a drama major for one year, Midler quit school in order to pursue a career onstage. In 1965, she was hired for a small part in the film, Hawaii (1966). When the production company finished filming in Hawaii, Midler returned with it to Los Angeles. While there, she obtained several part-time jobs in order to support herself, including working as an extra for United Artists. In 1966, she relocated to New York City, where she was hired as a member of the chorus line for the Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof (1964). Within a year, her talents on stage earned her the part of Tzeitel, the eldest daughter of Tevye, the protagonist of the story. In 1969, Midler left the production in order to pursue other theater interests. She took acting and singing lessons with Herbert Berghof at his HB Studio. In 1970, she was hired as a weekend performer at Continental Baths, a popular New York City bathhouse. She developed a nightly show Bette Midler. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans
THE ROSE One of Bette Midler’s most significant achievements as an American entertainer was her starring role in her Hollywood debut film, The Rose (1979). The film, which takes place in the 1960’s, loosely chronicled the real-life story of singer Janis Joplin, a rough-voiced, hard-drinking Texan. Midler provided audiences with an award-winning portrayal of Mary Rose Foster, a self-destructive rock star struggling to handle the stresses inherent in a life of fame. Midler’s critically acclaimed performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for best actress in a musical or comedy. Equally important to her career, Midler performed the film’s sound track, which included the title song, “The Rose.” The song became a megahit of the 1980’s, and it is among Midler’s most requested songs. Midler’s success with the film and the title song catapulted her to superstar status and established her as an entertainment legend.
Midler achieved superstar status with her leading role in her first feature film, The Rose. Her portrayal of a selfdestructive rock star earned her a Golden Globe Award for best actress in a musical or comedy and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1982, Midler starred in the comedy film, Jinxed. The film was poorly received at the box office, and Midler’s career faltered. In 1985, she signed a contract with Touchstone Films, a division of Walt Disney Studios. Her first film for Touchstone, Down and out in Beverly Hills (1986), earned her a Golden Globe Award for best actress in a motion-picture musical or comedy. That same year, she also starred in another box-office hit, Ruthless People. In the coming years, she found success with such films as Outrageous Fortune (1987), Big Business (1988), and Beaches (1988). Midler, who also sang the title song, “Wind Beneath My Wings,” for the film Beaches, won the Grammy Award for record of the year. In 1988, she provided the voice of Georgette in the Disney animated film, Oliver and Company. Then in 1991, she won the Grammy Award for song of the year for her rendition of the ballad, “From a Distance,” from her album, Some People’s Lives (1990). Throughout the 1990’s, Midler continued to star in numerous successful motion pictures. In 1991, she costarred with James Caan in the film musical, For the Boys, for which she won a Golden Globe Award for best actress in a motion-picture musical or comedy. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. That same year she costarred with Woody Allen in the 812
film, Scenes from a Mall. Other popular films Midler starred in during the 1990’s include Gypsy (1993), Hocus Pocus (1993), Get Shorty (1995), The First Wives Club (1996), Get Bruce (1999), and What Women Want (2000). In 2003, Midler teamed up with Barry Manilow to record the Grammy Award-nominated album, Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook. That same year she also went on tour with a new and highly successful show, Kiss My Brass. In 2004, she returned to the big screen in the popular box office hit, The Stepford Wives. In 2005, she traveled to Australia to go on tour with her show, Kiss My Brass Down Under. She once again collaborated with Manilow when she recorded the album Bette Midler Sings the Peggy Lee Songbook in 2005. In 2006, Midler recorded the Christmas album Cool Yule, which earned her another Grammy Award nomination, this time for best traditional pop vocal album. In 2007, Midler starred in the popular film, Then She Found Me. In 2008, she released an album of her greatest hits titled, Jackpot: The Best Bette. In 2008, Midler entertained Las Vegas audiences in her show, The Showgirl Must Go On, at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Significance A highly dedicated, hardworking, award-winning vocalist and actor, Midler has obtained iconic status as an American entertainer. Her unique talents onstage as a singer and as a comedian catapulted her to stardom during the 1970’s. For four decades, she has entertained audiences with her music and at the box office. Midler’s numerous talents enabled her to obtain superstar status in several different entertainment venues. She earned the distinction of being a Grammy Award-winning recording artist and simultaneously became a popular boxoffice draw. —Bernadette Zbicki Heiney Further Reading Bego, Mark. Bette Midler: Still Divine. Lanham, Md.: Cooper Square Press, 2002. Celebrity biographer Bego recounts Midler’s career ups and downs. Mair, George. Bette: An Intimate Biography of Bette Midler. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol, 1995. Covers Midler’s unlikely rise to stardom and her triumphs over adversity and tragedy. Includes index. Martin, Linda, and Kerry Segrave. Women in Comedy. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1986. Collection has
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more than fifty biographical essays about female comedians of the twentieth century. Midler, Bette. Bette Midler: A View from a Broad. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981. Autobiographical account of Midler’s life and career. Orgill, Roxane. Shout, Sister, Shout! Ten Girl Singers Who Shaped a Century. New York: Margaret K. Mc-
Elderry Books, 2001. Profiles ten female singers, one from each decade of the twentieth century, who had a significant impact on music history, including Midler (1970’s). See also: Neil Diamond; Fran Drescher; Mandy Patinkin; Dinah Shore; Barbra Streisand.
Harvey Milk Activist, politician, and social reformer Milk was the first openly homosexual man elected to public office in San Francisco. He successfully drafted and worked for the passage of a bill protecting the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Born: May 22, 1930; Woodmere, New York Died: November 27, 1978; San Francisco, California Also known as: Mayor of Castro Street; Harvey Bernard Milk (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; social issues Early Life Harvey Milk was born the second son of a prosperous family of Lithuanian Jews and the grandson of a prominent businessman who assisted in the founding of the first local synagogue. Despite being frequently teased during his school years for his gawky physical appearance, he played football for Bay Shore High School in New York and developed a deep interest in opera. Graduating in 1947, he majored in mathematics at the New York State College for Teachers in Albany (now SUNY-Albany) from 1947 to 1951. He then served in the United States Navy during the Korean War as a diving officer and instructor, but he was dishonorably discharged in 1953. He acknowledged his sexual orientation in high school but kept it quiet. After leaving the Navy, he worked at a number of business positions for insurance and brokerage firms in New
York City (and, briefly, Dallas) and invested in several Broadway plays, including Hair (1968). His conservative views began to shift before he moved to San Francisco in 1969 to take a position as a securities analyst. Life’s Work Milk was one of a large number of gay men who followed the dreams of the counterculture to California in an effort to build a more open life and create a tolerant social and legal environment. After opening his camera shop in March, 1973, as a businessman in the heavily gay Castro Street neighborhood, Milk took an early interest
Harvey Milk. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Milk, Harvey in the politics of his new home and ran unsuccessfully for public office in 1973, 1975, and 1976. His initial entry into politics was, by his own admission, triggered by anger over the Senate Watergate hearings, but his later campaigns showed a swift acquisition of political savvy and an ability to integrate many populations into his community base of support. A change in the election laws in 1977 permitting district-based voting for the Board of Supervisors rather than obliging all candidates to run citywide allowed Milk to put together backing from a highly diverse base of support. Working across community lines, he crafted a platform addressing common needs, ranging from improved transportation, child care, and subsidized housing to the establishment of a police review board. He was regarded initially by the gay political groups in San Francisco as an outsider and only gradually developed the coalition of lesbian and gay supporters that would help elect him to the Board of Supervisors. Among his political initiatives were managing corporate land deals, legalizing gambling, and assigning a commuter tax to anyone working in San Francisco who did not live in the city. A major achievement was his drafting of and successful argument for a gay and lesbian civil rights ordinance protecting against discrimination in housing, public accommodations, and employment. This was especially significant because many other American cities that had such ordinances on their
Jewish Americans books were at this time finding them challenged and, in some cases, rescinded. His promising career was cut off on November 27, 1978, when both he and Mayor George Moscone (with whom Milk had established a solid working relationship) were assassinated by former supervisor Dan White at their offices in city hall. White and Milk had frequently clashed in board meetings, and White, who had resigned from his position, was unsuccessfully attempting to be reappointed. White confessed to the double murders but was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. News of this light sentence triggered a massive demonstration that was termed the White Night Riots when some three thousand outraged gays and lesbians descended on city hall, trapping both city officials and police inside and setting fire to several police cars. The San Francisco Gay Democratic Club voted to change its name to the Harvey Milk Gay Democratic Club as a memorial, and acting mayor Dianne Feinstein appointed Harry Britt to serve out the remainder of Milk’s term
Significance As San Francisco’s first openly gay supervisor, Milk forced citizens of the city to acknowledge the presence of and contributions made by their lesbian and gay neighbors to the life of the city. His assassination and the subsequent trial of White publicly showcased the complex dynamics of American homophobia and placed a human face on a prejudice directly unfamiliar to many members of the national public. His ability to establish common ground Opposing Proposition Six with a variety of disparate groups as an openly gay man also disproved the contenGay and lesbian civil rights were an important part of Harvey Milk’s tion that gay candidates would attempt to political life from his first days in San Francisco. He saw openly gay promote their community’s interests exmen and lesbians in public life as demonstrating that it was possible to clusively. The knowledge that Milk had give a better life to a population that had historically either been invisible and ignored or abused by elected officials. His popularity as a comsuccessfully run for office without allowmunity leader and his high visibility in the Castro Street neighborhood ing his sexual orientation to become or be of San Francisco eventually gave rise to his election to the Board of Sumade a political liability served to inspire pervisors. The most significant statewide civil rights effort (and one that every later campaign by American lesbians brought Milk national exposure) as an openly gay city administrator ocand gay men seeking election to public ofcurred in 1978. Conservative California state senator John Briggs introfice at any level of government. He reduced a measure (Proposition Six) to the State Assembly in Sacramento corded three cassette tape messages based proposing that gay men and lesbians, as well as anyone advocating hoon his long-standing knowledge that as a mosexuality in any way, should be banned from teaching in California gay activist he might be subject to murder, public schools. In response, Milk challenged Briggs to a televised deand he adapted the Jewish tradition of leavbate along with lesbian academician Sally Gearhart and successfully reing a moral legacy to his own situation. The butted Briggs’s arguments in an unprecedented and extremely public confrontation about inaccurate stereotypes of homosexuals. Despite intapes set forth his wishes as to acceptable tense campaigning by its supporters, the proposition was soundly political successors and then called upon defeated. those who remained in the closet to come out as an act against prejudice and to use
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Jewish Americans the energy of their grief in a constructive manner. The closing section of the message castigated organized Christianity for not speaking out against the campaign by Anita Bryant to rescind a gay civil rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida, and urged the gay movement to continue as a source of hope for the next generation. One of the tapes contained a phrase that was widely quoted after Milk’s death: “if a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” This was born out of Milk’s conviction that one of the most important things he could do was to give hope to people who believed that no substantial change in their social position or in their access to social authority was possible. It also served notice to America that the days of quiet persecution of women and men on the basis of their sexual orientation were over. The reaction of the cultural community to Milk’s death mirrored his transformation from a colorful and locally known leader to a symbol of the price of honesty and freedom. His life was honored by a poem written by San Francisco writer Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “An Elegy to Dispel Gloom” (1978), and became the subject of historical accounts, children’s books, and even the libretto
Milken, Michael of a 1995 opera, “Harvey Milk.” A documentary film, The Times of Harvey Milk, was created in 1984, blending interviews with Milk and commentary by colleagues and friends, and a feature film titled simply Milk appeared in 2009 starring Sean Penn. — Robert B. Ridinger Further Reading Shilts, Randy. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2008. A reprint of the original detailed biography done by a San Francisco journalist who interviewed people from every sector of Milk’s life. Weiss, Mike. Double Play: The San Francisco City Hall Killings. Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1984. An account of the trial of Dan White and the aftermath of Milk’s murder by a journalist who covered the proceedings and was inspired to create this book after being interviewed by Shilts for the project that would become The Mayor of Castro Street. See also: Barbara Boxer; Dianne Feinstein; Barney Frank.
Michael Milken Criminal, investor, and philanthropist Milken popularized the junk bond in the 1980’s, and his role in generating high yields was questionable enough to lead to a prison term. Since his release, he has devoted much of his time to philanthropy. Born: July 4, 1946; Encino, California Also known as: Michael Robert Milken (full name) Areas of achievement: Crime; philanthropy; business Early Life Michael Milken was born in California and went to college at the University of California, Berkeley. Graduating with honors, he then attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, gaining an M.B.A. Entering the workforce, he joined Drexel Firestone, a fairly traditional investment bank. Milken started out as a director researching bonds and did some trading. After Drexel merged with Burnham and the firm became Drexel Burnham, Milken moved into working with high-yield, high-risk bonds.
Life’s Work It was in the late 1970’s that Milken’s division began to return high profits every year, and Milken was well compensated. He spent most of his time working, often arriving on the West Coast to work before the markets on the East Coast opened, and he did not have much time in the early years of his career for family or other activities. He is Jewish but did not make that a large part of his public life in the 1980’s. Milken eventually moved his part of the business to Los Angeles, occupying offices on Wilshire Boulevard. He developed a wide variety of contacts, and, as the capital market shifted, many businesses were looking for opportunities to create higher yields than those offered by traditional business models. Among Milken’s prominent business backers (companies to which Milken would sell bonds and in return would profit from the high yields) were Executive Life Insurance Company and Columbia Savings and Loan. Milken was able to produce huge loans for businesses through high-yield, high-risk bonds, and this enabled new ventures to get off the ground. These bonds became known as junk bonds, be815
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Milken. A series of investigations followed, and Milken eventually pled guilty to six counts of securities fraud in 1990. Milken wound up Michael Milken painted himself as the originator of the highserving only two years in prison, because of yield bond market, which is probably an overstatement. However, good behavior and his testimony against others. he clearly was the primary figure involved with them in the 1980’s. Since leaving prison in 1993, Milken has been His efforts allowed the leveraged-buyout boom of the 1980’s and involved with charitable endeavors, partly bethe accompanying business developments and changes. These practices contributed to the collapse of the savings and loan induscause his plea agreement required that he never try and other dire financial issues of the late 1980’s. Milken again be involved in securities issues. Milken launched a second career at the time his first one was imploding, emerged financially unscathed and is estimated and he got deeply involved in medical research. He devoted the by various publications to be one of the five second part of his life to medical fund-raising and raising awarehundred richest people in the world. ness of health issues. Both of these are major achievements. Milken had long been involved in philanthropy, to which he could devote more time after his jail sentence. Among his charitable interests are the Milken Family Foundation and the cause sometimes they were not worth much. Among the Milken Institute. The first supports education, including companies that got their start or experienced growth with teachers, and medical research, including a center that inMilken’s backing of their capital offerings were Turner vestigates a wide variety of issues and supports investiBroadcasting and MCI Communications Corporation. gations into epilepsy. In addition, it promotes awareness Not all did well with Milken’s investments, however, and of prostate cancer, to which Milken has a personal conmany who bought junk bonds lost money, including both nection. In 1993, he was diagnosed with advanced prosExecutive and Columbia. Some areas of business did tate cancer. Milken survived treatment, and his cancer particularly well, because Milken was one of the first went into remission. The Milken Institute is an economic to see possibilities. For example, he foresaw a boom in think tank that uses economic theories to solve social and Nevada, and so he backed several casinos, including financial difficulties. Milken also funds Faster Cures, a Harrah’s and the MGM Mirage. research group that aims to shorten the time it takes to get In the 1980’s, Milken participated in takeovers and lemedical discoveries translated into treatment in the marveraged buyouts, in which an investment group would ketplace. borrow money in order to buy enough of a company to take it over. The assets would then be sold off and the Significance loan paid back. This was seen by some as releasing the Milken stoked the leveraged buyout boom of the capital in these companies back into the market; others 1980’s. Allowing capital in old firms to be liquidated viewed it destroying long-standing, good corporations. spurred new businesses to be started. However, the risky Among the corporations bought out through Milken’s fifinancial behavior required to do this resulted in many nancing were Beatrice and Revlon. companies going bankrupt and many workers losing their Milken also facilitated a practice that some called jobs. Whether Milken is a genius or an evildoer depends greenmailing. This involved an investor buying a lot of on the viewer’s perspective. Milken deserves credit for stock in a particular company, then that investor obtainthe time, money, and effort he has put into fund-raising ing a letter from Milken stating that Milken would raise for medical research and education. In 2004, Fortune laenough money for the investor to buy all of the origibeled him the “Man Who Changed Medicine.” nal company. The original company would then be ap—Scott A. Merriman proached and told about the threatened takeover and be given the opportunity to buy back the shares that the inFurther Reading vestor held (at a higher price, of course). Some viewed Bruck, Connie. The Predators’ Ball: The Inside Story this as a legalized version of blackmail. of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Milken continued to make high profits on high-yield Raiders. New York: Penguin, 1989. Looks at the junk bonds until the mid-1980’s. At that point, fellow fichanges in Drexel in the 1980’s and the rise in power nancier Ivan Boesky pled guilty to some crimes and of Milken. Examines the company’s interoffice dyagreed, as part of the plea agreement, to testify against namics.
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Jewish Americans Grant, James. Money of the Mind: Borrowing and Lending in America from the Civil War to Michael Milken. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992. Examines the history of banking and lending throughout the last century and a half. Authored by a former Barron’s staff writer. Lewis, Michael. Liar’s Poker. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010. This book details the rise and fall of Wall Street in the 1980’s and looks at the switch to bonds, especially junk bonds, by many firms. Written by a former bond trader. Sobel, Robert. Dangerous Dreamers: The Financial In-
Miller, Arthur novators from Charles Merrill to Michael Milken. New York: Beard Books, 2002. This examines a number of corporate financial creators, including Milken. More positive toward Milken than most, noting how politics played a role in his prosecution. Stewart, James B. Den of Thieves. New York: Touchstone Books, 1992. Examines the insider trading ring of the 1980’s and includes interviews with a large number of the participants. See also: Marcus Goldman; Carl Icahn; Jerome Kohlberg, Jr.; George Soros.
Arthur Miller Playwright Miller, a leading dramatist, used ordinary and fallible men and women as his protagonists, and they embodied the dilemma of maintaining integrity in a society where compromise and evasion are the norms.
by winning several drama prizes. He graduated in 1938 and was offered a job in Hollywood as a scriptwriter. While at high school, he had already declared himself an atheist and a communist, although his communism was perhaps more related to the ideas of Ralph Waldo
Born: October 17, 1915; New York, New York Died: February 10, 2005; Roxbury, Connecticut Also known as: Arthur Asher Miller (full name) Areas of achievement: Theater; literature Early Life Arthur Miller was born of immigrant Polish Jewish parents, Isidore and Augusta, the second of three children. Although his father was illiterate, he built up a large business in women’s clothing, employing more than four hundred workers. However, this prosperity came to a sudden end in 1929, following the Wall Street crash and ensuing recession. Miller’s father lost everything, and his mother blamed his father for the losses. The experience had a profound impact on Miller. Later, he likened the crash to the Civil War for the effect it had on American society, including the destruction of old securities. The family had to move to Brooklyn to live in a highly ghettoized Jewish district. Miller completed high school at Abraham Lincoln High School in 1932, supporting himself and the family with early-morning bread deliveries. Miller had to put himself through college, which he did by working as a mailing clerk. He attended the University of Michigan, majoring in English, but he also wrote plays. In fact, he augmented his finances
Arthur Miller. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Miller, Arthur Emerson than to those of Karl Marx. Turning down the Hollywood job, he opted to join the Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal program of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Concerns about its left-leaning politics caused Congress to close it down in 1939. Miller then worked in the Brooklyn dockyard, an experience reflected in his play A View from the Bridge (1955). On the outbreak of war, he was refused active service because of an old sports injury. Before that, he had begun writing short radio plays for the Columbia Broadcasting System and several plays for the theater. The first one, The Man Who Had All the Luck, was produced in 1940. Although it gained the Theater Guild’s National Award, it closed after only four performances. His second effort, All My Sons, based on an incident of faulty manufacturing of war materials, which he began writing in 1941, finally gained Broadway production in 1947. Its theme of
Jewish Americans family betrayal struck a chord with audiences, earning Miller a Tony Award for best author and gaining him an instant reputation.
Life’s Work The late 1940’s through the early 1960’s marked the peak of Miller’s success, although he continued to write until his death in 2005. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of a Salesman came out in 1949 in England and in New York, followed by Miller’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play En folkefiende (1882; An Enemy of the People, 1890) in 1950. Miller was clearly following Ibsen’s symbolic naturalism, which spoke prophetically to a capitalist society about family betrayal and the wider cause of that betrayal in false social values. Miller’s next play, The Crucible, in 1953, came to be one of his most enduring. It tackles the Salem witch hunts of Puritan New England and the inability of the protagonist to preserve integrity and life. What made the play so poignant at the time of producDEATH OF A SALESMAN tion was the actions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). Several of Arthur Miller began writing his successful play at his new home Miller’s erstwhile Communist friends had been in Roxbury, Connecticut, in 1948, completing it in just six weeks. ordered to testify before it, and HUAC denied Since then, Death of a Salesman (1949), which bears all the hallmarks of a mature Miller play, has become one of the classics of Miller a passport to attend the English opening modern theater. The protagonists are symbolically named the of the play. Later, Miller would be summoned Lomans, to mark Miller’s rejection of classical notions of tragedy before HUAC. Miller divorced his wife of sixas having to have highborn heroes. They live in a New York suburb, teen years, Mary Slattery, and married the iconic and the tragic hero, Willy, is a traveling salesman. Hollywood film actor, Marilyn Monroe. When The family members seek to live the American dream, to rise Miller appeared before HUAC, Monroe was in from rags to riches by their own efforts. Miller ruthlessly exposes tow, creating sensational headlines. Miller’s dithe emptiness of the dream as one based on false values. Certainly vorce from the increasingly mentally unstable there is hard work, but what Willy emphasizes to his two sons, Biff Monroe also brought its share of headlines in and Happy, is the force of personality. His model is the salesman 1961, during the filming of The Misfits, with who can just pick up a telephone and orders flood in. Willy’s perMiller’s screenplay adapted from an earlier short sonality lacks both forcefulness and moral integrity. He has been unfaithful to his wife, Linda, and excuses Biff’s stealing habits. His story. sons are turning out to be failures, and Willy is unable to help them. After the Fall came out in 1964, and it reMiller’s stagecraft shows an innovative flair, especially in its vealed an autobiographical trend taking root in use of flashbacks and of the open or skeletal stage, where several Miller’s writing, which blossomed as family actions can be seen taking place simultaneously. Miller uses symthemes began to reflect accounts of Miller’s bolic techniques of sound and lighting to show the presence of the family experiences, as a boy and as a married past. The play consists of two acts and an epilogue, which is man. This trend inevitably touched on a number Willy’s funeral after his suicide, an unsuccessful attempt to gain of Jewish themes. This continued in his next insurance money for his sons. It is his final act of failure. play, Incident at Vichy (1964). Here Miller exThe climax of the play involves the search for personal integamined the Holocaust, wondering just why it rity, the importance of truth-telling, and the need to discard false was so easy for the Nazis to carry out. The Price social values that have been set up as ultimate goals for life. Willy’s failure is ultimately that of America’s faulty values. Miller handles (1968) had autobiographical elements, though his characters sympathetically, and the death of the hero generates many critics noted a waning of Miller’s draa classic sense of pity. matic powers. Certainly, the plays written during the 1970’s
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Jewish Americans and 1980’s made much less impact, as new dramatic styles emerged. By this time, Miller had married for a third time, an Austrian photographer and artist, Inge Morath, and he was much less interested in personal success. However, when other writers might have retired, Miller continued to write and achieved further success later in life, especially in Britain, where his plays were frequently revived and studied. His 1991 play, The Ride Down Mount Morgan, was in fact first produced in London, some time before a New York production. The play shows Miller still experimenting with stagecraft and technique, trying to convey the protagonist’s inner life on stage. Inevitably, the themes turn to old age and reviewing the past, trying to justify one’s actions, even though, in this case, they had led to polygamy. Peter Falk, from the television series Colombo, carried the play for Miller. Morath died in 2002. Miller’s daughter married the actor Daniel Day-Lewis; his son, suffering from Down syndrome, was institutionalized and somewhat ignored by Miller. Honors still came to Miller, such as the 2001 National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Lecture; Spain’s Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature in 2002; and the Jerusalem Prize in 2003. Agnes Barley, a painter fifty-five years his junior, moved into his Connecticut farm, where Miller died of congestive heart failure in 2005. Significance Miller’s achievement was built on foundations laid by Eugene O’Neill in the United States and, earlier, by Ibsen in Europe, which established a prophetic theater using ordinary people as protagonists and putting them into situations with which an everyday audience could identify.
Morgenthau, Henry, Jr. Nevertheless, those situations had heroic possibilities as the individual stood against society in some conflict of integrity. Although the protagonist often fails, Miller shows compassion for human weakness. He expresses a deep moral sympathy for the victims of society’s wrongdoing. — David Barratt Further Reading Bigsby, Christopher. Arthur Miller: A Critical Study. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Includes thirty-one chapters, with each play receiving a chapter or half-chapter. Final chapter discusses Miller as a Jewish writer. ______. Arthur Miller, 1915-1962. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008. An authorized and definitive biography; Bigsby was handed Miller’s archives shortly before the playwright’s death. ________, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Useful source of reference material and some criticism. Full bibliography. Martin, Gottfried. Arthur Miller: A Life. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2003. A more individualistic account of Miller’s life than the official Bigsby biography. Moss, Leonard. Arthur Miller. Boston: Twayne, 1980. Includes critical analysis of some of Miller’s plays through 1979. See also: Paddy Chayefsky; Edna Ferber; Moss Hart; Lillian Hellman; David Mamet; Clifford Odets; Neil Simon.
Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Government official Morgenthau helped shape the fiscal policies of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and played a significant role in promoting the U.S. rescue of Jews fleeing the Holocaust. Born: May 11, 1891; New York, New York Died: February 6, 1967; Poughkeepsie, New York Area of achievement: Government and politics Early Life Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (MOR-gehn-thow) was raised in the elite world of German-born Jewish immigrants
who achieved remarkable financial and professional success in late nineteenth century America. Rather than follow his father, the diplomat Henry Morgenthau, Sr., into public service, the younger Morgenthau chose to study agriculture at Cornell University and then operated a dairy farm and apple orchards in Dutchess County, New York. It was there, in 1913, that he became friendly with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, a friendship that would ultimately shape Morgenthau’s life. He strongly supported Roosevelt’s political aspirations, and when Roosevelt was elected governor of New York, he named Morgenthau chair of the state’s Agricultural Advisory 819
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Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Committee and appointed him to the Conservation Commission. Life’s Work Morgenthau followed Roosevelt to Washington, D.C., after his victory in the 1932 presidential election. Roosevelt chose him to head the Federal Farm Board, and when Treasury Secretary William Woodin resigned the following year, Roosevelt named Morgenthau his successor. Morgenthau criticized deficit spending, but acceded to Roosevelt’s insistence that it was necessary to combat the economic woes of the Great Depression. A strong advocate of balanced budgets, Morgenthau nevertheless endorsed Roosevelt’s use of “emergency” supplementary budgets to finance government works agencies. As a result of Morgenthau’s opposition, Roosevelt dropped plans to fund Social Security from general government revenue and instead paid for it by taxing employees. It was Morgenthau who conceived the aggressive promo820
tion of war bonds to help pay for the U.S. war effort in World War II (1939-1945). Morgenthau had only a minimal contact with the organized Jewish community and did not consider himself a Zionist, although he was sympathetic to the development of Palestine as a haven for Jewish refugees. He was deeply loyal, both personally and politically, to Roosevelt and considered it inappropriate to seek the president’s intervention on Jewish matters. When the German Jewish refugee ship St. Louis unsuccessfully sought admission to the United States in 1939, Morgenthau spoke with Secretary of State Cordell Hull about it, but neither pressed for their entry nor raised the matter with Roosevelt. In 1943, Josiah E. DuBois, Jr. and other senior aides to Morgenthau, most of them not Jewish, discovered that the State Department was suppressing news of the Holocaust and sabotaging rescue opportunities so the United States would not be shouldered with what one official
Jewish Americans called “the burden and the curse” of dealing with Jewish refugees. DuBois and his colleagues urged Morgenthau to bring the scandal to the attention of the president, but Morgenthau, still reluctant to bother Roosevelt, preferred to focus on trying to persuade the secretary of state to change the department’s policies. Only in the face of overwhelming evidence of the State Department’s malfeasance, and with congressional pressure on the refugee issue mounting, did Morgenthau finally agree, in January, 1944, to go to the president. To preempt Congress and avoid an election-year controversy, Roosevelt agreed to Morgenthau’s recommendation to establish a government agency to rescue Jews, known as the War Refugee Board. Operating from the Treasury Department’s offices and staffed by the same Morgenthau aides who had pressed for rescue action, the War Refugee Board played a key role in saving an estimated 200,000 Jews from the Nazis during the final fifteen months of the war. Morgenthau’s behind-the-scenes lobbying also helped thwart the State Department’s 1943 plan, approved by Roosevelt, for a joint Anglo-American declaration banning public discussion of the Palestine issue until after the war. In 1944, Morgenthau and his aides prepared a blueprint for governing postwar Germany that came to be known as the Morgenthau Plan. It proposed demilitarization, partition of the country into separate states, and dismantling most major industries so Germany would revert to a primarily agricultural country incapable of provoking future wars. Morgenthau’s plan also recommended the execution, without trial, of senior Nazi war criminals. The War Department and the State Department opposed the plan because they hoped to have a militarily capable Germany on America’s side against the Soviet Union. Secretary of War Henry Stimson claimed Morgenthau was motivated by a desire for “Jewish vengeance” against the Nazis. Roosevelt initially supported the Morgenthau Plan, as did the Soviets. Roosevelt persuaded British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to go along with the plan, but after details leaked to the press and provoked some public criticism, Roosevelt backed off. With Roosevelt’s death in April, 1945, Morgenthau’s days as Treasury secretary were numbered. He did play a prominent role in the 1945 Bretton Woods conference, which created such important international financial instruments as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Because Morgenthau did not have a close relationship with President Harry S. Truman, he resigned that summer. He then sought to rally public opinion in fa-
Morgenthau, Henry, Jr. vor of his plan for postwar Germany, using a series of radio broadcasts, articles, and a book, Germany Is Our Problem (1945). His campaign failed; the Truman administration soon scrapped the Morgenthau Plan entirely and proceeded with the rebuilding of industrial Germany. After leaving the Treasury Department, Morgenthau assumed an active role in Jewish organizational life. He chaired the United Jewish Appeal and served as an unofficial economic adviser to the government of Israel. An Israeli moshav, a village, Tal Shachar (Hebrew for “morning dew,” which is the translation from German of “Morgenthau”), is named in his honor. Significance Morgenthau helped steer the U.S. economy through the turbulent years of the Depression. As Roosevelt led the United States into World War II, Morgenthau advocated that the costs of war not be borne in debt but through fund-raising. Even before the end of the war, he was instrumental in making a plan to get the world’s wartorn economies back on a stable footing. His efforts at the Bretton Woods conference laid the groundwork for this. Some of the important results of the conference were the founding of the World Bank and the creation of an adjustable foreign exchange market rate system and of convertible currencies. Morgenthau also played a central role in promoting the rescue of Jews fleeing the Holocaust. —Rafael Medoff Further Reading Beschloss, Michael. The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 19411945. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002. Focuses on the evolution and fate of Morgenthau’s plan for remaking post-World War II Germany. Medoff, Rafael. Blowing the Whistle on Genocide: Josiah E. DuBois, Jr. and the Struggle for a U.S. Response to the Holocaust. A chronicle of the efforts by Morgenthau, his aide DuBois, and other Treasury Department officials to promote the rescue of Jews from the Holocaust. Morgenthau, Henry, III. Mostly Morgenthaus: A Family History. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1991. This insider’s account of Morgenthau history brings to life the human side of a fascinating and influential family. See also: Bernard Baruch; Judah Benjamin; Joe Lieberman. 821
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Henry Morgenthau, Sr. German-born lawyer, entrepreneur, and U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (1913-1916) Part of the German Jewish establishment of New York, Morgenthau was a strong supporter of President Woodrow Wilson and the Democratic Party. His loyalty was awarded with an ambassadorship to the Ottoman Empire, and his strong humanitarian record earned him praise and gratitude from Jews and Armenians. Born: April 26, 1856; Mannheim, Baden (now in Germany) Died: November 25, 1946; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Law; philanthropy; government and politics Early Life Henry Morgenthau (MOR-guhn-thow) was born in Mannheim, Baden, the ninth of twelve children. At the age of nine, he moved with his parents, Lazarus and Babette Morgenthau, to the United States. His father had enjoyed considerable financial success with his cigar business in Germany but was hit hard by the U.S. tariff policy after the Civil War. After immigrating to the United States, Morgenthau’s father failed to establish a successful business, but his tenacity and his hard work deeply affected his son. According to his granddaughter and historian Barbara Tuchman, such “genes and environment” prepared Morgenthau well to “become Horatio Alger with a Jewish conscience.” Morgenthau easily acquired English, graduating from high school at the age of fourteen. Because of his family’s dire financial circumstances, he was forced to quit his studies in law at City College of New York and help support the family as an errand boy. He eventually put himself through Columbia Law School by teaching in an adult high school, and he was admitted to the bar at the young age of twenty-one. In 1879, he opened a law firm with two friends and accumulated a considerable fortune in realty law. Raised in an assimilated Reform Jewish family, Morgenthau had a penchant for political idealism with a strong moral conscience. He associated with reformer and founder of Henry Street Settlement Lillian Wald, and he became actively involved in municipal politics, trying to improve working conditions after the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911. He developed a close friendship with Rabbi Stephen Mayer Wise, who was twenty years his junior and whom he supported financially in the 822
founding of the libertarian Free Synagogue after Wise’s falling-out with the trustees of Temple Emanu-El, one of New York’s prominent synagogues. Life’s Work In 1912, inspired by the idealism of Woodrow Wilson, Morgenthau decided to retire from business and to devote his life to public service. He helped launch Wilson’s presidential campaign and served as chair of the Democratic Finance Committee. He hoped for a post in Wilson’s cabinet, but he was, to his disappointment, awarded only an ambassadorship. The post, tradition-
Henry Morgenthau, Sr. (Library of Congress)
Jewish Americans ally reserved for Jews, Morgenthau reluctantly accepted, and he served as U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916. Morgenthau’s position in Constantinople turned him into a witness to the Armenian tragedy, recognized by most as the first genocide of the twentieth century. He wrote numerous reports about the atrocities committed against the Armenians and tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to involve the German and U.S. governments in stopping the destruction of the Armenians. Morgenthau was involved in two unusual missions during and after World War I. In June, 1917, he embarked on a secret mission to Constantinople to ascertain Ottoman interest in a separate peace with the Allies. Yet, the secret peace mission, while authorized by Wilson and under the official designation of a visit to Palestine’s Jewish community, was doomed from the start and aborted at an early stage amid controversy. Two years later, in the postwar chaos and amid mounting outrage over pogroms against Jews in Poland, Wilson asked Morgenthau to head an investigative commission to Poland. The commission, however, was unable to submit a unanimous report, and conditions for Jews in Poland did not significantly improve. Morgenthau’s commitment to provide aid and relief for fellow Jews did not translate into support for a Jewish state. After Rabbi Wise’s pressure on President Wilson to endorse Zionism, Morgenthau broke with his old friend and resigned as president of the Free Synagogue. In his autobiography he fervently rejected Zionism and only years later, in his eighties and after the Holocaust, did he admit that he had been wrong. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage less than two years before the proclamation of the state of Israel. Significance Morgenthau symbolizes the dilemma of the assimilationist American Jew in the early twentieth century— the desire to be integrated into mainstream American life made him weary of Jewish nationalism. However, toward the end of his life, he recognized that the existence
Morgenthau, Henry, Sr. of a Jewish state secured his Jewish identity in the diaspora. According to his granddaughter, Morgenthau was eager to be recognized as a reformer and a humanitarian, and he wanted to be awarded with a significant political post. He never denied or negated his Jewishness. In fact, he left his mark on a number of Jewish organizations, including the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, the American Jewish Committee, and B’nai B’rith. His efforts to stop the Armenian tragedy earned him lasting recognition as a champion of the Armenian cause. —Sonja P. Wentling Further Reading Brecher, Frank W. “Revisiting Morgenthau’s Turkish Peace Mission of 1917.” Middle Eastern Studies 24, no. 3 (July, 1988): 357-363. Brecher examines the reasons for the mission and explores why it ended so abruptly and amid great controversy. Morgenthau, Henry, Sr. Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1918. In this memoir Morgenthau details his tenure as U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the tragic unfolding of the Armenian genocide. Morgenthau, Henry, III. Mostly Morgenthaus: A Family History. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1991. Written by Morgenthau’s grandson, this provides an interesting portrait of three Morgenthau men, Lazarus, Henry, Sr., and the author’s father, Henry, Jr., whose lives were dedicated to family and to their fellow men. Tuchman, Barbara W. “The Assimilationist Dilemma: Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story.” Commentary 63, no. 5 (May, 1977): 58-62. An appraisal by Morgenthau’s granddaughter, who focuses on the fact that Morgenthau’s humanitarianism preserved the ailing Jewish settlement in Palestine for later statehood, a development he was deeply ambivalent about and accepted only toward the end of his life. See also: Bernard Baruch; Henry Kissinger; Herbert Lehman; Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
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Arthur D. Morse Journalist and author Morse’s investigative journalism in the 1950’s and early 1960’s broke new ground on issues of race, public health, and politics. He later wrote the first book about the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration’s response to the Holocaust. Born: December 27, 1920; Brooklyn, New York Died: June 1, 1971; near Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia) Also known as: Arthur David Morse (full name) Areas of achievement: Journalism; education Early Life Growing up in interwar Brooklyn, Arthur D. Morse (mors), the son of a Jewish obstetrician, intended to follow his father into the world of medicine. In the middle of his college years at the University of Virginia, however, Morse abruptly switched gears and decided to pursue a career in journalism. Life’s Work Morse worked as a reporter and director for Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now series on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in the 1950’s. He wrote influential exposés about race relations, the Hollywood blacklist, and public health, including the first television network program documenting the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Morse’s first book, Schools of Tomorrow—Today!, written in 1959 with his wife, Joan, described innovative programs undertaken by a number of schools. In 1964, Morse was named to succeed Fred Friendly as executive producer of the series CBS Reports. Around this time, Morse began exploring the question of how the U.S. government responded to the Holocaust, expecting to devote an episode of CBS Reports to the topic. He filmed a number of interviews with former U.S. government officials, Jewish leaders, and Holocaust survivors, at one point taking a camera crew to Israel. The topic was loaded with controversy. In the first decades following World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enjoyed near-iconic status in the public mind. It was unthinkable to criticize the president who shepherded America through the Great Depression and led the Free World to victory over the Nazis. Moreover, the 1950’s and early 1960’s were a time when presidents were not subjected to the kind of scrutiny that later be824
came routine. Biographies of FDR were often laudatory to a fault. For reasons not publicly explained, CBS blocked Morse’s project, and the footage of the interviews was never aired. Deeply engrossed in the research and unwilling to drop it, Morse resigned from CBS in early 1965 and devoted himself full-time to writing a book about Roosevelt and the Holocaust. In late 1967, Morse finished While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy. The book’s title made clear Morse’s conclusion that the Roosevelt administration had neglected opportunities to rescue Jews from the Nazis. With an advance feature story in The New York Times and serialized excerpts in Look magazine, While Six Million Died was a sensation even before its release in the spring of 1968. Although some important archives were not yet open to researchers, Morse was able to piece together key aspects of this difficult chapter in American history. Refugee ships were turned away from America’s shores, even though the immigration quotas were largely unfilled. Reports about the mass killings were suppressed by the U.S. State Department, because it feared such news would increase public pressure to rescue the Jews. Gas chambers and crematoria could have been bombed, if the Roosevelt administration had been willing to exert a minimal effort to save Jews from Hitler. Morse also described how Treasury Department staffers blew the whistle on the State Department’s obstruction of rescue opportunities and brought about some belated U.S. steps to aid the Jews. Pressure from the Treasury and other sources convinced FDR to establish the War Refugee Board. Despite its small budget and staff, the board helped rescue more than 200,000 Jews from execution by Adolf Hitler’s regime near war’s end. Morse’s book made it possible for large numbers of Americans to begin considering the failings of a longidolized president. In the years after While Six Million Died, historians such as David S. Wyman would gain access to archives that Morse did not see and reveal much additional information about the American response to the Nazi genocide. While Six Million Died left a deep impression on many readers. Stuart Eizenstat, the U.S. envoy who later led the successful effort to compel Swiss banks to pay restitution to Holocaust survivors, has cited While Six Million Died as a central influence in shaping his un-
Jewish Americans derstanding of America’s response to the Holocaust, thereby influencing his own work. Prominent Soviet Jewry activists, such as Glenn Richter of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and Joseph Smukler of the Philadelphia Soviet Jewry movement, have said that While Six Million Died helped motivate their activism. Many pro-Israel activists have said their efforts on behalf of the Jewish state were galvanized by what they learned from Morse about American apathy during the Holocaust. The knowledge that his book had such an impact no doubt would have given Morse much satisfaction, in view of the final words of his preface: “If genocide is to be prevented in the future, we must understand how it happened in the past—not only in terms of the killers and the killed, but of the bystanders.” Morse died in an automobile accident in Yugoslavia in 1971. He did not live long enough to see the profound impact of his book. Significance From his pioneering work on race relations and the dangers of smoking to his equally groundbreaking writing on America’s weak response to the Holocaust, Morse
Moses, Robert enlightened the public about important historical issues. His courageous investigations awakened Americans to shameful conditions that had been hidden from them. —Rafael Medoff Further Reading Baum, Phil. “A Conversation with Arthur D. Morse.” Congress Bi-Weekly 35, no. 5 (March 11, 1968): 1117. Wide-ranging talk with Morse about his research into the U.S. response to the Holocaust. Gratz, Roberta Brandes. “Close Up: Dark Chapter.” The New York Post, January 30, 1968, p. 16. Article about how Morse exposed the inadequate response of the Roosevelt administration to reports of Jewish genocide. Raymont, Henry. “A Book Asserts U.S. Thwarted Rescue of Jews from the Nazis.” The New York Times, October 25 1967, p. 2. Details the passive attitude the U.S. government took toward news about the mass killings of Jews in Europe. See also: Carl Bernstein; David Halberstam; Seymour M. Hersh; Daniel Schorr.
Robert Moses Urban planner For nearly a half century, Moses was the major designer of New York City’s expressways, bridges, parks, and many other structures. Born: December 18, 1888; New Haven, Connecticut Died: July 29, 1981; West Islip, Long Island, New York Areas of achievement: Architecture and design; government and politics Early Life Robert Moses (MOH-zehs) was the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany. His mother, Bella, possessed a willful, idealistic, and opportunistic nature that observers later saw reflected in Moses. His father, Emanuel, was the owner of a department store in New Haven, Connecticut, who retired when Bella expressed a desire to live in New York City. Unlike many other New York Jews in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Moses family did not move to the lower East Side but further uptown, to a prosperous German Jewish neigh-
borhood. Bella spent much of her life working in a settlement house for Eastern European Jewish immigrants, who, she believed, needed to be “Americanized.” The Moses family provided private schools for Moses and his brother Paul Emanuel. Bella was strict with her children but tended to spoil them. Both boys were considered brilliant, their sister less so. Moses grew tall, wiry, and handsome. His education continued at Yale; Wadham College, Oxford; and Columbia University, where he earned a Ph.D. His dissertation, The Civil Service of Great Britain, revealed his admiration for the British system, which he saw as attracting men of intelligence and high ability to influential posts in the civil service, while a much larger group performed at a lower level. He defended what seemed to be an undemocratic vision of society by insisting that merit must be the qualification for success. The meritorious were likely to be intelligent students with Ivy League educations. Completing his degree in 1913, Moses gained a position with the Training School for Public Service in New York, the first American educational institution estab825
Moses, Robert
Jewish Americans
portunities. Within four years, the number of state parks on Long Island grew from one to fourteen. When Moses established a park, he The Triborough Bridge linking the boroughs of Manhattan, built roads to link them with highways. Despite Queens, and the Bronx is one of Robert Moses’s most physically the fact that his position pertained to Long Isstupendous works. Fifty Pennsylvania steel mills made its girders; a forest in the Northwest was cut down to make the forms for its land, Moses was responsible for generating park concrete. It joins the only mainland part of New York City to its additions and improvements throughout the state. greatest island and saves the residents of these boroughs untold Moses’s notable accomplishments are assohours of travel. It is also a richly symbolic work. It is a central conciated closely with New York City. Jones Beach, nector of a vast transportation network. On Randall’s Island, fashioned on a sandbar off the Long Island where the East and Harlem Rivers open into Long Island Sound, coast, became a favorite destination for New and where massive supports were erected at one end of each of the Yorkers. A position Moses gained under Mayor three concomitant bridges, beneath the tollbooths, Moses estabFiorello Henry La Guardia on January 19, 1934, lished his main office. He made the island, as his biographer puts heading the New York City Park Commission, it, “an autonomous sovereign state.” Here he could work, if he so gave Moses much more latitude. By May 1 of wished, uninterrupted by the doings of the world over and outside the same year park visitors found every tennis him. Anyone having business with Moses would have to come here. In 2008, the bridge was renamed the Robert F. Kennedy court resurfaced, every lawn reseeded, eleven Bridge. miles of bridle paths rebuilt, eight golf courses refashioned, and many other obvious improvements made. All structures were freshly painted, and hundreds of comfort stations, drinking founlished to train young men for government service. Bella tains, and benches had been repaired. That was just the had connections with the trustees of this organization. At beginning. In the 1930’s, Moses built 235 playgrounds, this school, Moses met Mary Sims, whom he married in although at that time few people noticed that only one of 1915. Work at the school bored him, however, and he was them was built in Harlem. offered a chance to reorganize New York City governMoses did not just build and improve parks. He built ment under its young mayor, John Purroy Mitchel. Then seven bridges, one of which, the aptly named Triborough Belle Moskowitz, the wife of one of his colleagues at the Bridge, connects three boroughs with three bridges and a training school, introduced Moses to an even more imcauseway. He built fourteen expressways, the Lincoln portant man, Alfred E. Smith, her employer, who had Center for the Performing Arts, the New York Coliseum, been elected governor of New York. Shea Stadium, and more. The power Moses accumulated to accomplish this building boom flowed from political Life’s Work leaders eager to demonstrate tangible benefits that they Moses’s initial job in Smith’s administration was a sucould present to the public. pervisory position with the State Reconstruction ComConstruction also involves destruction, especially in mission. He prepared a report on the reorganization of an established metropolitan complex such as New York state government that was much applauded by reformers, City, and Moses received much criticism for projects that and Moses became essentially an adviser to Smith. A destroyed homes and ravaged neighborhoods. One excheck to his growing influence came in 1920 when Smith ample is the seven-mile Cross-Bronx Expressway. In just lost the governorship to a Republican opponent. Howone mile of this project, which links northern and southever, in 1922, Smith regained the seat. Offered various ern sections of Routes 1 and I-95, fifty-four apartment positions over the next few years, Moses perceived that houses, each holding from thirty to fifty families, were the one opening the most opportunities for him was the destroyed as well as many small homes. Adjoining streets presidency of the Long Island State Park Commission, of the Bronx became dead ends, and criminal activity in which he assumed in 1924 and held for forty-four years. the neighborhood mushroomed. Critics claimed that a At a time when people were gaining more leisure time and slightly different route would have preserved most of the means to own an automobile, the need for more recrethese structures. Here and elsewhere, neighborhoods and ational space was obvious. Parks previously had been conpedestrians were forced to give way to Moses’s dedicaceived as wilderness places, but Moses believed that parks tion to automobiles and thoroughfares for them. Moses should also provide various recreational and sporting opdied of heart disease in 1981 at the age of ninety-two.
The Triborough Bridge
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Jewish Americans Significance Both supporters and opponents of Moses’s achievements agree that the changes he made in New York City and his influence in the field of urban design are of immense importance. Had he never lived, New York would be a different city. Whether it would be a better or a worse city is a question that will continue to be argued. After a period of several decades, in which people familiar with his work regarded it as astonishing and admirable, negative criticism arose sharply in the 1970’s, when people saw that neighborhoods from downtown Manhattan to the South Bronx had lapsed into serious decline, and they began to identify Moses’s alterations as leading to that degeneration. Subsequent reinvigoration of the city suggests that the criticism was too harsh and that the work of this remarkable man should be reassessed. —Robert P. Ellis Further Reading Ballon, Hilary, and Kenneth T. Jackson, eds. Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007.The editors present eight essays by urban experts who have investigated Moses’s achievement and influence in the ex-
Muni, Paul ercise of public authority to design and reshape the modern city. Caro, Robert A. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. This immense study is both a biography of Moses and a history of his recasting of the New York metropolitan era in more than four decades in the twentieth century. Caro calls Moses “America’s greatest builder” but sees him also as a man obsessed with the attainment and exercise of power, which brought about what Caro terms the city’s “fall.” Gratz, Roberta Brandes. The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. New York: Nation Books, 2010. The author writes as an advocate of Jane Jacobs, an activist and writer on urban problems, who, beginning late in Moses’s career, became his most bitterly negative critic. This book, more one-sided than Caro’s, presents some of the most trenchant criticisms of Moses’s philosophy of urban improvement. See also: Dankmar Adler; Marcel Breuer; Frank Gehry; Milton Glaser; Daniel Libeskind; Richard Neutra.
Paul Muni Ukrainian-born actor During the 1930’s, when Americans sought escape from the deprivations of the Great Depression, Muni made an impression in films with his intense, magnetic, and engrossing performances. Born: September 22, 1895; Lemberg, Galicia, AustroHungarian Empire (now Lviv, Ukraine) Died: August 25, 1967; Montecito, California Also known as: Muni Wisenfrend; Muni Weisenfreund (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater; activism Early Life Paul Muni (MYEW-nee) was born on September 22, 1895. His parents, Salche and Nacham Favel Weisenfreund, were itinerant Yiddish entertainers, who traveled throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire, performing short Yiddish plays and song-and-dance routines. An unsuccessful tour in England in 1901 prompted their emigration to the United States in 1902.
Muni, called by the common Yiddish nickname “Moony,” started acting at age twelve, playing an old man, replacing another actor at the last minute in a play. He continued acting, often playing old men on the Yiddish stage. Yiddish theater actors spoke their lines in a “more elegant” Germanized Yiddish than everyday Yiddish. The acting style was broad rather than realistic, exhibiting more temperament and an almost operatic intensity. Improvisation was considered a useful talent, even adding lines from other plays into the dialogue. In 1919, Muni joined the Yiddish Art Theater, founded by Maurice Schwartz, and performed in several plays, including Sholem Aleichem’s Shver Tsu Zein a Yid (1914). He met his future wife, actor Bella Finkel, during this time, and they married in May, 1921, two years before Muni became an American citizen. He began his English-speaking theater-acting career in 1926, playing an elderly Jewish man in We Americans (1926). By this time, he was listed in the playbills as Muni Wisenfrend. 827
Muni, Paul Life’s Work Muni continued his Broadway stage work with a play in 1927, still using the name Muni Wisenfrend. Then in 1928, he was lured to Hollywood to work with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Barbara Stanwyck, Cary Grant, and Claudette Colbert. Muni was handsome, with black hair and eyes, and a well-proportioned 165 pounds. However, he was only five feet, ten inches tall, so he wore small lifts in his shoes to add to his height. When he made the film Scarface (1932), he even added padding to give himself the bulk he felt the character warranted. A perfectionist in preparing for his roles, he spent considerable time researching the historical personages he often portrayed in his films, reading books about the character and the era, rehearsing the correct dialect in order to speak his lines with the proper accent. He would remain in character even when not in a scene. He tried to “become” the person he was portraying, and he became one of the finest character actors of his time. His first film, a talkie titled The Valiant (1929), earned him an Academy Award nomination, the first of five he would receive over his career. This was the first time he
Paul Muni. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans used the name “Paul Muni.” He was not, however, satisfied with the kind of roles he was being offered, and so he returned to Broadway, taking a lead role in the Elmer Rice play Counsellor-at-Law in 1931. In 1932, he was back in Hollywood, where he made two breakout films, Scarface and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), the latter in an Academy Award-nominated role. He signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. His association with the studio produced some of his most memorable films, including The Life of Emile Zola (1937). As Zola, he gave the powerful, moving “J’accuse” speech that convinced many he was one of Hollywood’s best actors. He also made Juarez (1939) and The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), for which he received an Academy Award for Best Actor. Still, his career included only twenty-five films; they produced five Academy Award nominations (and one write-in nomination for his performance in 1935’s Black Fury). He was one of the biggest Hollywood stars in the 1930’s, but after a dispute with Warner Bros., his contract was terminated. From 1940 through the 1950’s, he made only eight films. Muni went back to Broadway in 1955. He played the part of Henry Drummond in the play Inherit the Wind (1955), and he was awarded the Tony for best performance by a leading actor in a drama. He retired in 1959, when a lifelong rheumatic heart condition and increasing blindness began to hamper his work. At age seventy-one, he succumbed to a heart disorder and died in Montecito, California. Significance Before World War II, Hollywood, though run largely by Jews, was “almost venomously antiSemitic,” according to actor Marlon Brando, and Jewish actors invariably had to change their names and alter their physical features that were “too Jewish.” Though Muni had been successful in the Yiddish theater and on the Broadway stage under the name Muni Wisenfrend, when he got to Hollywood he acted under the name Paul Muni. The name change, however, did not change his concern for his fellow Jews, especially those European Jews who wanted to make their home in Israel. He was committed to the cause of creating a Jewish state in Israel. Brando said Muni gave an “astonishing performance” in one of his last Broadway roles, in A Flag Is Born (1946). Muni was considered an actor of great integrity. —Jane L. Ball
Jewish Americans Further Reading Brody, Seymour. Jewish Heroes and Heroines of America. Hollywood, Fla.: Frederick Fell, 2005. Muni’s story is among this illustrated collection of true stories. Druxman, Michael B. Paul Muni: His Life and His Films. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1974. Covers Muni’s private life and his various acting roles. Lawrence, Jerome. Actor: The Life and Times of Paul Muni. New York: Samuel French, 1982. Account of Muni’s life from his childhood, when he traveled with
Myerson, Bess his parents’ Yiddish theater company, to his declining years. Includes interviews with theater and film greats who knew or worked with Muni. Phillips, Alastair, and Ginette Vincendeau, eds. Journeys of Desire. London: British Film Institute, 2008. Muni is discussed as a European actor who became an American stage and film star. See also: Alan Arkin; George Cukor; Samuel Goldwyn; Carl Laemmle; Ernst Lubitsch; Louis B. Mayer; Otto Preminger; William Wyler.
Bess Myerson Beauty queen and activist Myerson was the first Jewish woman to win the title of Miss America, and after the contest she became an entertainer and an activist against prejudice and for public welfare. She also served as New York City’s commissioner for consumer affairs. Born: July 16, 1924; Bronx, New York Also known as: Bess Myerson Wayne; Bess Myerson Grant Areas of achievement: Entertainment; activism; social issues Early Life Bess Myerson (MI-ur-son) was born and raised in a lower-middle-class section of the Bronx. Her parents, Russian immigrants Louis and Bella Myerson, had three daughters. During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, the Myersons lived with other Jewish families in the Sholom Aleichem Cooperative. Myerson studied piano and flute at New York High School of Music and Art, and then she went to Hunter College, majoring in music and hoping to become an orchestra conductor. She graduated in 1945. Her mother sent Myerson’s picture to the Miss New York City contest, and Myerson entered and won the title, earning her the right to compete in Atlantic City’s Miss America pageant for 1945. Life’s Work Myerson gained instant fame at the age of twenty-one when she won the Miss America crown. A feisty, intelligent woman, she entered the contest in the hope of winning a scholarship to continue her studies. Myerson faced anti-Semitism both during and after the contest. One of the contest officials suggested that Myerson
change her name to one that sounded less Jewish; she refused. Some judges were warned to vote against her. She faced anti-Semitism as well during the year she wore the crown. Some of the contest sponsors, including the Catalina Swimsuit Company, refused to use her as a spokeswoman. One country club that had scheduled the winner for an appearance withdrew the invitation because the club was restricted, that is, it did not allow Jews to become members. Some parents refused to allow Myerson to speak to their sons in veterans’ hospitals. The experience convinced Myerson to change her life goal to speaking out against prejudice. She entered the new medium, television, appearing as a panelist on several game shows and serving as hostess for other shows. She participated in various government programs and held appointed office. She was part of the White House Conference on Violence and Crime, she worked at the National Center for Productivity and Quality of Working Life, and she served with the United States Mission to the United Nations. In 1969, the mayor of New York City, John Lindsay, appointed her the city commissioner for consumer affairs. In that position, she broadcast a syndicated consumer affairs television show, What Every Woman Should Know, and persuaded the city council to adopt a number of measures, including the 1971 Consumer Protection Act. Besides her job as commissioner, Myerson worked as a consultant for consumer affairs for Citibank and the Bristol-Myers corporation. She was also a columnist for the Chicago Tribune newspapers and an editor for Redbook magazine. From 1965 to 1970, she was chairperson for the New York State Bonds for Israel campaign. She has written books and received a number of 829
Myerson, Bess national awards and honorary doctorates. In 1980, Myerson ran for the Democratic nomination for United States senator from New York, but she lost to Elizabeth Holtzman. Although she has had many successes in her professional career, Myerson has faced a number of personal problems. In 1973, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, but she told no one of her illness until she was declared cancer free. Later, however, she became a public spokesperson for the fight to find a cure for the disease. She was married and divorced three times. In 1947, she married business executive Allen Wayne. They had one daughter, Barbara, and were divorced in 1958. Myerson married and divorced Arnold Grant, a tax lawyer, twice. She also became notorious for her love affairs. In 1980, she became involved with Carl Andrew Capasso, twenty-one years her junior. Capasso was convicted of tax fraud and, along with Myerson, accused of bribing a judge. Myerson resigned as commissioner but was indicted for complicity in the matter, dubbed by the news media the “Bess Mess.” She was subsequently acquitted. In later years she lived in South Florida where she continued her campaign against ovarian cancer.
Jewish Americans
Bess Myerson. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Significance Myerson’s beauty brought her national fame at a young age, and her intelligence and buoyant spirit kept her in national prominence throughout her life. She will be remembered as the first Jew to win the coveted Miss America crown and for her unflinching protection of common people in consumer affairs. She waged an unstinting battle against prejudice and against ovarian cancer, challenges that affected her life. She made her mark principally in her own city, New York, but her influence extended to the whole nation. —Frederick B. Chary Further Reading Alexander, Shana. When She Was Bad. New York: Dell, 1991. A biography of Myerson concentrating on the “Bess Mess” and the subsequent trial. Dworkin, Susan. Miss America, 1945: Bess Myerson and the Year That Changed Our Lives. New York: New Market Press, 2000. A scholarly though read830
able account of Myerson’s winning the Miss America title and placing it in a broader social context. Seidemann, Joel.“High Times and Nepotism at the Koch Court: The United States of America v. Bess Myerson, Andy Capasso. and Hortense Gabel.” In In the Interest of Justice: Great Opening and Closing Arguments of the Last Hundred Years. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. An attorney examines the “Bess Mess” trial from a lawyer’s point of view. Watson, Elwood, and Darcy Martin, eds. “There She Is, Miss America”: The Politics of Sex, Beauty, and Race in America’s Most Famous Pageant. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. A scholarly account of the Miss America contest and how it reflected American society and attitudes. Includes commentary on the role of Myerson. See also: Bella Abzug; Michael Bloomberg; Barry Diller; Ed Koch; Charles Schumer; Gloria Steinem.
N Maud Nathan Activist, social reformer, and feminist Nathan made significant contributions in educating consumers, in obtaining better working conditions for women, and in getting women the right to vote. Born: October 20, 1862; New York, New York Died: December 15, 1946; New York, New York Also known as: Mrs. Frederick Nathan Areas of achievement: Activism; women’s rights; religion and theology Early Life Maud Nathan (mawd NAY-thihn) was born in New York City on October 20, 1862, into a socially and religiously prominent Sephardic Jewish family. Her parents were Annie Augusta Florance and Robert Weeks Nathan. Maud Nathan had two brothers, Robert Florance and Harold, and a sister, Annie. Nathan spent her childhood and adolescence in New York City, with the exception of four years, during which the family lived in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school. In 1878, her mother died. In 1880, she married her first cousin, Frederick Nathan, a successful broker. She and her husband had one child, Annette Florance Nathan, who died in 1895. Nathan became involved in New York society and was active in various charities. She and her husband spent summers in Saratoga Springs, New York, a fashionable resort area frequented by the high society of the time. As a result of her participation in charitable work, Nathan met Josephine Shaw Lowell, who was involved with bettering the lives of workingwomen. In 1890, in collaboration with several other women activists, Lowell and Nathan formed the Consumers League of New York, which sought better working conditions for women and a sanitary environment for the manufacture of consumer goods. Nathan was also concerned about child labor. In 1894, she spoke before a New York legislative committee in favor of a bill to regulate the employment of women and children in retail stores. Life’s Work After the death of her daughter, Nathan became even more involved in the Consumers League of New York. In
1897, she became the organization’s president, and she held the office for twenty-one years. Nathan and the other members of the league advocated better wages for working women, a clean and appropriate workplace, and protection from sexual advances by employers. The league addressed problems of women working in manufacturing and in retail stores. Nathan also emphasized the importance of consumer education. She insisted that consumers had a responsibility to know the conditions under which products were manufactured and to not buy products made in unsanitary workplaces and by individuals, especially women, earning unreasonably low wages. Nathan believed women to be equal to men, and she strongly opposed a social context that confined women to the domestic sphere and taught them they needed a husband to support them. She believed that unless women could vote, they could not have significant input into legislation and social reform. Both she and her husband played an important role in the women’s suffrage movement. She was a member of both the New York State and the National Woman Suffrage Association, and she repeatedly made speeches and wrote letters and newspaper articles demanding the right for women to vote. She spoke at the International Congress of Women in London in 1898 and again in 1904 in Berlin. In 1904, she also spoke in favor of woman suffrage before a United States Senate committee. In 1912, she received the New York Herald Prize for the best letter supporting the vote for women. Her husband died in 1919, but Nathan continued to call for better working conditions for women and for their right to vote and for consumer education. She traveled abroad and exchanged ideas with activists and social reformers throughout Europe. She wrote two books and maintained extensive scrapbooks about her activity as a social reformer. In 1926, she published The Story of an Epoch-Making Movement about the Consumer League and in 1933 Once Upon a Time and Today about her work for women’s suffrage and for assistance to Jewish immigrants. In addition, throughout her life, Nathan played an active role in the Jewish community, both in religious and 831
Nemerov, Howard in social contexts. In 1897, she spoke at the Sephardic synagogue Shearith Israel on the topic “The Heart of Judaism.” She was a member of the board of directors of the Hebrew Free School Association and taught English to Jewish immigrants. Nathan died, after an illness of several years, on December 15, 1946, in New York City. Significance Nathan played a significant role both as a member of the Jewish faith and as an activist and social reformer, improving the lives of working women, of children, and of consumers, both men and women. She insisted upon equality between men and women and advocated for the economic and political rights of women and their ability to contribute in spheres other than the home. She called for a liberal and tolerant religion that involved social reform and improvement of the quality of life for members of her faith and for people in general. —Shawncey Webb Further Reading Antler, Joyce. The Journey Home. New York: Free Press. 1997. An overview of Jewish American women during the twentieth century. Nathan made contributions in politics, consumerism, and working conditions for women. Boris, Eileen. Home to Work: Motherhood and the Poli-
Jewish Americans tics of Industrial Homework in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Good discussion of reform movements to improve working conditions of women. Describes Nathan’s role in the consumer movement. Chatriot, Alain, et al., eds. The Expert Consumer: Associations and Professionals in the Consumer Society. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006. Excellent for Nathan’s interaction with the European consumer movement. Nathan, Maud. Once Upon a Time and Today. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933. Nathan recounts her work for woman suffrage and her involvement in aiding Jewish immigrants and other social reforms. _______. The Story of an Epoch-Making Movement. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1926. Nathan’s account of the consumer movement. Rogow, Judith. Gone to Another Meeting: The National Council of Jewish Women, 1893-1993. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 2005. Explores impact of Jewish American women in Jewish and general American society. Places Nathan in this context. See also: Mary Antin; Emma Goldman; Samuel Gompers; Ernestine Rose; Hannah Solomon; Henrietta Szold; Lillian D. Wald.
Howard Nemerov Poet, novelist, and educator Nemerov wrote well-crafted poetry, in which he wrestled with problems of perception and identity, using traditional, carefully constructed poetic forms. Born: March 1, 1920; New York, New York Died: July 5, 1991; University City, Missouri Also known as: Howard Stanley Nemerov (full name) Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Howard Nemerov (HOW-urd NEHM-eh-rov) was born into a cultured and prosperous Jewish family in New York City. His parents were David and Gertrude Nemerov. Howard Nemerov’s one sibling, a sister, Diane, became a well-known photographer before committing suicide. Nemerov became an outstanding student at the 832
Ethical Culture Fieldston School, a prestigious institution run by the Society for Ethical Culture. After graduating in 1937, Nemerov entered Harvard University, where he won the Bowdoin essay competition, one of Harvard’s most distinguished literary awards. After receiving his B.A., he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force as a pilot, and he was posted to Great Britain. After the United States entered the war, he transferred to the U.S. Air Force. In 1944, he married Margaret Russell, with whom had three sons; one of them, Alexander, later became a professor at Yale. Nemerov’s first post after the war was at Hamilton College, from 1946 to 1948, where his first volume of poetry, The Image of the Law (1947), was published. It contained forty-four poems, mainly of a philosophical nature. Their imagery and control of form echo two great poets of the 1930’s, W. H. Auden and William Butler Yeats.
Jewish Americans
Nemerov, Howard
In 1948, Nemerov received an appointment at Bennington College in Vermont, where he was to stay until 1966. He liked New England and was particularly influenced by the New England poets Robert Frost and Robert Lowell. His poetry turned to nature, seeing in its images types and tropes of the philosophical ideas with which he was wrestling. Life’s Work At first, however, Nemerov was uncertain whether he wanted to write fiction or poetry. The Melodramatists (1949), his first novel, is about an aristocratic Boston family, and it involves a study of Christian, especially Howard Nemerov. (AP/Wide World Photos) Catholic, experience. Although a nonpracticing Jew, Nemerov was attracted by Roman Catholicism at this and Windows (1958) continues this trend. In 1960, Nemtime. During the whole of his writing career, he explored erov wrote “The Runes,” a substantial poem. The work religious topics, both Jewish and Christian. collected in The New Room of the Dream (1962) suggests Next came Frederigo: Or, The Power of Love (1954), he had found his voice. Poems such as “To Clio, Muse of a stylistically elegant novel. It explores themes of reality History,” “Polonius Passing Through a Stage,” and “The and fantasy in the game of love, employing the image of View of Pisgah” are more accessible than his earlier pothe mirror, which Nemerov was to make use of in his poems. Nature is still the predominating delight. Two verse etry. His third novel, The Homecoming Game (1957), undramas with biblical themes, “Endor” and “Cain,” aplike his first two, earned him a lot of money; Hollywood peared. Nemerov claimed he always found delight in made a successful film of the novel, and it became a writing, and he could write quickly, especially when free Broadway play. It has a college setting, where a popular of academic duties. His colleagues saw him as a poet, as athlete fails several tests and is about to be dropped from he records in Journal of a Fictive Life (1965). This interthe football team, in a clash of pragmatism against acaesting book was written in a month’s time. It is by far the demic ideals. most personal of Nemerov’s writings, done to break a During this time, Nemerov had published two sub“writer’s block” by recording random dreams, interprestantial volumes of poetry, Guide to the Ruins (1950) and tations, and thoughts; the work is more psychological The Salt Garden (1955). It is obvious that Nemerov had than philosophical. been influenced by older and modern poets, his work In 1966, Nemerov left Bennington for Brandeis Uniechoing Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, and the seventeenth versity in Massachusetts. He stayed only three years becentury metaphysical poets. Themes of childhood and fore moving to the Midwest to Washington University in death are pervasive. “The Lives of Gulls and Children,” St. Louis, where he was Edward Mallinckrodt Distinwhich appears in anthologies, describes children’s expeguished Professor of English and Distinguished Poet in rience of death, which they explore through dying and Residence. He was to stay there till his death from cancer dead seagulls, learning about the disconnect between huin 1991. mans and nature. “The Goose Fish,” another poem, juxNemerov’s The Blue Swallows appeared in 1967. The taposes the sea, human lovers, and death. “The Pond” is title poem is perhaps one of his best known, again using close to Frost in its linking of death and nature. Both volnatural imagery to discuss the philosophical question of umes demonstrate Nemerov’s ability to convey abstract the mind’s attempt to impose order, even when motion ideas through carefully crafted natural images. The sea seems too quick to be perceived. The disconnect between and the forms of water begin to predominate. Mirrors 833
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Jewish Americans
“The Runes” Howard Nemerov’s “The Runes” first appeared in New and Selected Poems in 1960, before his reputation as a poet was well established. It marked his first real claim to be considered a leading New England poet, on a par with Robert Lowell, whose work the poem resembles in part. Other echoes are from T. S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets (1943). “The Runes” consists of fifteen sections or stanzas, each one fifteen lines of blank verse. Runes were ancient Germanic and Celtic writings that revealed “secret knowledge” when deciphered. The runes in the poem are marks of nature that need deciphering to yield their secret knowledge. The images used are running water, ice, seeds, and the cycle of the seasons. Indeed, the overall poem is structured around the seasons; within the fifteen stanzas, the first and last complement each other, the second and fourteenth, and so on, making the eighth stanza the cornerstone. Besides images of nature, there are significant literary allusions to Ulysses, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), the atonement ritual in the Bible, Aaron’s rod, Marcel Proust, and more. The overall theme is based on the image of water, which during the year takes on different forms. There are patterns in running water, yet the water’s flow, like the flow of time, can easily be seen as random and unpatterned. The tension is between an individual’s mind imposing order and the flow of time in nature and history, as the individual becomes conscious of it.
the observer and outer reality lies at the heart of Nemerov’s irony. The book won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Award for Poetry. Gnomes and Occasions (1973) was followed by The Western Approaches (1975), which demonstrates Nemerov’s new interest in modern science and a relaxation of formal poetic structures. The completion of this volume led to the issuing of The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov in 1977, which won for Nemerov the Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize. His reputation was firmly established. Other volumes followed: Sentences (1980), Inside the Onion (1984), War Stories (1987), and Trying Conclusions: New and Selected Poems, 19611991 (1992), published at his death. War Stories is a reworking of war experiences, about which he had previously kept silent. Nemerov also wrote two collections of short stories, A Commodity of Dreams (1959) and Stories, Fables, and 834
Other Diversions (1971), and two collections of essays, Figures of Thought (1978) and New and Selected Essays (1985), which include several addresses, an interview, and his views on the writing of poetry. Nemerov served as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (19631964), he was Poet Laureate (1988-1990), he received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and he became chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1976. Significance In a period when commitment to specific causes was fashionable, Nemerov upheld the classical tradition of the objective, somewhat ironic, allusive, and formal poet, who was prepared to question the culture around him. He represented the philosophical poet, who poses existential questions of life in terms of natural imagery. His philosophical approach has often been linked to that of the medieval philosopher William of Occam. —David Barratt Further Reading Duncan, Bowie, ed. The Critical Reception of Howard Nemerov. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1971. An early but invaluable collection of essays on and reviews of Nemerov’s work. Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning. A Reader’s Guide to the Poetry of Howard Nemerov. Salzburg, Austria: Poetry Salzburg, 2000. A comprehensive guide to the poetic texts. Kirsch, Adam. “One Big Thing: An Exchange.” Poetry 183, no. 3 (December 1, 2003): 163-170. A review of 2003’s Selected Poems. Kirsch tries to see overall philosophical statements in the poetry. Labrie, Ross. Howard Nemerov. Boston: Twayne, 1980. The book begins with a philosophical overview, then devotes chapters to Nemerov’s fiction and poems and suggests an approach to understanding his writing. Little biographical material. Potts, Donna L. Howard Nemerov and Objective Idealism: The Influence of Owen Barfield. St. Louis: University of Missouri Press, 1994. A study based on the 1984 book Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning, written jointly by Nemerov and Barfield. See also: Joseph Brodsky; Stanley Elkin; Maxine Kumin; Philip Levine; Adrienne Rich; Mark Strand; Louis Untermeyer.
Jewish Americans
Neusner, Jacob
Jacob Neusner Educator, rabbi, and scholar Neusner is one of the world’s foremost experts on Judaism. The field of religious studies owes much of its current dynamism to his visionary organizing activities of rabbinic literature. Born: July 28, 1932; Hartford, Connecticut Areas of achievement: Education; religion and theology; scholarship Early Life Jacob Neusner (JAY-kuhb NEWZ-nur) was raised in a Reform Jewish home and graduated in 1950 from William H. Hall High School in West Hartford, Connecticut. He studied American history at Harvard College and obtained a fellowship to attend Oxford University from 1953 to 1954. It was during this fellowship that he studied his first passage from the Talmud and discovered a world of complex thought more intriguing than that to which he had been exposed in his historical studies. He decided to undertake formal study of the rabbinical literature. He enrolled in the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) in 1954. Neusner spent 1957 and 1958 studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Upon his return to JTS, he enrolled in the joint Ph.D. program in religion sponsored by Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary. He was ordained a rabbi upon graduating from JTS in 1960 with his master’s degree in Hebrew Letters, and he also received his Ph.D. in religion from Columbia University. He spent years as an observant Conservative Jew. Neusner became an instructor in religion at Columbia University in 1960-1961 and then moved to the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, as an assistant professor of Hebrew. He came to Brandeis University as a research associate in 1962, the same year he published A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai, which was awarded by JTS the Abraham Berliner Prize in Jewish History. Over the next decade, Neusner published the fivevolume History of the Jews in Babylonia (1965-1970) as well as Aphrahat and Judaism: The Christian Jewish Argument in Fourth Century Iran (1971). He would later refer to these writings as his “precritical stage,” because he took the rabbinic literature at face value. Neusner became assistant professor of religion at Dartmouth College in 1964 and was promoted to associate professor in 1966. In 1964, he married Suzanne Richter, with whom he had three sons and a daughter.
Life’s Work Neusner left Dartmouth in 1968 to become a professor of religious studies at Brown University. During this period, Neusner entered fully into a systematic form of critical study of the rabbinic literature, a corpus of works by known and unknown authors that spans one thousand years. He also returned to the Reform Judaism of his childhood. He launched into this work with extraordinary scholarly productivity, and he became the first scholar to bring the vast body of rabbinic literature into a language (English) and format that would make this body of religious argumentation available to nonrabbinical students and scholars of religion. So extensive and formidable was his work (more than 950 books and hundreds of articles) that he became the epicenter of new academic book series, of conferences, of professional associations, of scholarly symposia, and of a rich and varied engagement with leading scholars of other world religions, both devout believers and strict secularists. His graduate students went on to occupy university posts in religious or Jewish studies in major universities, and the field of religious studies owes much of its current dynamism to his visionary organizing activities. His first-time English translations and his reconfiguring of rabbinic literature to make it accessible drew considerable criticism from some rabbinic and academic scholars for his interpretations of the evolution of Judaism. Neusner took each text in isolation and sought to determine what its author was seeking to accomplish and how the author crafted arguments and organized material to advance a system of Jewish thought. Neusner views rabbinic literature in general as utopian documents designed to articulate a model for the social order. Neusner’s achievements in religious studies are unmatched by any other scholar. He became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1989. In 1992, he was made a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He has received numerous awards, including the Von Humboldt Prize (1981) and the Medal of the Collège de France (1990), and honorary doctorates from leading global universities. He has been a visiting professor at many schools and given lectures on the campuses of such religiously affiliated institutions as Calvin College, Pontifical Gregorian University, Brigham Young University, and Oklahoma Baptist University and at such elite secular universities as Oxford, Copenhagen, the Sorbonne, Edinburgh, Trinity College Dublin, Prince835
Neutra, Richard ton, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, and University of Texas, Austin. The diversity of these invitations is a testament to Neusner’s abilities to explain classical Judaism to secularists, devotees of other world religions, and observant and nonobservant Jews without compromising its meaning or importance. He is well known for high-level interreligious dialogue with major religious leaders, such as the pope, and for his strongly worded criticism of sayings attributed to Jesus Christ of Nazareth, which he finds not authentically Jewish. Neusner left Brown in 1990 to become Distinguished Research Professor at the University of South Florida for a decade. In 1994, he also became a professor at Bard College and assumed a self-endowed chair there as Distinguished Service Professor of the History and Theology of Judaism in 2001, and he accepted an appointment as a senior fellow of the Institute of Advanced Theology. Significance Neusner can be credited with almost single-handedly creating the modern field of the academic study of Judaism, which impacted religious studies at universities worldwide. He is a major contributor to interreligious di-
Jewish Americans alogue in which all parties remain true to their convictions and seek commonalities, differences, and insights from within the context of their respective traditions. —Dennis W. Cheek Further Reading Neusner, Jacob. A Rabbi Talks with Jesus. Montreal, Que.: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. Neusner imagines traveling back in history two thousand years to listen to Jesus. _______. Visions of the Social Order—How Religions Concur: Describing, Analyzing, and Comparing Judaic and Christian Systems of the Formative Age. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 2011. Neusner reveals his deep knowledge of rabbinical Judaism and of Christianity as systems of religious thought. Poirier, John. “Jacob Neusner, the Mishnah, and Ventriloquism.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 87, nos. 1/2 (July-October, 1996): 61-78. A critic takes issue with Neusner’s interpretation of the Mishnah, a canonical study of Jewish law. See also: Irving Greenberg; Harold S. Kushner; Sally J. Priesand.
Richard Neutra Austrian-born architect Neutra combined European and American ideas of modern architecture with his theories of urban planning to become one of the twentieth century’s most significant modernist residence designers. Born: April 8, 1892; Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Austria) Died: April 16, 1970; Wuppertal, West Germany (now in Germany) Also known as: Richard Joseph Neutra (full name) Area of achievement: Architecture and design Early Life Richard Neutra (NOY-trah) was one of four children born to Samuel Neutra, a metallurgist, and Elizabeth Glazer Neutra. As a young man, Richard Neutra was impressed with the steel-framed train stations designed by Otto Wagner, a Secessionist architect. The Secessionists strove to create “modern” buildings using geometric forms and the latest industrial materials. Neutra was also 836
influenced by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who was similarly devising a modernist style, and industrialist Henry Ford, who initiated the assembly-line system in his automobile factories. Neutra believed that buildings, like Ford’s cars, could be constructed of prefabricated parts. In 1911, Neutra entered the Technishe Hochshule in Vienna, where he studied mechanical engineering, design, and other subjects related to architecture. One of his teachers was the architect Adolf Loos, a proponent of Wright and other American architects and another influence on Neutra. Neutra’s schooling was interrupted in 1914, when he was drafted into the Austrian army, and he served on the Balkan front during World War I. In 1917, he returned to Vienna to resume his education and graduated the following year. Life’s Work After graduation, Neutra briefly worked for architectural firms in Switzerland and Berlin and was the city ar-
Jewish Americans chitect in Luckenwalde, Germany. In October, 1921, he became a draftsman for Erich Mendelsohn, a leading German architect during the Weimar Republic. In 1922, Neutra married Dione Niedermann, and the couple had three sons, Frank, Dion, and Raymond. Frank was later discovered to be mentally challenged and placed in an institution; Dion became an architect; and Raymond became a physician. In the 1920’s, Neutra wanted to go to the United States, where his friend, Austrian-born architect Rudolph Schindler, was working for Wright. In October, 1923, Neutra briefly settled in New York before moving to Chicago to work for Holabird and Roche, one of the firms that pioneered development of the skyscraper in the nineteenth century. In Chicago, Neutra helped design the Palmer House hotel and met Wright, who invited Neutra to Taliesen, Wright’s home and studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Neutra and his family spent a few months at Taliesen, where he drew plans and conducted design studies for several of Wright’s projects. In February, 1925, the Neutras arrived in Los Angeles, which would be their permanent home and the location of Neutra’s most significant buildings. The family initially lived with Schindler and his wife, and Neutra worked with Schindler and other architects. At this time, Neutra expressed his vision of modern architecture in his plans for his imaginary metropolis, Rush City. Rush City featured freeway and railway systems traveling through high-rise buildings and one- and two-story housing projects. The city also had drive-in markets, community centers, and schools in which a circle of classrooms opened onto outside patios. The architecture of Rush City was impersonal, austere, and geometric, and its buildings were mass-produced out of prefabricated parts constructed of steel, concrete, and glass. Neutra’s design concepts were evident in two projects commissioned in the late 1920’s. The Jardinette Apartments in Hollywood, completed in 1927, is a housing complex constructed of concrete that features gardens on its flat roofs, bands of steel-casement windows, and projecting balconies. Neutra’s acknowledged masterpiece, the Lovell Health House in the Hollywood Hills, was completed in 1928. The two-and-a-half-story residence is cut into the hillside. The home was the first completely steel-framed residence in the United States, and it was constructed of prefabricated elements, including panels of casement windows that were clamped into place and concrete Gunite that was “shot” onto a wire mesh frame. In these projects, Neutra exhibited the elements that would become his personal architectural vocabulary:
Neutra, Richard bands of steel-casement windows; flat and often overhanging roofs; sliding glass doors or large casement windows to connect the indoor living spaces to outdoor gardens and patios; the use of metal, wood, glass, and concrete; and built-in furniture. For the rest of his career, Neutra would design many other residences, including his own home in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was particularly interested in designing small, low-cost homes, although many of his clients were wealthy people who worked for the Los Angeles film studios. He also created apartment houses and commercial structures, such as office buildings, restaurants, and schools. The Corona Elementary School, completed in 1935, featured sliding glass doors opening onto outdoor patios, outdoor hallways, and movable desks and chairs that enabled instruction to be offered both indoors and outdoors. During World War II, he designed several housing projects, including Avion Village, a complex for defense workers in Grand Prairie, Texas, and Channel Heights, for shipyard workers in San Pedro, California. Neutra’s office was a training ground for many ar-
Richard Neutra. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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chitects who would later design significant Neutra Colony in Silver Lake buildings in Southern California, including Harwell H. Harris, Gregory Ain, and RaThe Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, located about five phael S. Soriano. In 1949, Neutra teamed miles west of downtown, features a rare concentration of Richard with architect Robert E. Alexander, with Neutra’s architecture. The neighborhood is the site of the Silver Lake whom he designed schools, hospitals, and Reservoir, bounded on both sides by Silver Lake Boulevard. Neutra health centers in Puerto Rico and schools built his home and nine others on the east side of the boulevard. His home, with his studio, was completed in 1932 and named the and the governor’s house in Guam. Three Van der Leeuw Research House in honor of C. H. Van der Leeuw, a of their most distinguished collaborations Dutch industrialist who loaned Neutra money to build the residence. were the Lincoln Memorial Museum and The house was destroyed in a fire in 1963 and rebuilt according to the Visitors’ Center at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; designs of Neutra and his son, Dion. In 1993, Neutra’s wife, Dione, the U.S. Embassy in Karachi, Pakistan; and donated the house to the California State Polytechnic University, the Los Angeles County Hall of Records. Pomona, and the school’s architecture students provide public tours of In 1949, Neutra suffered a major heart atthe home. tack, and he would be plagued with heart Neutra purchased several lots located down the street from his trouble and bouts of depression for the rest home and sold them to clients for whom he designed nine residences: of his life. After being struck by a second Sokol House (completed 1948), Treweek House (1948), Reunion heart attack in 1953, he performed much of House (1949), Yew House (1957), Flavin House (1957), Kambara House (1960), Inadomi House (1960), Ohara House (1961), and Akai his work in bed, and, wearing pajamas and a House (1962). Four of the houses were built on Argent Place; in 1992, necktie, he often received clients in his bedthe centennial of Neutra’s birth, this street was renamed Neutra Place room. In the late 1950’s, he ended his partto honor the architect. nership with Alexander, who opened an architectural office with Neutra’s son, Dion. By the late 1950’s and 1960’s, the aesthetics of modernism and the International onstrated by the Lovell Health House and the many other Style that Neutra had helped promote had fallen out of residences that best express his design philosophy. fashion, and critics denounced the impersonal, industri—Rebecca Kuzins alized quality of his buildings. Neutra continued to obtain commissions throughout the United States, as well Further Reading as in Cuba, Venezuela, Germany, France, and SwitzerGehbard, David, and Robert Winter. An Architectural land. He began to alter his style of residential architecture Guidebook to Los Angeles. Rev. ed. Salt Lake City: to include pitched instead of flat roofs and the use of Gibbs Smith, 2003. A survey of the city’s architecwood and brick instead of concrete. ture, featuring information about where and when In 1963, Neutra’s home and studio were gutted in a Neutra’s buildings were constructed and descriptions fire, and he lost almost all of his work and personal posof his work and architectural style. sessions. He and Dion redesigned and rebuilt the home. Hines, Thomas S. Richard Neutra and the Search for In 1966, Neutra and his wife moved to Vienna, returning Modern Architecture. Rev. ed. New York: Rizzoli, to Los Angeles in 1969. On April 16, 1970, Neutra was 2005. An indispensable source, offering a comprevisiting a client in Wuppertal, West Germany, when he hensive account of Neutra’s life, work, and architecsuffered a massive heart attack and died. tural concepts. Includes a list of his buildings and many photographs of his work. Significance Lamprecht, Barbara, and Peter Gössel. Neutra. 25th anAfter several decades of criticism about his work, arniversary ed. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2009. A brief, ilchitectural historians and critics reevaluated Neutra’s arlustrated overview of Neutra’s work. chitectural legacy in the late twentieth century, praising his ability to bridge European and American architecSee also: Dankmar Adler; Frank Gehry; Louis I. Kahn; ture, his use of new industrial materials, and the purity Daniel Libeskind; Richard Meier; Robert Moses; Ruand geometric beauty of his style. He succeeded in his dolph Schindler. mission to create a new, modernist architecture, as dem838
Jewish Americans
Nevelson, Louise
Louise Nevelson Ukrainian-born artist Nevelson’s groundbreaking sculptures incorporated several artistic styles, including surrealism, cubism, and abstract expressionism. Born: September 23, 1899; Kiev, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine) Died: April 17, 1988; New York, New York Also known as: Leah Berliawsky (birth name); Louise Berliawsky Nevelson (full name) Area of achievement: Art Early Life On September 23, 1899, Louise Nevelson (lew-EEZ NEH-vehl-sehn) was born Leah Berliawsky in Kiev. Her parents, Isaac and Minna, were Orthodox Jews. Nevelson’s older brother, Nachman, was born in 1898, and her younger sister, Chaya, was born in 1902. Nevelson’s father came from a family of landowners, but oppression and deteriorating conditions for the Eastern European Jewish population had caused his siblings to leave the country. In 1903, Nevelson’s father emigrated to the United States, while the family stayed behind, living with her mother’s parents. In 1905, the family joined Nevelson’s father in Rockland, Maine. Most Jewish immigrants settled in urban areas, but the Nevelsons lived in a New England town with a small Jewish population. Another sibling, Lillian, was born in 1906. Nevelson’s father worked in construction and owned a lumberyard. Later, Nevelson would trace her artistic use of wood to her early familiarity with lumber. As a child she already knew she wanted to be an artist. In 1918, she graduated from high school and became engaged to Charles Nevelson, whose family owned a prosperous shipping business. They married in 1920 and settled in Manhattan. On February 23, 1922, their son Myron (Mike) was born. In 1924, they moved to the upper-class Jewish community of Mount Vernon, in Westchester County. Nevelson studied drama, drawing, and painting. After her husband left his family’s shipping business, he was forced to sell their Mount Vernon home and move to Brooklyn. From 1929 to 1930, Nevelson studied with Kenneth Hayes Miller and Kimon Nicolaïdes at the Art Students League of New York. Nevelson found her marriage too restrictive, and in 1931 she and her husband separated. She took her son to live with her parents in Maine. This was a turning point: She abandoned her life as a society matron to become an
artist. She traveled to Munich to study with the legendary teacher Hans Hofmann. However, after only six months, political pressures forced Hofmann to close his school and settle in New York in 1932. Life’s Work After returning to New York in 1932, Nevelson studied with Hofmann and worked as a mural-painting assistant for Mexican artist Diego Rivera. During the 1930’s Nevelson lived in poverty, sold all her jewelry, moved frequently, and was often depressed. In the mid-1930’s, Nevelson began focusing on sculpture, mostly in clay or in stone, rather than in expensive bronze. Influenced by Pablo Picasso, she created bold, abstract self-portraits and female figures. In her first museum exhibition in 1935 at the Brooklyn Museum, she exhibited a terracotta figure. From 1935 to 1939, she taught for the Federal Works Progress Administration. During the 1940’s, Nevelson created her first assemblages or environments: whimsical and mysterious sculpture, reflecting surrealist and Mayan elements. In 1941, she had her first solo show at the Nierendorf Gallery, where she continued to exhibit until the owner, Karl Nierendorf, died in 1948. In 1942, she began using found wood in her sculpture. In 1943, the Norlyst Gallery presented her first thematic sculpture exhibition, The Circus, the Clown Is the Center of His World. Because her work did not sell and she lacked storage space, Nevelson destroyed two hundred sculptures and paintings in 1943. She exhibited her first abstract wood montages in 1944. During the 1950’s, Nevelson developed her signature, mature style: monochromatically painted assemblages of shallow, open boxes filled with discarded wood objects, such as chair legs, spools, and balustrades. From 1955 to 1958, the nonprofit gallery Grand Central Moderns gave Nevelson annual solo exhibitions, all thematic installations of wood sculptures painted black. Her Moon Garden + One exhibition in 1958 received wide critical acclaim and firmly established her as a major artist. In an on-site installation, Nevelson assembled 116 boxed wood collages to create a dark environment, lit only by blue lightbulbs. The sculptural walls named Sky Cathedrals surrounded freestanding pieces. Nevelson often described cast shadows as part of the “in-between places,” or the “dawns and the dusks” between land and sea. This installation synthesized elements of abstract (cubist, colorfield, and action) painting in sculpture. In 1959, she exhib839
Nevelson, Louise ited a white installation, Dawn’s Wedding Feast, in the Museum of Modern Art’s Sixteen Americans exhibition of new talent. Nevelson also developed a memorable public persona, with exotic dress and famous false eyelashes. In 1961, her first gold-painted sculptures, The Royal Tides, were exhibited at the Martha Jackson Gallery. In 1965, her Homage to 6,000,000 I (1964) was shown at the Jewish Museum in New York, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem purchased her Homage to 6,000,000 II. With the revival of public art in the late 1960’s, Nevelson began working in more permanent materials, such as Cor-Ten steel and Plexiglas, to create public sculpture. Her commissions included Atmosphere and Environment X (1969), The White Flame of the Six Million (1970), Sky Covenant (1973), and Dawn’s Forest (1985). Diagnosed with cancer in 1987, Nevelson died at the age of eighty-eight on April 17, 1988, in New York City. Significance Nevelson’s thought-provoking sculpture was infused with her personal experience as a struggling and often isolated Jewish immigrant and as a woman artist. Legendary both for her art and her public persona, she broke through gender barriers to pioneer installation and environmental art. In addition to its presence in traveling exhibitions and in museum holdings worldwide, her public art has been installed throughout the United States in locations that include Madison Plaza in Chicago, the Kentucky Center for the Arts in Louisville, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Louise Nevelson Plaza, the first New York plaza to be named for an artist, showcases seven of her sculptures. In 2000, the U.S. Postal Service issued commemorative stamps featuring her work. In 2008, Mercedes Ruehl starred in Occupant (2002), Edward Albee’s play about Nevelson. While predominantly abstract, pieces such as her 1964 work, Homage to 6,000,000 I, a tribute to victims of the Holocaust, evoke powerful themes and emotions. — Alice Myers Further Reading Cohen, Mark Daniel. Louise Nevelson: The Architecture of the Light. New York: Nohra Haime Gallery, 2007. Catalog of an exhibit from February 7 to March 10, 2007, at the Nohra Haime Gallery. Illustrated. Lisle, Laurie. Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life. Lincoln, Nebr.: iUniverse.com, 2001. Based on extensive research and interviews with the artist, this is a readable, comprehensive biography. Originally published in 1990. Illustrated. Bibliography and index. 840
Jewish Americans
Large Sculptural Environments of Found Wood Louise Nevelson created her most characteristic and influential pieces in the 1950’s. This body of work can be described as mysterious, large sculptural environments in wood. Painted uniformly in black, these assemblages of stacked, open-faced boxes integrated found wooden objects and united them within new contexts of space. Although Nevelson had exhibited in group and one-woman shows before, she had achieved only minor recognition. In 1955, she gave the first of a series of one-woman exhibitions at the Grand Central Moderns in New York. These exhibitions, which continued through 1958, brought her recognition and wide critical acclaim. The sculptures established Nevelson as a pioneer installation and environmental artist, who could translate modern abstract painting styles into sculpture. Each exhibit had a title and theme. Ancient Games and Ancient Places (1955) included a celebrated piece, The Bride of the Black Moon. Royal Voyage (1956) blended traditional African and Native American forms. The Forest (1957) included an eight-foot-tall sculpture. The monumental Moon Garden + One (1958), which consumed an entire room, was the subject of reports in major national publications, including ARTnews, Time, Art, The New York Times, and Life.
Nevelson, Louise, and Edward Albee. Louise Nevelson: Atmospheres and Environments. New York: C. N. Potter, 1980. Catalog published with an exhibition from May 27 to September 14, 1980, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Illustrated and bibliography. Nevelson, Louise, and Diana MacKown. Dawns + Dusks: Taped Conversations with Diana MacKown. New York: Scribner, 1976. Transcribed audio conversations between Nevelson and her longtime assistant and companion create an autobiographical portrait of the artist. Illustrated. Rapaport, Brooke Kamin, ed. The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend (Jewish Museum of New York). New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. This oversize exhibition catalog includes essays that provide insight into the artist’s public persona, art, and personal life. More than one hundred illustrations, a bibliography, and an index. See also: Helen Frankenthaler; Eva Hesse; Lee Krasner; Ibram Lassaw; Barnett Newman; Mark Rothko.
Jewish Americans
Newman, Barnett
Barnett Newman Artist, educator, and author Associated with the New York School, Newman created paintings, sculpture, and prints in an abstract style. Born: January 29, 1905; New York, New York Died: July 4, 1970; New York, New York Also known as: Barney Newman Areas of achievement: Art; education; literature Early Life Barnett Newman was born in New York City to Abraham and Anna Newman, immigrants from Uom/a, Poland, on January 29, 1905. Three more children, George, Gertrude, and Sarah, completed the family. Barnett Newman’s father established a manufacturing business, making it possible for the family to move uptown to Belmont Avenue, a then-fashionable neighborhood of the Bronx. Newman graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1923 and from City College of New York in 1927. The stock-market crash of 1929 decimated his father’s business. Newman attended classes at the Art Students League and was involved with a group of artists that included Milton Avery, Mark Rothko, Saul Berliner, Adolph Gottlieb, Alexander Borodulin, and others who participated in drawing and poetry readings and wrote brave manifestos about art and cultural living. None of Newman’s paintings from this time survived. He attempted to become a public school art teacher, but he was given a substitute position, teaching art appreciation at Grover Cleveland High School in Queens, where he met Annalee Greenhouse, a graduate of Hunter College. She was born in the British Mandate (now Israel). She and Newman married on June 30, 1936. Both continued working as substitute teachers until Newman began part-time teaching at the Washington Irving Adult Center, and Annalee became a full-time teacher, later head of her department. Newman returned to painting in the mid-1940’s. In 1947, one of his paintings was included in an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. Its purchase by Connecticut collectors was his first sale. Life’s Work Newman worked in a surrealist style through the early 1940’s. He considered his 1948 Onement I a breakthrough painting. It was the first of his Onement series, in which he separated areas of color with slender vertical lines that he called “zips.” The “zip” remained an essen-
tial facet of his work. His first solo exhibit at Manhattan’s Betty Parsons Gallery in 1950 opened to other artists’admiration but scathing critical reviews. Still, Newman’s paintings were included in exhibits at the Hawthorne Memorial Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the Walker Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota. His second solo exhibit at Betty Parsons was again lauded by artists but poorly reviewed by critics. When he was excluded from the Museum of Modern Art exhibit Fifteen Americans, which featured his friends Jackson Pollock, Rothko, and Clifford Still, Newman was so discouraged that he completely withdrew from gallery activity, not exhibiting again until 1955, when Horizon Light was shown at the Betty Parsons Gallery Tenth Anniversary Exhibition. His eight-foot Vir Heroicus Sublimis, included in American Painting, 1945-1957 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, was cruelly assailed by critics. Newman suffered his first heart attack that year. However, he was able to paint during his recovery. He viewed his black-and-white Stations of the Cross series, often considered the apex of his work, as a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. His later series, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue?, used pure vibrant colors. His paintings were included in the Museum of Modern Art’s traveling exhibition New American Painting, which toured Europe before opening in New York. In October, 1962, the critical tide turned in his favor when paintings by Newman and Willem De Kooning were hung together in the exhibit Founding Fathers at the Allan Stone Gallery. Major exhibits and honors followed. His sculptures, prints, and paintings became increasingly well received, both nationally and internationally; by 1959 he was exhibiting on three continents simultaneously. His work was chosen for the U.S. Pavilion at the Eighth São Paulo Biennial. He continued to be active in printmaking, painting, and sculpture until his death of a heart attack on July 4, 1970. Significance Newman is considered to be an abstract expressionist because of his association with the New York School during the 1940’s and 1950’s, a time when powerful abstract images exploded upon the art world as essentially American, owing little, if anything, to European art. However, his dedication to flat color and hard-edge canvases led the way toward minimalism and color field painting as well as postpainterly abstraction. He was a 841
Newman, Paul dedicated teacher and a prolific writer. His enthusiastic encouragement of younger artists made him an important influence on many significant American painters of the mid- and late twentieth century. —Jan Statman Further Reading Auping, Michael. Declaring Space: Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Lucio Fontana, Yves Kline. New York: Prestel, 2007. Illustrated with color photographs of each artist’s significant works, Auping’s book chronicles each of these artists making his own specific mark and representing a different stage in the development of the abstract painting of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Ho, Melissa, ed. Reconsidering Barnett Newman. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2005. Provides an understanding of the scholarship on the art of
Jewish Americans Newman, including perspectives on his accomplishments as an innovator and a discussion of his themes, techniques, and significant works. Newman, Barnett. Selected Writings and Interviews by Barnett Newman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Newman’s writings make it easy to understand the artist’s unique place in twentieth century art and culture. Temkin, Anne. Barnett Newman. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002. Written as a catalog for a Newman retrospective, this 248-page book interprets Newman’s work, describes the life and times of the artist, and lists principles that informed his work. The book includes a photographic chronology. See also: Jim Dine; Helen Frankenthaler; Philip Guston; Lee Krasner; Sol LeWitt; Louise Nevelson; Mark Rothko.
Paul Newman Actor and philanthropist Newman considered acting a craft, and he made fifty films over thirty years. He evolved from a matinee idol to a character actor of significant depth and nuanced emotions, playing both heroes and antiauthoritarian figures. Newman became a renowned philanthropist. Born: January 26, 1925; Cleveland, Ohio Died: September 26, 2008; Westport, Connecticut Also known as: Paul Leonard Newman (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; business; philanthropy Early Life Paul Newman was born to Arthur and Theresa Newman in 1925. His Jewish paternal grandfather, Simon, was born in Hungary, immigrated to America, married Hannah Cohn, and owned a millinery shop in a Jewish neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. Newman’s father inherited a talent for business and co-owned a sporting goods store, Newman-Stern. Newman’s mother, a Catholic, was born in Austria. Several of Newman’s relatives were prominent in Cleveland. His aunt, Lillian, wrote poetry in Yiddish; another aunt, Ottile, headed the drama department at Euclid Temple, a prominent synagogue; and his uncle, Aaron, cofounded the Jewish Independent newspaper. The Newmans belonged to the temple, a syn842
agogue in the Woodland Avenue Jewish enclave. They were members of Oakwood Club in Cleveland Heights, but they moved to Shaker Heights in 1927. With his older brother, Arthur, Jr., Newman enjoyed tobogganing, ice skating, and team sports. Although Newman was athletic, he performed in neighborhood skits and at age eleven enrolled in Curtain Pullers, a group that studied drama at the Cleveland Play House. Young Newman delivered newspapers and worked as a clerk in a Jewish delicatessen in the upscale Shaker Heights neighborhood. He graduated from Shaker Heights High School, starring in school plays. He went to Ohio University in 1943, pledged Phi Kappa Tau, and was a business major, but excelled in drama productions. On June 6, 1943, he was called up by the Navy. He became a rear-seat radioman and a gunner in torpedo bombers assigned to squadrons that flew out from Barber’s Point, Hawaii, over the Pacific. In 1945, Newman enrolled on the G.I. Bill at Kenyon College, graduated in 1949, and found his career in drama after starring in Kenyon’s productions. Newman played in summer stock in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, at the Belfry Theatre. He mastered voice projection, stage presence, and a charming luminosity. He married actor Jacqueline Emily Witte on December 27, 1949, and they had three children: Alan Scott (born
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1950), Susan Kendall (born 1953), and Stephanie (born 1955). He continued repertory acting in Woodstock, Illinois, at the Opera House, and his good looks, vibrant blue eyes, and athletic physique endeared him to audiences. In 1950, he worked briefly at the family store in Cleveland following his father’s death. When Newman-Stern was sold, Newman went to Yale, studying under Constance Welch. In the summer of 1952, Newman and his family moved to New York, where he worked in television and at the Actors Studio, where he learned the method acting style of Konstantin Stanislavsky. Life’s Work Newman’s first break was in Picnic (1953) on Broadway, for which he earned rave reviews. Newman transitioned into films, signed a contract with Warner Bros., refused to change his Jewish name for the screen, and accepted a role in The Silver Chalice (1954). Newman moved easily among films, television, and Broadway productions for the rest of his life, receiving acclaim in all venues. He played in The Desperate Hours (1955) on Broadway; garnered applause for “Guilty Is the Stranger,” an episode of Goodyear Television Playhouse; and starred in a 1955 television presentation of Thornton Wilder’s Paul Newman. (Archive Photos/Getty Images) Our Town (1938). The Battler (1955) followed, a part he gained after actor James Dean was killed in a Cannes Film Festival in 1958, and appeared in Sweet car crash. Bird of Youth (1959) on Broadway and the film From the Newman’s first film success was his portrayal of Terrace (1960). boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody up There Likes Me He bought out his contract with Warner Bros. and (1956), and he received wide acclaim for the authentic thereby was able to negotiate increased salaries based on realism of his performance. Success followed with the his critical acclaim. In Newman’s blockbuster epic film film The Rack and television’s Bang the Drum Slowly in Exodus (1960), which recounted the founding of Israel, he 1956. Newman was viewed as a sex symbol, a stud, a played Ari Ben Canaan. This was followed by gigantic man’s man, captivating, his shirtless muscles rippling, Newman successes with The Hustler (1961), Paris Blues and his portrayals of heroes or redemptive antiheroes (1961), Hud (1963), Harper (1966), Hombre (1967), and were mesmerizing. Cool Hand Luke (1967). Ever humble, Newman appreciIn 1956, Newman and his wife separated, but his caated his achievements and continued his diligent work reer soared, with his portrayals in The Helen Morgan ethic. Newman formed a film production company, first Story (1957), Until They Sail (1957), and The Long, Hot with Martin Ritt in 1960, called Salem Pictures and anSummer (1958), made with Joanne Woodward. Three other company, with John Foreman in 1969, which proFaces of Eve (1957) had made Woodward a star, and for it duced the auto-racing film Winning (1969), for which she won an Academy Award. Newman starred with ElizNewman learned to race cars. Butch Cassidy and the abeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), which reSundance Kid appeared in 1969, with Newman and Robceived brilliant reviews. After a Mexican divorce for ert Redford, and it proved to have one of the largest box Newman, he and Woodward married January 29, 1958. offices of all time. In 1969, Newman, Barbra Streisand, They had three daughters: Elinor Theresa (1959), Meand Sidney Poitier formed First Artists Production Comlissa “Lissy” Stewart (1961), and Claire “Clea” Olivia pany; for this company, Newman did Pocket Money (1965). Newman received the best actor award at the 843
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Helping Children with Cancer Paul Newman developed a merchandising brand, Newman’s Own, to market products he developed with his friend A. E. Hotchner in Westport, Connecticut. All proceeds went to charities, and Newman’s Own has distributed more than $280 million. Newman built a summer camp for children with cancer, which opened in June, 1988, in northeastern Connecticut. Called the Hole in the Wall Camp, the camp was free to the children and attracted the finest pediatric doctors and facilities. It offered critically ill children log cabins to sleep in, outdoor activities, and all the trappings of a Wild West town, named after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s legendary Hole in the Wall Gang. Additional children’s camps followed, with the Double Hole in the Woods Ranch at Lake Luzerne, New York, and the Boggy Creek Gang Camp, Florida, totaling eleven children’s camps, with sites in Ireland, France, and Israel. The creation of these camps was Newman’s proudest achievement, and through philanthropy his estate continues to give back to the public for the common good.
(1972) and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972). Newman and Redford reunited for The Sting in 1973. Newman starred in and directed Sometimes a Great Notion (1970), and he appeared with his son Scott (who died in 1978) in The Towering Inferno in 1974. Newman and Woodward purchased a country home in Westport, Connecticut, in the early 1960’s, and they kept apartments in New York City and Los Angeles. In 1976, Newman drove a Triumph TR-6 to win the National Championship and the Sports Car Club of America President’s Cup for Excellence. At age seventy Newman became the oldest driver to win the Twenty-Four Hours of Daytona. Newman often rewrote scripts to reflect his take on his character or to improve the story line. He always wished to improve, giving the public all he had as an entertainer. He succeeded admirably, becoming an icon in the entertainment industry. Newman proved an able director with Rachel, Rachel (1968) and The Glass Menagerie (1987). Newman used his celebrity to support such worthy issues as civil rights. A gutsy nonconformist, Newman had both the swagger and sagacity of a rebel but the intelligence to stay within the lines. He continued working in Slap Shot
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(1977), Absence of Malice (1981), Harry and Son (1984), and The Verdict (1982). He won an Academy Award for The Color of Money (1986). Nobody’s Fool (1994) won him the best actor award from the Film Critics Circle, he played the Stage Manager role in Our Town at the Westport Country Playhouse in 2002 and on Broadway in 2003, and he won Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards for Empire Falls (2005). Newman died of lung cancer in 2008 at eighty-three.
Significance Newman was an actor of such great magnitude that he could challenge Hollywood’s contract system and work as an independent, forming his own production companies and selecting his own roles, which allowed him to control his image. He capitalized on fame and success to work for significant political and charitable causes, endearing him to the film industry that established him as a legend and to the public that found him so endearing. —Barbara Bennett Peterson Further Reading Dherbier, Yann-Brice, and Pierre-Henri Verlhac, eds. Paul Newman, a Life in Pictures. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006. The editors live and work in Paris and reveal the international appeal of Newman, illustrating his family life and his film career through photographs. Lax, Eric. Paul Newman: A Biography. Atlanta: Turner, 1996. An informed biography that treats Newman with respect for his acting abilities and his involvement in political causes. Levy, Shawn. Paul Newman, a Life. New York: Harmony Books, 2009. Well-researched, detailed biography written by a film critic for The Oregonian in Portland. See also: Alan Arkin; Adrien Brody; Tony Curtis; Kirk Douglas; Dustin Hoffman; Lee Strasberg; Barbra Streisand; Sam Wanamaker.
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Newman, Randy
Randy Newman Musician and composer Newman is a premier film composer and singersongwriter. His songs often challenge the liberal pieties of his audience. Born: November 28, 1943; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Randall Stewart Newman (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; entertainment Early Life Randy Newman (RAN-dee NEW-muhn), the son of Irving Newman, a physician, and Adele Newman, was born into a musical family. Randy Newman’s uncles, Alfred, Lionel, and Emil Newman, were successful film composers, and his cousins, David and Thomas Newman, would also compose music for motion pictures. As a child, Randy Newman visited the film studios to watch his Uncle Alfred conduct orchestras, and Newman’s songs would be influenced by film music. Another of his inspirations was the music of New Orleans, particularly the piano playing of Fats Domino. While his father was stationed in Sicily during World War II, Newman and his mother lived in New Orleans, and he would later return there. In 1948, his family settled in Los Angeles, where he began playing the piano when he was seven. Newman’s childhood friend, Lenny Waronker, worked at Metric Music, the music publishing subsidiary of Liberty Records. In 1960, Waronker hired Newman to write songs for Metric. Newman attended the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied music, but he dropped out before receiving his degree. By the time he left college, many of his songs had been recorded by other singers, including Dusty Springfield, Judy Collins, and Rick Nelson, and his work would later be covered by Henry Nilsson, Peggy Lee, and Three Dog Night, among others. Newman married Roswitha Schmale in 1967, and they had three children before divorcing in 1985. He married Gretchen Preece in 1990, and the couple had two children. Life’s Work Newman’s first album, Randy Newman, featuring eleven of his own songs,
was released in 1968. The album was praised by critics but was a commercial failure. On his next album, Twelve Songs, released in 1970, Newman’s voice had changed from a style that, in the words of critic Greil Marcus, “could be called Jewish to one that can only be called black.” He sang with “a lazy, blurred sound, where words slide into each other, where syllables are not bitten off, but just wear out and dissolve.” Unlike the other singersongwriters of the 1970’s, such as Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, or James Taylor, Newman’s songs were not autobiographical but were about the lives of characters he had created, and he often sang in his characters’ voices. His work puzzled most listeners who were used to taking the words of rock songs literally, believing they were the singer-songwriters’ confessions, and it took some time for him to develop an audience that understood his ironic wit. Newman’s songs were also politically incorrect in an era in which singer-songwriters typically expressed liberal opinions. In 1972, for example, the title tune on his Sail Away album was sung by a white slave captain, who recruits Africans to come to the United States, where they will, among other things, “sing about Jesus and drink wine all day.” Good Old Boys, a collection of songs about the South
Randy Newman. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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released in 1974, similarly explored racism. In “Rednecks,” a chorus of southerners acknowledged their racism but pointed out that people in other parts of the country also discriminated against African Americans. Little Criminals, released in 1977, featured Newman’s only Top Ten hit single, “Short People,” in which he declared that he did not “want no short people ’round here.” As often happened with Newman’s music, listeners failed to understand the song’s humor, and he was publicly denounced for making fun of little people. Born Again, released in 1979, included “It’s Money That I Love,” in which he proclaimed he was more interested in money than in the “starving children of India.” Trouble in Paradise, which came out in 1983, contained one of Newman’s best-known songs, “I Love L.A.” In the mid-1980’s, Newman began to release fewer albums and to focus on composing film scores. His first score was for the film Cold Turkey (1971), and a decade later he created the music for Ragtime (1981). He followed this with numerous film scores, including The Natural (1984); Gotcha! (1985); ¡Three Amigos!, for which he cowrote the screenplay with Steve Martin and Lorne Michaels, in addition to writing the music and lyrics; Parenthood (1989); Avalon (1990); Awakenings (1990); Maverick (1994); The Paper (1994); Michael
(1996); Meet the Parents (2000); Seabiscuit (2003); Mr. 3000 (2004); Meet the Fockers (2006); and Leatherheads (2008). Newman also composed music for Toy Story (1995), which was created by Pixar, a computer animation company, in conjunction with Walt Disney Pictures. He went on to work on other films for the two companies, as well as other animated features, including James and the Giant Peach (1996), Cats Can’t Dance (1997), A Bug’s Life (1998), It’s Tough to Be a Bug (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Cars (2006), and The Princess and the Frog (2009). As a film composer, Newman received the awards and recognition that previously eluded him. He received eight Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score and eleven nominations for Best Original Song; he won an award for Best Original Song in 2001 for “If I Didn’t Have You” from Monsters, Inc. Some of his other nominated songs include “I Love to See You Smile” from Parenthood, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” from Toy Story, and “Almost There” and “Down in New Orleans” from The Princess and the Frog. His film music has also received five Grammy Awards, including best song for motion picture, television, or other visual media for “When She Loved Me” from Toy Story 2, “If I Didn’t Have You” from Monsters, Inc., and “Our Town” from Cars, and best instrumental composition for The Natural and A Bug’s Life. Newman’s Cast of Characters “It’s a Jungle out There,” his theme song for the television series Monk, earned an Emmy Award During a Carnegie Hall concert in 2006, Randy Newman joked, in 2004. “Most of my songs aren’t autobiographical, or I’d be in an instituIn addition to his film and television work, tion.” In fact, Newman’s songs are autobiographical, but they are the autobiographies of some of the most twisted characters in rock Newman has continued to record albums, inmusic. cluding The Randy Newman Songbook, Vol. 1, a For example, in “Let’s Burn down the Cornfield” an arsonist collection of solo performances of many of his urges his girlfriend to help him start a fire so they can make love well-known songs, released in 2003, and Harps during the blaze. The singer of “You Can Leave Your Hat On” also and Angels, issued in 2008. The latter album has some kinky sexual fantasies; he asks his girlfriend to take off featured several songs critical of the state of the all her clothes, except her hat. The protagonist of “Naked Man” is a nation during the last years of President George streaker who mugs an old lady and then seeks to evoke her sympaW. Bush’s administration. thy by explaining his troubled past. “Little Criminals” is sung by a couple who are kicking their junkie relative out of their house so he will not hamper their plans to rob a gas station. “In Germany Before the War” tells the story of a child murderer. Many of his characters express unpopular political opinions, making racist remarks about blacks and Asians or urging the United States to drop a nuclear bomb on its enemies. In another song, a yuppie with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement insists “My Life Is Good” and refuses to let a teacher criticize his son or tell him any other bad news that will destroy his happiness.
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Significance Newman has demonstrated his versatility as a musician through his prolific work as a composer, an arranger, a conductor, a singer, and a pianist. He has challenged the conventions of singer-songwriters by eschewing confessional, autobiographical music in favor of songs sung by his self-created characters, and in so doing, he has broadened the parameters of rock music.
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Newman went on to a successful career as a film and television composer, creating songs that continue to express his unique sense of humor and his ability to write in the voice of other characters. —Rebecca Kuzins Further Reading Hoskyns, Barney. Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2006. Examination of rock music in the 1970’s features a discussion of Newman’s work. _______. Waiting for the Sun: Strange Days, Weird Scenes, and the Sound of Los Angeles. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1996. Newman’s life and work is described in this history of popular music in Los Angeles. Marcus, Greil. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. Includes a chapter in which Marcus seeks to explain why Newman’s music failed to attract a broad audience. Romanowski, Patricia, and Holly George-Warren. The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll. New York: Fireside, 1995. Contains an informative entry on Newman. See also: Burt Bacharach; Neil Diamond; Danny Elfman; Billy Joel.
Mike Nichols German-born theater and film director, writer, and comedian Famous for directing such motion-picture classics as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Graduate (1967), as of 2010 Nichols was one of only twelve people to have won all four major entertainment awards: a Grammy Award, a Tony Award, an Emmy Award, and an Academy Award.
When the Nazi regime began persecuting Germany’s Jewish population, Nichols’s family started to plan their escape to the United States. His father left Germany, moved to New York City in 1938, and changed his name to Paul Nichols. Nichols and his three-year-old brother joined their father the following year, while Nichols’s
Born: November 6, 1931; Berlin, Germany Also known as: Michael Igor Peschkowsky (birth name) Areas of achievement: Theater; entertainment Early Life Mike Nichols (NIHK-uhls) was born in Berlin, Germany, to Brigitte and Igor Peschkowsky, a physician. By the time Nichols was born, his family had a rich history of successful ancestors. His maternal grandfather, Gustav Landauer, was an important theorist in the field of anarchism in Germany and a strong supporter of the theory of communist anarchism. Landauer became the leader of the German Social Democratic Party, and he was executed in 1919 by fascist leaders for his beliefs. Landauer also worked as a translator, transcribing many of William Shakespeare’s works into German. Landauer’s wife and Nichols’s grandmother, Hedwig Lachmann, was an accomplished poet and author.
Mike Nichols. (CBS/Getty Images)
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routine with May for a few years before starting to direct productions for Second City. While Nichols and May enjoyed much success as a comedy duo, they eventually parted to look for solo opportunities in 1961. However, the two would not stay apart forever. May later reconciled with Nichols, and he enlisted May’s help later to help him craft scripts for projects such as The Birdcage (1996) and Primary Colors (1998). It was his success as a director for the comedy group that got Nichols noticed by producer Arnold Saint-Subber, who asked Nichols to direct a Broadway stage production of Neil Simon’s comedy Barefoot in the Park (1963), starring Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley. The play was a hit, winning Nichols a Tony Award, the first in his string of wins, spanning from 1963 to 1965. After his extremely successful run as a Broadway director, Nichols turned his talent to the big screen. His first picture, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), was released just one year after he left the Broadway stage. The Elizabeth Taylor-starring film won five Academy Awards and also let Nichols nab his first Academy Award nomination. He was not deprived of the golden statue for long—he soon won an Academy Award for Best DirecLife’s Work tor for his work on The Graduate, released in 1967. In Nichols’s work with the Compass Players helped pro1998, the American Film Institute placed the film at pel him to great heights in the world of theater. When the number seven on the list of the one hundred best Ameriteam broke up, Nichols retained a successful comedy can motion pictures of all time. Nichols went on to work with many other stage productions, including Annie (1977) and Winning All Four Major Spamalot (2005). His work in film expanded Entertainment Awards to include Working Girl (1988), The Birdcage (1996), Closer (2004), and Charlie Wilson’s War While Mike Nichols’s life has been marked by several impres(2007), and many of those have garnered award sive achievements, including winning several Tony Awards for nominations. He also developed close profeshis work in directing for the stage and being honored by the United States Congress with the National Medal of Arts, one of sional relationships with actors such as Meryl his most important accomplishments was shared by only eleven Streep, Julia Roberts, and Jack Nicholson, with other entertainers as of 2010: winning at least one of each of whom he has worked on multiple films. the major entertainment industry awards. Nichols has won one Nichols has been married four times. His Grammy Award, eight Tony Awards, four Emmy Awards, and one fourth wife, whom he married in 1988, is Diane Academy Award. He has also been nominated for other Tony Sawyer, the anchor of ABC World News, the and Academy Awards, and he has won and been nominated for nightly news program of the American BroadGolden Globe Awards, Drama Desk Awards, British Academy casting Company. Film Awards, and more. mother was delayed by illness from making the trip until two years later. Nichols’s father died of leukemia when Nichols was only twelve, and his mother soon remarried and moved to Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Nichols studied at schools in Connecticut and New York before enrolling at New York University after high school. His time studying there, however, did not last long: He dropped out after only one day. After a year working as a stable hand, Nichols decided to pursue psychiatric studies at the University of Chicago, paying his way through school by working a succession of increasingly odd jobs, from being a janitor to judging jingle contests. After performing in theatrical productions at the university, however, he found his life’s work in the arts. It was while performing that he met fellow actor Elaine May, with whom he would later form a famous comedy team. Nichols traveled back and forth between New York and Chicago before joining a Chicago comedy team called the Compass Players, a group that was the precursor to the Second City players.
Nichols was also one of just ten people to have accomplished this feat in competitive categories. Two of the other award recipients, Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelli, won at least one “special” award instead of the regular competitive awards. Nichols’s ability to be repeatedly recognized by the best academies in the entertainment world has led to a lifetime of honor and respect from other members in the industry.
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Significance Even though Nichols spent much of his early life exploring different fields of study and other career paths, there is no question that he has made an indelible mark in film and in theater. Nichols is one of a few entertainers to win all four of the major industry awards: an Emmy
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Award (for the 2003 television miniseries Angels in America), a Grammy Award (for the 1960 comedy album An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May), a Tony Award (for the 2005 Spamalot), and an Academy Award (for 1967’s The Graduate). The “Showbiz Award Grand Slam,” as it was christened by the Los Angeles Times, had been accomplished by only twelve people as of 2010. Nichols continued his involvement in the entertainment industry as a cofounder of and teacher at the New Actors Workshop in New York City. —Jill E. Disis
cle provides a concise overview of Nichols’s film triumphs. Lahr, John. “Making It Real.” The New Yorker, February 21, 2000. Details Nichols’s childhood and his escape from the Nazis, covers his brilliant career onstage, in film, and in television, and concludes with his comfortable life with Sawyer in New York City. Tichler, Rosemarie, and Barry Jay Kaplan. Actors at Work. New York: Faber and Faber, 2007. Insightful collection of interviews with actors has a foreword by Nichols.
Further Reading Kenny, Glenn. “Mike Nichols’s Life in the Trenches.” Los Angeles Times, December 16, 2007, p. E31. Arti-
See also: Woody Allen; Judd Apatow; Peter Bogdanovich; Larry David; Stanley Donen; Larry Gelbart; Dustin Hoffman; Stanley Kramer; Steven Spielberg.
Leonard Nimoy Actor and photographer A versatile actor, Nimoy is best known for his role as Mr. Spock in the 1960’s science-fiction television series Star Trek. Born: March 26, 1931; Boston, Massachusetts Also known as: Leonard Simon Nimoy (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; photography Early Life Leonard Nimoy (LEHN-urd NEE-moy), the son of Russian Jewish immigrants from Zaslav, Ukraine, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1931. His parents escaped from Ukraine illegally; his father, Max, by slipping over the Polish border at night, and his mother, Dora, by hiding in a hay wagon. The Nimoys settled in an Italian neighborhood in Boston’s west end, where his father owned a barbershop. Nimoy and his older brother, Melvin, grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household and learned to speak fluent Hebrew and Yiddish. Nimoy began acting in community theaters when he was eight, and he had his first major role at seventeen, playing Ralphie in Clifford Odets’s play Awake and Sing! (1935). At fourteen, he developed an avid interest in photography. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Boston College, and he holds a master’s degree in education from Antioch College. He moved to Hollywood in 1950, and for the next sixteen years he acted in minor roles in the theater, film, and television. His television credits in-
clude many leading series of the 1950’s and 1960’s, including Wagon Train, Bonanza, The Untouchables, Perry Mason, and The Outer Limits. He also taught acting classes. In 1964, he and future Star Trek costar, William Shatner, appeared together for the first time in an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. titled “The Project Strigas Affair.” Life’s Work Nimoy’s career began to flourish in 1966 when Gene Roddenberry, the developer and producer of the sciencefiction series Star Trek, cast him to play the pointedeared alien Mr. Spock from the planet Vulcan. At first the network executives at the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) were unenthusiastic about the character because of Spock’s satanic appearance. Soon, however, Nimoy was receiving abundant fan mail—especially from female viewers—which convinced the network to keep the character in the series. Nimoy’s costars were Shatner, who played Spock’s adventurous superior officer, James T. Kirk, captain of the starship USS Enterprise, and DeForest Kelley, who portrayed Dr. Leonard McCoy, the curmudgeonly ship’s doctor. The second season’s opening episode, “Amok Time,” explored Spock’s Vulcan culture and introduced the Vulcan salute. Used as a greeting and farewell, the V-shaped gesture, formed by a splayed thumb and the separation of the first and second and the third and fourth fingers, was directly derived from Nimoy’s Jewish heritage. 849
Nimoy, Leonard When Nimoy was a young boy, he attended an Orthodox service with his father. During the ritual blessing, the Kohanim (or priests) and the all-male congregation covered their eyes with their shawls or hands. Max warned his son not to look, but the eight-year-old could not resist and peeked. He was impressed by how the priests, eyes shrouded, held their arms straight out with thumbs touching and their fingers divided between the middle and ring fingers. The gesture symbolizes the Hebrew letter shin, which stands for Shaddai, or Almighty God. It became the basis for the Vulcan salute, which was usually accompanied by the phrase “Live long and prosper.” The Vulcan salute has become a celebrated piece of Star Trek lore and is widely recognized in pop culture as well. Nimoy received three Emmy Award nominations for his portrayal of Spock, and he became so identified with the character that he wrote two memoirs, I Am Not Spock (1975) and I Am Spock (1995), which discussed the effect playing Spock had on his professional and personal
Leonard Nimoy. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans life. Star Trek experienced a resurgence in popularity in syndication and spawned six feature films. Nimoy also reprised his role as Spock in the television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation (1991) and in the film Star Trek, which was released in 2009. When Star Trek the television series was canceled in 1969, Nimoy replaced Martin Landau in the television series Mission: Impossible, playing “The Amazing Paris.” Tiring of the role, Nimoy left the series and appeared in several made-for-television films, including Catlow (1971), The Alpha Caper (1973), and Marco Polo (1982). He also made guest appearances in popular television programs, such as Rod Serling’s Night Gallery and Colombo starring Peter Falk. In 1982, he again received an Emmy Award nomination for best supporting actor for his role as Morris Meyerson in A Woman Called Golda, a film about the life of Golda Meir. In 1991, Nimoy partnered with Robert Radnitz to produce a made-for-television film titled Never Forget. He also was cast in the starring role. The film is a true story about Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of AuschwitzBirkenau concentration camp during World War II. After moving to the United States, Mermelstein opened a museum to document the Nazi atrocities he and millions of others had suffered. He was challenged by the Institute for Historical Review to prove that the prisoners died as a result of genocide. At great personal cost to himself and his family, Mermelstein took the organization to court and exposed it as neo-Nazi group promoting Holocaust denial. Nimoy commented that bringing Mermelstein’s story to the screen was one of the most satisfying things he had done in his acting career. Nimoy also enjoyed success as a stage performer and has appeared in a variety of productions, including The Man in the Glass Booth (1967), Oliver! (1960), Caligula (1945), Twelfth Night (1600-1602), and Equus (1973). One of his favorite roles, however, was that of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof (1964). Mounted by Stephen Slane, a New York producer who specialized in summer stock, the production played for seven weeks in Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio. Nimoy took on the role because the musical mirrored his parents’ experience of escaping from a small Russian village. In addition to acting, Nimoy developed photographic skills. Following Mission: Impossible, he briefly considered beginning a second career as a professional photographer. However, he decided not to give up acting and continued to have a lucrative career in television, in film, and onstage. In 2003, he announced his retirement from acting so that he could devote his time to photography. He
Jewish Americans published two books: Shekhina (2002), a photographic essay focusing on the feminine aspect of God, and The Full Body Project (2007), a collection of images of nude plus-sized women. Significance The Star Trek television and film franchise in general and the Spock character in particular captured the imaginations of a generation of science-fiction aficionados. Nimoy’s nuanced performance of Spock as a conflicted outsider who does not fully belong to Vulcan or to human culture reflects a psychological, emotional, and social identity crisis to which many people in contemporary society can relate. His portrayal of Spock also influenced young people who were fans of the show in the 1960’s to consider careers in science and space exploration. Aside from his association with Star Trek, however, Nimoy has chosen roles that reflect his deep love for Judaism, thereby publicly honoring his heritage through the practice of his craft. —Pegge Bochynski Further Reading Nimoy, Leonard. I Am Not Spock. Millbrae, Calif.: Celestial Arts, 1975. Offering an overview of his life as an actor, Nimoy discusses his love-hate relationship with Star Trek and the Spock character. _______. I Am Spock. New York: Hyperion, 1995. Updating material he presented in I Am Not Spock, Nimoy discusses his career from 1975 to 1995 and
Nimoy, Leonard
From Shin to Shekhina Leonard Nimoy’s controversial photographic essay Shekhina (2005) took him eight years to complete, yet it was decades in the making. When he developed the Vulcan salute from the gesture symbolizing the Hebrew letter shin, he had little idea of the deeper significance of the character and therefore did not understand why his father had forbidden him to look when the priests formed the letter with their hands in blessing. Years after Nimoy introduced the Vulcan salute on Star Trek, a rabbi told him that, according to the mystical Kabbala, the gesture and the blessing invoked the shekhina, or the feminine presence of God, which was so powerful it could overwhelm humans. Intrigued, Nimoy drew upon his photographic skills to explore this little acknowledged concept in Judaism and produced a series of artful black-and-white photographs of nude and seminude women wearing traditional male religious objects. The publication of the collection was vehemently denounced in Orthodox circles for its “heretical” content. Others within the Jewish community, however, praised the photographs for their mysterious beauty, creative power, and feminist interpretation of the divine.
claims that he has come to terms with the influence that Spock has had on his life and career. Nimoy, Leonard, and Donald Kuspit. Shekhina. New York: Umbrage Editions, 2005. Controversial photographic essay celebrating the feminine essence of God and featuring nude photographs of women. See also: J. J. Abrams; Paul Michael Glaser; Judd Hirsch; Dustin Hoffman; Michael Mann; Clifford Odets; William Shatner; Steven Spielberg.
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Noah, Mordecai M.
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Mordecai M. Noah Journalist, playwright, and politician Noah was the best known Jew in early nineteenth century America. His strong American patriotism combined with his Jewish pride set a precedent for Jewish integration into American life and government. Born: July 19, 1785; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Died: March 22, 1851; New York, New York Also known as: Mordecai Menasseh Noah; Mordecai Menahem Noah; Mordecai Immanuel Noah; Mordecai Manuel Noah (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; journalism; theater Early Life Mordecai M. Noah (MOR-duh-ki em NOH-uh) was born of mixed Sephardic and Ashkenazic ancestry, although he emphasized the more prestigious Sephardic element throughout his life. His parents, Manuel Mordecai Noah and Zipporah Phillips, died when Mordecai M. Noah was seven, and he was raised by his grandparents in Philadelphia and Charleston, South Carolina. In 1807, he was in Philadelphia, an active member of the Democratic Young Men and a supporter of the German American candidate for Pennsylvania governor on the DemocraticRepublican ticket, Samuel K. Snyder. The victorious Snyder appointed his young supporter a major in the state militia, and Noah was henceforth known as “Major Noah.” In 1811, Noah was appointed the United States’ first consul to Riga on the Baltic Sea. However, the Napoleonic Wars intervened, and in 1813 Noah arrived at his new assignment, the Barbary Coast community of Tunis. There his main task was recovering captured American seamen, but it was also hoped that he could establish contacts with Tunis’s influential Jewish community. In 1815, Noah was recalled by Secretary of State James Monroe, ostensibly on the grounds that Noah’s Jewishness would make relations with the Muslim rulers impossible but really because of the fact that Noah failed to free the American captives. Noah published two books on his consular career, the privately circulated Correspondence and Documents Relative to the Attempt to Negotiate for the Release of the American Captives at Algiers (1816), a vindication of his consular career, and Travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary States in the Years 1813-14 and 15 (1819). Back in the United States, Noah located in New York, 852
where he would spend the rest of his life. He became one of the city’s leading journalists. In 1817, he took over the editorship of the National Advocate, published by his uncle, Napthali Phillips, in the interest of New York’s legendary Tammany Hall political machine. Noah’s editorship, which included the addition of feature articles and lively feuds with rival newspapers, helped make the National Advocate one of the city’s most-read papers. Life’s Work A change of ownership led to the loss of the position when his contract expired on December 14, 1824. Noah quickly set up a competing paper, The New York National Advocate. It would be followed by several others. Like many newspapermen, Noah was active in politics. He served as sheriff of New York in 1821 and 1822, grand sachem of Tammany in 1824, surveyor and inspector of the Port of New York from 1829 to 1832, and judge of the Court of Sessions from 1841 to 1842. While rising in New York City politics, Noah was also becoming the most prominent lay leader of the city’s Jewish community. On November 28, 1827, Noah married a young Jewish woman, Rebecca Esther Jackson. Her father, Daniel Jackson, was a leader in the New York Jewish community, and Noah’s marriage solidified his position in Jewish leadership. He had the ambitious project of establishing a community for the Jews of the world on Grand Island in Niagara. There is some evidence that he saw this as an intermediate solution, pending a final restoration of the Jews to Palestine, a movement for which he hoped to eventually gain Christian support. On January 16, 1820, Noah petitioned the New York State legislature to sell him Grand Island for the colony. The motion was tabled, but five years later Noah acquired 2,555 acres on the island for his plan. The colony was to be called Ararat, and it was inaugurated with great pomp on September 15, 1825, with a ceremony at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Buffalo, New York. Noah appeared in splendid robes—actually a Richard III (15921593) stage costume borrowed from the Park Theater— and gave a series of decrees addressed to Jews everywhere, awarding to himself the title of “Judge in Israel” and imposing a three-shekel head tax on Jews everywhere to support a Jewish government. Noah also claimed that Native Americans were descendants of the ten lost tribes and efforts should be made to reunite them with their
Jewish Americans
Noah, Mordecai M.
Jewish brethren. Despite attracting some interShe Would Be a Soldier est from European Jews, the colony was a complete fiasco, but its failure did not discredit Mordecai M. Noah’s most successful play was She Would Be a Noah as a Jewish leader. Soldier: Or, The Plains of Chippewa, which premiered in New Through all this, Noah pursued his passion York on June 21, 1819. The play’s action centers on the American for the theater as playgoer, playwright, and victory in the battle of Chippewa in the War of 1812, a war Noah strongly supported. Noah employed the common plot device of the critic. His plays, often drawn from American woman who disguises herself as a man to join the army. She Would history, included She Would Be a Soldier: Or, be a Soldier contains numerous comic elements, resting on such The Plains of Chippewa (1819), Yusuf Caraclichés as the rustic poltroon Jeremiah and the affected, foppish malli: Or, The Siege of Tripoli (1820), Marion: British officer, Captain Pendragon, and concludes with the enOr, The Hero of Lake George (1821), and The gagement of the heroine, Christine, to the hero, the American offiGrecian Captive: Or, The Fall of Athens (1822). cer Captain Lenox. The characters also include an Indian chief Noah gave up serious playwriting (although he fighting on the British side, a character Noah treats with more recontinued to write short interludes for special spect than Indians usually received on the American stage. Noah occasions) because there was no money in it. wrote the heroine’s role for his friend Catherine Leesugg, a visiting He continued to attend the theater, and he was English performer. The play’s fulsome praise of the valor of Amerone of New York’s most respected theatrical ican soldiers helped make it one of the most successful American dramas of the early nineteenth century. She Would be a Soldier critics. continued to appear on the American stage until 1848. Noah’s career as a journalist, politician, and Jewish leader continued after the failure of the Ararat project, although as the years passed he became less an active leader in New York poli1936. The first serious biography of Noah based on tics and Jewish affairs than a revered symbol. He died afextensive research. Largely superseded by Sarna, but ter a paralyzing stroke, and his funeral was the largest of valuable in that Goldberg had access to Noah family any Jewish American to that date. letters since lost or destroyed, many of which he reprinted. Significance Karp, Abraham J. Mordecai Manuel Noah: The First Noah has been described as “the first American Jew,” American Jew. New York: Yeshiva University Muthe first to combine a strong Jewish identity with full parseum, 1987. The illustrated catalog of an exhibition ticipation in the Christian-dominated culture and politics devoted to Noah. of the young United States. He was unquestionably the Sarna, Jonathan D. Jacksonian Jew: The Two Worlds of most famous American Jew of his time, and his funeral Mordecai Noah. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981. was front-page news as far away as Boston. Noah’s jourThe standard biography, based on extensive research nalism and plays are largely forgotten, and the Ararat into Noah’s surviving papers and contemporary newsscheme was a failure. However, merely by fully and unpapers. Focuses on Noah as an emblematic figure in ashamedly participating in American life as a Jew, and by American Jewish history. vigorously campaigning against all forms of anti-SemiSchuldiner, Michael, and Daniel J. Kleinfeld, eds. The tism and discrimination in his newspapers, Noah carved Selected Writings of Mordecai Noah. Westport, Conn.: out a space for Jewish participation in American life. Greenwood Press, 1999. The only modern edition of However, there was an ambiguity, as Noah’s American Noah’s writings; contains She Would Be a Soldier, the Jewish patriotism coexisted with a desire to see the Jews Ararat proclamation, several journalistic writings, and restored to a homeland in the Middle East. two of Noah’s speeches on the restoration of the Jews —William E. Burns to Palestine. Further Reading See also: Bernard Baruch; Edna Ferber; Ed Koch; Goldberg, Isaac. Major Noah: American-Jewish Pioneer. Henry Morgenthau, Jr.; Eliot Spitzer; Studs Terkel. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America,
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Noether, Emmy
Jewish Americans
Emmy Noether German-born mathematician Noether was one of the founders of the study of abstract algebra, and she formulated Noether’s theorem, an important development in the theory of general relativity that has become fundamental in the study of classical and quantum physics. Born: March 23, 1882; Erlangen, Bavaria, Germany Died: April 14, 1935; Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania Also known as: Amalie Emmy Noether (full name) Area of achievement: Mathematics Early Life Emmy Noether (EH-mee NOH-thur) was born on March 23, 1882, in Erlangen, Bavaria, Germany. Her mother, Ida Amalia Kaufmann, and her father, Max
Emmy Noether. (Courtesy of Bryn Mawr College Archives)
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Noether, came from financially well-off Jewish families. In 1809, anti-Semitic laws forced Max’s grandfather to change his surname from Samuel; he chose Nöther. Max’s father kept this version of the name but used the form Noether. In 1875, Max began a long and distinguished career as a professor of mathematics at the University of Erlangen. Seven years later, his daughter, Emmy Noether, was born. She eventually had three younger brothers. They were raised in a home with a mathematician for a father and where education was valued. Since there were no college preparatory schools for girls in Germany at this time, Noether spent her high school years preparing to become a language instructor in a girls’ school. In 1900, at age eighteen, she earned a certification to teach both English and French. Surprisingly, she never taught languages. Instead, she decided to audit classes at the University of Erlangen. Women were prohibited from earning college credits or degrees, so she was reduced to asking for permission from individual professors (most of whom were friends of her father) to allow her to sit in their classrooms and listen to the lectures. This she did for two years; during that time only one other woman was auditing classes at the university. It was then that Noether began her formal study of mathematics. In 1903, Noether passed the entrance examination and began studies at the University of Göttingen. She attended lectures by highly respected mathematicians, including David Hilbert, Felix Klein, and Hermann Minkowski. In 1904, however, she returned to the University of Erlangen, which permitted women to earn degrees. Studying under her father’s friend, Paul Gordan, Noether completed her thesis and was granted a doctorate in mathematics in 1907, at the age of twenty-five. Life’s Work From 1908 until 1915, Noether worked at the University of Erlangen without pay or an official position. She published several papers in mathematical journals during these years, all of which demonstrated the formal style of formula manipulation that she had learned under her thesis adviser, Gordan. She took on more of her father’s duties at the university as his health began to fail. In 1915, Hilbert and Klein invited Noether to join
Jewish Americans them at the University of Göttingen. She accepted, and she stayed there for most of the rest of her career. Noether was beginning to employ more of an abstract approach in her mathematical thinking, a style championed by Hilbert in particular. He and Klein hoped that Noether could help them in their efforts to provide a mathematical framework for parts of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. In fact, she was responsible for several key developments in this area, and her reputation, already beginning to spread, grew quickly in the worldwide mathematical community. Her results, known as Noether’s theorem, are fundamental in physics. Unfortunately her mathematical success did not translate to success in her workplace. A 1908 law prohibited women lecturers in German universities. Nevertheless, Hilbert, Klein, and others worked hard to convince their fellow Göttingen professors to allow Noether to deliver her “habilitation” lecture, part of the process that all professors had to complete in order to be hired at a university in Germany. Her lecture was well attended because of the controversy surrounding her potential appointment. Although her lecture was well received, her application for employment was still denied. The government would permit her to lecture only as Hilbert’s assistant, still for no pay. Ultimately, in the 1920’s, the government allowed her to be appointed to the faculty, though without a salary. The university managed to provide her with a small stipend. Throughout the 1920’s Noether continued her work of publishing papers, educating a typically small circle of graduate students, and engaging in dialogue with mathematicians throughout Europe. She became a leader of the movement to employ highly abstract thinking as an approach to discovering the underlying relationships among mathematical objects. The highest validation of her work came in 1932 when she became the first woman invited to address the International Congress of Mathematics. Her lecture was widely regarded as a great success. In January of 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Not long after, the Ministry for Science published a list of all German professors who were of Jewish ancestry. Noether, who was one of six Göttingen professors on the list, was soon fired. She was so well regarded that even her Aryan students appealed for her reinstatement, but it was not to be. Friends sought positions for
Noether, Emmy
Noether’s Theorem In 1915, Emmy Noether began studying a problem that had surfaced in Albert Einstein’s work on the theory of general relativity. He and others struggled to understand why energy was not being conserved locally as it is in other settings. Eventually David Hilbert asked Noether to help. She responded by proving results that are known collectively as Noether’s theorem. Noether discovered a deep and unexpected connection: to every conservation of an observable quantity (such as angular momentum or energy) there corresponds an invariance, or symmetry, of a system, and vice versa. An invariance is a feature of a system that does not change with respect to some action, such as a rotation of the system or the progression of time. It is this latter symmetry that corresponds to the original problem in 1915: Noether proved that the conservation of energy corresponds to a system’s invariance over time. Her results are fundamental to the study of any physical system. By knowing which quantities are conserved, physicists are then able to deduce much more about a system. Noether’s theorem makes this knowledge accessible by providing a correspondence with symmetries, which can be deduced mathematically in a relatively easy way. Her powerful result is a basic tool in the study of both classical and quantum physics.
her at Oxford and in Moscow, but when neither of those materialized she accepted an offer from Bryn Mawr in the United States. There she became close friends with the chair of the mathematics department, Anna Pell Wheeler. It was a joy for Noether to have as a friend a professionally successful woman mathematician, whose position was in such contrast to her own struggle for professional acceptance in German academia. Her time at Bryn Mawr was short, however. In April of 1935, less than two years after coming to the United States, Noether underwent surgery to remove a large ovarian cyst. Four days later, on April 14, 1935, she died at the age of fifty-three, probably as a result of a postoperative infection. Significance Noether’s great contribution in mathematics was her pioneering use of a highly abstract way of approaching problems. She sought to strip the problem, or the mathematical object, of all of its particular characteristics and to discover the underlying relationships that governed the behavior of the objects in question. Her 1921 paper, “Theory of Ideals and Rings,” is considered her most important in mathematics and was essential for the develop855
Noether, Emmy ment of abstract algebra in the twentieth century, an area that is one of the most significant in modern mathematics. Even before she died, terms such as “Noetherian rings” were becoming commonplace in mathematics and remain so. Her students spread the influence of her new approach so well that forty years after the appearance of her paper, there was an education revolution in the United States, the so-called “new math” of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Even though the initial fad died away, much of her abstract approach remains a central feature of math education. —Michael J. Caulfield Further Reading Dick, Auguste. Emmy Noether, 1882-1935. Translated by H. I. Blocher. Cambridge, Mass.: Birkhäuser Boston, 1981. Dick’s biography was the first published and is still the source of most of what is known of Noether’s life and background. Kimberling, Clark. “Emmy Noether.” The American Mathematical Monthly 79 (February, 1972): 136-149. Kim-
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Jewish Americans berling draws from obituaries and from P. S. Alexandroff’s unpublished 1935 address before the Moscow Mathematical Society to shed light on Noether’s accomplishments. Einstein’s letter to the editor of The New York Times commemorating Noether is presented in full. Kleiner, Israel. “Emmy Noether and the Advent of Abstract Algebra.” In A History of Abstract Algebra. Cambridge, Mass.: Birkhäuser Boston, 2007. The only chapter in Kleiner’s text dedicated to the work of a single individual. Biographical sketches of Noether and five other mathematicians are included at the end of the book. Silverberg, Alice. “Emmy Noether in Erlangen.” Mathematical Intelligencer 23, no. 3 (Summer, 2001): 4449. Silverberg relates details of Noether’s early life by taking readers on a “tour” of Erlangen. Includes several photos. See also: Paul Cohen; Herbert Hauptman; Abraham Robinson.
O Phil Ochs Musician, singer, and activist A leader in the 1960’s folk music revival, Ochs was a singer and songwriter who turned to the headlines of the day for inspiration, crafting songs that called for political and social change. His song “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” became an anthem of the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War. Born: December 19, 1940; El Paso, Texas Died: April 9, 1976; Far Rockaway, New York Also known as: Philip David Ochs (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; activism
Ochs came to New York in 1962 at the forefront of a folk music boom. In small clubs and coffeehouses, young songwriters were creating a new musical genre, combining traditional acoustic music with lyrics that addressed issues of the day: civil rights, nuclear war, pacifism, free speech. Ochs quickly established himself as a leader in the topical song movement. His songs offered provocative social commentary, but he tempered the message with humor and catchy melodies. Along with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Seeger, Ochs performed in the historic 1963 Newport Folk Festival.
Early Life Phil Ochs (ohks) was born in El Paso, Texas, the second child of Jacob Ochs and Gertrude Phin, a native of Scotland. Phil Ochs’s father, the son of poor Russian Polish Jewish immigrants, had achieved the American Dream by becoming a doctor, but he had to leave America to do so: In the 1930’s, American medical schools had quotas that limited the number of Jewish students. He earned his degree at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and returned with a wife and young daughter, only to be drafted almost immediately. Army postings meant that the young family moved frequently, a pattern that continued even after the end of World War II. Ochs’s father suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar illness. He changed jobs often and at times was hospitalized. Ochs, a dreamy and solitary child, took refuge in films and music. A gifted clarinet player, he played at a local conservatory, but his musical heroes were Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. Ochs attended Ohio State University, where he majored in journalism, wrote for the school newspaper, and was introduced to guitar, folk music, and radical politics by Jim Glover, a college friend. Inspired by the work of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, Ochs began writing and performing his own songs in local clubs. His outspoken political views brought him face-to-face with censorship: At the height of the Cold War, he championed the Cuban revolution. Denied editorship of the school newspaper because of his controversial beliefs, Ochs quit in his senior year, determined to make a name for himself with his music.
Life’s Work In 1964, Ochs recorded his first album, All the News That’s Fit to Sing, which included songs about Vietnam, civil rights, and the Cuban missile crisis. The album found critical praise but, because of its political content, almost no airplay. Ochs continued to tackle controversial issues on his second album, I Ain’t Marching Anymore (the title track became an antiwar anthem), and on his third, which featured poems by Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong on the back cover with the question: “Is this the enemy?” Ochs was identified with protest music, yet each album featured personal, introspective lyrics along with topical ones. “When I’m Gone,” a meditation on life and death, is one of Ochs’s best known songs, and “There but for Fortune,” a hit for Baez, is a plea for compassion, more spiritual than political. By 1966, Ochs was a popular concert draw, selling out Carnegie Hall and playing college campuses, antiwar rallies, and folk festivals. However, the mainstream success his friend Dylan had achieved still eluded him. Ochs tried a new direction with Pleasures of the Harbor (1967), adding orchestration to his formerly spare, acoustic sound. Inspired by such musically inventive albums as the Beach Boys’Pet Sounds (1966), Ochs experimented with styles ranging from cinematic to Dixieland to electronic art-rock. Some critics thought the arrangements overwhelmed the lyrics, but Pleasures of the Harbor became Ochs’s most successful album. Ochs was profoundly changed by the violence he witnessed during protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, Illinois. After watching peaceful 857
Odets, Clifford demonstrators beaten and gassed by police, he became increasingly disillusioned. His 1969 album, Rehearsals for Retirement, featured a tombstone for “Phil Ochs (American)” on the cover. Its songs portray the death of America, a slide into violence and chaos. By then, Ochs was on his own downward slide. Once prolific, he was no longer able to write. He struggled with depression, bipolar disorder, and alcohol abuse for several years before hanging himself at his sister’s house in Far Rockaway, New York, on April 9, 1976. Significance Ochs saw music as a social force, and his songs did more than entertain: They informed, persuaded, and demanded a response. His music was a call to arms in the cause of peace. He dreamed of combining the broad popular appeal of Presley with the revolutionary spirit of Che Guevara. Though his idealism sometimes fell short of reality, his music remains powerful, still able to provoke anger, sadness, laughter, and—for others, if not for himself—hope. —Kathryn Kulpa
Jewish Americans Further Reading Cohen, David. Phil Ochs: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. Provides a detailed listing of writings and recordings by and about Ochs, along with background information. Eliot, Marc. Death of a Rebel: A Biography of Phil Ochs. New York: Citadel Underground Press, 1995. Revised and updated edition of the original 1979 biography; a sympathetic treatment by a writer who knew Ochs. Harden, Joel. “Music to Change the World: Remembering Phil Ochs.” Canadian Dimension, September/October, 2001. Interesting critical article reexamines Ochs’s life and legacy, focusing on his attempt to unite the radical left with the American working class. Schumacher, Michael. There but for Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs. New York: Hyperion, 1996. A complete and extensively researched biography; includes interviews with Ochs’s family, including his adult daughter. See also: Bob Dylan; Billy Joel; Carole King; Randy Newman; Carly Simon; Paul Simon.
Clifford Odets Playwright Odets expressed in his plays the traumatic social and financial trials of the Great Depression. Born: July 18, 1906; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Died: August 14, 1963; Los Angeles, California Areas of achievement: Theater; literature Early Life Clifford Odets (CLIHF-furd oh-DEHTS) had a tumultuous adolescence. Born in Philadelphia to Louis and Pearl Geisinger Odets, the first of their three children, Clifford Odets grew up in the Bronx. His father, an ambitious immigrant from Lithuania and Romania, was a printer and by the early 1920’s owned his own print shop, and the family became solidly middle class. Odets, however, rebelled against his father’s bourgeois values and lived in a state of tension against his family. Constantly at odds with his father, Odets was closer to his aunt and uncle, Esther and Israel Rossman, immigrants from Eastern Europe, than he was to his overbearing father and his mother, who was frequently ill. The ethnically Jewish Rossmans spoke Yiddish and read Yid858
Clifford Odets. (Carl Van Vechten Collection/Library of Congress)
Jewish Americans dish newspapers. Their English was what is often termed “Yinglish,” a combination of Yiddish and English. Odets employs considerable Yinglish in his dialogue. Although his father hoped his son would follow in his footsteps in the printing business, Odets refused. Once, enraged at his son’s insistence on writing, the father threw Odets’s typewriter out a window. He finally reluctantly approved Odets’s becoming an actor, and the young man became affiliated with several theater groups, including the Theatre Guild. In 1931, he joined the newly formed Group Theatre, which became his theatrical home. The Group Theatre discouraged the star system, encouraging instead plays in which an ensemble of six or eight characters had equal parts. All of Odets’s early plays have casts that meet this criterion. Members of the Group Theatre were fully involved in productions, often acting one week but building stage sets the next. The two most significant positive influences on Odets were his association with the Group Theatre and his closeness to the Rossmans, from whose dialect he drew much in creating his own dialogue. The anger Odets often felt toward his father is reflected in the righteous indignation present in his early, most strident, plays. Life’s Work Odets catapulted to fame in 1935 when four of his plays were performed on the New York stage, three during the first half of the year and a fourth by year’s end. His proletarian dramas, notably Waiting for Lefty (1935), Awake and Sing! (1935), and Paradise Lost (1935), transfixed audiences beset by the trials of the Great Depression. Odets came into his own when a performance of Waiting for Lefty was presented in a union hall. He produced the play in three days of feverish writing to meet a deadline the New Theatre League imposed for the submission of socially cogent plays to be entered in a contest it was sponsoring. Waiting for Lefty was submitted by the deadline and won the competition. It also was awarded the George Pierce Baker Drama Cup by Yale University. The rousing success of this play created an immediate demand for more of Odets’s plays. Waiting for Lefty consists of six vignettes that examine the effects of the Great Depression on a cross section of New York taxicab drivers who cannot find work in areas in which they have been trained. The play was too short to be presented on
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Odets and Communism In 1934, Clifford Odets joined the Communist Party but ended his membership in less than a year because the party attempted to force him to write political dramas touting party beliefs. During his brief membership, he participated in a protest trip to Cuba, but the protesters were expelled after a day in Havana. Odets’s play about the experience, “The Cuban Play,” was never produced. During the Great Depression, Odets’s sympathy with workers, as reflected particularly in Waiting for Lefty (1935), was evident. Convinced that America’s two-party system needed to be expanded to include a third party with a more liberal, populist outlook, Odets believed the Communist Party offered hope to working-class Americans. He soon rebelled against the aesthetic arrogance of the Communists who attempted to dictate to him the themes about which he would write. In 1952, his brush with Communism far in his past, Odets was summoned for questioning before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about this affiliation. He was asked to name fellow artists who were party members. Odets finally capitulated, largely to have his name removed from the committee’s blacklist. Following this capitulation, Odets was appalled by what he had done and suffered from knowing that he was considered a pariah by many of his associates.
its own, so it was first rushed to the stage as a double bill with the author’s Till the Day I Die (1935), a short play set in Adolf Hitler’s Germany. This play was soon replaced by Awake and Sing!, which many critics consider Odets’s most effective drama. Awake and Sing! was a version of his previously unpublished play “I’ve Got the Blues.” On December 9, 1935, Odets’s Paradise Lost opened on Broadway. In Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing!, he deals not only with problems caused by the Great Depression but also with such social issues as the role anti-Semitism played in the hiring and retention of cabdrivers desperately in need of employment. The three-generation family in Awake and Sing! is overtly Jewish. The mother, Bessie Berger, is the lovable, overprotective, and smothering stereotype of the Jewish mother. She agonizes over the fact that she and her family might end up on the streets if the Depression continues. She is at odds with Jacob, the grandfather, a man with Marxist leanings who reminds his grandson that Karl Marx was probably right in suggesting that families like this one should be abolished. Perhaps his most noble act is his suicide because it will help his grandson, Ralph, to 859
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marry and build a new life for himself with the money he will derive from Jacob’s life insurance policy. Golden Boy (1937) departs from Odets’s earlier plays. It is not notably Jewish in its outlook. Joe Bonaparte, a prizefighter, is a gifted violinist faced with a dilemma: If he injures his hands in a fight, he will compromise his violin playing. The economic pressures of the times make it incumbent upon Bonaparte to continue fighting. The money he earns buys him a prosperous existence. He drives a splashy Duesenberg automobile and never has to be concerned about paying for his next meal. He pays a high price, however, for this security. In the end, as he drives his Duesenberg at an excessive speed, he crashes it and dies. As the economic pressures of the Great Depression moderated toward the end of the 1930’s, much of the outrage that had earlier motivated Odets’s writing became less relevant. Rocket to the Moon (1938) and Night Music (1940) lacked the moral indignation of his earlier dramas, as did Clash by Night in 1941. Meanwhile, in 1937, Odets defected to Hollywood to write for the film industry, an act that he viewed as a form of artistic prostitution. When film writing made him rich, he used his affluence to save the financially straitened Group Theatre from dissolution. Nevertheless, drama critics were unforgiving and wrote negative reviews of these later plays. Although he wrote three more notable plays before his death, Odets never regained the recognition his early plays brought him. In The Flowering Peach (1954), a modern redaction of the biblical story of Noah and the Ark, he returned to his Jewish roots and produced an appealing play, but it was not well received critically. Odets died in 1963 of colon cancer.
were overshadowed by his socially critical plays written between 1935 and 1937. His characters gave voice to the grinding worry visited on families as they struggled to survive the Great Depression era. Revivals of some of his plays, notably Awake and Sing! and Paradise Lost, were well received. Later productions of The Big Knife (1949) have been thematically jarring to audiences expecting an angrier Odets than this play reveals. When judged strictly by objective aesthetic standards, The Big Knife holds up well. —R. Baird Shuman
Significance The proletarian dramas of Odets are of lasting interest, but his later plays, most of them well constructed,
See also: Edna Ferber; Moss Hart; Lillian Hellman; George S. Kaufman; Tony Kushner; David Mamet; Arthur Miller.
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Further Reading Brenman-Gibson, Margaret. Clifford Odets: American Playwright: The Years from 1906-1940. Vol. 1. New York: Atheneum, 1981. An excellent critical biography of Odets during the 1930’s. Cohen, Sarah Blacher, ed. From Hester Street to Hollywood on Stage and Screen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. The essay “Clifford Odets and the Jewish Context” explores this aspect of Odets’s work. Herr, Christopher J. Clifford Odets and American Political Theatre. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. Comments accurately on Odets’s appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Shuman, R. Baird. “Clifford Odets: A Playwright and His Jewish Background.” South Atlantic Quarterly 71 (Spring, 1972): 225-233. Considers Odets’s return to an overtly Jewish theme in his last major play, The Flowering Peach. Weales, Gerald. Clifford Odets: The Playwright. New York: Methuen, 1985. A compact and reliable critical biography of Odets.
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Tillie Olsen Activist, feminist, and writer Though Olsen’s body of literary work is small, her contributions to the short-story genre and to the advancement of women’s rights are significant. Born: January 14, 1912; Omaha, Nebraska Died: January 1, 2007; Oakland, California Also known as: Tillie Lerner (birth name); Tillie Lerner Olsen (full name) Areas of achievement: Literature; women’s rights; activism Early Life Tillie Olsen (TIH-lee OHL-suhn) was born to Russian Jewish immigrants Samuel and Ida Beber Lerner on January 14, 1912, in Omaha, Nebraska. Her parents had fled Russia after the failed 1905 revolution. Olsen was the second of six children. Her father worked a variety of labor-intensive jobs and later became a member of the Socialist Party of America. He was actively involved in organizing laborers and was eventually given the post of Nebraska Socialist Party state secretary. During his involvement with the Socialist Party, many other Jewish Socialists and activists visited the Lerner home, exposing young Olsen to their fervor. Olsen was often ill as a child, and she often missed school. She was a timid child who stuttered, but she was responsible and intelligent, helping raise her four younger siblings and doing menial jobs to help support the family. By the time she reached Omaha Central High School, she was widely read and had a strong political viewpoint. Chancing on a copy of Rebecca Harding Davis’s story “Life in the Iron Mills,” Olsen was encouraged to use her own writing skills to expose the problems that working-class people faced. Unfortunately, Olsen’s formal education ended as the Great Depression began, and she had to join that same labor force that she was so passionate about helping. Though her formal education was complete, she continued to educate herself by reading books she checked out of the local library. Life’s Work Olsen’s mature activism began when enrolled in the Young Communist League in 1931. As a member of the party, she protested labor problems on many occasions, and she was jailed at least twice. While she was imprisoned the first time in 1931 for participating in a labor movement for packinghouse workers, she became ill
with pleurisy, which later led to chronic health problems. The second jail sentence was the result of her involvement in the San Francisco maritime strike on July 5, 1934. Though the bail fee was set at an exorbitant one thousand dollars, the experience did produce two of her early published writings: the essays “Thousand-Dollar Vagrant,” an account of her meeting with the judge, and “Literary Life in California,” a report of her arrest. Both pieces were published in separate issues of The New Republic that same year. Shortly after her first imprisonment, Olsen moved to Faribault, Minnesota, where she had her first daughter, Karla, in 1932. She also began writing her first, and only, novel, Yonnondio. The opening chapter of the novel, “The Iron Throat,” was published in a 1934 issue of Partisan Review. Though the novel was never completed,
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Voice for the Silenced Tillie Olsen’s major achievement was her activism and its ability to give voice to those who have not been heard. She did this by campaigning tirelessly for both the working class and for women. Her early activism revolved around labor issues in the Great Depression. She was well known for exposing the needs of those around her, whether they worked in banks, packinghouses, or grocery stores, or were single mothers, students, or fans. In addition, she campaigned against social problems, such as racism and apartheid, and for positive institutions, such as public education and public libraries. In her 1978 book Silences, she revealed many of the reasons writers, both unpublished and published, fall into periods marked by a lack of production. Olsen was also involved in starting the Feminist Press, which publishes works by American women whose voices have been temporarily lost to literature. In recognition of Olsen’s lifetime achievements, she received the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1994. Both San Francisco, California (in 1981), and Santa Cruz, California (in 1998), declared a Tillie Olsen Day in her honor.
having been misplaced for many years, it was finally published in 1974 as Yonnondio: From the Thirties. Critics have compared this work to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906). In 1936, Olsen moved in with Jack Olsen, a fellow member of the Young Communist League, and she married him in 1944. They had three daughters together: Julie in 1938, Katherine Jo in 1943, and Laurie in 1948. These years were hard ones for Olsen, and she wrote very little, claiming that raising children, working, and running a household took up too much time and energy. She began writing again in the early 1950’s. The short story “I Stand Here Ironing” was the first of the newer pieces, and “Hey Sailor, What Ship?” followed. In 1955, she enrolled in a writing course at San Francisco State College. The next year she was given a Stegner Fellowship, named after writer Wallace Stegner, at Stanford University, and she was composed “O Yes.” In 1959, Olsen was given a grant from the Ford Foundation, which allowed her to commit herself to writing, but she was concerned that the grant came so late in her life. “Tell Me a Riddle” was written in 1960; it would become the title piece for a collection that contained all four of these stories. “Requa I” was her final short story; it appeared in 1971. In 1978, she published Silences, a nonfiction book about the reasons women do not create as much as they have the potential to produce. 862
Over the next quarter of a century, Olsen was given many opportunities. She served as a lecturer, a reader, a visiting professor, and a writer for a number of higher education institutions, including Amherst College, Radcliffe College, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts (Boston), and the University of California (San Diego and Los Angeles). She also received many fellowships, several honorary degrees, and a variety of awards. In 1994, she was given the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime of achievement. Olsen, who had been in poor health for a number of years, died on January 1, 2007, in Oakland, California. She was ninety-four years old.
Significance Olsen is remembered for her talent in writing and for her activism. She worked tirelessly to promote the rights of laborers and women. She had an ability to create a depth of characterization that overpowers other literary aspects. Further, her interest in sharing the reasons art is sometimes not fulfilled opened a discussion about why many writers have silent periods between compositions. Olsen was also instrumental in bringing Harding’s Life in the Iron Mills to public attention, in an effort to improve conditions for downtrodden workers, and she encouraged interest in a number of little-known writers. Olsen’s works gave a voice to women and working-class people. —Theresa L. Stowell Further Reading Frye, Joanne S. Tillie Olsen: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1995. Historical and political analysis of Olsen’s 1962 collection of four short stories. Includes an overview of scholarship on Olsen’s work. Hoofard, Jennifer M. “Tillie Olsen.” In American Writers: A Collection of Biographies, Supplement XIII: Edward Abbey to William Jay Smith, edited by Jay Parini. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003. Brief biographical article covering Olsen’s youth and middle years. Provides information about her activism and writing. Nelson, Kay Hoyle, and Nancy Huse, eds. The Critical Response to Tillie Olsen. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. Series of critical essays about Olsen’s works from the 1930’s through the 1990’s.
Jewish Americans Pearlman, Mickey, and Abby H. P. Werlock. Tillie Olsen. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Easy-to-read study of Olsen’s life and major works. Includes an interview with Olsen. Reid, Panthea. Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
Oppenheimer, J. Robert 2010. Examines Olsen’s many identities and considers her life as a metaphor for twentieth century America. See also: Nora Ephron; Erica Jong; Cynthia Ozick; Grace Paley; Susan Sontag.
J. Robert Oppenheimer Scientist and educator A brilliant physicist, Oppenheimer was scientific director of the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bomb used against Japan during World War II. Later he became a leading voice for international control of atomic weapons to save humankind from destruction in a nuclear war. Born: April 22, 1904; New York, New York Died: February 18, 1967; Princeton, New Jersey Also known as: Oppie; Julius Robert Oppenheimer (full name) Areas of achievement: Science and technology; war; scholarship Early Life J. Robert Oppenheimer (ah-pehn-HI-mur) was born on April 22, 1904, into a family of Jewish German immigrants. His father immigrated to New York City from Germany, and he became wealthy as a textile importer. His mother taught art at Barnard College and had private students in a Manhattan rooftop studio apartment. Though nonobservant Jews, Oppenheimer’s parents were active members of the Ethical Culture Society, an offshoot of Reform Judaism. Oppenheimer grew up in a spacious and luxurious apartment on West Eighty-eighth Street overlooking the Hudson River. A lonely boy, he collected rocks, looked forward to hiking in the countryside, read poetry, and wrote. Oppenheimer attended school in the sheltered intellectual atmosphere of the Ethical Culture Society. Academic excellence earned him a fellowship to Harvard in 1921, but he delayed entry for a year because of an attack of colitis. While Oppenheimer was recuperating, his former English teacher took Oppenheimer on a trip to New Mexico. The teenager was overwhelmed by the rugged desert and mountain beauty and quickly developed a passion for horseback riding. Twenty years later he would return to New Mexico to build the world’s first atomic bomb.
A tall, skinny, and intensely serious student, Oppenheimer reveled in the study of philosophy and of French literature, but he majored in chemistry. Ultimately he discovered that he was clumsy in lab work and what he most loved about chemistry was its theoretical physics aspects. He graduated from Harvard summa cum laude in only three years and then headed for the famed Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. Oppenheimer transferred in 1926 to the University of Göttingen, the
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Oppenheimer, J. Robert top center for the quantum mechanics aspects of theoretical physics, to study under Max Born. Here he developed friendships with Werner Heisenberg, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, and others who were destined to become the world’s new leading physicists.
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he commuted between Berkeley and Caltech, usually taking with him a team of associates and devoted graduate students. During these years, Oppenheimer did important work in astrophysics, nuclear physics, quantum field theory, and quantum electrodynamics at high energies. He was the first to write papers about what would later be classified as black holes in outer space, and he Life’s Work predicted the existence of subatomic particles and neuIn 1927, at the age of twenty-two, Oppenheimer received his Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen. While tron stars. By 1936, during the misery of the Great Depression a student, he published more than a dozen papers, the and the increasing threat of Nazi Germany, Oppenheimer most groundbreaking of which was the “Born-Oppendevoted some of his time to political causes. Like several heimer Approximation,” which simplified calculations in quantum mechanics and is still used. He returned to of his close colleagues and students, he became active in antifascist fund-raising activities, particularly supportthe United States in 1927 to do postdoctoral research at ing the International Brigades in stopping Francisco Harvard and then at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and he also served as assistant professor Franco’s fascist forces from taking over the Spanish Republic. Several of his leading graduate students and his of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. His brother Frank joined the Communist Party because of its dynamism as a teacher and his close contacts with the apparent commitment to stopping fascism. In November, world’s leading physicists attracted talented students to 1940, Oppenheimer married Katherine Puening Harrithe Berkeley campus, making it a leading center for the son, who had been a Communist Party member along study of theoretical physics. For the next thirteen years with her first husband, who was killed while fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). During the Cold War era in the 1960’s, such asHonors, Dishonors, Honors sociations would come to haunt Oppenheimer. In late January, 1939, Oppenheimer learned In 1946, J. Robert Oppenheimer received a Presidential Citathat German scientists had achieved nuclear fistion and a Medal of Merit for his direction of the Los Alamos Labosion by bombarding uranium with neutrons. ratory, where the bomb had been developed. A national celebrity, the father of the atomic bomb soon became the embodiment of the Within two weeks, Oppenheimer worked on moral dilemma for scientists in the postwar world. In 1946, he becalculations indicating the production of an came chairman of the general advisory committee of the Atomic atomic bomb was a distinct possibility. One Energy Commission, for which he developed policies for internamonth before the outbreak of World War II tional control of atomic weapons and the channeling of science in Europe, President Franklin Roosevelt was away from an arms race and toward peaceful purposes. In 1947, warned by Albert Einstein that the Germans Oppenheimer left the University of California, Berkeley, to serve were already working on such a weapon. Imas director of Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Studmediately, Roosevelt formed an ad hoc uranium ies, where he was given Albert Einstein’s former position as senior committee. One month after the attack on Pearl professor of theoretical physics. He continued in this position for Harbor, Oppenheimer was put in charge of fast twenty years. neutron research at Berkeley and was funded to In 1954, a concerted move by Oppenheimer’s political enemies succeeded in having President Dwight D. Eisenhower remove bring to Berkeley America’s leading theoretical Oppenheimer’s security clearance. He protested, and, at a hearing physicists to design an atomic bomb. By Sepin which many scientists testified on his behalf, the Security Board tember, 1942, the decision was made to create a affirmed Oppenheimer’s loyalty but denied him security clearsecret weapons lab, under U.S. Army jurisdicance. On May 27, 1954, he was stripped of security clearance by tion, to create a nuclear weapon. It was referred the Atomic Energy Commission because of alleged association to as the Manhattan Project. The major problem with Communists. The same agency nine years later awarded Opwas whether or not to trust Oppenheimer to penheimer the fifty-thousand-dollar Fermi Award for his outstandhead such a project in the light of his leftist poing contributions to theoretical physics and his scientific and adlitical associations. ministrative leadership. The award was given to him by President Oppenheimer was selected to administer the Lyndon Johnson. atomic bomb project, and his recommendation 864
Jewish Americans to centralize research at a secret site to be built at Los Alamos, New Mexico, in a walled canyon was accepted. He was familiar with this site, which was only forty miles away from a small ranch house that Oppenheimer owned and to where he often retreated for vacation. Managing a team of more than three thousand and coordinating the work of the nation’s leading physicists stretched Oppenheimer’s administrative skills to the limit. Nevertheless, he accomplished what he set out to do. On July 16, 1945, a test nuclear explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico, which Oppenheimer named Trinity, was an overwhelming success. However, what first entered Oppenheimer’s mind was a verse from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of Worlds.” The following month bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, bringing the war to a swift and horrific end. A lifelong chain smoker, Oppenheimer died of throat cancer at age sixty-two in 1967. Significance Oppenheimer made such significant original discoveries in theoretical physics that he can rightly be considered the father of the atomic bomb. He stimulated a new generation of brilliant theoretical physicists and helped establish the University of California, Berkeley, the California Institute of Technology, and Princeton University as world-class centers for the study of physics. He was also a victim of Cold War paranoia. Like many Jews and activist intellectuals, the strong stand taken by the Communist
Orman, Suze Party against fascist aggression, during an era of appeasement and isolationism, caused many to become involved with either the party or its front groups. Like many during the era of investigations by Senator Joseph McCarthy and by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Oppenheimer suffered the negative consequences of past identifications, but he was ultimately exonerated. —Irwin Halfond Further Reading Bernstein, Jeremy. Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005. Highly readable study of Oppenheimer’s life by a physicist who studied under him and was a staff writer at The New Yorker. Bird, Kai, and Martin J. Sherwin. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. New York: Vintage Books, 2006. A comprehensive biography and Pulitzer Prize winner, copiously footnoted and containing information drawn from a multitude of interviews. Pais, Abraham, and Robert Crease. J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. A joint effort to explain Oppenheimer’s life and work by a physicist who knew him and a historian at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. See also: Hans Albrecht Bethe; Albert Einstein; Richard P. Feynman; Donald A. Glaser; Frederick Reines; Edward Teller.
Suze Orman Financial adviser and writer Orman is a best-selling author and television show host who offers advice on personal finance to a wide audience. Born: June 5, 1951; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: Susan Lynn Orman (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; entertainment Early Life Suze Orman (SEW-zee OR-man) was born the daughter of Chicago delicatessen owner Morry Orman and his wife, Ann. The Ormans were Russian Jewish firstgeneration immigrants. By her own accounts, Suze Orman’s childhood was unhappy and stressful. She was considered to be a poor student in school. A speech problem, which made it hard for her to pronounce certain letter
sounds, made it difficult for her to read aloud. Because of the tendency of people to consider this a sign of intellectual deficiency and to dismiss her as being stupid, she developed a low sense of self-esteem. She had an especially difficult time mastering English; however, she excelled in mathematics, developing a propensity for numbers that would prove valuable for her future career in finance. Her father’s small business had a precarious existence; the Orman family subsisted under straitened circumstances. A fire destroyed the business, and, when Orman’s father tried to recoup the family fortune by using a part of his house as a room-and-board business, he was further set back by a lodger who filed a successful lawsuit against her father after falling and injuring himself. Orman credits her early experiences as helping to motivate her. 865
Orman, Suze She did go on to study for a bachelor’s degree in social work at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, at one stage washing dishes to help support herself, but she dropped out abruptly when she was just short of completing the academic requirements for her degree. In 1973, Orman borrowed fifteen hundred dollars from her brother, Robert, traveled to the West Coast in a van, settled in Berkeley, California, and earned her living as a waitress at Buttercup Bakery. She was finally awarded her degree from Illinois in 1976, having completed her final class at California State University, Hayward. Life’s Work Orman worked at Buttercup Bakery for seven years, until she confided to a longtime regular customer, Fred Hasbrook, about her aspirations to set up her own restaurant business. He arranged to get her a personal loan for fifty thousand dollars, to be repaid in ten years’ time, interest-free. She entrusted the loan to a Merrill Lynch stockbroker and shortly thereafter lost all of her investments. Surprisingly, she applied for a stockbroker’s posi-
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Jewish Americans tion at Merrill Lynch, which viewed her degree in social work as less desirable than credentials in business and finance. Nevertheless, she was accepted into the company’s training program and secured employment. Later, she discovered that she had been cheated by the Merrill Lynch broker who had originally handled her investment, and she sued the company, reclaimed her money with interest, and repaid Hasbrook and others who had helped her. Orman, nonetheless, remained with Merrill Lynch until 1983, when she accepted the position of vice president in charge of investments at Prudential Bache Securities. From 1987 to 1997 she branched out on her own, founding and running the Suze Orman Financial Group. It was as an author that she began to attain national celebrity status. In 1997, Orman published The Nine Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical and Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying, which made The New York Times best-seller list (seven of her books would make the list). This was rapidly followed by You’ve Earned It, Don’t Lose It: Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make When
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You Retire (1997), written in collaboration with THE SUZE ORMAN SHOW Linda Mead; Suze Orman’s Financial Guidebook: Putting the Nine Steps to Work (1998); By 2002, Suze Orman had published five books. That was the and The Courage to Be Rich: Creating a Life of year, however, that she would be elevated to celebrity status, with Material and Spiritual Abundance (1999). the network debut of The Suze Orman Show. This is a talk show Orman has been a frequent guest on The about individual and family financial situations, revolving around the dominant personality of its colorful and charismatic host, Oprah Winfrey Show. In 2002, Orman aired the Orman, who presides over the program in her rapid-fire, aggresfirst episode of her television show, the Suze sive, but folksy style. One of the more popular segments is “Can I Orman Show. Her subsequent publications inafford it?” For this, Orman accepts telephone calls (and sometimes clude The Road to Wealth: A Comprehensive talks one-on-one to individuals in the studio audience), listens to Guide to Your Money—Everything You Need to the viewers’ financial plans, and usually, with a series of dramatic Know in Good Times and Bad (2001; revised flourishes, gives them bluntly frank advice as to whether or not and updated in 2008); The Laws of Money: Five these plans are feasible and why. She has also tackled sensitive soTimeless Secrets to Get Out and Stay Out of Ficial issues relating to finance, such as the question of the growing nancial Trouble (2003); The Money Book for proportion of women becoming family breadwinners and the imthe Young, Fabulous, and Broke (2005); Women plications of this for families. The Suze Orman Show has won the and Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Gracie Award, an honor given annually by the American Women in Radio and Television (AWRT) for outstanding programs by and reDestiny (2007), with a Spanish-language verlating to women in the broadcast industry, a record-setting six sion published under the title Las mujeres y el times, over the years from 2003 to 2009. dinero: Toma control de su destino; and Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan (2009). Orman has designed special financial-aid kits on CD-ROM that bear her name: Protection Portfolio; FICO Further Reading Kit; Will and Trust Kit; Insurance Kit; Identity Theft Kit; Barrett, William P. “Sizzling Suze.” Forbes (December and Save Yourself Retirement Program. She has also pro28, 1998): 118-120. Very critical of Orman, Barrett duced DVDs and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) raises questions about her credentials and characterspecials of her books. She is an editor and columnist for izes her economic formulas as simplistic. O: The Oprah Magazine and Costco Connection. Grainger, David. “The Suze Orman Show: The Hyperkinetic and Ubiquitous Self-Help Guru Is Brimming Significance with Financial-Planning Heresies. So Is This Woman Orman has been hailed as the foremost personal finanfor Real? You Bet.” Fortune 147, no. 12 (2003): 82cial expert on television and in print. She has a genius for 90. Portrays Orman as a viable phenomenon and a generating publicity and for supporting women in becomneeded, iconoclastic voice ing financially savvy. Orman offers her listeners and readOrman, Suze. The Road to Wealth: A Comprehensive ers knowledgeable, straightforward, and realistic advice Guide to Your Money—Everything You Need to Know about financial matters. Certainly Orman has raised the in Good and Bad Times. New York: Riverhead Books, awareness of personal finance and other economic issues 2008. A thorough compilation of financial advice. among the general public. Her confidence in the economic recovery has proved to be a positive factor in asSee also: Ben Bernanke; Alan Greenspan; Paul Samuelsisting people to cope with the effects of recession. son; George Soros; Joseph Stiglitz. —Raymond Pierre Hylton
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Cynthia Ozick Novelist, scholar, and writer Ozick focuses on Jewishness and Judaism in her written words. Born: April 17, 1928; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Literature; scholarship Early Life Cynthia Ozick (OH-zihk) was born on April 17, 1928, in New York, New York, and grew up in the Bronx. Her parents, Celia Regelson and William Ozick, were Russian immigrants who came from an area comprising primarily Lithuanian Jewish families. At the age of five, Cynthia Ozick began to study in a cheder, a Jewish elementary school where she learned the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language. Ozick was initially turned away from the school because it was not typical for girls to undertake this kind of study. She has suggested that this incident was the beginning of her awareness of feminist concerns. Although Ozick enjoyed growing up in the Bronx, she admitted that it was also difficult to be Jewish
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in her neighborhood. She recalls incidents where stones were thrown at her and she was called anti-Semitic names. Ozick’s parents owned a drugstore, and she was often called upon to help with deliveries of prescriptions. Her father, however, was also a Jewish scholar of sorts, skilled not only in Latin and German but also in Hebrew and the logic of the Talmud. Ozick attended Hunter College High School in Manhattan, a school known for its academic rigor, and later went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from New York University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors in English. Ozick then proceeded to earn a master’s degree from Ohio State University, where she completed a thesis entitled “Parable in the Later Novels of Henry James.” This proved to be a significant project for Ozick, as the work of James would continue to inform much of her own writing throughout her career. In 1952, she married Bernard Hallote, an attorney, and together they returned to New York. Over the next decade, Ozick devoted herself to her writing and finally published her first novel, Trust, in 1966. One year before its publication, Ozick gave birth to her daughter, Rachel, who went on to earn a Ph.D. in Near Eastern studies and directs the Jewish studies program at the State University of New York at Purchase. Ozick’s work has been widely recognized not only in the context of Jewish American writing but also in the broader area of contemporary American literature. Her novel The Puttermesser Papers (1997) was a finalist for the National Book Award and was also listed as one of the Top Ten books of the year by The New York Times Book Review. Along with novels, Ozick has written short fiction, essays, poetry, and plays. Life’s Work Many of Ozick’s earlier novels and essays deal with the issue of high art, and scholars have noted that her work suggests that she feels a connection to the Romantics, who regarded artistic endeavors as simultaneously destructive and enlightening. Consequently, a dominant trope in her writing is the notion of idolatry and the potential for art to become idolatrous. This central focus of her work coincides with her insistence, following literary critic Irving Howe’s famous declaration in 1977 of the impending demise of Jewish American literature, that the genre must return to Jewish religious and liturgical concerns rather than focus solely on Jewishness as a cul-
Jewish Americans tural or ethnic manifestation. The law of antiidolatry is a major concern of Judaism, and Ozick’s attempt to negotiate the space between art and idolatry sets her writing apart from that of other Jewish American writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The defense of human over aesthetic and material concerns that would come to characterize much of Ozick’s fiction was explored famously in 1989, when Ozick published a novella called The Shawl. The novella has become one of the most important works of fiction pertaining to the Holocaust, but, more important, it is Ozick’s exploration of how best to represent the atrocities of this collective tragedy. While in many contexts Ozick has suggested that she is against writing Holocaust fiction, she has also articulated a compelling need to respond to the events of World War II in her work. The Shawl was subsequently produced for the stage in New York City and directed by Sidney Lumet. Some of Ozick’s additional notable works include The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories (1971), Art and Ardor: Essays (1983), The Cannibal Galaxy (1983), The Messiah of Stockholm (1987), Metaphor and Memory: Essays (1989), Fame & Folly (1996), and The Puttermesser Papers. Her essay collection Quarrel and Quandary (2000) won the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. She has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, in addition to winning the O. Henry Award. In 2004, Ozick published Heir to the Glimmering World (published as The Bear Boy in the United Kingdom), a novel in which she returns again to questions of art and idolatry, using some of the traditional elements of the Victorian novel but setting them in the context of 1930’s New York. One of the main characters of the novel, Professor Mitwisser, is a scholar of the Karaites, a sect of Jews who were known for their literalist readings of the Hebrew Bible as well as their rejection of the excesses of interpretation and commentary. The novel’s primary focus is both the necessity and the danger of interpretation. One sees in this novel’s use of Talmudic logic an implicit nod to the Talmudist’s reason that characterized her father, according to Ozick. Much like the tendency of Talmudic passages to defy the possibility of one monolithic interpretation, many of Ozick’s most significant stories depict characters that are torn between one world and another. Rarely in Ozick’s
Ozick, Cynthia
Confronting Art and Judaism It is possible that Cynthia Ozick’s greatest contribution to the field of Jewish American literature has been the ardor with which she has continually addressed the seeming dichotomy of art and Judaism. However, her concerns about whether art and the creative impulse ultimately lead to idolatry accomplish more than simply fleshing out the nuances of the issue. Rather, her work demonstrates the importance of recognizing the tension between the two and deciphering, in the spirit of the great Talmudists, the meaning that resides in this tenuous space. Ozick rejected the assertion of the New Critics that literature need not mean anything and insisted that literature must, in fact, mean something, specifically to the contemporary era. Ozick suggested that literature that means nothing becomes idolatrous—and anti-Jewish—because, like the idol, it leads back only to itself. Ozick’s work is especially important because it asks readers to consider the ethical and philosophical dimensions of the contradictions that characterize any endeavor that calls itself both creative and Jewish.
work do we get a sense of one side winning out over the other. Rather, the point often seems to be that there is something useful, and perhaps even more authentic, about the tension between art and idolatry, history and memory, the sacred and the secular. In 2008, Ozick published Dictation: A Quartet, a collection of four short stories. Significance Ozick is especially important in the context of Jewish American literary studies. While many of her literary contemporaries—Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth—have written fiction that seems to argue on behalf of the merits of Jewish secularism and assimilation into mainstream American culture, Ozick has consistently championed the importance of being a “Jewish” writer and of using her work to address concerns that are specifically Jewish in nature. Her writing is sharp, astute, creative, and often theoretical, and she is also one of the most prolific female writers within the Jewish American literary genre. —Monica Osborne Further Reading Franco, Dean J. “Rereading Cynthia Ozick: Pluralism, Postmodernism, and the Multicultural Encounter.” Contemporary Literature 49, no. 1 (Spring, 2008): 56-84. Revisits the work of Cynthia Ozick and ques869
Ozick, Cynthia tions whether, as most critics of her work have long suggested, her primary focus is the distinction between the Hebraic and the Hellenic. Halkin, Hillel. “What Is Cynthia Ozick About?” Commentary, January, 2005, 49-55. Examines how Ozick’s fiction broke with the dominant trope of assimilation that characterized most Jewish American fiction in the twentieth century. Kauvar, Elaine Mozer. Cynthia Ozick’s Fiction: Tradi-
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Jewish Americans tion and Invention. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Offers a comprehensive look at Ozick’s work in the context of contemporary American literature. Fleshes out the nuances and intricacies of Ozick’s work in a way that is both insightful and readable. See also: Saul Bellow; Judy Blume; Erica Jong; Bernard Malamud; Tillie Olsen; Philip Roth.
P Larry Page Entrepreneur, innovator, and philanthropist Page, together with Sergey Brin, created the popular search engine Google. Born: March 26, 1973; East Lansing, Michigan Also known as: Lawrence Edward Page (full name) Area of achievement: Business Early Life Larry Page was born in East Lansing, Michigan, on March 26, 1973, to Carl and Gloria Page, both brilliant professors at Michigan State University. Larry Page grew up around computers, scientific magazines, and intellectuals. He started playing with computers at age six, and he was the first student in his elementary school to turn in an assignment prepared on a word processor. With an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Page began taking apart computers and questioning his brother, his parents, and their friends from the university about electronics. Page received his primary education at a Montessori school, and he graduated from East Lansing High School. He went on to earn a B.S. in computer engineering at the University of Michigan, graduating with honors. While at Michigan, he was on the solar car team, was president of the national electrical and computer engineering honor society, and built a working inkjet printer out of Legos. Page chose Stanford University to pursue his master’s degree, because of its beautiful campus, its prestige, and its reputation for supporting high-tech entrepreneurs. Life’s Work Page met Sergey Brin, a University of Maryland graduate, at a Stanford University Ph.D. program orientation in 1995. They were sons of high-powered intellectuals, had strong mathematics and computer science backgrounds, and were Jewish, opinionated, and cocksure. They bonded immediately and relished intellectual combat. While working on a research project, Page and Brin became convinced that Internet search could be improved, and they decided to build a company to pursue this, eventually taking leave from Stanford. Using Brin’s interest in data mining and Page’s interest in information
linking, they set out to make Internet search more intuitive and relevant by ranking links between Web pages by their relative importance. Working with the academic concept of measuring topicality and value based on citations in research papers, Page and Brin believed that if you could link one page to another, it was similar to citing that link and the page was given a vote of importance. The more votes a page received, the more relevant the link. This was called the PageRank algorithm. This idea was game changing in Internet search, and it was the root for the company they decided to call Google, a misspelling of “googol,” a mathematical term meaning the number one followed by one hundred zeros. They began gathering dozens of inexpensive computers in their dormitory room, and their method of searching the Internet by relevance proved to be superior to any other Internet search method. This initial version of Google was running on the Stanford University Web site, yet the servers were in their dormitory room and needed to expand. After soliciting funds from friends, family, and even faculty members, the two cobbled together enough money to move their operation into a rented garage in Menlo Park, California. Page and Brin began shopping their company around Silicon Valley and landed a meeting with Sun Microsystems cofounder and Silicon Valley investor Andy Bechtolsheim. Bechtolsheim liked what he saw, and he wrote a $100,000 check to “Google, Inc.,” which did not yet exist. Page and Brin spent two weeks filing paperwork while still holding the $100,000 check, and they decided to make their company name Google. Google grew through mostly a cult following during the “dot-com bubble” of the late 1990’s and survived the bubble burst in 2001, which culminated with the September 11 terrorist attacks. While many high-tech companies failed, Google pressed on with unrivaled growth, and popularity soared. Page and Brin wanted to legitimize the business in the eyes of Wall Street, so the partners hired seasoned software executive Eric Schmidt as chief executive officer to run the daily business while they, named copresidents, worked on innovations. Page and Brin joked that Schmidt was the adult influence in this company filled with youth and exuberance. 871
Paley, Grace It was not until spring, 2004, when Google filed paperwork for its initial public offering of stock, that Wall Street really took notice. There had been rumors that the privately held Google was a strong company, but when the staggeringly large revenue and profit figures were released, Google took yet another giant leap in popularity. The small text advertisements Google served up with its search results surprised Wall Street with their profitability and enormous revenues. Google’s stock first started trading on August 16, 2004, with an unusually high initial public offering price of eighty-five dollars. The initial public offering raised $1.67 billion, making Google a $23 billion company and Page and Brin instant billionaires. Many Google employees also became millionaires. Nevertheless, with the extreme increase in personal wealth, Page remained relatively modest in his personal spending. In 2008, Google’s stock price passed five hundred dollars a share, making it one of the largest companies in history per market capitalization, one of the most successful companies in corporate history, and Page and Brin each worth more than fifteen billion dollars. Page married Lucinda Southworth, a biomedical informatics doctoral student at Stanford, at Richard Branson’s Caribbean property, Necker Island, on December 8, 2007. Significance Page is a mathematician, a brilliant computer scientist, and, with Brin, a pioneer in Internet search, in advertising, and in building one of the most famous companies in the Internet Age. Following the philanthropic lead of
Jewish Americans Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Page has taken an active role in using his considerable wealth and influence to make positive changes throughout the world. The Google founders created Google.org to harness the global power of the Internet and to effect change in the broad areas of poverty, energy, and the environment. — Jonathan E. Dinneen Further Reading Lowe, Janet. Google Speaks: Secrets of the World’s Greatest Billionaire Entrepreneurs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2009. An inside look at the personal and business lives of the Google founders, their business practices, and their philosophies by a best-selling author. Stross, Randall. Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008. A simple, well-written overview of Google and its business. The book explains how Brin and Page started Google while they were students at Stanford and made it their mission to organize all of the world’s information. Vise, David. The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time. New York: Random House, 2005. A detailed account of Google cofounders Page and Brin, focusing on their backgrounds, their motivations, and their personal growth. See also: Sergey Brin; Michael Dell; Larry Ellison; Carl Icahn.
Grace Paley Writer, activist, and feminist Paley advanced the art of fiction by giving voice to marginalized women through the depiction of everyday activities. Focusing on voice and language more than plot, she captured the patterns of speech and the drama of daily life while expanding the form and function of the short story. Born: December 11, 1922; Bronx, New York Died: August 22, 2007; Thetford Hill, Vermont Also known as: Grace Goodside (birth name); Grace Goodside Paley (full name) Areas of achievement: Literature; activism; social issues 872
Early Life Grace Paley (PAY-lee), also known as Grace Goodside, was the daughter of Isaac Gutseit and Manya Ridnyik, who came to the United States in 1906 from Ukraine when they were twenty-one. Both had been exiled by Czar Nicolas II for their political, socialist activities. After receiving amnesty and seeing Isaac’s brother killed in a workers’ demonstration in 1905, they decided to emigrate to New York City, where Gutseit Americanized the name to Goodside. The year they arrived, they had a son and, in two more years, a daughter. Isaac’s mother and two sisters soon joined the household. The whole family worked hard, and in two years Isaac began medical
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Grace Paley. (AP/Wide World Photos)
school. After graduating, he established a practice in the Bronx, where Paley was born, fourteen years after the younger sibling. By the time of her birth, the family’s circumstances were much improved. Paley was adored by her parents and extended family, and she enjoyed more personal freedom than had her older siblings. She grew up a tomboy, hanging out with the boys on the corner. Family life was comfortable even during the Great Depression, and their home was filled with visitors. Neighbors came on Friday nights to listen to music on her father’s Victrola. Immigrant friends and relatives often stayed for extended periods of time while establishing their way in the United States. Paley’s family maintained their socialist inclinations. Talk of politics and personal stories drew adults and children around the family dining table, where everyone contributed to the conversation. While Isaac became an atheist, his mother practiced the Jewish religion, and Paley grew up appreciating her Jewish heritage. As a young girl she was an excellent student, but she lost interest in all but literature as she grew older. She
married Jesse Paley, also of a Jewish immigrant family, when she was nineteen. He was stationed in the Pacific during World War II. After he returned, he worked as freelance photographer, and for most of their married life, they struggled to pay the rent. Life’s Work After starting college and then deciding she would not pursue a degree, Paley enrolled in a poetry course taught by W. H. Auden at the New School for Social Research. She showed him her poetry and followed his advice to use words from her own life. She began writing poetry, but, by her thirties, she found that the short story provided more opportunity for her particular talent with language. A social person, she was always interested in being where the action was. The action for young mothers was in the park, talking while their children were playing. Paley called this participation in local gossip maintaining the oral tradition. These conversations and the neighborhood activities became the inspiration for her stories. Her three collections of short stories, The Little 873
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A New Vision, a New Voice Grace Paley said that, for her, art was a new way of seeing the world. The world she was familiar with spoke to her in a way that prompted her to re-create it artistically in the genre that suited her vision, the short story. To capture her perception of the world, she adapted and invented language, explored themes and concerns outside the dominant culture, and subtly expanded the structure and function of the short story. Fascinated by conversations she heard as a child in her Russian Jewish home and by the expressions of her ethnically diverse neighbors, she recast the rhythms and speech of the people into poetic, streetwise diction, rich in metaphor, humor, and irony. She elevated the concerns of immigrants, usually women—love, children, sick friends, and community life—and made them proper topics of literature. Approaching literature with an optimism about the ways ordinary people can effect positive change in their lives, she expanded the confines of plot to accommodate not only the inevitable resolution but also hope for the future. Her stories contributed a hopeful voice to the literary canon.
Disturbances of Man: Women and Men at Love (1959), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974), and Later the Same Day (1985), all later published as Collected Stories (1994), represent her best work. Paley’s life and work became an intricate interweaving of family, community life, and art. As she worked in and for the community, her social activism grew. Community interests came to encompass the whole country and government policy. Her politics first centered on what she identified as women’s concerns—peace, family, and community life—and then became more global, particularly in response to the Vietnam War. During the 1960’s, she founded the Greenwich Village Peace Center. By the mid-1960’s, she had also become a feminist. In 1965, she began teaching writing at Columbia University. As she became more active politically and more connected with feminist viewpoints, she and her husband grew apart, divorcing in 1967. In 1972, she married Bob Nichols, a landscape architect and writer, who shared her commitment to social and political action. In the next decades, she traveled to Vietnam, the Soviet Union, Central America, and the Middle East, representing various organizations and promoting peace. She described these and other experiences in a collection of essays, Just as I Thought, published in 1998. Throughout years of political activism, Paley wrote stories that captured, with humor, irony, and linguistic invention, the expressions and circumstances of the di874
verse mix of her New York City neighborhood. Her intention in them was to present the voice and sensibility of the people she encountered. She also became a valued mentor and teacher in both formal and informal situations. While she taught at various places, she spent the last two decades of her life teaching at Sarah Lawrence College in Vermont. She won many awards for her work, including the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction in 1985. She was honored as the first winner of the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit and as the first New York State Author in 1986. Paley died of breast cancer at the age of eightyfour.
Significance Paley demonstrated in her life and in her stories the significance of daily life. From her youth, she experienced the value of speaking out and of working for community. Adept at listening to, observing, and capturing artistically the people around her, she created stories that gave voice to to lives theretofore unheard. She described her work as restorative and compared herself to a regional artist, asserting that she restored to the culture the overlooked lives of people in her ethnic New York neighborhood. Usually these were women absorbed in the concerns of daily life—relationships, children, community preservation. To reflect these lives artistically, she adapted and expanded the short story, the genre most suited to her snapshots of life. Focusing more on voice than on plot and creating a plot resolution that accommodated change, she reinvented, to some extent, the shortstory form, enabling it to provide for her characters the freedom to hope and to change. She was a community activist who saw that sometimes individuals and groups can effect change, an optimistic view that she promotes in her work. —Bernadette Flynn Low Further Reading Arcana, Judy. Grace Paley’s Life Stories: A Literary Biography. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. A close look at Paley’s life and art, based on years of interviews with Paley and her family, friends, and colleagues, and a close analysis of her work. Harrell Clark, La Verne. “A Matter of Voice: Grace Paley and the Oral Tradition.” Women and Language 23, no. 1 (2000): 18. An exploration of narrative technique in Paley’s fiction.
Jewish Americans Isaacs, Neil D. Grace Paley: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1990. A thorough study of Paley’s fiction, including responses of critics and Paley’s own assessment of her goals and techniques. Ruben, Rachel. “Tender Impiety: Grace Paley 19222007.” The Women’s Review of Books 26, no. 3 (May/ June, 2008): 30. This obituary reflects on the personality and character of Paley and provides an overview of her writing, social activism, teaching, and mentoring.
Paley, William S. Taylor, Jacqueline. Grace Paley: Illuminating the Dark Lives. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. Close analysis of Paley’s artistic technique, especially the ways she captures voice through invention, dialogue, and point of view. See also: Nora Ephron; Erica Jong; Tillie Olsen; Cynthia Ozick; Susan Sontag.
William S. Paley Business executive In the 1930’s, Paley built the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) on the foundation of news and entertainment programming. Born: September 28, 1901; Chicago, Illinois Died: October 26, 1990; New York, New York Also known as: William Samuel Paley (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life William Paley (PAY-lee) was born in Chicago to parents who were immigrants from a village near Kiev in Ukraine. His father, Sam, made cigars. When Paley was four years old, the family moved to Detroit, but they returned to Chicago in 1909. The Paleys also had a daughter named Blanche. Paley was a quiet boy who was not successful in elementary school, but he admired the resourceful heroes of Horatio Alger’s novels. Paley adopted the middle initial “S” at the age of twelve; it is assumed that it acknowledged his father’s name. Paley attended Carl Schurz High School for two years and then the Western Military Academy, where he did well and qualified to enter the University of Chicago at the age of seventeen, but he left college after a year. Paley expressed no particular interest in his religion, but, aware of and sensitive to anti-Semitism, he tended to associate mainly with other Jews, especially at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1922. A few years later, he became fascinated by radio. His cigar-making father sponsored a half hour program for a group of radio stations called United Independent Broadcasters (UIB) in 1925, and Paley, who had little interest in the cigar business, produced the show. He persuaded his father to use family funds to enable him to purchase UIB.
Life’s Work Paley, the new owner of UIB, increased the number of stations, and by 1929 he was president of a network of forty-nine stations, which he renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS).The network was in competition with the National Broadcasting Company (NBC),
Establishing an Outstanding News Organization The achievements of Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) News are in many respects those of its founder William Paley’s excellent administrators and outstanding reporters. Supreme among these was Edward R. Murrow, whom Paley hired in 1935. The reporters who brought World War II home to radio listeners included Charles Collingwood, Eric Sevareid, and Howard K. Smith. Walter Cronkite later gained great stature in this arena. Paley did not interfere with the reporters unless he saw them damaging the reputation for fairness that he strove to maintain. Paley stood behind Murrow during and after the famous See It Now broadcast in 1954, when he exposed Senator Joseph McCarthy’s weaknesses and urged opponents of McCarthy’s methods in exposing people he considered to be subversives to stop fearing him and act like responsible citizens. Murrow did run afoul of Paley’s fairness doctrine in 1958, when Murrow commented on the handling of possible statehood for Alaska and Hawaii. Paley provided opportunity for a negative response, which Murrow considered a disparagement of his own strong sense of fairness. Paley cut support for the news staff in his later years, when his effectiveness was declining, the older networks faced competition from cable news, and commercial interests were gaining economic power.
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William S. Paley. (AP/Wide World Photos)
which had begun operations four years earlier. The early 1930’s saw the beginning of broadcast ratings, and for a few years NBC held the lead, but Paley adroitly hired several assistants who helped the network to gain strength. One of them, Edward Klauber, impressed upon Paley the necessity of fairness in broadcasting, a lesson that would prove especially important in relation to CBS’s news coverage. CBS responded early to listeners’ demand for news. In 1933, the network offered three daily newscasts. Newspaper publishers objected and won limits on radio broadcasting from Congress, but CBS rebounded, particularly after 1935, when Paley hired Edward R. Murrow, one of the few employees who also became a personal friend. Murrow hired outstanding reporters who, like Murrow, gained fame with their coverage of World War II. Paley also contributed to the war effort by working for the Office of War Information with the rank of colonel. 876
Jewish Americans Paley’s interest in programming included a keen appreciation of entertainment programs, and he was both generous to first-rate talent and willing to take risks. When he heard Bing Crosby’s singing voice, Paley immediately sought and obtained the crooner’s services, although some of Paley’s associates warned him that the singer was not always reliable. In the early years of CBS, Paley also obtained the services of comedians Jack Benny, George Burns, and Gracie Allen, although they later gravitated to NBC. The two networks continued to attract each other’s stars, and CBS won the ratings battle in 1936 by luring such performers as Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson from NBC. Paley’s handsomeness and congeniality assisted him in recruiting performers and enticing advertisers. These attributes also made him a favorite with attractive women. He married one of them, the socially prominent Dorothy Hart, in 1932, and they adopted two children. His interest in other women and the fact that he devoted himself so thoroughly to his work brought about their divorce in 1947. Soon thereafter he married another socialite, Barbara Cushing; with her he became the father of two more children. The contest with NBC heated up in 1948, when Paley signed Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, the enormously successful performers in Amos ’n’ Andy; Jack Benny; and other media stars. Paley’s concern about fairness and good taste led to conflicts within the network, and so did his tendency toward neutrality, since newscasters who worked for him wished to express their own strong opinions. Paley gave Senator Joseph R. McCarthy an opportunity to respond to Murrow’s 1954 program analyzing the senator’s tactics in his assault on the communistic influences that McCarthy thought were endangering Americans. In 1961, Paley fired Howard K. Smith for what Paley regarded as the severity of his report on racial conflicts in Birmingham, Alabama. At first Paley resisted Norman Lear’s situation comedy All in the Family as too coarse and bigoted for CBS, but Paley’s capacious sense of taste led him to back its production in 1971. Thereafter, he was happy that he had done so. Paley had no knowledge of technology or interest in it, but he understood the importance of employing people who did. Thus the CBS version of color television won
Jewish Americans out over that of NBC, although its leader, David Sarnoff, was more astute in technology. Except for a three-year period in the 1980’s, Paley remained chief executive officer of CBS until his death in 1990 from kidney failure. Significance The career of Paley demonstrates the possibilities and the difficulties inherent in maintaining high standards in a public medium. He strove to make CBS popular with millions of listeners and viewers without compromising his quest for quality programming. The network’s development of an outstanding news department in the 1930’s, with brilliant reporting of World War II and of political and racial news in the quarter century after the war, illustrates his success. Ironically, his ability to attract advertisers, whom he strove to keep from controlling programming, unleashed the forces that eventually impaired news coverage. Eventually the network was charged with blurring the distinction between news and entertainment, and the CBS News staff declined in quality. Although little interested in Judaism, Paley always deplored prejudice against Jews, which he experienced even as a wellknown businessman. He contributed generously to Jewish causes and funded the construction of a modern art center in Jerusalem. —Robert P. Ellis
Parker, Dorothy Further Reading Paley, William S. As It Happened: A Memoir. New York: Doubleday, 1979. Paley’s recollections of employing such people as Will Rogers and Crosby in the early years of CBS and Paley’s work with Edward R. Murrow during World War II are highlights of this book. His accounts of later events are more routine. Paper, Lewis J. Empire: William S. Paley and the Making of CBS. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. A general reader’s biography that illuminates the way Paley’s taste generated the programming of CBS, which was disposed more favorably to entertainment than that of NBC. Smith, Sally Bedell. In All His Glory: The Life of William S. Paley. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990. A long, well-researched, and judgmental biography by a media journalist. Thomas, Dana Lee. The Media Moguls: From Joseph Pulitzer to William S. Paley. New York: Putnam, 1981. Paley is viewed in relation to a line of media giants stretching back to nineteenth century newspapers. See also: Walter Annenberg; Barry Diller; Michael Eisner; Sumner Redstone; Warner brothers.
Dorothy Parker Poet and playwright Parker’s verbal wit and her satirical reviews, essays, poems, plays, and short stories expressed the cynicism of the postwar generation and her contempt for pretense, hypocrisy, and sentimentality. Born: August 22, 1893; West End, New Jersey Died: June 7, 1967; New York, New York Also known as: Dorothy Parker Campbell; Dot; Dorothy Rothschild (birth name) Areas of achievement: Literature; theater; journalism Early Life Dorothy Parker was born Dorothy Rothschild in West End, New Jersey, on August 22, 1893. She was the fourth child of Henry Rothschild, a prosperous Jewish clothing manufacturer, and Eliza A. Marston, a Protestant. When Parker was five, her mother died. Two years later, her fa-
ther married Eleanor Frances Lewis, a retired teacher, who was also a Protestant. It was her first marriage. Parker’s older siblings disliked their stepmother, and Parker hated her so much that she wished for her stepmother’s death. In April, 1903, after just three years married to Parker’s father, the stepmother died suddenly, leaving Parker with a lifelong conviction that somehow she was at fault not only for her stepmother’s death but also for that of her mother. Parker and her older sister were sent to Blessed Sacrament Academy, one of the most respected schools in New York City. However, Parker’s consistently bad behavior resulted in her being expelled. At fourteen, Parker was placed in an exclusive boarding school, Miss Dana’s, located in Morristown, New Jersey. However, for some reason Parker stopped attending classes in the spring, and she did not return to Miss Dana’s the following fall. In fact, Parker never did graduate from high 877
Parker, Dorothy school. Fortunately, as she often pointed out, she was a voracious reader. Though later Parker would portray herself as a pitiful orphan and the child of a heartless father, after the stepmother’s death the Rothschild household was not an unhappy place. Even after her two high-spirited brothers had left home, Parker could live vicariously through her glamorous sister, Helen, who was going to one social event after another. Parker also had the family dogs to amuse her. Light verses about the dogs written by her father suggest that Parker inherited her wit and her poetic talent from him. However, after Helen married and left home, the atmosphere changed. Retired and in declining health, Rothschild chose to live quietly, with Parker as his only companion. In 1913, he died, evidently leaving less to his children than they had expected. Parker found employment playing the piano at a dance school and began submitting her light verse to newspapers. With the sale of her poem “Any Porch” to Vanity Fair, Parker was launched on her career as a professional writer.
Dorothy Parker. (Library of Congress)
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Jewish Americans Life’s Work In 1915, Parker was hired by Vogue as a copywriter. During the summer of 1916, she met a handsome stockbroker from Hartford, Connecticut, Edwin Pond Parker II, and the two fell in love. When he took Parker to meet his family, it was clear that they disapproved of her background. In June, 1917, Parker and Edwin were married in a private Protestant ceremony, and almost immediately Edwin left for military service as an ambulance driver. Unfortunately, he returned home an alcoholic, and the marriage failed, though Parker did not divorce him until 1928. In the fall of 1917, Parker was transferred to Vanity Fair, where she soon succeeded the writer P. G. Wodehouse as drama critic. Parker’s devastating critiques made her the darling of readers and established her reputation as a wit. However, they aroused such enmity among powerful producers and actors that in January, 1920, she was fired. Her friend, Robert Benchley, who was managing editor, resigned in protest. Meanwhile, both Parker and Benchley had become charter members of a luncheon group that met at the Algonquin Hotel. It had been organized by Alexander Woollcott, The New York Times drama critic, and included as many as thirty critics, editors, novelists, poets, and playwrights. Some of Parker’s most memorable witticisms were uttered at the Algonquin Round Table. It was at the Algonquin that Parker met Charles Gordon MacArthur, who also was in an unhappy marriage. Their affair resulted in Parker’s becoming pregnant. Though she had always wanted to have a child, it was evident that MacArthur was losing interest in her, and she saw no alternative but to have an abortion. In January, 1923, Parker made her first attempt to commit suicide; she would make another attempt just two years later. While Parker’s first publications were verse, reviews, and essays, in 1922 Parker and Benchley collaborated on “Nero,” a sketch included in the revue The ’49ers. During her career, Parker also wrote lyrics for musicals, such as the award-winning Candide (1958). In 1949, The Coast of Illyria, a play written by Parker and Ross Evans about the British essayist Charles Lamb, had a threeweek run in Dallas. In 1934, Parker married Alan Campbell, a bisexual actor-writer, and they collaborated on more than twenty screenplays, including A Star Is Born (1937). In 1947, Parker divorced Campbell, but they were remarried in 1950, and the marriage lasted until his death in 1963. Some of Parker’s best journalistic efforts were the re-
Jewish Americans views she wrote for The New Yorker under the title of “Constant Reader.” However, she is best known for three volumes of verse, Enough Rope (1926), Sunset Gun (1928), and Death and Taxes (1931), and for her short fiction, much of which first appeared in The New Yorker. Her stories were collected in two volumes, Lament for the Living (1930) and After Such Pleasures (1932). During the last fifteen years of her life, Parker’s alcoholism, along with a number of serious ailments, made it difficult for her to write. On June 7, 1967, Parker died of a heart attack in her suite at the Volney Hotel in Manhattan. Significance Parker’s verbal witticisms are quoted frequently and have become a part of American pop culture references. However, her short stories increasingly are being recognized as more than just satires of a vanished society; on reexamination, their themes still resonate, especially in regard to what is expected of women. Above all, Parker is admired for the courage that enabled her to speak her mind, whether she was under investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, under attack by supposed friends, or under the psychological torture of the demons that had haunted her since childhood. —Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman Further Reading Day, Barry, ed. Dorothy Parker: In Her Own Words. London: Taylor, 2004. Parker’s comments are organized topically, with chapters on such diverse subjects as “Dogs,” “Politics,” and “Suicide.” Illustrated. Index. Kinney, Arthur F. Dorothy Parker, Revised. New York: Twayne, 1998. The first complete critical study of Parker’s work. Illustrated. Includes chronology, extensive notes, bibliography, and index. Meade, Marion. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2004. Focuses on four American women, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zelda Fitzgerald,
Parker, Dorothy
Parker and Gender Roles In both her poetry and her short fiction, Dorothy Parker explored the problems faced by the women of the early twentieth century. Most of the personae in Parker’s verse are either lonely women yearning for love or bitter women dealing with betrayal by a husband or a lover. Their unhappiness is associated with their inability to achieve a satisfying relationship. In her short fiction, Parker looks at gender roles in more detail. Sometimes she exposes the narcissistic nature of pampered upper-class women who have taken advantage of their status. In other stories, such as her awardwinning “Big Blonde,” she writes sympathetically about a woman attempting to fulfill her traditional role. Hazel Morse’s husband Herbie wants her always to be a good sport, and because periodically she dissolves in tears, he walks out on her, leaving her to drown her sorrows in alcohol. Every man Hazel meets turns out to be another Herbie: If a woman cannot be the life of the party, he does not want to be around her. The tragic story of Hazel illustrates Parker’s disillusion over accepted gender roles: All of her stories make the point that any woman who allows a man to assign her a role in life will lose herself.
Edna Ferber, and Dorothy Parker. Illustrated. Lists of works, bibliographical references, and notes. _______. Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? New York: Villard, 1988. A lively, detailed biography of Parker. Illustrations, bibliography, and complete index. Parker, Dorothy. The Portable Dorothy Parker. 2d rev. ed. Edited and with an introduction by Marion Meade. New York: Penguin, 2006. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition includes new materials, along with the 1956 Paris Review interview. Bibliography and index. Pettit, Rhonda S. A. A Gendered Collision: Sentimentalism and Modernism in Dorothy Parker’s Poetry and Fiction. Rutherford, N. J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000. A feminist view of Parker’s work, relating it to the major literary trends of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See also: Nora Ephron; Edna Ferber; Lillian Hellman; George S. Kaufman; David Mamet; S. J. Perelman; Ayn Rand.
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Jewish Americans
Sarah Jessica Parker Actor and fashion designer Parker began acting in television, films, and theater at the age of eight. Her visibility soared when she played the role of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, a popular series that presented a distinctly female perspective on relationships, sex, aging, and fashion. Born: March 25, 1965; Nelsonville, Ohio Also known as: SJP Areas of achievement: Entertainment; fashion Early Life Sarah Jessica Parker was born March 25, 1965, in Nelsonville, Ohio. Her parents, Barbara and Stephen, had three older children. Parker’s father had grown up in a Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn. His grandfather had emigrated from Eastern Europe to America. Reportedly,
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the family name was changed from Bar-Kahn to Parker at Ellis Island. An immigration official misunderstood the last name as Parken, which, in sloppy handwriting, became Parker. Stephen’s grandfather, happy and successful in New York, proudly adopted the new name. Parker never received official religious education, but she strongly identifies with Jewish culture. Her family has always had a Christmas tree as a holiday tradition, not as a religious symbol. Barbara and Stephen divorced when Parker was young. Her mother married Paul Forste when Parker was three years old. Barbara and Paul had four more children and often struggled to make ends meet. Parker remembers being on welfare, occasionally not having electricity or telephone service, and years without birthday or Christmas presents. Parker and her sisters each got two pairs of shoes a year. Their mother shopped at thrift and outlet stores, sometimes buying the girls’ dresses for as little as ninety-nine cents. Parker studied ballet and singing from a young age. Her first professional acting job was at age eight in a television special. Soon after, in 1976, she was cast in The Innocents (1950) on Broadway. The family moved to Roosevelt Island, between Manhattan and Queens, to help the children’s theater careers. It was a low-income community, formerly known as Welfare Island. Parker remembers distinctions being made among the resident families: those receiving more government subsidies had the less-desirable homes. Because they lived next to the parking lot, everyone knew her family’s poor situation. The money that Parker and her siblings made went to paying the family’s bills. Parker and four of her siblings toured nationwide in a production of The Sound of Music (1959). She also performed on Broadway in Annie (1977) from 1977 to 1980, playing the lead role for the last year. Parker made her film debut in 1979’s Rich Kids. In 1982, she costarred in the short-lived television series Square Pegs. Life’s Work After graduating from high school, Parker stayed in Hollywood to pursue her acting career. In 1984, she costarred in Footloose with Kevin Bacon, Chris Penn, and John Lithgow. Parker starred in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, a 1985 teen film with Helen Hunt. Through the rest of the 1980’s, Parker was in several television shows, television films, and major motion pictures. Among these was the miniseries, followed by a televi-
Jewish Americans sion series, A Year in the Life. In 1984, she began dating Robert Downey, Jr. The pair split seven years later. In 1991, she was in the romantic comedy L.A. Story with Steve Martin. Parker’s career began taking off: She appeared in Honeymoon in Vegas (1992) with Nicolas Cage, Hocus Pocus (1993), Ed Wood (1994), and several other films and television shows. During the early and mid1990’s, she dated singer Joshua Kadison and John F. Kennedy, Jr. Parker also continued to work in the theater, both on and Off-Broadway. Parker was introduced to actor Matthew Broderick by one of her brothers, who had acted with him on stage. Broderick and Parker both appeared in Broadway’s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961). The couple married on May 19, 1997, in a nonreligious ceremony in a historic synagogue in Manhattan, and they moved to a brownstone in Greenwich Village. On October 28, 2002, Parker gave birth to their son, James Wilkie Broderick, named after Broderick’s father, James, and writer Wilkie Collins. Parker’s best-known role is Carrie Bradshaw in Home Box Office’s Sex and the City (1998-2004). The show followed the lives of Carrie and her three best friends: professional women in their thirties living in New York City. Sex and the City was popular and made Parker a household name. Her work on the show won her four Golden Globes, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Emmy Awards. Parker was the only one of the show’s four lead actors who never appeared naked, because of a strict no-nudity clause in her contract. Her role as Carrie transformed Parker into a fashion icon. While Parker was never a party girl, she shares with Carrie a love of shoes. Shoes are one of the few items on which Parker splurges. Otherwise, she is conservative with her money. In 2005, Parker released her first perfume, Lovely. A second, Covet, was released two years later. That same year, Parker launched a clothing and accessories line that was available only at Steve and Barry’s. Everything in her “Bitten” line sold for less than twenty dollars. She created several other perfumes: Covet Pure Bloom, Dawn, Endless, Twilight, and SJP NYC, which was inspired by Carrie and Parker’s love of New York. Parker returned to the big screen in 2005, with a number of semisuccessful films. However, Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010) were box-office hits. Parker has also hosted Shalom Sesame (the Israeli Sesame Street), read Jewish folktales for National
Parker, Sarah Jessica
SEX AND THE CITY When Sex and the City debuted on Home Box Office (HBO) in 1998, no one could have predicted the success and cultural influence it would have. Sarah Jessica Parker’s character, Carrie Bradshaw, who writes a weekly column for a New York newspaper, is looking for love, is obsessed with shoes, and is everyone’s best friend. Her three friends—Samantha (owner of a successful public relations business, oldest of the group and most sexually experienced), Miranda (career-focused lawyer and mother), and Charlotte (optimistic, the true romantic)— complete the ensemble. The franchise follows their many relationships with men, their struggles with their careers, and their strong friendship. Fans are passionate about the show and often strongly identify with one of the four women. Some feminists praise the show for its frank discussion of relationships, sex, and sexuality from a female perspective, although some critics blame the series for a decline in the morals of a generation of young women influenced by the characters’ sexual freedom. The series also made fashion designers and brands such as Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, Chanel, Fendi, Dolce and Gabbana, Prada, and Christian Louboutin household names. Carrie and company continue to empower women with the belief that they can have it all: great friends, a healthy romance, successful career, and fabulous shoes.
Public Radio (NPR), and narrated a documentary on the Hasidic community. On June 22, 2009, a surrogate delivered Parker and Broderick’s twin daughters, Marion and Tabitha. Significance Parker is best known for her role as Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City. However, Parker has also had a successful career in theater and in fashion design. Despite her acting ability, Parker has been rejected for film roles because executives believed that she was too Jewish looking. While Parker’s success has helped expand the media’s limited definition of beauty, it has not redefined it. Parker’s strict no-nudity clause makes her a good role model for young girls and women, because she feels that it is possible to be an actor without baring all. Parker became a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 1997. Over the years, she has participated in many of the organization’s campaigns, including its annual Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF program, the lighting of the UNICEF Snowflake, and designing a limited-edition T-shirt for the tsunami relief fund. She traveled to Liberia in 2006 as a celebrity ambassador. Parker is also a member of Holly881
Patinkin, Mandy wood’s Women’s Political Committee and of the Innocence Project’s actors’ committee. Above it all, Parker considers herself a working mother. —Jennifer L. Campbell Further Reading Fabrikant, Geraldine. “Talking Money with Sarah Jessica Parker.” The New York Times, July 30, 2000. An indepth discussion about finances with Parker, with a focus on her childhood on welfare and its effect on her spending habits as a millionaire. Pogrebin, Abigail. “Sarah Jessica Parker.” In Stars of David. New York: Random House, 2007. A discussion with Parker about being Jewish and what role it
Jewish Americans plays in her life and career. Includes several stories told to the author by Parker. Shapiro, Marc. Sarah Jessica Parker. Toronto, Ont.: ECW Press, 2001. A biography of Parker, from her childhood to her success on Broadway and her rise to a Hollywood star. Sohn, Amy. Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell. Rev. ed. New York: Pocket Books, 2004. A companion book to the hit television series, covering all six seasons. Includes interviews with the cast, hundreds of color pictures, fashion details, and behind-the-scenes information. See also: Matthew Broderick; Fran Drescher; Goldie Hawn.
Mandy Patinkin Actor, singer, and entertainer With his intense acting style and his two-octave vocal range, Patinkin has created a host of memorable characters on stage, in film, and on television. Born: November 30, 1952; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: Mandel Bruce Patinkin (full name) Areas of achievement: Theater; music; entertainment Early Life Mandy Patinkin (MAN-dee pah-TIHN-kihn) was born Mandel Patinkin, the son of Lester Patinkin, owner of a scrap-metal business, and Doris Sinton, homemaker. Mandy Patinkin has one sibling, a sister. Patinkin was named for his grandfather, Manachem Mandel, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, who started the family scrapmetal business in 1900 with a pushcart. Raised in a conservative Jewish tradition, Patinkin went to Hebrew school five days a week. At age nine he began singing in the choir at the Congregation Rodfei Zedek. In an interview for People magazine in 1989, he said singing was how he got attention. His Bar Mitzvah gift was a trip to New York City with his father. They saw two Broadway shows, and, once home, Patinkin memorized all the songs and sang them repeatedly. When he was fourteen, his mother suggested he join the local branch of the Young Men’s Jewish Council. Although Patinkin was reluctant initially, he became involved with the group by being in a play, which he enjoyed. Following his parents’ advice, he enrolled at the 882
Mandy Patinkin. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Jewish Americans University of Kansas to study liberal arts. After two years, in 1972, he followed his heart to the Juilliard School in New York City to study drama. He left Juilliard in 1974 without a degree, spent time traveling in Europe, and returned to New York to look for work as an actor. He found work in Off-Broadway and regional productions, playing bit parts, beginning to build a resumé. One of those roles was in 1975, in Arthur Wing Pinero’s play Trelawny of the “Wells” (1898), part of Joseph Papps’s New York Shakespeare Festival. This role was Patinkin’s debut for the festival, and he appeared in a number of festival productions in the next few years, developing his skills. In Split (1978), a play by Michael Weller, he met fellow cast member Kathryn Grody; they married in 1980 and had two sons.
Patinkin, Mandy
The Role of Che Guevara Mandy Patinkin had resisted acting in musicals, but he tried out on a whim for the part of Che Guevara in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita (1978). The musical about the beloved first lady of Argentina, who died in 1952, had been a smash hit in London, and the company was casting for a Broadway opening. Patinkin was between jobs, and so he auditioned. Wearing jeans and a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, Patinkin had no idea for which part he was being considered. Both his singing and his acting abilities gained him the role of Che Guevara. The character of Che serves as a Greek chorus, commenting on the action. In reality, Che Guevara and Evita Peron had never met. In Evita, there is no spoken dialogue, only songs and recitatives. In 1975, Patinkin had gone “once or twice” for lessons to voice teacher Andy Thomas Anselmo. Once Patinkin got the part, he resumed lessons. When Evita opened on Broadway in September, 1979, Patinkin’s “robust” portrayal of Che resulted in his winning a Tony Award in 1980 for outstanding featured actor in a musical.
Life’s Work When Split closed, his agent suggested Patinkin try out for the role of Che Guevara in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Evita (1978), then playing in London and scheduled to premiere in New York. Patinkin auditioned and, much to his surprise, got the part. The show opened on Broadway in September, 1979, and Patinkin won a Tony Award for best actor in a musical. When Evita closed, Patinkin was cast as Hotspur in the Shakespeare in the Park production of Henry IV, Part I (1597-1598) in 1981. Success on the stage led to success in film. In Ragtime (1981), based on the E. L. Doctorow novel from 1975, he played Tateh, a struggling Jewish immigrant who becomes a Hollywood film mogul. The film did not do well, but Patinkin’s work was reviewed favorably and caught the attention of Barbra Streisand, who was working on developing a film based on a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Patinkin did not like the characterization being developed for Avigdor, the male lead, and he made a number of suggestions about the role to Streisand. Again, the film, Yentl (1983), was not a major success, but Patinkin’s performance was praised. In 1983, he starred in Daniel, adapted from the Doctorow novel The Book of Daniel (1971), about the lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of being spies and executed in 1953. Patinkin’s portrayal of Julius Rosenberg was described by Variety as “superb.” In 1984, Patinkin was back on Broadway, starring in Steven Sondheim’s musical Sunday in the Park with George. Sondheim originally wrote the part of the French pointillist artist Georges Seurat for a baritone, but after
hearing Patinkin sing one of the songs from the show, Sondheim adjusted the music for Patinkin’s voice. To prepare for the role, Patinkin studied the work of Seurat by taking classes at the Art Students League, reading, and watching documentaries. The Seurat painting the musical focuses on is A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte, a giant canvas that hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. Patinkin flew to Chicago twice to study it, and his portrayal of Seurat earned rave reviews and a Tony Award nomination. His next role was to be a costar in the film Heartburn (1986), but difficulties with the director, Mike Nichols, over how the role was to be played resulted in Patinkin being fired. He was labeled “difficult” and was not offered any roles for a year. However, his career resumed with three choice roles: a Spanish swordsman in The Princess Bride (1987), a U.S. senator in The House on Carroll Street (1988), and the humanoid partner of a human policeman in Alien Nation (1988). His performances were acclaimed critically. In addition to acting in nonsinging parts, Patinkin recorded his first solo album, Mandy Patinkin (1989), and in 1989 he received rave reviews for his solo show, Mandy Patinkin in Concert, which he presented six times to benefit the Shakespeare in the Park series and victims of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). In 1994, Patinkin starred on television, playing the role of Dr. Jeffrey Geiger, a brilliant, yet quirky, thoracic surgeon, in David Kelley’s medical drama Chicago 883
Patinkin, Mandy Hope. Patinkin won an Emmy Award in 1995 for the role, but he left the show 1996, unhappy with the long separation from his family that filming entailed. He returned to Chicago Hope in 1998, playing the same role, and in 1999 he won another Emmy Award as outstanding guest actor in a drama series. Patinkin appeared as Quasimodo in the made-for-television film The Hunchback (1997) and recorded three albums. One of the albums, Mamaloshen (1998), meaning mother tongue, was recorded in Yiddish. Patinkin learned the language not only for the album but also for personal enrichment. His portrayal of Archibald Craven in the musical The Secret Garden (1991) earned a Tony Award nomination. Patinkin also starred in various films, including a Muppet film, The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (1999), and a Showtime drama, Strange Justice (1999), based on the investigation involving Anita Hill, who claimed she was harassed sexually by Clarence Thomas, then a nominee for the Supreme Court. During the 2000’s, Patinkin starred in Shakespeare in the Park’s The Wild Party (2000). He has continued to act on stage and in film and also has presented his one-man concert. In September, 2005, he introduced the character of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) profiler Jason Gideon in the television drama Criminal Minds, on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Unexpectedly, he left the hit show at the beginning of the third season. Throughout his career Patinkin has been active in various Jewish causes and cultural activities. He wrote the introductions for two books on Jewish culture, one of which was a holiday cookbook written by his mother.
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Jewish Americans Significance Patinkin is an accomplished actor and singer who continually works to perfect his skills. With his unique tenor voice, Patinkin has starred in musicals and sold-out concerts. His recordings have become best sellers. In the theater and on film, he has tackled a variety of roles, never becoming typecast. Patinkin has starred in two critically acclaimed television shows, making the characters of Geiger and Gideon distinctly his own. — Marcia B. Dinneen Further Reading Blum, David. “Grabbing a Bite with Mandy Patinkin.” The New York Times, January 18, 1995: C1. Biographical information, with particular focus on Chicago Hope. Holden, Stephen. “On Stage and Off, the Many Voices of Mandy Patinkin.” The New York Times, March 19, 1989, p. A38. Discusses Patinkin’s skills as a singer, his perfectionism, and his sensitivity as an actor. Reviews his Dress Casual concert. Rothstein, Mervyn. “Back Onstage, Grappling with a Classic Storm.” The New York Times, September 14, 2008, p. AR6. A look back at Patinkin’s career, particularly his roles for Shakespeare in the Park. Stark, John. “Actor Mandy Patinkin Battles His Perfectionist Tendencies.” People Weekly, May 8, 1989: 145-148. Includes biographical information as well as information on Patinkin’s “high-wire emoting.” See also: Matthew Broderick; Neil Diamond; Billy Joel; Bette Midler; Stephen Sondheim; Barbra Streisand.
Jewish Americans
Pearl, Daniel
Daniel Pearl Journalist A Wall Street Journal investigative reporter who covered such notable events as the war in the Balkans and Kosovo, Pearl was abducted by a Pakistani militant group in 2002 and beheaded. Born: October 10, 1963; Princeton, New Jersey Died: February 1, 2002; Karachi, Pakistan Also known as: Danny Pearl Area of achievement: Journalism Early Life Daniel Pearl (purl) was born in Princeton, New Jersey, to Judea and Ruth Pearl. Judea is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles; Ruth is of Iraqi Jewish heritage. In 1966, three years after their son’s birth, the family moved to California. Daniel Pearl grew up with a love of music, academics, and soccer, but music struck a powerful chord with him. He had his first violin lesson in 1970, and after that he learned to play other instruments, including the electric violin, fiddle, and mandolin. Pearl displayed his musical virtuosity throughout his life, writing songs and performing. As a student at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California, Pearl excelled in his schoolwork. He received an exceptionally high score on the English portion of the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT), ranking fifteenth in the country, and he was a National Merit Scholar. As a student at Stanford University and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, Pearl cultivated his budding journalistic skills. He showcased his talents by cofounding Stanford Commentary, a student newspaper that explored controversial issues. While his campus newspaper was short-lived, Pearl’s talent was not. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in communications, Pearl obtained a job working for the North Adams Transcript, a Massachusetts newspaper. Life’s Work After working at a string of different newspapers, Pearl began building a career at The Wall Street Journal in 1990. His first job was working in its Atlanta bureau, but Pearl quickly moved through the ranks. After a short time he
was transferred to the Washington bureau and then to the London bureau. While working in London, Pearl began covering foreign affairs as a Middle East correspondent and, within time, made his way from London to Paris. During the time Pearl was working as a foreign correspondent, he met Mariane Van Neyenhoff. They were married in 1999, just a year after they were introduced. Pearl was appointed chief of The Wall Street Journal’s South African bureau in Bombay, India, in 2000. His talent for writing on foreign affairs was brilliant at this time. He wrote everything from soft pieces that highlighted other cultures to investigative articles about war and its devastation. Among his prominent successes were articles written in late 1999 about the war in Kosovo, in which he quelled rumors that genocide was rampant. It was in Bombay that Pearl began writing about terrorism, a topic that would lead to his demise. On January 23, 2002, while pursuing an interview with the spiritual leader Sheik Gilani, Pearl was kidnapped by a Pakistani
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Penn, Arthur militant group in the city of Karachi. The group sent messages to U.S. officials, claiming that they had caught a spy. They demanded that terror detainees be freed and that fighter jets be sent to the government of Pakistan. However, Pearl’s life reached an abrupt end on February 1. The details of his murder were revealed just twenty days later, when the militant group broadcast a brutal three-minute video showing Pearl being beheaded. Significance Pearl’s death sent shock waves around the world and served as an important reminder to journalists of the dangers of reporting abroad. Pearl’s execution video was broadcast across the Internet, and media outlets everywhere printed articles detailing what had happened to The Wall Street Journal reporter. Months after his death, his family started the Daniel Pearl Foundation, which gives presentations about Pearl’s life and the importance of understanding other cultures through words and music. Pearl’s murder was also an unsettling indication of cultural conflict. The Daniel Pearl Foundation claims one of the reasons Pearl was murdered was because of his heritage as an American Jew, which Pearl spoke about in his execution video. No matter what reasons Pearl’s captors had for murdering him, his legacy has stood the test of time. He has been acknowledged in high schools and award programs throughout the United States. His life was commemorated in a 2007 film titled A Mighty Heart. On May 19, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into legislation
Jewish Americans the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act, which aims to protect American journalists stationed all over the world. — Jill E. Disis Further Reading Block, Robert, and Daniel Pearl. “Body Count: War in Kosovo Was Cruel, Bitter, Savage; Genocide It Wasn’t.” The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 1999, p. A1. One of Pearl’s investigative articles published during his time in Paris. Cooper, Helene, and Daniel Pearl. At Home in the World: Collected Writings from The Wall Street Journal. New York: Free Press, 2002. An extensive collection of articles written by Pearl in his tenure at The Wall Street Journal. Kennedy, Dan. “The Daniel Pearl Video: A Journalist Explains Why Its Horrific Images Should Be Treated as News.” Nieman Reports 56, no. 3 (Fall, 2002): 80. An examination of the circumstances behind Pearl’s death and why the video of his execution is important for the journalistic world. Vajpeyi, Ananya. “Through Western Eyes.” New Statesmen 137, no. 4862 (September, 2007): 38-39. An analysis of the 2007 film A Mighty Heart, based on the life of Daniel and Mariane Pearl and starring Angelina Jolie. The article claims that the Karachi portrayed in the film is not an accurate representation of the city of the reporter’s death. See also: David Halberstam; Seymour M. Hersh.
Arthur Penn Film, television, and theater director Penn gave his films a sweeping visual style, linking the destinies of the characters to their landscapes. Penn’s Westerns and crime films have psychological depth, often presenting their protagonists as tortured existentialists. Born: September 27, 1922; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Died: September 28, 2010; New York, New York Also known as: Arthur Hiller Penn (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Arthur Penn (pehn) was three when his parents, Russian Jewish immigrants, divorced. His father, Harry Penn, 886
owned a watch-repair business in Philadelphia, and his mother, Sonia Greenberg, was a nurse. Arthur Penn’s mother took him and his older brother Irving to New York, and the family constantly moved, to apartments in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan’s lower East Side. When he was fourteen, Penn returned to Philadelphia to live with his father; there, Penn discovered that he was interested in the theater. He acted in high school plays and directed at the amateur Neighborhood Playhouse. Soon after his father died in 1943, Penn was drafted into the Army and sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He formed a small theater group and met Fred Coe, with whom he would work later in television and on Broadway. After seeing action in Ardennes as an infantryman, Penn joined Joshua Logan’s Soldier Show Company in
Jewish Americans Paris. Following his discharge he ran the company for a year in Wiesbaden, Germany. In 1946, Penn studied philosophy and psychology at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He also taught acting and staged several plays. Penn then spent two years in Italy, studying literature at universities in Florence and Perugia. Later, he joined the Los Angeles branch of the Actors Studio, where he learned about method acting.
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BONNIE AND CLYDE Robert Benton and David Newman wrote Bonnie and Clyde (1967) influenced by European and Japanese films and hoping that François Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard would direct it. When these directors turned down Warren Beatty, he chose not only the best alternative but also the best possible director. Beatty understood Arthur Penn’s penchant for outlaws and other outsiders, his insight into real and artificial families, and his willingness to make the story of the Clyde Barrow gang as violent as necessary, something the French auteurs may not have risked. Bonnie and Clyde merged European and American influences to transcend the story’s period origins. Arriving at the height of the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement, the film captured the unease with authority felt by many Americans, who identified with characters pushed into extreme behavior by the circumstances of their time. Bonnie and Clyde was controversial because of Penn’s use of graphic slowmotion violence, intensified by the quick cutting of editor Dede Allen, employed for painfully realistic effect and to provide an emotional component missing from earlier gangster films. Along with Mike Nichols’s The Graduate (1967), released four months later, Penn’s masterpiece helped announce that the old Hollywood of safe, conventional films was passé, paving the way for a director-dominated decade and such achievements as The Wild Bunch (1969), The Godfather (1972), and Chinatown (1974).
Life’s Work In 1951, Penn became a floor manager for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) in New York and worked on The Colgate Comedy Hour, which featured such acts as Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and he eventually became an assistant manager. In 1953, he began directing live television dramas for such programs as The Philco Television Playhouse. In 1957, he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System’s prestigious Playhouse 90, where he directed William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker (1957), about the relationship between teacher Annie Sullivan and her deaf-blind pupil Helen Keller. Penn’s experience directing thirty-six television plays drew the attention of Warner Bros., for which he made his first film, The Left-Handed Gun (1958), a psychological portrait of outlaw Billy the Kid (Paul Newman). The Left-Handed Gun has many similarities to Penn’s later films, with its use of violence, its idealization of society’s outsiders, and its cinematic style. In one memorable scene, a man’s boot stands in the middle of the street after he has been killed in a gunfight. Penn angered cinematographer J. Peverell Marley by breaking with tradition and shooting directly into the sun, an image he repeated in Little Big Man (1970). The studio reedited the film, and Penn refused to see the result. Frustrated by this experience, Penn turned to the theater. Before going to Hollywood he had directed Gibson’s Broadway success Two for the Seesaw (1958). The two then turned The Miracle Worker (1959) into a Broadway triumph, and Penn followed with Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic (1960), An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May (1960), and Tad Mosel’s All the Way Home (1960). From 1956 through 2004 Penn directed fifteen Broadway productions. He was also a consultant for John F. Kennedy during the 1960 presidential debates.
Penn returned to filmmaking by tackling The Miracle Worker for the third time in 1962. It won Academy Awards for Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, who repeated their stage roles, and the director received his first nomination. This success was followed by the disappointment of being replaced by John Frankenheimer after a week of shooting on The Train (1964), reportedly at the request of star Burt Lancaster. With his next film Penn asserted that he would not play Hollywood’s game. Mickey One (1965) tells the story of a paranoid nightclub comedian (Warren Beatty) being pursued by gangsters in the fragmented, elliptical style of French nouvelle vague directors such as JeanLuc Godard and François Truffaut. The film was dismissed as self-indulgent and obscure. Next came another flop, The Chase (1966). With a screenplay by Hellman and the presence of Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, and Robert Duvall, this examination of smalltown mores merged unsuccessfully with violent melodrama. After being turned down by Godard and Truffaut, Bonnie and Clyde (1967) star-producer Beatty turned to Penn, even though they had argued constantly during 887
Penn, Arthur Mickey One. The Depression-era gangster film was an instant classic and one of the most influential films of its time, earning ten Academy Award nominations, including one for Penn. The only film for which Penn is credited as a cowriter, Alice’s Restaurant (1969), is a poignant look at more peaceful outsiders. Based on a song by folk singer Arlo Guthrie, who stars, the film considers the struggles of young people searching for their identities, and Penn received his third and final Academy Award nomination for directing. Based on Thomas Berger’s 1964 novel, Little Big Man presents the adventures of Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) as he moves back and forth between white and Native American communities over several years, and the film culminates in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Penn comments on the Vietnam War through the U.S. Army’s massacre of Native Americans. All of Penn’s best films have political overtones, and the national malaise following Watergate permeates Night Moves (1975), in which a private detective (Gene Hackman) discovers a missing-persons case has unexpected consequences. The film was considered a failure, but its reputation as a stylish, thoughtful noir has increased over the years. Penn’s subsequent films were received poorly. Despite the presence of Brando and Jack Nicholson, The Missouri Breaks (1976) was dismissed as muddled. The story of four working-class young men coming of age in a small town, Four Friends (1981), suffered from a similar lack of focus. Penn seemed merely a director for hire on Target (1985), Dead of Winter (1987), and Penn and Teller Get Killed (1989). Following these films Penn worked occasionally in theater and television, including serving as an executive producer of Law and Order for the 2000-2001 season. He was president of the Actors Studio during the 1990’s. Penn married actor Peggy Maurer, later a family therapist, in 1955, and one of their two children, Matthew, directed several episodes of Law and Order. Irving Penn, the director’s brother, became one of the most famous photographers of the twentieth century. Arthur Penn died of congestive heart failure on September 28, 2010, at his home in New York City.
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Jewish Americans Significance Penn’s films, especially Bonnie and Clyde and Little Big Man, have a sweeping visual style, linking the destinies of the characters to their landscapes. Penn’s Westerns and crime films have psychological depth, often presenting their protagonists as tortured existentialists. His films are notable for the intensity of their performances: Newman in The Left-Handed Gun, Bancroft and Duke in The Miracle Worker, Redford and Duvall in The Chase, the entire cast of Bonnie and Clyde, Hoffman and Chief Dan George in Little Big Man, Hackman in Night Moves. Penn understood how to apply the techniques of method acting to film. — Michael Adams Further Reading Chaiken, Michael, and Paul Cronin, eds. Arthur Penn: Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008. Twenty-four interviews conducted between 1963 and 2007, covering all facets of Penn’s career. Friedman, Lester D., ed. Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde.” New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Essays by Penn, screenwriter David Newman, and six scholars. Hirsch, Foster. “Arthur Penn’s Open Door.” American Theatre 15 (January, 1998): 24-29. The director discusses the impact of the Actors Studio and method acting on his career. Kindem, Gorham. The Live Television Generation of Hollywood Film Directors: Interview with Seven Directors. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1994. Penn discusses what he learned from his television experiences. Wood, Robin. Arthur Penn. New York: Praeger, 1969. A distinguished scholar analyzes Penn’s films through Alice’s Restaurant. See also: Peter Bogdanovich; Joel and Ethan Coen; George Cukor; Stanley Donen; Dustin Hoffman; Stanley Kubrick; Sidney Lumet; Michael Mann; Otto Preminger.
Jewish Americans
Penn, Irving
Irving Penn Photographer, artist, and designer A gifted photographer, Penn achieved a rare reconciliation between the worlds of commerce and art, often dissolving the boundary between fashion and fine art. Born: June 16, 1917; Plainfield, New Jersey Died: October 7, 2009; New York, New York Areas of achievement: Photography; art Early Life Irving Penn (UR-veeng pehn) was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, about thirty miles from New York City. Penn’s father was a watchmaker; his mother was an immigrant to America. Penn had a brother, Arthur Penn, who became a noted television and film director in the decades following World War II. In 1925, Irving Penn’s parents divorced. The father remained in Philadelphia, where the family had been living, while the mother and children lived in a succession of locations, including the New York area. After opening a health food store, an unusual enterprise for the time, Penn’s mother became a nurse. In 1934, Penn enrolled in the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia, where he remained until 1938. One of his teachers, art director Alexey Brodovitch, engaged Penn as an unpaid intern at Harper’s Bazaar during the summers of 1937 and 1938, and several of Penn’s drawings appeared in the magazine. At about this time Penn began to photograph with a Rolleiflex camera. In 1941, he moved to Mexico to continue developing his skills as a painter, but after a year he decided to give up painting and return to New York to work as a freelance designer and art director in the publishing industry. After working in advertising design at a leading New York department store, Penn joined in 1943 the staff of Vogue, a fashion magazine that remained a mainstay of his professional life for more than a half century. In 1944, Penn volunteered for American Field Service, serving as an ambulance driver in the Allied campaign in Italy. During this time, he also made photographs of groups of military personnel. Life’s Work Upon his return to the United States, Penn became the leading fashion and still-life photographer for Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue and other magazines. He
also undertook many independent projects, including celebrity portraits, which were published in Vogue. Working almost entirely in a studio environment, he created a brilliant succession of images of leading figures in the world of the arts, including painters, sculptors, composers, dancers, and writers. Among his subjects was Pablo Picasso, who sat for Penn’s camera in France in 1957. The modernist painter is photographed in extreme closeup, with his left eye centered in the frame and his right eye hidden in deep shadow, a cyclopean vision of Picasso in keeping with the artist’s near-mythic status in the art world of the time. In 1948, a series of portraits made in a borrowed studio in Cuzco, Peru, following the completion of a Vogue assignment in Lima, gave rise to a project for Penn of photographing anonymous individuals living outside the mainstream of industrial, urban society. These photographs, collected in a 1974 volume titled Worlds in a Small Room, have been lauded as sensitive documentation of vanishing ways of life but are also criticized as an unwarranted cultural appropriation of the exotic appearance of vulnerable peoples. Less contentious is a series of images made in New York and Paris in 1950 and 1951, titled “Small Trades,” which represents people in their everyday work clothing. Common to these two projects and to Penn’s portraits generally are the use of a minimal studio background and a raking light that yields vivid textures and deep shadows. Many critics believe that the success of these pictures, and of Penn’s work taken as a whole, is due in no small degree to the photographer’s reserved yet generous personality, which put sitters at their ease. In 1950, Penn married a leading model of the day, Lisa Fonssagrives, a talented woman of Swedish origin who was six years his senior. Several of the best fashion photographs of the twentieth century were a result of their sympathetic collaboration within the constraints of the fast-moving world of fashion publication. The couple enjoyed forty-two years of marriage, during which Fonssagrive forged a second career as a sculptor; they had one son, Tom. Penn survived his wife by seventeen years. He died at home in New York City at the age of ninety-two. In a profession characterized by high levels of achievement by persons of Jewish parentage, Penn— who kept his private life well separated from his career— gave no evidence, within his photography or otherwise, of matters of faith. 889
Perelman, S. J. Significance Penn achieved a rare reconciliation between the worlds of commerce and art, often dissolving the boundary between fashion and fine art. An “insider” in the world of photography, he preserved a personal aesthetic and an intellectual point of reference that allowed his work to take unexpected creative turns while remaining accessible to a broad public audience. —Clyde S. McConnell Further Reading Hackert, Virginia A., and Anne Lacoste. Irving Penn: Small Trades. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009. A definitive collection of Penn’s 1950-1951 work in Paris and New York, dealing with everyday occupations and trades. Hamburg, Maria Morris. Earthly Bodies: Irving Penn’s Nudes, 1949-1950. Boston: Little, Brown, 2002. Produced by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, this presentation of a crucial episode in Penn’s artistic development offers a perceptive essay by a leading scholar. Keaney, Magdalene. Irving Penn Portraits. London: National Portrait Gallery, 2010. This chronologically ordered selection of thirty images taken between 1944 and 2006 establishes a claim for Penn’s preeminence
Jewish Americans in the field of photographic portraiture. The reproductions are exceptionally good. Szarkowski, John. Irving Penn. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984. Representing the first retrospective of Penn’s work, this catalog is essential reading, though the perceptive essay by the then director of photography is relatively short, considering Penn’s ultimate stature. Westerbeck, Colin, ed. Irving Penn: A Career in Photography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1997. This wide-ranging survey, possibly the best single source for background study of Penn’s work, is based upon the Irving Penn Archive at the Art Institute of Chicago, which was created by the artist’s gift of photographs and related materials. Woodward, Richard B. “Behind a Century of Photos, Was There a Jewish Eye?” The New York Times, July 7, 2002. This review of the 2002 exhibition New York: Capital of Photography at the Jewish Museum, New York, explains both the value and the limitations of critic Max Kozloff’s observation that Jews have been an important shaping force in American photography for more than a century. See also: Diane Arbus; Richard Avedon; Annie Leibovitz; Arthur Penn; Herb Ritts; Alfred Stieglitz.
S. J. Perelman Writer, playwright, and humorist A beloved humorist, Perelman contributed short, witty, thought-provoking pieces to magazines—principally The New Yorker—for more than four decades. In collaboration with others, he wrote several comedic plays produced on Broadway and screenplays for a number of popular Hollywood films. Born: February 1, 1904; Brooklyn, New York Died: October 17, 1979; New York, New York Also known as: Sid Perelman; Sidney Joseph Perelman (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; journalism Early Life S. J. Perelman (PUR-uhl-man) was the only child of Russian, Yiddish-speaking, socialist-leaning immigrants Joseph and Sophia “Sophie” Perelman. Born in Brooklyn, New York, S. J. Perelman moved as a child with his 890
parents to Providence, Rhode Island, where his father attempted various enterprises, including operating a chicken farm and running a store selling clothing, textiles, and sundries. While attending Classical High School, Pereleman worked at several local businesses, including his father’s shop. He read copiously, often watched motion pictures, and dreamed of becoming a cartoonist. After graduating from high school, Perelman in 1921 enrolled at nearby Brown University as a premedical student and lived at home rather than on campus. It was at Brown that he became friends with future novelist Nathanael “Pep” West, one of only a handful of fellow Jews at the university. Perelman’s interest in medicine waned quickly, replaced by his growing love of literature and humor, and he became a cartoonist for the school newspaper, The Brown Jug. In his senior year in 1925, he became editor of the newspaper. After leaving Brown without graduating, Perelman relocated to Greenwich Village to work
Jewish Americans as a freelance cartoonist and writer. He regularly contributed to Judge magazine and College Humor. In 1929, the year he anonymously published his first collection of humorous sketches, Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge, he married West’s eighteen-year-old sister, Laura. The couple produced two children, Adam and Abby.
Perelman, S. J. Perelman sold his Pennsylvania farm and moved to England for several years. However, he missed the bustle, chaos, and melting-pot ethnicity of New York City, and in the mid-1970’s he returned and lived there until his death in 1979.
Significance Life’s Work Though hugely popular for witty wordplay and satiriPerelman’s work was first noticed nationally in 1931, cal style in print, on screen and stage, Perelman’s writing when he published a short piece in The New Yorker, the had fallen out of favor by the time of his death. American first in a series of hundreds of contributions during a relatastes in humor had changed: Language had become tionship with the magazine that lasted until the end of his simpler and cruder, vocabulary reduced and expression life. These surrealistic sketches, employing puns, obmore direct. However, Perelman’s uniquely ironic, logicscure words, Yiddish phrases, literary allusions, and bending, and verbally unpredictable writing techniques, twisted logic, typically lampooned aspects of American newly adapted for modern audiences, have resurfaced in culture. Perelman’s contributions—with titles such as the work of such individuals as Woody Allen, David “Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer,” “Goodbye Broadway, Sedaris, Steven Wright, and Stephen Colbert. Hello Mal de Mer,” “Carry Me Back to Old Pastrami,” — Jack Ewing “Monet Makes the World Go Round,” and “De Gustibus Ain’t What Dey Used to Be”—became extremely popuFurther Reading lar for their ability to make well-educated readers laugh Crowther, Prudence, ed. Don’t Tread on Me: The Selected out loud. Many of his works were collected regularly in Letters of S. J. Perelman. New York: Viking, 1987. book form. This illustrated volume presents interesting, behindAt the same time, Perelman became known in Hollywood, a town he grew to detest, though he appreciated the money to be made there. In 1931, he collaborated on the screenplay for the antic Marx Brothers film Monkey Business. The following year—when he bought a farm in rural Pennsylvania, which provided considerable material for his writing—he contributed to the script for another Marx Brothers feature, Horse Feathers (1932). Traveling back and forth between the coasts, he wrote plays, often in league with his wife or others, and scripts for such films as Hold ’Em Jail (1933), The Golden Fleecing (1940), and Larceny, Inc. (1942). He collaborated with Ogden Nash on the Broadway hit One Touch of Venus (1943). In 1957, he won an Academy Award as cowriter of the script for Around the World in Eighty Days (1956). From the mid-1940’s onward, Perelman added to his reputation by embarking on a series of exotic journeys with his wife and occasionally others— including noted theater caricaturist Al Hirschfeld— and writing about his experiences in his inimitable style. His readership expanded to such publications as The Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, Holiday, Reader’s Digest, Redbook, TV Guide, and McCall’s. S. J. Perelman. (Library of Congress) When his wife died of breast cancer in 1970, 891
Perlman, Itzhak the-scenes glimpses of the author as revealed through his frank, urbane correspondence between 1928 and 1979 with many literary luminaries, including Philip Wylie, Edmund Wilson, Bennett Cerf, Frances and Albert Hackett, Ruth and Augustus Goetz, James Thurber, Raymond Chandler, T. S. Eliot, and others. Gale, Stephen H. S. J. Perelman: A Critical Study. New York: Routledge, 1991. This illustrated volume examines Perelman’s use of such literary devices as stream-of-consciousness, non sequiturs, puns, and understatement in his prose, screenplays, and plays. Herrmann, Dorothy. S. J. Perelman: A Life. Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Press/Prometheus, 1988. A wellresearched biography of the author, detailing his respectful relationship with novelist Nathanael West,
Jewish Americans his less-than-ideal marriage to West’s sister, his womanizing, and his relative indifference to his children. Perelman, S. J. The Most of S. J. Perelman. London: Methuen, 2001. This is a compendium of the author’s most memorable and characteristic work gleaned from across the length and breadth of his writing career, with an introduction by humorist Bill Bryson. _______. Westward, Ha! Springfield, N.J.: Burford Books, 2007. A collection comprising pieces about the author’s around-the-world travels, this volume features drawings by Al Hirschfeld. See also: Woody Allen; Art Buchwald; Nora Ephron; George S. Kaufman; Dorothy Parker; Neil Simon; Nathanael West.
Itzhak Perlman Israeli-born violinist A brilliant violinist, Perlman is known for engaging his audiences at a personal level. Noted for his Romantic repertoire, he is an accomplished player of klezmer and jazz. Perlman is an advocate of programs for the physically challenged and the needy. Born: August 31, 1945; Tel Aviv, Palestine (now in Israel) Areas of achievement: Music; education; philanthropy
Itzhak Perlman. (Redferns/Getty Images)
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Early Life Itzhak Perlman (IHTS-hawk PURL-muhn) was born in Tel Aviv to Shoshana and Chaim, a baker. Perlman developed an intense interest in the violin at the age of three after hearing a concert on the radio. Soon after, his father purchased him a secondhand violin. However, at the age of four, Perlman contracted polio and lost the use of his legs. As he recovered over the next year, he continued practicing the violin. Even though he learned to walk with the use of braces and crutches, from that time on Perlman performed while sitting in a chair. He gained admission to the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv, and he was performing solos around Israel by the age of ten. Hearing Perlman play in Israel, violinist Isaac Stern mentioned him to associates at the Zionist Organization of America. As a result, Perlman was brought to the United States in 1958 to perform on television for The Ed Sullivan Show. Afterward, he made a successful tour of the United States and Canada, and he gained admission to the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, where he studied under Dorothy DeLay and Ivan Galamian. While Perlman was at Juilliard, a severe disagreement developed between
Jewish Americans DeLay and Galamian, and students were forced to choose between the two instructors. Though Perlman respected both, he chose DeLay; he later stated that he preferred DeLay’s teaching style. Galamian focused on the music and DeLay focused on the person. Perlman’s relationship with DeLay grew close. She encouraged Perlman’s mother to allow him more independence so he would be comfortable with his paralysis, and she encouraged meetings with Toby Friedlander, another violin student, who eventually became his wife. Later, Perlman hosted several birthday parties for DeLay, even doing a skit with other former students in which he imitated her mannerisms. After Juilliard, Perlman made his professional debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1963, and in 1964, at the age of nineteen, he won the Edgar M. Leventritt competition. As Perlman’s fame and abilities grew, the instruments he used grew with him. He plays on the Soil Stradivarius (named for former owner Amédée Soil), valued at millions of dollars and built in 1714 by Antonio Stradivari, one of the most famous violin makers of all time. Perlman married Friedlander in 1967, and they raised a family of five children.
Perlman, Itzhak
Fiddling for the Future Itzhak Perlman stands apart from other violinists for his educational and philanthropic ventures. Many consider his most significant contribution to be the inspiration he provides to children and to those who are physically challenged. In one famous incident related on Minnesota Public Radio, Brian Newhouse told about a performance in which Perlman fell while coming on stage. Though it took him several minutes, he insisted on making it to the chair on his own, entertaining the audience with his humor as he went. As a result, he received an ovation before the performance even began. One of Perlman’s Emmy Awards was for a Public Broadcasting Service documentary entitled Fiddling for the Future (1998), which chronicled the Perlman Music Program. Begun in 1993 by Perlman’s wife, Toby, the program seeks out talented musicians and provides for their musical education regardless of their financial means. Perlman also serves on the faculty of the Juilliard School and of Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, and he has made appearances on numerous television programs, including Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, to encourage children with musical interests. In 2009, he performed with the New York Philharmonic as part of a campaign to raise two hundred million dollars to fight diseases that cause paralysis.
Life’s Work After gaining fame in the United States and Canada, Perlman returned to Israel for a series of eight concerts in 1965. In interviews, Perlman said that nothing could ever match the feeling of being received so warmly by the land of his birth. Since then Perlman has performed with every major orchestra in the world, and he has created hundreds of recordings. Some of his most recognized recordings are In the Fiddler’s House and his work with composer John Williams on the Academy Awardwinning score for the film Schindler’s List (1993). When asked whether he prefers performing before an audience or working in a recording studio, Perlman indicated his love for live performance. Stern commented that Perlman played as if demanding the listener’s attention, and his performances are often described as a personal connection with the audience. Nevertheless, Perlman has also been criticized for a lack of originality in his playing style. When compared to his fellow Israeli Pinchas Zukerman, Perlman is noted for the infectious manner of his performance and Zukerman is noted for his poetic interpretation. Perlman admits that in his early years
he intentionally tried to copy his hero, Jascha Heifetz, and later imitated Stern. It has also been mentioned that his early work was confined to the Romantic composers. Perlman faced these criticisms with the same determination that he used to overcome his physical challenges. In interviews he openly speaks about his disappointments and his constant attempts to improve. Drawing on a strong attachment to his Israeli heritage, in 1995 Perlman released In the Fiddler’s House, in which he performed in the klezmer style. Klezmer is a traditional Jewish musical form that has been described as an imitation of the emotions present in the human voice, with weeping and laughing in its tones. In addition to this, Perlman drew on the jazz traditions that were popular in his adopted home of New York City around the turn of the twentieth century. In 2002, Perlman released his own arrangements of ragtime’s most famous musician, Scott Joplin. Along with performing, Perlman teaches music. In one of his humorous stories, he relates how his wife told him the day after they were married that she would not play the violin anymore. However, inspired by her husband’s teacher, DeLay, she began a program to bring mu893
Picon, Molly sic to underprivileged children. When she first asked Perlman if he would teach as part of the program, he was reluctant. However, the more he taught, the more he enjoyed it, and his passion for the program grew to equal that of his wife. Significance In addition to winning the Leventritt competition, Perlman has received fifteen Grammy Awards, which include recognition for the best performance of chamber music, instrumental solos with and without an orchestra, and the Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also won four Emmy Awards, the Medal of Liberty from President Ronald Reagan, and the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton. In 2003, he was celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honors. Perlman’s hands, deft and large, allow him to play complicated arrangements at unprecedented speeds. He has developed special techniques for the use of vibrato (a pulsating pitch change) and positioning (placement of the hand to reach the proper notes). Perlman is considered the world’s leading expert in playing the compositions of Fritz Kreisler, and he is said to have perfected the ability to create emotional excitement, or frisson, in his listeners. — Kevin J. Knox
Jewish Americans Further Reading Behrman, Carol H. Fiddler to the World: The Inspiring Life of Itzhak Perlman. White Hall, Va.: Shoe Tree Press, 1992. This biography of Perlman is aimed at youths. Campbell, Margaret. The Great Violinists. New York: Doubleday, 1981. A good resource for comparing Perlman to other great violinists and to understanding his place in musical history. Perlman, Itzhak. “My Heroes: Itzhak Perlman on Why Heifetz Is the King of Violinists.” The Strad 39 (2009): 32-36. Perlman’s contribution to the violin magazine’s “My Heroes” series. Roth, Henry. Violin Virtuosos: From Paganini to the Twenty-First Century. Los Angeles: California Classic Books, 1997. Analyzes the musical styles of various violinists. Sand, Barbara Lourie. Teaching Genius: Dorothy DeLay and the Making of a Musician. Portland, Oreg.: Amadeus Press, 2000. This biography of Perlman’s teacher provides insight into Perlman’s personality through his relationship with DeLay and describes Perlman’s philosophy on teaching. See also: Leonard Bernstein; Misha Dichter; Jascha Heifetz; André Previn; Isaac Stern.
Molly Picon Actor, singer, and writer From the vaudeville stage to Broadway, Picon kept alive the legacies of the Yiddish theaters of Europe and the United States. Born: June 1, 1898; New York, New York Died: April 6, 1992; Lancaster, Pennsylvania Also known as: Mauka Opiekun; Margaret Pyekoon (birth name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater Early Life Molly Picon (pih-KAHN) was born in New York City to Clara Ostrow and Louis Picon. Louis was nearly absent from Picon’s life, except for occasional appearances, so she was raised by her mother and her grandmother. Picon’s connection to the world of entertainment began when her mother took in work as a seamstress for one of the Yiddish theaters in Philadelphia, and Picon’s 894
first performance came on a city trolley car en route to an amateur evening at one of the local theaters. Her vaudeville career in America consisted of traveling across country with a variety of troupes and doing a mixture of songs, acrobatics, dancing, and dramatic readings. Life’s Work Picon entered American theater at a time when the mixed-format vaudeville shows were still popular, and she began her career as a child, doing small roles at the age of six, under the name of Baby Margaret. Her diminutive size made her stand out from the other female stars of the Yiddish theater, many of whom were tall and fullfigured, enabling her to play many roles as a youngster or waif. Her first introduction to the Yiddish theater of Europe came after her marriage to Jacob Kalich in 1919. Prior to immigrating to the United States, he had worked at Bu-
Jewish Americans charest’s Zshignitza Theater, the birthplace of classic Yiddish theater, and he was knowledgeable about its body of work, its history, and its traditions. He decided that Picon should take her talent abroad, to work the Yiddish theater circuit of Europe, gaining experience and establishing herself as a recognized artist, which she did after they were married. Through him, she was introduced to the formal European pronunciation of Yiddish (different from the sound of the language she had grown up with), and she learned to read the tastes of audiences that had a different expression of being Jewish than the one prevalent in the United States. At this time there was little crossover between the American and the European Yiddish theaters in terms of training. Because of this, Picon’s first tour of Europe helped her to forge a unique identity as a performer. She traveled widely from 1920 to 1922, and in the process she witnessed the efforts of Yiddish culture in Europe as it struggled to adapt to the post-World War I world. This European trip was the first of many overseas journeys, and she eventually performed in places as varied as Argentina and South Africa. During World War II and the Korean War, she appeared at U.S. military bases and at camps for displaced people. She and her husband were also deeply involved in raising funds for the state of Israel through bond sales, and they traveled to Europe in 1946 to bring aid directly from the Jews of New York to the surviving Yiddish communities. Their trip took them to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. In the ruins of Warsaw and other Polish cities, Picon saw the Yiddish theaters where she had performed in the rubble and knew that her audiences had been killed in the concentration camps. In addition to being a performer of standard works of Yiddish repertoire, Picon was a creative artist in her own right, composing the words and music to nearly one hundred songs, beginning in 1929, mainly in Yiddish but also in English. She made recordings of standard songs from the Yiddish theater, beginning in 1938. With her husband, who doubled as playwright for several of her most popular plays, such as Yonkele and Oy Is Dus a Leben! (1942), she worked on adapting scripts for performance, in some cases making revisions almost until opening night. Upon her return to the United States, she brought her blend of European style and American energy to the New York theater scene, quickly establishing herself at the Second Avenue Theatre. Her work in Yid-
Picon, Molly dish films, while less known outside the Jewish community than is perhaps deserved, began in 1924 with the silent film Mazel Tov. In 1936, she appeared in what would come be considered an enduring classic, Yidd’l Mt’n Fidd’l, in which she played a girl who dresses as a boy to work with her father in a traveling group of street musicians. To many, her most memorable onscreen role was her appearance as Yenta, the irrepressible matchmaker, in the 1971 film version of Fiddler on the Roof (1964). She was also one of the few stars of the Yiddish theater to make a name for herself on Broadway, both through character parts and through her role in Milk and Honey in 1961. In 1992, Picon, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died at the age of ninety-three. Significance Picon’s career began in the days of vaudeville, when an international network of Jewish communities supported a vibrant and colorful theatrical world in productions that helped newly arrived immigrants learn about the ways of the United States and emphasized the continuities of Jewish life and identity. Her humor and style were a reminder of what it meant to be a Jew in a rapidly changing world. Despite economic depression, war, and the impact of radio and television, Picon carried the core values of the Yiddish theater into a new age for audiences who perhaps did not understand the language but responded warmly to her humor and her humanity. — Robert B. Ridinger Further Reading Perl, Lila, and Donna Ruff. Molly Picon: A Gift of Laughter. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990. Simply written biography that covers all aspects of Picon’s life and career and how she made an impact on Jewish immigrants to the United States. Picon, Molly. Molly! An Autobiography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980. A highly readable personal account of Picon’s career and the changing cultural worlds she belonged to over several decades. _______. So Laugh a Little. New York: Messner, 1962. An affectionate account of Picon’s grandmother that gives a detailed picture of her home life and her career in the Yiddish theater from a different perspective. See also: Fanny Brice; Fran Drescher; Elaine May; Bette Midler; Gilda Radner; Barbra Streisand.
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Podhoretz, Norman
Jewish Americans
Norman Podhoretz Journalist Podhoretz developed Commentary magazine into an influential voice for political and social conservatism within the Jewish community and beyond. Born: January 16, 1930; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Norman B. Podhoretz (full name) Area of achievement: Literature Early Life Norman Podhoretz (pod-HOR-ihtz) grew up in a Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn. He attended public schools, then enrolled in the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and Columbia University. His studies at JTS gave him a grounding in Jewish scholarship, but it was the “cosmopolitan allure” of Columbia University, as his biographer puts it, that enraptured Podhoretz and set him on the path of his literary career. Podhoretz became a protégé of the critic and essayist Calvin Trilling, whose recommendation facilitated a fellowship to Cambridge University for Podhoretz in 1950. Life’s Work Upon his return to the United States two years later, Podhoretz began writing essays and book reviews for leading intellectual publications, such as The New Yorker, Partisan Review, Encounter, and, especially, Commentary. Founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945, Commentary was intended to focus on both Jewish and general current affairs, a blend well suited for Podhoretz, who had one foot planted firmly in each world. He became assistant editor in late 1955 and editor in chief in 1960. That is also where he met his wife-tobe, Midge Decter, who was working in the magazine’s office. During Podhoretz’s first decade at the helm, Commentary was distinctly left of center in its politics, sometimes discomfiting its conservative sponsors at the American Jewish Committee. Still, Podhoretz was given a free hand, even when, in his zeal for African American civil rights, he went so far as to publish a sympathetic essay about Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, an unabashed proponent of violence. Podhoretz raised more than a few eyebrows with a 1963 essay, “My Negro Problem—and Ours,” which called for the “wholesale merging” of the black and white races, through marriage, as the answer to the nation’s racial tensions. 896
Commentary had been a strong voice for anticommunism in the 1950’s, but under Podhoretz it moved away from that stance. He also vehemently opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Gradually, however, Podhoretz became disenchanted by the radical left’s extreme positions on political and social issues, justification of and sometimes participation in acts of violence, and hostility to Israel in the wake of the Six-Day War in 1967. These tendencies, combined with the anti-Semitism that erupted among militant blacks during the Ocean Hill-Brownsville teachers’ strike of 1968 (after several Jewish teachers were fired from their jobs), led Podhoretz to reevaluate his views. By 1970, he had a complete change of heart, rejecting not only the New Left but also liberalism in general. At the same time, he adopted a positive view of traditional Judaism, although he did not become observant. Podhoretz later chronicled his transformation in a memoir that he appropriately titled Breaking Ranks (1979). In the pages of Commentary, Podhoretz gave expression to the disillusionment that many American Jews were feeling, as deep fissures emerged in the old black-Jewish and liberal-Jewish coalitions. Many of Podhoretz’s intellectual comrades joined him in the ranks of what came to be known as neoconservatism, and the magazine soon occupied a new and significant niche in the Jewish and broader community. The influence of the new Commentary soon became apparent. A 1975 essay by Daniel Patrick Moynihan criticizing the halfhearted response of U.S. diplomats at the United Nations to verbal assaults on America caught the eye of officials of the Gerald Ford administration and led to Moynihan’s appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Later that year, Podhoretz wrote Moynihan’s famous speech denouncing the U.N.’s Zionsim-is-racism resolution. Likewise in 1979, Jeane Kirkpatrick’s Commentary essay challenging President Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy came to the attention of presidential candidate Ronald Reagan and led to her nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after Reagan took the Oval Office. During the Reagan years, Podhoretz wrote some of the most important intellectual defenses of U.S. foreign policy, especially the use of military force to stymie Marxist advances in Central America and Grenada. Many ideas he and his colleagues advocated were adopted by
Jewish Americans the new administration, and a number of Commentary contributors were named to government posts. Podhoretz also emerged as one of the most articulate defenders of Israel in the Jewish community and beyond, with a series of essays articulating the fears of Israel’s abandonment that many American Jews increasingly harbored. Podhoretz’s essay “J’Accuse,” arguing that anti-Semitism was at the heart of much of the unfair criticism heaped upon Israel during the 1982 war with Lebanon, was regarded by many as the definitive reply to Israel’s detractors. Podhoretz’s efforts to wean American Jews away from liberalism met with only limited success. Despite his hopes and expectations to the contrary, most Jews have continued to vote for Democratic presidential candidates. Retiring as Commentary’s editor in chief in 1995, Podhoretz remained in the public eye as the magazine’s editor-at-large and as a newspaper columnist and author of several books, continuing to hammer away at the themes he has propagated since 1970. He has written extensively on the need for an uncompromising U.S. war against Islamic terrorism, which he considers World War IV (he refers to the Cold War with the Soviet Union as World War III).
Pollack, Sydney Significance Podhoretz’s articulate advocacy of neoconservative positions, especially on foreign policy issues, has influenced U.S. policymakers, prominent intellectuals, and a segment of American Jewry profoundly. As editor in chief of Commentary magazine, Podhoretz presented a wide range of views on Jewish matters and current affairs, which stimulated discussion on the important issues of the day. —Rafael Medoff Further Reading Balint, Benjamin. Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine That Transformed the Jewish Left into the Neoconservative Right. New York: PublicAffairs, 2010. How Jewish American writers made a mark on American culture in the pages of Podhoretz’s Commentary. Jeffery, Thomas. Norman Podhoretz: A Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Thorough biography of Podhoretz, a complicated man who fearlessly paraded in public his intellectual life. See also: Seymour M. Hersh; Walter Lippman; Daniel Scar; Arthur Hays Sulzberger.
Sydney Pollack Director and producer As an actor, a director, and a producer, Pollack worked on the stage, in television, and on feature films. Pollack won an Academy Award for Best Director for his work on the film Out of Africa (1985). Born: July 1, 1934; Lafayette, Indiana Died: May 26, 2008; Pacific Palisades, California Also known as: Sydney Irwin Pollack (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Born in Lafayette, Indiana, Sydney Pollack was the eldest of three children born to Rebecca and David, firstgeneration Russian Jewish immigrants. Pollack’s father was a pharmacist who had paid his way through college by being a semiprofessional boxer. Through Pollack’s early years as a child growing up in South Bend, Indiana, and into his teen years, his mother was frequently ill, eventually dying at the age of thirty-seven when Pollack
was only sixteen years old. He attended South Bend Central High School and became involved in many stage productions, such as Tobias and the Angel (1937) and Lady in the Dark (1941). His father had planned for him to pursue an education in dentistry at Northwestern University after graduation, but the young Pollack, enamored with acting, chose instead to leave for New York City. Upon his arrival in 1952, Pollack took up residence at Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) housing and enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre to attend a two-year acting program under the tutelage of legendary acting teacher Sanford Meisner. When Pollack completed the program in 1954, he received an invitation to return on a fellowship as Meisner’s assistant. Although the nineteen-year-old had no aspirations to teach, he found it hard to pass up such an honor, spending the next three years as an instructor while juggling various television and Off-Broadway acting roles until he was drafted in 1957. 897
Pollack, Sydney Life’s Work In 1958, during his two-year stint in the Army, Pollack married Claire Griswold, one of his former students. After Pollack’s discharge in 1959, John Frankenheimer lured Pollack to Hollywood and offered him an acting role in a production based on Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) show Playhouse 90. Soon after production ended, Frankenheimer hired Pollack as an acting instructor for the television special The Turn of the Screw (1959). Pollack returned for a repeat of the same duties for the feature film The Young Savages (1961). As Pollack collaborated on the film, he caught the attention of the lead actor, Burt Lancaster, who became impressed with Pollack’s unique teaching skills and techniques. The two men became friendly, and Lancaster encouraged Pollack to consider focusing his energies on a ca-
Sydney Pollack. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Jewish Americans reer as a director. Lancaster made a phone call and arranged for Lew Wasserman, an executive of Universal Pictures, to meet with Pollack. The meeting materialized into a job, in which Pollack was given a six-month free rein of the studios to observe and to learn about the filming process. In later years, Pollack often said that he owed his career to Lancaster. Along with Pollack’s duties at the studio, he continued acting, appearing in television episodes of The New Breed, The Twilight Zone, Have Gun—Will Travel, and various other shows. His first opportunity to direct happened in 1959 when the series Shotgun Slade was set to be canceled, with four shows remaining. Pollack received the green light to direct one of those episodes. Over the next five years, Pollack was granted more opportunities to direct various episodes of Ben Casey, The Fugitive, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and many other well-known shows. In 1962, Pollack landed his feature film debut as an actor in the film War Hunt, but more important than the role itself was the chance meeting with another actor, Robert Redford. The two formed a strong relationship that defined both of their careers in the decades to come. In 1966, Pollack won an Emmy Award for directing “The Game,” an episode on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) television program Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre. It turned out that cinema was where Pollack would make his mark as a director. His debut came with The Slender Thread (1965), closely followed by his second film, This Property Is Condemned (1966), starring Redford and Natalie Wood. Then Lancaster requested the young director for a lighthearted Western titled The Scalphunters (1968), a film that added a new dimension to Pollack’s resumé. For every way that They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) failed in reaching the popular appeal of a mass audience, it made up for in critical evaluation and gave Pollack his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Pollack then collaborated with Redford on two films: a Western about a mythical figure who tries to escape his own culture, Jeremiah Johnson (1972), and a highly successful romance, The Way We Were (1973). With a shift in genre focus, two consecutive action films ensued: The Yakuza (1974), Pollack’s first turn as producer-director, and the espionage thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975). Pollack directed Al Pacino’s turn as a paradoxical race car driver who is scared to take chances in life in Bobby Deerfield (1977), but the film failed miserably at the box
Jewish Americans office. Pollack’s next project, The Electric Horseman (1979), a film showing the contrast between those who comment on life and those who experience it, enjoyed a warm reception with audiences. Pollack enjoyed great success in the 1980’s. As he gained notoriety by directing and producing Absence of Malice (1981), he ultimately became a Hollywood player when he directed, produced, and acted in Tootsie (1982). It was well publicized that Pollack and the star of the film, Dustin Hoffman, argued frequently while making the film. The negative press did nothing to damage the great amount of box-office and critical success achieved by the film, as it went on to be nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director Academy Awards. Pollack then directed and produced what is, arguably, his finest and best-known work, Out of Africa (1985). The celebrated film won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. After achieving such high honors, Pollack spent several years away from the camera to concentrate his efforts as a producer for Bright Lights, Big City (1988), Scrooged (1988), Major League (1989), The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), King Ralph (1990), and Presumed Innocent (1990). Pollack returned to directing with Havana (1990), a film that would be the last of many projects shared with Redford. Although the film was a commercial flop, Pollack believed it to be one of Redford’s finest performances. After an acting role in Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives (1992), Pollack returned to dominate the box office with The Firm (1993). However, 1993 also brought the death of Pollack’s son, Steven, who was killed in a plane crash in Santa Monica, California. Pollack’s next two projects, both starring Harrison Ford, were Sabrina (1995) and Random Hearts (1999); both films made disappointing box-office showings. Acting roles on Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and Changing Lanes (2002), combined with his duties as an executive producer for The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and a producer for Cold Mountain (2003), managed to keep Pollack busy until he returned to direct The Interpreter (2005) and Sketches of
Pollack, Sydney Frank Gehry (2005). Pollack helped produce two Academy Award-nominated films: Michael Clayton (2007), a film he also starred in, and The Reader (2008). On May 26, 2008, at the age of seventy-three, Pollack died in his Los Angeles home, losing a battle with stomach cancer. He was survived by his wife, Claire, and two daughters, Rachel and Rebecca. Significance Although Pollack’s career as an auteur is often associated with big commercial films and larger-than-life stars, his legacy must be viewed as one might view artwork, taking a step back so as to see it in its entirety. It then becomes obvious that his unobtrusive style operates under the radar, shining a light on the gray area of human life and relationships that exists when viewing both sides. Perhaps Pollack’s greatest significance is that his artistic virtues earned box-office gold. —Kyle Bluth Further Reading Farber, Stephen. “How Conflict Gave Shape to Tootsie.” The New York Times, December 19, 1982, p. H1(N); H1(L). Long article about Pollack’s experience in making the film Tootsie, in which he reveals he at first turned down the project. Meyer, Janet L. Sydney Pollack: A Critical Filmography. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1998. A detailed filmography of Pollack’s work that covers his television credits also. Rusoff, Jane Wollman. “Friends in High Places Helped Sydney Pollack Film in the United Nations.” Albany Times Union, April 21, 2005. Brief but interesting overview of Pollack’s career, as he describes it to a reporter, and the story of how he got to film inside the United Nations for The Interpreter (2005) and why he hired himself to play a part in the motion picture. See also: Woody Allen; Dustin Hoffman; Barbra Streisand.
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Portman, Natalie
Jewish Americans
Natalie Portman Israeli-born actor An actor on stage and on film, Portman is best known for her role as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999, 2002, 2005).
Born: June 9, 1981; Jerusalem, Israel Also known as: Natalie Hershlag (birth name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Natalie Portman (PORT-mihn) was born June 9, 1981. Her father, medical student Avner Hershlag, and mother, Shelley Stevens, met at the Jewish student center at Ohio State University during the 1970’s. Shelley’s ancestors had immigrated to the United States from Austria and Russia, and Avner’s parents had immigrated to Israel from Poland after World War II. Avner’s grandparents and several more of his relatives died during the Holocaust. Avner and Shelley corresponded after he returned to Israel and were married when she visited him a few years later. Portman was born in Jerusalem in 1981, making her an Israeli citizen, and she was also an American citizen through her mother. In 1984, the Hershlags moved to
Natalie Portman. (AFP/Getty Images)
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the United States, where Avner became a resident surgeon in obstetrics and gynecology at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Portman attended the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland, while they lived in the area. The family relocated to Connecticut in 1988 when Avner received a fellowship to do research on fertility and reproduction at Yale University. In 1990, the Hershlags settled permanently in Long Island, New York, when Avner accepted positions at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island and New York University School of Medicine. Portman attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Glen Cove, New York, after the move and took ballet lessons until she was thirteen. She graduated from the Syosset High School, a secular public school, in 1999. During the summers, Portman attended the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts in Huntington, New York, and the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Camp in the Catskills. In June, 2003, Portman graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Already bilingual in Hebrew and English, Portman has studied French, Japanese, German, and Arabic. In high school, she took all the science courses the school offered and was a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search. In 2002, she cowrote a paper on memory in infants for a joint project between Harvard’s medical school and its Laboratory for Infant Study. Life’s Work Although Portman was a full-time student until 2003, she began acting professionally when she was only eleven. In 1992, she was chosen to understudy Britney Spears, who was playing the leading role in the OffBroadway musical Ruthless! Portman’s film career began when she was cast in the role of a child who befriends a middle-aged assassin, played by Jean Reno, in Luc Besson’s 1994 film The Professional. Soon after getting the part, she adopted her maternal grandmother’s maiden name, Portman, as her professional name. In 1994, she appeared in the short television film Developing. Portman played minor roles in the films
Jewish Americans
Portman, Natalie
Heat (1995), Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Queen Padmé Amidala of STAR WARS and Mars Attacks! (1996) and a major role in Beautiful Girls (1996). She turned down the After seeing Natalie Portman in The Professional (1994), direcrole of the title character in the 1997 remake of tor George Lucas decided to cast her as Padmé Amidala for the Lolita, because it was too similar to the characthree new Star Wars films he was planning. He judged that she ters she had played in The Professional and could grow with the role from a teenager to become the wife of Beautiful Girls. From 1997 to 1998, Portman Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader) and mother of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa. Portman was one of the few members of her genplayed the title character in a new adaptation of eration who had never seen the original Star Wars (1977), either on The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway. She television or in rerelease in the theaters, so she did not know what turned down a costarring role opposite Susan to expect. She was sixteen during the filming of The Phantom MenSarandon in the film Anywhere but Here (1999) ace (1999), nineteen during Attack of the Clones (2002), and after learning it would involve a sex scene. twenty-two when Lucas filmed Revenge of the Sith (2005). PortHowever, she accepted the part after Sarandon man worked with a dialect coach to learn how to speak without a insisted that the script be rewritten deleting the regional accent, and she studied the films of Lauren Bacall, Kathscene. arine Hepburn, and Audrey Hepburn to learn how to walk and talk In 1995, George Lucas cast Portman as Padmé with authority while remaining feminine. For the Star Wars films, Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy: The the dialogue was rather simple, but the action was demanding Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones physically, and Portman sprained her ankle during the filming of The Phantom Menace. Reviews were mixed, but the films were (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005). She among the highest grossing of all time and have made Portman an played a unwed teenage mother who gives birth extremely wealthy woman. in a Wal-Mart in Where the Heart Is (2000). This was the first film in which she was the primary star. Portman appeared in New York City’s Public Theater production of Anton Chekhov’s lerina and for which she won a Golden Globe and an Chayka (1896; The Seagull, 1909) in July, 2001. The cast Academy Award for Best Actress. included Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Portman made a cameo appearance in the film Significance Zoolander (2001) and appeared briefly as a widow in the Portman starred in three of the six Star Wars films. By film Cold Mountain (2003). 2008, the series had grossed more than $5.5 billion, makPortman appeared in the independent films Garden ing it the third most commercially successful film franState and Closer in 2004. The latter film featured her critchise in history, behind the James Bond and Harry Potter ically acclaimed role as Alice, an exotic dancer who befilms. In addition to Portman being the model for an accomes the mistress of a novelist (Jude Law). In the scition figure, Portman’s image has appeared on posters, ence fiction thriller V for Vendetta (2005), Portman cans of Diet Pepsi, boxes of Kentucky Fried Chicken, played a young woman who is saved from the secret poand other merchandise items. Because she is a vegetarlice by the main character, known only by the initial V. ian, the Kentucky Fried Chicken image was embarrassPortman worked with a voice coach to speak with an Ening for Portman, but her contract gave her no say over glish accent and allowed her head to be shaved. Another how her image could be used. Portman received a Golden film, Free Zone, also came out in 2005. Globe nomination for best supporting actress for her role Director Miloš Forman cast her in Goya’s Ghosts in Anywhere but Here. Her performance in Closer earned (2006); although he had not seen any of her film work, he her a supporting actress Golden Globe and a nomination thought she looked like a Francisco Goya painting. In for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. 2007, Portman starred in the fantasy film Mr. Magorium’s —Thomas R. Feller Wonder Emporium and the road film My Blueberry Nights. Portman appeared in The Other Boleyn Girl, a Further Reading historical drama in which she plays Anne Boleyn, the Dickerson, James L. Natalie Portman: Queen of Hearts. second wife of England’s King Henry VIII, in 2008. In Toronto: ECW Press, 2002. Biography of Portman 2009, she starred opposite Tobey Maguire and Jake written for young adults. Gyllenhaal in the contemporary drama Brothers. In 2010, Hemphill, Meg. “Natalie Portman.” In Style (November, she appeared in Black Swan, in which she played a bal901
Potok, Chaim 2006): 95. Pictorial profile of Portman emphasizing the clothing she likes to wear plus still photos from her films. Johnson, Anna. “Natalie, Naturally.” In Style 14, no. 13 (December, 2007): 154. Illustrated profile of Portman pointing out that she has a life outside her films. Portman, Natalie. “Ten Questions.” Time (March 10, 2008): 4. Interview with Portman, including questions submitted by readers, discussions of her favorite historical period, and her opinions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Stein, Daniele. “Sister Act.” W 37, no. 3 (March, 2008):
Jewish Americans 434. Interview with Portman and Scarlet Johansson, Portman’s costar in The Other Boleyn Girl. Weber, Bruce. “The Good Girl.” Teen Vogue (December, 2007): 192-195. Illustrated profile of Portman with considerable space devoted to her favorite charity. Wood, Gaby. “Natural Natalie.” Marie Claire (January, 2010): 100-109. Profile of Portman, with attention to her experiences as a child star, the variety of directors with whom she has worked, and her first experience as the subject of a tabloid story. See also: Lauren Bacall; Goldie Hawn; Winona Ryder.
Chaim Potok Novelist and scholar A scholar who grew up in the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community in New York, Potok is best known for his novels, such as The Chosen (1967). In it he depicts the conflicts and moral dilemmas faced by those who belong to the Hasidic community and who wish to take part in secular American society.
Catholic family revelatory both for the way a novel could transport him into another world and for its exploration of the clash between a religious subculture (Catholicism) and a mainstream secular culture. He found something
Born: February 17, 1929; Bronx, New York Died: July 23, 2002; Merion, Pennsylvania Also known as: Chaim Tzvi; Herman Harold Potok (full name) Areas of achievement: Literature; scholarship; religion and theology Early Life Chaim Potok (KI-ihm POH-tahk) was born in a Jewish area in the Bronx to Benjamin Max Potok and Mollie Friedman. Chaim Potok’s family belonged to the ultraOrthodox Hasidic branch of Judaism, although the young Potok did not wear the traditional dark clothes and long sidelocks of the Hasidim. He attended religious Jewish schools, however, including the Talmudic Academy High School and Yeshiva University in New York, from which he graduated in 1950 after studying both Judaism and English literature. From an early age Potok was interested in the arts. Around the age of nine he took up painting, but his father, who at first tolerated this pursuit, eventually told him to give it up because it violated Jewish customs. As a result, Potok shifted to writing, which was somewhat more acceptable to his devout family. When he was a teenager he discovered the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh. Potok found this story of an aristocratic 902
Chaim Potok. (©Jerry Bauer)
Jewish Americans similar when he read James Joyce’s coming-of-age novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914), a few years later, and he decided he wanted to write novels about the clash between Judaism and secular culture. To learn more about Judaism Potok attended the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was ordained as a rabbi in 1954. However, his intention was not to serve as a rabbi in a synagogue, and he never had a congregation, though he did serve as a U.S. Army chaplain in South Korea in the aftermath of the Korean War, from 1955 through 1957. He later said his time in Korea changed him greatly, for it made him realize that half the world had never heard of Judaism and there was no anti-Semitism there. On his return to the United States, Potok taught Jewish studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and then began studying for a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, which he completed in 1965, in part while living in Israel. During this period, he also worked for the journal Conservative Judaism, having earlier shifted his religious affiliation from Orthodox Judaism to the more moderate Conservative movement. Life’s Work Although he received an encouraging rejection letter when he submitted a short story to The Atlantic Monthly at the age of seventeen, Potok did not publish any fiction, except in the school yearbook at Yeshiva University, until the mid-1960’s, when he was more than thirty years old. In the late 1950’s, he wrote a novel about his experiences in Korea, but it did not find a publisher. He finally published some short stories in 1964 and 1966, and then suddenly he became a success with his first published novel, The Chosen, in 1967, on which he had been working for seven years. Over the next twenty-five years Potok published another seven novels, most of them exploring the same situation he presented in The Chosen: the challenge of being a religious Jew in secular America. In his early novels, such as The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev (1972), Potok typically presented coming-of-age narratives about the moral dilemmas facing young men in Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. In 1985, in Davita’s Harp, he varied this approach to present the trials of a young woman raised by nonreligious, communist parents. In 1992, Potok drew on his experiences in Korea to depict the struggle for survival of a Korean peasant family in I Am the Clay. At the same time that he was writing fiction, Potok
Potok, Chaim
THE CHOSEN Chaim Potok’s extraordinarily successful literary debut, The Chosen (1967), begins with a dramatic baseball scene in which one of the two central characters nearly takes out the eye of the other. It is a gripping moment, not only for its action but also for the raw emotions it conjures, mostly hatred on both sides. Potok’s achievement is showing how negative emotions can exist and create problems, even in two characters who are essentially decent. This is a novel full of tension, even though after the baseball scene there is little real action. Mostly the two central characters, Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter, talk with each other or with their fathers, and the main dramatic moments are heated discussions about rabbinical commentaries. There is also a central tension related to the fact that Saunders is the son of the leader of an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic group who expects his son to succeed him, while Saunders wants to escape Hasidic isolation to become a psychologist in the secular world. Probably Potok’s greatest achievement in the novel is to bring to life the world of Hasidic Jews, to humanize them and make them understandable as people rather than as the dangerous aliens they seem to Malter in the opening chapter. Potok also lets readers see that even within the religious Jewish community there are divisions, and above all he is able to create a warmhearted story focusing on education and scholarship, in which two boys become friends and face moral dilemmas bravely.
pursued a scholarly career, working for the Jewish Publication Society, eventually becoming its editor in chief and assisting in its new translation of the Hebrew Bible. He also served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and other universities, and in 1978 he published Wanderings: Chaim Potok’s History of the Jews, a popular history but one based on serious scholarly work. It focused on the recurring theme in his fictional works, that of the clash between Judaism and other cultures. In his last years he wrote books for children, including The Tree of Here (1993) and The Sky of Now (1995), and a nonfictional account of a Jewish family in the Soviet Union, The Gates of November (1996). He also tried his hand at playwrighting and cowrote the autobiography of the violinist Isaac Stern. He published a collection of three novellas under the title Old Men at Midnight (2001), which some saw as among his darkest works. He won a number of awards, including the Edward Lewis 903
Preminger, Otto Wallant Award for The Chosen, which was also nominated for a National Book Award and which was made into a film starring Rod Steiger in 1981. In the mid1970’s, he moved with his family—his wife Adena and their three children—to Israel, where they lived for four years. They returned to the United States and settled in Merion, a suburb of Philadelphia, where Potok lived until 2002, when he died of cancer. Significance Potok is often contrasted with Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, writers who focused on describing assimilated, secular Jews in their fiction. In contrast, Potok described the world of religious Jews, especially the world of the ultra-Orthodox Hasidim. He is also notable for exploring the conflict between that world and the secular world, or, more precisely, the conflict within the religious Jewish community over how to deal with the secular world: to pursue isolation or engagement. Potok’s books were huge best sellers, in part because of the appeal of the exotic world he described and in part because the dynamics of the clash between a religious subculture and the larger secular culture surrounding it struck a chord with those in other subcultures. Potok is notable for writing novels of ideas, focusing on such important issues as the moral responsibility of scientists, anti-Semitism, and the demands of religion and of art. —Sheldon Goldfarb
Jewish Americans Further Reading Abramson, Edward A. Chaim Potok. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Includes detailed, sophisticated analyses of Potok’s early novels, a chronology (up to 1985), and an annotated bibliography. McClymond, Kathryn. “The Chosen: Defining American Judaism.” Shofar 25, no. 2 (2007): 4-23. Distinguishes Potok from Roth and Bellow. Notes how Potok depicts divisions within Judaism and shows the Jewish religious community as being part of American life. Sternlicht, Sanford. Chaim Potok: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Includes a biographical sketch and a detailed analysis of each of Potok’s novels (although the analysis is not sophisticated). Contains useful background information and a bibliography. Walden, Daniel, ed. Conversations with Chaim Potok. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. A collection of interviews in which Potok talks about his writing, religion, Jewish history, and his life. Includes a chronology (up to 2000). _______, ed. “The World of Chaim Potok.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 4 (1985). A collection of essays on various aspects of Potok and his work. See also: Sholom Aleichem; Saul Bellow; Howard Fast; Bernard Malamud; Henry Pereira Mendes; Philip Roth; Isaac Stern.
Otto Preminger Austrian-born actor, director, and producer A fiercely independent filmmaker who chafed under Hollywood’s studio system, Preminger brought an elegance and a sophistication to the genre of film noir in the 1940’s. Born: December 5, 1906; Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Austria) Died: April 23, 1986; New York, New York Also known as: Otto Ludwig Preminger (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Otto Preminger (AH-toh PRE-mihn-jur) was born in 1906 in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Markus, a public prosecutor, was a well904
respected official in Emperor Franz Josef’s administration, even though as a Jew he refused the government request that he convert to Catholicism. Young Preminger grew up in Vienna, which he later described as a rather provincial city when compared to the culturally diverse and dynamic Berlin, where he first pursued his career. When Preminger decided he wanted to become an actor and explore a career in the theater, his tolerant father did not object, except to say that he hoped his son would have another profession to rely on, should acting prove to be a less-than-sustaining occupation. Preminger earned a law degree, but he never practiced as an attorney. His early years were happy, although he later described an incident in which he was attacked by a group of anti-Semitic boys. Not wishing to alarm his parents, Preminger never told
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them about the beating. The repercussions of this incident, however, had a marked impact later on his work in theater and in film. Successful roles in several productions of William Shakespeare’s plays brought Preminger to the attention of the famous director Max Reinhardt, who treated Preminger as a protégé. Soon Preminger was directing his own productions, deciding early on that he would pursue his career in the United States. In April, 1935, he made a sudden decision to go to the United States after meeting the American film producer Joseph Schenck, who assured Preminger that he would find employment in Hollywood. Although he had yet to master Otto Preminger. (AP/Wide World Photos) English and he did not know how he would support his wife, Marion, whom he had married in 1932 and ately Preminger began to seek out scripts that he could who had given up her theatrical career for his sake, direct or produce for the studio. Film history was made Preminger arrived in Hollywood seeking work at when Preminger singled out a script based on Vera Schenck’s studio, Twentieth Century-Fox. Caspary’s novel Laura (1943), the story of a police detective who falls in love with the portrait of a beautiful Life’s Work woman who has been murdered—or so it seems until At first, Preminger thrived in the studio system, even the beautiful woman returns to the scene of the crime. though he quickly gained a reputation as a dictatorial diThe story then becomes the detective’s mission to find rector. However, actors who knew their lines and adapted out the identity of the woman who was murdered and to Preminger’s firm ideas of how a film should be shot why Laura had been the target. By this time, Zanuck had and acted in did well for him. Then Preminger ran afoul returned to the studio, determined not to let Preminger of Twentieth Century-Fox’s production chief Darryl F. direct, although he tolerated Preminger’s role as producer. Zanuck. The two strong-willed men quarreled over the It soon became clear, even to Zanuck, that Preminger filming of Kidnapped (1938), an adaptation of Robert alone knew how to direct the script and how to obtain Louis Stevenson’s classic 1886 novel. By the end of the best performances from the film’s cast. Indeed, the 1937, Zanuck had bought out Preminger’s contract. film made stars out of its three principals: Clifton Webb, Preminger was unable to obtain work in Hollywood, so Dana Andrews, and Gene Tierney. Laura (1944) became he moved to New York City, where he became a successone of the celebrated films of the 1940’s and remains ful Broadway director and an actor, performing as a Nazi high in the estimation of film critics. Preminger was then in the hit play Margin for Error (1939). This role brought assigned to direct several films, including Fallen Angel him to the attention of screenwriter Nunnally Johnson, (1945), Daisy Kenyon (1947), and Where the Sidewalk and before long Preminger was again in Hollywood, perEnds (1950). This acclaimed work displayed Preminger’s forming in a series of roles that capitalized on his rather talent for long takes with fluid camera movements. Unmenacing stage presence. like many of his contemporaries, he disliked cuts in At the same time, Preminger continued to regard himscenes, and whenever possible he made the camera move self as a director, and during Zanuck’s absence from toward or away from the actors rather than stop the acTwentieth Century-Fox to serve in the Army, Preminger tion of a scene to adjust camera placement. This apwas again able to act and to direct with the approval of proach to filmmaking was influenced by his theater Zanuck’s replacement, William Goetz. Almost immedi905
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Filming the Founding of the State of Israel Otto Preminger made a painstaking effort to be accurate historically in his films—in other words, to make his fictional story about the founding of Israel, Exodus (1960), congruent with the sequence of historical events. Above all, he wanted to be true to the human complexity of the story, which meant, in his view, rejecting the anti-British and anti-Arab attitudes reflected in the novel on which it was based. After interviewing Israelis about the British presence in the Middle East, Preminger concluded that although the British could be criticized for inhibiting, in certain ways, the drive for statehood, many Israelis regarded the British as having withdrawn finally from their occupation of Palestine with considerable understanding and empathy for Israeli sentiments. Anti-Semitism among the British is explored in the film, but it is not used simply to reject the British character. Equally important was Preminger’s decision to film on location in places where the war took place. He wanted to get as close as possible to the reality of events.
work. He put the movement of his actors first and rarely sought to emphasize the technical virtuosity of the film industry. However, Preminger chafed under the confines of the studio system that did not allow him to explore his social and political concerns. He was denied the opportunity to direct Pinky (1949), a film about racism that spoke to his own searing memories of the anti-Semitism he had experienced in Vienna. (Elia Kazan directed the film.) As soon as his contract with Twentieth Century-Fox was fulfilled, the director embarked on an illustrious career as an independent filmmaker, supervising every aspect of his films, including their editing and marketing. A fierce opponent of censorship, he refused to make changes in scenes when asked by film distributors and by Hollywood executives. In films such as The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and The Cardinal (1963), he took on controversial subjects, such as drug addiction and the politics of the Catholic Church. Exodus (1960), based on Leon Uris’s novel, deals directly with Preminger’s Jewish heritage. He carefully developed a screenplay dealing with the founding of the state of Israel, but he had a falling-out with his staunchly pro-Israel collaborator, Uris, who objected to Preminger’s desire to portray both the Jews and the Arabs with empathy. Preminger’s first two
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Jewish Americans marriages failed, but his marriage to Hope Bryce produced two children and lasted until his death in 1986 from complications of lung cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Significance Preminger brought an elegance and a sophistication to the genre of film noir in 1940’s Hollywood and to films that provided strong parts for women. His role in establishing the independent producer not bound by Hollywood conventions and censorship is even more important. He was not afraid to take on momentous issues, such as the founding of the state of Israel, in his films. Preminger’s body of work shows his keen sensitivity to the dignity of minority groups and his opposition to any form of discrimination. He transformed Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen (1875) into Carmen Jones (1954), a story about African Americans. He also filmed George Gershwin’s 1935 opera of African American life, Porgy and Bess (1959). Several of Preminger’s films have become classics, including Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Advise & Consent (1962). — Carl Rollyson Further Reading Fujiwara, Chris. The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger. New York: Faber & Faber, 2008. A comprehensive biography by an astute film critic. Includes filmography, film stills, and detailed notes section. Pratley, Gerald. The Cinema of Otto Preminger. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1971. Based on interviews with the director. Provides an introduction to Preminger’s life and career, concentrating on his films and his Jewish background in Austria. Includes detailed filmography and several film stills. Preminger, Otto. Preminger: An Autobiography. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977. A detailed account of his life and career up to the making of The Cardinal and his third marriage. Includes a filmography, film stills, and index. See also: George Cukor; Stanley Donen; George Gershwin; Stanley Kramer; Ernst Lubitsch; Joseph L. Mankiewicz; Irving Thalberg; Leon Uris.
Jewish Americans
Presser, Jackie
Jackie Presser Labor leader, activist, and criminal Presser was one of the most influential labor leaders in modern history. As president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters during the Ronald Reagan era, Presser led a campaign to rehabilitate the public image of the union, and he served as a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant on mob activity. Born: August 6, 1926; Cleveland, Ohio Died: July 9, 1988; Lakewood, Ohio Areas of achievement: Activism; crime; social issues Early Life Jackie Presser (PREH-sur) was the son of William and Faye Presser. Jackie Presser’s grandfather was a Jewish Austrian immigrant who worked in textiles and picketed in New York. At the time of Presser’s birth, the family was poor and involved heavily in labor activism. Presser’s father had extensive connections to organized crime and worked his way up to become an important leader in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Presser dropped out of school in eighth grade, and his father got him a job delivering jukeboxes. When Presser was seventeen, he joined the Navy and was stationed overseas in World War II. The experience of serving the United States at a time when it was fighting anti-Semitic fascism may have awakened some pride in his Jewish and activist heritage. For the rest of his life, Presser followed his father’s steps in activism and the mob. Presser’s father became a favorite of Jimmy Hoffa, the long-running Teamsters president. This influence allowed him to secure his son a job in Local 10 in Cleveland. Presser was elected president of Local 10 in 1948, but his early years with the Teamsters were troubled. After expanding Local 10, he was dismissed by the new members he had recruited. In 1964, he failed at an attempt to broker a real estate deal, at heavy cost to the union. However, his father was among the leaders of the Teamsters in Ohio, and he gave Presser the position that would lead to his success: setting up Local 507. Once again Presser excelled at drawing in new members, but this time he was careful not to offend his new charges and started wearing traditional suits instead of sports jackets and pinky rings. Life’s Work His work at Local 507 earned Presser the respect of the union, and by 1972 he and his father were its un-
disputed leaders in Ohio. However, 1972 was also the year Presser and his father became informants on the mob for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In 1976, Presser’s father was forced to resign after being convicted of corruption-related charges, and Presser succeeded him as international vice president. In this role, Presser found the cause that would lead him to the union’s presidency: rehabilitating the public image of the Teamsters. Presser’s strategy was to appeal directly to blue-collar workers. He paid for radio ads during football games and testified before Congress about the mob. Wishing for a greater presence in government, Presser established an elegantly appointed office in Washington, D.C., and was the only union leader to endorse Ronald Reagan in 1980, based on a poll he took of rank-and-file members. As a reward, he was made a part of Reagan’s transition team. By now, Presser was being investigated by the Department of Labor, and there was controversy over his appointment. However, the investigation outlasted the transition period and interest faded. In 1983, Teamster president Roy Williams was convicted of bribery, and Presser was elected to serve out Williams’s term. Presser was facing indictment and government takeover of the union. Nonetheless, he secured election to his own term as president in 1985. He also continued his work with the Reagan administration, which he endorsed again in 1984. Pressure from federal investigators continued to mount. In 1986, the President’s Commission on Organized Crime found the Teamsters to be a mob tool, and the government immediately began a plan to take over the union. Presser had earlier escaped indictment because he was an FBI informant, but information came out that Presser had been funneling payroll money to the mob. Presser claimed that this was done to keep his cover and that he had been instructed to do so by the FBI. The affair became a major scandal, with the FBI under investigation as well. However, as before, the investigators took too long. Presser was suffering from brain cancer, and his trial was put on hold indefinitely. He died in 1988, and the public lost interest in the investigation. Significance Presser left the Teamsters union with a mixed legacy. He succeeded in reintegrating the Teamsters with the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of In907
Previn, André dustrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which had separated from the Teamsters thirty years before. He secured the union a lasting presence in Washington and with the Republican Party; Teamsters made up a major bloc of Reagan conservatives. Although the Teamsters union later switched parties, it was Presser who restored its national influence. However, instead of avoiding association with the mob, the Teamsters were consumed by it. Presser spent his presidency trying to escape indictment, and corruption charges plagued subsequent union presidents. While Presser’s vision was the best one for labor, his history and his personality made him incapable of carrying it out, leaving it a task for future leaders. —Jacob Davis Further Reading Crowe, Kenneth C. Collision: How the Rank and File Took Back the Teamsters. New York: Charles Scrib-
Jewish Americans ner’s Sons, 1993. This book chronicles the reform movement that opposed Presser within the Teamsters and follows the union after his death and into the early 1990’s. Fitch, Robert. “Revolution in the Teamsters.” Tikkun 8, no. 2 (March/April, 1993): 19. This article was written at the same time as Collision, but it appears in a magazine that focuses on Jewish aspects in large stories. Zeller, F. C. Duke. Devil’s Pact. Secaucus, N.J.: Birch Lane Press, 1996. This book was written by the Teamsters’ director of communications during Presser’s reign, and it provides an insider’s account of Teamster activities. It intimately portrays most of the characters in Presser’s life. See also: Saul Alinsky; Samuel Gompers; Sidney Hillman.
André Previn German-born conductor and musician A renowned musician and conductor, Previn has made it his mission to make both traditional and contemporary classical music accessible to audiences around the world. Born: April 6, 1930; Berlin, Germany Also known as: André George Previn; Andreas Ludwig Priwin (birth name); André Ludwig Previn (full name) Area of achievement: Music Early Life André Previn (AHN-dray PREH-vihn) was born into a secular Jewish family of Russian extraction that lived in Berlin under the Weimar Republic. He was the youngest of Jack and Charlotte Priwin’s three children. The family was musical, and Previn was encouraged in his piano studies. His father enrolled Previn at the Berlin Conservatoire when he well under age. Unfortunately, the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany put an end to his father’s successful legal career, and in 1939 the family left for the United States, where Previn’s uncle was doing well in the music department of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in Hollywood. Previn enrolled in Beverly Hills High School, 908
André Previn. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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and he attended from 1943 to 1946. At school Previn as Composer and at the MGM studios, Previn’s musical talents were soon noticed, and he signed a conAndré Previn’s early compositions were created for the music detract with MGM in 1945. partment of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood, and they were Thereupon began a long apprenticeship in largely arrangements and orchestrations. Original works included musicianship, performing, transposing, arrangmusicals such as Coco (1969). Later came Every Good Boy Deing, and orchestrating. He was beginning to be serves Favor, commissioned for Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee in 1976. successful, receiving an Academy Award nomPrevin’s first aim in his classical career was to be a conductor; ination for Best Score for the film Three Little his second was to be a piano soloist. It was only later in life that Words (1950), when he was drafted into the the desire to be a composer grew. In an interview at the time of his U.S. Army in 1950. eightieth-birthday celebrations, he said his preference was composAfter demobilization from his San Franing, especially if he had particular performers in mind. cisco base in 1952, Previn delayed returning His first major opera was A Streetcar Named Desire (1998), to MGM for a year to take conducting lessons based on Tennessee Williams’s play. The female lead was written for with Pierre Monteux. Sessions of conductRenée Fleming. This particular performance became, for Previn, a ing MGM orchestras had convinced Previn favorite among his whole repertoire. A second opera, Brief Encounthat this was what he really wanted to do in ter, based on an old film, followed in 2009. music. Another group of works was written for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, who was for four years his wife. The main work here was a His move into classical music was foreviolin concerto simply called “Anne-Sophie” (2002). He also wrote stalled by his love affair with jazz. He began for her a Double Concerto for Violin and Double Bass (2007) and the working with various jazz musicians, cutting Double Concerto for Violin and Viola (2009). Other works were a number of albums. At the same time he was songs, composed for either Fleming or Barbara Bonney. Noteworthy working successfully for MGM on films such was a short piece, “Owls,” commissioned by the Boston Symphony as Gigi (1958), which won him an Academy in 2004 to mark his long association with the organization. Award for Best Score. He had married Betty Bennett, a jazz singer, in 1952, with whom he had two daughters. This ended in divorce, but he quickly remarried in 1958. His second phony Orchestra (LSO) and a live performance followed wife, Dory, wrote lyrics, and they collaborated in a numin 1965. In 1967, he took his first professional post as ber of successful jazz songs and films, including Valley of principal conductor, following Sir John Barbirolli, at the the Dolls (1967). Between 1949 and 1973 Previn worked Houston Symphony. He had made a good impression in on forty films. England, but in Texas his taste for contemporary and Various opportunities to play as a solo classical piaBritish music was not shared by his audience. In fact, nist came Previn’s way, along with a chance to work with Previn’s knowledge of the traditional repertoire was such classical composers as Leonard Bernstein. At age lacking, and his reputation as a Hollywood and jazz man thirty-four, Previn was ripe for a career move. He signed haunted him. Notoriety about his personal life enveloped a contract with Columbia Records to make an album as a him at the time: He had a failing second marriage and a solo pianist. He remained with MGM for a while, workmuch-publicized affair with actor Mia Farrow. ing on the film version of My Fair Lady (1964), which Meanwhile, London beckoned, first with a contract won him his fourth Academy Award. from Electric and Musical Industries (EMI) to record Ralph Vaughan Williams’s nine symphonies and second Life’s Work with an invitation from the LSO to be principal conducPrevin hired as his manager Ronald Wilford, who was tor. He moved back to London in 1968, eventually marvice president of Columbia Artists Management, and rying Farrow and buying a house in Surrey. that led to a contract with Radio Corporation of AmeriHis time with the LSO was highly successful. In addican (RCA) to make albums as a conductor. RCA sent him tion to regular concert series, there were recording sesto England to record with the Royal Philharmonic Orsions, television appearances, and tours to Russia and to chestra. Previn was a fan of British music, and soon he two Salzburg Festivals. However, when an invitation became a devoted Anglophile, enjoying the London mucame from Pittsburgh to lead the Pittsburgh Symphony, sic scene. Further recordings with the London Sym909
Previn, André he accepted. Farrow and the children (three biological and three adopted) wanted to put down American roots, and Farrow was eager to take up her acting career again. In 1979, he resigned his post with the LSO as its longestserving conductor, though he remained a guest conductor. He won two Grammy Awards with the orchestra, for recordings of choral works by William Walton and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Previn’s time with the Pittsburgh Symphony was a time of consolidation, for him as a conductor of the classical repertoire and for the orchestra. However, his marriage to Farrow ended. In 1982, he wed Heather Sneddon, a marriage that lasted twenty years. At this time, he became enraptured with the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom he believed to be the greatest of all composers. In 1985, he moved to Los Angeles to take over the Los Angeles Philharmonic. However, he resigned in 1989 after clashes with Ernest Fleischmann, an old friend from London days, who was the orchestra’s general manager. This led to an appointment back in England with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and to a number of collaborative efforts with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony. He also worked with the Vienna Philharmonic of Austria and the Emerson String Quartet. Based in New York, Previn found new creativity in composing. His first full-length opera was A Streetcar Named Desire (1998), which went on to win a Grand Prix du Disque. Various other works followed, some written for the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, who became his sixth wife in 2002. Even after their divorce in 2006, the pair still worked together. The first part of his career had won Previn awards in Hollywood. At the other end of his career, he was honored in Europe and the United States. In England, he was made a Knight of the British Empire (KBE) in 1996 for his services to British music. In 1998, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. In 2005, he won the prestigious trienniel Glenn Gould Prize for excellence in music. He received many Grammy Awards, culminating in the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award. He also wrote a number of books on conducting and the orchestra.
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Jewish Americans Significance Previn is one of the few American orchestral conductors of the last century to receive recognition across Europe and to have had the opportunity to conduct some of the best European orchestras regularly. What makes this particularly remarkable is that the genesis of his career was in films and musicals rather than in classical music. Previn’s versatility and genius allowed him to escape the label of Hollywood musician and win worldwide recognition in several musical fields. Specifically, he introduced British and contemporary European music into the American orchestral repertoire, especially championing the works of Walton, Benjamin Britten, and Dmitri Shostakovich. His work on restoring the original scores to several Rachmaninoff works is also important. Above all, he exploited the medium of television to bring classical music to a wide audience, and he made it a point to tour with his orchestras to places often bypassed by classical musicians. —David Barratt Further Reading Bookspan, Martin, and Ross Yockey. André Previn: A Biography. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981. A popular biography of the first part of Previn’s life, based on recorded interviews with Previn and his friends. It divides his life into jazz and classical periods, concluding with an assessment of his achievements thus far. Friedland, Michael. André Previn: The Authorized Biography. London: Ebury Press, 1991. A wider set of interviews with wives and acquaintances than found in the Bookspan biography, taking Previn’s life through another decade. Previn, André. No Minor Chords: My Days in Hollywood. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Personal account of the first part of Previn’s musical career. Captures Tinseltown in its glory days between 1948 and 1964. Smith, Steve. “André Previn Leads Debut of His Concerto for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra.” The New York Times, April 27, 2009. Covers a number of Previn’s compositions and eightieth-birthday celebrations. See also: Leonard Bernstein; Aaron Copland; George Gershwin; Lorin Maazel; Itzhak Perlman; Isaac Stern.
Jewish Americans
Priesand, Sally J.
Sally J. Priesand Rabbi As the first woman to achieve ordination to the rabbinate through a theological seminary, Priesand broke a barrier to women’s full participation in Jewish religious life and modeled a new role for temple leadership, in which rabbi and congregation work together in affirming Judaic tradition and values. Born: June 27, 1946; Cleveland, Ohio Also known as: Sally Priesand; Sally Jane Priesand (full name) Areas of achievement: Religion and theology; women’s rights Early Life Sally J. Priesand (PREE-sand) was born to Irving Theodore Priesand and Rose Elizabeth Welch in 1946, a part of the post-World War II baby boom. During Sally J. Priesand’s childhood, the family lived on Cleveland’s east side, where they were active in the Jewish community. As a child, Priesand attended classes at the Conservative Community Temple, although she later reflected that she did not enjoy them or feel religious. When she was in junior high school, the family moved to the city’s west side, where she and her brothers were the only Jews in their schools. Perhaps in compensation, Priesand enthusiastically took part in youth activities offered by the Reform temple, Beth Israel, her parents joined. The Temple Sisterhood gave her a scholarship to a summer camp institute at Zionsville, Indiana. She loved the camp, which allowed her to give sermons and to take other roles in services. Priesand traces her ambition to become a rabbi back to these experiences. In high school, she contacted Hebrew Union College (HUC) in Cincinnati, asking about its undergraduate program and its seminary. The reply on the latter was equivocal and not totally negative. She entered the undergraduate college’s program in Judaic studies, offered in cooperation with the University of Cincinnati. During college, she was part of a small circle of women students who, if not as single-minded as Priesand, were likewise serious about Jewish worship and tradition. These friends offered much-needed moral support as Priesand’s ambitions became known and controversial on campus. At this time, the HUC seminary was headed by a remarkable president, Nelson Glueck. A distinguished archaeologist as well as a rabbi, Glueck had announced that he was eager to ordain a qualified woman. Priesand
was admitted to rabbinical studies with the implicit understanding that if she completed her course work satisfactorily, she would be ordained. Priesand continued to do well with her academics. She also spoke to outside groups and took High Holiday student assignments (although not all congregations were happy to have her). For her rabbinical thesis she chose an ambitious topic, “The Historic and Changing Role of the Jewish Woman.” On June 3, 1972, she was ordained as a rabbi by Alfred Gottschalk, Glueck’s successor. Life’s Work Priesand’s first position was assistant rabbi at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City. She served seven years there, and she was promoted to associate rabbi. When the lead rabbi approached retirement, it became clear that she had little or no chance of succeeding him. Beginning the search for a post that matched her qualifications and hopes, she bumped into the glass ceiling. Few congregations searching for a rabbi would consider a female candidate. For the next two years she served in a part-time post at Temple Beth El in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and worked as a chaplain at Lenox Hills Hospital in Manhattan. In 1981, she became rabbi at Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, New Jersey. It was a middle-sized congregation, whose 365 families were willing to accept a female rabbi and work with her in cooperative worship and service. Priesand had believed originally that a larger congregation was a measure of success for a rabbi, but her attitude changed during the years at Monmouth. Leading prayer and worship, studying and teaching the Torah, and conducting the services that mark life-cycle events are important duties, no matter what the setting. At this temple she was able to develop a unique partnership with the congregation so that members were empowered in their faith. She stayed at the Monmouth Reform Temple for twenty-five years, until her retirement in 2006. Although in this work Priesand fulfilled her own career ambitions, she was cast in another role, that of pioneer. Once in the rabbinate, she was in demand as an exemplar of newly empowered women within Judaism. She carried this out within her own congregation by ensuring that girls and women participated equally in worship and in committee assignments. In the wider world, she worked with many organizations in the Reform 911
Priesand, Sally J. movement to encourage fuller representation of women. She has also been an active member of community groups, working for such causes as housing for the homeless, Planned Parenthood, and Holocaust studies. In 1975, her book, Judaism and the New Woman, based on her extensive research for her rabbinic thesis, was published. HUC awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1998, and its Sally J. Priesand Visiting Professorship has been funded to support Jewish women’s studies. Significance Priesand’s achievements represented a rare intersection of her own ambitions and talents with the spirit of her times. Since 1922 Reform Judaism had held that nothing in Jewish law forbade women rabbis, yet in the following half century none had been recognized in American life. The cultural transformations of the 1960’s and early 1970’s put the egalitarian ideals of American society to a reality test. Even before the women’s movement gathered force, the drive for civil rights challenged long-established racial injustices. Many young Jews had put their lives on the line by joining African American freedom riders in the South, finding racial discrimination an obvious case of the world needing repair. Thus, when Priesand argued for women’s ordination based on each person’s right to pursue her own dreams and reach her potential, she struck the right note for a receptive audience. Two years after Priesand became a rabbi, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso was the first woman ordained in Reconstructionist Judaism. Amy Eilberg, ordained in 1985, was the first female rabbi in the Conservative movement. By the opening of the twenty-first century, female rabbis numbered in the hundreds. At the same time, movements for ordaining female clergy were consolidating in many Christian denominations. As one of Priesand’s friends told her, she carried the dreams of many others. —Emily Alward Further Reading Kimmel, Elizabeth Cody. “Sally Priesand.” In Ladies First: Forty Daring American Women Who Were Second to None. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic
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Congregational Leadership Despite the many honors she garnered as America’s first female rabbi, perhaps Sally J. Priesand’s hallmark achievement lies in the way she fulfilled her goal: to be an inspiring rabbi of a congregation. Monmouth Reform Temple, a middle-sized congregation located in a middle-class borough in the middle of New Jersey, was not notable. However, during Priesand’s time there it launched a remarkable number of new initiatives, including a local job bank, a library of Judaica, and a Habitat for Humanity program. The temple’s “Mitzvah Day” encourages voluntarism. It sponsors tours to Israel. Perhaps inspired by Priesand’s avocation of watercolor painting, it puts on the largest invitational art show in New Jersey, the annual Monmouth Festival of the Arts. Priesand’s legacy is not limited to a busy activities calendar. From the beginning, she aimed for a more participatory, creative partnership between rabbi and members rather than one in which she would serve as an authority figure. She has stated that it was not part of her job to “be Jewish” for anyone else; rather she saw herself as enabling others to find their own ways of understanding Judaism. She believed this approach to be one congenial to women leaders. There are very few prayers or rites of Judaism that require professional clergy to conduct. The Monmouth Reform Temple has a Saturday-morning Shabbat service that mostly is conducted by laypersons, with ample opportunity for discussion following the formal program. In this and in similar practices, Priesand offered a model followed by many women rabbis and by congregations that want to incorporate democracy into their worship.
Society, 2006. Short but illuminating essay highlighting early experiences that helped shape Priesand’s rabbinical career. Nadell, Pamela S. Women Who Would Be Rabbis. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. A survey of the women who aspired to be rabbis during a century of change in Judaism. Contains a long chapter on Priesand’s quest. Priesand, Sally Jane. “New Jersey Q and A: Rabbi Sally J. Priesand, Reflections of a Woman Who Dared.” Interview by Sally Friedman. The New York Times, September 19, 1993. Interview in which Priesand reflects on her experiences as a reluctant pioneer, how her personal beliefs had changed, and the “tests” of illness and loss in her life. See also: Susan Brownmiller; Betty Friedan; Harold S. Kushner; Golda Meir; Gloria Steinem.
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Pritzker, Jay A.
Jay A. Pritzker Businessman An entrepreneur who developed the Hyatt Hotels, among other industries, Pritzker founded the Pritzker Prize, awarded to outstanding contributors to architecture and design. Born: August 26, 1922; Chicago, Illinois Died: January 23, 1999; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: Jay Arthur Pritzker (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; architecture and design Early Life Jay A. Pritzker (PRIHTS-kur) was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a family with deep Jewish and Ukrainian roots. His grandparents, Nicholas and Annie, had emigrated from a Jewish enclave near Kiev, Ukraine, in 1881. Nicholas made a name for himself and his family early on by founding a law firm. Nicholas’s son and Pritzker’s father, Abram, continued the family’s successful start in the United States, studying at Harvard Law School and later joining the family firm, Pritzker and Pritzker. Abram found his true calling in something that would later define his son’s life: real estate and corporate investment. Like his father, Pritzker was educated in legal studies, studying at Northwestern University, and he exhibited a talent for business and entrepreneurial services. After serving in the U.S. military during World War II, Pritzker started to acquire timber and metal-goods companies. His destiny, however, was set after making a business deal in an unlikely place: a small coffee shop by the name of Fat Eddie’s at Los Angeles International Airport in 1957. While at Fat Eddie’s, Pritzker realized the amount of business in the shop and in the hotel where the shop was located was enormous. The hotel—named after Hyatt von Dehn, who had founded it just a few years earlier— was available for purchase. Pritzker decided to make von Dehn an offer of $2.2 million, written on a napkin, for the franchise. Life’s Work Pritzker calculated that traveling business executives would love to stay at a hotel located close to an airport. His prediction paid off handsomely. Pritzker first concentrated on building Hyatt Hotels in the San Francisco area, but soon he expanded the properties to Los An-
geles, Seattle, and later around the country and even the world. Within forty years of expanding the franchise, he had created a business that had more than 180 hotels and annual revenues of three billion dollars. Pritzker was also known for the risks he incurred in expanding the business. Douglas Geoga, once the Hyatt Hotels subsidiary president, remembered how at one point Pritzker had purchased a half-finished hotel and converted it into a Hyatt Regency. The Regency would later become a highlight of the Hyatt franchise, a lavish version of his other successful hotels. The daring entrepreneur did not limit his business ventures to building hotels. Pritzker helped his family invest in First Health Group Corporation and other companies dealing in biotechnology and life sciences. With his brother, Pritzker built the Marmon Corporation, which invested in everything from airlines to magazines and furniture. The corporation flourished well into the 1990’s. In 1996, the brothers had a fortune of nearly $13.5 billion. After a rocky partnership with Manhattan developer Donald Trump in 1994—Pritzker’s company asserted that Trump did not pay to restore the Grand Hyatt Hotel in midtown New York City, which they had opened together—Pritzker found his health declining. Pritzker suffered a stroke in 1997, and his son, Tom, slowly began taking on more responsibilities for the family business. Pritzker died from cardiac arrest in 1999 at the age of seventy-six. Significance One of the world’s richest men, Pritzker left behind solid investments and a thriving business empire. In 1979, he founded the Pritzker Prize with his wife, Cindy. The Pritzker Prize is one of the most prestigious awards an architect can receive, with a monetary prize of one hundred thousand dollars. For Chicagoans, Pritzker’s legacy has been immortalized in the Pritzker Pavilion, an outdoor performing venue located in Grant Park in downtown Chicago. The building, constructed by Pritzker Prize winner Frank Gehry, was named in honor of Pritzker after the family donated fifteen million dollars for its construction. It opened officially in July, 2004, and it has been used by musicians and celebrities, such as Tori Amos, Oprah Winfrey, and dozens of Olympic medalists. —Jill E. Disis 913
Prusiner, Stanley B. Further Reading Chen, Aric. “Architects at Play, Dangling Medals.” The New York Times, May 19, 2010, p. E7. An article detailing the 2010 Pritzker Prize award ceremony, with more of the history behind the meaning of the award. McBrewster, John, Frederic P. Miller, and Agnes F. Vandome, eds. Millennium Park: Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Cloud Gate, AT, Grown Fountain, Lurie Garden, DP Pedestrian Bridge, McCormick Tribune Plaza, Wrigley Square, Harris Theatre (Chicago), McDonald’s Cycle Center, Exelon Pavilions. Beau Bassin, Mauritius: Alphascript, 2009. A book with information and images of Millennium Park in Chicago and its many structures and pavilions, including the Jay Pritzker Pavilion.
Jewish Americans Ramirez, Anthony. “Jay Pritzker, Billionaire Who Founded the Hyatt Hotel Chain, Is Dead at Seventy-Six.” The New York Times, January 24, 1999, p. 40. Provides an overview of Pritzker’s life, comments from his family, and quotations from friends about his life. Weber, Joseph, and Lorraine Woellert. “The Pritzkers’ Empire Trembles: Can a New Generation Halt the Slide in the Family’s Fortunes?” BusinessWeek (September, 2001). An article written after Pritzker’s death details the future of the Pritzker family businesses before the economic troubles of the late 2000’s. See also: Frank Gehry; Leona Helmsley; Carl Icahn; Marcus Loew.
Stanley B. Prusiner Scientist and physician Prusiner discovered prions, proteins that can reproduce and cause fatal degenerative neurological diseases. His discovery challenged biological notions that all infectious agents contain either DNA or RNA. Born: May 28, 1942; Des Moines, Iowa Also known as: Stanley Ben Prusiner (full name) Areas of achievement: Science and technology; medicine Early Life Stanley B. Prusiner (PREWS-nehr) was born in Des Moines, Iowa, to Jewish parents during World War II. His father was drafted into the U.S. Navy shortly after his birth. Prusiner’s family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, while his father was in the Navy, and after the war his family returned to Des Moines, where Prusiner attended primary school and his brother Paul was born. In 1952, the family moved back to Cincinnati, so that his father could find a better job as an architect, and there Prusiner attended Walnut Hills High School. In 1960, Prusiner attended the University of Pennsylvania. He did hypothermia research with Sidney Wolfson and graduated in 1964 with a degree in chemistry. Prusiner remained at the University of Pennsylvania for medical school, and he did research with Britton Chance on brown fat in hamsters. He completed his medical degree in 1968 and then moved to San Francisco for an internship at the University of California, San Francisco 914
(UCSF). In San Francisco, Prusiner met Sandy Turk, and they married. One year later, Prusiner went to the National Institutes of Health to work as a postdoctoral research fellow with Earl Stadtman. There he learned biochemical techniques for protein purification and characterization. In 1972, Prusiner began a residency in neurology at UCSF. Life’s Work During his neurology residency, Prusiner examined a female patient who later died from a slow virus infection called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Slow virus infections so intrigued Prusiner that he decided to make them the subject of his research. From the scientific literature, Prusiner discovered several related slow virus diseases known to afflict humans and animals. These diseases caused similar symptoms and comparable patterns of brain damage, and they included scrapie, which afflicts sheep and goats, and such human diseases as CJD and kuru, a disease unique to the Fore highlanders of Papua New Guinea, who acquire it through ritualistic cannibalism of the brains of deceased tribe members. All of these diseases cause loss of coordination (ataxia) followed by mental deterioration (dementia) and a distinctive type of damage in which large portions of the brain die and are replaced by clear, protein-filled “plaques” (spongiform encephalopathy). In 1974, Prusiner accepted a position as an assistant professor of neurology at UCSF, and he began research-
Jewish Americans ing scrapie. When he isolated plaques from the brains from scrapie-infected sheep, he found that they contained agglomerations of a single protein and no deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or ribonucleic acid (RNA). When he injected this purified protein into the brains of mice, those mice contracted scrapie. Prusiner became confident that the cause of scrapie was a single protein, and in 1982 he published a controversial but landmark paper that included his new term “prion,” shorthand for “proteinaceous infectious particle.” Thus these dementias were caused by protein only and not viruses. In 1984, Prusiner and his collaborators showed that normal cells make a version of the prion protein (PrP). In fact this protein is present on the surface of cells in the brains of all mammals he examined, but it does not make them sick. Instead, there is an abnormal version of the PrP, and this altered version causes the dementias. In 1988, Karen Hsiao in Prusiner’s laboratory showed that human prion diseases are sometimes inherited. Particular mutations in the gene that encodes the PrP can cause prion diseases. These mutations induce the PrP protein to fold in an aberrant manner, and these aberrantly folded proteins commandeer the normal versions of PrP and force them into the aberrantly folded conformation. These amalgamated clusters of abnormally folded protein kill brain cells and cause the large, clear plaques in the brains of people and animals afflicted with prion diseases. Significance Prusiner won the 1997 Nobel Prize for his discovery of prions. He uncovered a completely new category of disease-causing agents. With this basic understanding of prions in hand, other new prion-based diseases, such as Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome and fatal familial insomnia, were discovered. Prusiner’s work also provided an understanding of those mechanisms that underlie other types of dementias, such as Alzhei-
Prusiner, Stanley B. mer’s disease, and established new strategies for drug development and new types of medical-treatment strategies. Prusiner’s work also provided the groundwork to address the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or “mad cow disease” problem in Great Britain. The similarity between the sheep and the cow PrP allows scrapie to move to cows if their feed is tainted with brain material from scrapie-infected sheep. After identifying BSE in 1986, the British government banned the use of animalderived feed supplements in 1988, and the British BSE epidemic began to decline . The understanding of prion diseases, pioneered by Prusiner, provided the strategy to address this distressing animal health problem. —Michael A. Buratovich Further Reading Max, D. T. The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery. New York: Random House, 2007. A science reporter who suffers from a neuromuscular disease provides a clear, vivid history of prion diseases and scientists’ attempts to understand them. Prusiner, Stanley B. Prion Biology and Diseases. Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2003. A technical but accessible compendium of prion diseases and their biochemical, genetic, and molecular aspects. _______. “The Prion Diseases.” Scientific American 272, no. 1 (1995): 48-57. Prusiner’s popular summary of the discovery of prion diseases. Yam, Philip. The Pathological Protein: Mad Cow, Chronic Wasting, and Other Deadly Prion Diseases. New York: Springer, 2003. A science writer’s account of prion diseases and the potential threat they pose to human health. See also: Albert Sabin; Jonas Salk.
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R Isidor Isaac Rabi Physicist The winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944, Rabi was a leader in the evolution of quantum theory. His work in the development of radar and of the Manhattan Project and in the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission was central to the success of these vital governmental initiatives. Born: July 29, 1898; Rymanów, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Poland) Died: January 11, 1988; New York, New York Also known as: Israel Isaac Rabi Area of achievement: Science and technology Early Life Isidor Isaac Rabi (IH-sih-door I-zhihk RAH-bee) was born in a small town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the close of the nineteenth century. His father, David, the youngest of nine children, emigrated to the United States shortly after Rabi’s birth and sent for his wife, Sheindel, and their son within the year. When Rabi began school on the lower East Side of Manhattan, where his family lived, his mother said his name was “Izzy,” a diminutive of Israel, which resulted in an official listing as Isidor. He included Isaac as a proclamation of his Jewish identity as a young man. The family moved to the Brownsville section of Brooklyn when Rabi was ten, and he attended Manual Training High School in order to explore a non-Jewish environment. In spite of his family’s Orthodox religious orientation, which included obtaining for Rabi education in a Hebrew school (which he recalled as “some evilsmelling basement”) at age three, Rabi was reluctant to participate in a Bar Mitzvah ceremony until he was permitted to deliver an address not from the Torah but from his own composition, “How the Electric Light Works,” early evidence of his own way of honoring the creation of the universe. Rabi chose to attend Cornell because of its reputation for strong science courses and its distance from New York City, and he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1919. After three years of futile efforts to find work in an industry that did not hire Jewish scientists, he began graduate school at Cornell in 1922, trans916
ferring to Columbia University when he was awarded a fellowship in physics. He received a Ph.D. in 1927. Life’s Work Rabi and his wife, Helen, moved to Europe after his graduation to study with the pioneers of the field of quantum mechanics, working with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. Rabi began a thirty-eight-year career as a teacher at Columbia University in 1929, starting as a lecturer and eventually being named in 1964 the first University Professor, the highest academic rank at Columbia. Through the 1930’s, leading capable colleagues and students, he devised a series of experiments that resulted in the Nobel Prize for physics in 1944 for his magnetic resonance method of determining the rotational status of atoms and molecules. By 1940, Rabi, who was fully aware of the intentions and practices of the Nazis because of his continuing contacts with the nuclear scientists who had fled from Europe to the United States, joined the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in order to work on the development of radar for military purposes. While continuing his official position at the Rad Lab, Rabi became a consultant to Robert Oppenheimer, a good friend, who was directing the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic weapon at Los Alamos, New Mexico. “I took the war personally,” Rabi recalled. In 1945, Rabi accepted an appointment as the chair of the department of physics at Columbia, holding that position until 1949, when he joined in the formation of the Brookhaven National Laboratory for atomic research to explore peaceful uses for atomic energy. He was convinced that the United States needed to produce an atomic weapon before German scientists succeeded in their efforts. Nevertheless, he was always troubled by the use of such a destructive device, and he devoted himself to postwar initiatives to control such weapons. Continuing his contributions to the American scientific community, Rabi was in charge of the publication of a twenty-eight-volume edition of the experiments of the Rad Lab after World War II, the foundational source of the American electronics industry. In 1946, he was one of the founders of the Atomic Energy Commission, a
Jewish Americans presidential advisory board, where he expressed his concerns about the production of the hydrogen bomb, troubled by what he saw as people “who do not respect the human spirit” in charge of the project. He testified at the hearing investigating Oppenheimer’s security clearance in 1954, recognizing his friend’s eccentric tendencies but supporting his patriotism and endorsing his unbiased honesty as a scientist. Rabi continued his affiliation with Columbia, where he met President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom Rabi encouraged in 1957 to appoint an official scientific adviser to the government. Eisenhower commented that Rabi came to Washington to serve the country, not to advance himself. Upon Rabi’s retirement from Columbia in 1968, former students and colleagues honored him with a schematic diagram, called the Rabi Tree, originally designed by the U.S. Navy and featuring Rabi, to illustrate the importance of basic scientific research. During the 1970’s and the 1980’s, Rabi spoke frequently about the vital role the scientist played in a civilized community of nations. Significance Rabi’s Nobel Prize-winning work was instrumental in the understanding of the atomic nucleus. Later he used his knowledge of physics to contribute to the development of radar and of atomic weapons, which were crucial to the success of the Allied powers in winning World War II. After that war, Rabi spearheaded a multivolume
Radner, Gilda compendium of research that became the launching pad for the electronics industry. As educator and physicist Lee DuBridge stated, Rabi was a “key figure in lifting American physics and other areas of American science from the primitive role they occupied during his student days to the position of international leadership which American science occupies.” —Leon Lewis Further Reading Motz, Lloyd, ed. A Festschrift for I. I. Rabi. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1977. Affectionate reminiscences by Rabi’s students and colleagues. Rabi, I. I. My Life and Times as a Physicist. Claremont, Calif.: Claremont College, 1960. A recollective memoir offering a good indication of Rabi’s manner of thinking and speaking. Rigden, John S. Rabi: Scientist and Citizen. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. A superb biography, thorough and knowledgeable. Very informative about the cultural context of Rabi’s youth in New York City and on his Jewish heritage with respect to his long friendship with Robert Oppenheimer. See also: Hans Albrecht Bethe; Albert Einstein; Richard P. Feynman; Donald Glaser; David Gross; J. Robert Oppenheimer; Frederick Reines; Edward Teller; Steven Weinberg.
Gilda Radner Actor, entertainer, and writer Radner was a versatile performer, on Broadway, in movies, and on television, and she charmed audiences with her zany characters on Saturday Night Live. When she contracted ovarian cancer, she made it her mission to educate women on early detection and treatment. Born: June 28, 1946; Detroit, Michigan Died: May 20, 1989; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Gilda Susan Radner (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; theater; activism Early Life Gilda Radner (GIHL-duh RAD-nur) was born into a prosperous Jewish family in Detroit, Michigan, and she
had one sibling, Michael, who was a year older. Her parents were Herman Radner, an investor, and Henrietta Dworkin, a legal secretary and an aspiring ballerina until her marriage in 1937. Despite having only a fifth-grade education, Gilda Radner’s father was ambitious and purchased a joint ownership in a billiards club; at the beginning of Prohibition in the 1930’s, he sold his investment and purchased Walkerville Brewery in Ontario, Canada, which allowed him to produce alcohol that allegedly was to be smuggled into the United States, where purchasing it was illegal. He eventually made enough money to invest in the Seville Hotel, an upscale Detroit lodging that served such celebrities as Frank Sinatra, George Burns, and Milton Berle. As a youth, Radner was troubled at times. Her mother put her ten-year-old daughter on diet pills and took Radner and her brother to Florida every 917
Radner, Gilda winter to escape the cold. However, this annual relocation adversely affected Radner’s schooling and friendships. As a girl, Radner dreamed of becoming a writer. She composed poetry, wrote short stories, kept a diary, and admired Emily Dickinson. Radner’s Jewish faith was important to her life. Her Lithuanian grandfather operated a kosher meat business. Radner attended Hebrew school and Sunday school regularly. At fourteen, Radner sat shivah, a vigil to mourn the dead, for her father after he died of brain cancer; he left her a sizable inheritance. Radner remembered with fondness her father taking her to Broadway road shows, sponsoring her dance lessons, and encouraging her acting. Her memories included his comic antics and jokes, and these were an influence on her performing life. Radner’s governess— Elizabeth (“Dibby”) Clementine Gillies—was another positive influence. When others teased Radner about her weight, Dibby encouraged Radner to make a joke and to laugh. Unfortunately Radner’s preoccupation with body size persisted into adulthood; she was at times bulimic. Radner maintained her sense of humor. She later wrote humorously about the pain of not having dates in an article which appeared in the book Very Seventies (1995), a collection of essays from Crawdaddy magazine. At the
Gilda Radner. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Jewish Americans all-girls Liggett High School, Radner found several interests. She sang alto in a double quartet and became active in drama, yet she still had a desire to write. Life’s Work Radner attended the University of Michigan from 1964 to 1969; her major was drama, with a focus on improvisational comedy and on acting. She found at the university that her spoken words were more engaging than her written words. Without graduating, Radner and her boyfriend, Jeffrey Rubinoff, left to pursue acting in Toronto. When their relationship ended in 1970, Radner worked for sixty dollars a week as a clown at children’s events. Radner performed in the original cast of Godspell (1970), a rock musical that opened in Toronto before playing in New York. Interestingly, Radner, an adherent of the Jewish faith, enjoyed her work in Godspell, based loosely on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Radner continued to pursue comedy. She joined an improvisational comedy troupe with Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, and Bill Murray. She performed in the OffBroadway cabaret The National Lampoon Show (1973) and worked in New York with Belushi in “The National Lampoon Radio Hour” (1974). Radner was the first cast member to sign for the latenight comedy show Saturday Night Live. Belushi, Aykroyd, Murray, Chevy Chase, and others followed. During her five years (1975-1980) with Saturday Night Live, Radner created the characters of Roseanne Roseannadanna, who appeared in “Weekend Update”; Baba Wawa, a parody of Barbara Walters; Rhonda Weiss, the gum-chewing Jewish coed; and Emily Litella, a commentator based on Radner’s nanny, Dibby. Radner’s comic commercial for the hip-hugging “Jewess Jeans” was popular. Radner earned an Emmy Award in 1978 for her scripts and performances on Saturday Night Live. She appeared on other television programs: Jack: A Flash Fantasy (1977), Witch’s Night Out (1979), and The Garry Shandling Show (1988). Radner took her Saturday Night Live act to the Broadway Winter Garden Theatre in the show Gilda Radner: Live from New York (1979). The next year she married the show’s band-
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leader, G. E. Smith. Their marriage lasted Advancing and Protecting Women until 1982. Radner appeared in the films The Last Detail (1973), Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video Gilda Radner advanced the cause of women—particularly Jewish (1979), Gilda Live (1980), It Came from women—in entertainment: on television, in Broadway productions, Hollywood (1982), and Movers and Shakers and in movies. Primarily known as an actor and comedian, Radner was (1985). She and actor-director Gene Wilder also a writer, and she won an Emmy Award for her work in television. met when they appeared together in First Another way Radner supported women was in her efforts to raise awareness of ovarian cancer. She shared her own struggles in her autoFamily (1980) and Hanky Panky (1982). biography, It’s Always Something; she talked frankly and publicly They wed in the same year as their movie about the symptoms of the disease and encouraged regular physicals The Woman in Red (1984). for women. Her openness helped to save the lives of women. Radner continued to make time for writing. She and Alan Zweibel wrote the book Hey, Get Back to Work! (1983). In 1995 she wrote about her love for her pet in “Sparkle Further Reading the Wonder Dog,” which was published in Chicken Soup Piver, M. Steven, and Gene Wilder. Gilda’s Disease: for the Pet Lover’s Soul (1998). After Wilder and RadPersonal Experiences and a Medical Perspective on ner’s movie Haunted Honeymoon (1986), Radner disOvarian Cancer. New York: Broadway Books, 1998. covered she had ovarian cancer. Her autobiography, It’s Radner’s case history includes medical details, her Always Something (1989), details her struggle with the personal experiences, and the authors’ insights. disease and describes the aid she received from the Radner, Gilda. It’s Always Something. New York: Simon Wellness Community, an organization that supports vicand Schuster, 1989. Radner’s autobiography focuses tims of cancer and their families. Radner died of cancer on her later years and her bout with cancer. in Los Angeles on May 20, 1989. _______. “Live! From Adolescence! ‘I Always Hated Saturday Night.’” In Very Seventies, edited by Peter Significance Knobles and Greg Mitchell. New York: Simon and Radner performed on stage, in movies, and on televiSchuster, 1995. Radner laughs at herself as a teenager sion. She was an Emmy Award winner for her work on in her essay in this article collection. Saturday Night Live, an essayist, a writer of comedy Wilder, Gene. Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for sketches for radio and television, author and coauthor of Love and Art. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005. books. Her humorous writing about her problems in adoWilder’s autobiography highlights his life with Radner. lescence encouraged teenagers not to take themselves too The chapter on their meeting is “Hanky-Panky with seriously. An essential element in her comedy sketches Roseanne Roseannadanna.” and in her character portrayals, was a Jewish identity. By Zweibel, Alan. Bunny, Bunny: Gilda Radner: A Sort sharing her struggles with ovarian cancer, Radner publiof Love Story. New York: Applause Books, 1997. cized the disease, alerted others to symptoms, and enZweibel’s play script describes his friendship with couraged regular checkups. Charitable funds established Radner. in Radner’s memory have helped in the fight against cancer. Even after her death, Radner’s impact is apparent. See also: Bea Arthur; Fanny Brice; Jamie Lee Curtis; An organization called Gilda’s Club continues to support Fran Drescher; Goldie Hawn; Ricki Lake; Elaine victims of cancer. May. —Anita Price Davis
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Jewish Americans
Harold Ramis Actor and director Head writer of the avant-garde Second City Television and screenwriter of successful film comedies, including the blockbuster National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), Ramis has become a sought-after film director. Born: November 21, 1944; Chicago, Illinois Also known as: Harold Allen Ramis (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Harold Ramis (RAY-mihs) was born to Nathan Ramis and Ruth Cokee. His parents owned a food and liquor store. Harold Ramis graduated from Nicholas Senn High School in 1962; as an adolescent he was president of his Hebrew school. As an undergraduate studying psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, Ramis pledged to the Alpha Xi chapter of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, experiencing many of the outrageous episodes portrayed in the film, National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978). He and his fraternity brothers frequented the rhythmand-blues nightclub Leo’s Blue Note on Delmar Boulevard in East St. Louis, where once some patrons asked to
The Many Mitzvahs of GROUNDHOG DAY Although the most overtly Jewish film of Harold Ramis is Year One (2009), which tells the story of Genesis, the less obvious spirituality of 1993’s Groundhog Day may finally be more profound. That claim may be mitigated by the fact that adherents of several faiths—particularly Buddhism, because of the reincarnation motif, and Christianity and Falun Gong—have used the film to teach and to illustrate their beliefs. At the time he made the film, Ramis described himself as a secular humanist, but many Jewish thinkers have observed that the pattern of the main character’s redemption is not that he is rewarded by heaven, as in Christianity, or by nirvana, as in Buddhism, but by perfecting his character by doing mitzvahs, good deeds. In the film, television meteorologist Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, finds himself repeating the same day, February 2, until he finally stops being self-centered and begins doing things for other people. The script may also be said to have become more Jewish in tone after Ramis’s revisions. Danny Rubin’s original story had Connors living a ten-thousand-year cycle before the film started. By making the repeated days begin in the present, Ramis brought it closer to Judaism’s emphasis on perfecting this world with good deeds.
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dance with their dates. Ramis later wrote the scene into National Lampoon’s Animal House. Upon graduation in 1966, Ramis remained in St. Louis to work as an orderly in a mental institution, which he valued as a preparation for life and for comedy writing. Returning to Chicago in 1968, Ramis supported himself by substitute teaching in Chicago’s inner-city schools while writing entertainment articles for the Chicago Daily News, working with the experimental television group, TVTV, and, off and on, with the improvisational comedy group, Second City. His writing experience led to Ramis being hired as the “Party Joke” editor for Playboy magazine, which, in turn, honed his comedy writing skills. Readers sent in their favorite jokes, and Ramis would refine them. Even other great comedians came to trust Ramis’s comic instincts. Martin Short once told The New Yorker writer Tad Friend that when other comedians are around Ramis, they always glance at him to see if he is laughing. In 1974, Second City colleague John Belushi invited Ramis to New York to work on the National Lampoon Radio Hour, which also led to the National Lampoon road show. When other Second City alumni created Second City Television (SCTV) in 1976, Ramis was tapped as head writer, a position he held for three seasons. While primarily working behind the scenes on Second City Television, on camera Ramis created many of SCTV’s most memorable characters, including Moe Green, the host of Dialing for Dollars, and Dr. Mort Finkel, the dentist who makes house calls. Life’s Work Ramis’s work with the National Lampoon review led to his cowriting, with Doug Kenney (and later with Chris Miller), National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), which broke box-office records for comedy. His second film script, Meatballs (1979), was a commercial success, the first of three films in three years with his friend Bill Murray; the others were Ramis’s directorial debut, Caddyshack (1980), and Stripes (1981). Ramis returned to television in 1982 as head writer and producer for The Rodney Dangerfield Show: It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me, and he occasionally appeared as a guest star on Second City Television. In 1983, he wrote another Lampoon vehicle, National Lampoon’s
Jewish Americans Vacation. It was the phenomenal success of his next film that would keep him in Hollywood for decades. Ghost Busters (1984) featured Ramis as writer and actor, with Murray and Dan Ackroyd. Ramis’s on-camera success led to two other roles, in Baby Boom (1987) and Stealing Home (1988), before he reprised his Egon Spengler role in Ghostbusters II (1989), which he also wrote. He wrote a sequel to an earlier success, Caddyshack II (1988), but producing zany comedy for the youth market would not remain a staple for Ramis. His success in that area gave him the freedom to choose projects more carefully, and after a hiatus, his next film was quite different. Groundhog Day (1993), written and directed by Ramis, was not even clearly a comedy, though Murray brought out its humorous possibilities. It inaugurated a period of what critic Friend called “redemptive comedies,” about characters who need to learn a lesson. Others include Multiplicity (1996, directed but not written by Ramis), Analyze This (1999), and Bedazzled (2000). Ramis then wrote and directed Analyze That (2002) and followed up with a comedy so dark that neither critics nor viewers took to it: The Ice Harvest (2005). In 2006, Ramis directed an episode of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) television series, The Office, then two more in 2007 and another in 2010. In 2009, his comic treatment of the Book of Genesis, Year One, was a mild success. Through much of his early career, Ramis did not consider himself a practicing Jew, but he admitted to becoming more reflective about religion after the events of September 11, 2001. He joined the Aitz Hayim Center for Jewish Living, which he called “postdenominational” and cited as an influence on Year One. Ramis was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 2004, and the following year he received the Austin Film Festival’s Distinguished Screenwriter Award. In 2009, Ramis reunited with the other principals of Ghostbusters—Ackroyd, Murray, and Ernie Hudson—to voice a Ghostbusters video game that was a huge success, leading to the development of Ghostbusters III. The game also includes an animated likeness of Ramis as Egon Spengler.
Ramis, Harold Significance Producer Brian Grazer called Ramis the father of modern Hollywood comedy. Ramis, who loves to analyze comic styles, sees his comedic vision running counter to that of Woody Allen, centered around the lovable loser. Ramis likes to create as central figures dropouts and countercultural outsiders, who do not accept the definition of success offered by their society. Ramis has inspired (and written for) most of the major comic actors working in Hollywood. He is a comedian’s comedian, respected by his peers. Ramis films have become in his lifetime icons for the next generation of comic filmmakers to study. — John R. Holmes Further Reading Ackroyd, Dan, Harold Ramis, and Don Shay. Making Ghostbusters: The Screenplay. New York: Performing Arts, 1985. The complete screenplay of the hit film, along with extensive discussion of the making of the film. Gilbey, Ryan, ed. Groundhog Day. New York: Performing Arts, 2004. The screenplay of Ramis’s final version of the film, with Gilbey’s commentary, mostly on the rewrite of Danny Rubin’s earlier script. Jewitt, Robert. “The Deadly Deception of the Flesh in Groundhog Day.” In St. Paul Returns to the Movies: Triumph Over Shame. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdman’s, 1999. A Christian analysis, though not doctrinal, of the spirituality of the film. Patinkin, Sheldon, Alan Arkin, and Harold Ramis. Second City: Backstage at the World’s Greatest Comedy Theatre. New York: Performing Arts, 2000. A complete history of the improvisational theater that gave Ramis some of his earliest training in creating and in performing comedy. Sacks, Mike. And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with Eighteen Top Humor Writers on Their Craft and the Industry. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 2009. Ramis talks with Sacks about the influence of Chicago as a source of irony and autobiographical elements in some of his films. See also: Woody Allen; Judd Apatow; David Copperfield; Larry Gelbart; Charles Grodin; Gilda Radner; Carl Reiner; Adam Sandler; Ben Stiller; Gene Wilder.
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Shulamit Ran Israeli-born composer A renowned composer, Ran uses in her work references to modernism, neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Jewish-Israeli music. Born: October 21, 1949; Tel Aviv, Israel Area of achievement: Music Early Life Shulamit Ran (SHOO-lah-meet rahn) was born in Tel Aviv to a German father and a Russian mother, who both had immigrated to Palestine in the 1930’s. By the age of seven, Ran was composing songs; her formal study of music began with piano lessons at the age of eight, and composition lessons with Alexander Uriah Boskovich and Paul Ben-Haim at the Tel Aviv Academy of Music commenced a year later. She made her public debut as a pianist in 1961, and soon thereafter she was awarded scholarships from the Mannes College of Music and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. With her parents, she came to New York and began study at the Mannes College in 1962. Her piano teachers were Nadia Reisenberg and Dorothy Taubman; Ran continued her study of composition with Norman Dello Joio. In 1963, Ran performed her Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra with the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts, with Leonard Bernstein conducting. Most of her compositions in this period were for chamber ensembles; the Capriccio and her Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra (1970) were the exceptions. Other early works included the Sonatina for Two Flutes (1961), Hatzvi Israel Eulogy for mezzosoprano, flute, harp, and string quartet (1969), and Three Fantasy Pieces for cello and piano (1971). Ran graduated from Mannes in 1967. She then spent several years concertizing in the United States, Europe, and Israel, but—on receiving an offer from the University of Chicago in 1973—she curtailed her performing activities and relocated permanently to Chicago. Life’s Work When Ran was appointed to the faculty of the University of Chicago, she continued her studies in composition with Ralph Shapey. While her compositional work is influenced by modernism (in the style of Shapey), other musical influences are neoclassicism (in which her work might be compared with that of Johann Sebastian Bach, Paul Hindemith, and Béla Bartók), Romanticism (through her studies with Ben-Haim), and Jewish-Israeli music. 922
Ran’s works include both small-scale forms (piano solos, songs, and chamber music), large works for orchestra, and an opera, Between Two Worlds: The Dybbuk (based on an old Yiddish legend first dramatized by Solomon Ansky in the early twentieth century), which she wrote during a tenure as Brena and Lee Freeman, Sr., Composer-in-Residence at the Lyric Opera of Chicago). The world premiere of this work took place in Chicago in 1997. The European premiere (in a German translation) was at the Bielefeld Opera in 1999. Ran’s musical works are published by the Israel Music Institute and by the Theodore Presser Company. In addition to her opera, she has written works on commission from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (where she was composer-in-residence from 1990 to 1997), the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chanticleer, and others. Ran has been the recipient of grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and she has received the Pulitzer Prize. Among Ran’s works are Halle (2005), for organ solo; Credo/Ani Ma’amin, a section from And on Earth, Peace: A Chanticleer Mass (2006); Song and Dance (2007) for saxophone duo and percussion; Ha’hatzaga Nimshechet (2008; The Show Goes On), for clarinet and orchestra; and Lyre of Orpheus (2009), for string sextet with cello solo. She is the recipient of honorary doctoral degrees from, among others, Mount Holyoke College (1988) and Bowdoin College (2004). Ran has been married twice. Her first husband was Cliff Colnot, a musicologist and conductor with degrees from Northwestern University. Her second husband, with whom she has two sons, is Avraham Lotan, a surgeon specializing in otolaryngology. Significance Shulamit Ran has remained active as a composer, a performer, and an educator. She was named the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. She is also the artistic director of Contempo (formerly the Contemporary Chamber Players), in which position she succeeded Shapey. While influencing her students, she has continued to write new music on commission from performing organizations in many countries, and her stature among composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is secure. —Susan M. Filler
Jewish Americans Further Reading Gradenwitz, Peter. The Music of Israel: From the Biblical Era to Modern Times. 2d ed. Portland, Oreg.: Amadeus Press, 1996. The work of Ran is discussed in the chapter “Composers in Modern Israel.” Ran, Shulamit. Contemporary Anthology of Music by Women, edited by James R. Briscoe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Includes the composer’s personal assessment of her life, education, and musical works. Features the second movement of
Rand, Ayn her Symphony (1990), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991. Toumani, Meline. “A Mass by Committee and a Test of Belief.” The New York Times, April 22, 2007. Ran tells how she was commissioned by the singing group Chanticleer to write part of a Mass. To her surprise, she was assigned the Credo. See also: Lukas Foss; Philip Glass; Lorin Maazel; André Previn; Isaac Stern.
Ayn Rand Russian-born philosopher and writer An uncompromising philosopher of rationalism, individualism, freedom, and enlightened self-interest, who spread her ideas in her novels and essays from the mid-1930’s to her death, Rand was a major progenitor of the modern libertarian movement.
1921 to study history and philosophy, while her father worked in the pharmacy he formerly owned and her mother translated books. Graduating in 1924, Rand enrolled in the State Technicum for Screen Arts, hoping to write screenplays subtly favoring her philosophy, but she found this impos-
Born: February 2, 1905; St. Petersburg, Russia Died: March 6, 1982; New York, New York Also known as: Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum (birth name) Areas of achievement: Philosophy; social issues; literature Early Life Ayn Rand (in rand) was born to Jewish parents. Her father was agnostic, and her mother was not actively religious. Her family achieved a middle-class lifestyle, provided by her father’s pharmacy, and she grew up strongly oriented toward rationality, optimism, and great achievement. Though mainly raised with her younger sisters, Natasha and Nora, by her social mother, Rand adopted her father’s quiet passion for politics and ideas. Previously tutored and self-taught, she found high school boring. In 1917, Rand favored the February Revolution, which led to the abdication of Czar Nicholas II, and she developed an infatuation for Alexander Kerensky, a leader in the revolution who spoke fiercely for freedom (she lost her illusions before meeting him in 1945). However, Rand opposed the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks took over the government. Her family fled to the Crimea when the Bolsheviks confiscated her father’s pharmacy, but failed to escape before Vladimir Lenin defeated the Whites. Rand enrolled in the University of Petrograd in
Ayn Rand. (Library of Congress)
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collectivist that even the word “I” had disappeared. Meanwhile, she began The Fountainhead Ayn Rand called her philosophy Objectivism because she con(1943). This portrayed her first example of the sidered it based strictly on applying pure reason to objective realideal Rand hero, architect Howard Roark, and it ity. It was strongly Aristotelian (Rand gave the three sections of Atexpounded her philosophy. She had great diffilas Shrugged names from Aristotelian philosophy). Artistically, culties finding a publisher and nearly gave up at she placed strong emphasis on Romanticism, by which she meant a heroic and optimistic (though still realistic) view of life. She recogone point; O’Connor persuaded her to continue, nized no place for emotion—not even regarding tastes in art, literaand she dedicated the novel to him. It finally apture, and music or in personal relationships. peared in 1943 and eventually sold well. In From an early age she rejected collectivism in all forms, advo1949, a film based on it was released. Rand cating individualism and freedom and realizing that ultimately wrote the script, but overall she was displeased collectivism leaves no room even for individual thought, which with the film and became disgusted with Hollymight challenge the collective wisdom. Politically, she advocated wood. She and O’Connor moved to New York strict laissez-faire capitalism, rejecting all forms of statism, from for good in 1951. clerical rule and traditional authoritarianism through fascism to By that time, Rand was forming a circle of communism and other forms of leftism. friends, young people who shared her views. Ethically, Rand advocated enlightened self-interest (including They included Barbara and Nathaniel Branden, what amounted to a form of the Golden Rule) and firmly rejected altruism. She was fiercely atheistic and anticlerical. Her ideal was Alan Greenspan, and Leonard Peikoff (Rand’s the independent, self-contained individual, who neither sacrifices eventual heir). One problem was that Rand infor others nor expects others to sacrifice for him or her. creasingly saw herself as perfectly rational and expected everyone to agree with her completely, even about tastes in the arts. Yet they were also supposed to think for themselves. Writer Ruth sible. The extreme censorship frustrated her. A letter Beebe Hill pointed out the contradiction in this, but the from a cousin in Chicago inspired Rand to go to America problem got worse. Rand started an affair with Nathaniel in 1926, nominally to study film for a year; her family laBranden, which by a complex series of events wrecked bored to make this possible. She intended to stay and the circle in 1968. never returned, changing her name to Rand in the proAlready she was working on Atlas Shrugged (1957), cess, though she remained in touch with her family until inspired by the notion of a strike by the dominant creators the late 1930’s. In Hollywood, she met Cecil B. DeMille of society against the self-sacrifice demanded by altruand got a job as an extra on the film The King of Kings ism. The distillation of all she advocated, it left her with (1927); then she became a junior writer, researching the problem of what to do next; she never wrote another scripts. In 1929, she married Frank O’Connor (who benovel and her later essays often relied heavily on selfcame her spiritual soulmate) and took American citizenquotation. Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957 to ship in 1931. many negative reviews, but it sold well. Despite its flaws (the black-and-white portrayal of heroes and villains and Life’s Work protagonist John Galt’s excessively long, tedious speech), Rand’s career as advocate of freedom and individualit superbly presents her philosophy and shows the deism started with a 1932 screenplay called Red Pawn, fects in collectivism. which was bought but never produced. Then she wrote In 1962, she started The Objectivist Newsletter (later her first novel, We the Living (1936), inspired by her unicalled The Objectivist) to present her views and those of versity experiences. She also wrote a play, Night of Janulike-minded associates. She published five collections of ary 16th (1934), about a murder trial in which the verdict the essays: The Virtues of Selfishness (1964), Capital(decided by a jury chosen from the audience) springs ism: The Unknown Ideal (1966), The New Left: The Antifrom subconscious philosophical views. Both were comIndustrial Revolution (1971), Introduction to Objectivpleted in 1934, but she had many problems getting the ist Epistemology (1979), and The Romantic Manifesto play performed as she wished and even more getting the (1969). However, the effort of both writing her essays novel published. Later she wrote a short novel, Anthem and carefully editing submissions led her to end it and (1938), about the rediscovery of egoism in a world so start The Ayn Rand Letter to express herself. She also
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Jewish Americans occasionally lectured and made other public appearances. Health problems forced her to end The Ayn Rand Letter a few years later, and her career wound down. O’Connor died in 1979, and Rand began a script for an Atlas Shrugged film, dying of lung cancer before she got far. Significance Although Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism was intended as a complete philosophy and its heroes attract admiration as ideals, its greatest influence has been political. In the early 1940’s, she was part of a group of three women (the others were her friends Isabel Paterson and Rose Wilder Lane) who played a key role in starting a movement for capitalism and individualism at the height of the “New Deal.” Many later leaders of the Libertarian Party were initially influenced by them, but Rand has also had an enduring influence (through novels, essays, and occasionally personal encounters) on a large number of people in a wide variety of fields. The most important undoubtedly was economist Greenspan, a friend and contributor to her newsletters in the 1960’s and later longtime chairman of the Federal Reserve. —Timothy Lane Further Reading Berliner, Michael S., ed. Letters of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton, 1995. Selected letters—business and personal, with some expounding her philosophy over several pages—mostly from 1934 until her death.
Redstone, Sumner Branden, Barbara. The Passion of Ayn Rand. New York: Doubleday, 1986. Generally favorable biography and assessment by a longtime associate who had a temporary falling out with Rand at the end of the 1960’s. Branden, Nathaniel. Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand. New York: Avon, 1989. Personal account of the author’s relationship with Rand and its devastating impact on both families and the Objectivist movement. Britting, Jeff. Ayn Rand. New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2003. A short but complete biography and analysis. Doherty, Brian. Radicals for Capitalism. New York: PublicAffairs Books, 2007. History of the modern libertarian movement, with considerable material about Rand, her philosophy, and her influence. Harriman, David, ed. Journals of Ayn Rand. New York: Penguin, 1997. Rand’s personal notes, primarily about various writing projects (including some never completed), particularly The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Heller, Anne Conover. Ayn Rand and the World She Made. New York: Doubleday, 2009. Detailed, wellresearched biography and assessment; mostly favorable, but points out flaws, such as her rigid rationalism. See also: Alan Greenspan; Lillian Hellman; Erica Jong; Tony Kushner; Emma Lazarus; Dorothy Parker; Susan Sontag.
Sumner Redstone Business executive, entrepreneur, and investor A leader in the entertainment and the communications industries, Redstone built his father’s regional drive-in theater business into National Amusements, Inc., a multinational entertainment industry that includes Showcase Cinemas, Multiplex Cinemas, and Cinema de Lux. In the process of building his business, Redstone became the chairman of Columbia Broadcasting Service (CBS) Corporation and Viacom. Born: May 27, 1923; Boston, Massachusetts Also known as: Sumner Murray Rothstein (birth name); Sumner Murray Redstone (full name) Areas of achievement: Business; entertainment
Early Life Sumner Redstone (SUM-nur RED-stohn) was born Sumner Murray Rothstein in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the older of Max and Belle Rothstein’s sons. In 1940, the family surname was changed to Redstone. Sumner Redstone grew up in a public housing project apartment in a Jewish community in the west end of Boston. His father, proud to be a second-generation American, sold linoleum and wholesale liquor before becoming an owner of drive-in theaters and nightclubs. During his childhood, Redstone was required to study hard and work diligently. In 1940, Redstone graduated from Boston Latin School, earning the highest grade point average ever recorded at the school. Over the next two years Redstone 925
Redstone, Sumner earned the credits necessary to obtain a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard University. His foreign language studies and participation in the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) led Redstone to receive a special invitation to join a team of U.S. Army cryptographers that decoded Japanese messages during World War II. After the war, Redstone’s final military assignment was overseeing entertainment for Army hospitals. His father’s nightclub connections greatly assisted in this endeavor. After leaving the military service as a first lieutenant, Redstone was awarded his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University. While working toward a degree from Harvard Law School, Redstone used his military connections to earn a tidy profit, buying and selling surplus military supplies. After graduating, he married Phyllis Gloria Raphael, and he accepted a clerkship at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and a teaching job at the University of San Francisco Law School. In 1948, Redstone became a special assistant to the attorney general in Washington, D.C. From 1951 to 1954, Redstone
Sumner Redstone. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Jewish Americans had a law partnership of Ford, Bergson, Adams, Borkland, and Redstone. Life’s Work In 1954, Redstone left the law practice and joined his father and brother at Redstone Management, the controller of a dozen drive-in theaters. Redstone initially focused his attention on expansion of the company and its relationship with film companies, but he was soon assigned to handle the company’s daily operations. At this time, drive-ins were considered second rate and did not receive equal access to first-run films. Redstone took legal action against the film companies and gained drive-ins the right to show new films. In the 1960’s, the company became known as National Amusement, Inc., and soon thereafter it began converting the drive-ins to cinema complexes with multiscreen theaters. National Amusement eventually owned fourteen hundred film screens. When fire swept through Boston’s Copley Plaza Hotel in 1979, Redstone escaped through the thirdfloor window, but he suffered third-degree burns on 45 percent of his body and severe leg injuries. His survival and his ability to walk again showed the breadth of his strength and his tenacity. Realizing his need for a closer relationship with motion-picture companies, Redstone began investing in Warner Communications, Twentieth Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, and other entertainment and media organizations, including Viacom. Viacom had acquired cable network stations of interest to Redstone. Redstone wanted Viacom and persisted until he obtained his purchase goal in 1987. The more than three-billion-dollar procurement included eight radio stations, five television stations, and the cable channels MTV, Nickelodeon, Showtime, and The Movie Channel. Immediately after the purchase, Redstone made Viacom’s stock public. Redstone failed to acquire Orion Pictures in 1988, but the attempt gained the company eighteen million dollars in assets. In 1994, he achieved the tenmillion-dollar purchase of Paramount Communications, which included theme parks, sports teams, and Simon and Schuster. He also acquired Blockbuster Entertainment Corporation. In 1995, Viacom suffered financial deficits that led Redstone to sell some assets, including Madison Square Garden, USA Networks, and much of Simon and Schuster. Blockbuster suffered financial problems, too, but Redstone managed to shore up
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the troubled company’s finances for the time Development of Viacom being. Despite these woes, Redstone’s business mergers continued to flourish throughout the Sumner Redstone is known for his development of Viacom, one late 1990’s and early 2000’s. He was elected of the top entertainment and content companies worldwide. IniViacom’s chief executive officer in 1996, and tially a spinoff of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), Viacom later purchased its former parent corporation, and as a rethree years later the company merged with Spellsult it gained the cable channels Country Music Television (CMT) ing Entertainment. In that year, Viacom also beand The National Network (TNN), which was later called Spike. gan trading on the New York Stock Exchange. CBS and Viacom separated into two independent companies again Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2005. Redstone, the chairman of the board of National Amuseregulation changes in 1999 allowed Redstone ments, Inc., the controlling stockholder of Viacom, became execuand Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) tive chairman of the board of directors of Viacom and of CBS CorChairman Mel Karmazin to merge these busiporation. His realization, in the mid-1980’s, that film theaters were nesses. Over the next few years additional purin direct competition with cable networks and that home entertainchases included Black Entertainment Network ment was likely to be a fast-growing business inspired him to invest (BET), Comedy Central cable network, and in Viacom. From there he anticipated that Paramount Pictures Corother radio and television stations. Redstone poration, MTV, Nickelodeon, CMT, Black Entertainment Television (BET), and others would provide services that would advance negotiated additional MTV services in China his business. Redstone foresaw the value of packaging and bunand published his autobiography, A Passion to dling services to best serve his clients, and Viacom was the major Win, in 2001. He survived prostate cancer in acquisition that brought this to fruition. In 2010, Viacom continued 2004, and in that same year Blockbuster sepato follow Redstone’s example of delving into new arenas of enterrated from Viacom. CBS and Viacom became tainment. Viacom’s MTV Networks (MTVN) eventually included separate entities in 2005. The next year, Reda membership-based music service, Rhapsody; a videogame destone stepped down from his chief executive ofvelopment company, Harmonix; and multiple online gaming opficer position but remained a major stakeholder. portunities, AtomFilms, AddictingGames, Shockwave, Xfire, and In 2009, Redstone and National AmuseNeopets. ments suffered under massive debts to creditors. In order to appease creditors, National Amusement sold thirty-five theaters to Rave nies, Redstone also engaged in many civic and philanCinema and also sold nearly one billion dollars in Viacom thropic activities. His service to the community included and CBS stock. In 2010, National Amusement announced chairing the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater the sale of its Russian movie theater chain to Shari Boston. He served as chairman or trustee to numerous Redstone. Despite these sales, Redstone continued to nonprofit health and medical organizations and several hold voting control in both Viacom and CBS. art institutions. Redstone also gave millions of dollars in After fifty-two years of marriage, Redstone was dicharitable grants to fund research in burn care and cancer vorced by Phyllis. (He married Paula Fortunato in 2002, treatment. and they were divorced in 2009.) Redstone and Phyllis —Cynthia J. W. Svoboda are the parents of Shari Ellin Redstone and Brent Dale Redstone and the grandparents of five. Sumner Redstone Further Reading has lectured at Harvard Law School, Boston University McPhail, Thomas L. Global Communication: Theories, Law School, and Brandeis University. Stakeholders, and Trends. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2002. Includes a synopsis of Viacom in its examinaSignificance tion of large media companies. Redstone built National Amusements into a global Meyer, Nancy A. “Viacom Announces Plans to Buy family holding company and successfully conducted leCBS.” In Great Events from History: The Twentieth veraged buyouts of Viacom and Paramount CommunicaCentury, 1971-2000, edited by Robert F. Gorman. tions. His humble upbringing, his rigorous education, his Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2008. Provides an savvy investments, his competitive nature, and his enduroverview of the merger of CBS and Viacom and disance of physical hardships generated a strength and a cusses the two executive officers who orchestrated the drive that Redstone used to construct a media empire. deal. Despite the demands of overseeing several major compa927
Reed, Lou Redstone, Sumner, and Peter Knobler. A Passion to Win. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Provides Redstone’s insights into his business, his investments, and his obsession with triumphing over adversaries. Wasserstein, Bruce. Big Deal: Mergers and Acquisitions in the Digital Age. New York: Warner Books, 2000.
Jewish Americans Analyzes the wheeling and dealing of major media corporation mergers and the key players involved in these transactions. See also: Walter Annenberg; Michael Dell; David Geffen; Carl Icahn; Mel Karmazin; George Soros.
Lou Reed Rock musician and songwriter Reed was a founding member of and the principal songwriter for the avant-garde rock music group Velvet Underground. After the group broke up in the early 1970’s, Reed pursued a solo career that flourished with creativity. Born: March 2, 1942; Brooklyn, New York Also known as: Louis Firbank; Lewis Allan Reed (full name) Areas of achievement: Music; literature; photography Early Life Lou Reed was born at Beth El Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Sidney George Reed (originally Rabinowitz), was an accountant. His mother, Toby Futterman, reputedly had been a beauty queen. In 1953, Lou Reed’s father, whose accounting practice was prospering, moved the family to the middle-class suburb of Freeport, Long Island, which was also home to a significant number of actors and entertainers. The young Reed was fascinated by the new genres of popular music that appeared in the late 1950’s. Having received some training in classical piano and having largely taught himself to play guitar, Reed began to play in various doo-wop groups. Reed’s rebellious temperament increasingly concerned his parents, and in 1959 Reed underwent electrotherapy treatments at Creedmoor State Psychiatric Hospital. This experience, which Reed later confronted in such songs as “Kill Your Sons” (1974) and such albums as Growing Up in Public (1980), left him profoundly ambivalent about conventional family life. From 1960 to 1964, Reed studied literature at Syracuse University. The most formative relationship of Reed’s early life was with the Jewish writer Delmore Schwartz. From Schwartz, Reed learned the naturalism that would characterize his lyrics and a conception of the artist as an 928
unavoidably alienated adversary of mainstream culture. At the same time, Reed took an increasing interest in free jazz musicians, such as Ornette Coleman. Life’s Work After graduation Reed took a job as a songwriter for the budget record label Pickwick International. Through Pickwick, Reed, who was experimenting with guitar technique, met the Welsh music student John Cale, who was working with the minimalist composers John Cage and La MonteYoung. The convergence of the musical interests of Reed and Cale led to the creation of Velvet Underground. The band soon attracted the attention of the artist Andy Warhol, who was looking for musical accompaniment for his work in multimedia. Warhol provided for Reed a model for how an artist might manipulate his public image for a mass audience. Between 1965 and 1970, the Velvet Underground released four albums that are generally considered among the most innovative in the history of rock music. Reed overtly explored transgressive subjects—the complex interplay of sexual dominance and debasement and, in songs such as “Heroin” (1967) and “Sister Ray” (1967), the urban drug culture and New York City’s gay and transgender scene. The Velvet Underground’s musical style, with its use of drone, distortion, and feedback, only underscored their divergence from the good vibrations of the 1960’s. With the disintegration of the Velvet Underground, Reed embarked on a solo career. The 1972 album Transformer produced the most successful single of Reed’s career, “Walk on the Wild Side,” which celebrated leading figures of the demimonde that clustered around Warhol’s studio, The Factory. Throughout the 1970’s, Reed experimented with a variety of musical styles, such as the androgynous glam rock and the incipient heavy metal of 1974’s live recording Rock and Roll Animal. In 1980, Reed married British designer Sylvia Morales. Songs
Jewish Americans such as “Blue Mask” (1982) remained as menacing as anything Reed had ever written. However, Reed had written songs of rare emotional complexity, such as “Coney Island Baby” (1975). Much of his songwriting in the 1980’s developed this latent romanticism and suggested a Reed who was containing his more self-destructive tendencies. The late 1980’s and early 1990’s saw a veritable renaissance of Reed’s career. The 1989 album New York evoked both the energies and the pathologies of the city that had always been his creative inspiration. Throughout much of his career Reed had downplayed his Jewish heritage. The New York album reversed this practice, with such songs as “Good Evening, Mr. Waldheim” calling out contemporary forms of anti-Semitism. In 1990, Reed and Cale reunited to do a Warhol tribute album. Songs for Drella—“Drella” being a nickname for Warhol that blended “Dracula” and “Cinderella”—was followed by 1993’s Magic and Loss, a moving reflection on the death of two friends from cancer. In 1996, Reed was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. While Reed continued to write and record music into the new century, his divorce from Morales in 1994 and his relationship with performance artist Laurie Anderson coincided with a new eclecticism in the projects he pursued. In 1996, Reed teamed with theater director Robert Wilson to provide songs for Time Rocker, a reinterpretation of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). In 2000, Reed and Wilson collaborated on a staging of the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe, POEtry, songs and readings from which Reed issued in a 2003 recording “The Raven.” Reed also published three books of photography: Emotion in Action (2003), Lou Reed’s New York (2006), and Romanticism (2009). In 2010, Reed premiered his first documentary film, Red Shirley, which recounts the life of his onehundred-year-old cousin from her emigration from Poland in 1938 to her years as a labor organizer in New York City’s Garment District. Significance In one of his earliest and most affecting ballads, “I’ll Be Your Mirror” (1967), Reed promised “to reflect what you are.” Reed shared with fellow Jewish rock musicians Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Leonard Cohen a desire to bring a literary sensibility to his music. Many critics, for example, treat the three-part “Street Hassle” (1978) as a
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Pushing the Limits of Expression in Rock Music Even as the various public personae that Lou Reed adopted in the 1970’s reflected commercial trends in the music industry, Reed pushed the limits of expression in rock. In 1973, he released the album Berlin, in which the divided city of the Cold War became the setting for a harrowing chronicle of the dissolution of a relationship. Vilified by many critics at the time for its brutal realism, Berlin stands today as one of the masterpieces of Reed’s solo career, so much so that in 2006 and 2007 artist and director Julian Schnabel teamed with Reed to produce both a Berlin tour and a related film. In 1975, Reed went a step further with Metal Machine Music, sixty-four minutes of unrelenting guitar feedback. Interpreted at the time either as a salvo in Reed’s conflicted relationship with his record company or as evidence of Reed’s final descent into madness, Metal Machine Music is often considered a precocious classic of electronic music. Indeed, much of Reed’s energy has been devoted to electronic music. In 2002, the German new music group Zeitkratzer premiered a version of Metal Machine Music that composer Ulrich Krieger had transcribed for classical concert instruments. In 2008, Reed, Krieger, and Sarth Calhoun formed Metal Machine Trio (MM3) to perform and record electronic improvisation inspired by the original album.
model of the short story in song. What sets Reed apart from other musicians is the uncompromising naturalism in which he voices his lyrics. The point, however, was never pure provocation, and Reed was no mere voyeur. He treated the denizens of even his darkest songs with compassion, and, in so doing, he held out the possibility of redemption and transcendence. As he observed in his signature song “Sweet Jane” (1970), “Anyone who ever had a heart/ They wouldn’t turn around and break it.” If Reed opened up a new world for rock music, he also owed much to the Old World. He reversed his family’s assimilationist trajectory, returning to the lower East Side and Greenwich Village and embracing the Jewish tradition of songwriting that combined self-effacing irony with sympathy for the little man. —Charles R. Sullivan Further Reading Beeber, Steven Lee. The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2006. Beeber presents Reed both as a successor to the confrontational Jewish comedian Lenny 929
Reich, Robert B. Bruce and as the zeyde (grandfather) of the punk rock of the 1970’s. Billig, Michael. Rock and Roll Jews. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Billig’s sociologically informed study examines Reed alongside Dylan, Simon, and Cohen. Bockris, Victor. Transformer: The Lou Reed Story. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994. Although there is not yet an authorized or entirely reliable Reed biography, Bockris’s is the most detailed.
Jewish Americans Doggett, Peter. Lou Reed: Growing Up in Public. London: Omnibus Press, 1992. An analytical discussion of Reed’s musical significance. Reed, Lou. Pass Through Fire: The Collected Lyrics. New York: Hyperion, 2000. The fulfillment of Schwartz’s charge to Reed never to abandon his calling as a writer. See also: Leonard Cohen; Bob Dylan; Paul Simon.
Robert B. Reich Economist and politician Liberal economist Reich is known for shaping the fiscal policies of two presidents, serving as secretary of labor for the first administration of Bill Clinton and as an adviser on Barack Obama’s economic transition board. Born: June 24, 1946; Scranton, Pennsylvania Also known as: Robert Bernard Reich (full name) Areas of achievement: Government and politics; economics Early Life Robert B. Reich (rik) was born to Jewish Americans Edwin Saul Reich and Mildred Dorf on June 24, 1946. Robert B. Reich’s father, a local business owner, was a lifelong conservative, and the young Reich has admitted in interviews that he was never able to convince his father to become more liberal. Reich grew up in South Salem, New York. He suffered from the rare genetic disorder known as multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, or Fairbanks disease, which hampers bone growth and led to Reich’s unusually short stature (four feet eleven inches). He was the valedictorian of his 1964 graduating class at John Jay High School. Reich enrolled at Dartmouth College, where he was politically and socially active. He was elected student body president and directed student productions; he also started an experimental educational system where free classes were offered to everyone living in the area. Reich graduated summa cum laude in 1968. He worked for Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. After Kennedy’s assassination in June of that year, Reich worked for Eugene McCarthy’s campaign, until McCarthy’s loss to Hubert Humphrey at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. 930
Reich later won a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford University as a graduate student. It was at Oxford that he first met Bill Clinton, who was also studying politics. While at Oxford Reich also met Claire Dalton, whom he would later marry. In 1970, after receiving his master’s degree from Oxford in political science and economics, Reich returned to the United States to attend Yale Law School. Reich worked as the editor of The Yale Law Journal and took part in a “public policy union” of students that petitioned local politicians for reform. Reich earned a juris doctor degree in 1973, but he never pursued a Ph.D. Later in his career, his lack of a doctorate would be grounds for denying him tenure at Harvard. Life’s Work Avoiding large law firms, Reich began work for the government in 1974, taking a position at the Justice Department as an assistant solicitor general. In 1976, Reich became director of policy planning at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), during the Jimmy Carter administration. He left the FTC in 1981 to lecture at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he taught courses on business, public policy, and government. He also appeared as a liberal political commentator on National Public Radio and other programs, and he worked as a consultant to Democratic presidential nominees. While at Harvard Reich published two popular books, Minding America’s Business: The Decline and Rise of the American Economy (1982) and The Next American Frontier (1983). In his books, Reich was preoccupied with America lagging behind foreign industries, a problem that first came to his attention in his five years at the FTC, an experience on which both books drew
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Reich, Robert B.
Robert B. Reich. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
heavily. Minding America’s Business (1983), cowritten with business consultant Ira Magaziner, was a call for increased government intervention to steer large businesses toward investment in new, emerging technology. Reich argued that government incentives need not be drastic or intrusive and that the U.S. government had undertaken similar programs of minor intervention in the past. The Next American Frontier (1983) expanded these ideas and responded to Republican criticism of Reich’s previous book; Reich proposed that ailing manufacturing companies that asked for government aid should receive it only on the condition that they focus future efforts on emerging technology. He decried the intricate financial schemes that large American corporations used to make money, proposing a greater focus on education of the workforce and communication between competitors. In The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for Twenty-First Century Capitalism (1991), Reich attempted to come to grips with globalization, continuing to push for education and companies’ investment in their
employees’ potential, as he observed the domination of low-priced foreign labor over older manufacturing industries. Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign took on several of Reich’s ideas, and the slogan “Putting People First” recalled Reich’s interest in promoting companies’ “human capital” of trained, inventive employees. Clinton appointed Reich first as the lead adviser on his economic transition team and later as secretary of labor. After being appointed, Reich wrote an article for The New York Times explaining his eventual goal of more extensive education for every laborer. Reich has said in interviews that the significant achievements of his term as labor secretary included the passing of the Pension Protection Act, the increase in the minimum wage, the enforcement of stricter workplace safety guidelines, and the national campaign against sweatshop labor. In 1997, Reich joined the faculty of Brandeis University as a lecturer on government. His 1997 memoir, Locked in the Cabinet, an account of his time in the Clinton administration, was the subject of controversy 931
Reich, Robert B. when Reich was accused of fabricating events and passages of dialogue. Jonathan Rauch of Slate magazine wrote two articles describing disputed incidents and details in the book, problems that he claimed persisted even in a later version of the book, which Reich had revised in reaction to controversy. Reich ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, finishing a close second in the Democratic primary. He was expected to run again in 2006, but instead he endorsed Deval Patrick, who went on to become governor. In 2006, Reich became the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, Reich published Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, which addressed the issue of federal stimulus packages. Significance Reich has had a significant impact on the national economic conversation, and he is regarded as one of the best economic policy makers of the past several decades. He was ranked as one of Time’s “Top Ten Cabinet Members of All Time” for his tenure under Clinton, and he worked to support Obama, serving as an adviser during the presidential campaign and at the beginning of his term. Reich remains a powerful and highly productive voice in political debate, writing articles for The New York Times and his blog and appearing on political talk shows. —C. Breault
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Reform Work as Labor Secretary After Bill Clinton appointed Robert B. Reich secretary of labor on January 22, 1993, Reich used the position to make major strides in workplace safety, fair wages, consideration for employees on leave, and pension planning. He presided over the implementation of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which required employers to provide unpaid leave for individuals who missed work for personal and family needs, such as recovering from injury or illness or caring for a sick member of their immediate family. Reich championed 1994’s School-to-Work Opportunities Act, which established vocational training for high school graduates who did not plan to attend college. He pushed for greater corporate responsibility in many areas: educating employees, providing health benefits, and enforcing safety standards in the workplace. He lobbied for a higher minimum wage and won, with the increase becoming law in 1996. As Reich said in an interview, even the administrative obligations were taxing: simply managing an agency with twenty thousand employees and an annual budget of thirtyfive billion dollars felt like an achievement in itself. Reich stepped down as labor secretary in 1996, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. Nevertheless, just as many of Reich’s humane economic proposals were used by Clinton’s campaign in 1992, 1996’s presidential campaign showed Clinton again promising reforms originally advocated by Reich, such as federal grants to encourage worker education.
Further Reading Leibovich, Mark. “The True Measure of a Man.” The Washington Post, March 14, 2002, p. C01. An article about Reich’s short stature. Reich, Robert B. Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future. New York: Knopf, 2010. Reich suggests that problems with the U.S. economy are caused by income inequality and shows how economic conditions during the Great Depression are repeating themselves.
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_______. Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life. New York: Vintage, 2008. This sharp, readable book shifts the focus from corporate responsibility to consumer responsibility, arguing that capitalism has had a negative effect on our democracy because consumers are unwilling to rein themselves in. Reifenberg, Anne. “Robert Reich.” The Dallas Morning News, September 5, 1993. An interview with Reich soon after his appointment as secretary of labor, in which he describes the problems he sees facing the American workforce. See also: George Akerlof; Kenneth Arrow; Ben Bernanke; Milton Friedman; Alan Greenspan; Herbert Stein.
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Steve Reich Musician and composer A leading composer, Reich is credited with helping to create the minimalist style of music. Born: October 3, 1936; New York, New York Also known as: Stephen Michael Reich (full name) Area of achievement: Music Early Life Steve Reich (rik) was born in New York on October 3, 1936. After his parents’ divorce, he spent his childhood shuttling between New York and California. The long train rides taken between visiting parents would feature in one of his later compositions, Different Trains (1988). As a boy, he had piano lessons, but he took little interest in them. His interest in music was aroused when at age fourteen he studied drums with Roland Kohloff. Reich enrolled at Cornell University, where he majored in philosophy, and graduated in 1957. He took a music theory course from William Austin, covering music from the time of Johann Sebastian Bach forward, which further stimulated his interest in music. Returning to New York City, Reich determined to study composition and began private lessons before enrolling at the Juilliard School in 1958, where he studied with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti. He went back to California in 1961 to study with Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio at Mills College, where he received his master’s degree in 1963. While remaining in San Francisco, several experiences formed the basis of his later musical style. The music of John Coltrane and African drumming showed him the effects of static harmonies and of short, repeated rhythmic patterns. He also performed in Terry Riley’s famous minimalist piece In C (1964). Reich discovered that two tape recorders playing identical loops of recorded speech starting at the same time would gradually move out of phase with each other (that is, after a while they would slowly no longer be synchronous with each other), producing slowly moving and changing patterns and rhythms. He called this process “phasing” or “phase shifting.” Life’s Work His first acknowledged composition using the technique of phase shifting was the tape piece It’s Gonna Rain (1965), which he created by using segments of a
preacher expostulating about the deluge. The work’s first series used phase shifting of one segment; a second series begins with two voices and shifts phases until eight voices appear to be heard. For Reich, the importance of phase shifting was its impersonality: once started, it works itself out by rule with nothing left to chance. Reich moved permanently back to New York in 1966, where he extended his idea of phasing to live instrumental performers to create in the listener the sensation of gradual change. His first instrumental piece of 1967 was Piano Phase for two pianos. Reich builds up many cycles; instead of tapes running out of synchronicity, both pianists begin a twelve-note pattern simultaneously, and one gradually speeds up until the patterns are one note apart; that pattern is held, and then the process repeated, and so on. The effect of Reich’s repetitive pieces hovers between movement (the motoric pulse and sense of change) and stasis (long stretches of repetition in which new patterns emerge). Reich’s pieces were performed in New York art galleries, where the works of other minimalists, who worked in film, in the visual arts, and in music, were also appearing. These and other pieces were performed and recorded by his ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians. Reich had been interested in West African music since 1962; after an important concert given at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1970, Reich was accepted at the University of Ghana to study drumming. Reich realized his compositions and West African drumming had much in common: Both were based on repeated patterns, with each performer playing a different rhythmic pattern; both featured unrelenting repetition and emphasized percussive sound qualities; and both submerged the individuality of the performer into the emerging process. Reich put this new musical experience into his next piece, Drumming (1971), which marked his first largescale composition, both in its ninety-minute length and in the number of instruments, including nine percussionists and a piccolo player, plus two female voices. Drumming is recognized as the first masterpiece of musical minimalism. In 1973 and 1974, Reich explored another world music tradition, the gamelan music of Bali, by studying in Seattle, Washington, and Berkeley, California. This experience is reflected in Music for Eighteen Musicians (1976). Constructed in eleven sections and using mallet 933
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Jewish Americans
Different Trains harkens back to Reich’s cross-country train journeys as a child. In this piece, he uses recorded train sounds and taped spoken testimony (including from Holocaust Steve Reich’s earliest compositions were truly minimal, in the survivors) as sources of melody (a speechsense that they were based on the manipulation and repetition of a music technique). Its theme is trains, both small snippet of recorded speech or a short melodic fragment. By exploiting the phenomenon of “phase shifting,” he constructed works those that took him across the country and that slowly evolved, yielding new patterns. those that took other Jewish children to their From this basic technique, in the coming years Reich expanded, deaths in Nazi camps. enlivened, and broadened his compositions: using larger ensembles, The Cave (1993), a staged audio-video coladding new instruments, finding new sonorities, adding counterlaboration with his wife Beryl Korot, is about point, creating more complex textures, gradually adding new repeatthe cave at Hebron, which tradition considers ing figures, and creating large harmonic progressions. A resulting the burial site of Abraham and Sarah. The refeature of Reich’s compositions was the presence of three apparent corded words of Israelis, Palestinians, and levels (or layers) of texture, seemingly moving at different speeds: Americans mix and echo among the sounds of the quick, restless pulsations of the patterns; the slower-moving, amplified voices and percussion and string inemerging patterns; and very slow waves of sounds and harmonies. struments, creating a “cave” of listening. Reich’s rediscovery of his Jewish heritage brought him to incorporate recordings of spoken texts into works that address social, reliReich continues to compose prolifically, gious, and spiritual issues. writing works for the concert hall using instrumental ensembles and tape and collaborating on multimedia projects. He is the recipient of many awards, including two Grammy instruments such as in the gamelan, this work has broad Awards and a 2009 Pulitzer Prize for his Double Sextet harmonic movement, ebbs and flows of sounds, pulsat(2007). ing chords, dense textures, and rich timbres. Its recording took his music to a large audience, bringing Reich Significance commissions and allowing him to write pieces with Reich is one of the leading composers of the twentieth larger musical forces. and the twenty-first centuries. His early works helped Reich was raised as a secular, assimilated Jew, but he form what is called the minimalist school of musical did explore a variety of Eastern and Indian spiritual praccomposition. His manipulation of taped voices and the tices. In 1974, he began to rediscover his Jewish roots. In rule-driven impersonality of his compositions were tech1976 and 1977, he immersed himself in the study of Heniques fundamental to the creation of the experimental brew, of the Torah, and of cantillation, chanting from the music of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Hebrew Bible. In 1977, he travelled to Israel to hear au—Thomas McGeary thentic singers from Sephardic communities. In cantillation, Reich discovered the ta’amim, the notation of the Further Reading melodic fragments out of which longer melodies are creMertens, Wim. American Minimal Music: La Monte ated. The first product of his immersion in Jewish tradiYoung, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass. New tions was a setting of psalm verses, Tehillim (1981), for York: Alexander Broude, 1983. Puts Reich in the four women’s voices and ensemble. Tehillim does not company of his fellow minimalist composers. imitate Jewish cantillation, but the influence is present in Potter, Keith. Four Musical Minimalists. Cambridge, Enthe lyricism and the colorful instruments. gland: Cambridge University Press, 2000. A chapter After creating a large-scale work, The Desert Music on Reich presents an overview of his life and his ca(1984), a setting of William Carlos Williams’s poems for reer, with clear presentations of his techniques and deorchestra and chorus, Reich returned to small percussion scriptions of major works. pieces and tape pieces. A darkening of tone and a use Reich, Steve. Writings on Music, 1965-2000. Edited by of chromatic modes in his works of this time reflect Paul Hillier. New York: Oxford University Press, his awareness of Jewish music and worship and of the 2002. Collection of Reich’s interviews, essays, and Israeli-Arab conflict. Reich’s later works became more writings about his compositions. programmatic. Several explored his Jewish heritage. Schwarz, K. Robert. Minimalists. London: Phaidon Press,
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Jewish Americans 1996. Chapters on Reich, one treating him as a minimalist and the second treating his opera and musictheater works as maximalist. Strickland, Edward. Minimalism: Origins. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Broad discussion
Reiner, Carl of American minimalism; puts Reich’s music in the context of minimalist painting and sculpture. See also: Aaron Copland; Philip Glass; Arnold Schoenberg.
Carl Reiner Actor, entertainer, and writer Beginning as a dramatic actor, Reiner found his strength to be in comedy, and he became one of the busiest entertainers in Hollywood, creating The Dick Van Dyke Show and collaborating with funny man Mel Brooks. Born: March 20, 1922; Bronx, New York Area of achievement: Entertainment
to 1946 during World War II. A corporal in the Army, he was first trained to be a radio operator, then he was sent to the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University to acquire specialized training as a French-language interpreter. He later served as a Teletype operator, but he was transferred to serve under Major Maurice Evans in the Army Entertainment Section. Their troupe was charged with touring the Pacific theater to put on such plays as G.I. Hamlet (1944) and to perform for their fellow servicemen. When the war ended, Reiner traded the military stage for the civilian stage. He found work at a New Hampshire mountain resort, where his responsibilities included emceeing variety shows and performing stand-up comedy. Although he was always a capable ac-
Early Life Carl Reiner (RI-nur) was born at home, in the Bronx, New York, on March 20, 1922, the second son of Bessie Mathias and Irving Reiner, Jewish immigrants from Austria. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was a watchmaker and an inventor. When Carl Reiner was sixteen years old, he worked as a machinist’s helper, repairing sewing machines for eight dollars a week. At that time, his older brother read about a free acting class being given by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) at a drama school. The WPA was a New Deal program that was designed to put the unemployed back to work. Reiner took the class, and his instructor, Mrs. Whitmore, suggested he audition for Paul Gilmore at the Daily Theater, on Sixty-third Street and Broadway. By the time Reiner was seventeen, he had joined the Gilmore Players and wanted to become a serious dramatic actor. He met his future wife, Estelle Lebost, while both were involved in summer theater at Allaben Acres in New York. While he worked as an actor, she—a singer, an actor, and a visual artist—worked as a stage technician. They were married on December 24, 1943; they had three children, daughter Sylvia Anne and sons Rob and Lucas. Reiner served in the military from 1943 Carl Reiner. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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tor, it had become evident by this time that comedy was his true calling. Life’s Work Reiner may well be entertainment’s Jewish Renaissance man. He is a stage, film, and television actor, a comedian, a television writer, a screenwriter, a playwright, a novelist, a memoirist, and a film director. He has succeeded in balancing a prolific career that includes writing, directing, producing and acting. Following World War II, Reiner accumulated a number of stock company and Broadway stage credits. In 1947, he starred in the touring company of Call Me Mister (1946). In 1948 and 1949, he appeared on Broadway in Inside U.S.A. (1948), and later he performed in Alive and Kicking (1950). During the late 1940’s, television was making its mark on postwar American entertainment. In 1948, Reiner appeared on the television series The Fashion Story. From there he became part of the live, prime-time comedyvariety show The Fifty-fourth Street Revue. In 1950, he was hired away from that show to appear in The Admiral Broadway Revue, which featured the comedy of an unpredictable young comedian named Sid Caesar. That evolved into Caesar’s legendary Your Show of Shows, from 1950 to 1954, and later into Caesar’s Hour, from 1954 to 1957, for which Reiner was both performer and writer. He participated as a performer in numerous skits with Caesar, Imogene Coca, and Howard Morris, among others. Reiner also worked behind the scenes with such writers as Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, and
THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW
Mel Tolkin. Reiner wrote and produced the awardwinning Dick Van Dyke Show from 1961 to 1966. His career as a film director includes Enter Laughing (1967), The Comic (1969), Where’s Poppa? (1970), Oh God! (1977), The One and Only (1978), The Jerk (1979), Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), The Man with Two Brains (1983), All of Me (1984), Summer Rental (1985), Summer School (1987), Sibling Rivalry (1990), Fatal Instinct (1993), and That Old Feeling (1997). His film career as an actor includes Happy Anniversary (1959), The Gazebo (1959), Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! (1965), The Art of Love (1965), Don’t Worry, We’ll Think of a Title (1966), The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966), A Guide for the Married Man (1967), The Comic (1969), Generation (1969), Oh, God! (1977), The End (1978), The Jerk (1979), Skokie (1981), Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), Summer School (1987), The Spirit of ’76 (1990), Fatal Instinct (1993), Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000), Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Good Boy! (2003), Ocean’s Twelve (2004), and Ocean’s Thirteen (2007). Among his many honors are seven Emmy Awards and a 1998 Grammy Award for The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000. Reiner was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame for making “outstanding contributions in the arts, sciences, or management of television, based upon either cumulative contributions and achievements or a singular contribution or achievement.” On March 25, 1988, he was the subject of a video archive interview with the Television Academy Foundation’s Archive of American Television.
Although he has been successful in varied professional fields, Carl Reiner has managed to keep Americans laughing through good times and bad, through economic ups and downs, and through several wars, hot and cold. His occasionally irreverent but always original and subtly self-deprecating brand of humor creates impossible situations and turns them into triumphs, in a comment on the foibles of human nature with a decidedly Jewish sensibility. Nowhere is this more evident than in the award-winning Dick Van Dyke Show. In 1959 and 1960, Reiner wrote, produced, and starred in a pilot for a proposed series he called Head of the Family. Even though many of the episodes were based on his life, network executives refused to accept him as the star. Although this was a crushing disappointment, he reconsidered the concept, using another actor, Dick Van Dyke, as leading man in the role of Rob Petrie. This transformed Reiner’s greatest disappointment into his greatest triumph.
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Significance Reiner embodies the essence of Jewish humor, which was popularized by such noteworthy Jewish film and radio comedians as the Marx brothers, Eddie Cantor, and Jack Benny. From his early work with Caesar during the Golden Age of Television to his later work with Steve Martin, Reiner influenced generations of American comedians. His collaboration with Mel Brooks in creating the comedic persona of the 2000 Year Old Man is possibly the best example of Jewish humor in his repertoire. He proved that a gifted individual could be successful in more than one area of entertainment, by
Jewish Americans achieving award-winning successes as an actor, an author, a director, and a producer. He then expanded his dramatic and comedic talents to include writing for stage, screen, television, novels, short-story collections, and children’s books. — Jan Statman Further Reading Brooks, Mel, and Carl Reiner. The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000: The Book. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. This collection displays remarkably funny insight into the workings of two popular comedic minds, that of Reiner and Brooks. The character of the 2000 Year Old Man was created to test the boundaries of their talents by skewering topics as diverse as fad diets, religion, garlic, prunes, taxes, and fried foods. Nachman, Gerald. Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s. New York: Back Stage Books, 2004. The writer looks at several comedians
Reiner, Rob who became headliners in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and he includes Reiner in his discussion. Reiner, Carl. Enter Laughing. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958. Reiner’s semiautobiographical novel describes the experiences of a young man breaking into the difficult world of show business. This book became the subject of a hit Broadway play and a film. _______. How Paul Robeson Saved My Life and Other Mostly Happy Stories. New York: Cliff Street, 1999. Twelve rich, multidimensional tales filled with nostalgia, poignant memories, and unconstrained humor. Most of them are fictional, although some are based on Reiner’s true-life experiences. _______. My Anecdotal Life: A Memoir. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003. A collection of Reiner’s autobiographical anecdotes and personal observations. See also: Judd Apatow; Alan Arkin; Roseanne Barr; Albert Brooks; Charles Grodin; Norman Lear; Rob Reiner.
Rob Reiner Director, actor, and activist With a career that began as an actor in a wildly popular television series, All in the Family, Reiner moved on to great success as a film director and a producer. He is an outspoken activist for children’s causes and protecting the environment. Born: March 6, 1947; Bronx, New York Also known as: Robert Norman Reiner (full name) Areas of achievement: Entertainment; activism Early Life Rob Reiner (RI-nur), the oldest of three children, was born into a show-business family: His father is comedian, producer, and director Carl Reiner, and his mother is actor Estelle Reiner. The Reiner family lived in New Rochelle, New York, but moved to Los Angeles when Rob Reiner was a young teen. The show-business environment had an impact on young Reiner as he witnessed the daily activities of his father producing The Dick Van Dyke Show situation-comedy series in the early 1960’s. Because of his father’s important job in show business, Reiner met at a young age such groundbreaking comedians as Mel Brooks and Sid Caesar and such esteemed screenwriters as Larry Gelbart and Neil Simon. With this
undeniable show business in his blood, Reiner’s interest in the theater grew. His first acting opportunity was in a high-school play, and later he would have regular acting roles in a resident company in Plymouth, Massachusetts. After graduating from Beverly Hills High School, Reiner attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), majoring in drama. He was involved in improvisational comedy at college, and he founded a troupe called the Session. He also wrote for the television variety show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late 1960’s. An important role early in his career was his film debut in Enter Laughing (1967), based on a semiautobiographical book written by his father, who produced and directed the motion picture. Reiner also had frequent roles on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and on situation comedies such as Gomer Pyle—USMC, The Andy Griffith Show, and The Partridge Family. In 1971, Reiner’s career in television peaked with his role as Michael “Meathead” Stivic on the critically acclaimed and socially conscious situation comedy All in the Family. Life’s Work Reiner’s role as “Meathead” lasted eight years. All in the Family was groundbreaking for television in the 937
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Award for his adapted screenplay. In 1990, Reiner directed a film based on another Stephen King work, Misery (1987), which would also be To his dismay, Rob Reiner will be known always as “Meatan important film for him. Reiner demonstrated head,” for his role on the critically acclaimed All in the Family situhis devotion to authenticity through his tireation comedy. However, that role propelled him into an esteemed career in film, where he found great success as a director. His direcless research for Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), torial career spans three decades, with a diverse collection of films which follows the story of Medgar Evers, an that demonstrate an amazingly dynamic range in subject matter African American civil rights activist who was and theme. Directing everything from lighthearted romances to murdered in 1963. Reiner made a string of other controversial dramas, Reiner brings his unique sensibility and major films, from romantic comedies (1989’s depth of directorial knowledge to every film. He has received mulWhen Harry Met Sally. . .) to military courttiple Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations as well as room dramas (1992’s A Few Good Men), that nominations from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and had major star power, critical acclaim, and the Directors Guild of America. box-office success. Over the years, Reiner has worked with multiple A-list actors, such as Jack Nicholson, James Caan, and Morgan Freeman. early 1970’s, retaining its social and cultural importance. Reiner’s later films explored such themes as aging and Reiner played the part of a young hippie liberal who is death (2007’s The Bucket List) and the adolescent experimarried to Gloria, Archie and Edith Bunker’s daughter. ence (2010’s Flipped), a topic he previously examined in Reiner’s character was a perfect counterpoint to the main Stand by Me. In 1987, Reiner cofounded Castle Rock Encharacter, Archie, an ultraconservative, cigar-smoking tertainment, which was responsible for such great situabigot. Under the supervision of producer Norman Lear, tion comedies as Seinfeld. the show tackled such sensitive sociopolitical issues as Another aspect of Reiner’s life that has occupied his homosexuality, race relations, women’s rights, and even time and energy is his activism for social, political, and the ongoing war in Vietnam. Reiner’s character was of environmental causes. In 1997, he and his wife started Polish descent, which provided Archie with a target for the I Am Your Child Foundation (now known as Parents’ his prejudicial attitudes. With a strong cast that included Action for Children), which educates parents in early Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton, and Sally Struthers, childhood development and better parenting methods. the show pushed the boundary of situation-comedy subReiner is also a member of the Social Responsibility ject matter at that time. The show managed to combine Task Force, an organization established in 1999 by the comedy and drama in a perfect balance. All in the Family Directors Guild of America, which examines issues such won a string of Emmy Awards, with Reiner collecting as violence on television and its impact on society. A two for his work on this significant show. Reiner learned strong supporter for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential a great deal from his experiences on All in the Family that election, Reiner has been a strong advocate for progreshelped his transition from acting to directing. sive liberal causes. Considered as a possible candidate Reiner’s first experience in directing was his comedic for governor of California in 2006, he decided against mock documentary (or “rockumentary”), This Is Spinal running. Reiner is also a devoted supporter of animal and Tap (1984). It follows the tour of four rockers, with interenvironmental causes, contributing to the American Wild views, concert footage, and various exploits on the road. Horse Preservation Campaign and the Alliance for CliWith no script, This Is Spinal Tap has a spontaneous and mate Protection. improvisational feel to it, no doubt inspired by Reiner’s early days with the improvisational comedy groups. The Significance film remains a cult classic with a dedicated audience. Reiner is an important motion-picture director with Reiner’s directorial career is notable because his films an impressive resumé. For being among the most highly are all different genres. He demonstrates a great range for regarded filmmakers of Jewish descent, he was awarded directing and a genius for appealing to a popular audithe Israeli Achievement in Film Award in 2008. He was ence while maintaining solid critical praise. In his film an ACE (American Cinema Editors) Golden Eddie award Stand by Me (1986), based on Stephen King’s 1982 nohonoree in 2010 for his lifetime of film directing. Reiner vella The Body, Reiner superbly directs adolescent boys is well respected for his dedication to social and political in a heartfelt drama. He was nominated for an Academy causes. His tireless work for the Democratic Party and
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Jewish Americans his important contributions to humanitarian and environmental causes place him among the most socially conscious and philanthropic people in Hollywood. —Brad C. Southard Further Reading Burcksen, Edgar. “2010 American Cinema Editors Golden Eddie Award Nominee: Rob Reiner.” CinemaEditor, Spring, 2010, 14-17. This article examines Reiner’s evolution from actor to director with a detailed analysis of his craft. A good resource for those curious about his perspective on film direction and what he considers important in his work. Emery, Robert J. The Directors: Take Two. New York: Media Entertainment, 2000. With a chapter devoted
Reines, Frederick to Reiner, this is a companion to a television series called The Directors. It provides a good overview of his transition from acting to directing, with some comments about each film he directed. Kagan, Jeremy. Directors Close Up. Woberth, Mass.: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000. This book contains a series of interviews with directors that were nominated for best film by the Directors Guild of America. With perspectives from various important directors, including Reiner, it examines their challenges from preproduction to postproduction. See also: Woody Allen; Albert Brooks; James Caan; Billy Crystal; Fran Drescher; Carl Reiner; Ben Stiller.
Frederick Reines Physicist Beginning with his codiscovery of the neutrino in 1956, Reines pioneered the developments leading to an understanding of the properties and the interactions of this elementary particle. His subsequent work led to the field of neutrino astronomy and to an understanding of the role played by neutrinos in generating the elements heavier than iron during stellar collapse and explosion. Born: March 16, 1918; Paterson, New Jersey Died: August 26, 1998; Orange, California Area of achievement: Science and technology Early Life The son of Jewish immigrants to the United States from Russia, Frederick Reines (RI-nuhs) was the youngest of four children and spent much of his childhood in upstate New York. His father, Israel, was a store proprietor. Reines had fond memories of spending time working in his father’s store and enjoying life in a small American town. After the family moved to North Bergen, New Jersey, Reines attended Horace Mann Elementary School. He graduated from Union Hill High School in Union City, New Jersey, where he participated in a variety of extracurricular activities. Reines loved science and earned a bachelor of science degree in physics from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1939. Two years later he received his master’s degree from the same institution. In
1940, he married Sylvia Samuels. They reared a son and a daughter. In 1944, he earned his Ph.D. in physics from New York University. Life’s Work After earning his Ph.D., Reines worked under famed physicist Richard Feynman in the Theoretical Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. In 1945, Reines was appointed as the theory group leader. For the next fourteen years, he helped conduct a number of nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific and in Nevada to develop a better understanding of the effects of nuclear blasts. In 1951, Reines teamed with Los Alamos colleague Clyde Cowan, Jr., to search for the elusive neutrino particle that had been proposed by Wolfgang Pauli in 1936. Their first attempts at detecting the massless, neutralcharge neutrino were carried out at the Hanford nuclear facility in Richland, Washington. In 1955, they transferred their experimental operations to the new Savannah River nuclear reactor facility in South Carolina. One year later, using the capture of k-electrons to detect the neutrino, they observed the electron antineutrino. Soon thereafter, Reines focused his attention on gamma ray astronomy and the study of the neutrino’s properties and interactions. In 1959, Reines was appointed chairman of the Physics Department at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he remained until 1966. While at 939
Reines, Frederick Case, Reines and fellow researchers were the first to detect neutrinos created in the atmosphere by cosmic rays. In 1966, Reines became the founding dean of the Physical Sciences Department at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He helped graduate students develop medical radiation detectors, including those used to measure the total radiation delivered to the human body during radiation therapy. For several years, Reines pursued a program of experiments to test some of the fundamental symmetry principles and associated conservation laws of nature predicted by the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) of elementary particles. These included conservation of lepton number, which would be violated if the decay of an electron or neutrino occurred, and conservation of baryon number, which would be observed in proton decay. This work led to the development of large-scale particle detectors, which have placed stringent limits on the violations of these conservation laws. Based on the measurements of Reines and others, the Supernova 1987A explosion was analyzed to figure out events associated with stellar evolution, particularly the production of elements heavier than iron. Production of these elements is associated with neutrinos bombarding mass that escapes from the supernova. In 1981, Reines was awarded the J. Robert Oppenheimer Prize. He was also given the National Medal of Science (1985), the Bruno Rossi Prize (1989), the Michelson-Morley Award (1990), the W. K. H. Panofsky Prize (1992), and the Franklin Medal (1992). During his later years, his research concentrated on finding relic neutrinos, the neutrino-Mössbauer effect, limits on the violation of the Pauli exclusion principle, the precise measurement of the universal gravitational constant, exploration of the brain using ultrasound, and developing new particle detectors. In 1995, Reines and Martin Perl, a pioneer in lepton physics, shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. Reines died of natural causes at the age of eighty in 1998. Significance Reines played a role in the development of many fundamental scientific discoveries. Through his analyses of nuclear testing data, he outlined the effects associated
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Jewish Americans with nuclear blasts. Turning his efforts to elementary particle physics, he codiscovered the elusive neutrino and helped develop its use as a sensitive probe in particle physics experiments. Neutrinos were used to investigate the weak interactions, the structure of protons and neutrons, and the properties of quarks. He was a pioneer of neutrino astronomy, and the role that the neutrino played in the production of elements heavier than iron during stellar evolution. His later work helped to establish limits for fundamental symmetry principles and conservation laws. — Alvin K. Benson Further Reading Ananthaswamy, Anil. The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth’s Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade, 2010. The author explores some of the experiments being conducted to gain an understanding of dark matter, dark energy, and quantum gravity, and the roles that neutrinos play in these experiments. Dazzling, high-tech telescopes that are operating or under construction for exploration of outer space are described. Bettini, Alessandro. Introduction to Elementary Particle Physics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2008. This book presents a clear, insightful description of the standard model of elementary particle physics, which includes contributions made to this field through the work on the neutrino by Reines. The interplay between theoretical and experimental physicists in developing an understanding of the fundamental forces of nature is discussed. Zuber, Kai. Neutrino Physics. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2003. Zuber recounts the discovery of the neutrino, a discussion of its known properties, and its use in elementary particle experiments. Past, present, and future neutrino experiments and essential developments are described and explored. The diagrams are clear with informative captions. See also: Hans Albrecht Bethe; Albert Einstein; Richard P. Feynman; Donald Glaser; Sheldon L. Glashow; David Gross; Leon Lederman; Steven Weinberg.
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Abraham Reles Criminal Reles was a notorious gangster who headed a brutal mob assassin crew for the National Crime Syndicate, a highly organized crime group that controlled the illegal rackets in the New York City area during the 1930’s. Born: c. 1906; Brooklyn, New York Died: November 12, 1941; Coney Island, New York Also known as: Kid Twist Area of achievement: Crime Early Life Abraham Reles (AY-brah-ham REEL-eez) was born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn to Austrian Jewish immigrants. As a boy, Reles cared little for school, and he dropped out after the eighth grade. Reles then began spending his time in local billiard halls and candy stores. With respect to the latter, it is believed Reles may have earned his nickname “Kid Twist” because of his love for a candy of that brand; other theories suggest the moniker came from the way he strangled his victims. Reles eventually teamed up with two childhood friends, Martin “Buggsy” Goldstein and Harry Strauss, a trio that would eventually rise to power within mob ranks. Reles began his criminal career when he was arrested in 1921 for stealing bubble gum from a vending machine. For his crime, he was sentenced to four months in a children’s reformatory. While still teenagers, Reles and Goldstein went to work for the notorious Shapiro brothers in Brooklyn, committing petty crimes. In fact, Reles served a two-year prison term on their behalf. The Shapiro brothers failed to assist Reles at trial, a fact that enraged him. After his release, Reles attempted to gain control of the Shapiros’ Brooklyn rackets. During this time, Reles’s girlfriend was raped by one of the brothers. This prompted a war between Reles and the Shapiros. Reles vowed to kill all three brothers, a goal in which he succeeded. Life’s Work Upon release from prison, Reles and Goldstein partnered with a mixed group of Jewish and Italian gangsters based in the Ocean Hill area of Brooklyn. This group, which included Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss, Harry Maione, Frank Abbandando, Louis Capone, and Albert Tannenbaum, eventually would form the core of the
mob’s murder team, dubbed simply Murder, Incorporated. Throughout the 1930’s, Reles and his team were able to kill local rival bootleggers. His weapon of choice was an ice pick, which he would ram through his victim’s ear directly into the brain. Within a short period of time, Reles and his crew dominated the Brooklyn rackets, gaining the attention of such mob bosses as Louis Buchalter, Albert Anastasia, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Dutch Schultz, and Joe Adonis, all of whom were key leaders of the National Crime Syndicate. Reles’s men became the official execution arm for the National Crime Syndicate. It is believed that the group was responsible for at least one thousand murders throughout the United States. In 1940, after a low-level associate turned informant, Reles and his men became paranoid. Understanding his possible fate, Reles turned government informant to avoid being prosecuted. Reles’s testimony solved for police more than eighty murders in Brooklyn alone. Eventually, his testimony revealed the inner workings of the entire criminal organization. His statements led to the arrest, conviction, and executions of major mob figures such as Buchalter, Maione, Strauss, Capone, Abbandando, and Reles’s longtime friend Goldstein. On November 12, 1941, the night before he was to offer his testimony against Anastasia in federal court, Reles was found dead on a rooftop outside the window of the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island. It is not known whether he jumped to escape or was thrown or pushed to his death. Many believe that he was thrown from the window by one of the six police officers who were assigned to guard him during the trial. It was later discovered that mob boss Frank Costello may have ordered the hit to protect the crime families of New York. Significance Reles was the cofounder of the National Crime Syndicate’s killing team known as Murder, Incorporated. Through the use of violence and of the threat of murder, his crew helped enforce the rules of the mob. His brutal tactics established him as one of the most feared mobsters of all time. Reles has also been labeled as the greatest “stool pigeon” of all time, for when he testified against key mob figures in order to prevent his prosecution. He revealed countless details about mob practices, earning him the sobriquet “the canary who sang but couldn’t fly.” —Paul M. Klenowski 941
Rendell, Ed Further Reading Cohen, Rich. Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. Offers a historical overview of the role of the Jewish gangster in twentieth century America. Profiles various Jewish gangsters who were considered crucial members of the National Crime Syndicate. Elmaleh, Edmund. The Canary Sang But Couldn’t Fly: The Fatal Fall of Abe Reles, the Mobster Who Shattered Murder, Inc.’s Code of Silence. New York: Union Square Press, 2009. Offers a well-researched conclusion regarding Reles’s mysterious death.
Jewish Americans Fried, Albert. The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America. Rev. ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Chronicles the lives and the times of key Jewish mob figures, including Reles. Rockaway, Robert. But He Was Good to His Mother: The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters. New York: Gefen, 2000. Provides a detailed look at the lives of numerous Jewish gangsters, including Reles. See also: Louis Buchalter; Mickey Cohen; Arnold Rothstein; Dutch Schultz; Bugsy Siegel.
Ed Rendell Politician As two-term mayor of Philadelphia and two-term governor of Pennsylvania, Rendell gained a national reputation for his efforts to revive a city and a state beset by financial problems and a slumping economy. Born: January 5, 1944; New York, New York Also known as: Edward G. Rendell; Edward Gene Rendell (full name) Area of achievement: Government and politics Early Life Ed Rendell (REHN-dehl) was born in 1944 in New York City, and he grew up in a household interested in
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politics and in sports, two passions he inherited. When Rendell was fourteen, his father died of a heart attack. After graduating from high school, Rendell attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In college, Rendell was active in student government and in a Jewish fraternity. He graduated in 1965, and that fall he began attending law school at Villanova University, located in a Philadelphia suburb. After receiving his law degree in 1968, Rendell took a job in the office of the Philadelphia district attorney. In 1977, he defeated the incumbent district attorney for the Democratic Party nomination for that post; he later won the fall election. His youthful challenge to the incumbent and his success in trouncing him surprised Philadelphia politicians and marked Rendell as an up-andcoming political figure. Rendell was known as a tough prosecutor, and he won reelection in 1981. Life’s Work Rendell longed to win higher office. He considered running for governor of Pennsylvania in 1982, but he chose not to, thinking that the incumbent Republican would win easy reelection. When Governor Dick Thornburgh narrowly won a second term, Rendell regretted his decision. Four years later, he tried to win the Democratic Party nomination for governor, but he lost. That defeat was followed by another, the following year, in an attempt to win the party’s
Jewish Americans nomination for mayor of Philadelphia. Rendell’s once bright career seemed finished. Rendell’s political ambitions remained, however. In 1990, he began campaigning once again to become mayor, taking his party’s nomination the next year and winning the election that fall. When Rendell took office in 1991, Philadelphia faced serious problems. Job losses and the exodus of businesses and taxpayers left the city government facing large budget deficits. At the same time, the growing share of poor people in the city increased demands on city resources. Crime was also a serious problem, and so was a declining public school system. Rendell took tough steps to solve the city’s budget problems. Chief among them was a negotiation with city worker unions, which produced, that summer, new union contracts that included a two-year wage freeze and the city’s right to turn many city services over to private hands. To revive the city’s economy, he worked constantly to bring new development projects to Philadelphia, hoping that by improving the city’s hotel and restaurant base and enhancing its artistic and historical attractions, he could make Philadelphia a tourist destination and thus generate jobs. These efforts and some degree of success ensured Rendell’s reelection in 1995. He also gained national recognition, being dubbed “America’s Mayor.” Rendell left office in 1999, before his second term expired, to chair the Democratic National Committee. In 2002, he returned to Pennsylvania, winning election as the state’s governor. Rendell’s popularity as mayor of Philadelphia helped him capture many Republican votes. He persuaded state legislators to pass a property-tax reduction law, although he had to accept a provision that allowed local school districts—major recipients of property tax funds—to opt out of the plan. The vast majority of the state’s districts chose that option, weakening the tax-reduction component of the law. Rendell also won passage of a law legalizing casino gambling in some areas of the state, which he hoped would generate the state revenue. Rendell easily won reelection as governor in 2006. When a recession struck the country late in his second term, Rendell once again had to wrestle with the problems of declining tax receipts coupled with rising demand for state services.
Rendell, Ed Rendell married Marjorie (“Midge”) Osterlund in 1979, also a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Villanova University Law School and, since 1997, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Rendells have one son. Rendell is an avid sports fan and for years has served as an analyst for every Philadelphia Eagles football game in a postgame television show. Significance As mayor of Philadelphia, Rendell pursued moderate Democratic politics that used tough tactics to lower the cost of city government while at the same time promoting economic growth in order to create jobs. Under his leadership, Philadelphia’s financial situation improved, although many problems—the continuing loss of manufacturing jobs, the growing share of poor residents, and deficiencies in education—lingered. As governor of Pennsylvania, Rendell similarly struggled against the problems raised by an aging population, rising poverty rates, and worsening employment situation of a onetime industrial state. A tireless worker and plain speaker, Rendell was elected to two terms in both of these demanding offices in part because of his energy and enthusiasm. — Dale Anderson Further Reading Bissinger, Buzz. A Prayer for the City. New York: Random House, 1997. Details the crises and decisions Rendell faced as mayor of Philadelphia; written with Rendell’s cooperation. Kane, Larry. Larry Kane’s Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Temple Press, 2000. In portraits of Rendell and other city politicians, former news anchorman Kane depicts the political context within which Rendell worked as mayor. Orr, Jimmy. “Ed Rendell on Janet Napolitano: Perfect Because She Has No Life!” The Christian Science Monitor, December 3, 2008. Rendell, an outspoken politician, takes brickbats in this article about his tendency to speak frankly. See also: Bella Abzug; Abraham Beame; Michael Bloomberg; Ed Koch; Fiorello Henry La Guardia; Arlen Specter.
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Judith Resnik Astronaut and engineer Resnik was an accomplished engineer best known for her work as an astronaut. She was the second Jewish person, the first Jewish woman, and the second American woman to fly into space. Born: April 5, 1949; Akron, Ohio Died: January 28, 1986; Atlantic Ocean, near Cape Canaveral, Florida Also known as: Judy Resnik; Judith Arlene Resnik (full name) Area of achievement: Science and technology Early life Judith Resnik (REHZ-nihk) was the first child of Marvin and Sarah Resnik. She was raised in Akron, Ohio, where her father was an optometrist. When she was old enough, Resnik attended Hebrew school at Beth El Synagogue. Her secular education was provided by public schools. She attended Fairlawn Elementary School, Simon Perkins Junior High School, and Firestone High School, where she was a serious student who excelled in math and science. Learning was important in her household. Resnik’s after-school life included chores, homework, cooking lessons, and piano lessons. Judaism was a significant component of her childhood, and the Resniks attended temple each week and observed Jewish holidays and traditions. Over time, Resnik’s relationship with her mother became strained. Eventually, her parents divorced, and Resnik petitioned the court to live with her father, even though her mother had been awarded custody of the children. In 1966, Resnik entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), originally intending to be a mathematics major, but she later changed to electrical engineering. She graduated in 1970, and she soon married fellow student Michael Oldak in a traditional ceremony. The couple moved to the Washington, D.C., area after her husband was accepted into law school. The couple separated in 1975 and eventually divorced, though they remained friends. Life’s work Upon graduating from college, Resnik began work at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), where she worked on missile and radar technology. However, she was not happy with that work. In 1974, Resnik took a po944
sition with the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Laboratory of Neurophysiology. Along with her job as a biomedical engineer with the NIH, Resnik worked on a Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, studying the properties of rhodopsin, a chemical required for night vision, in eyes. She was awarded her doctorate in 1977. Almost at once, she learned that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was recruiting astronauts for the soon-to-be-launched space shuttle program. Despite the fact that NASA had never hired women astronauts, Resnik applied. In the meantime, she took a job as a systems engineer for Xerox. She learned on December 30, 1977, that she had been selected as one of six women to be part of NASA’s astronaut corps. After completing her one-year training period, Resnik began work on engineering support for the space shuttle orbiter. Though she worked on many systems and on software development, her specialty was the remote manipulator system (RMS), the space shuttle’s robotic arm. Resnik’s determination and meticulous attention to detail served her well in her work with NASA. She often remarked that this was the job that she really wanted, and that her time with NASA was the happiest of her life. Her first mission into space was aboard the maiden voyage of the Discovery on the STS 41-D Space Shuttle mission, where her skills with the shuttle’s robotic arm were well utilized. On this mission, she assisted in the deployment of a 103-foot-long solar panel and with the deployment of three satellites. Resnik’s second trip into space was to have been STS 51-L, aboard the Challenger. Tragically, Challenger’s external fuel tank exploded, causing the orbiter to break apart seventy-three seconds after launch. The crew compartment, with all seven astronauts aboard, fell into the Atlantic Ocean about eighteen miles from the launch site. There were no survivors. Significance Resnik died just as she was entering the most productive part of her career. However, she was an important part of the American space program, and she made many contributions to the technical side of the program. She avoided publicity as much as possible during her career as an astronaut. Her death in the Challenger accident has often been overshadowed by that of Christa McAuliffe, a teacher selected to fly on the same mission. However, several schools and engineering awards have been named
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in Resnik’s honor, and people familiar with the space program know of her contributions and her place in history. Resnik wanted to be known simply as a competent astronaut, not as a Jewish astronaut or as a woman astronaut. After college, she downplayed her Jewish heritage and gradually became less observant of Judaism, though she never lost her faith. It is ironic that she is best known for being the first Jewish woman to travel into space. —Raymond D. Benge, Jr. Further Reading Bernstein, Jeanne E., and Rose Blue. Judith Resnik: Challenger Astronaut. New York: Lodestar Books, 1990. Written for a juvenile audience, this is an excellent biography of Resnik. Kevles, Bettyann Holtzmann. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space. New York: Basic Books, 2003. An excellent book about women in space exploration with some good information about Resnik as an astronaut. Kolbert, Elizabeth. “Two Paths to the Stars: Turnings and
Triumphs.” The New York Times, February 9, 1986, sec. 1, p. 1. Part of a series on the Challenger astronauts, written shortly after their deaths. This part covers the career of Resnik. Mahler, Julianne G., and Maureen Hogan Casamayou. Organizational Learning at NASA: The Columbia and Challenger Accidents. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009. A comparison of the two fatal space shuttle accidents, with a criticism of NASA’s decision-making process in regard to the events leading to these accidents. Stuckey, Mary E. Slipping the Surly Bonds: Reagan’s Challenger Address. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006. An analysis of President Ronald Reagan’s address to the nation the evening of the Challenger accident, with an overview on how the space shuttle program fit into the national space policy. See also: Albert Einstein; Richard P. Feynman; Daniel S. Goldin; Carl Sagan.
Abraham A. Ribicoff Politician Ribicoff served as governor of Connecticut, spent three terms in the U.S. Senate, and held the post of secretary of health, education, and welfare in the administration of President John F. Kennedy. Born: April 9, 1910; New Britain, Connecticut Died: February 22, 1998; Bronx, New York Also known as: Abraham Alexander Ribicoff (full name) Area of achievement: Government and politics Early Life Abraham A. Ribicoff (RIH-bih-kawf) was born in a tenement on Star Street in New Britain, Connecticut, to Polish Jewish immigrants Samuel Ribicoff and Rose Sable. Although poverty plagued the family, Abraham A. Ribicoff’s factory-worker father refused to allow his son to help, insisting that Ribicoff put aside every cent he earned for his education. The boy peddled papers, ran errands, and, when time permitted, played sandlot base-
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Ribicoff, Abraham A. ball. In high school, he spent vacations working on a road construction crew. Upon graduation, Ribicoff spent a year working in a factory to save enough money to finance his first year at New York University. In 1929, Ribicoff accepted an offer from the G. E. Prentice factory to take over its Chicago office. Unwilling to abandon his education, he took afternoon classes at the University of Chicago Law School. (In this era, some law schools accepted students without baccalaureate degrees.) Ribicoff did well enough to become editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. In 1931, he married Ruth Siegel. The couple raised a son and a daughter. He earned his law degree cum laude in 1933. After graduation, Ribicoff returned to Connecticut and gained admission to the bar. He briefly worked in the office of a Hartford lawyer before setting up his own practice in Kensington. By this time, Ribicoff had become interested in politics. He won election to the Connecticut General Assembly in 1938 as a Democrat. He left the assembly in 1941 to hold a series of posts as a judge, the head of state committee studying crime and alcohol, the chair of the group that established the citymanager and city-council form of government in Hartford, and a hearing examiner for the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Commission. Life’s Work Ribicoff returned to partisan politics in 1948 and won election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut’s First District. He ran a strong but unsuccessful race against Prescott S. Bush, father of future president George H. W. Bush, in 1952 for the unexpired Senate term of Brien McMahon. One of the best vote-getters in Connecticut history, Ribicoff never lost another race. He won election as governor in 1954, just in time to help his state rebuild from devastating floods. He also focused on traffic safety. Largely as a result of his efforts, Connecticut by the mid-1950’s enjoyed a reputation as the state safest for driving, with enforced speed limits and stiff penalties for drunk drivers. One of Ribicoff’s favorite phrases, “the integrity of compromise,” explains how he managed to lead bipartisan efforts to get things done. Ribicoff was among the first to encourage Senator John F. Kennedy to seek the vice presidency running with presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1956. Many Democratic leaders, including Irish Catholic politicians, hesitated to put a Roman Catholic on the ballot because of the discrimination that he would face. Ribicoff thought that they were wrong, and Kennedy’s strong showing propelled him into the 1960 presidential race. 946
Jewish Americans Kennedy rewarded Ribicoff by making him secretary of health, education, and welfare (HEW). Ribicoff persuaded Kennedy to appoint his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general. He subsequently regretted resigning from the Connecticut governorship to take the HEW post, and he resigned in 1962 to return to Connecticut. Ribicoff won election to the U.S. Senate in 1962, 1968, and 1974. While he lobbied for welfare and health insurance reforms, he played an instrumental role in passing the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966. Ribicoff also came to oppose U.S. involvement in Vietnam and had a memorable televised confrontation with Chicago mayor Richard Daley at the 1968 Democratic Convention in the Windy City. Ribicoff thought that Vietnam drained money from domestic programs. He steadfastly advocated the integration of urban and suburban schools. Pragmatic about Israel, Ribicoff received some criticism from American Jews for supporting the sale of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well as to Israel. A moderate Democrat, Ribicoff backed George McGovern for the presidency in 1968 and 1972. He spent most of his last term in office fighting for school integration, tax reform, and medical reform. In 1980, Ribicoff decided to bow out of the Senate, chiefly because he wanted to slow down. He remained active in the law as a special counsel to a large New York City law firm. In his book The American Medical Machine (1972) Ribicoff wrote about his wife’s health struggles and her death. In 1972, Ribicoff married Lois “Casey” Mell Mathes. The marriage was a happy one, and she survived him. A sharp-dressing gentleman to the end, Ribicoff suffered from Alzheimer’s disease but succumbed to heart failure in 1998. Significance It is perhaps best to summarize Ribicoff’s significance with a story related at his memorial service. When Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, wanted her children to learn good citizenship, she made a special request that Ribicoff teach them. He was the model public servant. Ribicoff devoted his life to working tirelessly to provide Americans with basic services and protections. A man comfortable with giving the glory to others, he played a major role in advancing the presidential ambitions of Kennedy. He became best known for recognizing the importance of highway safety long before most other public officials did so and for using his senatorial platform to push for health care reform.
Jewish Americans Further Reading Ribicoff, Abraham. America Can Make It! New York: Atheneum, 1972. Ribicoff presents his view of the major problems facing the United States in 1972, such as school integration, housing, and poverty. Ribicoff, Abraham, and Paul Danaceau. The American Medical Machine. New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972. This book argues for medical reform, including government-sponsored health care. Ribicoff begins the book with a discussion of the medical experiences faced by his family members, including his late wife. Ribicoff, Abraham, and Jon O. Newman. Politics: The
Rich, Adrienne American Way. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1967. The authors chart the paths American politicians must travel to local, state, and national power, including the nominating process and campaigning. Weil, Martin. “Abraham Ribicoff, Eighty-Seven, Dies.” The Washington Post, February 23, 1998. Article gives a cogent overview of Ribicoff’s career of public service. — Caryn E. Neumann See also: Bella Abzug; Russ Feingold; Barney Frank; Howard Metzenbaum; Paul Wellstone.
Adrienne Rich Poet, activist, and scholar A strong advocate for feminism and gay and lesbian rights, Rich is a highly acclaimed poet and essayist of the postwar era whose writing is a part of a process of renewal, transformation, and social action. Born: May 16, 1929; Baltimore, Maryland Also known as: Adrienne Cecile Rich (full name) Areas of achievement: Literature; activism Early Life Adrienne Rich (AY-dree-ehn rihch) was born on May 16, 1929, in Baltimore, Maryland, where she and a younger sister were raised by their Jewish father, Arnold Rich, and Southern Protestant mother, Helen Jones. Adrienne Rich’s paternal grandfather, an Ashkenazic Jew from Austria, and his Sephardic wife from Mississippi raised their son to be part of mainstream white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture: They sent him to Bingham Military School in North Carolina, and later he attended the University of Virginia. According to Rich, her father never talked about these experiences in terms of personal, religious, or cultural isolation. When Rich was born, her father was a professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins Medical School, one of a handful of Jews to work there. Rich, in turn, was brought up as a Southern Protestant, and she would come to attribute her isolation from Jewish cultural and spiritual traditions as factors contributing to her split sense of self. She became keenly conscious of this conflicted sense of identity as a sixteenyear-old girl in 1946. To the dismay of her parents, she viewed newsreels in a theater in Baltimore depicting Nazi concentration camps, and she did not know how to
situate herself in relation to the slaughtered Jews. In her 1982 essay, “Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity,” in which she publicly identifies herself as a Jewish poet, she recalls this moment as the genesis of her search for her Jewish identity. As a young girl, she immersed herself in her father’s extensive library, reading, among others, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, William Blake, and John Keats. Her father was careful to instill in his daughter a respect for intellectual endeavors; both parents, her father the physician and her mother the talented musician, educated Rich at home until she entered the fourth grade. She learned to read and to write poetry under her father’s tutelage, and her primary motivation for writing was to please him. The strength of this paternal influence, and later that of the middle-class expectations within which she played the role of wife and mother, would remain important subjects of scrutiny in much of her poetry and prose. Life’s Work Rich’s early poetry, thanks to her father’s teaching, is characterized by the kind of formalism that modernists—mostly male—valued. When she graduated from Radcliffe College in 1951, W. H. Auden presented her the Yale Younger Poets Award for A Change of World (1951). Although trained to view poems as artifacts of beauty whose internal dynamism strove toward the universal, she gradually moved away from this conception of art as she grappled to understand her individual Jewish and sexual identity. At college, she befriended other Jews and began to challenge her father for not having raised her as one. 947
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DIVING INTO THE WRECK In Diving into the Wreck (1973), a remarkable collection of poems that won the 1974 National Book Award, Adrienne Rich bravely explores the world of men and canonical history and finds it defunct and alienating. At the same time, she registers her own complicity within it. The first poem, “Trying to Talk with a Man,” is set in a doomed wasteland for testing bombs, suggesting the danger of participating in and communicating with patriarchal systems of meaning. The poet’s will to change and the need to find a way for women to achieve renewal in creating a new vision for humanity are eloquently suggested in the title poem, “Diving into the Wreck.” Here, the speaker dons metaphorical scuba gear to plumb the depths of patriarchal myths and treasures, which exercise their seductive power not only on the subconscious mind but also on every person’s creative impetus, limiting its vision for the possibilities of human endeavor. The narrator figures as a nonhuman merman and mermaid, both he and she, an expression of many possible identities, striving to see beyond limiting myths toward a new world.
In 1953, against her parents’ will, she married Harvard economist Alfred Conrad, a Jew of Eastern European extraction. They had three children, David (1955), Paul (1957), and Jacob (1959). She published The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems (1955), but she was less prolific than in other decades. She found the patriarchal expectations put upon motherhood in 1950’s America oppressive. In addition, she felt destined to come to terms with her Jewish identity and, as she realized later, with her latent homosexuality. She began dating her poems in 1956 to register a continual evolution of self. Influenced by the progressive ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone de Beauvoir, and James Baldwin, and departing from her regularized style, Rich found a forceful female voice emerging from her writings of the 1960’s. She came to realize that the personal and the artistic were also necessarily political, contingent upon privilege (or lack thereof). Snapshots of a Daughter-inLaw (1963), Necessities of Life (1966), and Leaflets (1969) traced a rising urgency to cause societal change, especially regarding the oppression of women and also in the areas of racism and the war in Vietnam. She organized protests against Vietnam in New York City, where she had moved in 1966. It is clear from The Will to Change: 1968-1970 (1971) that Rich began to identify more strongly with the women’s liberation movement. Following her husband’s 948
devastating suicide in 1970, her brilliant Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 (1973) expressed pain and anger. Her works from the 1970’s were a call to action for all women against the myths of patriarchy. She accepted her homosexuality and began living with the writer Michelle Cliff in 1976, with whom she moved to Massachusetts in 1979 and to Santa Cruz in 1984. In the 1980’s, Rich publicly interrogated her Jewishness, as seen in “Split at the Root.” “Yom Kippur 1984” asked what it means to be an alienated Jew; the poem articulated the process by which she sought a voice amid many possible identities. The essay “Blood, Bread, and Poetry: The Location of the Poet” (1984) further recorded Rich’s evolving conviction that she must write political poetry as a woman, a lesbian, an activist, and a Jew. Rich has remained active in the 1990’s and into the twenty-first century. Seeing poetry not as a commodity but as a conversation with experience— in which political and spiritual struggles are enmeshed—she refused the 1997 National Medal of Arts from the Bill Clinton administration, which she saw as upholding a cynical view of art. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award for The School Among the Ruins: 2000-2004 (2004). In addition to her highprofile activism and her garnering of awards and honorary doctorates, Rich has held teaching positions at various institutions, including Swarthmore (1967-1969); Douglass College, Rutgers University (1976-1979); Cornell University (1981-1987); Scripps (1983-1984); and Stanford (1986-1993). Significance Rich has been one of the most important voices in American poetry since World War II. From rather formalist beginnings, her poetry has evolved to reflect an individual voice that sees the personal as synonymous with the political. Her writings are widely anthologized, and she has won many important American literary awards, including the National Poetry Association Award for Distinguished Service to the Art of Poetry (1989), the Frost Silver Medal (1992), and Yale University’s Bollingen Prize in Poetry (2003). In addition, she is a powerful advocate for several progressive movements (she was a member of the New Jewish Agenda) and for the rights of all underprivileged people, especially women and gays. In her poetry, her speeches, and her essays, Rich seeks to transcend the patriarchal structures within which she
Jewish Americans sees women searching for meaningful expression and action. — Bill Gahan Further Reading Keyes, Claire. The Aesthetics of Power: The Poetry of Adrienne Rich. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008. Chapters are dedicated to trenchant analysis of collections of Rich’s poetry, from 1951 through 1981. Langdell, Cheri Colby. Adrienne Rich: The Moment of Change. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. Eleven chapters examine Rich’s work and life in terms of their interconnected development from deliberate detachment to revolutionary expression. Rich, Adrienne Cecile, Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi, and Albert Gelpi, eds. Adrienne Rich’s Poetry and Prose: Poems, Prose, Reviews, and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. Annotated collection of works
Richards, Renée from 1951 to 1993. It is divided into three chronological sections (poetry, essays, and criticism). Werner, Craig Hansen. Adrienne Rich: The Poet and Her Critics. Chicago: American Library Association, 1988. Analyzes Rich’s work as process, beginning in the first chapter. Chapters 2-4 outline her rejection of patriarchy, her embrace of a lesbian vision, and her radical voice. Chapter 5 discusses Rich’s American influences, notably Walt Whitman. Yorke, Liz. Adrienne Rich: Passion, Politics, and the Body. London: Sage Publications, 1998. Treats Rich’s life and prose (with some analysis of poetry), outlining her ideas on lesbian and Jewish identity, her approach to political advocacy, and her contributions to feminism in the twentieth century. See also: Jane Bowles; Lillian Hellman; Erica Jong; Larry Kramer; Maxine Kumin; Cynthia Ozick; Dorothy Parker; Susan Sontag; Gertrude Stein.
Renée Richards Athlete and ophthalmologist Richards is best known for winning her right to play competitive tennis after undergoing gender reassignment surgery in 1975. The decision of the New York Supreme Court set a precedent for the rights of transgender athletes. Born: August 19, 1934; New York, New York Also known as: Dick Raskind; Richard Henry Raskind (birth name) Areas of achievement: Sports; medicine; activism Early Life Renée Richards (ruh-NAY RIH-churds) was born Richard Raskind in a Manhattan hospital on August 19, 1934. Her parents were doctors: Dr. S. Muriel Bishop, a neurologist and psychiatrist, and Dr. David Raskind, an orthopedist. The couple had a five-yearold daughter, named Michael, which, according to Richards, highlighted their desire for a son. Michael was a tomboy who had to be forced to wear dresses. The family had elaborate seven-course meals, often full of arguments, that took two hours. Richards’s mother ran a Victorian-type household but with the roles of husband and wife reversed. Richards’s mother and sister often dressed Richards
Renée Richards. (Getty Images)
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college, she continued to play tennis and was the captain of Yale’s team in 1954. Richards attended the University of Rochester’s Medical School, graduating in 1959. Her cross-dressing continued in private, and she began taking female hormones in the 1960’s. During these years, Richards also saw psychiatrists to deal with her desires to live as a woman. Richards did a two-year internship at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City in the field of strabismus, a condition in which the eyes are out of alignment. She then did her residency at the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital. Richards worked at the Navy’s St. Albans Hospital as chief eye surgeon, reached the rank of lieutenant commander, and won the All-Navy tennis tournament twice. When she was thirty-one, Richards considered having a gender-reassignment operation in Casablanca, Morocco, one of the few places offering it at the time. However, she was concerned about the medical standards and postponed the operation. Richards moved to Europe, where she lived as a woman for a year before returning to New York. In 1970, she married a model named Barbara and a few years later fathered a son, Nicholas Raskind. Richards continued to play tennis and in 1972 was ranked sixth nationally in the men’s over-thirty-five division. Richards and Barbara divorced in 1975, and, shortly after that, Richards had gender reassignment surgery. Life’s Work Their son was only three and a half at the time, so RichAfter graduating from high school, Renée attended ards continued to dress as a man in front of his son until Yale University and took premedical courses. During Nicholas was eight. Richards also continued her medical practice as a man, until she moved to California in February, 1976. She RICHARDS V. UNITED STATES TENNIS ASSOCIATION joined a local tennis club as Renée Richards, and she won a series of small tournaAfter the press disclosed Renée Richards’s past as Richard Raskind, ments before a reporter made the connecshe announced that she planned to compete in the 1976 U.S. Open. The tion between her and Dick Raskind. United States Tennis Association (USTA), the Women’s Tennis AssoControversy arose when Richards acciation (WTA), and the U.S. Open Committee instituted a policy requiring all female athletes to undergo sex chromatin testing. Richards cepted an invitation to play as a woman in a refused, arguing that, even though she would fail, she was a woman. In national tennis tournament. The United States 1977, Richards sued the organizations in order to play in the U.S. Open Tennis Association (USTA) and Women’s as a woman. The associations argued that Richards had an unfair adTennis Association (WTA) withdrew their vantage because of her decades living and developing as a man. The sanctions of the event. Twenty-five of the policy was important to keep foreign countries from entering male thirty-two women scheduled to play withplayers as women in order to win a tournament. Richards’s doctors ardrew in protest of Richards’s participation. gued that she was a woman by every standard except the chromosome She lost in the semifinals. A few days later, test. She was psychologically a woman and had the internal sexual orat age forty-one, Richards announced her gans and physique of one. The New York Supreme Court ruled that the plans to play in the upcoming U.S. Open. tennis associations had violated Richards’s human rights and that there The USTA, WTA, and United States Open was overwhelming medical evidence that she was female. Richards lost during the first round of the 1977 Open, but she set a legal preceCommittee reacted by making all women dent for future transsexual athletes. competitors take a sex chromatin test. Richards refused and was excluded from the in girl’s clothing as a small child. It was the only time that she says they showed her any love or affection. Richards remembers a humiliating time when they forced her to attend a neighborhood Halloween party dressed like a girl. Her father was aware of the inappropriate behavior, but he never intervened. Her sister would put Richards in dresses and try to hide her penis. When Richards was five, the family moved to Forest Hills, New York, into a fifteenroom, colonial-style home. Around this time, Michael began insisting that Richards dress and act like a boy. Their father was rarely home, and on weekends he would play tennis at a local club and would take Richards along. That was when her love of tennis began. By fifteen, she was a successful athlete: swimmer, football quarterback, tennis player, and baseball pitcher. Richards was also popular, having male friends and girlfriends. At this time, she was trying to suppress her desires to wear women’s clothes and her attraction to men. The cross-dressing continued in private, including painful attempts to hide her penis and to push her testicles up into her body, holding them in place with adhesive tape. This caused a self-loathing that plagued her for a number of years. Richards had already begun referring to her feminine urges as “Renée,” which means reborn.
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Jewish Americans event. The following year, she sued the tennis associations in a case that went before the New York Supreme Court. They overturned the USTA’s “born a woman to play as a woman” policy and declared Richards a legal woman with the right to play women’s tennis. Richards played tennis until 1981, when she retired and became one of Martina Navratilova’s coaches. After two years, Richards returned to her medical practice. Richards wrote her first autobiography in 1983, which was later made into a motion picture. She continued her successful practice in New York and served as a professor at Cornell Medical School. Later, Richards joined the faculty of New York University, a position she held through 2007. In 2001, she received the Helen Keller Services for the Blind Award, Manhattan Branch. Richards moved to upstate New York and shared an apartment with her son in Manhattan. She wrote another autobiography, covering the second half of her life, that was published in 2007. Significance Renée Richards was born Richard Raskind in 1934. She won her first tennis tournament at age ten and was captain of her high school and college teams. However, she pursued a career in medicine, becoming a talented eye surgeon. At thirty-one, she went to Casablanca, one of the few places offering gender reassignment surgery in the mid-1960’s. Richards returned to the United States and eventually had her surgery ten years later. She moved to California, where she could live as a woman, not as a man who had transitioned into a woman. However, Richards’s love of tennis helped her put her life together. In
Rickles, Don deciding to fight for her right to play women’s tennis, Richards became the face of transgender athletes. She became a role model for a generation. Years later, Richards regretted her decision to fight the USTA so publicly but not her surgery. —Jennifer L. Campbell Further Reading Birrell, Susan, and Cheryl Cole. “Double Fault: Renée Richards and the Construction and Naturalization of Difference.” In Reading Sport: Critical Essays on Power and Representation, edited by Susan Birrell and Mary McDonald. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000. A detailed essay about the construction and perception of gender and about the role of the media in determining Richards’s court case against the tennis association. Sociologically technical but understandable to the average reader, providing many details surrounding the case. Richards, Renée, and John Ames. No Way Renée: The Second Half of My Notorious Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008. A second autobiography of Richards covers her life and reflections since the publication of her first book. Richards changed the names of some of her friends and family in the book. _______. Second Serve. New York: Stein and Day, 1983. Richards’s autobiography, covering her early life as Richard Raskind, her transition to Renée, and her life after retiring from tennis. Gives explicit details of the gender reassignment surgery. See also: Senda Berenson Abbott; Dara Torres.
Don Rickles Actor, entertainer, and comedian Rickles, an entertainer and a comedian, gained notoriety as a master of impersonations and insults. Born: May 8, 1926; Queens, New York Also known as: Mr. Warmth, Bullethead; Donald Jay Rickles (full name) Area of achievement: Entertainment Early Life Don Rickles (RIH-kuhls) was born to Max S. Rickles and Etta Feldman in Queens, New York, on May, 8, 1926. Max’s family had immigrated from the Russian Empire in 1902, when Max was three; Etta was the daughter of im-
migrant parents from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who had settled in New York, her birthplace. The family cherished its Jewish immigrant heritage and raised their only child in an Orthodox household in Brooklyn Heights. Max and Etta were great champions of any endeavor their son pursued, encouraging Rickles in a stint in the military, in Max’s footsteps as an insurance salesman, and in the pursuit of Rickles’s ultimate goal of being an entertainer. Rickles was a poor student but very social, serving as the president of the Dramatic Society at Newtown High School. Upon his graduation, he followed his father’s recommendation to join the U.S. Navy in 1943. At boot 951
Rickles, Don camp in Sampson, New York, his service commenced during World War II; Rickles was stationed aboard the USS Cyrene as a seaman first class. After three years of active duty in the Philippines, he was honorably discharged in 1946. When he returned home at the age of twenty, Max suggested that Rickles join him in selling life insurance, but he was unsuccessful in this new career venture. Etta encouraged her son to follow his dream to be an entertainer, and Rickles joined the American Academy of Dramatic Arts at the age of twenty-two to learn how to act. He attended school with several future Hollywood greats: Jason Robards, Anne Bancroft, and Grace Kelly. Rickles was not successful initially as an actor; he had difficulty with dramatic roles, but he could make people laugh when the roles were comedic. Rickles was challenged early in his career to find his niche. The stand-up routine did not quite suit him. Rickles was a master of impersonations and could elicit laughter with his Jimmy Durante and Jack Benny impressions, but Rickles was really at his best when he interacted with
Don Rickles. (AP/Wide World Photos)
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Jewish Americans the audience. His special comedic style developed in response to his early audiences. Life’s Work Playing to hecklers in lounges and strip clubs in New Jersey and Washington, D.C., Rickles became the king of insults by hurling ethnically charged barbs at the audience, surpassing the influential comedian Jack Leonard, who mumbled insults to the crowd. Over time, Rickles would earn the nickname “Mr. Warmth” for his acerbic demeanor on stage. Once the show was over, he was a friendly and amiable guy, creating a duality in how the entertainment community perceived him and chose to book him. Rickles had great adoration for his parents. Max suffered a severe heart attack in 1953, and when he died suddenly Rickles and Etta were despondent. This sparked several changes that impacted Rickles’s career in a positive way. After Max’s death, Rickles and Etta moved to Long Island, and Rickles ended up as a weekend regular at Elegante, a dinner club in Brooklyn. Joe Scandore, owner of Elegante, bought out Rickles’s contract from his previous manager, and Scandore would remain Rickles’s manager for the next forty years. Etta’s charm and tenacity brought her son significant opportunities in his career; she would remain his number-one fan until her death in 1984. Despite his successful Brooklyn club run, Etta and Rickles moved to Miami Beach in the 1950’s. The scenery and creature comforts were similar to those of New York: nightclubs, entertainers, and even Jewish delis. Rickles took his impressions to a small club stage at Murray Franklin’s, nestled among Miami’s upscale hotels, with headlining entertainers such as Milton Berle and Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. However, the most significant event in Miami would be the relationships developed between Etta and Dolly Sinatra and between Rickles and Dolly’s son, legendary singer, Frank Sinatra, who affectionately referred to Rickles as “Bullethead.” In his autobiography, Rickles’s Book (2007), Rickles provides amusing anecdotes about making friends with comic giants from Miami to Hollywood to Las Vegas and with several noted celebrities, many of whom he met while performing at the Beverly Hills nightclub Slate Brothers. Through Rickles’s contacts in entertainment, he reached new heights in his career, beginning with his first Hollywood film, Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), with
Jewish Americans Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster, to several appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. From there, Rickles made a few films and a dozen guest appearances on classic situation comedies of the 1960’s, including The Addams Family (1964), Gilligan’s Island (1966), and Get Smart (1968-1969), and he eventually landed the title role in a situation comedy on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) C.P.O. Sharkey (1976-1978). The films and television shows were secondary to the lasting stage career Rickles developed in Las Vegas, home to fellow comedians, including Carson, Phyllis Diller, and longtime friend Bob Newhart. Rickles’s initial encounter with his future spouse was also the result of a business contact. Rickles went to the office of film agent Jack Gilardi to inquire about a job; Barbara Sklar happened to be employed as Gilardi’s secretary and was soon the object of Rickles’s affection. At the age of thirty-eight, Rickles married Sklar on March 14, 1965. She quickly became a featured figure in his routines, being portrayed as spoiled and fussy. Barbara takes the false tales and ribbing gracefully. Happily married for decades, the couple has two children, Mindy and Barry, and two grandsons.
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Bullethead Meets Mr. Potato Head The comedy of Don Rickles would not have been nearly as successful were it not for the sarcastic, wise-guy personality he brought to the stage, all in good fun. Rickles’s relationship with Frank Sinatra started with a snide remark alluding to Sinatra’s mob connections. Sinatra appreciated Rickles for his hold-no-punches humor, giving him the nickname Bullethead. Rickles had the honor of being the only comic allowed to antagonize Sinatra publicly, without threat of bodily harm. Rickles’s friendship with Sinatra extended to fellow Rat Pack member Dean Martin. Martin also found great humor in Rickles’s insult routine. Rickles and Martin teamed up on several occasions for the decade-long run of Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts (1974-1984). At the Celebrity Roast, a celebrity was honored by celebrity friends and comedians who would take turns ribbing the honored guest. Rickles’s role was that of a cynical court jester, sent to embarrass the king or queen of the evening. It was that cynical voice that John Lasseter wanted for a role in his animated film for Pixar in 1995. Rickles appeared in the Toy Story trilogy as the voice of Mr. Potato Head, the character based on the popular toy consisting of a plastic potato head with removable parts. Rickles recounts the numerous, engaging tales of his career in his autobiography, Rickles’s Book (2007), and in the documentary by John Landis, Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project, for which Rickles won an Emmy Award in 2009.
Significance Rickles’s successful career has spanned more than fifty years. He embraced his Jewish heritage as a starting point for his humor in the 1940’s, when other Jewish comics had changed their names to mask their ethnicity. Rickles’s style of insult humor is unique, as his material is based on interactions with people of all ethnicities; in general, popular Jewish comedians have drawn material from their own heritage. With Rickles, there is no forbidden topic and the insults are shared with the whole audience, regardless of ethnicity, race, or religion. His influence is seen in the work of comics such as Lisa Lampanelli and Kathy Griffin. Despite his gruff onstage persona, Rickles is a generous philanthropist who supports many Jewish charities and donated funds for the Barbara and Don Rickles Gymnasium at the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. —Emilie Fitzhugh Sizemore
Further Reading Epstein, Lawrence J. The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America. New York: Perseus Books, 2001. A good comparative view of professional Jewish comedians in America, citing Rickles as an extreme example, marking the changes in acceptance, style, and material in the twentieth century. Newhart, Bob. I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This! New York: Hyperion, 2006. A personal look at Rickles on and off stage, through the eyes of his best friend, Newhart. Rickles, Don, and David Ritz. Rickles’s Book. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007. An autobiography with short anecdotes about Rickles’s past. Contains a wealth of primary information, has been quoted frequently since its release, and serves as an entertaining read. See also: Woody Allen; Jack Benny; Larry David; Alan King; Robert Klein; Carl Reiner; Henny Youngman.
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Hyman G. Rickover Russian-born naval officer As the driving force behind the development of nuclear power, Rickover was instrumental in creating the first practical nuclear reactors and nuclear-powered vessels that were used for national defense. Born: August 24, 1898, or January 27, 1900; Makov, Russian Empire (Mákov Mazowiecki, Poland) Died: July 8, 1986; Arlington, Virginia Also known as: Hyman George Rickover (full name) Areas of achievement: Military; science and technology; war Early Life Born in Russia Hyman G. Rickover (HI-mehn RIHKoh-vur) immigrated with his family to the United States
Hyman G. Rickover. (Library of Congress)
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in 1905. In 1918, Congressman Adolph Sabath nominated Rickover for the Naval Academy. Specializing in engineering and propulsion, Rickover graduated in the top quarter of his class in 1922, and the new officer served aboard the destroyer, La Vallette, and the battleship, Nevada. Rickover then volunteered for the submarine service, where junior officers could command their own vessels, in the hopes of attracting professional attention. His background in propulsion served him well, and he advanced up the ranks to lieutenant commander. Rickover moved back into the surface warfare community by taking command of the USS Finch, a minesweeper, in 1937. He captained the Finch, the only vessel he would ever command, for only four months before receiving a shore assignment at the Cavite Navy Yard in the Philippines. In 1939, his engineering expertise led to a staff appointment in the Navy’s Bureau of Engineering, the department responsible for propulsion design. By the time World War II ended in 1945, Rickover held the rank of captain. Life’s Work After World War II, Rickover’s background in electrical systems earned him a post as a Navy representative to the Manhattan Project, the wartime program that developed the atomic bomb. President Harry Truman wanted to explore civilian uses for nuclear power, and, through the new civilian-run Atomic Energy Commission, invited military officers to join the project. Because the technology was new, the Navy selected only a handful of officers to join the program, including Rickover, because of his background in propulsion and electrical systems. Ambitious as always, Rickover saw atomic power and nuclear propulsion as not only a great advantage in powering ships but also as a specialist area that he could make his own. As the senior naval officer, Rickover arranged to have himself placed in charge of the Navy’s small nuclear energy program, establishing himself as the Navy’s expert on nuclear propulsion and subordinating the efforts of all other Navy nuclear officers to him. Thereafter, all significant breakthroughs in naval nuclear propulsion became his achievements, even though he himself did not create them. Rickover immediately saw the benefits of harnessing nuclear power to move ships. Atomic energy offered a nearly limitless supply of power, freeing ships from the limits of fossil fuels and the constant need to refuel. Be-
Jewish Americans
Rickover, Hyman G.
cause nuclear power plants would be selfS1W and S2W Nuclear Reactors contained, nuclear-powered ships did not require as many shore facilities, freeing the Under the direction of Hyman G. Rickover, the Navy launched a proNavy to conduct operations without the gram to develop nuclear power that would have military and civilian apneed to capture and hold ports from a warplications. The first mass-produced nuclear reactors, the S1W and S2W, time enemy. As a former submariner, Rickwere identical designs that served different purposes. While the S2W over especially saw the benefit for subwas installed aboard the USS Nautilus, the S1W was a land-based test bed constructed in Arco, Idaho. The S1W went critical first, in 1953, marines. Fossil-fueled submarines had to and tested all components of the S2W that went into the Nautilus. After spend much of their time on the surface, Nautilus proved a success, the Navy established a nuclear propulsion running their diesel engines to charge the school in Arco, with the S1W reactor providing realistic training for batteries that powered the submarine when future submariners. Aside from where they were constructed, both reit was underwater. This time on the surface actors were identical in that they were pressurized water reactors with made the submarine vulnerable, and the uranium-235 as the fissionable material that generated ten megawatts limited battery power meant that the subof power. In Nautilus, that power translated into more than thirteen marine’s time underwater was relatively thousand-shaft horsepower. Both reactors needed periodic replacement short. Nuclear-powered submarines, howof their uranium rods, but they operated without incident for decades, ever, could stay underwater indefinitely proving to be safe and reliable power plants. The S2W reactor went because the self-contained system did not offline when the Navy decommissioned Nautilus in 1980, and the S1W reactor remained in operation until 1989. The S indicated it was a subneed batteries. Moreover, the nuclear power marine power plant, the number indicated the reactor’s place in the deplant produced enough power to operate sign sequence, and W meant it was constructed by the Westinghouse systems that provided oxygen and fresh Corporation. water for the crew. That meant that once a submarine submerged, the only limit to the time it could stay underwater was the amount of food on board and the crew’s enprivate shipyard, Electric Boat in Connecticut, to build durance. By focusing on a nuclear-powered submarine, the Nautilus. Instead of following a usual test program, Rickover was able to concentrate the Navy’s efforts on a which would involve constructing a nuclear reactor, seepractical use for nuclear power, and also it also gained for ing if it works, and then trying to fit it into the submarine, Rickover total control of the project because of his posiRickover demanded that the first test reactor meet the tion as the Navy’s expert on nuclear propulsion. tight dimensions of the Nautilus, a risky venture but one Rickover soon found support for his submarine projthat also cut years off the project. Last, Rickover decided ect. By 1950, the Cold War with the Soviet Union was dewho would command the submarine and what crew veloping, and Congress was willing to fund projects that members would sail on the ship, bypassing the tradipromised to protect America from the Soviet menace. tional Navy Bureau of Personnel. Rickover justified In 1951, Congress authorized Rickover to supervise making the personnel decisions himself because of the construction of the submarine USS Nautilus, the first specialized nature of the nuclear vessel, but it made him nuclear-powered vessel in history. In a crash program further enemies in Navy. While constructing the Nautithat delivered the revolutionary new ship in only four lus, Rickover was also promoting nuclear power as a years, Rickover used his authority as director of the source of energy for civilian use. He positioned himself Navy’s Nuclear Power Branch to bypass traditional means as the director of nuclear reactor design for the civilian of acquiring ships and materials, a process that aggraAtomic Energy Commission, becoming a dominant figvated many in the Navy and in the Atomic Energy Comure in that civilian agency by assuming control over the mission. While an intelligent man, Rickover was also a training of civilian nuclear reactor operators. blunt and an abrasive one, especially to anyone whom he In 1954, the Nautilus was ready for commissioning believed to be incorrect or less intelligent than himself. and its first test cruise. Powered by a nuclear reactor, the That included anyone who disagreed with him. Such an submarine sped from Connecticut to Puerto Rico, a disattitude made Rickover many enemies in the Navy and tance of twelve hundred miles, in only ninety hours, and would later contribute to many of his personal and prosped back without refueling, demonstrating the advanfessional problems. tages of nuclear power. After a number of operational deInstead of a Navy construction yard, Rickover chose a 955
Rischin, Moses ployments, in 1958 Nautilus achieved fame when it became the first ship to reach the North Pole after a lengthy transit under the Arctic ice pack. Bolstered by these achievements, the Navy was prepared to construct more nuclear submarines, but Rickover’s future in the Navy was in jeopardy. He had made many enemies over the years, and in 1953, having been passed over twice for promotion to admiral, he was facing mandatory retirement after thirty years in the Navy. Disregarding traditional practice, however, Rickover outmaneuvered his adversaries. By positioning himself as the Navy’s greatest expert on nuclear power, he made himself indispensable, and the Navy could not get rid of him. In addition, Rickover ignored tradition by bypassing the Navy chain of command and going directly to Congress to get what he wanted. He demanded the right to name all nuclear-powered ships, and he began to name submarines after past congressional members, an honor that soon had current congressional members willing to accommodate Rickover in the hope of getting a submarine named after themselves. Rickover thus was able to avoid forced retirement, received promotion to admiral, and continued to run the Navy’s nuclear program for another thirty years. Not until 1982, after sixty-three years of naval service, was Rickover finally forced into retirement by President Ronald Reagan. Significance At a time when Cold War fears ran high, Rickover’s nuclear-powered vessels provided military security to the United States from the 1950’s to the present day. Although potentially hazardous because of their radiation, Rickover’s submarines and nuclear-powered ships have never suffered a major reactor incident. Although Rickover was often criticized for his dictatorial control over nuclear power, his vessels provided national security and a steady source of accomplished nuclear technicians that
Jewish Americans promoted and operated civilian nuclear power stations after they left the Navy. Rickover subsequently became both the ideal figure for running a program and a symbol of what to avoid. He certainly created an efficient and effective nuclear force for the Navy, but his desire to control and regulate flew in the face of the institutional nature of the armed forces and their need to subordinate themselves to civilian command. Rickover was often jealous of potential rivals and engaged in petty spats with the Navy that were as damaging to the Navy as his submarines were successful. —Steven J. Ramold Further Reading Allen, Thomas B., and Norman Polmar. Rickover: Father of the Nuclear Navy. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007. Lengthy, detailed examination of Rickover’s career; details Rickover’s professional successes, but does not shy away from some severe criticism of Rickover’s personal failings. Duncan, Francis. Rickover: The Struggle for Excellence. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2001. Written with the support and approval of Rickover’s family, Duncan’s book is generally positive about Rickover’s achievements and justifies his personal behavior by citing the rigorous demands of the nuclear Navy. Rockwell, Theodore. The Rickover Effect: The Inside Story of How Admiral Hyman Rickover Built the Nuclear Navy. New York: Wiley and Sons, 1995. The author worked with Rickover for more than a decade; the book concentrates on the technical problems that Rickover had to overcome to develop and field nuclear-powered ships and commercial nuclear power. See also: Jeremy Michael Boorda; J. Robert Oppenheimer; Edward Teller.
Moses Rischin Educator and historian A recognized authority in American ethnic, immigration, and Jewish history, Rischin served as founding director of the Western Jewish History Center in Berkeley, California. Born: 1925; Brooklyn, New York Areas of achievement: Education; scholarship 956
Early Life Moses Rischin (MO-zuhs RIH-shihn) is a secondgeneration New York Jew, the son of immigrants who left Russia in the wake of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. Raised in Brooklyn, Rischin received his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College, and he was awarded his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1957. As a
Jewish Americans native-born American, a generation removed from the immigrants he studied, he was successful in framing the immigrant experience within the larger context of social and cultural history in America. Early in his career, Rischin was on the research staff of the American Jewish Committee. In 1962, he published The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870-1914, one of the first major works of modern American Jewish history. Considered a classic that is used heavily in classrooms, that signature work established him as an American, a Jewish, and an immigration and ethnic historian. In the summer of 1962, Rischin accepted a one-year appointment to the University of California, Los Angeles. The position was extended another year, and in 1964 Rischin was appointed to San Francisco State University to teach American immigration and ethnic and urban history. Life’s Work Rischin’s experience traveling west led him to investigate the Western and California migration experience. He called for rigorous study of the culturally diverse experience of the West. In 1962, Seymour and Rebecca Fromer founded the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Oakland and moved it to Berkeley in 1966. In 1967, Seymour Fromer created the Western Jewish History Center (WJHC) to collect, preserve, and provide access to archival and oral history documentation about the Jewish community in the American West, and he invited Rischin to join as director. The museum and center acquired a national and international reputation and became America’s first accredited Jewish museum. The archival collections created at the WJHC became part of the Western Jewish Americana archives at the Bancroft Library, and the combined collections encompass the entire Western United States, beginning with the 1849 Gold Rush and continuing to the present, with a specific focus on the Jewish experience in California and the San Francisco Bay area. During his tenure as director, Rischin oversaw the preparation of biographies, advised a new generation of scholars, and organized the earliest conferences on Western Jewish history. The first Conference on Western Jewish History was held in Berkeley in 1977, cosponsored by the WJHC under Rischin’s directorship. The center published Rischin’s The Jews of the West: The Metropolitan Years in 1979. The second conference on Western Jewish history was held in Denver in 1986, sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver. Jews of the American West was the resulting publication, and it established
Rischin, Moses Rischin, coeditor and contributing author, as the father figure of Western American Jewish history. In 1995, when, for the first time in its 103-year history, the American Jewish Historical Society chose to meet in San Francisco, Rischin was asked to chair the conference, “Regional History as National History.” During these years of research and publication, Rischin was generous in sharing his time and knowledge with many organizations, as member and past president of the Immigration History Society, founder of the Journal of American Ethnic History and member of the editorial board, member of the advisory board of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, and member of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Centennial Commission. Rischin is author and editor of many books on American immigration and Jewish history and served as coeditor, with Jonathan D. Sarna, of the American Jewish Civilization series of Wayne State University Press. Tributes from colleagues and scholars he has mentored include An Inventory of Promises: Essays on American Jewish History in Honor of Moses Rischin, edited by Jeffrey S. Gurock and Marc Lee Raphael, published by Carlson Press in 1996, and an annual lecture given in his honor at WJHC. Jews of the Pacific Coast: Reinventing Community on America’s Edge, authored by Ellen Eisenberg, Ava F. Kahn, and William Toll, published by the University of Washington Press in 2010, is dedicated to Rischin. Significance Rischin is a highly respected historian, in both American Jewish history and immigration history. A pioneer of American Jewish history, he recognized the value of the immigration experience, and he was successful in communicating that value to others. Succeeding generations of scholars have benefited from his research and his mentorship, further expanding the field. —Amy H. Crain Further Reading Kahn, Ava F., ed. Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush: A Documentary History, 1849-1880. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 2002. Rischin wrote the foreword, and coedited with Jonathan Sarna the American Jewish Civilization Series. Kahn, Ava F., and Marc Dollinger, eds. California Jews. Lebanon, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 2003. Rischin wrote the foreword, including a short autobiography. He worked closely with the editors and many 957
Ritts, Herb of the authors of this book during his tenure at the Western Jewish History Center. Rischin, Moses. “Our Own Kind”: Voting by Race, Creed, or National Origin. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1960. Provides another facet to Rischin’s professional interests and additional biographical details. _______. The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 18701914. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962. Rischin’s first book established his credentials as a respected immigration and American Jewish historian.
Jewish Americans _______, ed. The Jews of North America. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1987. Rischin assisted in planning the conference, was invited to edit the resulting book, and wrote the introduction. Rischin, Moses, and John Livingston, eds. Jews of the American West. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1991. Rischin’s essay relates the Western Jewish experience to the American Jewish mainstream experience. See also: Daniel Bell; Allan Bloom; Daniel J. Boorstin; Peter Gay; Barbara W. Tuchman.
Herb Ritts Photographer A celebrated photographer, Ritts worked in a distinct style. His portfolio was filled with black-and-white photographs and striking male and female nudes that bent the boundaries of gender and race. Born: August 13, 1952; Los Angeles, California Died: December 26, 2002; Los Angeles, California Also known as: Herbert Ritts (full name) Area of achievement: Photography Early Life Herb Ritts (rihtz) was born on August 13, 1952, in Los Angeles, California. His father, Herb, was a businessman; his mother, Shirley, worked in interior design. Despite the fame he would find in photography, it was not a line of work Ritts pursued from an early age. He went to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and majored in economics and art history. He returned home after finishing school to help in the Ritts family furniture business. Ritts’s time spent working with his family was brief. It was not long before he found his calling in photography, the result of taking a few classes in the subject. Finally, in 1978, Ritts had an encounter that would lead to the career of a lifetime: a simple photo shoot with close friend and future film star Richard Gere. The shoot with Gere, who was not well known at the time, was not glamorous. Ritts posed Gere with an old Buick automobile in the background. A year later, after Gere’s popularity exploded from appearances in such films as Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) and Days of Heaven (1978), Ritts’s photos gained notoriety as 958
well. It was after this stroke of luck that Ritts started taking show business seriously. Not long after, he took it by storm. Life’s Work Ritts soon was in demand by many top professionals and celebrities. Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, Ritts began photographing important people. Christopher Reeve, Cher, the Dalai Lama, Ronald Reagan, and Edward Norton were among his clients. Richard Gere, who stayed a close friend, was also among his many subjects. Ritts also took risks with his photography. One of his magazine covers for Vanity Fair featured model Cindy Crawford shaving the face of K. D. Lang, a female vocalist. Crawford was not the only supermodel to be photographed by Ritts; he also worked with Christy Turligton and Naomi Campbell, who would become famous in the modeling industry. What helped Ritts stand out from the pack was his eye for black-and-white photography and for nudist photography. He was known for concentrating on the human body, leaving both the clothes of the subject and the setting of his subjects as secondary. Ritts wo
