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.
Jewish Americans
Cahan, Abraham
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-
Jewish Americans
Cahn, Sammy
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 w
