Who Am I? May 4, 2024
I was born at the home of my maternal grandparents in the Midwest state known for being “round on the ends and high in the middle” during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison. My parents were of German-Jewish extraction. My dad, Sam, was a salesman and later became the president of a shoe manufacturer. He changed businesses frequently and during some hard times we lived in a series of boarding houses which exposed me to the poor and downtrodden.
I spent a lot of my formative years growing up in St. Louis, MO. As our family’s circumstances improved I attended a private school for a year and was able to take dancing and piano lessons and wear fancier clothes. I graduated from Central H.S. and earned a B.A. from Washington University.
I moved to the Big Apple during the presidency of William Howard Taft with the dream of becoming a writer. The path towards that goal was not at all easy and I suffered scores of rejections before I was able to launch my writing career. In the meantime I felt it helpful to absorb some local color so I worked as a waitress at Childs, one of the first national dining chains, as a salesgirl at both Hearn’s and Macy’s, as a nursemaid and, finally, in a sweatshop. I took a keen interest in gender inequality and unequal pay for women. I visited the slums and Ellis Island and attended night court. My gritty experiences gave me the background and inspiration I needed for my chosen profession.
I got acceptances for my short stories from Red Book, Cosmopolitan, the Delineator, Metropolitan magazine, Century and the Saturday Evening Post. I was to have a prolific career, writing over 300 short stories, 5 plays and 17 novels. Many of many works were made and remade into Hollywood films.
I wrote of sexual liberation to include extra-marital affairs and homosexuals, racism, class struggles, women’s rights, ordinary people, the struggles of working women and immigrants, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and upward mobility. Some say I was both the spiritual and literary grandmother to authors Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann who came along after me. I felt that my early experiences in NYC served me well in writing about the themes that appeared in my novels. I’m typically quoted as saying, “A woman has to be twice as good as a man in order to get half as far.”
I want you to know that I didn’t just “talk the talk” but I also “walked the walk.” I joined the Lucy Stone League organization allowing women to keep their maiden names. I felt women should be able to enjoy their own independent lives and liberty. I married an émigré pianist and remained married to him for 37 years albeit the fact that we maintained separate residences, a phenomenon very unusual for adults at that time. Naturally, our marriage did not preclude affairs and I was known to have indulged extensively.
During my heyday I was acquainted with some of my famous literary peers such as F. Scotts Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather and Sinclair Lewis. I was a friend and patron of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance to include the poet Langston Hughes and the writer, Zora Neale Hurston. The latter was also my driver and companion for a time. My socially conscious novels even came to the attention of Lenin and Trotsky. The latter hosted me on my visit to the U.S.S.R. I was also friendly with Eleanor Roosevelt and was an occasional visitor to the White House.
I was appointed to the National Advisory Committee to the W.P.A. and served as a delegate to the W.H.O. During World War II I sold war bonds and helped raise money to aid Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis.
I do have some N.J. bona fides. WJZ radio station in Newark once hosted a program called “Famous Writer Broadcasts” and I was invited to appear on one of their programs. In my later years I did appear on other radio and TV programs and also lectured at different universities. Upon my passing I left half of estate to my alma mater, Washington University, and the other half to Brandeis University to endow English professorships.
I think you know me by now. That’s my image in the charcoal drawing below.
(1a)Who Am I? (1b)What state was I born in? (1c)Who drew that famous charcoal image of me below? (2a)What was the name of that private school I attended for 1 year in St. Louis before transferring to Central H.S.? (2b)I was a member of a feminist intellectual group that debated political, cultural and sexual reform which included LGBTQ (it wasn’t called that then!) issues. What was the name of that group? (3)Of all the novels I have written I consider my favorite to be the story of a domestic servant named Bertha who worked at several upper-class families around Manhattan. What is the name of that novel? (4a)Another of my better known novels told the story of 2 single moms, one white and one Black, who are raising similar age daughters. One mom has business acumen and the other has secret southern recipes and they become entrepreneurs in a restaurant and packaging business. The setting for the novel is Atlantic City, N.J. The novel dealt with controversial topics such as miscegenation and the conflicts between light and dark-skinned African-Americans. What was the name of that novel which was made into a 1934 film and later remade in 1959? (4b) Before the novel referred to in question (4a) was published it had a different name. What was that name? (4c)In the second photo below are 2 of the marvelous act- resses that appeared in the 1934 film version of this same novel. What are their names? (5)There is a historical marker dedicated to me in Ohio. What does it say directly under my name and where is that marker located?
