David Freedman (2) (1898–1936)

David Freedman was born to a Jewish family in Botoşani, Romania. His parents were Sara and Israel Freedman. Israel, a political refugee, immigrated with his family to the USA in 1900, settling in New York City. Freedman grew up in the tenements and graduated from the City College of New York in 1918. That same year, he married Beatrice (née Rebecca Goodman), a fellow New Yorker from an immigrant family, with whom he had four children. From 1924, Freedman was a full-time freelance writer. He wrote short stories, plays, the books of Broadway musicals, material for comedians, and several radio programs that he also produced. He had shows running on Broadway almost every year from 1926 through 1937. His books included the novel Mendel Marantz (1925) and Your Next President! (1932). Freedman's first play, Mendel, Inc., debuted in 1929. When radio replaced vaudeville, Freedman, who already enjoyed a reputation as a popular and versatile writer, was ready for the new medium. He was prolific, creating as many as six entertainment programs a week for several years, and eventually worked in the film industry as well. Freedman was also a biographer and wrote about industry insiders. His first biography, the Eddie Cantor memoir My Life Is in Your Hands (1928), became a bestseller. Freedman and Cantor collaborated on a biography of showman Florenz Ziegfeld, called Ziegfeld: the Great Glorifier (1934). It was adapted for the film Ziegfeld Follies (1945). Phantom Fame: The Anatomy of Ballyhoo, which Freedman co-authored in 1932 with impresario Harry Reichenbach, became the basis for the movie The Half-Naked Truth (1932). In the mid-1930s, Freedman contributed scripts for short comedies produced by Educational Pictures in New York. The best known is probably Blue Blazes (1936), starring Buster Keaton as an inept fireman. Freedman suffered a massive heart attack and died at age 38 in 1936. His family honored his memory with the posthumous publication of The Intellectual Lover (1940, 2007), a collection of his short stories originally published individually between 1922 and 1928. Of the countless pieces Freedman wrote between 1920 and 1936, Mendel, Inc. (1929) is the only fully realized play. Mendel, Inc. was the basis for the 1932 Warner Brothers movie The Heart of New York. Four of Freedman's books were translated into Russian and published in 1926; they enjoyed tremendous popularity for a short period.