Ferber, Edna

Edna Ferber
circa 1904
Born	August 15, 1885 Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
Died	April 16, 1968 (age 82) New York City, New York, USA
Occupation	Novelist, playwright
Nationality	United States
Genres	drama, romance

Edna Ferber (August 15, 1885 – April 16, 1968) was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), and Giant (1952; made into the 1956 Hollywood movie).

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early years

Ferber was born in 1885 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Jacob Charles and Julia (Neumann) Ferber. After living in Chicago, Illinois and Ottumwa, Iowa, at age 12 Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel. She covered the 1920 Republican and Democratic national conventions for the United Press Association.

[edit] Career

Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, although she fleshed out multiple characters in each book. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty persons have the best character.

Due to her imagination in scene, characterization and plot, several theatrical and film productions have been made based on her works, including Show Boat, Giant, Ice Palace, Saratoga Trunk, Cimarron (which won an Oscar) and the 1960 remake. Three of these works - Show Boat, Saratoga Trunk and Giant - have been developed into musicals.

When composer Jerome Kern proposed turning the very serious Show Boat into a musical, Ferber was shocked, thinking it would be transformed into a typical light entertainment of the 1920s, and it was not until Kern explained that he and Oscar Hammerstein II wanted to create a different type of musical that Ferber granted him the rights. Saratoga, based on Saratoga Trunk, was written at a much later date, after serious plots had become acceptable in stage musicals.

In 1925, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her book So Big, which was made into a silent film starring Colleen Moore that same year. An early talkie movie remake followed, in 1932, starring Barbara Stanwyck and George Brent, with Bette Davis in a supporting role. A 1953 remake of So Big starred Jane Wyman in the Stanwyck role, and is the version most often seen today.

Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Ferber and another member of the Round Table, Alexander Woollcott, were long-time enemies, their antipathy lasting until Woollcott's death in 1943, although Howard Teichmann states in his biography of Woollcott that this was due to a misunderstanding. According to Teichmann, Ferber once described Woollcott as "a New Jersey Nero who has mistaken his pinafore for a toga."

In 2008, The Library of America selected Ferber's article "Miss Ferber Views 'Vultures' at Trial" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.

On July 29, 2002, in her hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin, the U.S. Postal Service issued an 83¢ Distinguished Americans series postage stamp honoring her. Artist Mark Summers, well known for his scratchboard technique, created this portrait for the stamp referencing a black-and-white photograph of Ferber taken in 1927.^[1]

Plaque located in Manhattan, at 65th Street & Central Park West, in the building in which Edna Ferber lived for 6 years

[edit] Personal life

According to some sources, Ferber was a lesbian.^[2] Ferber had no children, never married, and is not known to have engaged in a romance or sexual relationship with anyone of either gender. In her early novel Dawn O'Hara, the title character's aunt is said to have remarked, "Being an old maid was a great deal like death by drowning -- a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling." Ferber did take a maternal interest in the career of her niece Janet Fox, an actress who performed in the original Broadway casts of Ferber's plays Dinner at Eight and Stage Door.

Ferber died at her home in New York City, of stomach cancer,^[3] at the age of 82.

[edit] Film portrayal

Ferber was portrayed by the actress Lili Taylor in the 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle.^[4]

[edit] Works

Musicals adapted from Ferber novels:

• Show Boat (1927) - music by Jerome Kern, lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld
• Saratoga (musical) (1959) - music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, dramatized by Morton Da Costa
• Giant (2009) - music and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa, book by Sybille Pearson

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Biography portal

• Edna Ferber at the Internet Movie Database
• Edna Ferber at the Internet Broadway Database
• Works by or about Edna Ferber in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Works by Edna Ferber at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Edna Ferber at Internet Archive
• Algonquin Round Table page at the Algonquin Hotel's web site
• Edna Ferber Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society
• Biography, photos, bibliography, etc. from the Appleton Public Library
• Edna Ferber at Find a Grave