Surprising Connections
A blog post by Director of Collections and Exhibits Joanna Church. To read more posts by Joanna click HERE.
Sometimes the best way to come up with a potential blog topic is to look up the date your post is due, and let Wikipedia data lead you astray. For example, here are birthdays for December 12. A quick glance down the list showed me a few familiar names, reminding me that I actually already knew that 12/12 is Frank Sinatra’s birthday, and adding the fun fact that he shares it with his friend Sammy Davis, Jr. Speaking of old Hollywood, December 12 is also Edward G. Robinson’s birthday, and I remembered that oddly enough we have a few photos of the actor in our collections. (I noticed them some years ago because he’d been misidentified by a young intern who, bless their heart, did not spend all of high school watching Turner Classic Movies, like me.)
In this undated photo by Baltimore photographer Nat Lipsitz, Harry Diamond and Edward G. Robinson examine a piece of paper; both are wearing large “Israel Bonds” tags on their lapels. Robinson (1913-1972), a Jewish actor (born Emanuel Goldenberg in Romania) known for his ‘tough guy’ persona on screen, was a major supporter of Israel Bonds. In the 1950s and ‘60s he was a regular performer at the Chanukah Festival for Israel, held at Madison Square Gardens, culminating in the celebration of his 75th birthday, December 12, 1968, on stage at the event (held four days later, on December 16th); tributes from President Lyndon B. Johnson and Premier Levi Eshkol of Israel, congratulating him on his years of service to Israel Bonds, were read aloud that evening. This work was an extension of his efforts during and after WWII, when he used his movie stardom to publicize the plight of refugees – such as in this 1948 short, “Where Do You Get Off?”
All that being said, though it’s not surprising to see Robinson in an Israel Bonds-themed image, the specific Baltimore information is not yet known. Robinson was in town for film premieres and stage plays – and art auctions (he was a prolific collector) – many times over the years, and thus he could have taken the time to help with local Israel Bonds efforts more than once; we’ll need to do a little more research to pin down this particular event.
And since I started with Frank Sinatra, I’ll note that while we don’t have any photos of him (or of member of the tribe Sammy Davis, Jr., for that matter) in our collections, he doesn’t go entirely unrepresented. Our Baltimore Jewish Council collection contains a small file of materials related to the production and release of “The House I Live In,” a 1945 short film in which Sinatra catches a group of kids chasing a Jewish boy, and proceeds to teach them about religious tolerance and American values. You can watch it here, thanks to the Library of Congress; it’s only 10 minutes and worth a viewing, though I should note that in addition to the enjoyable sight of Hollywood’s fanciful version of the ideal young whippersnapper (and, of course, your man doing some signature crooning), there is also some use of war footage. More to my point today, our BJC file on the film includes reviews of and reactions to the film from the Baltimore papers, and this form postcard sent out by BJC Executive Director Leon Sachs, noting that the film will be shown at the Hippodrome and urging “friends of every faith” to watch what he calls a “truly American job [that] should get a genuine American response.”
And there are your unexpected connections for December 12!