A True Story of Nazi Escape, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe
December 19, 2022
In this entertaining if somewhat overstuffed saga, journalist Stapinksi (Murder in Matera) and graphic designer Siegler (Dear Client) untangle the threads linking Siegler’s grandfather, Jules Schulback, to DC Comics publisher Harry Donenfeld, film director Billy Wilder, and Marilyn Monroe. A furrier and amateur filmmaker, Jules and his wife fled Nazi Germany in 1938 with the help of Donenfeld, who agreed to be their financial sponsor. (He had once been neighbors with Jules’s cousin in the Bronx.) Sixteen years later, Jules closed his fur shop in Manhattan one night and walked uptown to the block where Wilder was filming the scene in The Seven Year Itch when Monroe’s skirt blows upward as she stands over a subway grate. A raucous crowd made Wilder’s footage unusable (he later recreated the scene on a Hollywood soundstage), leaving Jules’s recording “as the only color-film footage to survive.” From this tidbit of family lore, Siegler and Stapinski weave a sprawling story that touches on the Broadway Mob, the rise of pulp magazines (“sex paired with badly written detective tales”), the origins of Superman, the Hollywood production code, Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak, and much more. Though not every detour pans out, it’s a dizzying and edifying ride.
December 15, 2022
Historical examination of a surprising intersection of family histories. Memoirist Stapinski and design studio founder Siegler draw on family papers and historical sources to create a lively tale of movie stars, Jewish refugees, Superman, and the "Sultan of Smut." The story begins in 1929 in Berlin, where the teenagers Jules Schulback--Siegler's grandfather--and Edith Friedmann fell in love; where Billy Wilder was working as a "dance gigolo" and ghostwriter; and where Nazism was on the rise. At the same time, in New York, printer, bootlegger, and philanderer Harry Donenfeld was making a fortune producing girlie magazines, among other nefarious enterprises. When he found out that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were trying to market their idea of action comics, featuring a certain caped hero, Donenfeld saw dollar signs. He got the na�ve young men to sell him the rights to Superman for $130--$10 a page for a 13-page story--giving Donenfeld and his partner the Superman character "to have and hold forever." Donenfeld was underhanded, but when a friend and neighbor asked him to sponsor a relative desperate to escape from Germany, he signed the papers. And so Jules came to New York with Edith and their daughter. A photography buff, Jules happened to be on the Manhattan street where Marilyn Monroe was filming the famous subway shoot--skirt billowing over a subway grate--as publicity for The Seven Year Itch, a Wilder film. Bit players in the authors' sprightly narrative include Hugh Hefner, Joe DiMaggio, and Clark Gable. Interwoven with chapters set in America are scenes of dire suffering for the Schulback, Friedmann, and Wilder families in Europe. Though Donenfeld was a cad, he quietly helped others flee Germany and took up many progressive and charitable causes. He made sure, too, that his famous action hero battled against Nazis, adding "the words 'Truth, justice, and the American way' to Superman's job title." A spirited look at mid-20th-century America.
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December 1, 2022
Jules Shulback, a Jewish furrier in 1930s Berlin, was desperately searching for a way to extract his young family from the Nazi regime's increasingly violent clutches. Harry Donenfeld, a hedonistic New Yorker, fueled his extravagant lifestyle through printing smut and bootlegging. The lives of these two very different men would become eternally linked--despite never meeting face-to-face--through extraordinary circumstances. Their compelling journeys brought them into contact with a cavalcade of iconic twentieth-century celebrities along the way; through astonishing coincidences, Shulback and Donenfeld intersected with Superman creators Joe Schuster and Jerry Siegler, accomplished director Billy Wilder, baseball paragon Joe DiMaggio, screen superstar Clark Gable, Hollywood eccentric Howard Hughes, celebrated playwright Arthur Miller, and the iconic Marilyn Monroe. This is a beautifully hopeful tale about what it means to live the American dream, how ordinary people can become real-life superheroes, and the serendipitous ways in which strangers impact our lives. Supremely readable, this book is highly recommended to both serious and casual history readers.
COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from January 13, 2023
Stapinski (Murder in Matera) and Siegler (Dear Client) turn some seemingly tall tales into facts. The extravagant but true stories stem from Siegler's grandfather, Jules Schulback, who had repeatedly shared family folklore that he shot the only surviving photograph from Marilyn Monroe's famous PR scene for The Seven Year Itch. Siegler didn't exactly believe him until she cleaned out his apartment and found the film reel. That led to an investigation of all his stories. The book shows he escaped Nazi detention by claiming to be Clark Gable's advance man. The person who helped him and his family escape Nazi Germany was Harry Donnenfeld, a DC Comics publisher and sometimes bootlegger and pornographer. Over a span of 20 years, the two cross paths with other luminaries, such as Billy Wilder, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio, Clark Gable, Howard Hughes, Hugh Hefner, Arthur Miller, Superman creators Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, and even Donald Trump. VERDICT Should appeal widely.--David Keymer
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