Arthur Hailey
Arthur Hailey was a British-Canadian novelist whose plot-driven storylines were set against the backdrops of various industries. His meticulously researched books, which include such best sellers as Hotel, Wheels, The Moneychangers, Overload, have sold 170 million copies in 38 languages. Arthur Frederick Hailey was born on April 5, 1920, in Luton, England, the only child of George Wellington Hailey, a factory worker, Elsie Wright Hailey. An avid reader, Hailey began to write poems and stories at a young age, he once said, "My mother left me off chores so I could write." Elsie encouraged her son to learn typing and shorthand so that he might become a clerk instead of a factory worker. At fourteen, Hailey failed to win a scholarship which would have enabled him to continue his schooling. From 1934 to 1939 he was an office clerk in London, he joined the Royal Air Force in 1939, served as a pilot during World War II rising to the rank of flight lieutenant. In 1947, unhappy with the post-war Labour government, he emigrated to Canada, becoming a dual citizen.
Settling in Toronto, he held a variety of jobs, in such fields as real estate and advertising. He was editor of a trade magazine called Truck Transport. During these years, he continued to write. Hailey's professional writing career began in 1955 with a script called Flight into Danger, purchased by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and telecast on April 3, 1956; this story of a plane flight in jeopardy after its crew is incapacitated was "the smash hit of the season," won enormous acclaim, was broadcast internationally. It was adapted as a novel with Hailey credited as co-author; the story was filmed in 1957 as Zero Hour!, for television in 1971 as Terror in the Sky. Most famously, it served as the basis for Paramount's 1980 parody Airplane!. With the success of Flight into Danger, Hailey was in demand as a television writer, wrote for such shows as Studio One, Kraft Television Theatre, Playhouse 90, Suspense. In 1959, he adapted his teleplay No Deadly Medicine into his first novel The Final Diagnosis.
Published by Doubleday, it's the story of the chief pathologist at a Burlington, hospital. The book received good reviews, was a selection of the Literary Guild of America. Hailey's second novel, In High Places was published in 1962. Dealing with international politics the book was again selected by the Literary Guild, was a best seller in Canada. Hailey's commercial breakthrough came in 1965 with publication of Hotel, which followed five days in the lives of employees and residents of New Orleans' luxurious St. Gregory Hotel; the book spent 48 weeks on the New York Times best seller list, peaking at #3, became the eighth highest-selling novel of the year. It established the template for Hailey's future works: ordinary people involved in extraordinary situations in a business or industry, described in meticulous detail. Following the success of Hotel, Hailey moved to California. In 1968 he achieved international fame with his fourth novel, the story of one eventful night at a midwestern international airport.
The novel was No. 1 in the New York Times for 30 weeks, became the top-selling novel of the year. The film adaptation, released in 1970, was the second-highest-grossing film of the year and received ten Academy Award nominations, including best picture; the success of the film, together with that of 1972's The Poseidon Adventure, led to the proliferation of "disaster films" during the 1970s, which included three additional films in what became the Airport franchise. After the financial success of Airport, on the advice of his tax attorney, Hailey moved as a tax exile to the Bahamas settling in Lyford Cay on New Providence Island, he had intended to stay for just two years, but liked it so much that he remained there for the rest of his life. In 1971, he published Wheels, set in the automobile industry. Hailey followed it with two additional no. 1 sellers: The Moneychangers, about the banking industry. In 1979, following publication of Overload, Hailey announced his retirement. After undergoing quadruple heart bypass surgery, however, he felt rejuvenated, returned to work.
His novel Strong Medicine, about the pharmaceutical industry, was published in 1984 and was another major best seller. His commercial success had declined somewhat by 1990 with publication of The Evening News, with his final novel, which appeared in 1997. Hailey continued to write, but—except for the slim The Lyford Legacy: A Brief History of Lyford Cay from 1788,—Hailey now wrote only as a hobby. Arthur Hailey's papers are housed at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, at the Harry C. Moore Library of the College of The Bahamas. Hailey would spend three years on each book. First, he would dedicate a year to research six months reviewing his notes, 18 months writing, his research was painstaking: he read 27 books about the hotel industry for Hotel, he spent months at a Detroit car plant for Wheels, he spent time—at the age of 6
The Red Badge of Courage
The Red Badge of Courage is a war novel by American author Stephen Crane. Taking place during the American Civil War, the story is about a young private of the Union Army, Henry Fleming, who flees from the field of battle. Overcome with shame, he longs for a "red badge of courage," to counteract his cowardice; when his regiment once again faces the enemy, Henry acts as standard-bearer. Although Crane was born after the war, had not at the time experienced battle first-hand, the novel is known for its realism and naturalism, he began writing what would become his second novel in 1894, using various contemporary and written accounts as inspiration. It is believed. Shortened and serialized in newspapers in December 1894, the novel was published in full in October 1895. A longer version of the work, based on Crane's original manuscript, was published in 1983; the novel is known for its distinctive style, which includes realistic battle sequences as well as the repeated use of color imagery, ironic tone.
Separating itself from a traditional war narrative, Crane's story reflects the inner experience of its protagonist rather than the external world around him. Notable for its use of what Crane called a "psychological portrayal of fear", the novel's allegorical and symbolic qualities are debated by critics. Several of the themes that the story explores are maturation, heroism and the indifference of nature; the Red Badge of Courage garnered widespread acclaim, what H. G. Wells called "an orgy of praise", shortly after its publication, making Crane an instant celebrity at the age of twenty-four; the novel and its author did have their initial detractors, including author and veteran Ambrose Bierce. Adapted several times for the screen, the novel became a bestseller, it has never been out of print and is now thought to be Crane's most important work and a major American text. Stephen Crane published his first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, in March 1893 at the age of 22. Maggie was not a success, either critically.
Most critics thought the unsentimental Bowery tale crude or vulgar, Crane chose to publish the work after it was rejected for publication. Crane found inspiration for his next novel while spending hours lounging in a friend's studio in the early summer of 1893. There, he became fascinated with issues of Century Magazine that were devoted to famous battles and military leaders from the Civil War. Frustrated with the dryly written stories, Crane stated, "I wonder that some of those fellows don't tell how they felt in those scraps, they spout enough of what they did, but they're as emotionless as rocks." Returning to these magazines during subsequent visits to the studio, he decided to write a war novel. He stated that he "had been unconsciously working the detail of the story out through most of his boyhood" and had imagined "war stories since he was out of knickerbockers."At the time, Crane was intermittently employed as a free-lance writer, contributing articles to various New York City newspapers.
He began writing what would become The Red Badge of Courage in June 1893, while living with his older brother Edmund in Lake View, New Jersey. Crane conceived the story from the point of view of a young private, at first filled with boyish dreams of the glory of war, only to become disillusioned by war's reality, he took the private's surname, "Fleming," from his sister-in-law's maiden name. He would relate that the first paragraphs came to him with "every word in place, every comma, every period fixed." Working nights, he wrote from around midnight until four or five in the morning. Because he could not afford a typewriter, he wrote in ink on legal-sized paper crossing through or overlying a word. If he changed something, he would rewrite the whole page, he moved to New York City, where he completed the novel in April 1894. The title of Crane's original, 55,000-word manuscript was "Private Fleming/His various battles", but in order to create the sense of a less traditional Civil War narrative, he changed the title to The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War.
In early 1894, Crane submitted the manuscript to S. S. McClure, who held on to it for six months without publication. Frustrated, the author asked for the manuscript to be returned, after which he gave it to Irving Bacheller in October. An abbreviated version of Crane's story was first serialized in The Philadelphia Press in December 1894; this version of the story, culled to 18,000 words by an editor for the serialization, was reprinted in newspapers across America, establishing Crane's fame. Crane biographer John Berryman wrote that the story was published in at least 200 small city dailies and 550 weekly papers. In October 1895, a version, 5,000 words shorter than the original manuscript, was printed in book form by D. Appleton & Company; this version of the novel differed from Crane's original manuscript. Parts of the original manuscript removed from the 1895 version include all of the twelfth chapter, as well as the endings to chapters seven and fifteen. Crane's contract with Appleton allowed him to receive a flat ten percent royalty of all copies sold.
However, the contract stipulated that he was not to receive
John Frankenheimer
John Michael Frankenheimer was an American film and television director known for social dramas and action/suspense films. Among his credits were Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May, The Train, Grand Prix, French Connection II, Black Sunday, Ronin. Frankenheimer won four Emmy Awards—three consecutive—in the 1990s for directing the television movies Against the Wall, The Burning Season and George Wallace, the latter of which received a Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film, he was considered one of the last remaining directors who insisted on having complete control over all elements of production, making his style unique in Hollywood. Frankenheimer's 30 feature films and over 50 plays for television were notable for their influence on contemporary thought, he became a pioneer of the "modern-day political thriller," having begun his career at the peak of the Cold War. He was technically accomplished from his days in live television, he developed a "tremendous propensity for exploring political situations" which would ensnare his characters.
Movie critic Leonard Maltin writes that "in his time... Frankenheimer worked with the top writers and actors in a series of films that dealt with issues that were just on top of the moment—things that were facing us all." Frankenheimer was born in Queens, New York, the son of Helen Mary and Walter Martin Frankenheimer, a stockbroker. Frankenheimer once speculated, his father was of German Jewish descent, his mother was Irish Catholic, Frankenheimer was raised in his mother's religion. He became interested in movies at an early age. In 1947, he graduated from La Salle Military Academy in Long Island, New York. In 1951, he graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, where he had studied English, he developed an interest in acting as a career while in college but began thinking about directing when he was in the Air Force. This led him to join a film squadron based in Burbank, where he shot his first documentary, he began studying film theory by reading books about other famous directors, such as Sergei Eisenstein along with how-to books about the craft of film making.
Frankenheimer began his directing career in live television at CBS. Throughout the 1950s he directed over 140 episodes of shows like Playhouse 90, Climax!, Danger, including The Comedian, written by Rod Serling and starring Mickey Rooney as a ragingly vicious television comedian. Frankenheimer's first theatrical film was The Young Stranger, starring James MacArthur as the rebellious teenage son of a powerful Hollywood movie producer, he directed the production, based on a Climax! episode, "Deal a Blow", which he directed when he was 26. Frankenheimer returned to television during the late 1950s, moving to film permanently in 1961 with The Young Savages, in which he worked for the first time with Burt Lancaster in a story of a young boy murdered by a New York gang, his departure from television is considered to signal the end of the Golden Age of Television. Roger Ebert considered Frankenheimer to have had a special gift as a filmmaker and to have been a "master craftsman", he stated that Frankenheimer made some of the "most distinctive films of his time" and that he was " one of the most gifted directors of drama on television".
Production of Birdman of Alcatraz began under director Charles Crichton. Burt Lancaster, producing, as well as starring, asked Frankenheimer to take over the film; as Frankenheimer describes in Charles Champlin's interview book, he advised Lancaster that the script was too long, but was told he had to shoot all, written. The first cut of the film was four-and-a-half hours long, the length Frankenheimer had predicted. Moreover, the film was constructed. Frankenheimer said the film would have to be rewritten and reshot. Lancaster was committed to star in Judgment at Nuremberg, so he made that film while Frankenheimer prepared the reshoots; the finished film, released in 1962, was a huge success and was nominated for four Oscars, including one for Lancaster's performance. Frankenheimer was next hired by producer John Houseman to direct All Fall Down, a family drama starring Eva Marie Saint and Warren Beatty. Due to production difficulties with Birdman of Alcatraz, All Fall Down was released first.
Frankenheimer followed this with The Manchurian Candidate. Frankenheimer and producer George Axelrod bought Richard Condon's 1959 novel after it had been turned down by many Hollywood studios. After Frank Sinatra committed to the film, they secured backing from United Artists; the story of a Korean War veteran, brainwashed by the Communist Chinese to assassinate a candidate for President, co-starred Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, James Gregory, John McGiver, Angela Lansbury. Frankenheimer had to fight to cast Lansbury who had worked with him on All Fall Down and was only three years older than Harvey, who would play her son in the film. Sinatra's preference had been for Lucille Ball; the film was nominated for two Oscars, including one for Lansbury. The film was unseen, either theatrically or on broadcast, for many years. Urban legend has it that the film was pulled from circulati
Black and white
Black-and-white images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of gray. The history of various visual media has begun with black and white, as technology improved, altered to color. However, there are exceptions to this rule, including black-and-white fine art photography and in motion pictures, many art films. Most early forms of motion pictures or film were white; some color film processes, including hand coloring were experimented with, in limited use, from the earliest days of motion pictures. The switch from most films being in black-and-white to most being in color was gradual, taking place from the 1930s to the 1960s; when most film studios had the capability to make color films, the technology's popularity was limited, as using the Technicolor process was expensive and cumbersome. For many years, it was not possible for films in color to render realistic hues, thus its use was restricted to historical films and cartoons until the 1950s, while many directors preferred to use black-and-white stock.
For the years 1940–1966, a separate Academy Award for Best Art Direction was given for black-and-white movies along with one for color. The earliest television broadcasts were transmitted in black-and-white, received and displayed by black-and-white only television sets. Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the world's first color television transmission on July 3, 1928 using a mechanical process; some color broadcasts in the U. S. began in the 1950s, with color becoming common in western industrialized nations during the late 1960s. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission settled on a color NTSC standard in 1953, the NBC network began broadcasting a limited color television schedule in January 1954. Color television became more widespread in the U. S. between 1963 and 1967, when major networks like CBS and ABC joined NBC in broadcasting full color schedules. Some TV stations in the US were still broadcasting in B&W until the late 80s to early 90s, depending on network.
Canada began airing color television in 1966 while the United Kingdom began to use an different color system from July 1967 known as PAL. The Republic of Ireland followed in 1970. Australia experimented with color television in 1967 but continued to broadcast in black-and-white until 1975, New Zealand experimented with color broadcasting in 1973 but didn't convert until 1975. In China, black-and-white television sets were the norm until as late as the 1990s, color TVs not outselling them until about 1989. In 1969, Japanese electronics manufacturers standardized the first format for industrial/non-broadcast videotape recorders called EIAJ-1, which offered only black-and-white video recording and playback. While used professionally now, many consumer camcorders have the ability to record in black-and-white. Throughout the 19th century, most photography was monochrome photography: images were either black-and-white or shades of sepia. Personal and commercial photographs might be hand tinted. Colour photography was rare and expensive and again containing inaccurate hues.
Color photography became more common from the mid-20th century. However, black-and-white photography has continued to be a popular medium for art photography, as shown in the picture by the well-known photographer Ansel Adams; this can take the form of black-and-white film or digital conversion to grayscale, with optional digital image editing manipulation to enhance the results. For amateur use certain companies such as Kodak manufactured black-and-white disposable cameras until 2009. Certain films are produced today which give black-and-white images using the ubiquitous C41 color process. Printing is an ancient art, color printing has been possible in some ways from the time colored inks were produced. In the modern era, for financial and other practical reasons, black-and-white printing has been common through the 20th century. However, with the technology of the 21st century, home color printers, which can produce color photographs, are common and inexpensive, a technology unimaginable in the mid-20th century.
Most American newspapers were black-and-white until the early 1980s. Some claim. In the UK, color was only introduced from the mid-1980s. Today, many newspapers restrict color photographs to the front and other prominent pages since mass-producing photographs in black-and-white is less expensive than color. Daily comic strips in newspapers were traditionally black-and-white with color reserved for Sunday strips.:Color printing is more expensive. Sometimes color is reserved for the cover. Magazines such as Jet magazine were either all or black-and-white until the end of the 2000s when it became all-color. Manga are published in black-and-white although now it is part of its image. Many school yearbooks are still or in black-and-white; the Wizard of Oz is in color when Dorothy is in Oz, but in black-and-white when she is in Kansas, although the latter scenes were in sepia when the film was released. The British film A Matter of Life and Death depicts the other world in black-and-white, earthly events in color.
Wim Wenders's film Wings of Desire uses sepia-tone black-and-white f
Anthology series
An anthology series is a radio, television or book series that presents a different story and a different set of characters in each episode or season. These have a different cast each week, but several series in the past, such as Four Star Playhouse, employed a permanent troupe of character actors who would appear in a different drama each week; some anthology series, such as Studio One, began on radio and expanded to television. Medieval Greek anthologiā, collection of epigrams, from Greek, flower gathering, from anthologein, to gather flowers: antho-, antho- + logos, a gathering. Many popular old-time radio programs were anthology series. On some series, such as Inner Sanctum Mysteries, the only constant was the host, who introduced and concluded each dramatic presentation. One of the earliest such programs was The Collier Hour, broadcast on the NBC Blue Network from 1927 to 1932; as radio's first major dramatic anthology, it adapted stories and serials from Collier's Weekly in a calculated move to increase subscriptions and compete with The Saturday Evening Post.
Airing on the Wednesday prior to each week's distribution of the magazine, the program soon moved to Sundays in order to avoid spoilers with dramatizations of stories appearing in the magazine. Radio drama anthology series include: Academy Award Theater Arch Oboler's Plays The Campbell Playhouse Cavalcade of America CBS Radio Workshop Earplay Four Star Playhouse Lux Radio Theater The Mercury Theatre on the Air The Screen Guild Theater Stars over Hollywood Radio anthology series provided a format for science fiction, horror and mystery genres: Mystery House The Witch's Tale Lights Out The Hermit's Cave Famous Jury Trials Dark Fantasy Inner Sanctum Mysteries The Whistler Suspense The Mysterious Traveler Creeps by Night Mystery Playhouse The Strange Dr. Weird The Haunting Hour The Sealed Book Mystery in the Air The Weird Circle Quiet, Please! Escape The Unexpected The Hall of Fantasy 2000 Plus Dimension X ABC Mystery Theater, anthology and mystery series Sleep No More Theater 10:30 X Minus One The final episode of Suspense was broadcast on September 30, 1962, a date that has traditionally been seen as marking the end of the old-time radio era.
However, genre series produced since 1962 include: The Black Mass The Creaking Door Beyond Midnight The Zero Hour Mystery Theater Nightfall The Cabinet of Dr. Fritz 2000X The Twilight Zone In the history of television, live anthology dramas were popular during the Golden Age of Television of the 1950s with series such as The United States Steel Hour and The Philco Television Playhouse. Dick Powell came up with an idea for an anthology series, Four Star Playhouse, with a rotation of established stars every week, four stars in all; the stars would own the studio and the program, as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had done with Desilu studio. Powell had intended for the program to feature himself, Charles Boyer, Joel McCrea, Rosalind Russell; when Russell and McCrea backed out, David Niven came on board as the third star. The fourth star was a guest star. CBS liked the idea, Four Star Playhouse made its debut in fall of 1952, it ran on alternate weeks only during the first season, alternating with Andy.
It was successful enough to be renewed and became a weekly program from the second season until the end of its run in 1956. Ida Lupino was brought on board as the de facto fourth star, though unlike Powell and Niven, she owned no stock in the company. American television networks would sometimes run summer anthology series which consisted of unsold television pilots. Beginning in 1971, the long-run Masterpiece Theatre drama anthology series brought British productions to American television. In 2011, American Horror Story debuted a new type of anthology format in the U. S; each season, rather than each episode, is a standalone story. Several actors have appeared in the various seasons, but playing different roles—in an echo of the Four Star Playhouse format; the success of American Horror Story has spawned other season-long anthologies such as American Crime Story and Feud. The 20th Century Fox Hour ABC Movie of the Week ABC Stage 67 Academy Theatre Actors Studio Alcoa-Goodyear Theatre The Alcoa Hour Alcoa Premiere American Crime American Crime Story American Horror Story American Film Theatre American Playhouse The American Playwrights Theater: The One Acts Th
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian federal Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster for both radio and television. The English- and French-language service units of the corporation are known as CBC and Radio-Canada and both short-form names are commonly used in the applicable language to refer to the corporation as a whole. Although some local stations in Canada predate CBC's founding, CBC is the oldest existing broadcasting network in Canada, first established in its present form on November 2, 1936. Radio services include CBC Radio One, CBC Music, Ici Radio-Canada Première, Ici Musique. Television operations include CBC Television, Ici Radio-Canada Télé, CBC News Network, Ici RDI, Ici Explora, Documentary Channel, Ici ARTV; the CBC operates services for the Canadian Arctic under the names CBC Radio-Canada Nord. The CBC operates digital services including CBC.ca/Ici. Radio-Canada.ca, CBC Radio 3, CBC Music/ICI.mu and Ici.
TOU. TV, owns 20.2% of satellite radio broadcaster Sirius XM Canada, which carries several CBC-produced audio channels. CBC/Radio-Canada offers programming in English and eight aboriginal languages on its domestic radio service, in five languages on its web-based international radio service, Radio Canada International. However, budget cuts in the early 2010s have contributed to the corporation reducing its service via the airwaves, discontinuing RCI's shortwave broadcasts as well as terrestrial television broadcasts in all communities served by network-owned rebroadcast transmitters, including communities not subject to Canada's over-the-air digital television transition. CBC's federal funding is supplemented by revenue from commercial advertising on its television broadcasts; the radio service employed commercials from its inception to 1974, but since its primary radio networks have been commercial-free. In 2013, CBC's secondary radio networks, CBC Music and Ici Musique, introduced limited advertising of up to four minutes an hour, but this was discontinued in 2016.
In 1929, the Aird Commission on public broadcasting recommended the creation of a national radio broadcast network. A major concern was the growing influence of American radio broadcasting as U. S.-based networks began to expand into Canada. Meanwhile, Canadian National Railways was making a radio network to keep its passengers entertained and give it an advantage over its rival, CP. This, the CNR Radio, is the forerunner of the CBC. Graham Spry and Alan Plaunt lobbied intensely for the project on behalf of the Canadian Radio League. In 1932 the government of R. B. Bennett established the CBC's predecessor, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission; the CRBC took over a network of radio stations set up by a federal Crown corporation, the Canadian National Railway. The network was used to broadcast programming to riders aboard its passenger trains, with coverage in central and eastern Canada. On November 2, 1936, the CRBC was reorganized under its present name. While the CRBC was a state-owned company, the CBC was a Crown corporation on the model of the British Broadcasting Corporation, reformed from a private company into a statutory corporation in 1927.
Leonard Brockington was the CBC's first chairman. For the next few decades, the CBC was responsible for all broadcasting innovation in Canada; this was in part because, until 1958, it was not only a broadcaster, but the chief regulator of Canadian broadcasting. It used this dual role to snap up most of the clear-channel licences in Canada, it began a separate French-language radio network in 1937. It introduced FM radio to Canada in 1946, though a distinct FM service wasn't launched until 1960. Television broadcasts from the CBC began on September 6, 1952, with the opening of a station in Montreal, a station in Toronto, Ontario opening two days later; the CBC's first owned affiliate television station, CKSO in Sudbury, launched in October 1953. From 1944 to 1962, the CBC split its English-language radio network into two services known as the Trans-Canada Network and the Dominion Network; the latter, carrying lighter programs including American radio shows, was dissolved in 1962, while the former became known as CBC Radio.
On July 1, 1958, CBC's television signal was extended from coast to coast. The first Canadian television show shot in colour was the CBC's own The Forest Rangers in 1963. Colour television broadcasts began on July 1, 1966, full-colour service began in 1974. In 1978, CBC became the first broadcaster in the world to use an orbiting satellite for television service, linking Canada "from east to west to north". Starting in 1967 and continuing until the mid-1970s, the CBC provided limited television service to remote and northern communities. Transmitters were built in a few locations and carried a four-hour selection of black-and-white videotaped programs each day; the tapes were flown into communities to be shown transported to other communities by the "bicycle" method used in television syndication. Transportation delays ranged from one week for larger centres to a month for small communities; the first FCP station was started in Yellowknife in May 1967, the second in Whitehorse in No
John Garfield
John Garfield was an American actor who played brooding, working-class characters. He grew up in poverty in Depression-era New York City. In the early 1930s, he became a member of the Group Theater. In 1937, he moved to Hollywood becoming one of Warner Bros.' stars. Called to testify before the U. S. Congressional House Committee on Un-American Activities, he denied communist affiliation and refused to "name names" ending his film career; some have alleged that the stress of this incident led to his premature death at 39 from a heart attack. Garfield is acknowledged as a predecessor of such Method actors as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean. Garfield was born Jacob Julius Garfinkle in a small apartment on Rivington Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side, to David and Hannah Garfinkle, Russian Jewish immigrants, grew up in the heart of the Yiddish Theater District. In early infancy, a middle name—Julius—was added, for the rest of his life those who knew him well called him Julie, his father, a clothes presser and part-time cantor, struggled to make a living and to provide marginal comfort for his small family.
When Garfield was five, his brother Max was born. Their mother never recovered from what was described as a "difficult" pregnancy, she died two years and the young boys were sent to live with various relatives, all poor, scattered across the boroughs of Brooklyn and The Bronx. Several of these relatives lived in tenements in a section of East Brooklyn called Brownsville, there, Garfield lived in one house and slept in another. At school, he was judged a poor reader and speller, deficits that were aggravated by irregular attendance, he would say of his time on the streets there, that he learned "all the meanness, all the toughness it's possible for kids to acquire." His father moved to the West Bronx, where Garfield joined a series of gangs. Much he would recall: "Every street had its own gang. That's the way it was in poor sections... the old safety in numbers." He soon became a gang leader. At this time, people started to notice his ability to mimic well-known performers, both physically and facially.
He began to hang out and spar at a boxing gym on Jerome Avenue. At some point, he contracted scarlet fever, causing permanent damage to his heart and causing him to miss a lot of school. After he was expelled three times and expressed a wish to quit school altogether, his father and step-mother sent him to P. S. 45, a school for difficult children. It was under the guidance of the school's principal—the noted educator Angelo Patri—that he was introduced to acting. Noticing Garfield's tendency to stammer, Patri assigned him to a speech therapy class taught by a charismatic teacher named Margaret O'Ryan, she gave him acting exercises and made him memorize and deliver speeches in front of the class and, as he progressed, in front of school assemblies. O'Ryan thought he cast him in school plays, she encouraged him to sign up for a citywide debating competition sponsored by the New York Times. To his own surprise, he took second prize. With Patri and O'Ryan's encouragement, he began to take acting lessons at a drama school, part of The Heckscher Foundation and began to appear in their productions.
At one of the latter, he received back-stage congratulations and an offer of support from the Yiddish actor Jacob Ben-Ami, who recommended him to the American Laboratory Theater. Funded by the Theatre Guild, "the Lab" had contracted with Richard Boleslavski to stage its experimental productions and with Russian actress and expatriate Maria Ouspenskaya to supervise classes in acting. Former members of the Moscow Art Theatre, they were the first proponents of Konstantin Stanislavski's'system' in the United States, which soon developed into what came to be known as "the Method." Garfield took morning classes and began volunteering time at the Lab after hours, auditing rehearsals and painting scenery, doing crew work. He would view this time as beginning his apprenticeship in the theater. Among the people becoming disenchanted with the Guild and turning to the Lab for a more radical, challenging environment were Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, Franchot Tone, Cheryl Crawford and Harold Clurman. In varying degrees, all would become influential in Garfield's career.
After a stint with Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theater and a short period of vagrancy, involving hitchhiking, freight hopping, picking fruit, logging in the Pacific Northwest Garfield made his Broadway debut in 1932 in a play called Lost Boy. It ran for only two weeks, but gave Garfield something critically important for an actor struggling to break into the theater: a credit. There is a claim that he was a patron of Polly Adler's brothel in New York. Garfield received feature billing in his next role, that of Henry the office boy in Elmer Rice's play Counsellor-at-Law, starring Paul Muni; the play ran for three months, made an eastern tour and returned for an unprecedented second, return engagement, only closing when Muni was contractually compelled to return to Hollywood to make a film for Warners. At this point, Warner's sought a screen test, he turned them down. Garfield's former colleagues Crawford and Strasberg had begun a new theater collective, calling it "the Group," and Garfield lobbied his friends hard to get in.
After months of rejection, he began frequenting the inside steps of the Broadhurst Theater where the Group had its offices. Cheryl Crawford noticed him o
