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The huckster that wrote the Anne Frank Diaries |
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Meyer Levin
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The huckster that wrote the Anne Frank Diaries |
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Typical of his early rhetoric: ~ "The Jews suddenly faced themselves....They saw that they were different from all other inmates of the camp. For them things were not so simple. To go back to Poland? To Hungary? To streets empty of Jews, towns empty of Jews, a world without Jews.
To wander in those lands, lonely, homeless, always the tragedy before one's eyes...and to meet again a Gentile neighbor who would open his eyes wide and smile, remarking with double meaning 'What, Yankel! You're still alive.'"
Meyer Levin, Author, June 1946
History of the Play (1955 production)
In 1952, Doubleday published the first American edition of the Diary; this
translation included cuts that Otto Frank and the original European publishers
had made. The novelist, Meyer Levin, wrote a front page essay "The Child Behind
the Secret Door" for the New York Times Book Review (proclaiming) the
importance of the work: "Anne Frank's diary is too tenderly intimate a book to
be frozen with the label 'classic,' and yet no other designation serves...Anne
Frank's voice becomes the voice of six million vanished Jewish souls." The
response was enormous and three printings, 45,000 copies, were sold within a
short time.
With the instant success of the book,
producers, theatrical agents and others were anxious to gain rights to produce a
play or film based on Anne Frank's Diary. Meyer Levin, who had done so
much to promote the book and its adaptation, early on worked with Otto Frank and
Doubleday on negotiations. Through a series of complicated events which are
still in dispute, Levin's play was turned down;
he sued producer Crawford and Otto Frank
and later producer Bloomgarten. For decades, Levin continued to write and
talk about how unfairly he felt he had been treated and argue that his play in
which Anne's Jewishness was central was a more authentic adaptation of the
diary. (See Meyer Levin, The Obsession, 1973). For two differing analyses
of this controversy and the role of playwright Lillian Hellman and others, see,
An Obsession with Anne Frank, Meyer Levin and the Diary, Lawrence Graver,
(Univ. of Ca. Press., 1996) and The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank: Meyer
Levin, Lillian Hellman, and the Staging of the Diary, Ralph Melnick, (Yale Univ.
Press, 1997).
Doubleday, as Otto Frank's representative, gave producing rights to Kermit Bloomgarden who engaged the husband and wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, screenwriters of films such as The Thin Man, Easter Parade and It's a Wonderful Life to write the theatrical adaptation. Goodrich and Hackett were determined to present the story in a positive light, with an inspirational and universal message for audiences. Their first drafts emphasized the mischievous side of Anne's personality, but later emphasized her optimism and idealism. They consulted with director Garson Kanin and playwright Lillian Hellman about dramatizing the narrative structure of the Diary -- adapting narration into dramatic events. Goodrich and Hackett, along with Kanin, visited the Annex with Otto Frank; he answered their many questions about the Annex and those who had hid there.
On October 5, 1955, The Diary of Anne Frank opened on Broadway starring Joseph Schildkraut as Otto Frank and Susan Strasberg as Anne. Praise for the production was widespread. The play went on to win the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as three Tony Awards, including Best Play of the 1955-56 season. The Diary of Anne Frank eventually played a total of 717 performances on Broadway, before being produced throughout America and the world, in professional and amateur theatre. In 1959, the film version starring Millie Perkins as Anne Frank was directed by George Stevens.
Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times called the play "A tender, rueful, moving drama. It's strange how the shining spirit of a young girl now dead can filter down through the years and inspire a group of theatrical professionals in a foreign land." New York Herald Tribune drama critic Walter Kerr wrote,..."Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett have fashioned a wonderfully sensitive narrative out of the real life legacy left us by a spirited and straightforward Jewish girl. A play that is--for all its pathos--as bright and shining as a banner."
Why in 1952 did the diary become an overnight bestseller? Why through play and film did America embrace a universal, optimistic Anne Frank?
"As bright and shining as a banner, "warm," "tender" these became descriptions not only of the play but of Anne Frank the words, "in spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart" (lifted out of context) confirmed the image of Anne Frank as a universal idealistic figure. The play was the first popularization of the events of the Holocaust. As such it was very much a product of its time; it embraced a sense of assimilation and universalism.
http://www.annefrank.com/download/materialf_storyofdiary.doc
Without declaring his prior interest to the editors of The New York Times Book Review, he had even arranged to write the front-page rave that turned a book with a modest first printing of 5,000 copies into a nationwide sensation overnight. In exchange for this mitzvah, he had asked only one favor from Anne's father, Otto Frank -- the right to adapt the diary into a play.
But his draft of a script was rejected; the wildly successful adaptation that opened on Broadway in 1955 was by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, gentile screenwriters who had worked on Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life." Levin became convinced that he had been cheated out of his rightful due by a powerful cabal that included, among others, the Broadway producers Cheryl Crawford and Kermit Bloomgarden, the playwright Lillian Hellman, the law firm Paul, Weiss, Wharton, Rifkind & Garrison, the Doubleday editor Barbara Zimmerman (later Epstein), the Macy's department store heir Nathan Straus and Otto Frank himself -- whom he ultimately likened to Hitler.
Another surprise is the extremely cool response that the diary received when he offered it for publication. Otto wanted it published not as a Holocaust memoir but rather so that something of his daughter would survive. Every mainstream British publisher turned it down, as did most in America: there was widespread agreement that no one was interested in those old horrors.
But the American edition, when it eventually appeared, sold out immediately, and one of its early readers was an American novelist and journalist, Meyer Levin, who believed that it could be adapted for the stage.
The story of Levin's battles to have his own dramatization accepted form a long and absorbing part of an already fascinating book. Levin believed that the play should express a uniquely Jewish experience and should be steeped in the history of Jewish suffering. But Frank thought, correctly, that the value of the diaries was that they told a universal story.
When Lillian Hellman turned down the assignment to adapt the book, she suggested Frances and Albert Hackett, screenwriters who specialized in light comedies and had won awards for Father of the Bride and It's a Wonderful Life. The general agreement was that they must not depress the audience.
Their adaptation proved a stunning commercial success (Marilyn Monroe attended the first night), but the disagreement between Levin and Frank degenerated into a series of heartless legal squabbles, with Levin making it his life's work to pursue and persecute Anne's father through the courts.
Many people made money, got famous or had their lives destroyed by the diaries. A family friend of Meyer Levin told me that he died embittered and broken. Every stage, every development, including the purchase of the house to make the Anne Frank museum, was embroiled in controversy and fights. During all this, Otto lived in two rooms in a relative's house in Switzerland. One of the few moments of joy in this fascinating book comes when Otto is remarried, to a woman who had lost her own husband and son in the camps.
Very little attention is given to the assault made on the diary by Holocaust deniers, a subject that has been dealt with by Deborah Lipstadt in Denying the Holocaust. Instead, Lee examines the claims and competing claims about who betrayed those hidden in the annexe and asserts that she has identified the culprit. I found this the least interesting part of the book.
There were a million people who were morally capable of betraying the Franks, but very few prepared to take the risk of concealing them. Why did they do it? In a radio interview with Johannes Kleimann, one of Otto's employees, this verdict was given on Anne's modest father: "The reason I offered to help Otto Frank and his family during the hiding period is because I knew him as a sincere businessman and a very decent and helpful person, qualities for which he is generally respected."
Anne Frank was a remarkable young girl; remarkable in her perceptiveness, her self-awareness and her considerable gifts as a writer. Otto Frank was remarkable in quite another way: he was an ordinary husband, father and businessman who tried to live a good life, to do the best by and for everyone. In Yiddish, such a person is called a mensch, which simply means a human being. It is the highest accolade one Jew can give to another.