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Fannie Hurst

Fannie Hurst (October 18, 1889 – February 23, 1968)[1] was an American novelist and short-story writer whose works were highly popular during the post-World War I era. Her work combined sentimental, romantic themes with social issues of the day, such as women's rights and race relations. She was one of the most widely read female authors of the 20th century, and for a time in the 1920s she was one of the highest-paid American writers. Hurst also actively supported a number of social causes, including feminism, African American equality, and New Deal programs.[2]

Fannie Hurst
Fannie Hurst in 1932. Photograph by
Carl Van Vechten.
BornOctober 18, 1889
Hamilton, Ohio
DiedFebruary 23, 1968 (aged 78)
Manhattan, New York City
OccupationNovelist, writer
Notable worksBack Street, Imitation of Life
SpouseJacques S. Danielson (1915-1952; his death)

Although her novels, including Lummox (1923), Back Street (1931), and Imitation of Life (1933), lost popularity over time and were mostly out of print as of the 2000s, they were bestsellers when first published and were translated into many languages. She also published over 300 short stories during her lifetime. Hurst is known for the film adaptations of her works, including Imitation of Life (1934), Four Daughters (1938), Imitation of Life (1959), Humoresque (1946), and Young at Heart (1954).

Early life Edit

 
Sketch by Marguerite Martyn of Hurst in her last year at Washington University, 1909

Hurst was born on October 19, 1885, in Hamilton, Ohio, to shoe-factory owner Samuel Hurst and his wife Rose (née Koppel), who were assimilated Jewish emigrants from Bavaria. A younger sister died of diphtheria at age three, leaving Hurst as her parents' only surviving child. She grew up at 5641 Cates Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri and was a student at Central High School.[3]

She attended Washington University and graduated in 1909 at age 24. In her autobiography, she portrayed her family as comfortably middle-class, except for a two-year stint in a boarding house necessitated by a sudden financial downturn, which sparked her initial interest in the plight of the poor. However, this has been challenged by later researchers, including her biographer Brooke Kroeger and literary historian Susan Koppelman. According to Koppelman, while Fannie Hurst was growing up, her father changed businesses four times, never achieved much financial success, and failed in business at least once, and the Hurst family lived at 11 different boarding houses before Fannie turned 16. Kroeger wrote that while Samuel and Rose Hurst did eventually move to a house in a fashionable section of St. Louis, this did not occur until Fannie Hurst's third year of college, rather than during her childhood.

In her last term in college, Hurst wrote the book and lyrics for a comic opera, The Official Chaperon, which was given on the Washington University campus in June 1909.[4][5][6]

After her college graduation, Hurst briefly worked in a shoe factory before moving to New York City in 1911 to pursue a writing career. Despite having already published one story while in college, she received more than 35 rejections before she was able to sell a second story and establish herself as a regularly published author. During her early years in New York she worked as a waitress at Childs and a sales clerk at Macy's and acted in bit parts on Broadway. As Hurst worked these jobs, under the name Rose Samuels, she observed her customers as well as employees. She began to take note of important social issues like unequal pay and gender inequality.

In her spare time, Hurst attended night court sessions and visited Ellis Island and the slums, becoming in her own words "passionately anxious to awake in others a general sensitiveness to small people", and developing an awareness of "causes, including the lost and the threatened".[7]

Career Edit

 
Fannie Hurst, 1914

In the years after World War I, Hurst became famous as an author of extremely popular short stories and novels, many of which were made into films. Her popularity continued for several decades, only beginning to decline after World War II.

Throughout her life, Hurst also actively worked and spoke on behalf of social justice organizations and causes supporting feminism and African-American civil rights, and occasionally supported other oppressed groups such as Jewish refugees (although she chose not to support some other Jewish causes), homosexuals, and prisoners.

She was also appointed to several committees associated with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs.

Author Edit

In 1912, after numerous rejections, Hurst finally published a story in The Saturday Evening Post, which shortly thereafter requested exclusive release of her future writings. She went on to publish many more stories, mostly in the Post and in Cosmopolitan magazine, eventually earning as much as $5,000 per story. Her first collection of short stories, Just Around the Corner, was published in 1914, and her first novel, Star-Dust: The Story of an American Girl, appeared in 1921.[8][9] By 1925, she had published five collections of short stories and two novels, and become one of the most highly paid authors in the United States.[8] It was said of Hurst that "no other living American woman has gone so far in fiction in so short a time."

Her works were designed to appeal primarily to a female audience, and usually had working-class or middle-class female protagonists concerned with romantic relationships and economic need (see Major themes). Her work was described in 1928 as "overwhelmingly prodigal of both feeling and language ... mix[ing] naked, realistic detail with simple unrestrained emotion." Hurst was heavily influenced by the works of Edgar Lee Masters, particularly Spoon River Anthology (1916), and also read the works of Charles Dickens, Upton Sinclair, and Thomas Hardy. Hurst considered herself to be a serious writer, and publicly disparaged the works of other popular authors such as Gene Stratton-Porter and Harold Bell Wright, dismissing Wright as a "sentimental" author whose works people read only for "relaxation". Early in Hurst's career, critics also considered her a serious artist, admiring her sensitive portrayals of immigrant life and urban working girls.[8] Her stories and books regularly made annual "best-of" lists, and she was called a female O. Henry. Her second novel, Lummox (1923), about the tribulations of an oppressed domestic servant, was praised for its insights by Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Eleanor Roosevelt. However, some reviewers criticized her for "sappy" plots and careless writing, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his 1920 novel This Side of Paradise, had a character presciently describe Hurst as one of several authors "not producing among 'em one story or novel that will last 10 years."[10]

Beginning in the late 1930s, critics no longer took her seriously and sometimes expressed frustration about the continued popularity of her work in the face of bad reviews. In the post-World War II era, she was regarded as merely a popular author who wrote for and about the working classes. She became a favorite target of parodists, including Langston Hughes, who parodied her racially themed novel Imitation of Life as Limitations of Life. Her own editor, Kenneth McCormick, described her as a "fairly corny artist" but a "wonderful storyteller". She was also called the "Queen of the Sob Sisters", "sob sister" being a term used in the early 20th century for female reporters who wrote sentimental human interest stories designed to evoke an emotional response from female readers. Hurst herself recognized that she was "not a darling of the critics" but said, "I have a vast popular audience — it warms me, like a furnace."

 
Hurst boarding the SS Leviathan with a dog in 1925 in New York

The great popularity of Hurst's works gave her major celebrity status. Hurst also took steps to publicize herself for purposes of promoting both her writing and the activist causes she espoused (see Social activism). In the 1920s, news media widely covered aspects of her personal life such as her unconventional marriage (see Personal life and death) and a diet on which she lost 40 pounds. She was frequently interviewed about her views on subjects relating to love, marriage and family. For decades, The New York Times continued to report regularly on Hurst's doings, including her walks in Central Park with her dogs, her travels abroad, her wardrobe, and the interior decoration of her apartment.

Back Street (1931), Hurst's seventh novel, was hailed as her "magnum opus" and has been called her "best loved" work. Its main character, a confident, independent young gentile woman, falls in love with a married Jewish banker and becomes his secret mistress, sacrificing her own life in the process and ultimately meeting a tragic end. Hurst's next novel, Imitation of Life (1933), was also hugely popular, and is now considered her best known and most famous novel. It told the story of two single mothers, one white and one African American, who become partners in a successful waffle and restaurant business (modeled after Quaker Oats Company's "Aunt Jemima" pancake mix) and have conflicts with their teenage daughters. Hurst's inspiration for the book was her own friendship with African-American author Zora Neale Hurston. However, Imitation of Life and the two films based on it provoked controversy due to the treatment of African-American characters, including a romanticized mammy figure and a "tragic mulatto" who rejects her loving mother in order to pass for white.

Approximately 30 films were made from Hurst's fiction. Back Street was the basis for three films of the same name in 1932, 1941 and 1961, plus a fourth film written by Frank Capra, Forbidden (1932), which liberally borrowed elements from Hurst's novel without crediting her. Imitation of Life was twice adapted for film in 1934 and 1959.[8] Both were respectively inductees for the 2005 and 2015 National Film Registry lists.[11]

It was also adapted by Joselito Rodriguez for the 1949 Mexican film Angelitos negros ("Little Black Angels"), which was remade in 1970 as both a film and a telenovela. Her short story "Humoresque", published in 1919, was made into a 1920 silent film and a 1946 film noir starring Joan Crawford. A later story, "Sister Act", published in Cosmopolitan in 1937, inspired the musical films Four Daughters (1938) and the Frank Sinatra vehicle Young at Heart (1954).

Hurst continued to write and publish until her death in 1968, although the commercial value of her work declined after World War II as popular tastes changed. Her total publications over her nearly six-decade career include 19 novels,[12] over 300 short stories (63 of which were gathered in eight short-story collections), four plays produced on Broadway, a full-length autobiography and an autobiographical memoir, numerous magazine articles, personal essays, articles (often unsigned) for various organizations to which she belonged, and screenplays (both independently written and collaborations) for several films.

Social activism Edit

 
Eleanor Roosevelt (left) with Hurst in 1962

Throughout her life, Hurst was involved with many social activist groups supporting equal rights for women and African Americans, and occasionally assisting other people in need. In 1921, Hurst was among the first to join the Lucy Stone League, an organization that fought for women to preserve their maiden names. She was a member of the feminist intellectual group Heterodoxy in Greenwich Village, and was active in the Urban League. She volunteered as a regular visitor to inmates of a women's prison in Manhattan. During World War II she raised money to help Jewish refugees fleeing Europe, but in her earlier years was less supportive of other Jewish causes, saying in a 1925 interview that Zionism "segregates us, raises barriers or creates race prejudice".[13] Her attitude changed in the 1950s,[14] and in 1963 she received an honorary award from the Zionist women's organization Hadassah.[15]

During the 1930s and 1940s, Hurst was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and a frequent White House visitor. Hurst was named chair of the National Housing Commission in 1936–1937 and appointed to the National Advisory Committee to the Works Progress Administration in 1940. She was a delegate to the World Health Organization in 1952.

In 1958, Hurst briefly hosted a television talk show out of New York called Showcase.[16] Showcase was notable for presenting several of the earliest well-rounded discussions of homosexuality and was one of the few programs on which homosexual men spoke for themselves rather than being debated by a panel of "experts".[17] Hurst was praised by early homophile group the Mattachine Society, which invited Hurst to deliver the keynote address at the Society's 1958 convention.[18]

Life and death Edit

In 1915, Hurst secretly married Jacques S. Danielson, a Russian émigré pianist. Hurst kept her maiden name and the couple maintained separate residences and arranged to renew their marriage contract every five years, if they both agreed to do so. The revelation of the marriage in 1920 made national headlines, and The New York Times criticized the couple in an editorial for occupying two residences during a housing shortage. Hurst responded by saying that a married woman had the right to retain her own name, her own special life, and her personal liberty. Hurst and Danielson had no children, and remained married until Danielson's death in 1952. After his death, Hurst continued to write weekly letters to him for the next 16 years until she died, and regularly wore a calla lily, the first flower he had ever sent her.

During the 1920s and 1930s, while she was married to Danielson, Hurst also had a long affair with Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson.[19][20][21] They often met at Romany Marie's café in Greenwich Village when Stefansson was in town. According to Stefansson, at one point Hurst considered divorcing Danielson in order to marry him, but decided against it. Hurst and Stefansson ended their relationship in 1939.[citation needed]

Hurst was friends with many leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including Carl Van Vechten and Zora Neale Hurston, who during her time at Barnard College worked as Hurst's secretary and later traveled with her.[13] In 1958, Hurst published her autobiography, Anatomy of Me, which described many of her friendships and encounters with famous people of the era such as Theodore Dreiser and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Overweight as a child and young woman, Hurst had a lifelong concern about her weight. She was known in literary circles as an avid dieter and published an autobiographical memoir about her dieting, No Food With My Meals, in 1935.[citation needed]

Hurst died on February 23, 1968, at her Hotel des Artistes apartment in Manhattan, after a brief illness.[1] A few weeks before she died, she sent her publishers two new novels, one untitled and the other entitled Lonely is Only a Word. Her obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times.[citation needed]

Major themes Edit

Combining sentimentality with social realism, Hurst's fiction focuses on American (including immigrant) working-class and middle-class women who attempt to balance societal expectations and economic needs with their own desires for fulfillment. Many Hurst characters, male and female, are working people trying to rise above their class. Abe C. Ravitz described Hurst's themes as "women's issues expressed often in myths of sacrifice, suffering, and love" and Hurst herself as "the laureate of the ghetto and the New Woman". For readers unfamiliar with city life, Hurst's experiences allowed her to create accurate depictions of contemporaneous New York City and, in her later works, the Midwest. She often dealt with subject matter considered "daringly frank and earthy" for its time, including unwed pregnancy, extramarital affairs, miscegnation, and homosexuality. Hurst's work has been criticized for relying heavily on stereotypes, including "The Cad, the Alcoholic, the Egotist, the Self-Absorbed Rich Lady, the Golden-Hearted Whore, the Brave Wife, the Pure-Minded Virgin, and the Honest Burgher".

Women in Hurst's works are generally victimized in some way by preconceived attitudes or social and economic discrimination. including sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and age discrimination. Although Hurst's women often have jobs, economic security for women is typically portrayed as coming through marriage, or sometimes through being a well-paid mistress to a wealthy man. Women whose relationships fail to meet these standards, or who pursue a type of love relationship without economic benefits, suffer deprivation or meet with tragedy. The women's situations are frequently made worse by their own passivity, a trait Hurst deplored; a happy ending often either does not occur, or occurs because of outside forces rather than the afflicted woman's own efforts. Hurst also focused on describing the "interior lives of women" and how the life choices of her female characters are driven by feelings and passions that they often cannot articulate or explain.

Influence and legacy Edit

In 1964, Hurst established her archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin with the assistance of her friend, the noted civil rights lawyer Morris Ernst. The collection of over 270 boxes includes extensive manuscripts of her works (short stories, novels, film scenarios, plays, articles, columns, speeches, and talks), both incoming and outgoing correspondence, notebooks, wills, contracts, interviews, and biographical material.[22]

Upon her death in 1968, Hurst left half of her estate to her alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, and the other half to Brandeis University. The universities used the money to endow professorships in their English departments and to create "Hurst Lounges" for writers to share their work with academics and students.

At the time of her death, and for several decades thereafter, Hurst was treated as a popular culture writer, credited with having "set the style followed by Jacqueline Susann, Judith Krantz, and Jackie Collins" and considered "one of the great trash novelists". Her works fell into obscurity and largely went out of print. In the 1990s, Hurst's life and work again started to receive serious critical attention, including the formation of a Fannie Hurst Society for interested scholars; a volume of literary criticism by Abe C. Ravitz published in 1997; and a detailed biography of Hurst by Kroeger published in 1999.

In 2004, The Feminist Press published a collection of her stories from between the years 1912 and 1935, seeking to "propel a long overdue revival and reassessment of Hurst's work" and praising her "depth, intelligence, and artistry as a writer."

Other aspects of Hurst's life and work examined by scholars include her American Jewish background, her friendship with and patronage of Zora Neale Hurston (which Hurston discussed in her own autobiography), the treatment of racial issues in her novel Imitation of Life and the movies based upon it, and even her well-publicized dieting. She has also been called a pioneer in the field of public relations due to her development of her own strong public persona.

In popular culture Edit

Hurst was a strong advocate for women maintaining independence their whole lives, even after marriage. In the 1920s, after Hurst revealed her marriage to Jacques Danielson, yet retained her own name and each had their own separate homes, the term "a Fannie Hurst marriage" was coined to describe a marital arrangement similar to Hurst's, where the husband and wife each maintained their own independent lives, even to the point of living in separate residences.

Hurst has been referenced in popular culture to exemplify a popular or lowbrow author, in contrast to serious, literary authors. The theme song of the 1970 Mel Brooks comedy film The Twelve Chairs includes the lines, "Hope for the best, expect the worst/ You could be Tolstoy or Fannie Hurst." Hurst is mentioned in a similar vein in the song "You're So London" by Mike Nichols and Ken Welch, written for the show Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall (1962): "You're so kippers, you're so caviar and I'm so liverwurst/ You're so Shakespeare, so Bernard Shaw and I'm so Fannie Hurst."

Selected works Edit

Short story collections Edit

  • Just Around the Corner (1914)
  • Every Soul Hath Its Song (1916)
  • Gaslight Sonatas (1918)
  • Humoresque: A Laugh on Life with a Tear Behind It (1919)[23]
  • The Vertical City (1922)
  • Song of Life (1927)
  • Procession (1929)
  • We are Ten (1937)

Novels Edit

  • Star-Dust: The Story of an American Girl (1921)
  • Lummox (1923)
  • Mannequin (1926)
  • Appassionata (1926)
  • A President is Born (1928)
  • Five and Ten (1929)
  • Back Street (1931)
  • Imitation of Life (1933)
  • Anitra's Dance (1934)
  • Great Laughter (1936)
  • Lonely Parade (1942)
  • Hallelujah (1944)
  • The Hands of Veronica (1947)
  • Anywoman (1950)
  • The Name is Mary (1951)
  • The Man with One Head (1951)
  • Family! (1960)
  • God Must Be Sad (1961)
  • Fool, Be Still (1964)

Autobiography Edit

  • Anatomy of Me: A Wonderer in Search of Herself (1958)

Other books Edit

  • No Food with My Meals (1935) (non-fiction autobiographical memoir about dieting)
  • Today is Ladies' Day (1939) (Home Institute booklet, offered through newspapers)
  • White Christmas (1942) (short fiction, Christmas story)

Stage plays Edit

  • The Official Chaperon (1909) (produced at Washington University in St. Louis)[4][5]
  • The Land of the Free (1917) (co-written with Harriet Ford)
  • Back Pay (1921) (adaptation by Hurst of her 1919 short story of the same name)
  • Humoresque (1923) (adaptation by Hurst of her 1918 short story of the same name)
  • It Is To Laugh (1927) (adaptation by Hurst of her short story "The Gold in Fish" (1925))
  • Four Daughters (1941) (story credit; stage play was adapted by Frank Vreeland from Hurst's short story "Sister Act")

Film credits Edit

References Edit

  1. ^ a b West, Kathryn (2004). "Fannie Hurst". In Wintz, Cary D. (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. Vol. 1: A-J. Finkelman, Paul. New York and Abingdon: Routledge. pp. 596–597. ISBN 1-57958-389-X. Retrieved June 21, 2010.
  2. ^ O'Brian, Edward (1918). . Boston Small, Maynard & Company Publishers. Archived from the original on March 2, 2019. Retrieved October 17, 2015.
  3. ^ Corbett, Katharine T. (1999). In Her Place: A Guide to St. Louis Women's History. St. Louis, MO: Missouri History Museum.
  4. ^ a b Untitled, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 30, 1909, image 8, column 5
  5. ^ a b Martyn, Marguerite (June 17, 1909). "Marguerite Martyn Discovers Real College Playwright in Fannie Hurst". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. image 13.
  6. ^ [1]Brooke Kroeger, Fannie Hurst: The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst. 2013, location 272
  7. ^ Frederick, A. (1980). "Hurst, Fannie, Oct. 18, 1889-Feb. 23, 1968". In Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Retrieved from Simmons College Library
  8. ^ a b c d Hurst, Fannie 1885Fl - 1968. (1999). In The Cambridge guide to women's writing in English. Retrieved from Simmons College Library
  9. ^ Hurst, Fannie, (1889 --1968). (2005). In The crystal reference encyclopedia. Retrieved from Simmons College Library
  10. ^ "This Side of Paradise". 1920. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  11. ^ "Complete National Film Registry Listing - National Film Preservation Board - Programs - Library of Congress". Library of Congress. Retrieved August 3, 2018.
  12. ^ Many sources list the total number of her novels as 18, and omit The Name is Mary, which was published in 1951 by Dell as a romance paperback after its original 1946 publication in The American Magazine.
  13. ^ a b Bolick, Kate (March 4, 2005). "Hurst and Hurston". Tablet. Retrieved February 13, 2017.
  14. ^ Green, David B. (October 18, 2013). "This Day in Jewish History A Storyteller With a Conscience Is Born". Haaretz. Retrieved February 13, 2017.
  15. ^ "Hadassah Honors Denmark for Rescuing Jews from Nazi Invaders". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. December 17, 1963. Retrieved February 13, 2017.
  16. ^ . Time. April 6, 1959. Archived from the original on February 1, 2011. Retrieved January 10, 2009.
  17. ^ Tropiano, pp. 4–5
  18. ^ Capsuto, Steven. . Archived from the original on August 19, 2008. Retrieved January 10, 2009.
  19. ^ Fannie Hurst. Anatomy of Me: A Wonderer in Search of Herself (p. 219). New York: Doubleday, 1958. ISBN 0-405-12843-6.
  20. ^ Gísli Pálsson. Travelling Passions: The Hidden Life Of Vilhjalmur Stefansson (pp. 187, 195). Lebanon: University Press of New England, 2005; ISBN 1-58465-510-0.
  21. ^ Robert Shulman. Romany Marie: The Queen of Greenwich Village (p. 144). Louisville: Butler Books, 2006; ISBN 1-884532-74-8.
  22. ^ "Fannie Hurst: A Preliminary Inventory of Her Papers at the Harry Ransom Center". norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Retrieved September 2, 2022.
  23. ^ Hurst, Fannie (1920) [1919]. Humoresque: A Laugh on Life with a Tear Behind It. New York City: Harper & Brothers.

Bibliography Edit

  • Tropiano, Stephen (2002). The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV. New York: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books. ISBN 1-55783-557-8.

External links Edit

fannie, hurst, this, article, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, improve, this, article, adding, citations, reliable, sources, unsourced, material, challenged, removed, find, sources, news, newspapers, books, scholar, jstor, november, 20. This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Fannie Hurst news newspapers books scholar JSTOR November 2019 Learn how and when to remove this template message Fannie Hurst October 18 1889 February 23 1968 1 was an American novelist and short story writer whose works were highly popular during the post World War I era Her work combined sentimental romantic themes with social issues of the day such as women s rights and race relations She was one of the most widely read female authors of the 20th century and for a time in the 1920s she was one of the highest paid American writers Hurst also actively supported a number of social causes including feminism African American equality and New Deal programs 2 Fannie HurstFannie Hurst in 1932 Photograph byCarl Van Vechten BornOctober 18 1889Hamilton OhioDiedFebruary 23 1968 aged 78 Manhattan New York CityOccupationNovelist writerNotable worksBack Street Imitation of LifeSpouseJacques S Danielson 1915 1952 his death Although her novels including Lummox 1923 Back Street 1931 and Imitation of Life 1933 lost popularity over time and were mostly out of print as of the 2000s they were bestsellers when first published and were translated into many languages She also published over 300 short stories during her lifetime Hurst is known for the film adaptations of her works including Imitation of Life 1934 Four Daughters 1938 Imitation of Life 1959 Humoresque 1946 and Young at Heart 1954 Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 2 1 Author 2 2 Social activism 3 Life and death 4 Major themes 5 Influence and legacy 6 In popular culture 7 Selected works 7 1 Short story collections 7 2 Novels 7 3 Autobiography 7 4 Other books 7 5 Stage plays 7 6 Film credits 8 References 9 Bibliography 10 External linksEarly life Edit nbsp Sketch by Marguerite Martyn of Hurst in her last year at Washington University 1909Hurst was born on October 19 1885 in Hamilton Ohio to shoe factory owner Samuel Hurst and his wife Rose nee Koppel who were assimilated Jewish emigrants from Bavaria A younger sister died of diphtheria at age three leaving Hurst as her parents only surviving child She grew up at 5641 Cates Avenue in St Louis Missouri and was a student at Central High School 3 She attended Washington University and graduated in 1909 at age 24 In her autobiography she portrayed her family as comfortably middle class except for a two year stint in a boarding house necessitated by a sudden financial downturn which sparked her initial interest in the plight of the poor However this has been challenged by later researchers including her biographer Brooke Kroeger and literary historian Susan Koppelman According to Koppelman while Fannie Hurst was growing up her father changed businesses four times never achieved much financial success and failed in business at least once and the Hurst family lived at 11 different boarding houses before Fannie turned 16 Kroeger wrote that while Samuel and Rose Hurst did eventually move to a house in a fashionable section of St Louis this did not occur until Fannie Hurst s third year of college rather than during her childhood In her last term in college Hurst wrote the book and lyrics for a comic opera The Official Chaperon which was given on the Washington University campus in June 1909 4 5 6 After her college graduation Hurst briefly worked in a shoe factory before moving to New York City in 1911 to pursue a writing career Despite having already published one story while in college she received more than 35 rejections before she was able to sell a second story and establish herself as a regularly published author During her early years in New York she worked as a waitress at Childs and a sales clerk at Macy s and acted in bit parts on Broadway As Hurst worked these jobs under the name Rose Samuels she observed her customers as well as employees She began to take note of important social issues like unequal pay and gender inequality In her spare time Hurst attended night court sessions and visited Ellis Island and the slums becoming in her own words passionately anxious to awake in others a general sensitiveness to small people and developing an awareness of causes including the lost and the threatened 7 Career EditThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Fannie Hurst news newspapers books scholar JSTOR December 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message nbsp Fannie Hurst 1914In the years after World War I Hurst became famous as an author of extremely popular short stories and novels many of which were made into films Her popularity continued for several decades only beginning to decline after World War II Throughout her life Hurst also actively worked and spoke on behalf of social justice organizations and causes supporting feminism and African American civil rights and occasionally supported other oppressed groups such as Jewish refugees although she chose not to support some other Jewish causes homosexuals and prisoners She was also appointed to several committees associated with President Franklin D Roosevelt s New Deal programs Author Edit In 1912 after numerous rejections Hurst finally published a story in The Saturday Evening Post which shortly thereafter requested exclusive release of her future writings She went on to publish many more stories mostly in the Post and in Cosmopolitan magazine eventually earning as much as 5 000 per story Her first collection of short stories Just Around the Corner was published in 1914 and her first novel Star Dust The Story of an American Girl appeared in 1921 8 9 By 1925 she had published five collections of short stories and two novels and become one of the most highly paid authors in the United States 8 It was said of Hurst that no other living American woman has gone so far in fiction in so short a time Her works were designed to appeal primarily to a female audience and usually had working class or middle class female protagonists concerned with romantic relationships and economic need see Major themes Her work was described in 1928 as overwhelmingly prodigal of both feeling and language mix ing naked realistic detail with simple unrestrained emotion Hurst was heavily influenced by the works of Edgar Lee Masters particularly Spoon River Anthology 1916 and also read the works of Charles Dickens Upton Sinclair and Thomas Hardy Hurst considered herself to be a serious writer and publicly disparaged the works of other popular authors such as Gene Stratton Porter and Harold Bell Wright dismissing Wright as a sentimental author whose works people read only for relaxation Early in Hurst s career critics also considered her a serious artist admiring her sensitive portrayals of immigrant life and urban working girls 8 Her stories and books regularly made annual best of lists and she was called a female O Henry Her second novel Lummox 1923 about the tribulations of an oppressed domestic servant was praised for its insights by Vladimir Lenin Leon Trotsky and Eleanor Roosevelt However some reviewers criticized her for sappy plots and careless writing and F Scott Fitzgerald in his 1920 novel This Side of Paradise had a character presciently describe Hurst as one of several authors not producing among em one story or novel that will last 10 years 10 Beginning in the late 1930s critics no longer took her seriously and sometimes expressed frustration about the continued popularity of her work in the face of bad reviews In the post World War II era she was regarded as merely a popular author who wrote for and about the working classes She became a favorite target of parodists including Langston Hughes who parodied her racially themed novel Imitation of Life as Limitations of Life Her own editor Kenneth McCormick described her as a fairly corny artist but a wonderful storyteller She was also called the Queen of the Sob Sisters sob sister being a term used in the early 20th century for female reporters who wrote sentimental human interest stories designed to evoke an emotional response from female readers Hurst herself recognized that she was not a darling of the critics but said I have a vast popular audience it warms me like a furnace nbsp Hurst boarding the SS Leviathan with a dog in 1925 in New YorkThe great popularity of Hurst s works gave her major celebrity status Hurst also took steps to publicize herself for purposes of promoting both her writing and the activist causes she espoused see Social activism In the 1920s news media widely covered aspects of her personal life such as her unconventional marriage see Personal life and death and a diet on which she lost 40 pounds She was frequently interviewed about her views on subjects relating to love marriage and family For decades The New York Times continued to report regularly on Hurst s doings including her walks in Central Park with her dogs her travels abroad her wardrobe and the interior decoration of her apartment Back Street 1931 Hurst s seventh novel was hailed as her magnum opus and has been called her best loved work Its main character a confident independent young gentile woman falls in love with a married Jewish banker and becomes his secret mistress sacrificing her own life in the process and ultimately meeting a tragic end Hurst s next novel Imitation of Life 1933 was also hugely popular and is now considered her best known and most famous novel It told the story of two single mothers one white and one African American who become partners in a successful waffle and restaurant business modeled after Quaker Oats Company s Aunt Jemima pancake mix and have conflicts with their teenage daughters Hurst s inspiration for the book was her own friendship with African American author Zora Neale Hurston However Imitation of Life and the two films based on it provoked controversy due to the treatment of African American characters including a romanticized mammy figure and a tragic mulatto who rejects her loving mother in order to pass for white Approximately 30 films were made from Hurst s fiction Back Street was the basis for three films of the same name in 1932 1941 and 1961 plus a fourth film written by Frank Capra Forbidden 1932 which liberally borrowed elements from Hurst s novel without crediting her Imitation of Life was twice adapted for film in 1934 and 1959 8 Both were respectively inductees for the 2005 and 2015 National Film Registry lists 11 It was also adapted by Joselito Rodriguez for the 1949 Mexican film Angelitos negros Little Black Angels which was remade in 1970 as both a film and a telenovela Her short story Humoresque published in 1919 was made into a 1920 silent film and a 1946 film noir starring Joan Crawford A later story Sister Act published in Cosmopolitan in 1937 inspired the musical films Four Daughters 1938 and the Frank Sinatra vehicle Young at Heart 1954 Hurst continued to write and publish until her death in 1968 although the commercial value of her work declined after World War II as popular tastes changed Her total publications over her nearly six decade career include 19 novels 12 over 300 short stories 63 of which were gathered in eight short story collections four plays produced on Broadway a full length autobiography and an autobiographical memoir numerous magazine articles personal essays articles often unsigned for various organizations to which she belonged and screenplays both independently written and collaborations for several films Social activism Edit nbsp Eleanor Roosevelt left with Hurst in 1962Throughout her life Hurst was involved with many social activist groups supporting equal rights for women and African Americans and occasionally assisting other people in need In 1921 Hurst was among the first to join the Lucy Stone League an organization that fought for women to preserve their maiden names She was a member of the feminist intellectual group Heterodoxy in Greenwich Village and was active in the Urban League She volunteered as a regular visitor to inmates of a women s prison in Manhattan During World War II she raised money to help Jewish refugees fleeing Europe but in her earlier years was less supportive of other Jewish causes saying in a 1925 interview that Zionism segregates us raises barriers or creates race prejudice 13 Her attitude changed in the 1950s 14 and in 1963 she received an honorary award from the Zionist women s organization Hadassah 15 During the 1930s and 1940s Hurst was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and a frequent White House visitor Hurst was named chair of the National Housing Commission in 1936 1937 and appointed to the National Advisory Committee to the Works Progress Administration in 1940 She was a delegate to the World Health Organization in 1952 In 1958 Hurst briefly hosted a television talk show out of New York called Showcase 16 Showcase was notable for presenting several of the earliest well rounded discussions of homosexuality and was one of the few programs on which homosexual men spoke for themselves rather than being debated by a panel of experts 17 Hurst was praised by early homophile group the Mattachine Society which invited Hurst to deliver the keynote address at the Society s 1958 convention 18 Life and death EditThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Fannie Hurst news newspapers books scholar JSTOR December 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message In 1915 Hurst secretly married Jacques S Danielson a Russian emigre pianist Hurst kept her maiden name and the couple maintained separate residences and arranged to renew their marriage contract every five years if they both agreed to do so The revelation of the marriage in 1920 made national headlines and The New York Times criticized the couple in an editorial for occupying two residences during a housing shortage Hurst responded by saying that a married woman had the right to retain her own name her own special life and her personal liberty Hurst and Danielson had no children and remained married until Danielson s death in 1952 After his death Hurst continued to write weekly letters to him for the next 16 years until she died and regularly wore a calla lily the first flower he had ever sent her During the 1920s and 1930s while she was married to Danielson Hurst also had a long affair with Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson 19 20 21 They often met at Romany Marie s cafe in Greenwich Village when Stefansson was in town According to Stefansson at one point Hurst considered divorcing Danielson in order to marry him but decided against it Hurst and Stefansson ended their relationship in 1939 citation needed Hurst was friends with many leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance including Carl Van Vechten and Zora Neale Hurston who during her time at Barnard College worked as Hurst s secretary and later traveled with her 13 In 1958 Hurst published her autobiography Anatomy of Me which described many of her friendships and encounters with famous people of the era such as Theodore Dreiser and Eleanor Roosevelt Overweight as a child and young woman Hurst had a lifelong concern about her weight She was known in literary circles as an avid dieter and published an autobiographical memoir about her dieting No Food With My Meals in 1935 citation needed Hurst died on February 23 1968 at her Hotel des Artistes apartment in Manhattan after a brief illness 1 A few weeks before she died she sent her publishers two new novels one untitled and the other entitled Lonely is Only a Word Her obituary appeared on the front page of The New York Times citation needed Major themes EditThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed December 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message Combining sentimentality with social realism Hurst s fiction focuses on American including immigrant working class and middle class women who attempt to balance societal expectations and economic needs with their own desires for fulfillment Many Hurst characters male and female are working people trying to rise above their class Abe C Ravitz described Hurst s themes as women s issues expressed often in myths of sacrifice suffering and love and Hurst herself as the laureate of the ghetto and the New Woman For readers unfamiliar with city life Hurst s experiences allowed her to create accurate depictions of contemporaneous New York City and in her later works the Midwest She often dealt with subject matter considered daringly frank and earthy for its time including unwed pregnancy extramarital affairs miscegnation and homosexuality Hurst s work has been criticized for relying heavily on stereotypes including The Cad the Alcoholic the Egotist the Self Absorbed Rich Lady the Golden Hearted Whore the Brave Wife the Pure Minded Virgin and the Honest Burgher Women in Hurst s works are generally victimized in some way by preconceived attitudes or social and economic discrimination including sexual harassment gender discrimination and age discrimination Although Hurst s women often have jobs economic security for women is typically portrayed as coming through marriage or sometimes through being a well paid mistress to a wealthy man Women whose relationships fail to meet these standards or who pursue a type of love relationship without economic benefits suffer deprivation or meet with tragedy The women s situations are frequently made worse by their own passivity a trait Hurst deplored a happy ending often either does not occur or occurs because of outside forces rather than the afflicted woman s own efforts Hurst also focused on describing the interior lives of women and how the life choices of her female characters are driven by feelings and passions that they often cannot articulate or explain Influence and legacy EditThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed December 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message In 1964 Hurst established her archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin with the assistance of her friend the noted civil rights lawyer Morris Ernst The collection of over 270 boxes includes extensive manuscripts of her works short stories novels film scenarios plays articles columns speeches and talks both incoming and outgoing correspondence notebooks wills contracts interviews and biographical material 22 Upon her death in 1968 Hurst left half of her estate to her alma mater Washington University in St Louis and the other half to Brandeis University The universities used the money to endow professorships in their English departments and to create Hurst Lounges for writers to share their work with academics and students At the time of her death and for several decades thereafter Hurst was treated as a popular culture writer credited with having set the style followed by Jacqueline Susann Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins and considered one of the great trash novelists Her works fell into obscurity and largely went out of print In the 1990s Hurst s life and work again started to receive serious critical attention including the formation of a Fannie Hurst Society for interested scholars a volume of literary criticism by Abe C Ravitz published in 1997 and a detailed biography of Hurst by Kroeger published in 1999 In 2004 The Feminist Press published a collection of her stories from between the years 1912 and 1935 seeking to propel a long overdue revival and reassessment of Hurst s work and praising her depth intelligence and artistry as a writer Other aspects of Hurst s life and work examined by scholars include her American Jewish background her friendship with and patronage of Zora Neale Hurston which Hurston discussed in her own autobiography the treatment of racial issues in her novel Imitation of Life and the movies based upon it and even her well publicized dieting She has also been called a pioneer in the field of public relations due to her development of her own strong public persona In popular culture EditHurst was a strong advocate for women maintaining independence their whole lives even after marriage In the 1920s after Hurst revealed her marriage to Jacques Danielson yet retained her own name and each had their own separate homes the term a Fannie Hurst marriage was coined to describe a marital arrangement similar to Hurst s where the husband and wife each maintained their own independent lives even to the point of living in separate residences Hurst has been referenced in popular culture to exemplify a popular or lowbrow author in contrast to serious literary authors The theme song of the 1970 Mel Brooks comedy film The Twelve Chairs includes the lines Hope for the best expect the worst You could be Tolstoy or Fannie Hurst Hurst is mentioned in a similar vein in the song You re So London by Mike Nichols and Ken Welch written for the show Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall 1962 You re so kippers you re so caviar and I m so liverwurst You re so Shakespeare so Bernard Shaw and I m so Fannie Hurst Selected works EditShort story collections Edit Just Around the Corner 1914 Every Soul Hath Its Song 1916 Gaslight Sonatas 1918 Humoresque A Laugh on Life with a Tear Behind It 1919 23 The Vertical City 1922 Song of Life 1927 Procession 1929 We are Ten 1937 Novels Edit Star Dust The Story of an American Girl 1921 Lummox 1923 Mannequin 1926 Appassionata 1926 A President is Born 1928 Five and Ten 1929 Back Street 1931 Imitation of Life 1933 Anitra s Dance 1934 Great Laughter 1936 Lonely Parade 1942 Hallelujah 1944 The Hands of Veronica 1947 Anywoman 1950 The Name is Mary 1951 The Man with One Head 1951 Family 1960 God Must Be Sad 1961 Fool Be Still 1964 Autobiography Edit Anatomy of Me A Wonderer in Search of Herself 1958 Other books Edit No Food with My Meals 1935 non fiction autobiographical memoir about dieting Today is Ladies Day 1939 Home Institute booklet offered through newspapers White Christmas 1942 short fiction Christmas story Stage plays Edit The Official Chaperon 1909 produced at Washington University in St Louis 4 5 The Land of the Free 1917 co written with Harriet Ford Back Pay 1921 adaptation by Hurst of her 1919 short story of the same name Humoresque 1923 adaptation by Hurst of her 1918 short story of the same name It Is To Laugh 1927 adaptation by Hurst of her short story The Gold in Fish 1925 Four Daughters 1941 story credit stage play was adapted by Frank Vreeland from Hurst s short story Sister Act Film credits Edit Humoresque 1920 Lummox 1930 based on 1923 novel also dialogue Symphony of Six Million 1932 based on story Night Bell Back Street 1932 based on novel Imitation of Life 1934 based on the novel Back Street 1941 based on novel Humoresque 1946 based on story Imitation of Life 1959 based on novelReferences Edit a b West Kathryn 2004 Fannie Hurst In Wintz Cary D ed Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance Vol 1 A J Finkelman Paul New York and Abingdon Routledge pp 596 597 ISBN 1 57958 389 X Retrieved June 21 2010 O Brian Edward 1918 The best American short stories of 1917 and the yearbook of the American short story Boston Small Maynard amp Company Publishers Archived from the original on March 2 2019 Retrieved October 17 2015 Corbett Katharine T 1999 In Her Place A Guide to St Louis Women s History St Louis MO Missouri History Museum a b Untitled St Louis Post Dispatch May 30 1909 image 8 column 5 a b Martyn Marguerite June 17 1909 Marguerite Martyn Discovers Real College Playwright in Fannie Hurst St Louis Post Dispatch image 13 1 Brooke Kroeger Fannie Hurst The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst 2013 location 272 Frederick A 1980 Hurst Fannie Oct 18 1889 Feb 23 1968 In Notable American Women The Modern Period Retrieved from Simmons College Library a b c d Hurst Fannie 1885Fl 1968 1999 In The Cambridge guide to women s writing in English Retrieved from Simmons College Library Hurst Fannie 1889 1968 2005 In The crystal reference encyclopedia Retrieved from Simmons College Library This Side of Paradise 1920 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Complete National Film Registry Listing National Film Preservation Board Programs Library of Congress Library of Congress Retrieved August 3 2018 Many sources list the total number of her novels as 18 and omit The Name is Mary which was published in 1951 by Dell as a romance paperback after its original 1946 publication in The American Magazine a b Bolick Kate March 4 2005 Hurst and Hurston Tablet Retrieved February 13 2017 Green David B October 18 2013 This Day in Jewish History A Storyteller With a Conscience Is Born Haaretz Retrieved February 13 2017 Hadassah Honors Denmark for Rescuing Jews from Nazi Invaders Jewish Telegraphic Agency December 17 1963 Retrieved February 13 2017 Yakety Yak Time April 6 1959 Archived from the original on February 1 2011 Retrieved January 10 2009 Tropiano pp 4 5 Capsuto Steven Kudos AGLA s and GLAAD s Gay and Lesbian Media Awards Archived from the original on August 19 2008 Retrieved January 10 2009 Fannie Hurst Anatomy of Me A Wonderer in Search of Herself p 219 New York Doubleday 1958 ISBN 0 405 12843 6 Gisli Palsson Travelling Passions The Hidden Life Of Vilhjalmur Stefansson pp 187 195 Lebanon University Press of New England 2005 ISBN 1 58465 510 0 Robert Shulman Romany Marie The Queen of Greenwich Village p 144 Louisville Butler Books 2006 ISBN 1 884532 74 8 Fannie Hurst A Preliminary Inventory of Her Papers at the Harry Ransom Center norman hrc utexas edu Retrieved September 2 2022 Hurst Fannie 1920 1919 Humoresque A Laugh on Life with a Tear Behind It New York City Harper amp Brothers Bibliography EditTropiano Stephen 2002 The Prime Time Closet A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV New York Applause Theatre and Cinema Books ISBN 1 55783 557 8 External links Edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fannie Hurst nbsp Wikisource has the text of a 1921 Collier s Encyclopedia article about Fannie Hurst nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Fannie Hurst Fannie Hurst Papers at the Harry Ransom Center Fannie Hurst Papers at Washington University in St Louis Fannie Hurst Collection at Brandeis University Works by Fannie Hurst at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Fannie Hurst at Internet Archive Works by Fannie Hurst at LibriVox public domain audiobooks nbsp Fannie Hurst Women s History About com Archived from the original on January 9 2006 Fannie Hurst at IMDb Fannie Hurst at the Internet Broadway Database nbsp Jewish Women s Archive page Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Fannie Hurst amp oldid 1177153223, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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