Meyer Levin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meyer Levin (October 7, 1905 – July 9, 1981) was an American novelist. Perhaps best known for his work on the Leopold and Loeb case, Levin worked as a journalist (for the Chicago Daily News and, from 1933–1939, as an editor for Esquire).

Career[]

Levin published six novels before World War II. Though critical response was good, none were successful financially. Reporter (1929) was a novel of the modern newspapers, Frankie and Johnny (1930) an urban romance, Yehuda (1931) takes place on a kibbutz, and The New Bridge (1933) dealt with unemployed construction workers at the beginning of the Depression. In 1937, Levin published The Old Bunch, a story of immigrant Chicago Jewry that James T. Farrell called "one of the most serious and ambitious novels yet produced by the current generation of American novelists."[1] Citizens (1940) was a fictional account of the 1937 strike at the Republic Steel Company plant outside Chicago.

He also wrote and directed a documentary titled "The Illegals," for the Office Of War. The film dealt with the smuggling of Jews out of Poland. [2]

After the war, Levin wrote, with the approval of the Frank family, a play based on The Diary of Anne Frank, but his play was not produced. Instead a version of the same story dramatized by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett reached Broadway. Levin sued for plagiarism.[3]

Meyer wrote the 1956 novel Compulsion, inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case. The novel, for which Levin was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America in 1957, was the basis for Levin's own 1957 play adaptation and the 1959 film based on it, starring Orson Welles.[4] Compulsion was "the first 'documentary' or 'non-fiction novel' ("a style later used in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song").[5]

Bibliography[]

Novels[]

  • The Reporter (1929)
  • Frankie and Johnny (1930)
  • Yehuda (1931)
  • The Golden Mountain: Marvelous Tales of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem and of his Great-Grandson, Rabbi Nachman, Retold from Hebrew, Yiddish and German Sources (1932)
  • (1933)
  • (1937)
  • Citizens (1940)
  • My Father's House (1947)
  • Compulsion (1956)
  • Eva (1959)
  • (1964)
  • (1965)
  • (1968)
  • The Settlers (1972)
  • (1974)
  • (1978)
  • The Architect (1981), (fictionalized life of Frank Lloyd Wright)
  • "Classic Chassidic Tales" (1932), a gathering of the scattered legends of Baal Shem Tov[6]

Autobiographical works[]

  • (1949)
  • (1974)

Judaica[]

  • Beginnings in Jewish Philosophy
  • The Story of Israel
  • An Israel Haggadah for Passover
  • The Story of the Synagogue
  • The Story of the Jewish Way of Life
  • Hassidic Stories"[7]

Awards[]

  • 1966: National Jewish Book Award for The Stronghold[8]
  • 1967: National Jewish Book Award for The Story of Israel[9]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Saturday Review of Literature, 13 March 1937
  2. ^ Mitgang, Herbert (1981-07-11). "MEYER LEVIN, WRITER, 75, DIES; BOOKS INCLUDED 'COMPULSION'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-04-06.
  3. ^ An Obsession with Anne Frank Meyer Levin and the Diary Lawrence Graver UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford 1997 The Regents of the University of California
  4. ^ Jake Hinkson (October 19, 2012). "Leopold and Loeb Still Fascinate 90 Years Later". criminalelement.com. Retrieved October 23, 2012.
  5. ^ "Meyer Levin's Compulsion": article by Steve Powell in "The Venetian Vase of September 21, 2012
  6. ^ Jason Aronson Inc. Northvale, NJ 1996
  7. ^ Greenfield Ltd. Publishers,1932, Box 3084 Tel Aviv Israel
  8. ^ "Past Winners". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved 2020-01-19.
  9. ^ "Past Winners". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved 2020-01-19.

External links[]

Retrieved from ""