Edna Ferber

Edna Ferber (August 15, 1885 – April 16, 1968) was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright.

Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber, who was of German Jewish descent.

The Ferbers had moved to Kalamazoo from Chicago, Illinois in order to open a dry goods store, and her older sister Fannie was born there three years earlier.

Ferber's father was not adept at business, and the family moved often during Ferber's childhood.

From Kalamazoo, they returned to Chicago for a year, and then

moved to Ottumwa, Iowa where they resided from 1890 to 1897 (ages 5 to 12 for Ferber).

In Ottumwa, Ferber and her family faced brutal anti-Semitism, including adult males verbally abusing, mocking and spitting on her on days when she brought lunch to her father, often mocking her in a Yiddish accent.

According to Ferber, her years in Ottumwa "must be held accountable for anything in me that is hostile toward the world.".

During this time, Ferber's father began to lose his eyesight, necessitating costly and ultimately unsuccessful treatments.

At the age of 12, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and later briefly attended Lawrence University.

After graduation, Ferber planned to study elocution, with vague thoughts of someday becoming an actor, but her family could not afford to send her to college.

On the spur of the moment, she took a job as a cub reporter at the Appleton Daily Crescent and subsequently moved to the Milwaukee Journal. In early 1909 Ferber suffered a bout of anemia and returned to Appleton to recuperate.

While Ferber was recovering, she began writing and selling short stories to various magazines, and in 1911 she published her first novel, Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed.

In 1912, a collection of her short stories was published in a volume entitled Buttered Side Down.

In her autobiography, Ferber wrote:

"In that day, and for a girl in her early twenties, they were rather hard tough stories... The book got good reviews. I was startled and grimly pleased when some of the reviewers said that obviously these stories had been written by a man who had taken a feminine nom de plume as a hoax. I have always thought that a writing style should be impossible of sex determination; I don't think the reader should be able to say whether a book has been written by a man or a woman."

She never resumed her career as a reporter, although she subsequently covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.

Ferber was shocked, thinking it would be transformed into a typical light entertainment of the 1920s.

She helped adapt her short story "Old Man Minick", published in 1922, into a play (Minick) and it was thrice adapted to film, in 1925 as the silent film Welcome Home, in 1932 as The Expert, and in 1939 as No Place to Go.

Starting in 1922, Ferber began to visit Europe once or twice annually for thirteen or fourteen years.

Her novels include the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron (1930; adapted into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), Giant (1952; made into the 1956 film of the same name) and Ice Palace (1958), which also received a film adaptation in 1960.

In 1925, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her book So Big.

Ferber initially believed her draft of what would become So Big lacked a plot, glorified failure, and had a subtle theme that could easily be overlooked.

When she sent the book to her usual publisher, Doubleday, she was surprised to learn that he greatly enjoyed the novel.

This was reflected by the several hundreds of thousands of copies of the novel sold to the public.

Following the award, the novel was made into a silent film starring Colleen Moore that same year.

It was not until Kern explained that he and Oscar Hammerstein II wanted to create a different type of musical that Ferber granted him the rights and it premiered on Broadway in 1927, and has been revived 8 times.

A remake followed in 1932, starring Barbara Stanwyck and George Brent, with Bette Davis in a supporting role.

Ferber did take a maternal interest in the career of her niece Janet Fox, an actress who performed in the original Broadway casts of Ferber's plays Dinner at Eight (1932) and Stage Door (1936).

Ferber was known for being outspoken and having a quick wit.

On one occasion, she led other Jewish guests in leaving a house party after learning the host was antisemitic.

Once, after Noel Coward joked about how her suit made her resemble a man, she replied, "So does yours."

Her 1952 novel, Giant, became the basis of the 1956 movie, starring Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean and Rock Hudson.

Ferber died at her home in New York City, of stomach cancer, at the age of 82.

She left her estate to her sister and nieces.

Ferber never married, had no children, and is not known to have engaged in a romance or sexual relationship.

In her early novel Dawn O'Hara, the title character's aunt remarks, "Being an old maid was a great deal like death by drowning – a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling."

A 1953 version of So Big starring Jane Wyman is the most popular version to modern audiences.

Riding the popularity of So Big, Ferber's next novel, Show Boat, was just as successful.

Shortly after its release, composer Jerome Kern proposed turning it into a musical.