Clifton Fadiman
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Clifton Fadiman (May 15, 1904—June 20, 1999) was an American intellectual, author, radio and television personality.
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[edit] Literary career
Fadiman grew up in Brooklyn and was a nephew of the child prodigy William James Sidis[1]. A graduate of Columbia University, he worked for Simon & Schuster for ten years, ending as its chief editor. He spent another ten years (1933-1943) in charge of The New Yorker's book review section and in 1944 became a judge for the Book of the Month Club. His witticisms and sayings were frequently printed in newspapers and magazines. "When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before, you see more in you than there was before", was one of the better known. Of Stendhal, Fadiman wrote, "He has no grace, little charm, less humor... [and] is not really a good storyteller..."
[edit] Books by Clifton Fadiman
- Reading I've Liked: Presented with an Informal Prologue and Various Commentaries (1941, British edition 1946)
- Party of One (1955)
- The American Treasury 1455-1955 (1955, ed.)
- Any Number Can Play (1957)
- Fantasia Mathematica (1958, ed.)
- Lifetime Reading Plan (1960, co-author)
- Enter, Conversing (1962)
- Mathematical Magpie (1962, ed.)
- Wally the Wordworm (1964)
- The World Treasury of Children's Literature (1984, ed.)
- The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes (1985, ed.)
- Treasury of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1992, ed.)
[edit] Radio and television career
Fadiman was a prime example of the "witty intellectual" type popular on television in the 1950s. John Charles Daly, Bennett Cerf, George S. Kaufman, Alexander King and a number of other television celebrities personified, along with Fadiman, the highly-educated, elegant, patrician raconteurs and pundits regarded by TV executives of that era as appealing to the upper-class owners of expensive early TV sets.
Fadiman was already well known from radio where, from May 1938 until June 1948, he hosted its most popular quiz show, Information Please!, which he briefly revived for CBS-TV in 1952 as a thirteen-week summer replacement for the musical variety program The Fred Waring Show. During that June-September period, devoted fans of the departed radio program could finally not only hear, but also see Information Please! longtime panelists Franklin P. Adams and John Kieran who, like Fadiman himself, were literary figures and intellectuals. With the advent of TV, Fadiman gained in popularity, quickly establishing himself as an all-purpose, highly knowledgeable guest and host. At ease in front of the TV camera and experienced from his years in radio, he frequently appeared on talk shows and hosted a number of upscale quiz programs.
His longest-lasting TV program was This Is Show Business, which ran on CBS from July 15, 1949 to March 9, 1954. Called This Is Broadway during the first four months of its run, the show mixed song, dance and other musical entertainment, with information. Host Fadiman, celebrity guest panelists, and regular raconteurs/intellectuals Kaufman, Abe Burrows and Sam Levenson commented on the musical performers and chatted with them. In late September 1951, This Is Show Business became the first regular CBS series to be televised live from coast to coast. The continuing need in 1950s TV for summer series to replace live variety shows, likewise brought this show back in 1956 for a 12-week period (June 26-September 11). Fadiman and Burrows returned along with new panelists Walter Slezak and actress Jacqueline Susann, the future author of Valley of the Dolls. Susann's husband, TV executive Irving Mansfield, produced the 1956 revival for NBC.
[edit] Pauline Elizabeth Rush
Fadiman's first marriage was to Pauline Elizabeth Rush, with whom he had a son, Jonathan Rush.
[edit] Annalee Fadiman
His second marriage was to Annalee Whitmore Jacoby, aka Annalee Fadiman, an author and World War II foreign correspondent for Time and Life, who later used the name Annalee Jacoby Fadiman. Annalee Fadiman graduate from Stanford University, she moved to China in 1941 without a journalism job but determined to report on the war raging there. She co-authored (with Theodore H. White) the 1946 best seller Thunder Out of China.
On 5 February 2002, Annalee Fadiman committed suicide in Captiva, Florida, aged 85, after a long battle with breast cancer and Parkinson's disease.[2] They had two children, including author and editor Anne Fadiman.
[edit] Death of Clifton Fadiman
Clifton Fadiman died in 1999 of pancreatic cancer on Sanibel Island, Florida at the age of 95. In the year of his death, Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan came back into print as The New Lifetime Reading Plan.
