THE AMERICAN WAY

Historical examination of a surprising intersection of family histories.

Memoirist Stapinski and design studio founder Siegler draw on family papers and historical sources to create a lively tale of movie stars, Jewish refugees, Superman, and the “Sultan of Smut.” The story begins in 1929 in Berlin, where the teenagers Jules Schulback—Siegler’s grandfather—and Edith Friedmann fell in love; where Billy Wilder was working as a “dance gigolo” and ghostwriter; and where Nazism was on the rise. At the same time, in New York, printer, bootlegger, and philanderer Harry Donenfeld was making a fortune producing girlie magazines, among other nefarious enterprises. When he found out that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were trying to market their idea of action comics, featuring a certain caped hero, Donenfeld saw dollar signs. He got the naïve young men to sell him the rights to Superman for $130—$10 a page for a 13-page story—giving Donenfeld and his partner the Superman character “to have and hold forever.” Donenfeld was underhanded, but when a friend and neighbor asked him to sponsor a relative desperate to escape from Germany, he signed the papers. And so Jules came to New York with Edith and their daughter. A photography buff, Jules happened to be on the Manhattan street where Marilyn Monroe was filming the famous subway shoot—skirt billowing over a subway grate—as publicity for The Seven Year Itch, a Wilder film. Bit players in the authors’ sprightly narrative include Hugh Hefner, Joe DiMaggio, and Clark Gable. Interwoven with chapters set in America are scenes of dire suffering for the Schulback, Friedmann, and Wilder families in Europe. Though Donenfeld was a cad, he quietly helped others flee Germany and took up many progressive and charitable causes. He made sure, too, that his famous action hero battled against Nazis, adding “the words ‘Truth, justice, and the American way’ to Superman’s job title.”

A spirited look at mid-20th-century America.