Bobbe arnst biography sample
•
Despite the deepening economic depression, work continued apace on a number of large building projects that were transforming the Manhattan skyline, including the Empire State Building, which was being readied for its May grand opening.
Developers also looked to the future, including the Rockefeller family, who commissioned a massive project in Midtown — 14 buildings on 22 acres — that would be one of the greatest building projects in the Depression era…
…so great that even E.B. White found the proposed Rockefeller Center difficult to fathom:
* * *
Star Power
The Depression years also offered lesser diversions, and there’s nothing like celebrity culture to distract one’s mind from daily woes. For our amusement, E.B. White offered up the recent nuptials of Olympic swimmer (and future Tarzan movie star) Johnny Weissmuller and Ziegfeld singer/showgirl Bobbe Arnst…
…of course there’s no better place to find celeb
•
In 1908 the family moved west to Chicago, where they reunited with Elizabeth’s parents, who lived on a farm nearby in a humble community of Freidorf colony immigrants.
The family rented a single floor in a shared house for the entirety of his ungdom, 4 blocks from Lincoln Park; his frequent trips to the nearby zoo helped to instill his early love of animals. As part of a city schema with horses, he even learned how to ride bareback – a skill which would later serve him well in the role of Tarzan.
Johnny attended St. Michael’s school and served as an altar boy there, up until age twelve when he switched to public school. Once his father abandoned the family, Johnny had to leave school after the eighth grade and went to work at an early age to help support his little brother and mom, who worked as a cook. He delivered packages for a church supply company and hawked produce from a cart…later in life he said:
“You know, your guts get so mad when you try to fight poverty…
•
Swimming career
In the era of "false news" and partial truths, Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984) is mostly remembered, when he is remembered, as the actor who made Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan character world famous. But Janos Weissmuller had a previous notoriety: as a five-time gold medalist for the United States at the 1924 and 1928 Olympics, as a champion freestyle swimmer. Born in Szabadfal, Romania (also known as Freidorf in German, due to the large German population), his "family belonged to the group of Donauschwaben (Danube Swabians), who came to the United States after the turn of the twentieth century."1 Weissmuller used his brother's citizenship documents (his birth certificate, as record keeping was less rigorous in the early 20th century) to avoid questions when he represented the United States in the Olympics. Though truths are partial and often complicated, they still remain truths: the fluid rules of citizenship mean that "facts