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Adolph Zukor

Adolph Zukor
Adolph Zukor 001.jpg
Born (1873-01-07)January 7, 1873
Ricse, Austria-Hungary
Died June 10, 1976(1976-06-10) (aged 103)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation Film producer
Years active 1903–1959
Known for founder of Paramount Pictures
Spouse(s) Lottie Kaufman (1897–1956)
Children Eugene J. Zukor
Mildred Zukor Loew

Adolph Zukor (January 7, 1873 – June 10, 1976) was an American film mogul and founder of Paramount Pictures.

Zukor was born to a Jewish family in Ricse, Hungary, which was then a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In 1889, at the age of 16, he promised Mella Baumoel, a girl almost 4 years older, that he would send for her one day and they would be married; he emigrated to the United States. Mella arrived in the U.S. too late to wed him; they never spoke again, but she kept the ring he gave to her and passed it to her granddaughter. Like most immigrants, he began modestly. When he first landed in New York, he stayed with his family and worked in an upholstery shop. A friend got him a job as an apprentice at a furrier.

Zukor stayed there for two years. When he left to become a "contract" worker, sewing fur pieces and selling them himself, he was nineteen years old and an accomplished designer. He was young and adventuresome, and the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago drew him to the Midwest. There he started a fur business. In the second season of operation, Zukor's Novelty Fur Company expanded to 25 men and opened a branch.

Historian Neal Gabler wrote, "one of the stubborn fallacies of movie history is that the men who created the film industry were all impoverished young vulgarians..." Zukor clearly didn't fit this profile. By 1903, he already looked and lived like a wealthy young burgher, and he certainly earned the income of one. He had a commodious apartment at 111th Street and Seventh Avenue in New York City's wealthy German-Jewish section".

In 1918, he moved to New City, Rockland County, New York, where he purchased 300 acres of land from Lawrence Abraham, heir to the A&S Department Stores. Abraham had already built a sizable house, a nine-hole golf course and a swimming pool on this property. Two years later, Zukor bought an additional 500 acres, built a night house, guest house, movie theater, locker room, greenhouses, garages, staff quarters and hired golf architect A.W. Tillinghast to build an 18-hole championship golf course. Today, Zukor's estate is the private country club Paramount Country Club.


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