Irving Mansfield
| Irving Mansfield | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Irving Mandelbaum July 23, 1908 Brooklyn |
| Died | August 25, 1988 (aged 80) Manhattan |
| Occupation | Producer, publicist, writer |
| Spouse(s) |
Jacqueline Susann (1939-1974; her death) Beverly Robinson (1983-1988; his death) |
| Children | Guy Mansfield |
Irving Mansfield (July 23, 1908 – August 25, 1988) was an American producer, publicist and writer. He is best remembered as the husband of novelist Jacqueline Susann and for his promotion of Susann's enormously popular books.
Irving Mansfield was born Irving Mandelbaum on July 23, 1908 in Brooklyn, to Jacob and Polish-born Annie Mandelbaum. Mansfield graduated from New York University in the early 1930s.
After working in public relations for several years, Mansfield became a producer with CBS in 1946 and developed Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, This Is Show Business and The Jane Froman Show, among other programs.
Mansfield gave up his career to help his wife promote her book, Valley of the Dolls, which was published in 1966 and became the best-selling novel of the year. Mansfield continued to work with his wife in promoting her subsequent novels, The Love Machine (1969) and Once Is Not Enough (1973), both among the top three sellers of their respective years. Mansfield also executive-produced movie versions of his wife's novels The Love Machine (1971) and Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough (1975), as well as a 1981 television mini-series version of Valley.
Mansfield met Jacqueline Susann, then an aspiring stage actress, in the late 1930s while he was working as a press agent. Susann was impressed by his ability to place "items" about her in the theater and society pages of New York newspapers, and they were married on April 2, 1939. Suann gave birth to their only child, Guy Hildy Mansfield, on December 6, 1946. At the age of three, Guy was diagnosed as autistic.
In an interview with People magazine in 1983, Mansfield described his son and how he found out his son was autistic:
Guy was eventually institutionalized, although the Mansfields never revealed the true reason for his absence from home, fearing he would be stigmatized should he eventually recover.
...
Wikipedia