1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [73]
La Guardia, Fiorello (1882–1947) La Guardia was a lawyer and reform-minded politician. He served in Congress before his election in 1933 as mayor of New York, running on the Fusion ticket, which united the Liberal and Republican parties. His object was to reform the corrupt Tammany Hall Democratic boss system. He did just that, making sweeping reforms that became the envy of the nation. Through three terms as mayor, he emerged as a beloved figure of infinite energy and great compassion, fighting corruption and organized crime, bringing new efficiency to city services, expanding municipal social-welfare services, and introducing slum-clearance and subsidized housing. Many consider him the greatest mayor of any major American city—ever.
Land, Edwin (1901–1991) While a student at Harvard University, Land became interested in the phenomenon of polarized light and, in 1937, founded the Polaroid Corporation, creating polarized materials for sunglasses, 3-D movies, and military use. In 1947, he invented a single-step photographic process that enabled black-and-white pictures to be developed in 60 seconds. A color process was marketed in 1963. In an era before digital imaging, Polaroid photography was highly popular, very useful, and made Land a wealthy man.
Landers, Ann (1918–2002) Born Esther “Eppie” Pauline Friedman Lederer, she took the name Ann Landers in 1955 when she won a contest to take over what was already a popular newspaper advice column, “Ask Ann Landers.” Lederer transformed it from mere popularity into a fixture of many of the nation’s newspapers for the next 45 years. Ann Landers’s advice was sympathetic but frank, always direct, sometimes witty, and, on occasion, stinging. Her readers asked question ranging from the trivial to the life-changing, and she faithfully engaged each of them. Landers’s identical twin, Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips, was also a famous advice columnist, writing “Dear Abby” under the name Abigail Van Buren.
Landon, Alf (1887–1987) Alfred M. “Alf” Landon was Republican governor of Kansas from 1933 to 1937 and challenged Franklin D. Roosevelt for the White House in 1936. In 1912, he campaigned for Theodore Roosevelt when TR ran on the Progressive “Bull Moose” third-party ticket, and, for the rest of his political career, Landon embodied the Progressive philosophy, even after he became a Republican. Landon enjoyed tremendous popular support during the 1936 presidential election, but could not defeat the incumbent FDR. Although he never again played a major role in national politics, he remained a popular figure, a monument to the Progressive era, which had done much to reform American politics during the early 20th century.
Lange, Dorothea (1895–1965) Lange learned photography under the tutelage of the great Clarence White and worked in a San Francisco photo studio during the 1920s. It was not until the 1930s and the Great Depression that she found the subject of her lifetime: documenting the lives of the poor but proud victims of the Dust Bowl. Composed with classical elegance, her photographs convey the intense humanity of people who might otherwise have been relegated to a column of statistics. She recorded the human face of national adversity.
Lansky, Meyer (1902–1983) Born Maier Suchowljansky in Grodno, Russia, Lansky immigrated with his parents to New York’s Jewish slum, the Lower East Side, where he and pal Bugsy Siegel formed a profitable street gang. With the acumen of a skilled entrepreneur and the ruthlessness of a criminal, Lansky built a powerful and multifaceted crime syndicate that became the model for organized crime in America. Grown wealthy, he bankrolled other criminals in a variety of illegal enterprises, but his specialty was always gambling. His gambling