• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 428 0

Ann’s father, Melville D. Weingarten, was a successful stockbroker with a Manhattan firm on Fifth Avenue and a branch office in Fordham. His first wife, Susan’s mother, died in 1918 in the flu epidemic, and he remarried Ann and Jane’s mother, Nanette, a couple of years later. Ann, along with her parents and sisters, lived what Ann described as a “Park Avenue lifestyle,” very social, wanting for very little, with the girls attending the right schools. Ann wasn’t impressed by it. By her own admission, she was a bookish tomboy, upsetting her mother because she wasn’t the little girl of her times, playing with dolls and dressing in frilly clothing. She attended several different schools, including a boarding school, but the best of her education came from her own explorations in the books she read and the museums she visited. She balked when her father enrolled her at Barnard, where she managed to make it through a year before refusing to go back. She then attended secretarial school, more to satisfy her frustrated father than out of any real interest, but it proved to be more beneficial than she could have guessed: she found a job as a secretary, which put her in touch with much less privileged people than she’d grown up around—co-workers with whom she soon became friends.

“I saw a different part of life,” she said. “These were different kinds of people, different than the people I had come in contact with through my family. I became friendly with them. I remember being friendly with a girl from a very large Irish Catholic family. We would go to the cafeteria there in the building where we worked, and she would be very careful to spend only fifteen cents—three nickels—in the Automat. She had to give money from her job to help support her family, and this was an eye-opener for me. I became very conscious of never spending more than fifteen cents, because I didn’t want her to think anything.”

Shortly before meeting Eisner, she had taken a job as an administrative assistant in Paramount’s New York offices, working in the advertising department for the film company, doing everything from writing business letters to running errands. The job led to a Spirit episode that might have tested another relationship. Paramount had just released Samson and Delilah, a film greeted by critical derision. Will and Ann had attended a private Paramount screening of the movie, and Eisner hadn’t thought much of the film, either. His Spirit story “Sammy and Delilah,” a send-up of the movie, was unappreciated by the Paramount publicists. Fortunately for Ann, who was still relatively new on the job, her relationship with Eisner was unknown to her co-workers.

She was in her office the day after the Spirit story appeared in the papers when she heard a disruption in another office. “I was sitting at my desk and I heard screaming between the head of the department and my boss,” she said. “They’re screaming, ‘We’ll sue the son of a bitch.’ They said something about Will Eisner, and of course my ears perked up.” When she realized what all the shouting was about, she stole away to a phone booth, where she could talk without being overheard. “I got on the phone and called Will. ‘They’re going to sue you,’ I said. He said, ‘That’s good.’”

As Eisner saw it, the publicity generated by a Paramount Pictures lawsuit could only work in his favor.

“They claimed we defamed the movie,” he said. “I was rubbing my hands, saying it was great news. Ann said, ‘What do you mean, great news?’ I said, ‘Just think if they sue me—think of all the publicity I’ll get.’ I was sure I’d win.

“During the two or three weeks that followed, Ann and I were brought closer together. I kept hoping they would sue. I kept telling the syndicate to get ready for a big burst of publicity, but ultimately, they didn’t sue. They came to their senses. But this story has always been regarded by Ann and me as a very significant one because the incident occurred during our romance. I guess I was a little overwhelmed by her concern for me.”

Their relationship moved along quickly. Eisner proposed