HARVEY FROMMER SPORTS TOPICS

REMEMBERING FENWAY PARK (with slides) will celebrate the legendary ball park. Based on Harvey's acclaimed and best-selling book, the talk will feature dramatic, poignant and humorous oral history examples. The audience will also be involved, telling Fenway and baseball stories.

REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM (with slides) will celebrate the legendary ball park. Based on Harvey's acclaimed book, the talk will feature dramatic, poignant and humorous oral history examples plus anecdotes. The audience will also be involved, telling Stadium and baseball stories.

THE GREATEST RIVALRY: RED SOX (originally Pilgrims) vs. YANKEES (originally Highlanders), Fenway vs. Yankee Stadium, Billy Martin, Casey Stengel. Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio - The Bucky Dent Home Run, The Curse of the Bambino, - the fights, the fury, the fanaticism..."Yankees Suck!" "Screw the Red Sox!"

The Frommers are a wife and husband team who successfully bridge the worlds of popular culture and traditional scholarship. Having met as reporters on New York University's newspaper when they were undergraduates, MYRNA KATZ FROMMER and HARVEY FROMMER went on to write five critically-acclaimed oral histories (It Happened in the Catskills; It Happened in Brooklyn; Growing Up Jewish in America; It Happened on Broadway; and It Happened in Manhattan). They are cultural/oral historians with a concentration on New York City. Their work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Newsday, New York Daily News, Los Angeles Times, Redbook, Golf Digest, International Herald Tribune, USA Today, Washington Post.

They are cultural-travel writers who have published hundreds of articles in newspapers, magazines and on the Internet.

Accomplished and charismatic public speakers, the Frommers have appeared before live audiences and on the media throughout the United States lecturing on their books and travel experiences.

IT HAPPENED IN MANHATTAN

The story of Manhattan during the transformative 30 period following the end of World War II. From the euphoric post-war years when the city came into its own, to the 1970's when it nearly went bust. A look back to when the waterfront was filled with boats unloading cargo and ocean liners were setting off for points abroad, when B. Altman's was on Fifth Avenue and S. Klein's was on Union Square, when songwriters peddled melodies at Tin Pan Alley and guys and dolls went to the Friday night fights at the old Madison Square Garden. The lost world of 52nd Street jazz joints, Harlem clubs, the Fillmore East, eleven daily newspapers, and Automats. Thousands of people get moved to make way for Lincoln Center, and New York becomes the cultural capital of the world as well as the capital of haute cuisine and haute couture. The Third Avenue El and Pennsylvania Station come down; the UN Building and the Twin Towers come up. A bunch of mothers take on Robert Moses, and SoHo is saved from becoming a cross-town expressway.

THE ADVENTURES AND UNEXPECTED REWARDS OF ORAL HISTORY

An alternative way of looking at the past from the perspective of ordinary men and women, history from the bottom up instead of the top down. How to interview and create a collective memoir. Unforgettable experiences and extraordinary coincidences in the course of more than a decade of taping memories and making out of them works of oral history.

IT HAPPENED IN THE CATSKILLS

Humor and pathos combine in this account of the legendary "Borscht Circuit" from its "kochalayn" boardinghouse origins to mid-century grand hotels to the sad present-day ruins of a formerly fabulous vacation-land. Getting there via the old O&W coal-fired railroad or shlepping up old Route 17 in a retired Checker's cab with a stop along the way at the Big Apple Rest. The rise and fall of Grossinger's, the pink castle on the hill where the who's who of a generation gathered. Entertaining in the Catskills where comedy greats from Danny Kaye to Woody Allen, from Buddy Hackett to Jerry Lewis learned their craft performing before tough but appreciative audiences. Enjoying in the Catskills from champagne contests in the era of "Mambo Time" to the pleasures of unlimited dining: "Eat, eat," says the mother to the child, "we're paying for it."

IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN

A nostalgic return to the Brooklyn of the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's when life was a tidy neighborhood universe of stickball, stoopball, and double-dutch jump rope. Memories of striving for perfect penmanship and worrying about permanent record cards in P.S. 177. The tastes of those times: a half sour pickle straight from the barrel, a wedge of Ebinger's blackout cake, an egg-cream at the corner candy store, a Nathan's frank in Coney Island. Reliving the ignominy and glory of the immortal Brooklyn Dodgers (some of them lived in the neighborhood). Dining out at Lundy's in Sheepshead Bay and trying on clothes in the original Loehmann's on Flatbush Avenue. Answers to the question ex-Brooklynites still ask whenever they meet: "What high school did you go to?"

IT HAPPENED ON BROADWAY

The sizzle, dash and drama of the Great /White Way, back- and front-stage stories told by the luminaries who lived them: Celeste Holm's recollections of the original ground breaking production of "Oklahoma!" when she played Annie Ado. Breaking-in stories by Carol Channing, Richard Kiley, and Betty Buckley. Dancing on Broadway as told by Marge on Gower Champion, Gwen Verdon on Bob Fosse, and Donna McKechnie on Michael Bennett. The dark side of musicals as evoked by George C. Wolfe in "Jelly's Last Jam." The trials of a true "Broadway Baby" by Elaine Stritch. Producer Robert Whitehead's memories of working with Judith Anderson, Ethel Waters, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Charles Durning's memories of working with George C. Scott in the 1996 revival of "Inherit the Wind." The backstage story of the long road taken by Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," en route to Broadway.

THE JEWISH CONTRIBUTION TO WHAT HAPPENED ON BROADWAY

An account of the overwhelming impact Jewish artists have had on Broadway from the days of the Yiddish theater to today. Memories of Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein told by their children. Jerry Herman's quintessential Jewish-American success story. Moss and Kitty Carlisle Hart hear the music to "My Fair Lady" for the first time. The irrepressible force of nature that was Zero Mostel. Joel Grey describing how he developed the character of the emcee in "Cabaret" and how Jewish protests made them change the lyrics to one of the songs. The "Jewishness" of "Death of a Salesman," what it was like to be one of its first readers, what it was like to see its first performance on the road in Philadelphia.

GROWING UP JEWISH IN AMERICA

A passionate and poignant look at Jewish-American childhood against the background of monumental movements of the twentieth century. What it was like to grow up Jewish in Homestead, Pa. in the 1900's, in a Cleveland orphanage in the 1920's, in segregated Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960's. Hitching rides on freight trains during the Depression, living a post-war Sephardic childhood in Seattle. Bar mitzvah memories from a buffet in an empty apartment in the Bronx to a Long Island temple extravaganza where Mookie Wilson of the New York Mets cut the challah. Rosh Hashanah services at the magnificent reform Rodef Shalom in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh and the modest orthodox Tifereth Israel in Duluth, Minnesota. How American children viewed the Holocaust from their safe side of the Atlantic; how their world view changed once there was an Israel. Evocations of intimate, inter-generational family life, interactions with the gentile world, and tensions between the sacred and the profane emerge in this pointed examination of Jewish-American life from a tenuous immigrant past to a comfortable present.

THE SPANISH-JEWISH CONNECTION

We have traveled throughout Spain and uncovered fascinating stories of the Jewish heritage coming to life again after being confined to oblivion for centuries: a medieval yeshiva unexpectedly discovered in the process of a house renovation in the Catalonian city of Gerona; the suprising uncovering of a 15th century Ketubah (marriage contract) sequestered in the binding of a book in the archives of Tudela, the Xuetas of Mallorca, ostracized and considered Jews long after their conversion, who still own jewelry shops on the Street of Silver, a mikveh in Besalu (one of the oldest in Europe) thought to be part of a laundry. And many more...

THE JEWS OF THE AZORES

A tale of two Jewish presences on the fabled Portuguese archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic. One was begun in the nineteenth century by a Moroccan family that started an orange export industry and went on to develop the island's major industries and bring banking and modern commerce to a formerly primitive economy. They also founded a Jewish community that is just now ending. The other, lost in the mist of time, is thought to go back to the late middle ages and involves a unique and still very popular Azorean ritual called the "Cult of the Holy Spirit." Local historians now believe this ritual which takes place between Passover and Shavuoth in decorative little chapels devoid of Christian symbols is connected to Conversos who used the ceremonies as a way of straddling the true faith with the one they were coerced into accepting.

THE JEWS OF THE CARIBBEAN

Little-known stories of Sephardic settlements that go back to the Age of Exploration. How some like the one in Barbados have disappeared; others like the one in Curacao continue to thrive. How Jewish settlement in the Caribbean islands led to Jews being allowed to settle in Holland and England. How Chapter Two of the ongoing saga began when Eastern European Jews during the 1920's and 30's got off the boat thinking they were in North America. The Jews of Sosua, an unusual refuge from Nazi persecution in the Dominican Republic.

Working with and Writing the Autobiographies of Sports Legends:

NOLAN RYAN -- who could throw a baseball faster than any other pitcher in history.

RED HOLZMAN -- whose innovations as coach led the New York Knickerbockers to the only NBA titles they ever won.

TONY DORSETT -- who made football players around him better who had to battle prejudice and the opposition to become one of the great runners in National Football League history.

A revealing, inside look at these three icons of sport based on the author's first hand contact with them.

Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Greatest Sports Scandal of the Century:

One of the most interesting, intriguing and still controversial stories in the annals of sports -- the illiterate but immensely talented baseball player who though found innocent of wrong-doing in a court of law, was drummed out of baseball by a bigoted baseball commissioner.

Harvey's book RICKEY AND ROBINSON (on Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey) is perfect for MLK Day and BLACK HISTORY MONTH, and he can give a very informative and controversial talk on the topic of "Breaking Baseball's Color Line", blending exclusive interviews with Rachel Robinson, Mack Robinson (Jackie's brother), Hall of Famers Monte Irvin, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Ralph Kiner and others. Celebrated author, Harvey Frommer, evokes the lives of Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey and heralded baseball player Jackie Robinson to describe how they worked together to shatter baseball's color line. Rickey and Robinson is a dual biography tracing the convergence of the lives of two of baseball's most influential individuals in a special moment in sports and cultural history.

ACCOLADES

From George Mitrovitch, Director Fenway Park Great Writers Series "Harvey, it was a joyous occasion. You did splendidly. Seriously, "splendidly." So many people thanked me for the "privilege" of being there."

Miami Book Fair International

"There is no way to overestimate your contribution to (our) success."

Lillian Brown, former owner Brown's Hotel, Catskills "You were as good as any of my headliners. Wonderful performer."