Louis Untermeyer was born in 1885 into a well-to-
do family of German-Jewish jewelers. His formal
education ended at fifteen when he refused to
return to high school and discovered that
Columbia University would not admit him without
passing marks in algebra and geometry. He then
worked in the family jewelry business while
establishing his career as a poet and literary jack-
of-all-trades. His literary successes allowed him to
devote less and less time to the jewelry business
until he formally resigned at the age of thirty-seven.
Untermeyer eventually moved away from New York
City and bought Stony Water, a 160-acre farm in the
Adirondacks that became the setting for some of
his finest lyrics. Although he continued to earn his
living through writing and lecturing, he made a
brief stab at commercial farming, raising
Hampshire pigs and Jersey cows, tapping maples,
harvesting apples, and marketing Stony Water
preserves. In his autobiography Bygones: The
Recollections of Louis Untermeyer (1965),
Untermeyer compared his situation with that of the
gentleman farmer who celebrated the first
anniversary of his venture into dairy farming by
proposing a toast: “Friends,” he said, “you will
notice that there are two shaped bottles on the
table. One shape contains champagne; the other
contains milk. Help yourself to them carefully; they
cost the same per quart.”
The outbreak of World War II brought Untermeyer
back to the city. He joined the Office of War
Information, where he worked with Howard Fast,
Santha Rama Rau, and the film director John
Houseman. Later, as editor of the Armed Services
Editions, Untermeyer oversaw the republication of
forty works of literature a month. By the end of the
war, he had helped to deliver some 122 million
books into the hands of American servicemen.
When the war ended, Untermeyer wished to
remain in a salaried position for a variety of
reasons, not the least of which was the expense
associated with his growing contingent of former
wives. He accepted a position with Decca Records
directing its efforts to sell recordings of plays and
poetry. In 1950, he became a celebrity as one of the
original panelists on CBS-TV’s What’s My Line?
McCarthyism was, however, frothing and
unfettered in the early...
(The entire section is 929 words.)
mlimm
