There You Have It: The Life, Legacy, and Legend of Howard Cosell

Notes

189 Notes Introduction 1. Jesse Lemisch, “If Howard Cosell Can Teach at Yale, Why Can’t Herbert Aptheker?” Newsletter of the Radical Historians Caucus 22 (May 1976): 1–9. 2. Howard Cosell with Mickey Herskowitz, Cosell (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1973), 119. 1. Poor, Jewish, and from Brooklyn 1. Cosell and Herskowitz, Cosell, 120. 2. See Jewish Virtual Library, Contemporary Authors, www.jewishvirtualli brary.org/jsource/biography/Cosell.html (accessed May 24, 2010). 3. HeritageQuest Online Census Image, Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920–Population, Borough of Brooklyn (ProQuest LLC), www.heri tagequestonline (accessed June 1, 2007). 4. Cosell and Herskowitz, Cosell, 119. 5. Ibid., 120; HeritageQuest Online Census. 6. Dave Kindred, Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship (New York: Free Press, 2006), 15. 7. Howard Cosell, interview by Elli Wohlgelernter, July 31, 1981, for the American Jewish Committee, William E. Wiener Oral History Library, New York Public Library, 43. Once again, there is a discrepancy with the census records with regard to the country of Isadore Cohen’s birth. The census recorder wrote “Russia,” although Cosell recalls that it was Poland. This can be explained by the fact that a portion of what is today Poland had been acquired by the Russian Empire in 1855. 8. Kindred, Sound and Fury, 15. 9. Ibid. 10. Cosell, interview by Wohlgelernter, 44. 11. Howard Cosell, Like It Is (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1974); Wendell Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 12. Cosell and Herskowitz, Cosell, 120. 13. Cosell, Like It Is, 290. 14. Cosell, interview by Wohgelernter, I53. 15. Cosell, Like It Is, 269. 16. Ibid., 285. 190 not es to pages 13–19 17. Howard Cosell (Howard William Cohen) Curriculum Vitae, Howard Cosell Folder, Biographical Collection, University Archives, New York University. 18. Ibid.; Leonard Shapiro, “Cosell Dies at 77,” Washington Post, April 24, 1995. 19. Cohen, Howard, SN: 12057393/01944643, National Personnel Records Center , St. Louis; Howard Cosell biography file. 20. “Marriages That Work: Howard and Emmy Cosell,” Family Circle, December 13, 1977, 224. 21. Kindred, Sound and Fury, 20. 22. Cosell and Herskowitz, Cosell, 124. 23. “Dorothy Farley Renz Is Bride of Media Man in Nuptials at Lutheran Church in Norwood,” Chester Times, March 15, 1947; Chester Times, June 3, 1950; “Ridley Twp. Civic Group Plan for Halloween Party,” Chester Times, October 26, 1951. 24. “County Native May Get P.O. Post,” Chester Times, March 24, 1953. 25. Kindred, Sound and Fury, 22. 26. “Paid Notice: Deaths—Pomper, Lewis,” New York Times, March 10, 2000. 27. Cosell and Herskowitz, Cosell, 127. 28. Kindred, Sound and Fury, 22; Howard Cosell Curriculum Vitae. 29. Cosell, interview by Wohlgelernter, 45. 30. Ibid., 46. 31. Ibid., 45. 32. Cosell, Like It Is, 281. 33. Ibid., 275. 34. Ibid., 281. 35. Whitfield writes that Jews who, like Cosell, have stood up for African American athletes have done so out of a desire to compensate for their own stereotypical weakness in sports by fixating on the conversely stereotypical strength of African American athletes. He writes: “The Jew’s mind has been among the glories of Western civilization, a testament to soaring spiritual and intellectual grandeur. The Jew’s body has long been portrayed as feeble and inferior. Over-endowed with brains (according to his enemies), the Jew has not been quite virile enough. In the climactic fight that [Bernard] Malamud stages in The Tenants (1971), the blocked black writer Willie Spearmint aims at the groin of Harry Lesser with a saber, as though picking the site where the Jew is least impressive and most vulnerable. By contrast, the blocked Jewish writer puts an ax to the skull of his opponent, targeting the attribute where the Jew has long felt superior.” Yet the historical realities of Jewish participation in sports, even into the 1950s, when Jews dominated the 1950–51 championship City College basketball team, contradict any simple understanding of Jews as not athletic. See Stephen J. Whitfield, “Unath- 191 not es to pages 19–2 4 letic Department,” in Jews, Sports, and the Rites of Citizenship, ed. Jack Kugelmass (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 51; Gena CaponiTabery , “Jump for Joy: Blues, Dance, and Basketball in 1930’s African America ,” in Sports Matters: Race, Recreation, and Culture, ed. John Bloom and Michael Willard (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 45. 36. Cosell, Like It Is, 293–94...