David Freedman was born on 26 April 1898, in Botosani, Romania—the first child, and only son born to Sara and Israel Freedman. Israel, a political refugee, immigrated with his young family to the United States in 1900, where four years later, David’s sister Sophie became the first Freedman born in the new country.

A precocious child, David surely remembered his native city when he entered the New York City public school system. Perhaps Moldavian folk tales were an element of the bond between father and son; no doubt, stories from their ancestral homeland were. Like Solomon’s father, David was well beloved. Konrad Bercovici, the prominent author, witnessed the close relationship between son and father. Bercovici met them at their home—a tenement house on the Lower East Side—arriving when the seven-year-old was playing chess with Israel, who was a fine player. David won.

The prodigy and his Father were virtually inseparable. Playwright Montague Glass considered them “twins born twenty years apart.” During the moments they did not share, Israel wrote for the Jewish Daily Forward, becoming a well-known figure on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, especially at the Café Royale. David, after a stellar performance at De Witt Clinton High School, matriculated to the City College of New York, graduating in 1918. Not only was he the first in his family to complete a formal education beyond high school, he stood out from his peers by winning medals in History and Oratory, and a highly coveted Phi Beta Kappa key.

Even before proving his academic prowess, a charming young woman recognized David’s potential and accepted his proposal. Beatrice (nee Rebecca Goodman), a fellow New Yorker, was born in the city on 27 September 1899. Her parents had fled from Kishinev, Russia—well in advance of the troubles there in 1904. She managed to get through high school before teaming up with David. The union of their lives was celebrated in September 1918. Within five years, three sons joined them: Benedict (1919), Noel (1922), and Toby (1924). A decade later their only daughter would arrive.

Beatrice engineered a home environment that accommodated David’s endeavors. His involvement in their domestic affairs was limited, however, a rule promulgated by both parents, who themselves were fluent in Yiddish, was that the only language allowed to be spoken in their home was the language that in time became the tool of David’s trade: English. David tried his hand at a number of jobs to support the growing assembly, arranged largely through the intervention of his father. He was employed for a time as Editor of the Paper Box Leader, a trade journal for cardboard-making businesses, but after a disastrous experience related to the flooding of a cardboard-filled warehouse, David segued into the human services arena. As the new decade roared in, he rolled up his sleeves, becoming the new Superintendent of the Israel Orphan Asylum, in lower Manhattan.

The fact that most Jewish orphans were cared for within the community was a problem. When benefactors and potential parents visited the children and inspected the premises, David regularly pressed his three boys into service to pad the number of children under supervision. On one occasion, the arrival of important guests was timed to coincide with the departure of children from a nearby school. The homeward path of the students had been diverted through the backyard of the orphanage, creating the intended effect: the VIPs were impressed with the number and diversity of the orphans. A major achievement during the Freedman’s tenure was the inauguration of the annual fashion show and parade, an event in which the actual orphans starred. The production resulted in the appearance of the asylum’s name on the payee line of many personal and public entity’s checks.

Perhaps the fundraiser also raised David’s awareness of his calling to the entertainment industry. Ultimately, neither parent found life at Israel Orphan Asylum suitable or satisfying, especially considering the needs of their growing family. All along, David had been writing. He was a writer. It was a calling that emerged early in and persisted throughout his life. By age twenty-one, he had published the first of the Mendel Marantz stories, in a popular journal, the PICTORIAL REVIEW. Subsequently, he gathered the stories to form his first book, MENDEL MARANTZ (1925). Over a million copies of the novel were sold in Russia, though no rubles found their way back to the author of the pirated translation.

From 1924 on, David was a self-employed writer. He created countless sketches for musicals and had shows on Broadway almost every year from 1926 through 1937. His first play, MENDEL, INC., debuted in 1929. When radio replaced vaudeville, David, by then a popular, versatile writer, pre-empted the territory. He was prolific, creating hundreds of entertainment programs, as many as six a week for several years. In time, Freedman’s skills were again sought for the next new entertainment medium—this time, the big screen.

David also wrote about industry insiders, including Broadway’s greatest showman, Florenz Ziegfeld (1867-1932), with whom he had associated over the years. ZIEGFELD: THE GREAT GLORIFIER (1934), written by David (with Eddie Cantor), was used for the movie, ZIEGFELD FOLLIES (1945).

CAUGHT SHORT!, an amusing portrayal of an investor caught short, thus losing everything except his sense of humor, has been described as having truly captured “the Humor required for the times.” The book kept readers chuckling at Cantor’s investment failures, and perhaps even their own. Throughout the era, writing flowed from David into the idle hands and ears of the nation. In 1931, YOO-HOO PROSPERITY: THE EDDIE CANTOR FIVE-YEAR PLAN was released. This irreverent look at causes of the depression offered humorous solutions for putting the country back on track. H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), the most prominent newspaperman, book reviewer, and political commentator of his day, asserted that these books did more to pull America out of the Depression than all government measures combined. Doubtless, the praise also extended to “The Eddie Cantor Radio Show.” This phenomenal hour-long Sunday evening series, sponsored by Chase and Sanborn from 1931 to 1934, established Cantor as a leading comedian and David as “king of the gag writers.”

            Before the show’s debut, during the first five months of 1931, David and Beatrice moved out West, so that David could work on PALMY DAYS.

The two buildings are like their two residents. Each man has his merits and advocates. Both were beneficiaries of a rich Jewish heritage, born to impoverished Eastern-European immigrants, and raised in New York. Freedman was a Renaissance man; Cantor, ostentatious. David appreciated the paradoxical relationship between perception and reality, routinely playing with and exploiting incongruities between the two—in his writing, in his late night performances at Lindy’s (held exclusively for industry insiders), and in his personal life. In contrast, his client enjoyed high public visibility and to date, a more prominent location in history books.

       David moved to a tower of the Beresford to expand his thriving business concerns. As J. Fred MacDonald explains, “With the ascendancy of broadcast humor, gag writers became a critical factor” because, “radio devoured jokes at a tremendous rate. Comedians were, understandably, heavily dependent upon their writers to furnish new and better jokes for each program... In 1934, Variety reported that several popular comedians had already exhausted the material it had taken them up to twenty years to accumulate.” David’s material was in high demand; he supplied scripts for such virtuosi of the dial as Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, and Fanny Brice. Workers in his "Joke Factory" needed space to assemble the scripts. Located on the third floor of the enormous penthouse, the enterprise gave Herman Wouk, now a Pulitzer Prize winner, one of his first writing jobs. It is this eminent novelist who dubbed David “czar.” In a memoir by Wouk’s colleague, Emmy winner