John Garfield — actor with roots in the Russian Empire
John Garfield (born Jacob Julius Garfinkle) was an American actor from the Bronx who became one of Hollywood's most compelling performers of the 1940s — bringing raw, proletarian energy to films like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Body and Soul, and Force of Evil. He was blacklisted by the McCarthy-era Hollywood Ten proceedings and died of a heart attack at 39.
Tracing the roots — Jewish
Born in the Bronx in 1913 to David Garfinkle and Dinah Catzberg, both children of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Garfield grew up in poverty in the immigrant Jewish tenements of New York. His screen persona — the angry young man from nowhere with nothing to lose — was his own life story, and his destruction by McCarthyism was the story of an immigrant community punished for its radical politics.
A career defined by ambition
"I was born in the streets and the streets taught me everything I know."