10 Facts About Maurice Zolotow

Maurice Zolotow was an American show business biographer.

Maurice Zolotow's articles appeared in publications including Life, Collier's Weekly, Reader's Digest, Look, Los Angeles, and many others.

In 1936, after graduation, Maurice Zolotow took a job at Billboard, then a publication covering not just the music business, but all aspects of show business.

Maurice Zolotow was an early jazz lover and gave Duke Ellington his first national review.

Maurice Zolotow remained devoted to pop culture, literature, politics, and magic.

Strangely enough, one of Zolotow's first books, published only in London in 1948, was about Dr Maurice William, a Ukrainian-born New York dentist and former Socialist, whose 1920 critique of Marxist economics had supposedly influenced Chinese statesman Sun Yat-sen, shortly before his death, to rethink his earlier sympathy for Communism.

Maurice Zolotow wrote shorter celebrity profiles on such entertainers as Tallulah Bankhead, Walter Matthau, Grace Kelly, and Milton Berle.

Maurice Zolotow wrote occasionally on food and alcohol, including several articles on the latter for Playboy.

Maurice Zolotow lived in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, for much of his adult life, but moved to Los Angeles, California, after his divorce.

Maurice Zolotow had two children, poker enthusiast Steve Zolotow and author Crescent Dragonwagon.