Sime Silverman

Journalist

• Born: May 19, 1873
• Birthplace: Cortland, New York
• Died: September 22, 1933
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

An experienced theater journalist, Silverman founded in 1905 the influential New York publication Variety to report on vaudeville and burlesque. He created the magazine’s unique lingo and built Variety into a widely read resource on popular entertainment of the day, from theater to Hollywood films.

Early Life

Sime Silverman (sim SIHL-vur-mehn) was born in Cortland, New York, to Louis and Rachel Silverman. Sime Silverman spent much of his youth in Syracuse, New York, where he excelled in mathematics at school. As a teenager, Silverman began his lifelong habit of gambling and found employment as a house dealer for poker games. He was expected to follow in the footsteps of his immigrant father, who ran a money-brokerage that loaned money to individuals who used their assets as collateral.

Silverman worked as a bookkeeper for his father’s firm in New York, but he developed a compelling interest in the theater. He wrote about vaudeville first in the Daily America as The Man in the Third Row; for the New York Morning Telegraph, a more prominent paper, he penned reviews under the pseudonym Robert Speare. The daily newspapers did not pay well enough to support Silverman, however, and he continued working for his father.

In March, 1898, Silverman married Hattie Freeman, the daughter of Syracuse alderman George Freeman, an influential and wealthy political figure. The couple’s son Sidne was born later that year. In 1905, the Morning Telegraph fired Silverman outright after a vaudeville act he had panned withdrew its advertisement. Frustrated by the incident, Silverman resolved to avoid pandering to business interests in future writing.

Life’s Work

In 1905, at the age of thirty-two, Silverman demanded that his father make him a full partner in the family business. When his father refused, Silverman immediately quit his work as a bookkeeper and began putting together the theatrical paper he had dreamed about for years. He coaxed Freeman, his father-in-law, into giving him $2,500 in capital and used it to produce Variety’s first issue, which was published on December 16, 1905. Silverman hired acquaintances from the theatrical world as writers, notably Abel Green, a journalist who contributed distinctive lingo to the Variety vocabulary and later wrote its most famous headline, “WALL ST. LAYS AN EGG” (October 30, 1929). Even articles written by the seven-year-old Sidne (“Skiggie”) appeared in the paper’s early issues.

Although the paper ran on a shoestring budget in its early years, by 1909 Variety was successful enough to move to a new office near Times Square. In 1920, the paper reached the height of its influence and moved again, this time to 154 West Forty-sixth Street, where it remained for many years. Variety originally covered vaudeville exclusively, but eventually it expanded to cover burlesque, plays, radio, and finally film and television.

Silverman’s insistence on independence, born from his negative experience on the Morning Telegraph, was deeply felt. The premier issue of Variety claimed the opinions of its reviewers would not be influenced by advertising. Silverman’s independence led to several publicity wars between Variety and other theatrical powers: A long-running feud with E. F. Albee, the man who ran a centralized booking office that Silverman (and many others) considered a monopoly, was the most significant. Silverman had another lengthy battle in print with the Shubert family, who owned many Broadway theaters; personal enmity played a role in the feud, because a Shubert brother once had been Silverman’s rival for Hattie’s affection. Silverman’s Variety also criticized the White Rats, a union of thespians that functioned as a booking agency, for its domination of vaudeville. The dispute became so acrimonious that it led to an attempt on Silverman’s life.

After several years of publication, Silverman began to introduce the distinctive lingo that remains Variety’s trademark. Articles were peppered with slang that Silverman and his writers picked up from actors or invented themselves, such as “smash hit,” “hokum,” “biz,” or narrative “payoff.” The phrase “show biz” is popularly attributed to Silverman, and his paper eventually became known as the “show-biz bible.”

In later years Silverman’s health declined, but the launch of a rival publication, The Hollywood Reporter, on September 3, 1930, prompted Silverman to start a new paper based in Hollywood to cover the film industry. On September 22, 1933, Silverman suffered a fatal hemorrhage while visiting Los Angeles for the launch of Daily Variety.

Significance

Recognizing the need for a publication dedicated solely to entertainment news, Silverman established the most influential paper in the history of show business: the “World’s Greatest Theatrical Paper,” as Variety’s masthead claimed. The Variety slang that Silverman introduced and encouraged was further developed by his successors, and much of it has spread into popular discourse today. Silverman’s combative sense of independence, running against even his advertisers’ interests, became Variety’s hallmark.

Bibliography

Cieply, Michael, and Brooks Barnes. “Trade Papers Struggling in Hollywood.” The New York Times, March 14, 2010. An article about Variety, with information on Silverman.

Cullen, Frank. Vaudeville, Old and New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America. New York: Routledge, 2006. This reference work contains a detailed entry on Silverman and information on his significant contemporaries in the theater world.

Stoddart, Dayton. Lord Broadway: Variety’s Sime. New York: Wilfred Funk, 1941. The fawning attitude of the first full-length biography of Silverman is regrettable, but the account of his life is closely based on the statements of Silverman’s wife and friends.