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THE RISE OF FIRST NATIONAL 183
scribing our national figures as noble heroes upon whom the Almighty has bestowed miraculous gifts, or as demons intimately leagued with Hades, Zukor has been portrayed as a modern combination of Napoleon and Machiavelli with dashes of oriental subtlety; or as an inspired genius, who, while selling furs in New York and Chicago shops, shrewdly planned to make himself dictator of the entertainment world and ruthlessly forced his way to the top.
His father, a merchant in a village in Hungary, and his mother, of a family in which rabbis and doctors predominated, planned to educate the older son, Arthur, and Adolph as rabbis. Father and mother died and the boys were raised by relatives. Arthur, adopting the name of his uncle, Leiberman, completed his education and became a rabbi in Hungary, but Adolph turned to business and worked in small retail shops until the lure of America possessed him. He persuaded his guardians to permit him to seek his fortune in the new country beyond the sea. He reached New York in 1888, aged about seventeen, and found employment at low wages in various East Side factories, among them a small fur shop. Relatives and neighbors from Hungary had prospered in the fur trade in Chicago, and to that city went Zukor. Within a few years, he became a partner in the firm of Morris Kohn and Company, fur manufacturers. There, too, he met and married Lottie Kaufmann, the daughter of sturdy Hungarians who had battled their way through farming in North Dakota to a mercantile position in Chicago.
The fur business carried him back to New York. When he was about thirty years old, he invested with friends in a penny arcade in Union Square. The entertainment field pleased him, and presently he left the fur business to his partners and gave his time to the new venture. He joined William A. Brady, producer of stage plays and owner of "Hale's Tours," in early showing of travel films, and this was followed by association with Marcus Loew in nickelodeons and popular-priced film and vaudeville shows. The truth about Zukor is far more interesting — and significant,