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BLOOMFIELD, LEONARD (1887–1949), American linguist.
Bloomfield, chiefly through his book Language, became the
most influential individual in guiding the development of
American descriptive linguistics. He taught at various American
universities and from 1940 to 1949 was professor of linguistics
at Yale. His interests widened from Indo-European to
other language groups and into problems of general linguistics.
He published his first inclusive survey of the field An Introduction
to the Study of Language (1914); later he published
Tagalog Texts with Grammatical Analysis (1917); and in the
early 1920s began his long series of important contributions to
the study of the Algonquian languages spoken by many North
American Indian tribes. His interest in the practical application
of linguistics to the teaching of languages remained strong
throughout his life, and he wrote a number of textbooks and a
general work, Outline Guide for the Practical Study of Foreign
Languages (1942). He was one of the founders of the Linguistic
Society of America, and served a term as its president. His
most important work, Language (1933), though outdated in
several respects, is still used as a standard textbook in many
places. It has provided generations of linguists with a survey of
the whole field, an analytical framework, and a basic approach
to language as a subject for scientific inquiry.
Bibliography: B. Bloch, in: Language, 25 (1949), 87–98.
[Haim Blanc]
BLOOMFIELD, MAURICE (1855–1928), U.S. expert in Sanskrit.
Born in Austria, Bloomfield was taken to the U.S. as a
child and received his higher education at the University of
Chicago and at Yale, where he studied under the Sanskritist
W.D. Whitney. Bloomfield concentrated on research in Vedic
language and literature, and after further study at Berlin
and Leipzig (1879–81) was appointed professor of Sanskrit
and comparative linguistics at Johns Hopkins University. His
major works are A Vedic Concordance (1906), and Vedic Variants
(completed after his death by his student and colleague,
Franklin Edgerton, and published 1930–34). Bloomfield was
president of the American Oriental Society (1910–11).
Bibliography: Studies in Honor of Maurice Bloomfield
(1920).
BLOOMFIELD-ZEISLER, FANNY (1863–1927), U.S. virtuoso
pianist, known for her recitals in Europe and the U.S.
Born in Vienna, Fanny Bloomfield-Zeisler was taken to the
U.S. in 1868. She made her debut in Chicago at eleven and then
went to Vienna for further study with Theodor Leschetizky
(1830–1919). She first toured Europe in 1893 and continued to
appear in leading cities until World War I. She gave a special
performance in Chicago in 1925, to mark the half-century of
her concert career.
BLOOMGARDEN, KERMIT (1904–1976), U.S. theatrical
producer. Born in Brooklyn to Zemad and Annie Groden
Bloomgarden, he graduated from New York University in 1926
bloomingdale
as an accounting major and practiced as a certified public accountant
for six years, when he met a Broadway producer at
a dinner party who convinced him that “the theater was for
me,” Bloomgarden recalled. In 1935 Bloomgarden began a tenyear
association with Herman Shumlin’s production organization,
and he was associated with the presentation of several
successful plays by Lillian *Hellman, including The Children’s
Hour, The Little Foxes, and Watch on the Rhine. Later he produced
other Hellman plays on his own. His first venture as a
producer was Heavenly Express, starring John *Garfield, which
gave him experience but no profits before it closed quickly in
1940. Following World War II, Bloomgarden produced Deep
Are the Roots, a powerful drama about racial conflict, and
Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest. Perhaps the best-known
play he produced in that period, in 1949, was Arthur *Miller’s
Death of a Salesman, with a cast headed by Lee J. *Cobb. It is
considered one of the greatest American plays of the 20th century,
and it won the Tony and New York Drama Critics Circle
awards as well as the Pulitzer Prize.
He had failures as well as hits. But between September
1955 and the following May, Bloomgarden, alone or in association
with others, presented four major productions: Hellman’s
adaptation of Jean Anouilh’s The Lark, the musical The Most
Happy Fella, Miller’s A View From the Bridge, and The Diary
of Anne Frank, based on a diary kept by a doomed Jewish girl
in World War II. Directed by Garson *Kanin, it ran for 717
performances, made a star out of Susan *Strasberg, and won
the three major drama prizes of 1956: the Pulitzer, the Tony
for best play, and the New York Drama Critics Circle award.
The play, written by the husband and wife team of Albert
*Hackett and Frances Goodrich went through eight drafts
over several years before emerging on the stage. The playwrights
visited Amsterdam to see the secret hideaway and
conferred with Otto Frank, Anne’s father. The work was based
on Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, the best-selling
book about the Dutch girl’s wartime experience hiding from
the Nazis. The play contains the pivotal line from the diary:
“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really
good at heart.”
In 1957 Bloomgarden produced Look Homeward, Angel,
based on the novel by Thomas Wolfe, as well as Meredith Willson’s
Music Man, which won eight Tony awards and ran for
1,375 performances. Over the years his name preceded the credits
of Hellman’s Toys in the Attic, Miller’s The Crucible, Stephen
*Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle, and Lanford Wilson’s The
Hot L Baltimore. He produced more than 30 plays on Broadway,
including seven by Hellman and three by Miller. In 1974,
after the amputation of his right leg because of arteriosclerosis,
he returned to Broadway with Peter Shaffer’s Equus.
[Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)]
BLOOMINGDALE, prominent U.S. family. The founder of
the family was LYMAN GUSTAVUS (1841–1905), merchant and
philanthropist. He was born in New York, son of German Jew-
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 783