Arthur B. Krim

April 4, 1910 - September 21, 1994 Arthur B. Krim passed away twenty years ago today. We, his family, mark this day by commemorating him and celebrating his life well-lived. He was born in his paternal grandfather's house in Harlem, New York, the son of two young Jewish immigrants from Russia. His father, Morris Krim, had immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 15, from the Ukrainian shtetl of Borispol, first supporting himself with a fruit and vegetable stand on a street corner in New York City's Lower East Side. His mother was Rose Ocko, a seamstress. She too had emigrated from Russia as a teen. Growing up first in New York City, then in Lakewood, N.J. and Mount Vernon, N.Y., he received his first catcher's mitt from his father when he was eight years old, beginning a lifelong love of baseball. With a bugle he received from his uncle, he played reveille each morning at summer camp and later the trumpet in high school, and in his college band. With a deep love of reading and learning, he thrived at Columbia College, immersing himself and excelling in his studies of philosophy, history, and English literature and where he was captain of the debating team. He attended Columbia Law School where he became Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review and from which he graduated first in his class. During WWII, he served for 3 years as a U.S. Army attorney in the Pacific. As special assistant to the Undersecretary of War, he earned the praises of his superiors for providing effective assistance to business and industry working to increase military aircraft and equipment production and resolving critical manpower issues. He achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. In his early legal career in New York City, he joined the law firm of Phillips & Nizer and represented many theater artists and writers. He spent time with members of New York's Group Theater and this period became the harbinger of his empathy for and understanding of, the creative community. Within a few years of such involvement and representation, he and his law partner Robert Benjamin were transferred ownership of a troubled United Artists and led it from near bankruptcy to profitability, followed by many years of success. As chief executive of United Artists, he and his team developed and adopted the innovative and successful practice of financing the films of independent producers, directors, actors, and writers, some of whom had been blacklisted in the McCarthy era, while providing them with unprecedented levels of creative autonomy. He became known for investing in the unique and little known producer, director or writer who did not, or could not, fit the Hollywood mold, but who had an important story to tell. At Orion Pictures, he and his team continued the same successful approach. Ultimately, he was the force and direction behind the financing and distribution of more than 1,000 films over a 40-year period. Many of his films earned Academy Award recognition. Fourteen received Academy Awards in the "Best Picture" category, the most of any studio head in the film industry. He was deeply committed to numerous humanitarian causes, most notably, the struggles for civil rights, civil liberties, and against apartheid in Zimbabwe and South Africa; efforts toward improved international relations and for nuclear disarmament; and the struggle for gay rights. He served on the Board of Governors of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science; the Board of Trustees of his beloved Columbia University, including five years as its chairman; as a Life Trustee of the African-American Institute; and on the Boards of the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson Library Foundations. Having lived through the Depression and the Jim Crow era and believing that a civilized, compassionate society had a moral responsibility to provide education, economic opportunity, and protection to the weak, the economically disadvantaged, and those against whom it had discriminated, he devoted decades of personal service and financial support to the Democratic Party. And, he proudly yet privately served as trusted personal advisor to three Presidents: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Jimmy Carter. Along with the considerable achievements and contributions of his lifetime, from which so many have benefited and will continue to benefit, he was a modest, self-effacing man of the highest integrity, of impeccable honesty, an exceedingly generous and loyal friend, a role model to every member of our family and of our extended family, and a loving, patient, accepting, and supportive husband, father, and grandfather. Today, as always, we remember him with much gratitude and love -- Mathilde Krim, Daphna Krim & Sergio Kapfer, Amanda Crotty, Robert & Mayra Crotty, Maria Jonzier, and Marc & Renee Jonzier.