ANNETTE KAUFMAN

KAUFMAN--Annette.

A passion for music set Annette Kaufman on a fairy-tale course from North Dakota to a conservatory in NYC where she met and fell in love with Louis Kaufman, married him at the age of 18-and seldom left his side for the next 62 years. Mr. Kaufman, a Hollywood legend, played principal violin in over 500 films including Casablanca and Gone with the Wind. In his 2003 memoir, A Fiddler's Tale, he wrote that upon his proposal of marriage, Annette replied that she would like to be his accompanist. For the next 62 years, she was. They lived in Los Angeles, CA in a house designed for them by Lloyd Wright where, at the age of 101, Mrs. Kaufman died peacefully on January 25, 2016. The Kaufmans were well known in the Los Angeles pre-and post-war cultural scene. They were the first collectors of Milton Avery and, being softhearted and generous, helped many struggling painters during Depression-era America. In Brussels after the war, they were shown an obscure piece of music by Vivaldi, The Four Seasons; Mr. Kaufman became the first person to record it. A generous benefactor to many cultural institutions including the Library of Congress, the National Portrait Gallery and the Portland Art Museum, Annette was a vivid raconteur of a time in Europe and Los Angeles that, while largely faded from memory, lived on in her ebullient recounting of it.