which I have spent many years trying to piece together. What happened at Attica, however, was clear. It exposed me to more than the social reality of racism: There I saw all of its absolute ugliness.
2
Childhood
My grandfather Jonas Siegel died in 1924 of influenza, leaving behind my father and uncle—both still boys—and my grandmother Bessie. One of my grandfather’s best friends was married to a woman named Bessie, too, who had died not long after my grandfather passed away—also of influenza. It seemed natural that Grandma Bessie and my grandfather’s friend gravitated toward each other as they navigated parallel experiences of loss, and when they got married in 1925 everyone thought it was a good match.
Born Abraham Wonskolaser, or Wonsal, my grandfather’s new anglicized name was Aaron Warner, which became Albert at some point. Most people called him Abe. Among friends and family he was Major, a nickname that had something to do with his rank in the U.S. Army Reserves. He was big on family. In fact my grandfather went into business with his three brothers Harry, Sam, and Jack, who together formed a film studio they called Warner Bros. Major managed the distribution and finances of the company from New York, while the other brothers took care of the production side of things on Sunset Boulevard and later on in the Burbank studios.
When Grandma Bessie and Major got married, the studio was well established and holding its own during a period of nonstop change and innovation, but while the company was doing all right and had solid prospects, it wasn’t until 1927 that Warner Brothers hit it big with The Jazz Singer. Featuring Al Jolson in the blackface makeup that was a symbol of mainstream racism in America, The Jazz Singer held the distinction of making history as the first “talking picture.” Not only did it mark the beginning of the end of the silent era, it made Warner Bros. a lot of money. Overnight the Warner name became synonymous with “Hollywood,” and three of the four founding brothers were industry kingpins. Tragically the fourth brother died on the eve of all that. Sam worked tirelessly to figure out the technical aspects of The Jazz Singer, only to die from an untreated sinus infection the day before the film’s premiere in New York City. The three surviving Warners did not attend that screening. They were burying their brother.
After the wild success of The Jazz Singer, Major and his two brothers were wealthy beyond anything Grandma Bessie—who had been fairly well off before she married him—could have dreamed possible.
A child of an immigrant family that fled the pogroms of Middle Europe, Major was known publicly as a person of few airs. That said, by the time Major died in 1967 he had in fact picked up some of the habits associated with great wealth, prime among them, by the time I was old enough to see his routines, that he never seemed to work. Horseracing, “the sport of kings,” was his passion. Mostly I remember him quietly reading the racing forms. Family lore had it that he once turned down a chance to buy the Yankees because it would have distracted him too much from the ponies. I don’t know if that story is true, but Major certainly spent a lot of time at racetracks in New York and Miami Beach, riding back and forth in the front seat of his chauffeured car. Maybe he had retired or conducted business only between post times. I never asked. Something that did interest me as I grew older, however, was a particular man among Major’s racetrack acquaintances. He was famous for many reasons, prime among them being his job as the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
J. Edgar Hoover and Major saw the world though a similar lens. They shared a deep hatred of communism and the Soviet Union. Certainly Stalin’s anti-Semitism fed into Major’s antipathy. The Warners veered hard to the right after World War II. I remember Major buying cases of Hoover’s Masters of Deceit. He would inscribe copies of his distinguished friend’s book to friends and family. The inscription in my copy says: “Fight for USA. A great country. To Lewis Steel. Fondly, A Warner”
When I was ten our family took a trip to see the sights in Washington, DC, and Hoover assigned a special agent to take us around. In the FBI Building my brother and I were brought down to the basement firing range,