Bernard Katz papers

1936-1970

Bernard Katz (1902-1970), advertising art director, was raised in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn in surroundings which brought him, as he reports in his unpublished autobiographical writings, into contact at an early age with several personalities who were later to achieve success in the theater and in motion pictures. During one of his summer vacations from school he was employed as copy boy in the sports department of the N. Y. Sun. At age eighteen, continuing his journalistic bent, he edited and published (in Bensonhurst) a monthly scandal sheet entitled "The Town Gossip", which, although ephemeral, succeeded in attracting at least one literary contribution (a novelette) from the novelist, Oscar Schisgal.

His literary and artistic talents led him into the field of advertising. Following employments as production manager at Namm's, and as art director at Abraham & Straus, both leading department stores in New York City, Mr. Katz became advertising and promotion director of Hearns, a department store located at 14th Street and Tompkins Square. At the time of his appointment in 1932 Hearns was floundering in the depths of the Great Depression and was virtually bankrupt. By employing, in his own words, "some of the maddest institutional, sales and promotion stunts in advertising history", he contributed to the transformation of Hearns into a thriving success with a multi-million dollar annual volume. Mr. Katz left Hearns in 1950 to became art director of Fairfax, Inc., a small but established advertising agency in New York City where he remained for some eighteen years until his retirement.

Mr. Katz had a lifelong interest in African-American history and music. He was the compiler a work entitled The Social Implications of Early Negro Music in the United States (N. Y., Arno Press, 1969); and with his son, Jonathan Ned Katz, he co-authored Black Woman: A Fictionalized Biography of Lucy Terry Prince (1973). He accumulated a large collection of sound recordings of American jazz and was acknowledged authority on the subject. He served as script-writer and impresario for a series of jazz concerts held at Town Hall in New York City on New Years Day.

Bernard Katz was married to Phyllis Brownstone Katz. They resided for many years in Manhattan's Greenwich Village at 81 Jane Street. Two of their sons have become noted historians: William Loren Katz, who specializes in Black history; and Jonathan Ned Katz, who is an authority on the history of gay men and lesbians in America.