Leo Rosten

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Leo Calvin Rosten (April 11, 1908–February 19, 1997) was born on 11 April 1908 in Lodz, Russian Empire (now Poland) and died on 19 February 1997 in New York. He was a teacher, academic and humorist best remembered for his stories about the night-school "prodigy" Hyman Kaplan (first published in The New Yorker in the 1930s, and later reprinted in two volumes—The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N and The Return of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, under the pseudonym Leonard Q. Ross).

He is also well-known for his encyclopedic volume The Joys of Yiddish (1968), a guide to the Yiddish language and to Jewish culture (as well as a source for anecdotes and Jewish humor). It was followed by "O Kaplan! My Kaplan!" 1976, and Hooray for Yiddish! (1982) , a humorus lexicon of the American language as influenced by Jewish culture.

Among his other works is a large volume titled Leo Rosten's Treasury of Jewish Quotations. Among his own many quotations are: "A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead," "Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad," "Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense," "We see things as we are, not as they are," and "I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."

Rosten was a successful screenwriter. He wrote the story for The Dark Corner, a film noir starring Mark Stevens; and Lured, the Douglas Sirk-directed period drama with Lucille Ball. He is listed as one of the writers for "Captain Newman, M.D." adapted from his novel of the same title. Other films: Mechanized Patrolling (1943) (as Leonard Q. Ross), They Got Me Covered" (1943) (story) (as Leonard Q. Ross), All Through the Night" (1942) (story) (as Leonard Q. Ross), The Conspirators (1944) (screenplay), The Velvet Touch (1948), Sleep, My Love (1948) (novel) (screenplay), Double Dynamite (1951) (story), Walk East on Beacon (1952), and "Mister Cory (1957) (story).

At a tribute dinner to fellow funnyman W. C. Fields, a youngish and reportedly nervous Rosten came up with the unscripted remark about Fields that "anyone who hates babies and dogs can't be all bad!" This statement is often misattributed to Fields himself.