Jack Liebowitz

Jack Liebowitz was born Yacov Lebovitz in Proskuriv, present-day Khmelnytsky, Ukraine in October 1900, to a Jewish family. His mother, Mindl, never identified his biological father, her first husband (who had left the family), but married Yulyus Lebovitz when her son was three. Yacov soon adopted his stepfather's surname, and in 1910 the family emigrated to the United States. They arrived in the Jewish neighborhood of New York City's Lower East Side and, as was common at the time, adopted Anglicized names: His parents became Julius and Minnie Liebowitz, while he became Jacob, soon shortened to Jack. Jack was a hardworking child and became a newsboy amongst other small jobs. In high school, he became adept at accountancy, a career he thought would help him escape his poor background.

Career and partnership with Harry Donenfeld

By age 24, Liebowitz had earned his accounting degree from New York University, and by 1927 had married (Rose) and moved to The Bronx. Liebowitz set himself up as an accountant based in Manhattan's Union Square area, with one client, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU); his father had been a steward for that union since the early 1910s. By 1925, Liebowitz was in charge of the union's strike fund, and a year later managed to keep the fund solvent in the wake of a six-month, 50,000-worker strike. His business acumen placed Liebowitz in a position of high standing with the union officials. Toward the end of the decade, Liebowitz had taken on more clients and begun studying the stock market. His initial dealings worked well for the union, but after the Wall Street crash of 1929, funds plummeted and Liebowitz and the ILGWU parted company.

In 1929, Julius Liebowitz approached Harry Donenfeld, whom he had befriended through ILGWU ties, and sought work for his son. Donenfeld, a rising businessperson who felt a sense of loyalty to those from the old neighborhood, took Jack on as his personal accountant. Although a chance meeting, the two men complemented each other very well—Donenfeld was a social, chance-taking high-flyer, while Liebowitz was cautious and had a logical mind that ensured Donenfeld's fiscal mistakes were small, and that his business promises were binding only in favor to himself.

When Liebowitz first worked for Donenfeld, the latter's empire was little more than a publishing house for "sex pulp" and art nudie magazines distributed by Eastern News, a company run by Charles Dreyfus and Paul Sampliner. In 1931, Eastern News faced bankruptcy and could no longer pay its publishers; the company owed Donenfeld alone $30,000. A compromise was called for, and Donenfeld, not wanting to find himself hamstrung by a distributor again, approached Sampliner with the idea of creating the Independent News Company, a publishing house with its own distribution system. As a publisher, Donenfeld had managed to dodge creditors and break deals, but as a distributor, he came to rely more on Liebowitz to ensure that the company ran smoothly. Liebowitz ensured bills were paid on time and began to build a trust with clients that Donenfeld's enterprises had never experienced.