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| Name: | Mitch Albom | |||
| Birth: | May 23 1958 | |||
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Mitchell David Albom (born May 23, 1958 in Passaic, New Jersey) is an American best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, playwright, radio and television broadcaster and musician. His books have sold over 26 million copies worldwide. Having achieved national recognition for his sports writing in the earlier part of his career, he is perhaps best known now for the inspirational stories and themes that weave through his books, plays and films. He is also well-known for his philanthropic work in Detroit, Michigan having founded three charities there.
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Family, Childhood, and Education
Mitchell David Albom was born on May 23, 1958 in Passaic, New Jersey to Rhoda and Ira Albom. Born the second of three children, he has an older sister and younger brother, Peter. After a brief move to the Buffalo, N.Y. area, the Alboms settled in Oaklyn, New Jersey. As a child, Albom wanted to be a cartoonist, but later took up music. He taught himself to play piano, and he played in bands as a teenager.
After attending high schools in New Jersey and Philadelphia, including Akiba Hebrew Academy in Lower Merion, Albom went on to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts to earn a bachelor’s degree in sociology. Pursuing his dream to become a musician, he worked after graduation for several years in nightclubs in the US and Europe. He discovered an aptitude for writing and eventually returned to graduate school, earning a Masters degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, followed by an MBA from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.
In 1995, he married Janine Sabino. They live together in suburban Detroit, Michigan.
Work
Columnist
While living in New York, Albom developed an interest in journalism. Still supporting himself by working nights in the music industry, he began to write during the day for the Queens Tribune, a weekly newspaper based in Flushing, New York. His work there helped earn him entry into Columbia University's prestigious Graduate School of Journalism. During his time there, to help pay his tuition – in addition to nighttime piano playing - Albom took a part-time job with SPORT magazine, which kindled his interest in sports writing. Upon graduation, he freelanced in that field for publications such as Sports Illustrated, GEO, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and covered several Olympic sports events in Europe – including track and field and luge - paying his own way for travel and selling articles once he was there. In 1983, he was hired as a full-time feature writer for The Fort Lauderdale News Sun Sentinel, and eventually promoted to columnist. In 1985, having won that year’s Associated Press Sports Editors award for best Sports News Story, Albom was hired as lead sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press to replace Mike Downey, a popular columnist who had taken a job with the Los Angeles Times.
Albom’s sports column became quickly popular with readers. In 1989, when the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News merged weekend publications under a Joint Operating Agreement, Albom was asked by his newspaper to add a weekly non-sports column to his duties. That column ran on Sundays in the “Comment” section, and dealt with American life and values. It was eventually syndicated across the country. Both columns continue today in the Detroit Free Press.
Albom, during his years in Detroit, became one of the most award-winning sports writers of his era; he was named best sports columnist in the nation a record 13 times by the Associated Press Sports Editors, and won best feature writing honors from that same organization a record seven times. No other writer has received the award more than once. He has won more than 200 other writing honors from organizations including the National Headliner Awards, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Sportscasters and Sportswriting Association, and National Association of Black Journalists. Many of his columns have been collected into anthology books including Live Albom I (Detroit Free Press, 1988), Live Albom II (Detroit Free Press, 1990), Live Albom III (Detroit Free Press, 1992), and Live Albom IV (Detroit Free Press, 1995).
Albom also serves as a contributing editor to Parade magazine.
Author
Sports books
Albom's first non-anthology book was Bo: Life, Laughs, and the Lessons of a College Football Legend (Warner Books), an autobiography of legendary football coach Bo Schembechler co-written with the coach. The book was published in August, 1989 and became Albom's first New York Times bestseller.
Albom's next book was Fab Five: Basketball, Trash Talk, The American Dream, a look into the starters on the University of Michigan men's basketball team that reached the NCAA championship game as freshmen in 1992 and again as sophomores in 1993. The book was published in November 1994 and also became a New York Times bestseller.
Tuesdays with Morrie
Albom’s breakthrough book came about after viewing Morrie Schwartz’s interview with Ted Koppel on ABC News Nightline in 1995, in which Schwartz, a sociology professor, spoke about living and dying with a terminal disease, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease). Albom, who had been close with Schwartz during his college years at Brandeis, reconnected with his former professor, visiting him in suburban Boston and eventually coming every Tuesday for discussions about life and death. Albom, seeking a way to pay for Schwartz’s medical bills, sought a publisher for a book about their visits. Although rejected by numerous publishing houses, the idea was accepted by Doubleday shortly before Schwartz’s death, and Albom was able to fulfill his wish to pay off Schwartz’s bills.
The book, Tuesdays with Morrie, was published in 1997, a small volume that chronicled Albom’s time spent with his professor. The initial printing was 20,000 copies. Word of mouth grew the book slowly, and a brief appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” nudged the book onto the New York Times bestseller’s list in October 1997. It steadily climbed, reaching the No. 1 position six months later. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 205 weeks. Now the bestselling memoir of all time, Tuesdays With Morrie has sold over 14 million copies and has been translated into 41 languages.
Oprah Winfrey produced a television movie adaptation for ABC, starring Hank Azaria as Albom and Jack Lemmon as Morrie. It was the most-watched TV movie of 1999 and won four Emmy Awards. A two-man theater play was later co-authored by Albom and playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, and opened off-Broadway in the fall of 2001, starring Alvin Epstein as Morrie and Jon Tenney as Mitch.
Tuesdays With Morrie is regularly taught in high schools and universities around the world and Albom started a private foundation with some of the proceeds, The Tuesdays With Mitch Foundation, to fund various charitable efforts.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
After the success of Tuesdays with Morrie, Albom's next foray was in fiction. His follow-up book was The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Hyperion Books) published in September 2003. Although released six years after Tuesdays With Morrie, the book was a fast success and again launched Albom onto the New York Times best-seller list. Selling over 10 million copies in 38 territories and in 35 languages, The Five People You Meet In Heaven is the bestselling hardcover first-time novel ever. In 2004, it was turned into a television movie for ABC, starring Jon Voight, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Imperioli and Jeff Daniels. Directed by Lloyd Kramer, the film was critically acclaimed and the most watched TV movie of the year, with 18.6 million viewers.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven is the story of Eddie, a wounded war veteran who lives what he believes is an uninspired and lonely life fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, Eddie is killed while trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a location but a place in which your life is explained to you by five people who were in it who affected, or were affected by, your life.
Albom has said the book was inspired by his real life uncle, Eddie Beitchman, who, like the character, served during World War II in the Philippines, and died when he was 83. Eddie told Albom, as a child, about a time he was rushed to surgery and had a near-death experience, his soul floating above the bed. There, Eddie said, he saw all his dead relatives waiting for him at the edge of the bed. Although the real Eddie survived the surgery, Albom has said that image of people waiting when you die inspired his concept of The Five People You Meet in Heaven
For One More Day
Albom's second novel, For One More Day (Hyperion), was published in 2006. The hardcover edition spent nine months on the New York Times Bestseller list after debuting at the top spot. It also reached No. 1 on USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. It was the first book to be sold by Starbucks in the launch of the Book Break Program in the fall of 2006. It has been translated into 26 languages. On December 9, 2007, the ABC aired the 2-hour television event motion picture "Oprah Winfrey Presents: Mitch Albom’s For One More Day," which starred Michael Imperioli and Ellen Burstyn. Burstyn received a Screen Actors’ Guild award nomination for her role as Posey Benetto.
For One More Day is about a son who gets to spend a day with his mother who died eight years earlier. Charlie “Chick” Benetto is a retired baseball player who, facing the pain of unrealized dreams, alcoholism, divorce, and an estrangement from his grown daughter, returns to his childhood home and attempts suicide. There he meets his long dead mother, who welcomes him as if nothing ever happened. The book explores the question, “what would you do if you had one more day with someone you’ve lost”?
Albom has said his relationship with his own mother was largely behind the story of that book, and that several incidents in For One More Day are actual events from his childhood.
Playwright
On November 19, 2002, the stage version of Tuesdays with Morrie opened off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre. Co-authored by Mitch Albom and Jeffrey Hatcher (Three Viewings) and directed by David Esbjornson (The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?. Tuesdays with Morrie starred Alvin Epstein (original Lucky in Waiting for Godot) as Morrie and Jon Tenney (The Heiress) as Mitch.
Albom’s follow up to the stage adaptation of Tuesdays were two original comedies that premiered at The Purple Rose Theater, in Chelsea, Michigan, a theater started by actor Jeff Daniels. Duck Hunter Shoots Angel (The Purple Rose’s highest grossing play as of 2008) and And the Winner Is have both been produced nationwide, with the latter having its West Coast Premiere at the Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach, California.
