Harold Leventhal

Harold Leventhal (May 24, 1919 – October 4, 2005) was an American music manager. He died in 2005 at the age of 86. His career began as a song plugger for Irving Berlin and then Benny Goodman. He managed The Weavers, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Alan Arkin, Judy Collins, Theodore Bikel, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Mary Travers, Tom Paxton, Don McLean and many others.

Personal life

Born in Ellenville, New York, to Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and Lithuania, Leventhal was eight weeks old when his father, Samuel, died at the age of 34. His mother, Sarah, moved the family to the Lower East Side, where she worked as their tenement's janitor. They then moved to the Bronx, where in 1935, at James Monroe high school, Leventhal, already a member of the Young Communist League, was arrested for organising an "Oxford Pledge" strike, aimed at persuading students to refuse to fight further wars.

He lost his first factory job for union organising, but was hired as an office boy by the songwriter Irving Berlin. Soon he was working as Berlin's "plugger", taking his songs around the nightclubs to be bought by band leaders such as Harry James, the Dorsey Brothers and Benny Goodman. He then joined Goodman's Regent Music Company, before enlisting in the army when the U.S. joined the Second World War. Assigned to India with the Signal Corps, Leventhal sought out the Congress movement, meeting Nehru and Gandhi. He founded American Friends of India, and, at a 1954 party hosted by the Indian delegation to the United Nations, Leventhal met Nathalie Buxbaum, a UN guide, who was to become his wife.

Harold Leventhal (judge)

Harold Leventhal (January 5, 1915 – November 20, 1979) was a United States federal judge.

Leventhal was born in New York City, New York. He received an A.B. from Columbia University in 1934. He received an LL.B. from Columbia Law School in 1936, where he was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review. He was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court justices Harlan Fiske Stone (1937-1938) and Stanley Forman Reed (1938). He was an Attorney for the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States from 1937 to 1938 and from 1938 to 1939. He was a Chief of litigation for the Bituminous Coal Division of the U.S. Department of the Interior from 1939 to 1940. He was an Assistant general counsel for the U.S. Office of Price Administration from 1940 to 1943. He was a U.S. Coast Guard Reserve Lieutenant Commander from 1943 to 1946. He served on the staff of Justice Robert H. Jackson during the Nuremberg Trials from 1945 to 1946. He then returned to his position as assistant general counsel for the U.S. Office of Price Administration in 1946. He was in private practice of law in Washington, D.C. from 1946 to 1951, before returning to the U.S. Office of Price Administration as chief counsel from 1951 to 1952. He was in private practice of law in Washington, D.C. from 1952 to 1965.