Beatrice Kaufman

Beatrice Bakrow Kaufman (January 20, 1895 – October 6, 1945) was an American editor, writer, and playwright. Although chiefly remembered as the wife of director, humorist, and playwright George S. Kaufman, she had a distinguished literary career of her own, and during the 1930s and 1940s, was regarded as "one of the wittiest women in New York" who was "influential in shaping American taste and culture in the early twentieth century".

Early life Kaufman was born Beatrice Bakrow in Rochester, New York in 1895. Her parents, Julius and Sarah (Adler) Bakrow, were of German Jewish heritage. She had two brothers, Leonard and Julian. Although she was admitted to Wellesley College in 1913—a rare accomplishment, at the time, for a Jewish woman—she was expelled during her first year for breaking curfew. She transferred to the University of Rochester in 1914, but dropped out after one year. In 1917 she married George S. Kaufman, a theatre reporter for the New York Tribune, and an aspiring playwright; the couple moved to New York City, where they lived for the rest of her life.

Writing While Kaufman was known principally for her editorial work, she wrote and published short stories, mostly in The New Yorker, and wrote two plays: Divided by Three (with Margaret Leech) and The White-Haired Boy (with Charles Martin), both of which were successfully produced.

George's most infamous affair, with the actress Mary Astor, became national news when Astor's husband, Franklin Thorpe, announced it to the press in 1934, during the couple's divorce proceedings. To reporters' requests for comment, Beatrice responded "I am not going to divorce Mr. Kaufman. Young actresses are an occupational hazard for any man working in the theatre." According to their friend Alexander King, "Beatrice was one of those great, daring women who knows that her husband is having extramarital relations and knows that everybody else knows it, and knows that this can be borne either by throwing fits in lobbies or by being Wife Number One. And she was Wife Number One." The quote is often attributed to Sophie Tucker, though there is no record of Tucker using it.