Fanny Holtzmann

Who was Fanny Holtzmann?

Fanny E. Holtzmann was a pioneering female lawyer in the motion picture and theatre industry. Born in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City, she was influenced by her immigrant grandfather, a Talmudic scholar who introduced her to the study of law.

Although she dropped out of high school at the end of her junior year, Holtzmann studied law in night school at Fordham University and earned her degree in 1922. The following year she rented an office in the Broadway Theater District and opened for business immediately after placing third in the New York bar exam. She numbered Edmund Goulding and William Randolph Hearst among her earliest clients.

Holtzmann gained international fame during a 1934 libel trial in London in which she represented Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia, who contended that the 1932 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film Rasputin and the Empress had misrepresented her relationship with Rasputin. Her client was awarded $125,000 in damages for the showing of the film in the UK, and eventually she won a large settlement for its release in other countries as well.

In the 1930s, Holtzmann helped Eastern European Jews emigrate to the United States, and following World War II she assisted Jewish refugees. At the founding conference of the United Nations in 1945, she served as counsel to the Republic of China, and assisted China in becoming a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. She also worked to gain the support of many countries for the admission of Israel into the United Nations.