ABSTRACT
Before their arrival as refugees from Nazism in New York on July 13, 1938, Victor Gruen—who was then still Viktor Grünbaum—and his wife, Lizzie Kardos, had two main contacts in the city: Gruen’s uncle, Harry, whose image in Gruen’s mind as a wealthy man stemmed from his childhood memories of gifts of five or ten dollars sent from America; and Ruth Yorke, the American actress whom he had met by chance and befriended on a railway car from Paris to Vienna. Yorke’s well-off boyfriend, Paul Gosman, was able to promise Gruen a job and thus secure an affidavit for him and his wife to immigrate to the US as permanent residents. Gruen and Kardos first stayed in the Upper West Side apartment of Yorke, who was the star of a long-running radio serial, and whose personal connections and contacts in the theater world would prove to be very useful to Gruen. Yorke soon found the refugee couple a “pleasant” apartment on Central Park West. Gruen looked forward to the future and was annoyed by some of his fellow refugees who bemoaned their fate. An optimist, he accepted his new life in America, and he immediately set about making his place in it. 1
