Ralph G. Martin
Ralph G. Martin, actually Ralph Martin Goldberg ( born March 4, 1920 in Chicago, Illinois, † January 9, 2013 in Sleepy Hollow, New York ) was an American author and biographer. He has authored over thirty biographical books about politicians and celebrities.
Life and work
Martin was born in 1920 in Chicago and moved at the age of 8 years with his family in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. As a young man he changed his name to Ralph G. Martin.
Martin attended the City College of New York and graduated in 1941 a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri from. After graduating, he hitchhiked around the country until he ended up in Brigham City, Utah, where he took a job at the local newspaper, the The Box Elder News Journal. There he worked as managing editor, senior reporter, society reporter and more. After his predecessor died the following day in the hospital, it became Martin's first task there to write an obituary for him.
With the onset of World War II, Martin reported for military service and entered the Army. He served in Europe as a war correspondent for the military newspaper The Stars and Stripes and later for Yank, the weekly magazine of the Military Army.
In 1944 he married his wife Marjorie Pastel Martin. The ceremony was conducted by New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Martin had previously interviewed for Yank. With Marjorie he had three children: Elizabeth, Tina and Maurice.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Martin worked as an editor for various magazines, including Newsweek, the political magazine The New Republic and as a managing editor for the interior decorating magazine House Beautiful. 1952 and 1956 he was a member of Adlai Ewing Stevenson's election campaign, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party.
Over the years he wrote alone and as co-author of over thirty books. The most famous among them is Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill, a two-part biography Jennie Jerome, Winston Churchill's mother. The first part, which appeared in 1969, remained for over thirty weeks on the bestseller list of the New York Times. In other biographies, he worked on King Edward VIII, the Kennedy family, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and Golda Meir. By Ballots & bandwagons he published in 1964 a study on the nomination party conventions in the United States.
Martin died on January 9, 2013 at the age of 92 years.