Jerome Robbins

Jerome Robbins (October 11, 1918 – July 29, 1998) was an American choreographer, director, dancer, and theater producer who worked in classical ballet, on Broadway, and in films and television. Among his numerous stage productions he worked on were On the Town, Peter Pan, High Button Shoes, The King And I, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, Gypsy: A Musical Fable, and Fiddler on the Roof; Robbins was a five time Tony Award winner and a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. He received two Academy Awards, including the 1961 Academy Award for Best Director with Robert Wise for West Side Story. A documentary about his life and work, Something to Dance About, featuring excerpts from his journals, archival performance and rehearsal footage, and interviews with Robbins and his colleagues, premiered on PBS in 2009 and won both an Emmy and a Peabody Award the same year. 2Early life Robbins was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz in the Jewish Maternity Hospital at 270 East Broadway on Manhattan’s Lower East Side – a neighborhood populated by many immigrants. He was the son of Lena (Rips) and Harry Rabinowitz. The Rabinowitz family lived in a large apartment house at 51 East 97th Street at the northeast corner of Madison Avenue. Known as "Jerry" to those close to him, Robbins was given a middle name that reflected his parents' patriotic enthusiasm for the then-president. In the early 1920s, the Rabinowitz family moved to Weehawken, New Jersey. His father and uncle opened the Comfort Corset Company in Union City, New Jerse