Jack H. Skirball (June 23, 1896 – December 8, 1985[1]) was an American film producer, real estate developer, philanthropist and rabbi.
Early life
Jack H. Skirball was born in 1896 in Homestead, Pennsylvania.[2][3][4] His father was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia.[5] His mother was an immigrant from England.[5] His father died when he was seven years old.[5] Shortly after, he moved to Cleveland, Ohio, with his mother and nine siblings.[5]
Skirball was the co-producer of Jacobowsky and the Colonel, a Broadway musical, alongside Jed Harris in 1944.[3]
Skirball was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[5] He believed that all films should be educational and that they should convey information in a way that is understandable to any audience member.[8]
Skirball was also a real estate developer.[5] In 1962, he developed the Vacation Village resort in Mission Bay, San Diego, California.[5] In 1983, he sold it for US$51 million.[6]
Philanthropy
Skirball Cultural Center.
Skirball founded the Los Angeles School of Hebrew Union College.[3] By 1972, he founded the Hebrew Union College Skirball Museum,[5] a museum of Jewish life near the campus of the University of Southern California.[6] His goal was to show Christians and Jews that they shared much in common, and to ""dissipate" anti-Semitism."[5] He later donated US$3.5 million to move it to a 15-acre plot of land in Brentwood, off the Sepulveda Pass, where it was renamed the Skirball Cultural Center.[6]
In 1985, Skirball founded the Skirball Institute on American Values, a program of the American Jewish Committee.[9] He appointed rabbi Alfred Wolf who was its director until 1996, when the latter was replaced by Eugene Mornell.[9] The Skirball Institute organized inter-faith conferences, essay contests for high school students, academic research on American values, and offered scholarships to college students.[9]
The Alliance Jack H. Skirball Middle School in Los Angeles and the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in New York City are named in his honor.[4][10] Moreover, in 2011, the Skirball Foundation donated US$10 million to the Los Angeles School of Hebrew Union College, which was renamed in his honor.[2][11]
^Sartain, Geraldine (November 1938). "The Cinema Explodes the Stork Myth". The Journal of Educational Sociology. 12 (3): 142–146. doi:10.2307/2261881. JSTOR2261881.