Sidney Franklin (bullfighter)

This article is about the American bullfighter Sidney Franklin. For other uses, see Sidney Franklin (disambiguation).
Sidney Franklin
Franklin, c. 1932
Personal information
Birth nameSidney Frumkin
NicknameEl Torero de la Torah
Born(1903-07-11)July 11, 1903
Brooklyn, New York City, New York, US
DiedApril 26, 1976(1976-04-26) (aged 72)
Manhattan, New York City, New York, US[1]
Sport
SportBullfighting
RankMatador
Bullfighting career
Début novillero27 July 1923
Alternativa1945[2]

Sidney Franklin (born Sidney Frumkin; 11 July 1903 – 26 April 1976) was the first American to become a successful matador, the most senior level of bullfighter.

Early years, family and education

Sidney Frumkin (or Frumpkin)[3] was born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, to Orthodox Jewish parents[4] who fled Russian persecution and came to the US.[5] His father was a policeman.[5] The family resided in Park Slope, Brooklyn,[5] and he was the fifth of ten children.[1] As a youth, Sidney aspired to be an actor and won prize for his beaded embroidery.[3] He was a student for three years at Brooklyn's Commercial High School and also studied Spanish at Columbia University's extension department.[3][1]

Career

In 1922, he relocated to Mexico City[5] and changed his surname to Franklin. He owned and ran a printing and poster business.[3] On September 20, 1923,[1] he began a career in bullfighting, instructed by the prominent torero Rodolfo Gaona.[3][5] He fought bulls in Spain (beginning in 1929), Portugal, Colombia, and Panama as well. Franklin's nickname acknowledged his Jewish heritage: El Torero de la Torah.[5]

He met fellow American Ernest Hemingway in 1929, and they became close friends.[3] In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway wrote:

he is one of the most skillful, graceful and slow manipulators of a cape fighting today. His repertoire with the cape is enormous but he does not attempt by a varied repertoire to escape from the performance of the veronica as the base of his cape work and his veronicas are classical, very emotional, and beautifully timed and executed.[6]

Hemingway adds:

He is a better, more scientific, more intelligent, and more finished matador than all but about six of the full matadors in Spain today and the bullfighters know it and have the utmost respect for him.[6]

Author Ernest Hemingway on Franklin’s fluency in the languages of Spain: “He speaks Spanish so grammatically good and so classically perfect, with all the slang and damn accents and twenty-seven dialects, that nobody would believe he is an American. He is as good in Spanish as T. E. Lawrence is in Arabic.”[7]

Journalist Lillian Ross describes one of Franklin’s early successes as a matador:

Franklin began to make history in the bull ring at his Spanish début on June 9, 1929, in Seville. Aficionados who saw him fight that day wept and shouted, and talked about for weeks afterward…“Sidney was a glowing Golden Boy,” recalls an American lady who was at the fight. “He was absolutely without fear. He was absolutely beautiful.”[8]

Ross in her biographical essay offers an example of Franklin’s efficiency in “dispatching bulls” while appearing at a Madrid bull ring billed with two other matadors: “One day early in his career, Franklin killed the two bulls that were allotted him. Then taking the place of the two other matadors, who had been gored, killed four more.”[9] Franklin killed about 5,000 bulls, and survived two severe gorings[3] and numerous other serious injuries, during his career.[1] According to A. E. Hotchner, "Lillian Ross's career with The New Yorker was founded on the success of her profile of the bullfighter Sidney Franklin."[10]

Franklin appeared in a few feature films in the US and Mexico.[citation needed] Later he presented bullfights on American TV.[citation needed] He played himself in The Kid from Spain, an Eddie Cantor vehicle.[5] He wrote an autobiography, Bullfighter from Brooklyn (1952),[3] although it is not considered reliable.[5] He was considered an authority on bullfighting, even writing for Encyclopædia Britannica.[1]

As his bullfighting career waned, he worked as a manager at a Seville cafe.[5]

Personal life

He was a close friend of the American actor James Dean, who was a big fan of the art of bullfighting.[citation needed]

Franklin was gay, his sexual identity having been an open secret among those who knew him, but remaining unknown to the public.[11] In his autobiography, he wrote of heterosexual relationships that are considered fictitious.[5] His romantic partner, Julio, would travel as his valet.[5]

In the late 1950s, Franklin returned to North America, residing in Mexico and Texas.[5][1] He lived in a nursing home in Manhattan during his final seven years, dying in 1976 at age 72 of natural causes.[1]

Partial filmography

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h "Sidney Franklin, 72, Dies; Matador from Brooklyn". The New York Times. 1976-05-02.
  2. ^ Footnote to: Barnaby Conrad, “John Fulton”, Encyclopædia Britannica. May 21, 2019. Retrieved 2019-09-12.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Geduld, Herb (October 23, 2003). "My son, the bullfighter" (Oct 4, 2011 ed.). Retrieved January 7, 2025.
  4. ^ "Guide to the Sidney Franklin (1903-1976) Collection, 1922-1976, 1986, 2001-2010 (Bulk 1922-1958)".
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Dolsten, Josefin (June 4, 2019). "The life of gay, Jewish bullfighter Sidney Franklin". Jerusalem Post. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved January 7, 2025.
  6. ^ a b Hemingway, Ernest (25 July 2002). Death in the Afternoon. Simon and Schuster. p. 387. ISBN 978-0-7432-3714-7.
  7. ^ Ross, Lillian (January 13, 1949). "El Unico (with accent) Matador". The New Yorker. Reprinted in Henry Finder, ed. (2014). The 1940s: The Story of a Decade. The New Yorker. pp. 441–452. ISBN 978-0-679-64479-8. p. 445: “Franklin speaks Castilian, Caló (or gypsy dialect) and Andalusian.”
  8. ^ Ross, 1949 p. 451
  9. ^ Ross, 1949 p. 442
  10. ^ Hotchner, A. E. (1955). Papa Hemingway.
  11. ^ Kilgannon, Corey (2019-06-25). "The Gay Jewish Matador from Brooklyn". The New York Times.

Sources