Education
Although she dropped out of high school at the end of her junior year, Holtzmann studied law in night school at Fordham University and earned her degree in 1922.
Although she dropped out of high school at the end of her junior year, Holtzmann studied law in night school at Fordham University and earned her degree in 1922.
The following year she rented an office in the Broadway Theater District and opened for business immediately after placing third in the New York bar examination She numbered Edmund Goulding and William Randolph Hearst among her earliest clients. Holtzmann gained international fame during a 1934 libel trial in London in which she represented Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia, who contended that the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film Rasputin and the Empress (1932) had misrepresented her relationship with Rasputin.
In the 1930s, Holtzmann helped Eastern European Jews emigrate to the United States, and following World World War II she assisted Jewish refugees.
She also worked to gain the support of many countries for the admission of Israel into the United Nations. In 1950, Holtzmann was looking for a new property for her client Gertrude Lawrence when the 1944 Margaret Landon book Anna and the King of Siam was sent to her by the William Morris agent who represented the author
He thought a stage adaptation of the book would be an ideal vehicle for the actress. Holtzmann agreed, but proposed a musical version would be better.
She sent the book to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II after Cole Porter declined to write the score, and the two men agreed to write what ultimately became The King and I. Holtzmann was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion three weeks before her death from cancer.
Berkman, Edward O., The Lady and the Law: The Remarkable Story of Fanny Holtzmann. Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown & Company
At the founding conference of the United Nations in 1945, she served as counsel to the Republic of China, and assisted China in becoming a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.