Sidney Franklin (bullfighter)

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.

This article is about the American bullfighter Sidney Franklin. For other uses, see Sidney Franklin (disambiguation).
Sidney Franklin
Sidney Franklin standing on the set of the 1932 film The Kid from Spain
Personal information
Birth nameSidney Frumkin
Nickname(s)El Torero de la Torah
Born(1903-07-11)July 11, 1903
Brooklyn, New York, United States
DiedApril 26, 1976(1976-04-26) (aged 72)
New York City, United States
Sport
SportBullfighting
RankMatador
Bullfighting career
Début novillero27 July 1923
Alternativa1945[1]

Biography

Sidney Franklin was born in Brooklyn, New York to Orthodox Jewish parents.[2] In 1922, he traveled to Mexico City, where he began a career in bullfighting. He fought bulls in Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Colombia, and Panama.

In Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway wrote:

Franklin is brave with a cold, serene and intelligent valor but instead of being awkward and ignorant 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. You will find no Spaniard who ever saw him fight who will deny his artistry and excellence with the cape.[3]

And later 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.[3]

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.”[4]

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.”[5]

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.” Ross reports that Franklin’s performance caused a sensation.[6]

Franklin appeared in a few films in the USA and Mexico. Later he presented bullfights on American TV. He wrote an autobiography, Bullfighter from Brooklyn, and was a close friend of the American actor and legend James Dean, who was a big fan of the art of bullfighting.

He died at home in 1976, age 72, of natural causes.[7] He was gay, his sexual identity having been an open secret among those who knew him, but remaining unknown to the public.[8]

Influence

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." – Papa Hemingway, A.E. Hotchner, 1955.

Partial filmography

References
  1. Footnote to: Barnaby Conrad, “John Fulton”, Encyclopædia Britannica. May 21, 2019. (Retrieved 2019-09-12.)
  2. "Guide to the Sidney Franklin (1903-1976) Collection, 1922-1976, 1986, 2001-2010 (Bulk 1922-1958)".
  3. Hemingway, Ernest (25 July 2002). Death in the Afternoon. Simon and Schuster. p. 387. ISBN 978-0-7432-3714-7.
  4. Ross, 1949 p. 445: Quoted in Ross. Ross notes that “Franklin speaks Castilian, Caló (or gypsy dialect) and Andalusian.”
  5. Ross, 1949 p. 451
  6. Ross, 1949 p. 442
  7. "Sidney Franklin, 72, Dies; Matador from Brooklyn". The New York Times. 1976-05-02.
  8. Kilgannon, Corey (2019-06-25). "The Gay Jewish Matador from Brooklyn". The New York Times.

Sources
  • Franklin, Sidney (1952) Bullfighter from Brooklyn. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
  • Paul, Bart (2009). Double-Edged Sword: The Many Lives of Hemingway's Friend, the American Matador Sidney Franklin. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
  • "Sidney Franklin: Bullfighter from Flatbush" http://www.jewsinsports.org/Publication.asp?titleID=3&current_page=375
  • Sidney Franklin Collection.; P-894; American Jewish Historical Society, Boston, MA and New York, NY.
  • Ross, Lillian. 1949. “El Unico (with accent) Matador” in The New Yorker, January 13, 1949. Reprinted in The 1940s: The Story of a Decade. 2014. The New Yorker, ed. Henry Finder. pp. 441-452 ISBN 978-0-679-64480-8 Parameter error in {{ISBN}}: checksum
  • "Yanqui Matador",
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