Was Arnold epstein from biloxi blues based on a real life person?

Answer 1

The character of Arnold Epstein is based upon Benjamin A. Friedman, of Taunton, MA. Ben was one of six children born to a couple who settled in Taunton to raise their family. The father died when the children were very young, and the mother was a cardiac invalid. The children struggled heroically to keep the family together under impoverished circumstances. It is notable that Ben, an extremely bright child and excellent athlete, suffered severe head trauma as catcher in a baseball game. A crushing blow left him profoundly visually impaired. He underwent one of the earliest surgical experiments with corneal transplant in New York funded by a benefactor -- a Taunton industrialist. The experimental surgery failed, so that one eye was eventually removed. The remaining eye was uncorrectable with glasses, but when the earliest version of contact lenses were manufactured in Germany, these lenses provided enough correction so that Ben was able to function. Ben had been accepted at Columbia University at the time of his injury, but those dreams faltered. Instead, he pursued a law degree at Suffolk University in Boston. When WW II broke out, he was determined to serve in submarine service. His visual impairment rendered him utterly ineligible for such service, but he remained determined, and memorized the eye charts in an effort overcome the hurdles. Finally, when all else failed, he appealed to his congressman, Joe Martin, and an accommodation was arranged that provided that so long as he waived any service related disability related to his eye condition, he was allowed to enlist in the Army Air Corps. He went to Biloxi for basic training with the group that included Neil Simon, and spent the war teaching meteorology and other subjects to air corps pilots at Bowdoin College in Maine, and later in legal services where he had a role in drafting legislation that provided voting protocols to servicemen.

Ben had a passion for travel and adventure. As a boy he horrified his parents when he took off from home to join the merchant marines. He was barely a teenager, but he figured if he made his way to California he could talk his way into service. He did reach California, but could not quite talk his way around the fact that he was a mere child. His father retrieved him from that adventure, but the spirit never left him. He accomplished feats that were quite astonishing for a man whose eyesight was completely dependant upon one eye that was virtually blind without its contact lense, and even with the lense, far from perfect. For example, he became determined to travel the Amazon, went to Brazil, and set out solo on an unprecedented adventure for its time. He fell in love with Ecuador, the Andes, and traveled extensively in those regions.

He opened his law practise in Taunton, MA, and entered public service, running for municipal council, winning handily. The city suffered under the control of an entrenched political machine at that time. The situation had become so alarming that a diverse group of citizens including ministers, priests, newspaper editors, physicians, etc. had formed to explore what on earth could be done, and they implored Ben to run for mayor against the remarkably charismatic officeholder of that era. Ben accepted the challenge and became a legendary character in urban governance, serving multiple terms, never defeated. His competence became so highly regarded that he was selected to represent U.S. mayors as keynote speaker at the World Conference on Law in Geneva in the 1960's.

He was a gifted trial lawyer. During the 1960's he became counsel to orphans whose parents were killed when a plane disintegrated over Mount Fuji, Japan, an incident reported in Life Magazine with photographs of the disintegration in flight. The case was resolved in the Federal Court system in Chicago, and in its time became the highest tort recovery for Massachusetts litigants in a wrongful death action.