This story begins with Benjamin Graham riding high. His arbitrage success with Guggenheim Exploration piqued the interest of Algernon Tassin, Ben’s former English professor at Columbia College. Tassin, a frugal bachelor, had invested his savings in what Ben calls “a very high-priced and gilt-edged public utility stock named American Light & Traction.” Tassin opened a private account with Ben by giving him shares of this stock worth $10,000, equivalent to $264,000 today. Ben would manage the account, and the two would evenly share the account’s profits and losses. In his autobiography, Benjamin Graham: The Memoirs of the Dean of Wall Street, Ben reveals that the account performed so well in the first year that Ben took home an astonishing “several thousand dollars.” These sums, worth a great deal more in 1917, dazzled my young grandfather.

 

The Broadway Phonograph Shop

“With this money I became coproprietor of The Broadway Phonograph Shop, situated at Broadway and 98th Street. My brother Leon had long been anxious to move out of the undistinguished ranks of John Wanamaker clerks.”

Ben’s older brother Leon had been working as a china salesman at the Wanamaker Department Store. The boys’ father had owned a successful china shop before his sudden death left the family penniless. Leon, too, yearned to be an entrepreneur.

“I lacked some of my brother’s enthusiasm, but nonetheless I was happy to make it possible for him to realized his dream…The total investment was about $7000 [$185,105 in 2024].”

Leon, who had a passion for opera, would realize his ambition to become the owner of a phonograph store. Ben, for his part, must have taken quiet pride in his role. Ben had grown up younger and smaller than his older brothers, who hurt him very much, he says in his Memoirs, without specifying how. It’s likely that they humiliated him, bullied, and even “thrashed” him, as their father had done to the older boys. These shame-filled moments had ignited Ben’s drive to compete with and surpass his older brothers.

Now Ben had risen to a superior position, where his eldest brother required Ben’s help to realize his dream. Secretly, the boy whose right to live had been questioned—the boy whom his mother wanted to throw out the window at birth—must have gloried in this indisputable proof of his worth.

“World War I naturally played havoc with our phonograph business.”

In June of 1917, Benjamin Graham married my grandmother Hazel Mazur, who is pictured atop this post. America had just entered the war, two months previously. Leon was drafted into the army and Victor, the middle brother, took his place at the store. Then Victor, too, was drafted. Ben was granted an exemption because of family obligations—a widowed mother and a pregnant wife—though he attended weekly drills with the New York State Guard. Ben took over the shop in the evenings and on Saturdays.

 

The Prince Who Had His Hand in the Till

Ben’s full-time position at Newburger, Henderson & Loeb Brokerage necessitated that the brothers hire the brother of a friend to mind the store—a young man “whom I’d often heard referred to as a ‘prince.’”

“Alas, after only a few months of his incumbency as manager, he managed to embezzle a considerable sum by selling a fair part of our inventory to other shops and pocketing the proceeds.”

Ben’s $7000 investment in his brother’s phonograph venture was mostly gone. In 1913, when Ben was still a student at Columbia, he had lost his $500 investment in Leon’s movie theater. By comparison, this loss was monumental. How devastated Ben must have felt, now that he was responsible for supporting his mother andhis wife. Then his money woes multiplied.

 

The Pitfalls of Wall Street

“I was learning the hard way about the pitfalls of Wall Street. Beginning with a so-called peace scare in the fall of 1916, and continuing for a year after we entered the war in 1917, security prices suffered a persistent decline.”

All the shares Ben held in the Tassin account lost value. These included bonds of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, which Ben had been sure would exceed their market price after the railroad reorganized.

“The Tassin account was called on for more margin, but I couldn’t replace the money I had withdrawn, since it was all tied up in phonographs, records, and fixtures.”

Ben resorted to selling some of his former professor’s shares of American Light & Traction stock at a “considerable loss.” I can only imagine Ben’s mortification as he fought to save his professor’s capital.

 

Failure

“The account remained under margin and was frozen. I had a debt to the account that I could not repay; what was worse was that my management of Tassin’s capital had failed abjectly.”

In addition to the several thousand he had earned, Ben must have borrowed money from the Tassin account, back when he needed $7000 to purchase the phonograph store. He likely disregarded his scruples in doing so, out of loyalty to Leon and his thirst to be Leon’s benefactor. The account was “under margin and frozen,” meaning that the value of the securities in the account had fallen so low that Ben would have to deposit more funds (which he didn’t have) to repay borrowed money, or he wouldn’t be allowed to do any trades.

 

In Dire Straits with Money and Love

Just as his financial situation—the phonograph shop, the Tassin account—grew doubly grim, Ben faced problems in his marriage.

I wish to express my profound gratitude to my grandparents, Ben and Hazel, and to all my ancestors: for surviving, loving, marrying, and raising children. I pledge to write about them, their flaws and the difficulties they faced, with compassion and deep appreciation for their unique gifts, strengths, and inherent goodness. They shared with us all the noble yearning to love and be loved.

 

Ben Graham Bested Rivals to Win Hazel

Hazel was the most desirable and desired girl he’d ever met. At sixteen, she’d been surrounded by a bevy of beaux. She possessed a charisma and sexual magnetism the likes of which one rarely sees except in singers and starlets. Like his literary hero Odysseus, Ben won Hazel from a host of rivals, including his two older brothers and his cousin Louis, whom he revered. Hazel kept a 1916 letter from Louis that hints that something romantic happened between them, and yet Hazel chose Ben, the youngest of the three Graham men. At twenty-two, when he looked so young that Hazel’s mother “actually inquired whether I shaved regularly,” Ben’s financial prospects were excellent. I sense that Hazel choosing him meant the world to Ben.

 

Ben Had Scant Experience with Women

Ben had no girls in his classes, from first grade through high school and college. He did have female cousins, but he barely mentions them. He had no female coworkers at any of his innumerable jobs. He had no female friends. Boys who grow up in modern-day America know hundreds of girls. Not Ben. To boot, Ben’s native calm and reserve, which served to render him a cool-headed investor, made it hard for him to talk with women.

“I had divided women pretty much into two classes: (a) Mother and (b) inhabitants of another planet.”

I’m not surprised that, rather than asking an “inhabitant of another planet” to marry him, Ben asked a woman who was a younger, sexier version of his mother. Dorothy was all he had, his primary attachment figure. Ben Graham perceived that his mother Dorothy stayed by him and his brothers after his father’s death, modeled strength and resilience, and kept the family fed and housed with no breadwinner. He loved her dearly, spending part of his first $100 bonus from his boss at N.H.&L. “a small GE electric grid broiler that she had always wanted”—a gift that “surprised and overjoyed her”—despite her flaws as a mother.

Hazel and Ben’s mother Dorothy were both short Jewish women, buxom and pretty, who not only asserted power with conviction but also brooked no disobedience. They were long on practical know-how and ruling the roost, short on empathy and capacity to nurture. Ben’s father had been mostly absent on business before he died of pancreatic cancer when Ben was eight. At a time when the patriarchy held sway, Ben had grown up in a matriarchal family. I characterized Ben’s mother Dorothy as an empowered single mom who gave orders to her three sons. She demanded that the boys get up for school and make their own breakfast (while she slept until ten), do all the household chores except cooking dinner, and in Ben’s case, shop for groceries. He describes in his Memoirs that if he got bruised in a scuffle or felt hurt, she allowed no “complaints” and expected him to take care of himself.

Ben’s first wife, Hazel, was my maternal grandmother, whom I knew well. Grandma Hazel was a vivacious presence who brought us delectable cookies in a pink bakery box and liked to mend my clothes but seemed unavailable to offer comfort if I was hurt or scared.

Ben took a stab at describing his and Hazel’s differences:

“Hazel was very sweet, but she was also as strong as steel, certain of herself, and possessive…I was given to absentmindedness, disregard of small attentions, and a certain British undemonstrativeness.”

I’m glad to see Ben admit to being a remote and inattentive husband. Ben’s aloofness, a consequence of the protective “breastwork around his heart,” played a part in the failure of all three of his marriages. How hard his detachment must have been for Hazel! I’m amazed that, at age sixty-three, my grandfather saw his boyhood wounds and sought to open his heart to love.

 

When Hazel Jumped in a Lake

“We had many misunderstandings of lesser and greater magnitude. We agreed to call it quits more than once.”

To get a sense of what he means, I jump back to a Sunday during their engagement, when Ben took Hazel rowing. Hazel jumped into the lake, fully clothed.

“She was sure I did not love her enough, that our romance was doomed, that she had nothing more to live for, and was determined to drown herself.” 

Hazel was a strong swimmer. He rowed alongside her and begged her to reconsider, until finally:

 “She climbed back into the boat and announced that she had decided to give our love another chance.”

I think she was right—he didn’t love her enough. Still, I’m awfully glad she decided to try again. This exceptional young woman, gifted in entrepreneurship and dance, had reveled in marshalling a horde of male admirers to help her, at sixteen, produce a hugely ambitious recital for her dance and elocution pupils. Surely she craved heaps more attention than Ben, the man with a breastwork around his heart, could give her.

 

Hazel Needed Equal Opportunity for Women

Hazel needed more than just a more attentive man. She needed to inhabit a world that gave women the chance to rise to positions of power: a world where a woman could win an Oscar for Best Director or run for president, regardless of the color of her skin or the religion she observed.

Hazel came of age at a time—just over a century ago!—that offered women limited prospects: higher status if she made a good marriage and bore children, lower status if she became an unmarried teacher or governess. Hazel could have been brilliant in a leadership role: CEO, politician, the director of a dance troupe. No companies in the 1910s and ’20s sought out smart, capable women to take the helm. In mid-life, long after she and Ben had divorced, Hazel shone as a globetrotting film director and cinematographer for Hadassah, roles where she used to advantage her commanding voice, gusto, and drive to take charge.

 

Marriage Has Evolved Since 1917

Our collective understanding of how to forge a happy marriage has grown in the century since my grandparents tied the knot. The Grahams wed at a time when the husband wielded most of the power. Today we try to equalize power; make joint decisions; and share responsibility for supporting the family, raising children, and keeping the house. We try to give both partners the chance to shine at what used to be traditional female or male roles, as parents, providers, homemakers, nurturers, and leaders. Some of us work hard to forge a safe and loving connection where adults (and children, if present) feel free to speak our truth. We want to be seen and heard, loved and appreciated for who we really are.

These words flow from my fingers, after nearly forty years of marriage, as if this kind of union were effortless—but happy marriages almost never are.

Ben and Hazel’s marriage looked nothing like this twenty-first century ideal, nor did their marriage resemble their peers’ marriages. In the 1910s and ’20s, men earned the living and wielded authority over family matters. Some husbands consulted their wives, or even deferred to them regarding home and children. Nevertheless, men gave orders, and women obeyed. In my experience, power imbalance between spouses—where one makes demands that the other must follow or risk rejection and punishment—erodes love and mutual regard. So it was with Hazel and Ben.

 

She Who Must Be Obeyed

While Ben supported the family in spectacular fashion on Wall Street, Hazel instituted a matriarchal hierarchy at home.

“[Hazel] was sure she could handle anything better than anyone else; she naturally took the lead in all practical arrangements; this led her in turn into the habit of bossing those around her, including her husband. I was not the man to tolerate that treatment. Though I liked to oblige and hated to quarrel about anything, I was strongly independent and inwardly resented all forms of domination.”

I sense Ben being the gentleman here, reporting his honest experience while describing Hazel in as kind a manner as possible. She was the mother of his children, and they were on friendly terms. I can vouch for that, because when I was the flower girl at my aunt Winnie’s wedding in 1957, I saw them chat amiably as parents of the bride, each accompanied by a new spouse.

 

Hurricane Hazel

I have never met a more commanding and domineering person than Grandma Hazel. She bossed her husbands, bossed us, bossed the lobsters into the pot. Buffeted by her gale-force will, we called her “Hurricane Hazel.”

What did Hazel do with her prodigious energy and talents? She taught dance at a school for the blind and got Ben involved in charity work that culminated in his tenure as president of the Jewish Guild for the Blind. I was told she was also a suffragette. I picture her, as a teenager, joining this historic march.

 

 

New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917. America gave women the vote in 1920.

 

Neither suffrage nor motherhood fully engaged Hazel. She gave birth to a son in 1918 and a daughter—my mother—in 1920. More children followed. Hazel employed a live-in governess, Fraulein Gohl, who gave her the freedom to sweep from one charitable or social event to the next.

If he “resented all forms of domination,” why did Ben let Hazel dominate him? The answer lies in his boyhood wounds. Just as he obeyed and earned money for his mother, he obeyed and earned money for Hazel, in hopes that she would deem him worthy of love.

 

How Did Ben Deal with His Resentment?

In his youth, Ben paid a high cost for his mother’s approval. He didn’t stand up for himself; didn’t defy her authority; and never made demands (not even for comfort), complained, or expressed his feelings and needs. He took the same approach with Hazel, avoiding conflict and letting her have her way. Writing his Memoirsdecades later, he wishes he had “refused to be told what to do” and “insisted that his wishes in all matters carried equal weight.” He did neither of those. Hoping his “steady climb toward affluence” would make her happy, he retreated into work. He worked at the brokerage firm and phonograph shop, tutored officers’ sons, drilled with the Guard, and wrote for Vogue and The Magazine of Wall Street. Ben’s avoidance exacerbated Hazel’s discontent. Ben had a delicate way of revealing that not even lovemaking bridged their chasm.

“Many a Sunday morning was to see me, bright and early, on the tennis courts, instead of being better engaged at home in bed.”

Ben’s relationship with the one girl in 1917 New York who believed that the woman should be in charge was as familiar to Ben as the air he breathed. Like his mother, Hazel barked orders, made decisions, withheld affection, and left him bereft of sympathy and love.

 

Financial Calamity, Bleak Despair

Like his mother, Hazel also believed in him, foreseeing that he would be a great success. Yet when still a newlywed, he “failed abjectly” at his management of the Tassin account.

“I recall spending one of my lunch hours walking around the financial district in bleak despair. At that moment I thought, more or less seriously, of suicide. But I returned determined to tell the facts immediately to my old friend.”  

Ben’s capacity to pick himself up when life knocked him down inspires me. He admitted his mistakes to Tassin and negotiated an agreement, pledging to pay off his debt at a rate of sixty dollars ($1587 today) per month. (Tassin stuck by Ben, who in later years “was able to build [Tassin’s] fortune to quite a respectable figure.”) Because Ben could no longer afford to pay the rent on his mother’s apartment, Dorothy moved in with him and Hazel.

 

Two Powerful Women Under One Roof

“Hazel and Mother did not get along at all. Mother was used to complete independence; my wife was dictatorial.”

During one of their quarrels, Ben announced he would leave home and enlist in the army to fight in France. He did not. He saw that he had to get his mother out of his house if he wanted to have a modicum of peace. He improved his “material situation” until he could afford a separate apartment for her. Dorothy, after her ordeal with Hazel, resolved to live alone for the rest of her life. Henceforth, through bull and bear markets, Ben always paid his mother’s rent.