Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968), was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle (1906). It exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the “free press” in the United States. Four years after the initial publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created. Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence." In 1943, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.Sinclair also ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Socialist, and was the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California in 1934, though his highly progressive campaign was defeated decisively.
Nobel Prize in Literature, Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Original Score, USC Scripter Award
Movies
There Will Be Blood, Sergei Eisenstein. Mexican Fantasy, ¡Que viva México!, The Gnome-Mobile, The Wet Parade, The Jungle, Time in the sun
Star Sign
Virgo
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Fact
1
His play, "The Jungle" at the Oracle Productions Theatre in Chicago, Illinois was nominated for a 2015 Joseph Jefferson Non-Equity Award for Play Production.
2
Sinclair later wrote up his memories of the 1934 race in a book titled, "How I Got Beat".
3
The Republican campaign against Sinclair generated so much animosity that when a woman announced at a Hollywood cocktail party her intention to vote for him she was forcibly ejected.
4
The Republican campaign against Sinclair's senate race forced them to spend $10 million, a record amount for the Depression.
5
During the 1934 senate race, phony newsreels designed to slander Sinclair were shown in California movie houses. The films had been produced by MGM president, Louis B. Mayer, who was also GOP chairman for California.
6
In his 1934 senate race, his GOP rival ran a successful smear campaign which discredited Sinclair. One of the tactics was to quote Sinclair's written works out of context to make it appear that he was, for example, an opponent of the Boy Scouts, and an advocate of "Free Love".
7
In 1934, he changed his registration to the Democratic Party and ran in the primary for the gubernatorial nomination for the Senate.
8
As a member of the Socialist Party, Sinclair was twice a candidate for Congress, twice the socialist nominee for governor of California, and once a candidate for the U.S. Senate.
9
Biography in: "Current Biography Yearbook 1962". Pages 389-391. The H.W. Wilson Company, 1963.
10
Biography in: "Dictionary of American Biography". Supplement Eight, 1966-1970, pages 593-595. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988.
11
Biography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, volume 7, pages 451-457. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Co., 1982.
12
Out of his own pocket, he sent copies of his novel "The Jungle" to every member of the U.S. Congress and then-President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, a voracious speed-reader who read several books a day, read Sinclair's novel and was horrified by the descriptions of conditions in the meat packing industry. He was inspired to champion for the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act, which led to the founding of the Food and Drug Administration.
13
Pulitzer-winning American writer, he was the Democratic nominee for California Governor in 1934. He ran for office on other occasions as a Socialist.
$700,000
