Edna Ferber spent her early years moving around the Midwest with her parents. In some towns, she experienced brutal antisemitism, which later inspired her to examine American prejudices in her writing and to take a strong stand against Germany’s burgeoning Nazi party in the 1930s.

Ferber’s prolific writing career included work as a journalist, playwright, and novelist with close ties to Hollywood. Film studios frequently adapted her novels and plays into commercial and critical hits. So Big won the 1924 Pulitzer Prize and was adapted to film 3 times (1924, 1932, 1953). Hollywood filmed her Western epics Cimarron (1931, 1960) and Giant (1956), her autobiographical drama Fanny Herself (1921), her riverboat drama Show Boat (1929, 1936, 1951), her lumberjack drama Come and Get It (1936), her Alaskan drama Ice Palace (1960), and her romances Gigolo (1926) and Saratoga Trunk (1945, 1959).