At the time of her death, Irene Lee Diamond was president of the Irene
Diamond fund, a foundation she set up in 1994 to support the performing
arts and to fight the scourge of AIDS. This fund followed the Aaron
Diamond fund which she and her husband established in the 1950s.
Shortly before Aaron's death in 1984, the couple decided to pay out the
remaining assets of the fund over the following ten years. Mrs. Diamond
went on to oversee some 700 donations, amounting to 220 million
dollars, 50 million of which went towards AIDS research. In 1999
President Clinton recognized her philanthropy by awarding her the
National Medal of Arts. Two years later she received the Carnegie Medal
of Philanthropy.
Born Irene Levine on 7 May, 1910, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she was
the daughter of Russian immigrants, Horace M. and Leah D. Levine. Her
father worked for the Duquesne Light Company as a records clerk. Later
he would rise to the position of director of the Central Retail Service
of the Duquesne Light Company.
After graduating from high school Irene moved to Manhattan to study
acting. There she assumed the name Irene Lee and began modeling and
some freelance reading for Warner Brothers. The latter led to a job in
Hollywood as an assistant story editor for Warner's. Soon, a meeting
with producer Hal B. Wallis led to
a 25 year association where she oversaw scripts for many of
Hollywood's classic films, including
Opfer einer großen Liebe (1939) and
Die Spur des Falken (1941).
In 1941 she convinced Wallis to let her buy the play "Everybody Comes
to Rick's" by Joan Alison and
Murray Burnett. She thought the
play would be a perfect fit for the day's news. She changed the title
to Casablanca and by the time the film came out it coincided with the
Allied invasion of North Africa and the Roosevelt-Churchill meeting at
Casablanca.
She and continued to work on films from New York after her marriage to
real estate developer Aaron Diamond in 1942 and, except for a brief
stint with Samuel Goldwyn, continued
her collaboration with Hal Wallis.
She is also credited with helping advance the careers of
Kirk Douglas,
Burt Lancaster and
Robert Redford.
Irene Lee Diamond died on 21 January, 2003, at her home on the upper
East Side of Manhattan. She was survived by a daughter and two
grandchildren.
