Talk:Jack Warden

Untitled

I have changed the date of his death. MSNBC reported his death as occurring on Wednesday. [1]Capitalistroadster 21:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Great Talent; Little Page

Hard to believe that this article was just created today. Here's a great bio/obit — http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-072106warden,1,5410883.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews&track=crosspromo Jimcripps 01:36, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I was sorry to read of his death. I only met him once, but I do write about film and culture. My (too scholarly?) attempt to add to the article-- subtracting nothing-- was simply deleted within minutes. I am a professor and author of works involving cultural contexts. I was enriching the article, I thought. A note informed me that I had violated the principle of neutrality and seemed to be venturing my own conclusions. Banishing originality is no guarantee of neutrality. I get paid to think, and I doubt I can stop. But what, then, was the point of removing my mention of his two Academy Award nominations, after the announcement that he won an Emmy? You create the impression he was primarily a TV actor. He certainly wasn't. It seems like mere Wiki possessiveness on somebody's part. Please post the rationale here, if there was one. I'll check back in a day or two.

Problem Child 2?

Of all the movies Jack Warden acted in, why does one scene from a sequel to a forgotten movie merit such attention? The "Weren't you ever hungry?" speech asking Jason Robards' Ben Bradlee to give young reporters Woodward and Bernstein a chance to break Watergate in "All The President's Men" certainly strikes me as a more memorable screen moment from Warden's illustrious career, and I'm sure there are many others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.86.49.228 (talk) 02:52, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Contradiction

The article says he injured his leg "on the eve of the D-Day invasion", spent almost a year in hospital, and then took part in the Battle of the Bulge - but D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge were only six months apart. GregorB (talk) 22:27, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Could the reference to the Battle of the Bulge be a conflation with a different Jack Warden? See: The PurlpeHeartAustin.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.225.231.149 (talk) 04:46, 5 July 2009 (UTC) Also, this site on the history of the 101st implies that he did not attend reunions due to his separating from the unit prior to its entering combat. That implication is that he did not serve with the unit during the Bulge.

Ethnicity question copied from user talk

[to All Hallow's Wraith] Hi - may I ask why are you so sure that the Guardian source is incorrect? The 1958 article that's referenced is not available for verification, so I don;'t actually know what it says, but assuming it says that his ancestry was PA Dutch, why are you certain that it is more reliable than the Guardian? And if you check IMDb now, it has a rather extensive discussion of his Jewish roots - are you sure that's incorrect? Would appreciate some sourcing. Thanks Tvoz/talk 07:00, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

• Warden's father, John Warden Lebzelter, is listed in the Kentucky Death Records (1938) at ancestry.com - the record also gives the names of his parents - Catherine O'Brien and Phillip Lebzelter - which is how I was able to trace their ancestry further back. Warden's paternal grandfather, Phillip Lebzelter, was the son and grandson of German immigrants to Pennsylvania. Ironically, his brother's first name was "Christian". Much of the ancestry of the grandfather's parents had already been traced here (the Martha Ackerman and Johann Wilhelm Lebzelter), and his ancestors had been getting married in Evangelical Lutheran Churches for generations (German Lutherans in Pennsylvania ended up being called Pennsylvania Dutch). The person who created the genealogy was Michael Huey (bio here), who self-published a book on the Lebzelter genealogy in 2001. As for Warden's paternal grandmother, Catherine O'Brien - according to the 1900 census, her father was from Ireland and her mother from Canada, so I presume she was neither Jewish nor Pennsylvania Dutch.
• Is all of this original research? Of course it is. But luckily, I managed to find a Los Angeles Times article/interview from 1958 that described Warden as being of "Dutch-Irish descent". This is literally the only reference I could find in a newspaper to Warden's background during his lifetime. Nothing else, newspaper or book, went into it at all during his life - and no references at all stated that he (or his father) was Jewish - an omission that would be surprising if he really was Jewish, considering how many Jewish characters Warden had played during his lifetime.
• That leaves us with The Guardian's obit, published the week after he died. We already know it isn't accurate because it says he was "from a poor Jewish family", but even the IMDB says that his mother, Laura Costello, wasn't Jewish.
• As far as I was able to find, that obit is the only reference that has ever existed to Warden being of Jewish ancestry - the only one in his very extensive 50-year career. In a general sense, the L.A. Times article would be more reliable because it had Warden's personal involvement (he was interviewed), while the Guardian article did not. In a specific sense where I know what I do, I'd have to surmise that the Guardian gleaned it from the IMDB, as they have other things (The Guardian's writing in September 2006 that Sacha Baron Cohen's mother was of Persian Jewish descent, copied from the then-unsourced Wikipedia entry, also inspired a long and endless discussion on that page, and is also inaccurate). As for the IMDB, I have no idea why the writer of the IMDB bio, Jon C. Hopwood, decided that Warden's father was Jewish (I guess because his last name can sound Jewish). He even mentions (in the IMDB bio) that Warden had talked about all this in an interview - but I was not able to find any such interview, nor any interview where Warden talked about having any Jewish ancestry. Like I said, the only reference available on his background during his lifetime was the 1958 L.A. Times profile. Anyway, Jon C. Hopwood is not a reliable source. However, not having researched this before, I had presumed that he was correct (i.e. that Warden's father was really Jewish) and was more than a little surprised to find out that the IMDB bio was way off (although that explained the lack of other sources). If you are really interested, maybe you can find some way to contact Hopwood and ask him to produce this interview.
• As for his birthname - I'm sorry I reverted that along with the other edits. Some sources list him as having been born "John H. Lebzelter" (presumably the H stood for something). However, I see that Warden's World War II enlistment record lists him as "John W. Lebzelter", so I suspect your change to "John Warden Lebzelter" is correct. I'll revert it to that. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 13:50, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed explanation - clearly this was not an off-hand edit on your part. Your research is pretty convincing - although I'm never too comfortable with the approach of trying to find RSes to support OR, I did find it odd that there was not any other independent discussion of his background out there, as just about all of the Google hits could be traced back to the earlier Wiki article wording and therefore irrelevant. The Hopwood IMDB piece is the one that I do wonder about, as it goes into some detail - conjured up from where? I'm not ready to dismiss it out of hand (I know nothing about Hopwood), but unless we locate that interview, I agree that Hopwood's bio is not enough on its own. I think it might be helpful to re-post this exchange on the article talk page, if that's ok with you, so if anyone else comes along wondering about this, your reasoning will be available to them. Tvoz/talk 19:59, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea, please do so. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:06, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Middle name; ethnic background

His middle name (from birth) is, IMO, subject to dispute. Some sources cite "Warden"; but other sources cite just "H." His German Jewish father would not likely have given his exact name to his son as this contradicts Jewish child naming practises which discourage or outright prohibit naming one's child after a living person. Otherwise Warden would have been John Warden Lebzelter, Jr. or John Warden Lebzelter, II. Also, according to sources he was of German Jewish paternal descent, not Mennonite. Quis separabit? 12:43, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

OK I checked and found that during WWII Warden's U.S. World War II Navy Muster Rolls, 1938-1949 indicate he was listed as "John W. Lebzelter Junior" or "John W. Lebzelter, Jr." so I guess he is John Warden Lebzelter, Jr. Quis separabit? 13:22, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

German Jews did sometimes give their children "Jr." names in the U.S. But Jack Warden's father wasn't Jewish. He (Warden's father) was half German Lutheran and half or so Irish. The discussion above addresses this. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 04:03, 20 July 2014 (UTC)