Biography for
Upton Sinclair More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

20 September 1878, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Date of Death

25 November 1968, Bound Brook, New Jersey, USA

Birth Name

Upton Beall Sinclair

Spouse

Mary Elizabeth Hard Willis	(14 October 1961 - 18 December 1967) (her death)
Mary Craig Sinclair	(21 April 1913 - 26 April 1961) (her death)
Meta Fuller	(18 October 1900 - June 1912) (divorced) 1 child

Trivia

Born at 9:00am-LMT

Pulitzer-winning American writer, he was the Democratic nominee for California Governor in 1934. He ran for office on other occasions as a Socialist.

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.

Biography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, volume 7, pages 451-457. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Co., 1982.

Biography in: "Dictionary of American Biography". Supplement Eight, 1966-1970, pages 593-595. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988.

Biography in: "Current Biography Yearbook 1962". Pages 389-391. The H.W. Wilson Company, 1963.

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.

In 1934, he changed his registration to the Democratic Party and ran in the primary for the gubernatorial nomination for the Senate.

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".

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.

The Republican campaign against Sinclair's senate race forced them to spend $10 million, a record amount for the Depression.

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.

Sinclair later wrote up his memories of the 1934 race in a book titled, "How I Got Beat".