Irene Lee Diamond

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 Dark Victory (1939) and The Maltese Falcon (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.