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Red-Hot Socialist. Jack was born on May 18, 1904, as a recently installed wooden plaque on the grimy, six-story, red-brick building at 85 Stanton St. attests. (Beneath Javits' name someone has scrawled "Nigger Lover.") Until his bar mitzvah at 13, Jack slept in the same bed with his brother Ben, now 71. "Our relationship was that of father and son," says Ben, who tried to teach Jack all he knew; to the vast annoyance of Jack's wife, he is still trying. For a time, Ben was, in his words, "a red-hot Socialist" who railed on street corners against the system that was crushing his father. Today, as a well-to-do lawyer, he is closer to Goldwater in his economic philosophy, has written a number of books with titles like Make Everybody Rich and Be a Capitalist or Be Damned.
Long, Red Curls. Jack, a quiet, neat child with long, red curls, began working at eleven, helping his mother sell crockery from a pushcart. After graduating as senior class president from Manhattan's George Washington High School, he worked as a lithographic-supply salesman and a bill collector, attended New York University's law school at the same time, passed his bar exams in 1927. In that, year was born Javits & Javits, a firm specializing in bankruptcy and corporate reorganization, with Ben the inside man and Jack the eloquent trial lawyer. Jack, who set up his own firm when he entered politics, is now worth roughly $1,000,000, earns $30,-000 a year as Senator and another $35,000, after taxes, from his Park Avenue law office.
Vacationing at Murray Bay, Canada, in 1933, Jack met and married Marjorie Ringling, an adopted daughter of the circus Ringlings and an aspiring actress. Within three years, they were divorced. Says Javits: "I guess we were too young. She was a Catholic and I was a Jew, and that had something to do with it."
Fourth Reich. During World War II Jack served in the Army's chemical-warfare branch, was discharged as a lieutenant colonel in 1945. A Republican since joining Fiorello La Guardia's home club in 1932, he immediately got himself appointed research chief for the G.O.P.'s New York City mayoralty candidate, Jonah Goldstein, who was roundly whipped by Bill O'Dwyer. As a reward for his labors, the party offered Javits the nomination for Congress in the 21st District, an exceptionally HIerate, sophisticated—and Democratic—area which had attracted so many German-Jewish refugees from Hitler that part of it was nicknamed "the Fourth Reich." Espousing a resoundingly liberal line, Javits upset his closest competitor 46,897 to 40,652 in a three-way race.
Challenged in 1948 by Democrat Paul O'Dwyer, the mayor's brother, Javits flooded the district with pamphlets, a comic book that showed him disarming a deranged gunman and saving the neighborhood (pure fantasy), even a brochure in Armenian for the handful of voters who spoke the language. He won by a bare 1,873 votes. It was never quite as harrowing again. In 1950, his margin rose to 29,255, and in 1952 to 42,229.