Seitlin, Charlotte

Born August 16, 1906 in Trenton, New Jersey, to Myron and Flora (Smith) Seitlin, Charlotte Seitlin graduated from Trenton High School in 1924 and from the New Jersey College for Women (later Douglass College, now part of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey) in 1928. Upon graduation, Seitlin went to work at Simon and Schuster in New York City, a publishing firm founded in 1924. By the time the firm forced her into retirement in 1971, Seitlin had risen to senior executive editor, specializing in entertainment memoirs and travel. Some of the figures she worked with over the years on their memoirs and other books include Erté, Sam Levenson, Rocky Graziano, June Havoc and June's better-known sister, Gypsy Rose Lee. Known as "Chatzie" to her family and friends, who included such literary greats as May Sarton, Janet Flanner, and Kay Boyle, Seitlin never married. After her retirement from Simon and Schuster, she worked as a freelance editor in New York and Connecticut, with occasional trips to Barbados, until her health declined severely in the spring of 1979. She died of a brain tumor in June of that year.