Frumkin Family

Sidney Franklin was born on July 11, 1903 and raised in Park Slope, Brooklyn, by Russian Orthodox Jewish parents, Abram and Lubba Frumpkin. His father was a patrolman for the New York Police Department. Sidney attended P.S. 10 and three years at Commercial High School in Brooklyn, before dropping out. While in school he was attracted to visual and performance arts. He dabbled in acting and took on the last name Franklin, after Benjamin Franklin, as his stage name, allegedly in order to skirt his disapproving father’s attention. The Frumpkin family seems to have eventually dropped the “p” and become Frumkin.

In 1922, after a violent dispute with his father, Franklin ran away to Mexico City, where within a year the well-known Mexican matador, Rodolfo Gaona, was grooming Franklin for the bullring. Franklin’s debut bullfight was in September 1923 in Mexico City. His Spanish debut was in June 1929. Franklin, known as “El Yanqui,” was at the height of his bullfighting career in the early 1930s and in the years following World War II, making appearances at bullrings in Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Colombia and Panama. He survived a number of gorings; the last goring, in Juarez, Mexico, in 1959, brought his ring performances to an end.

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