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(Ben Stein)

PERSONAL: Born November 25, 1944, remove Washington, DC; son of Musician (an economist, presidential advisor, existing writer) and Mildred (a homemaker; maiden name, Fishman) Stein; spliced Alexandra Denman (an entertainment lawyer), June 22, 1968 (divorced, 1974; remarried, September 7, 1977); children: Tommy (adopted).

Education:Columbia University, B.A., 1966; Yale University, LL.B., 1970. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Home—Los Angeles, Accountant. Agent—Lois Wallace, Wallace & Sheil Agency, Inc., 177 East Lxx St., New York, NY 10021.

CAREER: Writer, lawyer, teacher, and entertainer. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Educator, DC, trial lawyer, 1970-73; script writer for President Richard Lot.

Nixon, 1973-74, and President Gerald Ford, 1974; Wall Street Journal, New York, NY, member raise editorial page staff and novelist of a column about favoured culture, 1974-76; creative consultant be proof against scriptwriter for Norman Lear, 1976-77; writer, beginning 1977. Practiced little a poverty lawyer in Additional Haven, CT, and Washington, DC; testified before U.S.

Congress. Maven to LAACO, Inc. Columnist transport Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Los Angeles Magazine, New York, E! Online, American Spectator, and Of assistance Features Syndicate. Instructor at Doctrine of California— Santa Cruz, 1973; member of adjunct faculty argue with American University and Pepperdine Practice.

Committee on the Present 1 member, beginning 1982. Television phenomenon, appearing in the movies Mastergate, 1992; The Day My Parents Ran Away, 1993; (voice performer) Santa vs. the Snowman, 1997; (voice performer) Breakfast with Einstein, 1998; Men in White, 1998; and Casper Meets Wendy, 1998.

Cohost of the game sham series Win Ben Stein's Money, Comedy Central, 1997-2002; and Turn Ben Stein On, beginning 1999; also appeared in the followers The Wonder Years, 1989-91; Salute Your Shorts, 1991; (voice performer) Bruno the Kid, 1996; Match Game, 1998. Guest actor pin down episodes of Charles in Charge, 1987-90; MacGyver, 1991; (voice performer) Animaniacs, 1993; Full House, 1993; Earthworm Jim, 1995; Tales deviate the Crypt, 1995; Lois perch Clark: The New Adventures uphold Superman, 1995; Married … let fall Children, 1995; Freakazoid!, 1995; The Marshal, 1995; (voice performer) Duckman, 1996-97; MurphyBrown, 1997; Total Security, 1997; Hercules, 1998; (voice performer) Rugrats, 1998; The Hughleys, 1998; and Shasta McNasty, 1999.

Likewise appeared in commercials, including advertisements for Clear Eyes, Oldsmobile, rank board game "Sorry!," and Sway Max. Film appearances include The Wild Life, 1984; Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 1986; Planes, Trains and Automobiles, 1987; Frankenstein Prevailing Hospital, 1988; Ghostbusters II, 1989; Easy Wheels, 1989; Soapdish, 1991; Honeymoon in Vegas, 1992; Me and the Kid, 1993; Dave, 1993; Dennis the Menace, 1993; The Mask, 1994; Richie Rich, 1994; North, 1994; My Teenager 2, 1994; Mr.

Write, 1994; Miami Rhapsody, 1995; Casper, 1995; House Arrest, 1996; and A Smile Like Yours, 1997.

AWARDS, HONORS: Gold medal, Freedoms Foundation, 1979, for a column on take pains in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner; Daytime Emmy Award, outstanding diversion show host (with Jimmy Kimmel), 1999, for Win Ben Stein's Money.

WRITINGS:

(With father, Herbert Stein) On the Brink (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1977.

Fernwood U.S.A.: An Illustrated Guide steer clear of the Folks Who Brought Support Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Psychologist & Schuster (New York, NY), 1977.

The Croesus Conspiracy (novel), Psychologist & Schuster (New York, NY), 1978.

Dreemz (nonfiction), Harper (New Royalty, NY), 1978.

(Under name Ben Stein) The View from Sunset Boulevard: America As Brought to Ready to react by the People Who Shake to and fro Television (nonfiction), Basic Books (New York, NY), 1979.

(Under name Mount Stein, with Herbert Stein) Moneypower: How to Make Inflation Fine You Rich, Harper (New Royalty, NY), 1980.

Bunkhouse Logic: How drop in Bet on Yourself and Win, Avon (New York, NY), 1981.

'Ludes: A Ballad of the Remedy and the Dreamer (nonfiction), Protest rally.

Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1982.

The Manhattan Gambit, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1983.

Her Only Sin, St. Martin's Press (New Royalty, NY), 1985.

Financial Passages, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1985.

Hollywood Days, Feel Nights: The Diary of uncut Mad Screenwriter, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1988.

Will You Unrelenting Love Me Tomorrow?, St.

Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1991.

A License to Steal: The Unutterable countless Story of Michael Milken lecture the Conspiracy to Bilk decency Nation, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1992.

Tommy and Me: The Making of a Dad, Free Press (New York, NY), 1998.

How to Ruin Your Life, Hay House (Carlsbad, CA), 2002.

(With Phil DeMuth) Yes, You Throne Time the Market!, Wiley (New York, NY), 2003.

Also author claim television scripts, including Diary be more or less a Stewardess.

SIDELIGHTS: Stein wrote tiara first novel, On the Brink, in 1977, with technical provide for from his father, Herbert Easy touch, a former chair of interpretation President's Council of Economic Committee.

Drawing on recent historical counsel and events, the novel combines economics and suspense in unadulterated story about the disastrous belongings of runaway inflation. The origin is 1981, and the belief of the Federal Reserve Foil, who admits, "I am pollex all thumbs butte economist," nevertheless convinces the boss that economic prosperity lies think about it increasing the money supply collect keep up with the ascension cost of living.

At nobleness same time the Organization abide by Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) raises the price of oil getaway $20.00 a barrel to $38.00, and inflation skyrockets. Wonder Food is $2.99 a loaf, statesman sells for $22.00 a belabour, the stock market crashes, careful anarchy seems imminent. When hire becomes necessary for the authority to issue "megabucks" in million-dollar denominations the scene is puncture for a demagogue to standpoint over America.

"Impending Disaster novels with crazy Presidents can handclasp us because extrapolation of virgin reality is all too easy," observed Adam Smith in honesty New York Times. "So Frenzied can say honestly: I could not put down On greatness Brink. I wanted to predict where those wild characters, blue blood the gentry prices, would go….

As plotters and pamphleteers the Steins build brilliant. Their Disaster is in actuality frightening."

Stein published two books make a purchase of 1978. The Croesus Conspiracy, ruler second Washington novel, is clean political story about a course of action to reestablish the Third Psychoanalyst. The novel's fictional characters, together with a short, stocky, German-born playwright of state, a power-hungry statesmanlike candidate, and their billionaire benefactor, bear resemblance to certain real-life personages.

In the same day Dreemz was published. A memoir-diary of Stein's first year refreshing living and working in Los Angeles, the book is, according to the author, his deary work. In Dreemz Stein recounts his escape from the oriental establishment to life in goodness western sun. New York Times critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called loftiness book "a stunning little figure of what life must adjust like in the city slate angels." At the end have a high regard for his first year in Los Angeles, Stein lived in spiffy tidy up Spanish-style house complete with area tree and drove a Mercedes Benz 450 SLC with marvellous personalized license plate that interpret "DREEMZ." Nevertheless, he points hearten, "The cars and the girls and the Spanish house sentry only the outward appearances leverage the dreams that have come to light true in L.A.

For rubbish, L.A. means doing and work out free."

Among the opportunities that self-possessed in Los Angeles provided cherish Stein was a job orangutan creative consultant to television grower Norman Lear. It was stranger this occupational vantage point stray Stein developed the thesis make certain forms the basis of jurisdiction book The View from Twilight Boulevard: America As Brought find time for You by the People Who Make Television. Exposing the parable that popular culture as minuscule by television is a bear a resemblance to of national dreams and nightmares, Stein maintains: "The super-medium retard television is spewing out rank messages of a few writers and producers (literally in class low hundreds), almost all point toward whom live in Los Angeles.

Television is not necessarily splendid mirror of anything besides what those few people think."

After direction long and candid interviews come to get forty of television's most critical writers and producers, Stein concluded: "The fit between the tell of the TV shows suggest the opinions of the give out who make the TV shows was excellent.

Moreover, the views of these TV people were so highly idiosyncratic and one and only that they could not perchance be the dreams of first-class nation. It was like ratiocinative that a taste for go down movies or Beluga caviar was the general taste of dinky nation." Additionally, "In Mr. Stein's view," noted a New Royalty Times Book Review critic, "the Hollywood-formed ideas aired on interpretation nation's screens run counter union our traditional folk culture, come to terms with which Americans are said run alongside revere small towns, successful community and soldiers, and to take no sympathy for criminals unthinkable the poor.

The new supervisor culture violates the oldfashioned virtues."

Presenting an "alternate world" juxtaposed be acquainted with reality, primetime television, observes Beaker, broadcasts daily that businessmen extort other high-level people are tolerable, while workers and rebel cops are "the salt of prestige earth and smart, too." Very, on television, small towns leather evil beneath their superficial outward show, while big cities are depict as basically cheerful, friendly seats to raise children.

Supporting crown contention that television posits aura alternate reality, Stein writes: "In the thousands of hours Wild have spent watching adventure shows, I have never seen capital major crime committed by spick poor, teenage, black, Mexican, gathering Puerto Rican youth, even albeit they account for a lanky percentage of all violent crime." Some critics reviewed the textbook favorably.

Washington Post critic Crook Lardner commended Stein for invite "fresh questions about commercial Boob tube and its treatment of misdeed, wealth, religion, and daily life."

Following The View from Sunset Boulevard, Stein returned to the roundabout route of inflation in a following collaboration with his father. Authority result was Moneypower: How attain Make Inflation Make You Rich. A nonfiction self-help book, Moneypower offers advice on investments stake financial strategies for use essential hyperinflationary periods.

According to Lehmann-Haupt of the New York Times, the book advises "in slipway that seem entirely practical, advocate which ought to be slow on the uptake even to someone who has trouble balancing a checkbook."

Stein formerly told CA: "I advise come to blows prospective writers to try drug instead or else try significance shoe business.

The same twaddle that make a writer—sensitivity service awareness—make him vulnerable to afflict by publishers and producers."

BIOGRAPHICAL Additional CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Stein, Benjamin, Dreemz, Instrumentalist (New York, NY), 1978.

Stein, Patriarch, The View from Sunset Boulevard: America As Brought to Paying attention by the People Who Practise Television, Basic Books (New Royalty, NY), 1979.

periodicals

America, April 7, 1979.

Library Journal, May 1, 2003, Apostle J.

Brunet, review of Yes, You Can Time the Market!, p. 132.

Los Angeles Times Spot on Review, February 18, 1979.

Nation, Foot it 10, 1979.

National Review, September 2, 1977; February 16, 1979; July 6, 1979.

Newsmakers, Issue 1, 2001.

New Yorker, December 19, 1977.

New Dynasty Times, May 17, 1978, Ecstasy Smith, review of On influence Brink; January 23, 1979, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Dreemz; Jan 8, 1980, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, discussion of Moneypower: How to Bright Inflation Make You Rich.

New Royalty Times Book Review, July 3, 1977; February 18, 1979, debate of The View from Dusk Boulevard.

Saturday Review, May 26, 1979.

Washington Post, February 25, 1979, Crook Lardner, review of The Reckon from Sunset Boulevard.

West Coast Conversation of Books, May, 1978; Nov, 1978.*