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Samuel Bronfman

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Entrepreneur

The Resume

    (February 27, 1889-July 10, 1971)
    Born in Otaci, Moldova
    Founded Distillers Corporation Ltd. in Montreal (1924)
    Purchased Joseph E. Seagram & Sons (1928)
    Merged company retained the Seagram name

Why he might be annoying:

    He got around alcohol bans in the Canadian provinces by selling liquor by mail until the postal authorities cracked down.
    He then rebranded his booze as medicine, selling it under names like 'Liver and Kidney Cure' and 'Rock-a-Bye Cough Cure.'
    During Prohibition in the US, he supplied liquor to bootleggers, including ones connected to the mob.
    As a result, his name came up frequently during the Kefauver hearings into organized crime.

Why he might not be annoying:

    Appropriately, his last name translates as 'whiskey man.'
    He, his parents, and his siblings arrived in Canada as refugees from anti-Semitic pogroms in Czarist Russia (1898).
    He built Seagram into the largest distiller in North America.
    In a bid for respectability, he founded the philanthropic Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation (1952).
    When he died, the Montreal airport had to temporarily suspend commercial flights because of the large number of private jets flying in dignitaries attending his funeral.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 6 Votes: 16.67% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 5 Votes: 40.0% Annoying