Beatrice Silverman
Mailer's first wife (married 1944, separated winter 1951, divorced January 1952); with Mailer in Paris during his Sorbonne year and co-dedicatee, with his mother, of The Naked and the Dead ("To my Mother and Bea").
Beatrice (“Bea”) Silverman, a Boston University music major from Chelsea, Massachusetts, met Mailer in mid-December 1941, during his sophomore year at Harvard. They married on 7 January 1944, just before Mailer was drafted into the U.S. Army; Bea joined the WAVES the same year. The couple sailed for Europe on RMS Queen Elizabeth in October 1947 and studied at the Sorbonne on the GI Bill; Mailer began Barbary Shore in Paris during this period.
Bea is co-dedicatee of The Naked and the Dead: “To my Mother and Bea. I would like to thank William Raney, Theodore S. Amussen, and Charles Devlin for the aid and encouragement given me at various times in the writing of this novel”.
Their daughter Susan was born to Bea on 28 August 1949. Mailer separated from Bea in the winter of 1951 and began living with Adele Morales in New York; the divorce was finalized in January 1952.
Related pages
- 1941 | 1944 | 1948 | The Naked and the Dead