Dawn Steel

Steel was born to a Jewish family[5] in the Bronx, New York to Nathan "Nat" Steel (né Spielberg), a zipper salesman to the military and semi-professional weight lifter called the "Man of Steel,"[6] and Lillian Steel (née Tarlow), a businesswoman.

Lillian Tarlo Steel, Dawn's mother, died from lung cancer at age 55. She was the daughter of Nathan and Rebecca Tarlo, Polish immigrants. She had two brothers named Abraham and Paul. Their name became spelled T-A-R-L-O-W when Abraham joined the US military during World War I. Paul and Abraham's children reside in NYC And Georgia, while Lillian's children live in California.[7]

Dawn grew up in Manhattan and in Great Neck, New York,[8] according to her autobiography. She had one sibling, a brother, Larry Steel.

Both of her parents were of Russian-Jewish descent. When she was nine years old, Steel's father suffered a nervous breakdown, so her mother was the family's sole support.[4]

Steel attended the School of Business Administration at Boston University from 1964 to 1965, but left due to financial problems.[2] She attended New York University from 1966 to 1967, studying marketing, but did not graduate.[7]

In 1968, Steel worked as a sportswriter for Major League Baseball Digest and the NFL in New York.

In 1968, after starting out as a secretary, Steel became merchandising director for Penthouse.

In 1975, she founded a merchandising company that produced novelty items such as designer logo toilet paper called Oh Dawn! Inc.[4] One of the products she created was Gucci-logo embellished toilet paper. Within months the Gucci family sued Steel for trademark infringement.[9] Steel hired attorney Sid Davidoff, a former top aide to Mayor John Lindsay.[9] The case was in the news as "toilet paper caper" and was the subject of an editorial cartoon.[9] The case was settled out of court.[9]

In 1978, Steel moved to Los Angeles, working as a merchandising consultant for Playboy.

In her obituary for The New York Times, Nora Ephron said:

Dawn certainly wasn't the first woman to become powerful in Hollywood, but she was the first woman to understand that part of her responsibility was to make sure that eventually there were many other powerful women. She hired women as executives, women as producers and directors, women as marketing people. The situation we have today, with a huge number of women in powerful positions, is largely because of Dawn Steel.[2]

Steel's career at Paramount as Chief of Production was referenced in the HBO series Entourage, in the Season Three (2006) episode "What About Bob?", when fictional producer Bob Ryan asks Ari Gold whether Dawn Steel would still be working there, to which Ari replies: "Bob, Dawn Steel died nine years ago."

In 1989, Steel was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.[15]

Steel's father changed the family surname from "Spielberg" before her birth. The name Steel was chosen to reflect her father's weightlifting career.[2]

In 1975, Steel married Ronnie Rothstein, a former business partner in the Oh Dawn! merchandising company. She dated young struggling actor Richard Gere in 1975 and director Martin Scorsese (after his divorce from Isabella Rossellini) in 1983.[2][4]

In 1985, she married film producer Charles Roven[16] with whom she had a daughter, Rebecca Steel Roven, in 1987.[2][17]

She was a producer in all films unless otherwise noted.

• Steel, Dawn. They Can Kill You but They Can't Eat You: Lessons from the Front. New York: Pocket Books, 1993. ISBN 978-0-671-73833-4 OCLC 31007903
• Steel, Dawn. They Can Kill You but They Can't Eat You. New York: Simon & Schuster AudioWorks, 1993. Audio book read by the author (cassette format). ISBN 978-0-671-86555-9. OCLC 28867741

• Film producers
• List of notable brain tumor patients

• Dawn Steel at IMDb