Births on October 5

Frederic Morton, Austrian-American banker, journalist, and author (d. 2015)

Frederic Morton (October 5, 1924 – April 20, 2015) was an Austrian-born American writer.

Born Fritz Mandelbaum in Vienna, Morton was the son of a blacksmith who specialized in forging (manufacturing) imperial medals. In the wake of the Anschluss of 1938, his father was arrested, but later released. The family fled to Britain in 1939 and migrated to New York City the next year, when the senior Mandelbaum also changed the family name in order to be able to join an anti-Semitic labor union.

Morton worked as a baker but began studying literature in 1949. He returned to Austria in 1962 to marry his fiancée, Marcia, whom he had met at college.

From 1959, Morton worked as a columnist for several American periodicals including The New York Times, Esquire, and Playboy. He died at the Hilton hotel in Vienna at the age of 90 on April 20, 2015.