Harold Matzner is the owner of the popular Spencer’s Restaurant in Palm Springs and the CEO of a New York/New Jersey-based advertising and marketing firm. Mr. Matzner is credited with revitalising the Palm Springs International Film Festival and pioneering the successful business concept of targeted “shared mail.”
Matzner has served as executive vice chairman of the Palm Springs Art Museum, the McCallum Theatre, the Palm Springs Tennis Club Members Association, and the Palm Springs International Film Festival and Awards Gala. He has also served on the boards of Eisenhower Medical Center and the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center. Matzner supervised the drafting of Palm Springs’ Measure J, a tax hike that helped pay the city’s downtown renovation programme and infrastructure rebuilding. Let’s take a look at more info on Harold Matzner.
More info on Harold Matzner
Harold Matzner was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1937. His father worked for the Works Progress Administration, which supplied jobless people with low-wage public works jobs. “We had shelter and food, but nothing came easy for my parents at the time,” Matzner adds. “The country was emerging from the Great Depression, and my father had just a third-grade education. But we had shelter and food, for which we were thankful. My father was never unhappy with his career.”
Matzner and his parents shared a fifth-floor walk-up apartment with his maternal grandfather, an Orthodox Jewish cantor and Hebrew instructor. Matzner’s mother is described as “kind and filled with goodness.” Matzner’s father later became a minority shareholder in a printing firm. Matzner’s childhood employment included door-to-door sales of seeds and dog food, a paper route, and assistance in his father’s print business. He enjoyed sports and spent his free time playing baseball and football, and he was always the quickest runner in his class. This came in handy on days when bullies chased him home.
Matzner suffered in school, which he subsequently discovered was due to undiagnosed dyslexia. He also believes his father was dyslexic, which explains why he dropped out of school so early. Matzner graduated from high school in 1954 and went on to work as an apprentice in the sports department of the New York World-Telegram while continuing to work in his father’s printing company. He toured with the New York Yankees and had a couple of his stories published, but by 1958, he thought he wasn’t skilled enough as a sports journalist and chose to change careers.
