Burkan was born on November 8, 1879, in
Iași,
Romania, the son of Moritz Burkan and Tillie Armm. Burkan immigrated to America in 1886 and settled with his family on the
Lower East Side of
Manhattan where his father operated a series of luncheonettes and pool rooms in the red-light district. He was enrolled in the
City College of New York when he was fifteen and graduated three years later. He then did a two-year course at the
New York University School of Law, graduating from there in 1899. As he was too young to be admitted to the state bar that year, he initially worked as a stenographer with lawyer Julius Lehmann in the
Woolworth Building. He was admitted to the bar in 1900. Burkan wasn't a member of a white-shoe firm and never had any partners, although he did have associates and at one point occupied an entire floor of the Continental Building at
Broadway and 41st Street. His first major client was light opera composer
Victor Herbert. A copyright attorney, a number of his clients were important figures in show business, like
Charlie Chaplin and
Florenz Ziegfeld, and motion picture companies like
United Artists,
Columbia Picture Association, and
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1930, he successfully defended
Mae West when she faced obscenity charges over her show
Pleasure Man, only to reportedly sue her afterwards for failing to pay his fees. He appeared on behalf of
Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt in the custody battle over her daughter
Gloria. In 1906, he testified before Congress on behalf of the
Music Publishers Association to increase copyright protection for intellectual property owners. This led to the
Copyright Act of 1909. In 1914, he helped Victor Herbert, Irving Berlin, and other composers and music publishers to form the
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in order to protect their intellectual rights. As part of the ASCAP's efforts to sell licenses to businesses that wanted to play their music, Burkan filed a lawsuit on behalf of Herbert against a New York City restaurant that played Herbert's song
Sweethearts. The lawsuit,
Herbert v. Shanley Co., reached the United States Supreme Court, where Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes sided with Herbert and the ASCAP. His clients also included
Samuel Goldwyn, Arthur M. Loew,
Ernst Lubitsch,
Constance Bennett,
Walter Wanger, and
Jesse Lasky. Burkan was a delegate to the
1915 New York State Constitutional Convention. He was an alternate delegate to the
1916 Democratic National Convention and a delegate to the
1924,
1928, and
1936 Democratic National Conventions. He was also a member of the
New York State Democratic Committee by 1930, a presidential elector in the
1932 presidential election, and a delegate to the 1933 convention to ratify the
21st Amendment in New York. He served as the
Democratic leader in the 17th Assembly District in southern
Manhattan from 1915 until his death and as chairman of the
Triborough Bridge Authority in 1933. His son Nathan Burkan Jr. was a lawyer who served as counsel of the Office of Rent Control of the Housing and Development Administration. Burkan died from an attack of acute indigestion at his country home in
Great Neck on June 6, 1936. Three thousand people attended his funeral at
Temple Emanu-El, with another 500 people standing outside the Temple.
Gene Buck, president of the ASCAP, delivered the eulogy, and the services were conducted by Rabbi Nathan A. Perilman and Cantor Moshe Rudinow. Mayor
Fiorello La Guardia and former Mayor
James J. Walker led the funeral procession of over fifty honorary pallbearers, who consisted of jurists, Tammany leaders, stage personalities, and conductors. Among those who attended the funeral were
New York Supreme Court Justices Peter J. Schmuck,
Ferdinand Pecora,
Julius Miller,
Aaron J. Levy, and
Salvatore A. Cotillo, General Sessions Judges
Morris Koenig, Owen W. Bohan, George L. Donnellan, and James Garrett Wallace, Federal Judges
John C. Knox and
Martin T. Manton, Surrogate
James A. Foley, Representative
Sol Bloom, former Supreme Court Justice
Thomas C. T. Crain,
Grover A. Whalen,
George V. McLaughlin,
James J. Hines,
A. C. Blumenthal,
Will Hays,
Irving Berlin,
Morris Gest, District Attorney
William C. Dodge,
Nicholas and
Joseph Schenck, and
Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt. He was buried in Union Field Cemetery in Queens. == References ==