Linda Louise McCartney, was born September 24,1941. She was an American photographer, musician, animal rights activist, and entrepreneur. She was best known as the first wife of Paul McCartney and for her photographs of celebrities and contemporary musicians. Her photos were published in the book Linda McCartney’s Sixties: Portrait of an Era in 1992.
Linda Louise Eastman, the second of four children, in affluent Scarsdale in Westchester County, New York. She had one older brother, John, and two younger sisters, Laura and Louise Jr.
Her father, Leopold Vail Epstein, was born in 1910 to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Louis and Stella Epstein. His sister Rose Frisch became a noted scientist who worked on issues of women’s fertility and population studies.
Her father later changed his name to Lee Eastman .He practiced entertainment law in New York for well-known clients, including bandleader Tommy Dorsey, songwriters Harold Arlen and Jack Lawrence, and fine artists such as Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. At Eastman’s request, Lawrence wrote the song Linda”when Eastman’s daughter was four.It was recorded byBuddy Clark in 1947 and went to number 1 on the charts.Many girls born in the United States were named Linda in those years.
McCartney’s mother, Louise Sara Eastman (née Lindner), was from a German-Jewish family.Her father was Max J. Lindner, founder of the Lindner Company clothing store in Ohio.
Eastman graduated from Scarsdale High School in 1959.She then attended Vermont College, where she received an Associate of Arts degree in 1961. Her brother John, who studied law like their father, later became Paul McCartney’s attorney and manager.
Linda preferred nature and animals. After graduating from Vermont College she attended the University of Arzona and majored in fine arts.
Linda married Paul in March 1969 at Marylebone Town Hall, London, and thereafter went to St John’s Wood Church for a blessing.Her daughter, Heather Louise, from her marriage to Melville See, was adopted by her new husband. Together, the McCartneys had three other children. After the 1970 breakup of the Beatles, Paul and Linda recorded the album Ram and formed the band Wings in 1971. She continued to be part of her husband’s touring band following Wings’ breakup in 1981 up until The New World Tour in 1993.
Linda became an animal rights activist and wrote and published several vegetarian cookbooks. She also founded the Linda McCartney Foods company with her husband. In 1995 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and died from the disease in 1998 at the age of 56 in Tucson, Arizona.
Paul and Linda McCartney became vegetarian in 1971, and she promoted a vegetarian diet through her cookbooks: Linda McCartney’s Home Cooking (with author Peter Cox, 1989), Linda’s Kitchen, and Simple and Inspiring Recipes for Meatless Meals. She explained her change to vegetarianism by saying that she did not “eat anything with a face … If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian”.
The McCartneys became outspoken vegetarians and animal rights activists. In 1991, Linda introduced a line of frozen vegetarian meals under the Linda McCartney Foods name, which made her wealthy independently of her husband. The H. J. Heinz Company acquired the company in March 2000, and the Hain Celestial Group bought it in 2007.
A strong advocate of animal rights, Linda lent her support to many organizations, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the Council for the Protection of Rural England, and Friends of the Earth. She was also a patron of the League Against Cruel Sports. She narrated a TV advertisement for PETA in which she said: “Have you ever seen a fish gasping for breath when you take it out of the water? They’re saying, ‘Thanks a lot for killing me. It feels great, you know.’ No! It hurts!”After her death, PETA created the Linda McCartney Memorial Award.