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Born in a London Underground station during the Blitz, to Jewish refugees who had fled the Holocaust, Springer worked on Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 campaign before becoming, at 33, the youngest mayor Cincinnati had ever had. He later anchored local news there, winning ten regional Emmy Awards for commentary, before The Jerry Springer Show made him the face of a genre he more or less invented. He hosted it for 27 years, then moved to courtroom television as Judge Jerry.