David Herman
How Hollywood Invented the New Jew

David Herman | How Hollywood Invented the New Jew

- Hello, my name is David Herman. Welcome to sunny London. I’m going to be talking today, well, I was asked to give a talk about heroes, and I thought about movie heroes. And then I thought there weren’t really that many Jewish film heroes at a certain point in the early years of Hollywood. And then I began to think, well, actually what changed? Where did Jewish film heroes come from? And basically they broke through in the 1960s and 1970s in America, and I’m going to tell that story. So early in 1967, the young and then very unknown Dustin Hoffman was walking home along West 11th Street in New York when he bumped into his neighbor, Mel Brooks. Brooks had yet to make a movie. However, the two men were both part of a group of young Jewish actors and writers in New York, a group that included Gene Hackman of “French Connection” fame, Elliott Gould as in “Mash,” and James Caan as in “The Godfather.” And Brooks talked to Hoffman about a film he was planning called “The Producers.” He wanted Hoffman to play the crazy playwright. Hoffman said there was a problem. He was being considered for the main part in a new film called “The Graduate.” Brooks laughed. “But you’re an ugly little rat. You’re not going to get it.” Brooks wasn’t the only one who thought Hoffman didn’t look right for the part of Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate.” Hoffman himself had told director Mike Nichols that he didn’t think he was right for the role.

“He’s a kind of Anglo-Saxon, tall, slender, good looking chap. I’m short and Jewish.” “Believe me,” said Nichols, “Benjamin is Jewish inside.” Nichols persuaded Hoffman to go for an audition, and Hoffman later described how it went. “I was sitting in the makeup chair and I felt like the ugliest piece of shit there ever was. I mean, I always felt like this, but this time was worse. And Nichols kept saying, ‘What are we going to do about his nose?’ There were two problems here. First, there was the question about the character of Ben in ‘The Graduate.’ Although he is never described in the original novel, everyone thought of him as a tall, blonde, Californian. Nichols got Robert Redford to take a screen test.” Smart choice. Buck Henry, who wrote the screenplay for “The Graduate,” later said how, “We had conceived of the characters and in fact of all the major characters, as being prototypical South California. Big blonde people. Our fantasy casting when it was being written was Robert Redford and Candy Bergen. And for mom and dad, Ronald Reagan and Doris Day. All blonde, all healthy.” Well, Ronald Reagan wasn’t blonde, but you get the point. “Surfboards is what we call them.” So here comes Dustin, clearly not a surfboard. The larger question was not just about whether Dustin Hoffman, short, dark, with a big nose, was right for the part of Ben Braddock in “The Graduate.” The larger question in 1967 was whether anyone who looked that Jewish was right for any lead part in a Hollywood movie. Didn’t they all look, well, just too Jewish? This is what was behind all this talk of Hoffman’s nose and whether he was ugly.

It was all code for whether he looked too Jewish, and whether Hollywood was ready, 40 years ago, 55 years ago, for stars who looked so Jewish. All this changed in a few years, in no time at all. In the late ‘60s and early '70s, a whole new wave of Hollywood films took Hollywood by storm. First came “The Graduate” in 1967, the number one money maker in 1968, bringing in $50 million at the box office. It was the decade’s second highest grossing Hollywood release. It touched a nerve in America. Hot on its trail came “Funny Girl” with Barbara Streisand in 1968. Mel Brooks’s “The Producers” in 1968. “Bye Bye Braverman” with George Siegel in 1968. “I Love You, Alice B. Toklas” in 1968. “Goodbye, Columbus,” based on the Philip Roth novel, in 1969. “Hello, Dolly!” in 1969. “The Way We Were” in 1973. “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein, "And the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” starring Richard Dreyfuss, based on the novel by Mordechai Richler, all 1974. These films launched a whole new generation of Jewish East Coast directors, actors, and writers. Directors like Mel Brooks, Paul Mazursky, Mike Nichols, Sydney Pollack, and Woody Allen. Young actors in their twenties and thirties like Gene Hackman and Alan Arkin, George Siegel, Gene Wilder, and Dustin Hoffman, Elliott Gould, Barbara Streisand, and Richard Dreyfuss. And writers like Buck Henry, “The Graduate,” William Goldman, “All The President’s Men” and “Marathon Man,” and Robert Towne, famous for “Chinatown.”

It is easier to see what was going on when we look at their real names. Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky. Woody Allen was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg. Walter Matthau was born Walter Matuschansky. Buck Henry was born Buck Henry Zuckerman. Mike Nichols was born Michael Igor Peshkowsky. Robert Towne was born Robert Schwartz. The Schwartz’s and Zuckermans had hit Hollywood. They had three things in common, these writers, actors, and directors. First, they were Jewish. Secondly, they were from the East Coast, from the theater and TV world of New York. Nearly all of these names were from New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago. As Peter Biskind writes in his acclaimed history of '60s and '70s Hollywood “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” a lot of the energy that animated the new Hollywood came from New York. The '70s was the decade when New York swallowed Hollywood, when Hollywood was Gothamized. And third, finally, they were very young. The oldest of the group, Walter Matthau, was born in 1920, so he was almost 50, but most of them were born in the '30s and '40s. When “The Graduate” was made, Hoffman was 29, director Mike Nichols was 36, and screenwriter Buck Henry was 37. Alan Arkin was only 26 when he appeared as Yossarian in “Catch 22.”

Woody Allen was 30 when he wrote his first screenplay, and Barbara Streisand was 26 when she made “Funny Girl.” When Robert Evans, born Robert Shapera, became Executive Vice President of Paramount, he was 29. He was responsible for “Barefoot In The Park,” “The Odd Couple,” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Goodbye, Columbus,” “Love Story” and “The Godfather.” By the time he produced “Chinatown” in 1974, he was still only 34. The kids had taken over Hollywood. It’s easy to forget how new this was. This was a long way from old Hollywood and its nervous attitude to Jews. Of course, old Hollywood was run by Jews, obviously. Goldwyn and the Warner Brothers, Harry Cohen and Louis Mayer, they were all Jews, first or second generation immigrants from East Europe and Russia. Jewish producers made Hollywood, and from the '20s to the '50s, they ran it, but they kept their Jewishness off screen. In their book, “American Jewish Filmmakers,” David Desser and Lester D. Friedman write, “A story about Harry Cohn of Columbia illustrates the prevalent attitude among Jewish moguls throughout the studio years. The director Richard Quine wanted to use a specific actor in a film. 'He looks too Jewish!’ barked the irritated Harry Cohn, adding, ‘Around this studio, the only Jews we put into pictures play Indians.’ Louis B. Mayer of MGM obviously shared Cohn’s cruder sentiments when he told the dejected Danny Kaye, ‘I’d put you under contract right now, but you look too Jewish. Have some surgery to straighten out your nose and then we’ll talk.’ ‘

Even as MGM became known as Mayer’s ganze mishpocha,’ writes Paul Buhle, ‘the Jewish contents of films actually receded with the sound process,’ that is after the jazz singer. Harry Cohn was reputed to have barked to the director who wanted to cast a Jewish actor,” sorry, this is the same line about the only Jew we put into pictures plays Indians. And this is from Paul Buhle’s “From the Lower East Side to Hollywood.” Of course, this was not true. There were plenty of big Jewish stars through the Golden Age of Hollywood, but in the America of Henry Ford and Father Coughlin, the famous antisemite in the 1930s, they kept their Jewishness quiet. They had to change their names. Edward Israel Itzkowitz became Eddie Cantor. Muni Weisenfreund became Paul Muni. And Emmanuel Goldenberg became tough guy, Edward G. Robinson. And they did everything to disguise their Jewishness. They blacked up like Al Jolson. They spoke with funny Italian accents like Chico Marx or wore blonde wigs like Harpo. Jewish actors had nose jobs, anything so they didn’t look or sound too Jewish. In the words of Vincent Brooke in his book, “Something Ain’t Kosher Here: The Rise of the Jewish Sitcom” a virtual banishment of recognizable Jews from American movies occurred from the early ‘30s to the end of World War II, a period Henry Popkin has called the Great Retreat in Jewish cultural representation. If anything, Brooke is too conservative about his dates. Long after 1945, Jewish stars were still changing their names and their accents. Joseph Levitch became Jerry Lewis. Bernard Schwartz became Tony Curtis. And Shirley Schrift changed her name to Shelly Winters. Even the great satirist Lenny Bruce changed his name from Leonard Schneider.

Even key figures in the '60s New Wave anglicized their names, especially if their careers started in the '50s, like Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Walter Matthau, all anglicized their names and their routines. The cutoff point seemed to be around 1960. If your career started before, you probably changed your name. If it started after, you probably didn’t. And the reason for this is simple. If anything, the 1950s saw a greater disappearance of Jews from American films and television. There were no Jewish sitcoms after “The Goldbergs” went off air in 1956 until the 1970s. The Jewish hosted Yiddish-spiced variety shows that had dominated early TV vanished. There were a few TV sitcoms featuring regular Jewish characters, but they were not central characters. Long after McCarthyism had gone, Jews could not be too Jewish. Brooke writes, “The retreat from Jewish TV images from the late 1950s through the '60s occurred during a time of unprecedented prosperity and declining antisemitism.” So as late as 1967, Mike Nichols and Buck Henry fretted over how Jewish Dustin Hoffman looked. How could he play the part of Ben Braddock with a nose like that? So what changed? Several things changed, both in Hollywood and in the larger culture. First, Jewish writers broke through. They started to have a huge impact in the '50s and '60s. The generation of Bellow and Roth, Heller and Malamud appeared. And they start writing about Jewish characters. Yiddish explodes onto the page.

You can see the transition from Bellow’s first novel, “Dangling Man” in the 1940s, or Arthur Miller’s un-Jewish plays in the 1950s, to Roth’s first book “Goodbye, Columbus” with that great short story, “Eli, the Fanatic” and “Herzog” in 1963. There is a different voice, a new confidence. A different relationship to Jewishness, not just to the immigrant world of the '20s and '30s, but to new Jewish characters in the here and now. And these books sold. “Herzog” was a number one bestseller. It was on the bestseller list for 42 weeks, selling 142,000 copies in hardback alone. “On all levels,” wrote the great Jewish-American literary critic, Leslie Fiedler, in 1957, “the Jew is in the process of being mythologized into the representative American.” A few years later, Fiedler wrote of Zion as Main Street. Secondly, in the late '50s and early '60s, Hollywood discovered the Holocaust. Films like “The Diary of Anne Frank” in 1959, “Exodus” in 1960, and “Judgment at Nuremberg” in 1961, followed by all the debate that surrounded the Eichmann trial in 1961 led to a new interest in the Holocaust. The silence had been broken. Third, the Six Day War in 1967 created a new and very different interest in Israel. At the same time, a new generation of Jewish pop stars made the headlines.

Bob Dylan, of course, but also Simon and Garfunkel, who wrote and performed the songs on the soundtrack of “The Graduate.” Lou Reed, whose father was called Rabinowitz. Neil Diamond, Billy Joel, Leonard Cohen, Robbie Robertson from “The Band,” son of Leonard Klegerman. And Randy Newman among many, many, many others. A new generation of Jewish standup comedians also appeared. Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, Shelly Berman, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Tom Lehrer, and of course, Woody Allen. In October, 1965, the writer Wallace Markfield wrote an essay for Esquire Magazine on the Yiddishization of American humor. “Turn to any TV variety show,” he wrote, “await the standup comic, and chances are that he’ll come on with accents and gestures and usages whose origins are directly traceable to the borscht belt by way of the East European shtetl and the corner grocery store. The Jewish style, with its heavy reliance upon Yiddish and Yiddishisms, has emerged not only as a comic style, but as the comic style.” This wasn’t just about Jews, of course. There was a whole change towards ethnicity of any kind. Films like “In the Heat of the Night,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” both in 1967, and “Shaft” gave opportunities to Black actors. Italian Americans like Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, Coppola and Scorsese broke through in the early '70s. Jews were part of a whole new attitude towards ethnicity in America. So in part, then, Hollywood was responding to changes in the larger culture, but also just as the larger culture was changing, Hollywood itself started to change. The old Hollywood began to break up. The old conformity and conservatism gave way to new voices and new values. “Everything old was bad, everything new was good,” writes Peter Biskind in “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.”

Why? According to Biskind, the old Hollywood was out of touch with a new America. Doris Day and Rock Hudson comedies, war films and expensive musicals no longer spoke to a younger generation of film goers who listened to Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel and read Heller, Mailer, and Roth. America was changing. Civil rights, Vietnam, and the cultural revolution of the '60s found no expression in the Hollywood of Adolph Zukor, still on the board of Paramount in 1965 at the age of 92. Or Jack Warner, who at 73 still ran Warner Brothers. When the young Robert Evans was appointed to his job at Paramount, his boss told him, “The Paramount kaka in charge there now is 90 years old. He saw 'Alfie’ and couldn’t even hear it!” As a result, the studios, not surprisingly, were in dire financial straits. They were out of touch. They’d lost touch with their audience, particularly on the East Coast and the West Coast. In 1946, attendances hit an all time high, 78 million a week. By the 1960s, they were less than a third. By 1971, they were down to 15 million. This opened spaces for new talents. “The Graduate” was Hoffman’s third film. It was Mike Nichols’ second film. The screenwriter, Buck Henry, had only written one movie before and a TV series, “The Spy Spoof Gets Smart” with Mel Brooks.

It was a huge hit. It caught the pulse of late ‘60s America with its Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, its scenes of student life, and above all its rejection of the values and conformity of middle-aged Middle America, which also happened to be goyisher America. Right from the beginning, the film feels different. It opens, I don’t know if you remember the very opening shot. They’re playing, on the soundtrack, Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.” And you get a closeup of Dustin Hoffman on a plane. And the plane lands at LA airport. And we look at Hoffman alone at the airport as we hear the Simon and Garfunkel song. But above all, there’s the nose. We see Hoffman in profile against a white background, or rather we see his nose in profile against a white background. Ben’s parents later throw a graduation party for their son, home from college. A family friend comes up to him. “I want to say one word to you, just one word. Plastics. There’s a great future in plastics.” This was the Middle America that “The Graduate” and so many of the new wave of Jewish American films stood opposed to. Ben’s language is all about confusion and alienation. “I’m mixed up.” “What’s wrong with me?” “I’m just a little worried about my future.” The adults around him just speak platitudes. No one understands him. Even Mrs. Robinson isn’t interested in him, just in an affair. She’s a predator, shot against jungle-like plants, wearing animal print dresses.

Ben Braddock, of course, isn’t Jewish in any sense. There’s nothing Jewish about the character, but Hoffman’s look, the nose, the dark hair, the short, stocky build caught something about Braddock and about the moment. One pundit observed, “The Graduate is a movie about a Jewish boy with gentile parents.” Pretty much captures it all. As Leslie Fiedler wrote of Bellow and the Jewish writers, “The Jew is in the process of being mythologized into the representative American. Somehow when America was looking for a different kind of character, confused, alienated, an outsider, a new generation of Jewish actors seemed right for the part. Jews, I mean Jews with Jewish names and Jewish features, were not just acceptable in these new American films. They were actually desirable. Just as Jewish writers like Bellow and Roth seemed to speak to a larger new audience, so Jewish actors, writers, and directors suddenly seemed to speak to a new mainstream. They hadn’t changed. The culture and the mainstream culture had changed around them. There’s another point to be made about this explosion of Jewish talent in the '60s and '70s. They were both white and outsiders. Looking at Hoffman’s subsequent career, it is striking how many of his important early parts were as outsiders. The alienated and confused young Ben Braddock in "The Graduate,” the limping, coughing Ratso Rizzo, always scheming and on the make in “Midnight Cowboy” in 1969, which also earned him an Oscar nomination.

The curious hybrid Jack Crabb in “Little Big Man” in 1970, who was both a white in the Old West and someone who’d been raised by the Indians. So it was again, half in and half out of the culture. David Sumner, an American mathematician in Sam Peckinpah’s violent “Straw Dogs,” which may seem like an insider’s part, but in fact, Sumner and his young wife played by Susan George are outsiders in a strangely violent English country village. A small time French crook in “Papillon” in 1973. Hoffman also played the comedian Lenny Bruce in “Lenny” in 1974. And the investigative reporter, Carl Bernstein, trying to expose the corruption criminality of the Nixon White House in “All the President’s Men” in 1974. In each case, the nervy character that Hoffman plays is a kind of outsider. Part hustler, on the edge of the law, never quite at home in the larger society. This is emphasized by another curious feature of these films. In almost every occasion, Hoffman was partnered by someone who was everything that Hoffman was not. Classically good looking, All-American, usually blonde. In “The Graduate,” he ends up with the beautiful Katherine Ross, tall, white teeth, clear skin, very wholesome. In “Midnight Cowboy,” his character forms an intense relationship with Texan would be cowboy, Jon Voight. In “Straw Dogs,” his character is married to blonde Susan George. In “Papillon,” he joins up with the Steve McQueen character. And in “All the President’s Men,” Robert Redford plays Woodward to Hoffman’s Bernstein. Is this coincidence or is it somehow important that at this transitional moment, these big Jewish characters could be partnered, should be partnered, by a clearly non-Jewish actor or character? Two Jews was clearly one too many.

You can see similar patterns in the early career of Barbara Streisand. Her first film was “Funny Girl” in 1968, a year after “The Graduate,” directed by veteran director William Wyler based on the Broadway hit, which had made Streisand a star. Already a huge star in her own right, Streisand had been on the cover of Life magazine in 1966. The article in Life doesn’t beat around the bush. “At 23, she’s an undisputed queen of musical comedy, television, and records. Every one of the seven records she has made sold a million copies. She gets $50,000 per concert appearance. For nearly two years, she pulled in standing room only audiences for an otherwise undistinguished musical 'Funny Girl’.” So when they decided to make the musical into a movie, you’d think Streisand was straightforward casting. And yet, the film begins with much agonizing over how her character Fanny Brice looks. She first appears alone just as Hoffman did in the opening of “The Graduate.” Her face covered by the raised collar of her coat, she then looks in the mirror, and her first words in a thick, Jewish, New York accent are “Gorgeous.” Soon after she sings “If a Girl Isn’t Pretty.” There is a heated exchange with her mother and friends about whether Fannie’s good looking enough to be in show business. “You got to face facts! You don’t look like the other girls!” Then she sings, “Is a nose with deviation such a crime against the nation?” Her first encounter with Ziegfeld turns around the question of whether she’s beautiful or at least beautiful enough to sing, “I am the beautiful reflection of my love’s affection.” We get the point. She doesn’t look like the other girls. Why not?

Because she looks Jewish. She has a big nose, and she hasn’t had a nose job. So this becomes the talking point, literally, of the first 20 minutes or more of the film. It is an issue, just as Hoffman’s looks, especially his nose, was an issue. Now you don’t get many people going on about Hoffman’s nose or Streisand’s looks today because they’re both huge stars and have been for 40 years, but also because the Jewish thing isn’t such a big deal. 40 years after “The Graduate” and “Funny Girl,” we accept that people can look Jewish and be stars. In the late ‘60s, this was still up for debate. Nichols worries about Hoffman. Mel Brooks doesn’t even worry. He just assumes his friend’s looks will rule him out. As for Streisand, she’s pulled in the crowds on Broadway, but the film is still worried about how she looks. Of course, Brice was no looker herself, and the film is a sort of biopic. The point is though, that no one says Streisand or Hoffman look Jewish. They speak in code instead. They don’t look right. They’re ugly, their noses, what else, are too big. In her next big hit “Hello, Dolly!” two years later in 1969, Streisand plays the main part opposite curmudgeonly old Walter Matthau. She plays Dolly Levi, and as with Fannie Brice, there is no doubt that her character is Jewish.

Boy is she Jewish. And yet at the end of the film when she marries the Matthau character, there they are at the church in 1890s Yonkers. No one says anything, of course. It’s just assumed that here they are in this sweet pastoral vision, getting married in a church just like two Jews always do. Why not? Churches play an interesting part in the early careers of Hoffman and Streisand. Perhaps the most famous scene in “The Graduate” is when Hoffman as Braddock runs into the huge church, interrupts the wedding, and locks everyone in with a huge cross, bolting the door, so the young couple can escape. It would be fun to imagine someone rescuing Dolly Levi from her church wedding, but it never happens. Streisand followed these two huge successes with the comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” in 1972 with non-Jewish pinup, Ryan O'Neal. And “The Way We Were” in 1973 with non-Jewish pinup Robert Redford. Apart from Matthau, all her leading men were gentile stars, of course. As with Hoffman, how many Jews can you have in a movie? One is the answer. What happens when you get two Jews in a movie? You get anarchy and hysteria as in “The Producers” in 1969. Here you get two classic kinds of jew. First, Zero Mostel as Max Bialystok. Fat, huge, jowly, sweaty, lank, thinning hair, womanizing, hustling, and on the make, will sell his grandmother or your grandmother for a dime. Everything about him is big and over the top. “That’s it, baby!” he cries out early on. “When you got it, flaunt it!” Then he’s joined by young Leo Bloom, played by Gene Wilder.

Pale, nervy, hysterical accountant. Named after James Joyce’s most famous Jew, he looks more like something out of Kafka. You’re tempted to say they make a kind of Jewish Laurel and Hardy, except they’re both Jewish hysterics. The only good thing you can say about them is they’re not like the ghastly gentile characters who make up the rest of the film, unrepentant Nazis and flaming gays. “The Producers” was a huge hit out of nowhere. Apart from an animated short, “The Critic,” in 1963, Brooks had never directed a film before. Mostel had made films, but was then blacklisted in the early '50s and couldn’t find work for years until he relaunched his career with a succession of Broadway hits in the '60s. In fact, he played the part of Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” on Broadway in the 1960s. And then the producers of the film discovered Topol, who they saw in the London West End production and found Zero Mostel a bit too difficult for a film and loved Topol. And the rest, as they say, is history. Mostel had resumed his film career in 1966 “after a 15-year absence from the screen,” as one standard film encyclopedia puts it, which is code for McCarthyism. As for Wilder, he was barely 30, had just made a splash with a cameo part in “Bonnie and Clyde” in 1967, the year of “The Graduate” and the year of “Funny Girl.” In other words, there were two ways Jews could make a splash in the late '60s, either by making the reputation in TV, like Woody Allen, or on stage, Streisand, Mostel, Woody Allen, or by being so unknown that they wouldn’t cost anything.

Either way, there was no risk. Risk, in short, was the problem. Jews being Jews were a risk. These films, crucially, were all hits. “The Graduate,” “Funny Girl,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “The Producers” spoke the only language Hollywood accepts, they made money. As a result, they paved the way for a new wave of Jewish actors, writers, and directors through the late '60s and early '70s. George Siegel in Sidney Lumet’s “Bye Bye Braverman” directed by Sidney Lumet. “And No Way to Treat a Lady” in 1968. Woody Allen’s first film as a director, “Take the Money and Run” in 1969, and then of course in the '70s come “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan.” “Goodbye, Columbus” in 1969 with Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw. Elliott Gould in Paul Mazursky’s “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” in 1969. Alan Arkin in “Catch 22,” directed by the Jewish Mike Nichols, scripted by the Jewish Buck Henry in 1970. Elliott Gould in “Mash” and George Siegel in “Where’s Papa.” And with Barbara Streisand in “The Owl and the Pussycat,” all 1970. Alan Arkin and Elliott Gould in Jules Pfeiffer’s “Little Murders” in 1971. Gene Wilder in “Willy Wonka” in 1971. And Art Garfunkel in Mike Nichols’ “Carnal Knowledge” in 1971. Woody Allen’s played against him in “Everything You Always Wanted to Know” in 1972. Richard Benjamin in “Portnoy’s Complaint” based on the famous and successful, super successful Philip Roth novel, 1972. And Barbara Streisand in “What’s Up, Doc?” in 1972. The wave continued through the early and mid ‘70s with Streisand in “The Way We Were,” Hoffman in “Papillon” in 1973 and “Lenny” in 1974. George Siegel in Paul Mazursky’s “Bloom in Love,” Woody Allen “Sleeper” and “Love and Death,” Mel Brooks’s “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein,” and Richard Dreyfuss in “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.” When the Jews get going, boy, do they get going.

Most of these actors and directors went on to have long-lasting careers. Interestingly, some of the more obviously Jewish characters and figures did not. Mostel died in 1977, a decade after his comeback. Brooks and Woody Allen never really recaptured the heights of the 1970s. George Siegel, Elliott Gould, Richard Dreyfuss, Gene Wilder, and Richard Benjamin never found the big parts they had in the '70s, and in some cases, '80s. Even Streisand faded away as a movie star. “Yentl” and “Nuts” were her biggest movies in the '80s. Of course, nowhere do careers rise and fall faster than Hollywood. The point is these kinds of parts and these kinds of films stopped being made. There are exceptions. Woody Allen’s “Radio Days,” “Kissing Jessica Stein,” a couple of the more Jewish films of the Cohen brothers. But in general, the moment had passed. in Jewish American literature, in films, in the culture at large, Jews had made it center stage in the '60s and '70s. By the '80s and '90s, they weren’t, except in TV where Jews suddenly came out of the ethnic closet and appeared in many of the late 20th century. “Friends,” “Seinfeld,” “Will and Grace,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in the 21st century. It was as if the moment of transition from exclusion and silence to acceptance created an explosion of creativity and energy. The chapters in “American Jewish Filmmakers” by David Desser and Lester D. Friedman keep tailing away. The second edition in 2004 ends wondering whether we’ve witnessed the final flowering of an American Jewish cinema.

Something came to an end long before, back in the 1970s. Think of the great opening of “The Graduate.” Barbara Streisand’s version of the title song in “Hello, Dolly!” Elliott Gould playing the detective as Schlemiel in “The Long Goodbye.” Gene Wilder dancing on the fountains in front of the Lincoln Center in “The Producers.” In each case, there’s something both knowing and euphoric, extraordinary moments of celebration, which of course is exactly what they were. In a way, this whole story is captured by one image, not in a film, but on the cover of a magazine. The image is a photograph on the cover of Vanity Fair in December, 1983. The picture is of Woody Allen, perhaps then the most famous Jew in movies, maybe the most famous Jew in the world, made up as Groucho Marx, complete with glasses, grease paint mustache and eyebrows. At first glance, it’s straightforward enough. It’s Woody Allen dressed up as Groucho Marx. One great Jewish American comedian paying homage to another.

But then you look more closely and you realize how Jewish Woody Allen looks and what lengths the Marx Brothers went to disguise their Jewishness. Groucho’s mustache, Chico’s Italian accent, Harpo’s blonde wig, and not speaking. Being mute means that you couldn’t hear his Jewish accent. And their Italian names were ways of hiding their Jewishness just as much as Woody Allen’s New York Schlemiel Act played on his. And then you realize what a revolution took place in the history of Jews and cinema, especially in American cinema, between the long years of disguise, stereotypes, and antisemitism, and the surprisingly recent breakthrough when Jews came out of the celluloid closet. So I will leave it there because in past weeks I realize I’ve often run out of time and not had enough time for your questions. And there are quite a few questions already, so I will try and answer them if I can.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Shelly Shapiro, my old friend. What about Charles Grodin in the “Heartbreak Kid” with Cybill Shepherd in 1972. He plays a recognizably Jewish man who wants to trade up from his Jewish wife and Jewish life to Cybill Shepherd and WASP.

A: Yes. Very good question and a very interesting example. And I didn’t include it because neither Charles Grodin nor “The Heartbreak Kid,” with all due respect, are quite as famous as the stars and directors and writers and films that I did want to talk about. And maybe that’s because there was something about this subject, about somebody who wants to trade up from his Jewish wife and Jewish life to Cybill Shepherd and WASP that perhaps didn’t quite work for an audience. And maybe also there was something about the connection between this young, college-educated, anti-Vietnam, Jewish and non-Jewish audience, and these kind of new films, which were, many of them were about a kind of protest of sorts, and “The Graduate” most obviously, but many of the others as well. So I just wonder whether that’s the right kind of example. I’m not sure, Shelly, I shall dwell on that.

Barbara Hol, but thank you for suggesting it and reminding me. It’s a very interesting example. Barbara Holcroft. You haven’t mentioned one marvelous Hoffman movie, “Midnight Cowboy,” such an incredible breakthrough. Actually, I did mention it just in passing in a list of Hoffman films where he plays outsiders, and also how often he was partnered in these films with ultra-gentile men or women. In “Midnight Cowboy,” obviously Jon Voight. And in “The Graduate” with Katherine Ross and so on and so forth. And in “Papillon” with Steve McQueen and in “All the President’s Men” with Robert Redford. So clearly there’s something going on there. It’s not a coincidence that in these early films, which made Hoffman’s name and reputation, he was so often partnered with a gentile girlfriend, wife, or male partner who were all ultra gentile. And in the case of the men, always super blonde and very good looking. So, you know, there is something definitely going on there with Hoffman and with the early Barbara Streisand movies as well.

Q: Now, Yehuda’s iPad. And what about “Kramer vs. Kramer”?

A: I’m going to write down some of these examples. They’re very, very good. Yeah, well, you could say, huh, rather like with the Charles Grodin film, even, that’s not dissimilar because, again, you have the ultra Jewish outsider, Dustin Hoffman. Yes, he’s divorcing from Mrs. Kramer, Meryl Streep, but she is super blonde and super gentile. And again, that’s surely no coincidence. Just making a note about “The Heartbreak Kid” before I forget that. That was such a good suggestion. So it’s not saying, although it sounds it in a way, that Jews, you know, if Jews marry Jewish women, that doesn’t work out like in “The Heartbreak Kid” suggested by Shelly. And if they marry gentiles, that doesn’t work out like in “Kramer vs. Kramer” suggested by Yehuda’s iPad. But that would be an uncomfortable moral. Maybe that’s why “The Producers” was so successful because you end up with two Jewish men together. I don’t know. I just think it’s, I think it is part of the same syndrome however. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Hoffman and Streisand were so often, who were the two biggest Jewish stars of this period. And indeed, Elliott Gould, of course in “Mash” was partnered by Donald Sutherland. So there is something. You just can’t have too many Jews in a movie, I think is the bottom line. Unless it just ends up as complete mishegoss like in “The Producers.” That’s always the sort of risk. So.

Thank you, John Bows. Thank you very much for your very, very kind words. Much appreciated as always. Barbara Holcroft, back and fighting. One of my personal favorites. “Diary of a Mad Housewife” with Benjamin. Brilliant. Thank you, that’s also good, I’ll write that down as well. I’m sorry about all this, but these are really, really good suggestions. Yeah, perhaps I was a bit too cautious with my selection of big names and famous, high-grossing films. Yeah. Thank you so much, Naomi Frudman, much appreciated.

Yonah Yapu and Alfred Krumholz. One old edition, a transformation from stage and TV of George Burns, particularly after the death of Gracie Allen. George Burns, yes, and Jack Benny. I mean, that was of course that whole generation of Jewish comedians, entertainers. And they really played on their Jewishness, but of course neither could make the breakthrough into movies in the way that Woody Allen did. And they were from a previous generation. So that’s kind of interesting. And there’s also, of course, the fascinating relationship, Yonah and Alfred, of Jack Benny and Louis Armstrong, in Jack Benny’s TV shows, which is interesting.

So thank you for that reminder. I mean, they were very successful. There was a certain kind of Jewish shtick that worked in '40s, '50s TV. But it wasn’t as confident in its Jewishness as Woody Allen in his TV shows in the 1960s or even today. If you look at people like John Stewart, the satirical TV presenter, late night TV presenter on politics shows, or of course comedians like Seinfeld and Larry David. They are much more upfront about their Jewishness than that older generation. Because the way was paved by these hugely successful films and stars of the '60s, '70s and then onwards, although there was a bit of a falling away.

Q: Howard Levine says, “You implied at the start that Gene Hackman is Jewish. He’s not.”

A: Is he not? I do apologize. I will, I will take your word for it. And I’m very, very sorry for that mistake, Howard. Thank you very much for correcting me.

Q: Harry Levine, no relation, I’m guessing of Howard Levine. Could you perhaps present a lecture about non-Jews portraying Jews?

A: That’s a really, really interesting subject. That’s a great subject. Thank you very much. Well, top of the list of course would be Anne Frank. Because if you remember the 1950s, early '60s film perhaps it was about Anne Frank, they cast a very beautiful actress to play Anne Frank because the moment was not quite ready, you could argue, for a very Jewish-looking Anne Frank. How about that for an irony? So, yeah. That’s a very interesting, very interesting point, Harry. Thank you so much. Gail Dendy, thank you very much for your kind words.

Barbara Platt. You didn’t mention “Rain Man” with Dustin. I don’t recall any Jewish characters in “Friends,” the TV series.

Very interesting talk, thank you. Barbara, yes, “Rain Man.” Well, that’s again the same story, isn’t it? You take Dustin Hoffman as outsider in this case, the autistic brother, and you partner him with the uber-gentile Tom Cruise. So it’s the same pattern. I should, the only reason I didn’t mention it was because it comes significantly later. The '60s and '70s, I chose those because that’s the moment of breakthrough and that was something particularly interesting about that. But you’re absolutely right to mention “Rain Man,” which did come later, but. Now, Jewish characters in “Friends,” well, there are the Gellers, Ross and Monica, and their parents, remember it was Elliott Gould who played the father. So they are very, very Jewish. And Chandler, of course, is, just as he’s sexually rather ambiguous, he is also in a way a gentile in a Jews’ body, or a gentile pulling Jewish wise cracks. So he’s a kind of interesting, odd, maverick character. And of course, there’s Rachel. Very Jewish, Rachel Green. And her father, I can’t remember the name of the wonderful actor who plays Rachel’s father. Very, very Jewish. So I’m sorry to, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that. But thank you for reminding me about “Rain Man.”

Q: John Bowers. Was there any reason why the movie industry moved from Hollywood to New York in the time you’ve mentioned?

A: That is a really, really good question. I think it was a generational thing, John, is my sense. That New York was the center of the new. It was where the new TV was coming from. It was where the new comedy was coming from, not just on TV, but also the nightclubs and the standups. And it was where a lot of the new writers were coming from. So Philip Roth. Bellow moved from Chicago to New York for a while before he later moved to Boston, but he’s, and then he spent some more time in Chicago later. So there was a lot happening on the East Coast, and I think Hollywood felt like the enemy. It felt too corporate, it felt too gentile. It felt too out of touch with the newer young generation. And I think there was a sense that New York was a sort of place for young actors, young writers, young directors. Mike Nichols was a big theater director as well as a big film director and later TV director. So I think those were the reasons, is my guess. But I’m very open to suggestions and corrections on that.

Bernard Stein’s iPad. Thank you so much for your very kind words from you and Anna Lee. I do appreciate it. Anna Lee and Bob Stein there. Thank you so much.

Q: Barbara Holcroft. What about all the Jewish detective series and of course zillions on the hospital dramas?

A: Yes, Peter Falk, of course, as Columbo. But again, mixed ethnic identity, I guess, Columbo. I mean, what was interesting about the detectives, I guess, is that they, each detective, and I don’t know, you’re probably too young to remember TV detective shows in the ‘70s, but you know, each one had to have his own distinguishing mark. So Telly Savalas had his own little catchphrase. He was completely bald. He sucked a lollipop. That was his thing. Ironside was in, played by Raymond Burr, was in a wheelchair. Columbo was this kind of quizzical, quirky little guy, you know? So each one had their sort of mannerisms and quirks.

Now, here’s a question for you, Barbara. I’m not sure, who were all the Jewish TV detectives? I’m not sure. Cannon, of course, was just plain fat. That was his quirk, if you like. I’m not quite sure that I can remember any Jewish TV detectives from that period, but maybe I’m just, signs of a misspent youth perhaps. But anyone who can think of any, please send in your suggestions.

Sandy Weisswasser. Rhoda Morgenstern, a spinoff of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. And of course “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” which, not that Rhoda Morgenstern was involved in that, but that was an interesting case because I think, now was it written by Sid Caesar? It was written by a Jewish writer who had every expectation of playing that part and was considered too Jewish, and therefore the part went to Dick Van Dyke. Maybe it wasn’t. Who was it? Maybe it wasn’t Sid Caesar, maybe it was somebody else. I’ll have to look that up. But it is an interesting, it’s a very interesting story and of course that made Dick Van Dyke’s career.

And there’s also, if you remember, you may also be too young to remember this, Sandy, “All In the Family,” a very huge, successful TV show in the '60s. A spinoff of “Till Death Us Do Part,” with the character, the irascible blue collar character, Archie Bunker and his long-suffering wife. And Archie Bunker’s played by Carol O'Connor. And his daughter, I can’t remember who played her, but the son-in-law is obviously Jewish. And the point is you get the tension between these kind of right wing, Nixon blue collar workers, parents, and the son-in-law, who’s a left wing Jewish kind of character, played by Rob Reiner, who later became hugely successful as a film director, many years later. So that was a kind of interesting moment in American TV history. Rather like the Bill Cosby show was in a very different way introducing a Black actor playing, comic actor, very successful, playing a Black doctor, Black American doctor with a Black family. And that was a huge breakthrough point for Black representation in American TV shows.

Right, Carol Name. In the '70s, we got Steven Spielberg. Yes, very good point. Steven Spielberg, the most non-Jewish Jewish filmmaker, until, of course, “Schindler’s List” and then his autobiographical film, which is much less good, which came out two or three years ago. So, you know, he is the man who made his fortunes from directing Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. Yes, there are Nazis, but generally speaking, yes, yes, he is a Jewish film director. And I think, you know, there’s a famous book called “The Movie Brats” about that generation, Coppola, Spielberg, Scorsese, Brian De Palma, but nearly all the others are Italian Americans, interestingly. And Spielberg, I think was the only Jew in that book. But again, I’m open to correction.

Q: Barbara Holcroft. Did this open the doors going forward?

A: Yes and no. I think the place, oddly, that it opened doors most was not so much film. I mean, I guess in a way it did, but much more and much more important in TV because you began to get openly Jewish characters in “Will and Grace,” in “Friends,” in “Seinfeld,” in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” in “South Park.” And that was huge in the history of American TV and in English-speaking TV because it really, it did open the doors for Jewish comic writers and producers and directors and actors. And that really, really was massively important, I think. So thank you for that suggestion.

Myrna’s iPad. A real sleeper, Jeff Goldblum in “The Watch, the Favor, and the Really Big Fish” by the director Lewin. Jeff Goldblum. Yes, well, again, a younger generation of course, but you know, who could be more Jewish than Jeff Goldblum? Yeah, great suggestion. Thank you so much, Myrna’s iPad. Neville Golden. Thank you for your very, very kind words. Much appreciated.

Lorna Sandler. As an interpreter, I can guarantee the effectiveness of off the cuff delivery as opposed to a read text. You need to watch your spelling, ma'am, if you want to be taken seriously. Not quite sure what this means. You need to watch your spelling, ma'am, if you want to be taken seriously. Anyway, yes, I couldn’t agree more of course. And nothing would please me more than to give off the cuff delivery. I never do, whether it’s Best Man speeches or whether it’s talks on Lockdown University, or whether it’s talks on many other platforms, live and not live, at Jewish Book Week, wherever. I never, ever do off the cuff delivery. Never have, never will. One of my greatest failings and regrets in my long and undistinguished life. But thank you, Lorna.

Barbara Holcroft. Female Jewish ladies were always portrayed as mums or grannies, unless they were played by Barbara Streisand, of course. But yes, interesting point though about generations. Yes, very interesting point. Less so, and I guess this is, again, another part of the TV breakthrough is of course then you get the characters in “Seinfeld” and “Will and Grace.”

You get these very beautiful and super smart comediennes. “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” most recently. So, you know, that has changed. Not that there’s anything wrong with Jewish mums and grannies, of course. Remember that wonderful scene in the Nora Ephron film. Oh my God, my mind’s gone a blank now. But you know the scene I mean in the Jewish delicatessen with Meg Ryan and another great Jewish-American comedian, where Meg Ryan is trying to persuade her male friend how easy it is for women to fake their orgasm. And this Jewish lady sitting at the next table says, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

Q: Anna Gordon. Do you expect in one lecture to mention all the Jewish actors, writers, directors you know?

A: No, I don’t, but it would be, I feel sorry if I miss out some really big names. So, so that, but that’s why I focused on the biggest names both among the writers, directors, and actors, and among the films because there’s a greater chance that you will have all will know what I’m talking about.

Thank you, Barbara. I’m very grateful for your words. Ron Bernstein or Bernstein. When it was published, “Portnoy’s Complaint” was popular, referred to around New York as “The Gripes of Roth.” Absolutely, I heard that when I was living in New York years later, years after it came out, between 1979 and '82. Yes, it’s a great line. “The Gripes of Roth.” Rockon Farm.

Q: Were Hollywood dominated by say East Indians or Italians, would we have understood the industry dynamics as nepotism rather than talent?

A: Ooh. Well, I don’t think, apart from possibly the fact that Francis Ford Coppola commissioned his father to write the music for “The Godfather,” I’m not sure that Italians have been accused of nepotism actually. Italian Americans, I mean, in Hollywood. I think no one disputes the talent of Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola. You know, they were great directors. There were great actors like De Niro and Pacino. I don’t think anyone thinks, wow, you know, what on Earth was Coppola doing casting Robert De Niro or Al Pacino. They were fantastic actors and those were among their greatest parts. East Indians, well, that would be an interesting question.

Yeah, I guess when you’ve been outsiders for as long as Jewish American writers, directors, actors were you could be forgiven that, you know, they belonged to a small world socially in theater, on TV. So I think they could be forgiven for looking to some of their friends, particularly when Hollywood wasn’t interested in them and their friends. So I wouldn’t be quite so harsh.

And Linda says, “What about 'Tootsie’?” Great suggestion, thank you. Another outsider. Forgive me, it is 6:03. I’ve kept you far too long. Thank you so much for your interesting questions and suggestions, for your lovely comments. It’s been a pleasure being with you again, and I will return in the autumn. And I look forward to seeing many of you, all of you, hopefully, then.

And I do apologize to the 65 people whose questions I didn’t get around to. I’m so sorry about that. Thank you very much again, bye-bye.