Jews on Broadway: An Historical Survey of Performers, Playwrights, Composers, Lyricists and Producers (19 page)

Meanwhile, Arthur Laurents, who first teamed with Sondheim and Robbins on
West Side Story,
was a Brooklyn native whose mother kept a kosher home and whose paternal grandparents were orthodox Jews. After graduating from Cornell University, Laurents became a writer of radio scripts before serving time in the military. Actually he didn’t see much action, as he was stationed in Astoria in Queens, where he served his time writing scripts. His first Broadway show,
Home of the Brave
, was not a major success, but once he turned his attention to being a librettist, his luck changed. Along with
West Side Story,
he would go on to write the lyrics for
Gypsy
and several shows throughout the 1960s. He would also go on to direct a number of hit musicals including
La Cage Aux
Folles,
discussed later.

While
The Music Man
was another significant hit musical of the era, it was one of only a few musicals of the decade without much influ -

ence from the Jewish Broadway contingent. The sons and daughters of 108

5. From Communism to the Catskills

the Jewish immigrants had a foothold of sorts as they established themselves as the forces behind a litany of blockbuster musicals. In fact, two more shows would wrap up this amazing decade, both from Jewish composers, librettists, producers and/or directors. They were
Gypsy
and
The
Sound of Music
, both of which opened in 1959.

Gypsy
brought most of the team from
West Side Story
back together, linking Robbins, Sondheim and Laurents with the music of Jule Styne, who had ushered in the decade with
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
This time the show was about the life of the famous Minsky’s Burlesque stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee. While the show ran for a successful 702 performances, it was a far cry from some of the other blockbuster shows of the era.

Nonetheless,
Gypsy
would emerge as a classic, first moving to London for another 120 performances upon closing in New York, and then returning for several Broadway revivals. It was also one of Ethel Merman’s trium phant roles, playing the part of Momma Rose and belting out

“Every thing’s Coming Up Roses.”

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
The Sound of Music
, with a run of over 1,400 performances, ended a remarkable decade for musicals. It was a show adapted from Maria Von Trapp’s autobiography,
The Trapp Family
Singers
, which was also a German film. While the music and lyrics for
The Sound of Music
are uplifting and joyful in spirit, the undercurrent of a family escaping Nazi Germany took on a different, more somber tone than many of the musicals of the decade. Nonetheless, with a happy ending, it emerged as one of the most heartwarming musicals ever to grace the Broadway stage through the early years of the ’60s and again in successful revivals.

Although Jewish culture was not a theme of any of these 1950s blockbusters, the music and stories of most of these significant shows came from Jewish theater legends, the majority of whom retained their Jewish identities while assimilating into mainstream America. As was the case with the children of the early immigrants who opted for vaudeville over Yiddish theater, this generation also chose not to follow the wishes of their parents, which now typically included graduating college and finding more stable careers in law or business. The enthusiasm for reaching out and touching an audience through music, lyrics and dialogue, as was the case in Yiddish theater, was still seductive and the primary focus for this generation of Jewish talents.

109

Jews on Broadway

Most of the musicals of the 1950s took on optimistic, life-affirming themes. These were not the revue-style musicals of the pre-war era, nor did the patriotism and social issues that were more prominent in many of the productions during the war years influence them. Broadway musicals were now telling a wide range of stories about everything from the King of Siam to a love story infused with rival gangs to an abridged biography of the most famous stripper of the century, and they were doing so through the strength of collaborative efforts. No, this was not group theater, but the talented teams behind most of the hit shows were very much in sync with one another, and each knew his or her role in a production very well. In some cases, they would even take on dual roles, such as Jerome Robbins, who was both a choreographer and director.

Along with writers, composers, lyricists and actors, the Jewish knack for comedic expression was also reflected in the words of Abe Burrows, George S. Kaufman and the performances of Milton Berle, Zero Mostel and others. In fact, a Jewish training ground of sorts, for such comedy, had emerged in the area known as the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.

The Borscht Belt

In the early part of the 20th century, the Catskill Mountains began to emerge as a vacation destination. The rural area residents, mostly Jewish, saw the potential to lure city dwellers into their serene neck of the woods. It could be a place where vacationers, mostly Jewish, could get away from the city. As a result, hotels, inns and bungalow colonies sprang up. The response was favorable, so more were built, and those that were already packing in visitors began expanding, which they continued to do as the demand for accommodations grew. To create the full-vacation experience, many of the hotels included meals (mostly kosher), planned activities, golf courses and entertainment in the form of both singers and comedians. Yes, from humble beginnings, resorts were formed and they kept on expanding and expanding. In fact, for years, comedy routines were based on the fact that the hotels had become so big that it could be a half-day’s activity or more just locating your room.

Among the first entertainment venues in the area were those of Boris 110

5. From Communism to the Catskills

Thomashefsky, the Yiddish theater star, who built both an indoor and outdoor theater in the nearby Hunter Resort. From these theaters and the many newly built hotel ballrooms, which could accommodate hundreds of people, and in some cases over a thousand, the training ground for numerous comedians emerged. It was nicknamed the Borscht Belt.

The name Borscht Belt was derived from the Eastern European vegetable soup (borscht), which was well known to the Jewish immigrants and served on the traditional menu of Jewish cuisine at the resort hotels.

Over the years, these Catskill resorts, including Grossinger’s, the Con cord and Brown’s, would become the training ground for many of the most significant comedians of the century. The comics would work out their material and establish their on stage personas in front of adoring fans. It was a unique place in which they could be funny and be Jewish.

Catskills comics had an ongoing inside joke with the audiences who enjoyed the mainstream material, but identified more closely with, and laughed harder at, the routines about Jewish families, Jewish customs and Jewish life. Like Yiddish theater, the performers shared so much with their audience, which was typically 90 percent Jewish. For the com -

ics, it was the ideal place to fuse their Jewish identity with their comedy.

From jokes about their immigrant parents to Jewish delicatessens to planning their son’s Bar Mitzvah (Bat Mitzvah’s were not yet as popular as they are today), there was plenty of familiar fodder for humor, not to mention the typical wife and mother-in-law jokes.

By the late 1940s and through the heyday of the ’50s and ’60s, the Catskills resorts were packing in more than a million visitors a year. The summer months, especially on weekends, were prime spots for comics, and headlining on the holiday weekends, such as July 4 or Labor Day, meant you were at the top of your game.

Many of the comedians from the Borscht Belt went on to become stars of television, film and yes, even Broadway. Among those Catskills comics who also had an impact on the Great White Way were Woody Allen, Milton Berle, Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, Danny Kaye, Robert Klein, Jackie Mason, Zero Mostel and Carl Reiner. Other comics on the legendary circuit included Buddy Hackett, Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles and Totie Fields.

In the early days of what would become a legendary film career, New York-born and raised Allen Stewart Konigsberg, better known as 111

Jews on Broadway

Woody Allen, started performing stand-up comedy in the early 60s, after being expelled from NYU. From appearances at the Duplex (a nightclub in Greenwich Village) to other nightclubs in and around Manhattan and then in the Catskills, Allen’s nervous, neurotic humor emerged and was very well received. Meanwhile, Woody Allen was also part of the legen -

dary writing team on Sid Caesar’s
Your Show of Shows
, which included Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart and Neil Simon.

By the mid 1960s, Allen was already established, with a few films under his belt, and his stand-up career intact. He took his chances at writ ing for Broadway with two comedies,
Don’t Drink the Water
in 1966, and
Play It Again, Sam
, in 1968. Both shows were successful and were also two of the nearly 50 screenplays written by Allen, who not only starred in most of his films but also took the lead role on Broadway in
Play It Again, Sam.
The role suited Allen perfectly, as he played a socially awkward film critic, Alan Felix, who hoped his bad luck with women could be remedied through confidential talks with the ghost of Hum -

phrey Bogart. The show ran for 453 performances.

Woody Allen also brought the Catskills to life in his 1984 film,
Broad way Danny Rose
. Playing a former Catskills comic who now managed several absurd novelty acts, Allen tells the tales of his Borscht Belt days to a table of comics including Sandy Baron, Jackie Gale, Corbett Mon ica, Howie Storm, Will Jordan, and Morty Gunty, all of whom played the Catskills.

Not unlike Woody Allen, another Jewish New Yorker, Sid Caesar, also wore several hats, as a writer, performer and musician (Allen plays clarinet, Caesar, Saxophone). In fact, Caesar got his start in the Catskills, as a teenager, playing in one of the hotel bands before emerging as a come dian. He would go on to work on his comedy material to the delight of Catskills audiences. The new medium of the late 1940s, television, proved to be the breakthrough for Caesar. His second television series, in 1950,
Your Show of Shows
, topped the ratings and brought numerous top celebrities into the homes of a nationwide audience dazzled by what was thought by some to be a passing fad.

It was in the early 1960s that Neil Simon, along with composer Cy Coleman, lyricist Carolyn Leigh and choreographer Bob Fosse, would put together the musical comedy
Little Me
. It was perfect for Caesar who got to utilize many of the dialects he used in his comedy act while playing 112

5. From Communism to the Catskills

multiple characters and making 32 costume changes. The show ran for 257 performances (or over 8,000 costume changes) before moving to Lon don in 1964 for another successful run, without Caesar.
Little Me
would return twice to Broadway, also without Caesar, who moved on to films, plus occasional television and nightclub appearances.

If any one comedian truly exemplified the Catskills humor, it was Jackie Mason. The son of a rabbi, Mason was born Yacov ( Jacob) Moshe Maza in 1934 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He later moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan where a litany of show business greats had already honed their talents. Mason, however, followed in the footsteps of his father and three older brothers, all of whom became rabbis. He soon found himself working at a synagogue in Pennsylvania. In time, however, he would begin to interject humor into his weekly sermons while also sprinkling in jokes while talking to members of the congregation. This was the beginning of the end of his career as a rabbi and the start of a long, rocky, but ultimately highly successful comedy career.

Working as a social director in the Catskills, Mason learned from the comics he watched on stage and soon became part of the hotel circuit, getting regular bookings, while also making his way to nightclubs and on to television. While working to lose the heavy Jewish accent in an attempt to be more easily understood, he was also honing the Jewish stage persona that suited him well. And yet, he drew his share of criticism for playing the Jewish stereotype, somewhat like those in the vaudeville days before him. Nonetheless, Mason appeared often on the most popular entertainment program of the 1960s,
The Ed Sullivan Show
, until one fateful event derailed his career for a number of years. It didn’t take a senate subcommittee to blackball Mason; it took one inappropriate hand gesture on
The Ed Sullivan Show
to ban him from television for years to come. Mason claims the entire thing was an accident, but Sullivan disagreed. The outspoken Mason, always on top of politics, added fuel to the fire with a number of controversial actions and comments over the years.

Nonetheless, he was able to take his act from the stages of the Borscht Belt in its heyday and end up with a very successful Broadway show called
The World According to Me.
With his usual focus on the differences between Jews and Gentiles, plus plenty of political observations, Mason’s show took off in 1987 for a two-year run. Following that show, 113

Jews on Broadway

Mason would land on Broadway with seven more original one-man shows over the next 20 years, making him the most successful comic crossover to the Broadway stage.

Whether it was Robert Klein moving from the Catskills to the hit show
They’re Playing Our Song
, or Mel Brooks bringing
The Producers
to Broadway many years later, a number of the funnymen who would write, produce and/or perform on the Broadway stages worked in the Catskills.

Some started by literally working at the hotels, as busboys or in similar jobs to learn the lay of the land. But, no matter how they began, they worked hard and benefited from audiences that became tougher to please.

As their expectations for excellence increased, Catskills audiences, much like Broadway audiences, became more discerning as one comic raised the bar for the following night’s performer.