Stardust Lost: The Triumph, Tragedy, and Meshugas of the Yiddish Theater in America (43 page)

The moneylender is beside himself. His daughter must now be treated as dead. Embittered to the point of madness, he decides to go after the pound of flesh after all, setting himself against the church
with Antonio as its emblem. An overheated trial occurs, ending with the Jew awarded his right to that pound. It is, in effect, a death sentence. The community of Jewish elders turns away in revulsion. The high churchmen plead their case, but Shylock is stone-hearted. For all those martyrs who died in the Inquisition flames, for all who were forced to convert to Christianity on pain of death, he raises his hand in vengeance.

Yet for all his passionate avowals, Shylock hesitates. Illuminated by the morning sun, he lifts the weighing scales above his head—and stops. The conclusion is abrupt and catastrophic.

In its melodramatic flow, its sudden surprises, and big expostulatory speeches,
Shylock and His Daughter
was a throwback to the days of Adler, Kessler, and Thomashefsky. The extravagant emotional style can be gauged from Brooks Atkinson's comment in the
Times:
“If the acting in Second Avenue is not precisely in the grand manner, it has animation and latitude, with wide gestures and excitement; and you always know that you are not in a library.

“Without being flamboyant, Mr. Schwartz acts with boldness, using his hands continuously, waggling an eloquent forefinger and raising shaggy eyebrows to project astonishment.”

But grandiloquence was not the main reason for the play's success (it ran for most of the 1947–48 season). As Joel Berkowitz details in
Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage,
this production “clearly struck a chord with an audience that had just lived through Hitler's attempt to find a Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.” The chord was amplified in a printed introduction to the play. In a reference to the midsixteenth-century pope, it pointed out that “Paul IV's period was a
small-scale precursor of Hitler's time, and the Nuremberg racial laws were practically a copy of Paul's Roman edicts against the Jews. A description of the time is almost a replica of the anti-Jewish practices in our own days.”

There were other reasons for the play's visceral force. Jews were front and center as they had never been before. Postwar Hollywood hammered away at the notion that anti-Semitism was a poison that had destroyed the Axis, and that would threaten the United States if it were allowed to resurface. At the same time that
Shylock and His Daughter
was drawing crowds, 20th Century Fox produced
Gentleman's Agreement.
Based on Laura Z. Hobson's postwar novel, the movie starred Gregory Peck as a journalist who poses as a Jew, uncovering country-club prejudice in suburban America. Directed by Kazan, the self-congratulatory feature won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. (A stagehand wryly praised scenarist Moss Hart for the picture's “wonderful moral.” Asked what that moral was, the man replied, “I'll never be rude to a Jew again because he might turn out to be a Gentile.”)

A better, underpraised feature on the same subject opened that season. Directed by Edward Dmytryk,
Crossfire
concerned the killing of a civilian Jew by a sociopathic soldier. Robert Ryan played the villain, Robert Young the investigating officer, and Robert Mitchum a noncom who finally ferrets out the truth. The tough, unrelenting picture received no awards, but proved to be an immensely popular film noir.

The social conscience of the motion picture business would not be on exhibit for much longer. Shortly after those films were released, the House Un-American Activities Committee busied itself by investigating Hollywood. The congressmen went on a search for scenarists, directors, and actors who might have inserted communist propaganda in their films. Anyone who had been active in the politics of the left was suspect, some simply for being “prematurely anti-fascist” in the 1930s, others for being members of the party and lying about it. HUAC made little distinction between the two. An atmosphere of hysteria enveloped Hollywood and New York, and a blacklist was instituted by the studios and networks, barring actors and directors with “subversive” backgrounds.

Representative John Rankin of Mississippi took advantage of the situation to remind his fellow Americans of certain ethnicities. “I want to read you some of the names,” he intoned in 1948. “One of the names is June Havoc. We found out from the motion picture almanac that her
real name is June Hovick. Another one was Danny Kaye, and we found out that his real name was David Daniel Kaminsky. Another one is Eddie Cantor, whose real name is Edward Iskowitz. There is one who calls himself Edward G. Robinson. His real name is Emanuel Goldenberg. There is another one here who calls himself Melvyn Douglas, whose real name is Melvyn Hesselberg.”

That year, the European intelligentsia buzzed about
The Plague,
a metaphorical account of France under German occupation. Novelist/ philosopher Albert Camus made no attempt to explicate his work, but insiders knew it was a metaphorical account of France under German occupation. The protagonist, Dr. Rieux, represented humanity's decent impulses; the germs of disease stood for the evil buried in the life of an old, decaying culture. The last paragraph was Topic A at the Deux Magots café as well as other existentialist hangouts: “The plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; it lies dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; and perhaps the day would come when it would rouse up its rats again.” For any sensitive reader in America, his point needed no underlining. Anti-Semitism, thought to be slain on VE Day, had merely been on holiday.

Zionism exacerbated the situation. The notion of a Jewish state had drawn the world's attention, accompanied by fresh controversy. The debate was not limited to Congress and the State Department. On Second Avenue itself, battle lines were drawn. Examining the audience reaction to
Shylock and His Daughter,
for example, the
Morgen Zhurnal
critic divided ticket-holders into two groups. One was linked to the Jewish vigilantes in Palestine, the other to the regular army. “Those who support the Irgun have almost the whole drama to themselves. Shylock can almost be considered one of their own: vengeance is the key to his deeds! And those who support the Haganah or who are in general soft Jews who are against bloodshed, can consider Shylock among their ranks at the end: Jewish ethics have triumphed.”

Thus Schwartz had it both ways. He could reinterpret Shylock in a modern view—and yet be the classic Venetian. He could play the rancorous avenger—and yet be the righteous figure who could not take a life. Armed with this two-edged triumph he went on to produce a series of revivals, and bolstered his ego by pursuing some strange fantasies.

One of them, and perhaps the most peculiar, concerned
Death of a Salesman.
Arthur Miller audaciously placed an ordinary man—a commoner
rather than a king—at the epicenter of tragedy. In its first production the text was abetted by Lee J. Cobb's towering performance and Elia Kazan's inventive staging. It took some time for reviewers to realize that despite
Salesman
's fresh approach, it was
au fond
a classic family drama. The Broadway themes of mothers vs. daughters, husbands vs. wives, and in this case, father vs. sons, as critic Robert Brustein put it, “all engaged in epic battles that invariably ended in tearful reconciliations, were ultimately derived from Second Avenue.”

No doubt that was why Schwartz told an interviewer, “The part of Willy Loman was written for me. The role needs close understanding, not creating it through externals. Miller had me in mind when he wrote
Death of a Salesman.
”

The playwright was considerate enough not to deny or reinforce that assertion. But he did not award the rights to present a Yiddish
Salesman
to Schwartz. Instead they went to Joseph Buloff, who opened his version in Buenos Aires. The city's large Jewish population made it a smash. A year later Miller allowed Buloff to take the Yiddish rendition to Brooklyn. At the Parkway Theater, the adaptor/actor/director played opposite his wife, Luba Kadison, cast as the long-suffering Linda Loman. That occasion caused the playwright an unaccustomed twinge or two. In
Commentary,
critic George Ross concluded that despite the Irish-sounding monicker, Willy Loman's tone and style was clearly Jewish: “The effect is remarkable. Buloff has caught Miller, as it were, in the act of changing his name.”

Brustein concurred: “What one feels most strikingly is that the Yiddish play really is the original, and that the Broadway production was merely Arthur Miller's translation into English.” Privately, the playwright objected to these reductive critiques, but said nothing. “Why was this so?” asked a veteran of many Lower East Side productions. “Well, the proverb puts it this way:
Az tsvey zogn shicker, zol der driter geyn shlofen.
If two say drunk, the third should go to sleep. Which he did.”

THE COMPOSER OF
“Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” had always preferred Second Avenue to Broadway or Hollywood. “It's my duty to stay here,” he would explain. “I owe it to the Yiddish Theater. It gave me my start.” Besides, “In its heyday, the Yiddish Theater paid me $250 and my contract guaranteed me a six-week vacation. That's when Broadway paid a conductor $100 a week.” Only now, in 1948, at the age of fifty-seven, did Sholem Secunda feel ready for the big time.

His debut was called
Bagels and Yox,
an American-Yiddish musical presented at the Holiday Theater on Broadway and 47th Street. The show delivered what the title promised, cheap and frequent gags, recited by a cast of Borscht Belt comedians and song belters. One number rocked the theater, when the audience joined in on a chorus of nonsense syllables set to jaunty, mock-Romanian music in a minor key:

The
Times
considered
Bagels and Yox
“noisy mediocrity” but made a point of commending the “ancient” melodies: “Someone could make a memorable musical show out of these songs by taking them seriously and not throwing them away in a tasteless revue desperately coagulated around a microphone.” In Victoria Secunda's biography of her fatherin-law, she recalls that Sholem was flattered by the praise but sent a letter of complaint to the paper. The songs were not traditional, he informed the reviewer; they were composed by the undersigned.
Brooks Atkinson wrote back, “You fooled me. I thought that music was right out of the synagogues. I salute you for having given me such an exalted impression.”

Secunda returned to the Yiddish Theater in 1949. The book and lyrics for
Uncle Sam in Israel
were written in three languages—Yiddish, English, and a smattering of Hebrew. Chaim Ehrenreich, theater critic of the
Forward,
took exception to the polyglot style of these revues and went so far as to confront a producer backstage. “I pulled him by the lapels into the alley outside,” said Julius Adler. “Why do you knock me for making a living? If you want pure Yiddish Theater, why don't you invest your
own
money in it?” The
Forward
editors knew damn well from the size of dwindling readership, he went on, that “young members of benefit organizations are threatening to take their benefits to English theater because they don't understand Yiddish. If I don't use some English, there will
be
no Yiddish Theater!”

The attitudes of those two, the traditionalist and the realist, could be seen in the last two Yiddish movies ever to premiere on Broadway. The first was a retro work directed by Joseph Seiden. After having made films for the army for the last four years, he returned to his first love with
Got, Mentsh, un Tavyl
(God, Man and Devil), Jacob Gordin's fifty-year-old drama. Modernizing Job, folding in a touch of Faust and a sprinkling of socialism, Gordin created the moral fable of Hershele Dubrovner. The virtuous weaver buys a winning lottery ticket from the devil, disguised as a peddler. With his newfound wealth, Hershele acquires a factory that produces prayer shawls. So far, so pious.

But as he gets used to a finer life, the young man becomes more of a capitalist and less of a Talmudist. His humble origins forgotten, Hershele runs a hectic sweatshop, oppressing his employees at every turn. “They let us earn just enough so we don't croak from hunger,” complains one of the abused.

After years of suffering, another confronts his tormentor: “You robbed us all, you made us unhappy, corrupted us. Reb Hershele Dubrovner, you play-acted a comedy with God.” That speech prompts the boss's long dormant feelings of guilt. They proceed to destroy him. He recovers his conscience, acknowledges his sins, opens a safe, and peers in. “Look at that. A strongbox full of money, yet it will not pay the smallest debt which one man can owe another. Oh, powerful rich man, how fearfully poor you are.” In a final, fitful burst of energy Hershele wraps one of the prayer shawls around his neck and hangs himself.

The film opened with the appropriate fanfare on January 21, 1950, but its theme of working-class resentment was totally out of step with the upbeat tempo of the new decade. The reviews were tepid and the public apathetic. On the same day,
Catskill Honeymoon,
a musical comedy directed by Josef Berne, made its Manhattan debut. The plot, such as it was, focused on a couple celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary at a mountain resort, entertained by feverish tummlers, singers, dancers, and impressionists.