Jews on Broadway: An Historical Survey of Performers, Playwrights, Composers, Lyricists and Producers by Stewart F. Lane Read Free Book Online

criss-cross back and forth between the two genres. Actor Paul Muni would also make his start in Yiddish theater in 1907, at the age of 12, under his given name Moony Weisenfreund. He would make the transition to Broadway in a 1926 in a play entitled We Americans and just a few years later would embark on a film career that would extend over three decades.
    The most profound influence of Yiddish theater upon Broadway, how ever, came not only from the performers on stage but from those watch ing from the audience or in the wings, experiencing and learning about theater. A young Stella Adler and a boy named Lee Strasberg were both influenced by their early Yiddish theater experiences. Many Jew ish performers, especially those who later became stars of vaudeville, saw their first shows in Yiddish the aters while growing up on the Lower East Side. While they eventually emanated toward the American theater, many were heavily influenced by these early experiences on Second Avenue.
    The Jewish humor — personal, relatable and typically based on day-today encounters — became commonplace in vaude ville and in comedies on Broadway for generations, as well as in various media from The Goldbergs on radio in the 1930s to Seinfeld on television in the 1990s.
    The music of Broadway and what became known as Tin Pan Alley also had underpinnings from the klezmer music and operettas brought over from Eastern Europe and first heard on the Yiddish stages. The likes of Irving Berlin and George Gershwin, among other noted composers (dis cussed in Chapter 3, on the great Jewish composers and lyricists), also benefited from their early Yiddish theater experiences.
    For the Jewish people, theater became part of their American culture, with Yiddish theater expanding into the other boroughs of New York, as well as around the country. For the Jewish immigrants who had been chased from their homelands, whose cultural and religious institutions had been shut down, theater was a rare opportunity for freedom of expression, an opportunity to communicate that which was stifled in so many parts of the world. On stage, they could not only retell the stor -
    ies of pain and suffering, but rejoice in song and laugh at life’s many foi -
    bles. Whether one spoke Yiddish or not, the theater was a cultural resource and it provided the glue that held a poor, somewhat destitute immi grant community together. That community grew stronger and 28
    1. Immigration, Yiddish Theater and Building Broadway future generations of Jewish performers emerged, wanting to take to the stage and communicate through music, lyrics, comedy and/or dramatic pre sen tations. It was this Yiddish community that served as the foun -
    dation for the many years of Jewish involvement in theater that would follow.
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    Part of the Melting Pot:
    From Vaudeville to Broadway
    It’s not uncommon for teenagers to find new and invigorating forms of entertainment, including those that might be considered objectionable by their parents. Such youthful rebellion was just as common a century ago as it is today. In the early years of the 20th century, the Jewish immigrants toiled away, working long hours to put food on the table while living in overcrowded ghetto conditions in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
    For them, Yiddish theater remained a sanctuary second only to temple, a place to grasp the culture brought forth from Europe and a means of embracing the rich traditions that make up Judaism. It was an opportunity to celebrate freedom, having seen many of their theaters shut down under oppressive foreign rule.
    Yet, while Yiddish theater thrived, a newer temptress began to seduce the younger generation, with the lure of glamour, fame and money, in this, the land of prosperity. The allure was vaudeville, a term culled from a phrase popularized in France during the 15th century, “Un chanson du Vau de Vire,” meaning “A Song of the Valley of Vire.” This phrase referred to popular drinking songs