Jews on Broadway: An Historical Survey of Performers, Playwrights, Composers, Lyricists and Producers (5 page)

Additionally, he had opened his own theater, The Empire, and had become part of the theater syndicate that would control the industry through their own booking/management system for the first 15 years of the century. He ran six New York theaters and controlled numerous oth-23

Jews on Broadway

ers around the country as well as some in London. Along with his influ -

ence in bringing shows and stars to Broadway, Frohman is probably best remembered for producing an adaptation of the Barrie novel, which became the original
Peter Pan
starting Maude Adams. His brother Daniel teamed with Charles for a while, before going off on his own to help develop road companies, which would tour the country with popular shows. Daniel did, however, also keep his hand in Broadway activities as manager of the Lyceum Theater.

The Shubert Brothers, Sam, Jacob and Lee, were also Jewish immigrates who came to the United States with their parents in the late 19th century. Settling in Syracuse, New York, they found themselves fascinated by the theater, particularly the inner workings. As teenagers they worked diligently to pull themselves out of poverty, and before long, they were all theater managers. However, it was together that they would become a force to be reckoned with in the business.

Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, the Shubert brothers moved to New York City, borrowed money, and purchased their first venue, the Herald Square Theater. It was from that point forward that they would build an empire. Sadly, in 1905, however, they would lose Sam, at the age of 30, who died from injuries sustained in a train wreck in Pennsylvania. The remaining two brothers, spurred on by the callous response from the syndicate to their brother’s death, would forge ahead to become one of the most significant driving forces in theater history, booking over 600 shows under the esteemed title “Shubert Presents.”

Known initially for their operettas, the brothers saw the mass appeal of revues and used their theaters to present many up and coming performers, some of whom, like Al Jolson, emerged as major stars.
Maytime
(1917),
Blossom Time
(1921) and
Big Boy
(1925) were among the most successful early musicals to come from the Shubert brothers.

The Shubert Organization, now run by the nonprofit Shubert Foundation, continues to play a major role in theater today, owning 17 theaters and actively producing new shows, including many on Broadway.

Oscar Hammerstein was also one of the premiere impresarios at the turn of the 20th century, later opening opera houses and theaters in Philadelphia and London, while producing a few shows and operettas at his own New York theaters. A jack of all trades, Hammerstein was an inventor, writer, editor, publisher, composer, speculator, designer, 24

1. Immigration, Yiddish Theater and Building Broadway
builder, promoter, showman and one of the most prominent forces in American theatre.

Having made a fortune in the cigar industry, Hammerstein started out by moonlighting as a theater manager at venues showing German operas, and in some cases presenting some of his own plays. Near the end of the 19th century, he built the first of two theaters in the largely unsettled Harlem area, the Harlem Opera House on 125th Street. He would then move downtown with the opening of the Manhattan Opera House on 34th Street. In what would become Times Square, he opened the lavish Olympia Theater, followed shortly thereafter by the Victoria and the Republic. A few years later, both the Victoria and Republic would have roof gardens.

Despite some failures along the way, Hammerstein’s theaters would become some of the premiere show palaces on Broadway for many decades. Even though his own personal passion was opera, his theaters would become venues for all genres of theatrical shows. Hammerstein would later become known as the Father of Times Square. (More on both Hammerstein and the Shuberts, in the next chapter on vaudeville.) The other significant Jewish theater family, the Nederlanders, first established their presence in 1912 when David Nederlander acquired the lease of the Detroit Opera House. They would soon move to Broadway where their impact would be felt for the rest of the century and beyond.

Now in the third generation of theater ownership, James Nederlander, known in and around the industry as Jimmy, heads the organization which now controls not only several Broadway theaters but theaters in other U.S. cities as well as in London.

Approaching the age of ninety, Jimmy has been involved in the family business since the 1940s. Some 300 shows later, having received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 2004, he remains one of the luminaries of the business. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Jimmy, working with him and being his partner in the Palace Theater for more than 30 years.

THE EARLY SHOWS

And then there were the shows and the stars of the early years of the 20th century.
Florodora
was the hit of the era, running for over 550

25

Jews on Broadway

performances, while
The Wizard of Oz
debuted onstage in 1903 for nearly 300 performances and was followed shortly thereafter by
Babes in Toyland
which ran for 192 performances. But it was Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
that drew even more attention for the casting of the world-famous actress Sarah Bernhardt, who performed the show in French. Bernhardt had appeared on Broadway before, as Roxanne in Edmond Rostand’s
Cyrano
de Bergerac
, as well as in some French productions.

The French-born Bernhardt, of Jewish heritage, was baptized and raised in a convent. In her teens, she would try her hand at both comedy and tragedy as well as burlesque before emerging as a star in France in the 1860s. For the next four decades, she would perform in a wide variety of plays worldwide, making some appearances in United States. While she was heralded as a brilliant actress, her Broadway presentation of
Hamlet
, however, was not a favorite of the critics or the audiences. Frustrated, Bernhardt would return to France. She would come back to the United States and Broadway several years later in various roles, including a brief stint in vaudeville. More than just a legendary stage performer and queen of the tragic dramatic roles, Bernhardt was also a promoter, producer, sculp ture, artist and, like Bessie Thomashefsky, a woman who transformed the role of women in theater to a higher level than that of the many showgirls in the popular follies.

Alla Nazimova was another Jewish actress of the era who made an impact on Broadway. The daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Nazi -

mova was already a theatrical star in Moscow, and in other parts of Eur -

ope, when she first appeared in productions on the Lower East Side, but not in Yiddish. Instead, she performed in Russian, in a theater she helped establish.

As Yiddish theater grew and embraced the classics of Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw, among other playwrights, Broadway theatergo -

ers would soon follow suit, and it was Nazimova who would star in
Hedda
Gabler
in 1906 and
A Doll’s House
the following year. While she would later emerge as a major star of the silent film era, making a weekly salary of $13,000, unheard of for that time period, Nazi mova would return to Broadway to reprise the two Ibsen shows as well as appear in Anton Chek -

hov’s
The Cherry Orchard
and later on in
The Good Earth.
So power ful were her performances that the Shuberts named one of their thea ters The Nazimova, in her honor, until she signed with their rivals, the syndicate.

26

1. Immigration, Yiddish Theater and Building Broadway
It was also during the early years of the 20th century that a talented Jewish playwright came upon the scene in New York City. His name was David Belasco, and he grew up in San Francisco as a Sephardic Jew.

Interested in theater, he made his way across the country to New York City. Over the span of 46 years, starting in the 1880s, he would write, produce and/or direct over one hundred Broadway plays including
Madame Butterfly
. While Belasco was never a part of the Yiddish theater (although his father-in-law Morris Gest was a producer), he did bring some of the real-life experiences depicted in Yiddish theater to the Broadway stage.

Belasco was also a theater manager and owner, taking over Hammerstein’s Theatre Republic in 1902. He later sold the theater and it was once again named the Republic. He later went on to build more theaters in New York and in other cities.

The Influence of Yiddish Theater on Broadway

While Broadway theater had been around before the emergence of Yiddish theater in America, the latter would have a significant influence on English- speaking theater. It was the playwright Gordin, along with actor Jacob P. Adler, who brought the classics of Ibsen, Tolstoy and Shaw to America in Yiddish theater before they emerged on Broadway. Shakespeare and other classic works had been performed, but a broader scope of “sophisticated” works shined on the Yiddish stages and drew the attention of American producers and theater owners, many of whom were Jewish and were very tuned into what was happening on Yiddish Broadway. The domestic dramas would also find their home on Broadway in the form of timely plays about social and political issues.

Although the language barriers prevented many of the Yiddish theater stars from successfully making the crossover to Broadway, some did find ways of making the transition. Jacob P. Adler, as mentioned earlier, proved that it could be done, and done well, when he took the character Shylock to Broadway (in Yiddish) in
The Merchant of Venice
. Meanwhile, Bertha Kalish was able to use her powerful singing voice and multi-lin-gual ability to enjoy success on both stages, while the diminutive Molly Picon, who became a legend in vaudeville and on the English-speaking 27

Jews on Broadway

stages for decades, learned Yiddish at a young age and was able to 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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2

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 and songs with barbed satire and topical humor. By the end of the century the term “vaudevire” had emerged, which later became vaudeville.1

Unlike the traditional and secular works found on the stages of Yiddish theater, vaudeville was the epitome of the great American melting pot, welcoming immigrants of all nationalities. The phenomenon had begun in the late 1870s and had gained enormous acceptance throughout the United States. Vaudeville was culled from various sources including the Barnum and Bailey Circus, with the idea of presenting numerous, 30