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Reflections of the Yiddish Film Industry Bruce Sullivan gobbled up by stores bigger than Morris Bober could ever have imagined Works Cited Abramson, Edward A. “The Assistant.” Bernard Malamud Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993. 25-42. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 129. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Birmingham, Stephen. Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York. Harper and Row: New York, 1967. Howe, Irving. The World of Our Fathers. Simon and Schuster: New York, 1976. Kessler-Harris, Alice. Introduction to Bread Givers. Persea Books: New York, 1999. Malamud, Bernard. The Assistant. MJF Books: New York, 1992. Moon, Krystyn R. “The Gift of Bread Givers.” Journal of American Ethnic History, Winter 2010, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p74-78, 5p. Pinsker, Sanford. “The Re-Awakening of Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep.” Jewish Social Studies 28.3 (July 1966): 148-158. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Deborah A. Schmitt. Vol. 104. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Aug. 2010. Renny, Christopher. “Rags to Riches to Suicide: Unhappy Narratives of Upward Mobility” College Literature, Fall 2002, Vol. 29 Issue 4, p79, 30p. Roth, Henry. Call It Sleep. Noonday Press: New York, 1962. Segal, Elaine. “‘I want to be in business . I like to be in business.’” Smithsonian; Apr 94, Vol. 25 Issue 1, p80, 11p. Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. Persea Books: New York, 1925. Asimilation vs. Tradition: Reflections of the Yiddish Film Industry BRUCE SULLIVAN During the twentieth century, a new art-form took hold in America. Motion pictures combined the beauty of photography, the majesty of orchestral music, art and set design, with acting and directing talents from the stage to create what many consider to be a new, higher art form. What today is a billion dollar industry was created, in large part, by Jewish-Americans. The cultural impact of Jewish-Americans to popular culture is difficult to quantify, but for a populace that merely accounts for 2% of the over-all American population, Jewish American contributions are enormous. “Their contribution to popular culture is so rich, their impact so pervasive, it is impossible to describe fully even a modest zone of cultural influence” (Weber 130). Nowhere is this influence greater than in the American film industry. 24 It is difficult to imagine the American film landscape without the Jewish voice. It would be tantamount to imagining American popular musical traditions without the African American influence. Blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, disco, Motown pop, hip hop, and rap would not exist. What would be left? The Jewish American impact on Hollywood is no less important. Jewish American studio chiefs headed virtually every major American studio. Jewish American singers, and dancers, like Al Jolson (The Jazz Singer), comedians and actors like The Marx Brothers and directors like Steven Spielberg changed the face of American society. “The streets are crucial… they became the training ground for Jewish actors, comics, and singers” (Howe, World of Our Fathers). Alfred Kazin claimed that Jews were “prepared not in universities… but in the vaudeville theaters, music halls, and burlesque houses” (Weber, 130). Within the American film market existed an important Jewish Film Industry. This industry began in the 1910’s and flourished during the twenties and thirties. While films like The Jazz Singer reflected the anxiety of Jewish society, which was trying to balance assimilation with tradition, nowhere was the Jewish American psyche reflected more perfectly than in the Yiddish language films of the 1920’s and thirties. This paper will explore this industry and one of its most important contributors, Edgar Ulmer as a means to understand the Jewish American hopes, dreams, and fears during the period leading up to WWII. Jewish American filmmaker Edgar Ulmer had, by the 1930s, already gained a reputation as a talented filmmaker. “Ulmer had studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and was a contemporary to such future cinema giants as F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, Robert Siodmak, and Billy Wilder”(Muller 178). Prior to coming to the United States, Ulmer worked in Berlin as an art director and assistant stage director, where he worked on Murnau’s Faust in 1922 and The Last laugh in 1924. Ulmer traveled to America in 1925, a decision that probably saved his life, and went into training as a director. Ulmer developed a reputation as an egoless director who could produce films under extreme conditions and low budgets. He worked briefly for Fox and MGM before arriving back at Universal Studios, where he became interested in a screen adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Black Cat”. The film starring horror giants Bella Lugosi and Boris Karloff would ultimately be Ulmer’s biggest Hollywood success, but not without controversy. “The psychologically scarred Ulmer integrated into the work his personal quirks, including a childhood Oedipal complex and a fascination for such larger than life personalities as the notorious modern-day Satanist and all-purpose degenerate, Aleister Crowley” (Brunas 80). Shot in just 16 days (one day over schedule) and for only $91,125, Ulmer completed his expressionistic horror tale. Unfortunately, “the studio brass deemed that The Black Cat was too vile for public and censorial consumption” (Brunas 83). This forced a hasty reshoot over three and a half days. “Reviewers found the picture incomprehensible and revolting… and the subject matter was branded unsavory” (Brunas 83). Today, the film is hailed for its flamboyant technique and as one of the director’s finest works, even rivaling Detour (1945), often mentioned as the finest film noir picture ever made. It stands as “a masterpiece of the horror genre” (Katz 1418). 25 Though Ulmer’s career could have continued into A picture territory, his fate would lie elsewhere thanks to an affair with Shirley Castle on the set of The Black Cat. “She divorced husband Max Alexander, cousin of Universal chief Carl Laemmle, and married Ulmer. Laemmle got even by blackballing Ulmer at all the major studios. Poverty Row became home, but Castle remained his devoted wife for the rest of his life” (Muller 178). Ulmer would then go on to produce and direct some of the most important Yiddish language films in Jewish film history. Jewish cinema during the twenties and thirties reflected the hopes, fears, and dreams of their audience. “Audiences watched their deepest anxieties and desires literally enacted, displayed before their eyes” (Weber 131). Many of these Yiddish language films depicted a reoccurring struggle for balance between the need to hold on to tradition and the desire to assimilate and become part of modern society. As depicted in Green Fields (1937), Ulmer’s first Yiddish language film, “the turn of the twentieth century saw the beginnings of the break-up of traditional Jewish life in the villages of Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine, where, for centuries, a large part of the Jewish people had lived. The East European Jews were becoming increasingly secularized and increasingly urban and they were immigrating in large numbers to more hospitable shores” (Green Fields film credits). Many of the popular Yiddish language films produced in New York were actually adaptations of traditional Yiddish theater. Though Jewish immigrants poured into New York during this time, many missed their homelands and traditional ways of life. This desire to hang onto tradition was reflected in the art. “The Yiddish Literature that flourished in this period often lamented the disappearance of the old way of life, which was portrayed in idyllic terms. One writer whose work exemplifies this nostalgia is the great dramatist Peretz Hirschbein, who was born in a village in Poland in 1880 and died in LA in 1948. It is from his popular play Green Fields, first produced in 1923” (Green Fields credits). This play was adapted for the screen in 1937 by Ulmer. Ulmer, now in exile from Hollywood, seemed a perfect choice to help raise the level of Yiddish cinema. Ulmer’s reputation as a fast, budget conscious shooter was perfect for these limited market films. “He once bragged about completing 80 set-ups in a day” (Brunas 84). In Green Fields, Ulmer produced a film that appears far more lavish and expensive than its tiny budget would indicate. Green Fields “is a partnership of two outstanding talents: Edgar Ulmer, an Austrian-Jewish immigrant to the United States, who had made a reputation for himself as a maverick, versatile, highly productive filmmaker.; and Jacob Ben-Ami, an early disciple of Hirschbein’s and one of the leading serious actors and directors of the New York Yiddish stage. Though produced on a shoestring, (it was made in rural New Jersey), the film was a great critical and box office success, when first released in 1937, praised for its pastoral realism and Jewish authenticity”. Critical praise included suggesting that the film “has caught the beauty and poetry of the classic work and transferred it to the screen in a masterful manner” (The Film Daily). The New York World Telegram declared it “A new high in vernacular art!” In the film’s opening scenes, Young Levi leaves his friends and synagogue for greener pastures. His friends openly worry, “He will lose his way.” The new land he stumbles upon offers an idyllic vision of pastoral family life, with young 26 lovers stealing kisses during a happy planting. “Sunlit and air-filled, yet suffused and yearning, the film recalls Renoir and Vigo… It exudes a dreamy pantheism” (J. Hoberman). Like many Yiddish theater goers in the Lower East Side, the peasant farmers who inhabit this land are uneducated, but hard working Jews. They know little of the Torah, as they cannot afford to educate their children.
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