Many years ago I played the Spike Jones recording of "The Tennessee Waltz" on my deejay show in Flint, Michigan. It featured a wildly exaggerated, stereotypical Yiddish Dialect by Sarah Berner, whose list of radio, film, TV and record credits is one of the longest I've seen. I thought it was hilarious, and so did all those who made it a best seller. I got a long letter from a very offended listener who wanted me to apologize and break the record. Did Berner ever wish she had not made the record?
Mickey Katz, who worked with Spike Jones on "Cocktails for Two" specialized in broken Yiddish-English material. And Fannie Brice used a pretty heavy dialect in her early recordings.
Listening to some old Jack Benny shows with Artie Auerbach's "Mr. Kitzel" character, I wonder if some listeners were offended at the time or they are now if they hear the old shows. Would that character play today? How about Mrs. Nussbaum? Not likely.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I leave that to philosophers, sociologists and commentators.
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ReplyDeleteI've just read your blog for the first time today; I'm enjoying it immensely.
ReplyDeleteIf Kitzel, Nussbaum, Brice and others were on modern TV shows, I'm guessing they still might be liked: there's not a bad bone in any of them. Only Mrs. Nussbaum has a somewhat sharp tongue, but she's still likeable. I always thought she sounded close to my grandmother, although growing up in San Francisco, my grandma didn't have it as thick as her older brothers, Sig and Leon, who sounded like characters on "Abie's Irish Rose."
Unless it's because I haven't seen much currently, it seems to me the last show with lots of Jewish characters on it was "Seinfeld." Jerry's parents were likeable, but George's (Jewish despite the name ... and most everyone in the viewing audience knew it!) were harsher than anything on radio.
Right now, the most negative Jewish stereotype on TV for me has been Howard Wolowitz's mom, Carol Ann Susi, from CBS-TV's "The Big Bang Theory." Her voice is screeching enough to get the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem to tell her to "Schweig still!" I still laugh, though, but my sides hurt not because of the humor, but because of the ridiculous character she plays: if anything, it is not anti-Semitic, but is a really negative depiction of Jewish moms. Come to think of it, Howard is a fairly negative depiction of Jewish adults!
By the way, "The Big Bang Theory" seems to have quite a few Jewish actors not playing Jewish at all. Melissa Rauch, Howard's girl, is Jewish, but plays Catholic IIRC; Brian George is Jewish, but plays Indian; and Mayim Bialik along with Sara Gilbert have no Jewishness to their characters on the show, in spite of their Jewish backgrounds ... I guess that's called acting!
I listen a lot to OTR, which is why this post struck me. And I'm also a member in AFTRA-SAG and AEA which is another reason I get into this stuff. In spite of being out of school since 1976, I still have an academic bent: feel lucky that I didn't write paragraphs on this and bore you to death!
Thanks again for the fun I'm having going through your posts. Steve Login