9/6/23
Newsletter #450
The Crack of Dawn
Having nothing to do with our present, “politically correct,” times; I’ve been bitching for about 40 years that Hollywood never casts Jews as Jews. Never is overstating it; almost never. I just this second was looking at the credits for the new Netflix movie, Maestro, the story of the Jewish, Leonard Bernstein, starring the gentile, Bradley Cooper. As I’ve complained about this for decades, I often get the same response, “They don’t have to be Jewish, they’re actors.” True, but Jews, just like any other ethnic group, aren’t quite the same as everybody else.
Initially, when I was young, it used to bug the hell out of me that a Jew has never played Jesus. Starting with the silents, Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings from 1927 stars the ever-so-gentile, H. B. Warner, described on IMDb as, “the definitive cinematic Jesus Christ.”
H.B. Warner doesn’t look Jewish to me.
In Nicolas Ray’s remake of King of Kings (1961) they went out of their way to cast the biggest shaygetz (Yiddish for a non-Jewish boy) in Hollywood, Jeffrey Hunter, who admittedly looks like the Jesus depicted in many religious paintings over the centuries.
Seriously, I first saw this film when I was about twelve, and all I could think was, “You’re kidding me. This guy’s supposed to be a Jew?”
But then somehow making it even worse was casting the intensely Swedish, Max Von Sydow, star of many of Ingmar Bergman’s films (none of which are about Swedish Jews) in George Steven’s enormous disaster, The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).
Keeping the tradition alive, Martin Scorsese managed to go even one farther casting the intensely-not-Jewish, Willem Dafoe, as Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ. Scorsese did, however, cast an actual Jew, Harvey Keitel, as Judas. So, good Jews are gentile, but bad Jews are actually Jews. And Romans are British, like David Bowie.
I wouldn’t even bring this up except that I’ve been bitching about it for so long, and now Hollywood has finally gotten around to the idea that ethnically casting properly isn’t a bad idea. But when Hollywood, the world’s capital of idiots, finally figured it out, they immediately had to go too far and make it requirement. Obviously, you can no longer cast Caucasians as Asians or black people (the proper term in that sentence would be Negro, but that word is now suspect), however Bradley Cooper with an obviously phony prosthetic nose is perfectly cool? Seriously, he had to look in the mirror every day of shooting and think, “Lookin’ good. They’ll buy this.” Oh, yeah, by the way, he’s also the director of the film, too.
Does it mean something that the great American show, West Side Story, was created by four Jewish homosexuals? Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins and Arthur Laurents. I think it does matter. If you want to tell the truth, that is.
Director Bradley Cooper actually did actually cast a Jew in the film, comedian/actor Sarah Silverman, as Shirley Bernstein, Leonard’s sister. Bradley Cooper with fake schnoze and Sarah Silverman as siblings? And this picture was produced by Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese? And it’s serious?
Oy vey.
I think these are valid points from the perspective of believability and casting. It started, I think, with the film pioneer, Thomas Ince, who cranked out hundreds of early silent, one- and two-reel westerns starting in the early teens. Ince primarily cast real Indians, Indigenous Americans, as the Indians. Nobody else in Hollywood gave a shit. John Ford trained at Ince and continued the practice of only casting real Indians, on location in Monument Valley, Utah. In Hollywood, the most popular Indian actor had to be Ricardo Montalban, and I thought he was great. As a Latino actor in Hollywood in the ‘50s and ‘60s, being cast at all was miraculous. Ricardo Montalban kept getting cast because he was so damn good.
Ricardo Montalban in Across the Wide Missouri (1951).
At least Ricardo Montalban was Mexican and had a dark complexion. A movie I saw many times (though not lately) and always really liked, is Broken Arrow (1950), which for all intents and purposes is Dances with Wolves, except that it’s a much better movie. James Stewart is the star, but the film belongs to Jeff Chandler as Cochise, and Jeff Chandler was as white as white guys get. But once again, Chandler was so damn good. What am I even talking about?
Me and many others thought Anthony Quinn was terrific as Zorba the Greek, even though he was Mexican. My Greek buddy found the casting of Quinn stupid and offensive.
Here’s one bit of casting that actually pulled me out of the film, but didn’t ruin it by any means. One of the better TV things I’ve seen in the past few years was Feud: Bette & Joan (2017), with Susan Sarandon well-cast as Bette Davis and Jessica Lange pretty good as Joan Crawford (not quite up to Faye Dunaway, but still impressive). The series is about the making of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Alfred Molina plays the director, Robert Aldrich, whom I personally met and spoke with, and the two men have nothing in common in any way – they’re both white, that’s it – and it’s still good casting. Why? Alfred Molina is just a terrific actor, bringing so much life to the part that it doesn’t matter at all that it’s nothing like Robert Aldrich. But here’s the thing, if you will, there are quite a few scenes with Robert Aldrich and the studio head, Jack Warner, played by Stanley Tucci. Jack Warner was your classic Hollywood/garment district, loudmouthed, thought-he-was-funny-but-wasn’t, Jew, which Stanley Tucci never was and never will be – he’s not in the slightest bit Jewish – except that he too is a really good actor, and I just went with it.
What’s my point? Casting is extremely difficult. Getting an actor who just looks the part is frequently a bad idea. Casting someone just because they’re the correct ethnicity probably isn’t always the right idea. Jeff Chandler makes a terrific Cochise because he projects pride so well.
Nevertheless, I’d still like to see a Jew play Jesus. It would give everybody a different perspective on the character.
In the 1920s Charlie Chaplin considered the idea of making a movie about Jesus with him in the lead. Just word of it caused a furor, and started a rumor that Chaplin was Jewish, which he wasn’t. When a reporter confronted him with the question of whether or not he was a Jew, Charlie said, “I do not have that honor.”
Th-th-that’s all, folks.