This is a mini-controversy I did not plan commenting on, but, to paraphrase Michael Corleone, I feel like I am dragged into the Leonard Bernstein mess.
Bradley Cooper (left) as Leonard Bernstein (right)
Well, not exactly Leonard Bernstein, who is dead. More like the mess surrounding Bradley Cooper, who is portraying the genius composer and conductor, in a soon-to-be-released Netflix biography. [It is mandatory that I mention Cooper was a Philadelphia Daily News intern, whom I did not meet at the time.]
Cooper, who is Christian, is directing the biopic, and is playing Bernstein, who was Jewish, with a prosthetic nose.
Why do I feel dragged in?
Because I am Jewish and some of Cooper’s moronic critics have complained of casting a non-Jew to play a Jew, that’s one issue. Then they accused him of being anti-Semitic, of “Jewface,” because he is using a largish prosthetic nose. A large, hooked nose has been used by anti-Semitic cartoonists since they first put ink to paper. Such as this:
The “Jewface” slur suggests all Jews have a particular kind of face. Do they? Let’s ask Goldie Hawn, Jake Gyllenhaal, Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, David Arquette, Rashida Jones, Adam Levine, Amanda Peet, Paula Abdul, and Jack Black. The Jewish critics, as far as I am concerned, have some unresolved negative emotions about their own heritage and are projecting their dark feelings on to others.
If some are complaining about Cooper’s nose as Bernstein, just imagine what kind of hell the actress selected to play Barbra Streisand will get someday.
Next, complaining about casting a Christian to play a Jew is not at all like the long-ago custom of casting white actors to play Native Americans, or Natalie Wood to play the Latina Maria in “West Side Story.”
In reality, most American Jews look like everyone else, but, yeah, there are some Jewish “types,” such as Adam Sandler, Woody Allen, Mayim Bialik, Mel Brooks. Every ethnicity has a stereotype — Irish, Italian, English, African, Greek — that apply to some, but not all.
Complaining about Cooper’s casting suggests that roles should be cast by religion, which is unAmerican, and possibly illegal. And harmful to Jewish actors because Jews are only 2.4% of all Americans.
Remember “Hello, Dolly”? It starred Christian Carol Channing as Dolly Levi, perceived as Jewish. Who cared?
No one, but that was before we — some of us — started going nuts over identity.
Oh — and then there was the all Black version of Hello, Dolly. Again, bupkis complaints
Why? Intent.
The intent was to pay homage. No harm, no foul.
As to Bernstein, the late maestro’s three children and the Anti Defamation League have no problems with Cooper’s portrayal, so who should give any standing to the, pardon me, professional Jewish kvetchers?
“Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we’re perfectly fine with that. We’re also certain that our dad would have been fine with it as well,” the Bernstein children said in a statement on X.
There is no doubt that Cooper’s intent is to lionize the late maestro. As he should be for his music and his humanity. And he did have a somewhat large nose, but certainly nowhere near Cyrano de Bergerac.
Which reminds me, was there any controversy surrounding Steve Martin, in the movie “Roxanne” when he played a character with a shnooz that put Pinocchio to shame?
And while I was grappling with this, a storm blows in about casting the elegant (Christian) Brit Helen Mirren as American-born Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Using makeup to make her look more like Golda.
Horrors!
And complaints that Christian Cillian Murphy was cast to play Jewish physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Do these critics have any idea how stupid they sound?
How stupid they are?
The (pardon me) act of acting requires assuming an identity that is not yours.
How many Founding Fathers were nonwhite?
Roughly none.
But what happened when New York Puerto Rican Lin-Manuel Miranda cast Blacks and Hispanics in those roles — in racist America?
He was hailed as a genius.
But casting a white gentile as a white Jew is abhorrent?
Puh-leeze.
Great reading on a beautiful Sunday morning. So funny. So true. Glad my phone is waterproof as I sprayed nearly a mouth full of coffee when I read the Streisand line. Hamilton cast – what a bunch of hypocrites our society has turned into. Will be laughing all the way to church. Thank you.
P. S. I’m most often mistaken for Jewish. And people actually apologize for that mistake. Really.
If I gave you a laugh — great. As to the apology, I suspect that was a knee jerk and wasn’t intended as it came across. I’m usually tolerant of what OTHERS might see as micro aggressions.
Fantastic article Stu. There Is not one iota of BS in what you said. Unfortunately some people need something to fight for no matter how ludicrous it is.
By the way Stu, who would you like to play you in your bio-pic? 😊
Someone told me I looked like Frank Langella. But that was 30 years ago. Today, Walter Brennan.😄
😂
I saw this about Rachel Brosnahan in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” which, btw is an awesome series.. But, Stu, you are right. Who decides who is Jewish enough? Or Catholic or Muslim or anything else out there?
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All this political correctness is total b s.
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Perhaps we needed this to reach the apex of racial political correctness, and it can deservedly fade to the oblivion where it belongs.
Wishful thinking, I am afraid. But I do think “Woke” is approaching apex.
If they are offended, they don’t have to see the film, pretty simple I think. People have so many bugs up their butt about nonsense these days about the silliest things! My grandfather had a honker that could cause an eclipse, It was real, so was he. No nobody ever asked him his religion or nationality.
Consider Jimmy Durante’s nose! And he was Irish!
He was Italian. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Durante#:~:text=He%20was%20the%20youngest%20of,from%20Salerno%2C%20Campania%2C%20Italy.
I am replete with rue.
I always ask myself why stereotypes exist in the first place. The answer is pretty obvious. Growing up in the city, we tended to call people by names that today would likely be considered offensive. Things like “Joe the Jew'” or “Dago Paulie” or whatever. I don’t think we meant anything by them; they were more of a descriptive identifier than anything else. I guess times have changed. For the better? Not sure about that.
Ah, remember the hoo-hah over Chink’s steak shop? Faux controversy, the owner (who bought it from the guy nick-named Chink’s,) he caved and changed the name to Joe’s, then went out of business.
I got 30 days in Facebook Jail just for metioning Chinks was the name of a steak shop in Philadelphia,and tagged as being racist. This was last Feb.!
FB can be really dense. I got pulled over today for “threatening” someone.
He was a Trumpster who believes the election was stolen and kept floating conspiracy theories that have been disproved. He also seemed to think Trump hired Merrick Garland. I said he was too stupid to be breathing my air, so I told him he joined the BANNED nincompoops on my page and I would no longer read anything he said. THAT was the threat and bullying. I appealed. FB reversed itself a couple of hours later.
Stu, no more Facebook or Twitter, just Meta and X. Have you no feelings for the preferences of Tech Billionaires?
No, I don’t. 😄
Perhaps the lead critics are unfamiliar with the Judeo-Christian tradition? Since Jesus was a Jew, I guess Mel Gibson should not have played him? Or more recently, Jim Caviezel? Well done, Stu….Cooper is a brilliant actor/director/producer, working with the Bernstein family…..what a bunch of schlemiels (correct me please if my limited Yiddish is wrong…after all, I am literally a Gentile)
You nailed it, Donna.
The People who are complaining need to get a life and a better cause to fight for. Go volunteer with meals on wheels, rock newborns born to crack mothers etc. They will never ask if you are Jewish, Catholic or Muslim. You will be helping others and you will feel good for doing it.
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Wow! Mel Brooks is Jewish? All this time I thought he was Irish….you know, with the brogue.
It’s amazing how low we’ve sunk in 60 years. I don’t recall anyone having a problem with the decidedly non-Martian Ray Walston playing one on “My Favorite Martian.” And I’m pretty sure neither George Reeve nor Adam West were actual superheroes.
Irish Catholic Nathan Lane made his reputation by playing Jews in “Guys and Dolls” and “The Producers”.
Very Irish Sean Connery played an Egyptian in the film version of “The Highlander”.
Vienna-born Hedy Lamarr was a South Seas temptress in “White Cargo”.
Omar Sharif, niether Russian nor Jewish, was the title character in “Doctor Zhivago” and Nicky Rothstein in “Funny Girl”.
And the great mezzo-soprano Ruth Ann Swenson made no secret of her desire to play every mezzos favorite role–“Carmen”.
The Met’s management balked.
“You’re six feet tall, blonde and Swedish–no one is ever going to buy you as a Spanish Gypsy”.
“Yes” she responded, “But if Pavarrotti can play a starving poet in “Boheme”, I can play “Carmen”.
She did! and beautifully!
You didn’t mention Eddie Murphy’s portrayal of the old Jewish man, Saul, in the barbershop scene of the movie “Coming to America.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXAryQxtVbE As the comedian Sarah Silverman said, ““Every Jew f’ing loves that [portrayal] because it feels like love. It feels like being known. There’s no hatred in it.” Same, apparently, with the Bernstein flick.
Also, the movie industry in this country does not have a history of excluding Jewish actors from prime roles or limiting to them to stereotypical ones. James Caan plays an Italian gangster in The Godfather, and Edward G. Robinson plays Johnny Rocco in Key Largo. Paul Newman could get any role he wanted (and can even sell salad dressing). Peter Falk played Columbo. And, of course, Tony Curtis (born Bernard Schwartz) was another star. One probable difference today, is that he wouldn’t have needed to change his name. John Garfield was born Jacob Garfinkle, so ditto for him, as well as Michael Landon (born Eugene Maurice Orowitz — half Jewish, half Irish-Catholic). Lorne Greene just dropped his middle name (Hyman), so you have to say Jews have had a real Bonanza in show business. (Sorry, could not resist).
Hoss and the Chinese cook were the only Gentiles on the Ponderosa. 😄
For the record, Sean Connery was Scottish, not Irish.
For the record, Elvis Presley was Jewish. Arguably only half, but since his mother was Jewish, that makes him a Jew under Jewish law. The WSJ broke the news in an article in 1998 titled: “All Shook Up in the Holy Land.”
“Elvis’s Jewish heritage runs uninterrupted through his maternal grandmothers: his Great-Great Grandmother on his mother’s side, Martha Tacket, was an observant Jew. Elvis was frequently photographed wearing a Chai necklace, the Jewish symbol for ‘life’. A Star of David [along with a cross] was included on his mother’s gravestone after her death in August 1958, a decision that was made by Elvis in order to honor her Jewish heritage.” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/elvis-presley
He also donated to Jewish organizations over the years.
True, he grew up in the Assembly of God Church in the deep South and with gospel music, and frequently wore a cross. But does that justify all these Elvis impersonators who are not at least half-Jewish trying to look like him? How have the critics missed this one for so long? (There was a famous Orthodox Jewish Elvis-impersonator styled “Elvis Schmelvis” Shouldn’t he have gotten all the work?)
I did not know of Elvis’ Jewish heritage, thanks. He does not appear on most “Jewish lists” because it was a great great grandmother, not a mother or father.
And Hedy helped invent a form of wifi for the Navy in WWII.
I’m of Italian heritage and Catholic, and I LOVE ‘Father’ Guido Sarducci. If you don’t know him from SNL, go look up his bits. Wonderful! (The actor who played him is of Italian heritage.)
Everybody wants to get in on the act. I will say that none of this criticism came from anybody I ever heard of, so it wasn’t exactly a big deal. (As Stu says, a “mini-controversy”). On the upside is that it failed to mobilize any sort of support. The Anti-Defamation League itself stated that this was not antisemitism. In fact, I don’t think any Jewish organization jumped on this would-be bandwagon. In this era of manufactured outrage and hypersensitivity (on both left and right), it seems to me at least a small victory that sanity prevailed in this case.
I do disagree with Stu’s diagnosis that “Jewish critics…have some unresolved negative emotions about their own heritage and are projecting their dark feelings on to others.” Instead, I think it is a product of our era and a habit of thought that sees bigotry everywhere. (This is nearly as bad as the stance that there is bigotry and discrimination nowhere or that it is just not a problem.) My (hopeful) view is that this is just a phase, a swinging of the pendulum from when bigotry and discrimination were not only acceptable, but widely embraced and even catered to. I take this “small victory” as a good sign that ultimately reality will prevail.
Tom A, very well stated!
Thanks great article. I can’t un-see Walter Brennan playing you 🤣🤣🤣
Think how I feel!
The late film actor Anthony Quinn many years ago wanted to play the role of Henri Christophe, a real-life leader of the 1791 slave uprising in Haiti who went on to become the President and the only King of Haiti in that island nation’s history. Quinn’s father was Irish, his mother Mexican. Quinn got a lot of grief from people outraged about a white man playing the role of a Black revolutionary. In his defense, Quinn said “That’s why role playing is called acting! And I am an actor. And that’s what we do.” In the film “Lawrence of Arabia” Quinn played with great acclaim the role Auda Abu Tayi, a Bedouin Arab. In the film “Zorba the Greek,” Quinn played a Greek character so full of life that for the rest of Quinn’s life, no matter whom he played on screen, his characters were infused with Zorba’s spirit. Again, that’s why we call it acting.
Heh. Reminds me of the story about Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier on the set of Marathon Man. They were shooting a scene where Hoffman’s character had been up for three days, and Hoffman didn’t sleep for 72 hours before the shoot to get in character. Olivier reportedly said, ““My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”