“A sacrilege” quoted in Waiting for Godik.
false set of expectations See Altman and Kaufman, Making of a Musical, 122–33.
Berkowitz admitted to changing Tevye’s puns and distortions See Benny Mer, “The Fall and Rise of Tevye,” Haaretz.com, May 12, 2009.
“only country where they played around with the script” Stein interview.
“It’s been constant arguments” Altman letter to Robbins, May 25, 1965, JRP6:28.
“inefficiency here is stupendous” Altman letter to Robbins, June 3, 1965, JRP6:28.
“They all are responding to our directions” Abbott letter to Robbins, May 3, 1965, JRP6:28.
“Everyone—but everyone” Altman letter to Robbins, May 6, 1965, JRP6:28.
“he read the more serious scenes very well” Altman letter to Robbins, April 20, 1965, JRP6:28.
“has the equipment” Stein letter to Robbins, n.d., JRP6:28.
“shockingly lazy” … “audiences absolutely love him” Altman letter to Robbins, June 3, 1965, JRP6:28.
“My Tevye doesn’t groan, weep, wail” Zur quoted in Moshe Brilliant, “Tevye Stirs Up a Storm,” New York Times, August 15, 1965, X2.
“What makes you think we would be interested” Stein interview.
“cheap, empty, and hollow” Dr. Emil Feuerstein, “Fiddler on the Roof at the Godik Theater,” Ha’tzoffe, June 11, 1967, trans. Elhanan, clippings, BSA-TA.
“saccharine water with rose petals made of cellophane” Chaim Glickstein, unidentified, n.d., trans. Elhanan, clippings, BSA-TA.
“Yiddishkayt drowning in shmaltz” Gamzu, “Last Night in the Theater,” Haaretz, June 8, 1965, trans. Elhanan, clippings, BSA-TA.
“not even fresh shmaltz” Michael Ohad, “Lipstick.”
Tevye as “a warmhearted human being” Zur quoted in Brilliant, “Tevye Stirs Up a Storm.”
“never knew what an exilic Jew is” Feuerstein, Ha’tzoffe.
“he was the least Jewish” Glickstein.
“more goy than Sholem-Aleichem-like” … “grace and charm” Gamzu, “Last Night in the Theater.”
“miscast as Tevye” … “and not entertain” Mendel Kohansky, “Tevye via Broadway,” Jerusalem Post, June 11, 1965.
attorney general, Gideon Hausner, vowed to pronounce the indictment quoted in Segev, Seventh Million, 347. For further discussion of the Eichmann trial, see also Arendt, Eichmann, and Cesarani, Becoming Eichmann.
“marked the beginning of a dramatic shift” Segev, Seventh Million, 361.
“The Diaspora is returning to us” Ohad, “Lipstick.”
more than one-quarter Prince office press release, August 25, 1966; Fiddler clips, NYPL-PA, “1966.”
“5,760-mile Off-Broadway production” leaflet in HPP111:6.
“He filled that character with human warmth” “A Great Actor of Small People,” obituary for Shmuel Rodensky by Amnon Nevot, n.p., n.d., trans. Elhanan, clippings, BSA-TA.
“It shows how rooted and mature” “A Yidl mitn Fidl,” Ma’ariv, September 1965, trans. Elhanan, clippings, BSA-TA.
“give the show a particularly Jewish reputation” Prince letter to Hutto, October 21, 1965, HPP111:6.
the Israeli ambassador in Bonn Kohansky, “Fiddlers on All Roofs,” Australian Jewish News, September 19, 1969.
“the greatest Tevye ever” … “tore my heart” Topol interview.
“There will be virtually no competition” Pilbrow letter to Prince, September 30, 1966, HPP114:4.
“wild” about [McKern] Pilbrow letter to Prince, August 5, 1966, HPP114:1.
there was “no other Englishman” Pilbrow letter to Prince, August 17, 1966, HPP114:1.
out of their minds Pilbrow letter to Prince, August 19, 1966, HPP114:1.
“If he should turn us down” Prince to Fiddler authors, September 12, 1966, JRPP6:1.
Mostel demanded 10 percent Fisher (Prince office) letter to Pilbrow, September 22, 1966, HPP114:4.
London would go no higher than 7.5 telegram from Pilbrow office to Prince, September 19, 1966, HPP114:4.
“when the authors are off in Boston” Prince letter to Pilbrow, September 23, 1966, HPP114:4.
“You must deliver” telegram from P. Littler (Pilbrow office), September 21, 1966, HPP114:4.
“being produced in fourteen languages” Prince letter to Toby Rolwands (Pilbrow office), October 3, 1966, HPP114:4.
“Hal would like to know” Annette Meyers letter to Pilbrow, August 14, 1966, HPP114:5.
“CHYAM POPAL” telegram from Pilbrow to Prince, October 4, 1966, HPP114:4.
“Somebody totally unknown” Pilbrow letter to Prince, October 6, 1966, HPP114:1.
Topol … thought the invitation was a joke Topol, Topol by Topol, 2–3.
“far more exciting than we ever dared to hope” Pilbrow letter to Prince, October 31, 1966, HPP14:1.
Altman worried Altman and Kaufman, Making of a Musical, 140.
“doing everything correct” quoted in background essay in Playbill for 1990 production of Fiddler at the Gershwin, starring Topol, JBP22:6; Topol interview.
by March the show was fully booked until the following Christmas Topol, Topol by Topol, 114.
nearly 600 percent profit press release from Sol Jacobson-Lewis Harmon stamped “rec’d May 22, 1967,” Fiddler clippings, “1967.”
the Six-Day War See Sachar, A History of Israel, 615–66; Segev, 1967.
Topol traveled up and down Topol, Topol by Topol, 120–24, and Topol interview.
the threat of extermination Segev, Seventh Million, 392.
He had left London as a star Altman and Kaufman, Making of a Musical, 167; Pilbrow, A Theatre Project, 157.
Robbins “should come over … and try to save the show” Topol letter to Robbins, October 2, 1967, JRP6:1.
“extremely good shape” Pilbrow letter to Robbins, October 5, 1967, JRP6:1.
“since the rest of his behavior” Prince letter to Robbins, October 19, 1967, JRP6:1.
“actually the worst offender” Bock note to Robbins, November 8, 1967, JRP5:12.
“history repeats itself” Prince letter to Robbins, n.d. (enclosing Alfie Bass reviews), JRP6:5.
When Mirisch saw a notice Mirisch, I Thought, 306; Jewison, This Terrible Business, 178–79; Jewison interview.
Jewison hadn’t liked [Mostel] Jewison interview.
“must be rooted in truth” Jewison letter to Mirisch, September 8, 1969, NJP32:14.
Tevye had to feel like a Russian Jew Jewison interview.
“I identified very strongly with Israel” Fiddler post-screening Q&A, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Norman Jewison Retrospective, May 29, 2011.
“you could see him stiffen” Lincoln Center Q&A.
“My grandfather was a sort of Tevye” Topol quoted in McCandlish Phillips, “Topol, Film Tevye, Looks Back at Role,” New York Times, November 3, 1971, 38.
“collective incarnation of a new ethnic heroism” Sachar, A History of the Jews in America, 713; see also S. Rosenthal, Waning.
“wondered if they had not neglected” Sachar, A History of the Jews in America, 818.
CHAPTER 7: FIDDLER WHILE BROOKLYN BURNS
“We were in show business” Piro-1 interview.
“where Jews can live as in the Old Country” Sachar, A History of the Jews in America, 214.
rapidly deteriorating subdivided houses See Podair, Strike, and Pritchett, Brownsville.
“notoriously, a place that measured” Kazin, Walker, 12.
threatened to boycott See Ravitch, Great School Wars, 270ff., and “Schools to Seek Rights Panel Aid,” New York Times, August 27, 1963.
surrounded by community protesters Rubin interview.
“taste excellence” Piro-1 and Rubin interviews.
“With your scores” Piro-1 interview.
“We are not martyrs” Piro, “Teaching the Disadvantaged,” letter to Music Educators Journal 54:4 (December 1967): 16.
“For Mr. Piro” Beverly Cannon Dorsey int
erview.
“the only place you could feel free” Haskins interview.
Stephan Hirsch … found refuge there Hirsch interview.
“time to get down to business” McCullers interview.
“a big brother and father figure” Maritza Figueroa Reynolds interview.
“don’t do assembly-type” Piro, Black Fiddler (henceforth, BF), 18.
Bruce Birnel had just seen Birnel interview.
“Maybe Black Power is what” Clive Barnes, “Theater: All-Negro ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Has Its Premiere,” New York Times, November 13, 1967.
When they reopened, some 350 UFT teachers … stayed home New York Times coverage: “Admit Teachers, M’Coy Is Ordered,” May 24, 1968; “Classes Go On Despite District Woes,” June 11, 1968; “Donavan Says Schools in Ocean Hill–Brownsville District Will Remain Open,” June 17, 1968; “Ocean Hill Unit ‘Dismisses’ 350,” June 21, 1968.
“If community control … becomes a fact” Shanker quoted in Rossner, Year Without Autumn, 39, and in Sol Stern, “‘Scab’ Teachers,” Ramparts, November 17, 1966, 21.
“coming into the ghetto to cripple” letter to Shanker from parent/community negotiating committee for IS 201, quoted in Ravitch, Great School Wars, 306.
“educational genocide” Reverend C. Herbert Oliver, quoted in Martin Mayer, “The Full and Sometimes Very Surprising Story of Ocean Hill, the Teachers’ Union and the Teacher Strike of 1968,” New York Times, February 2, 1969.
“hoodlum element” … “mob rule” Shanker quoted in New York Times, “‘Hoodlum Element’ Said to Run Schools,” February 12, 1968, and, for example, UFT full-page New York Times ad for a “rally to protest mob rule and save our schools,” September 13, 1968.
“a white motherfucking Jew bastard” Piro-1 interview, and Piro, BF, 27.
“Can’t you do Guys and Dolls?” … “unsettled” … “sensitive time” Rubin interview.
a “queer old auntie” quoted in Samantha Ellis, “Lionel Bart’s Oliver!, June 1960,” Guardian, June 18, 2003, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2003/jun/18/theatre.saman thaellis.
James Baldwin “Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They Are Anti-White,” New York Times Magazine, April 9, 1967.
“It’s called Fiddler on the Roof” Piro, BF, 28.
help Teddy “keep it together” Dorsey interview.
“Gestapo tactics” … “Fuck you” quoted in Gitlin, Sixties, 334.
Only a year earlier, the Anti-Defamation League The ADL commissioned Gary T. Marx to conduct the study. He published it as Protest and Prejudice: A Study of Belief in the Black Community (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
Variety joked in September clipping and note from Prince’s assistant, September 16, 1968, HPP109:1.
“Commie fascists,” “Black Nazi lovers,” and “nigger lovers” quoted in Leonard Buder, “Parents Smash Windows, Doors to Open Schools,” New York Times, October 19, 1968, 1.
“racist pigs” Leonard Buder, “Brooklyn Inquiry Begun on Threats in JHS 271 Crisis,” New York Times, October 16, 1968.
leaflet filled with Jew-hating invective The leaflets are reproduced—and their use analyzed—in Fred Ferretti, “New York’s Black Anti-Semitism Scare,” Columbia Journalism Review 8:3 (Fall 1969): 18–28.
temperate terms of the ADL quoted in Bill Kovach, “Racist and Anti-Semite Charges Strain Old Negro-Jewish Ties,” New York Times, October 23, 1968, 1.
“perpetrated multiple fraud” New York Civil Liberties Union report quoted in Ferretti, “New York’s Black Anti-Semitism Scare,” 18.
shocked to find himself jeered Kovach, “Racist and Anti-Semite Charges,” 1.
Piro had voted with his union to strike Piro-1 interview.
“a professional theater schedule” Piro-2 interview.
“it looked like a drag queen” Piro-2 interview.
Sheila found quick identification Haskins interview.
Olga thought about Olga Carter Dais interview.
“Tevye—he’s a poor milkman” Teddy quoted in Richard Schoenstein, “Kiddie Afro Fiddler Brownsville Smash,” New York Magazine, April 7, 1969, 44.
“all about getting into character” Dais interview.
The afternoon work turned technical Reynolds, Haskins, Dorsey, Dais, McCullers, Piro, Sicari interviews.
“I’m not going to do it like that” Piro-1 interview.
“living and breathing your words” Hirsch interview.
They called themselves the Maccabees Piro, “Black Fiddler,” Music Educators Journal 58:3 (November 1971): 54.
personal secrets blazoned Piro, BF, 130.
threatened to kill him unpublished manuscript submitted to the New York Times in 1971 by colleague Dan O’Neil: “I was with Piro in the teacher’s cafeteria when one Jewish teacher threatened to kill him if the play went on.” Piro personal files, kindly shared.
On the day of the assembly Piro, BF, 85–90; Piro-1, Birnel, Dorsey interviews.
“It was real” Dorsey interview.
“This show has been canceled” “those fucking Jews” Piro, BF, 99, and McCullers interview.
“The girl giving me freedom” Haskins interview.
That night, Olga’s mother Piro, BF, 101; Dais interview; interview with Lillian Carter in Enders, Black Fiddler.
“That’s a good show” Brown interview and Piro, BF, 107–10.
trying to “scratch out a simple tune” Piro-2 interview.
“We urgently request” council letter quoted in Piro, BF, 128, and Brown interview.
with fury and dread Rubin interview.
It was Birnel Birnel, Piro interviews.
It took Bock, Harnick, and Stein less than five minutes Harnick-2 interview.
Robbins was away at the time memo from Floria Lasky to Robbins, March 6, 1969, JRP8:8.
“embarrassing” Harnick-2 interview.
“Hamlet can only be played” Stein interview.
“quite a marvelous thing” Stein quoted in WCBS report, Jean Parr.
had realized a profit of 1,300 percent Betty Flynn, “Boy Were those critics wrong!” Chicago Daily News, February 22, 1969, 3.
the issue was a poem Lester, Lovesong, and Ferretti, “New York’s Black Anti-Semitism Scare”; also Weusi interview.
Metropolitan Museum of Art was just opening Schoener, Harlem on My Mind. For discussion and analysis of the exhibit and the protests, see Steven C. Dubin, “Crossing 125th Street: Harlem on My Mind Revisited,” in Displays of Power: Memory and Amnesia in the American Museum (New York: New York University Press, 1999), and Bridget R. Cooke, “Black Artists and Activism: Harlem on My Mind (1969),” American Studies 48:1 (Spring 2007): 5–40.
“anti-Jewish feeling is a natural result” Van Ellison, “Introduction,” in Schoener, Harlem on My Mind, 13–14. A further controversy erupted when it became clear that some of the inflammatory assertions were Van Ellison’s paraphrases from Glazer and Moynihan that went uncredited because Schoener had taken out the footnotes.
six o’clock news Jeanne Parr Report, WCBS-NY, aired January 30, 1969.
60 Minutes Jane Nicholl, “Fiddler in the Ghetto,” aired June 10, 1969.
Enders’s hour-long film, Black Fiddler: Prejudice and the Negro broadcast on ABC, August 7, 1969.
Campbell’s cultural nationalism had been fostered Weusi interview.
“the equivalent of an African griot” Weusi interview.
Frances Brown’s enthusiasm Brown interview.
“ensemble playing in the finest sense” Piro, BF, 172.
That night he wrote the cast Piro, BF, 172–74.
foraging trips along Pitkin and Belmont Ampolsky interview.
birch trees to project Birnel interview, video footage.
Mayor Lindsay assembled James P. Sterba, “Mayor Names 13 to Calm Schools,” New York Times, March 13, 1969, 1.
“demonstrations, rampages” Martin Arnold, “Public-School Violence Spreads; 24 Students, 5 Adults Arrested,” New York Times, April 25, 1969, 1.
Beverly tried to organize Dorsey interview; Piro, BF, 192–93.
“battle-zone atmosphere” Piro, BF, 195.
two hundred high school kids broke twenty-five … windows Michael T. Kaufman, “School Battered by Band of Youths,” New York Times, May 1, 1969, 38.
“That’s some way to attract an audience” Piro, BF, 203.
from “optimistic universalism” Rieder, Canarsie, 27.
“the Jewish passage” Podair, Strike, 144.
breaking another twenty windows “Brooklyn School Stoned by Youths,” New York Times, May 2, 1969, 28.
Rubin was out there talking to police brass Rubin interview.
even Beverly’s mother Dorsey interview.
“dedication to the idea” Fiddler program at Eiseman, Fiddler clips, New York Public Library.
Piro gave the kids the requisite backstage pep talk … wept openly Dorsey, McCullers, Hirsch, Haskins, Reynolds, Dais, Piro, Birnel interviews.
“The one word which keeps knocking” Piro memo; Piro, BF, 226.
“It helped me to embrace” Reynolds interview.
“all in vain” Piro-1 interview.
A special screening was arranged “Black Students React to New ‘Fiddler’ Film,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jewish Press (Omaha, NE), November 18, 1971, clippings, BSA-TA.
film being shot with pieces of stocking “Dialogue with Norman Jewison,” Hollywood Reporter, February 13, 2003.
CHAPTER 8: ANATEVKA IN TECHNICOLOR
“the most important film” Jewison letter to publicity team in Toronto (Mick Langston), July 20, 1971, NJP32:15.
the first Harry Belafonte special Jewison, This Terrible Business, 49.
“my life was being wasted” Jewison, This Terrible Business, 92–93.
Jewison wiggled out of his contract See Mark Harris, Pictures at a Revolution, 143.
“the movie that made me feel” Jewison, This Terrible Business, 114.
“wanted to make films about political problems” Jewison interview.
summoned to the office of United Artists Jewison interview. In This Terrible Business, Jewison dates this meeting to 1969, clearly an error. He and Mirisch traveled to London to consider Topol for the role before mid-February 1968; correspondence between Jerry Robbins and his lawyer as well as Hal Prince in March and April 1968 refer to Jewison’s having been signed for the film; Mirisch, in I Thought We Were Making, says he’s the
Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof Page 48
