Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof

by Alisa Solomon

  one who offered the position to Jewison at his “first opportunity” (p. 305) after a summer 1967 meeting with United Artists.

  “never a big fan” “Norman Jewison, the Man Behind Fiddler on the Roof, Talks to John Williams,” news clipping from unidentified publication; n.d., NJP33:4.

  “Studios Again Mining Gold with Lavish Film Musicals” by Howard Thompson, New York Times, October 26, 1968, 39.

  United Artists went after it memos to Jerry Robbins JRP8:27.

  Kramer put in a bid Memo from Floria Lasky to Robbins, April 22, 1965, JRP8:27.

  “memorandum of terms” HPP115:8 and JRP8:27.

  293–94he stood to receive $100,000 … “exact a high price” Floria Lasky memo to Robbins, March 16, 1966, JRP8:29. Also see meeting summary memo, March 11, 1966, HPP115:8.

  Perl demanded $250,000 Memo from Floria Lasky to Robbins, March 23, 1966, JRP8:28.

  He got $75,000 Letter from Jerome Talbert to George Litto (Perl representative), April 4, 1966, JRP8:28.

  a last-minute, $2.5 million bid “Minutes of meeting re: ‘Fiddler on the Roof’—United Artists,” October 24, 1966; letter from Allen Klein to Edward Colto, Esq., November 17, 1966. JRP8:28

  $2.75 million Mirisch, I Thought We Were Making, 305.

  Hollywood, like the rest of America, had been rocked by change For a thorough discussion of these changes, see Harris, Pictures at a Revolution.

  the leader of the bloody slave revolt See Jewison, This Terrible Business, 153–56; also see Christopher Sieving, Soul Searching: Black-Themed Cinema from the March on Washington to the Rise of Blaxploitation (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011), esp. 83–117.

  Jewison assertively told the press Wayne Warga, “Civil Rights and a Producer’s Dilemma: Rights Challenge for Jewison,” Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1968, N1.

  Jewison had been feeling discouraged … “grief and disappointment” Jewison, This Terrible Business, 175–77. Also, Jewison interview.

  “to bring it into the big money” clipping from Variety, July 14, 1971, NJP33:4.

  “What would you say if” Jewison, This Terrible Business, 12–13. Also, Jewison interview and Lincoln Center Q&A, May 29, 2011.

  “He covered so beautifully” Jewison, Lincoln Center Q&A, May 29, 2011.

  “He could make a film free of complexes” “G. Yitur talks to Chaim Topol,” Olam Hakolnoa, December 16, 1971, trans. from Hebrew, Elik Elhanan, clipping, BSA-TA.

  “hey Jewboy” bullying Jewison, This Terrible Business, 11–15.

  “we need to feel how ‘the other’” ibid., 216.

  “I’m not a cerebral filmmaker” Norman Jewison, Film maker, documentary produced and directed by Doug Jackson, “special feature” on Fiddler on the Roof DVD, 2-Disc Collector’s Edition.

  37 books List of books purchased and forwarded from London to Los Angeles, November 6, 1969, NJP30:16.

  copies of Life Is with People memo from Jewison’s assistant, December 16, 1969. NJP 31:7.

  whirlwind five-day trip to Israel letter from Moshe Davis to Jewison, September 1, 1969; and draft itinerary, proposed schedule change, October 15, 1969, NJP30:15.

  old immigrants Jewison, This Terrible Business, 178, and notes from interview, NJP30:15.

  he also spent an afternoon Jewison letter to Vishniac, September 30, 1971, NJP31:7.

  “dear old Roman Vishniac” Jewison letter to Dan Smolen, UA, September 30, 1971, NJP32:15.

  “the look of the people” Jewison interview.

  “casting breakdown” notes Jewison notes, December 8, 1969, NJP30:6.

  “in a dignified manner” letter to Jewison from Rabbi Israel Klavan, Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Council of America, March 9, 1970, NJP31:4.

  “direct connection” with Sholem-Aleichem Jewison interview.

  The incident “devastated” Jewison Jewison interview.

  “MADAME CHAGALL SAYS” Western Union telegram from Saul Cooper to Norman Jewison, March 12, 1970, NJP30:8.

  Cooper updated Jewison letter, June 11, 1970, NJP30:8.

  “where there are animals” Jewison interview.

  “That’s when I turned to Tito” Jewison interview.

  “almost as much as he loved hard currency” Jewison, This Terrible Business, 178.

  forty-five minutes’ drive “General Information re Yugoslavia from Mirisch Films Limited,” July 13, 1970, NJP10:12.

  “All we had to do was build a synagogue” Jewison in “The ‘Fiddler’ Meets the Yugoslavs” by Frederick M. Winship, UP (dateline: New York), The Record, November 23, 1971.

  Decades before wide interest In 2004, the Handshouse Studio, a U.S.-based nonprofit fostering hands-on educational projects, began building, piece by piece, a replica of a magnificently painted wooden synagogue built in 1731 and burned down during the Holocaust in Gwoździec (Ukraine); in 2011, the nascent Museum of the History of Polish Jews entered into a collaboration with Handshouse to build and raise the synagogue replica at the museum, on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. It will stand as “a symbol of the vitality of Jewish culture in Poland,” Handshouse declares. They had no trouble raising nearly $57,000 from 441 donors through a Kickstarter campaign to document the project by film.

  building it from the timber Robert Boyle, “Set in Reality: Production Design,” featurette, Disc 2, Fiddler on the Roof, 2-Disc Collector’s Edition, MGM.

  visited whatever standing synagogues Jewison interview.

  In Targu Neamt … even tried to purchase Jewison interview and Mirisch Productions letter from associate producer Patrick Palmer, to Bucharest (National Cinema Center) March 19, 1970, NJP30:12.

  The request was denied Patrick Palmer interview.

  re-creating pastel murals Among the books Jewison and Boyle consulted was David Davidovits, Tsiyure-kir be-veit-kenesset be-Polin (Jerusalem: Mosad Byalik, 1968). Books Purchased—and Forwarded from London to Los Angeles, November 1969, NJP30:16.

  “I wanted audiences to feel the racial hatred” Jewison, This Terrible Business, 178.

  Though not so thoroughly ignored See Hasia Diner, We Remember with Reverence.

  in an image inspired by Vishniac Jewison interview.

  “the only wooden period replica” Jewison letter to Marvin Mirisch, May 24, 1972, NJP32:9.

  to the dismantling and rebuilding costs letter to Jewison from Meir Meyer (Israel Museum) who reports on presenting the matter of the synagogue to Dr. Z. Warhaftig, minister of religious affairs, January 2, 1971, NJP32:8.

  “I think Jerusalem has enough” Kollek letter to Meyer Weisgal, Weizmann Institute, June 14, 1972, forwarded by Weisgal to Jewison, July 4, 1972, NJP32:8.

  the minister of religion was reported letter from Meir Meyer to Jewison saying that the minister of religious affairs “wants the synagogue very much,” May 8, 1972, NJP32:8.

  shul had been torn down Jewison letter to Arthur N. Greenberg, December 18, 1972, NJP32:8.

  advertising budget of more than $3.3 million “Basic Starting Roadshow Advertising and Exploitation Budget for Fiddler on the Roof covering advance and opening through February 26, 1972: $1,440,024,” and letter from Jewison to United Artists approving the revised advertising budget of $3,360,451, June 20, 1972, NJP33:4.

  “We must not merchandise a Winston Diamond” Jewison letter to Walter Mirisch, October 6, 1971, NJP32:14.

  “logged the largest group sales advance” Variety, July 14, 1971; clip in JRP33:4.

  advertising director didn’t think it was necessary letter to Jewison from Donald Smolen, United Artists director of advertising, February 12, 1971, NJP33:4.

  “strong initial ethnic pull” Jewison letter to Gabe Sumner, United Artists, September 4, 1971, NJP33:4.

  “avoid stressing its Jewishness” letter from Quinn Donoghue (United Artists, UK) to Hy Smith (United Artists, NY), cc’d to Jewison, June 11, 1970, NJP33:2.

  “the 1971 UNICEF film” letter from Quinn Donoghue to Mirisch Co., cc’d to Jewison, June 11, 1970, NJP33:2. />
  Jewison repeated the anecdote United Artists press kit, clippings, “Fiddler on the Roof” folder 1966, NYPL-PA. Also, Jewison is quoted in several preview stories telling this story.

  “90 percent of Lutheranism” Jewison letter to Fred Goldberg, United Artists, December 15, 1971, NJP33:2.

  urged clergy to tell NJP33:2.

  “he loved it” letter to Jewison from Mike Hunter, United Artists, December 16, 1971, NJP33:2.

  Catholic Film Newsletter November 30, 1971, copy in NJP33:2.

  “let most of the life out” Vincent Canby review of Fiddler, New York Times, November 4, 1971.

  “condescending and way off track … hurt the most” Jewison letter to Gabe Sumner, United Artists, December 9, 1971, NJP33:2.

  “[Topol’s] sense of comedy” Paul D. Zimmerman review of Fiddler, Newsweek, November 15, 1971.

  “Gone with barely a trace are warmth” “Last of the Dinosaurs,” Jay Cocks, Time, November 22, 1971.

  playing to 93 percent capacity crowds in Paris Gabe Sumner letter to Jewison, December 7, 1971, NJP33:3.

  “overwhelm[ing] not only Aleichem” Vincent Canby, “Is ‘Fiddler’ More DeMille Than Sholem Aleichem?” New York Times, November 28, 1971.

  “the most powerful movie musical ever made” Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema: A Bagel with a Bite out of It,” New Yorker, November 13, 1971, 133–39.

  “Since when did film ever have anything to do with the theatre?” Jewison letter to Gabe Sumner, December 9, 1971, NJP33:2.

  “elitist” prejudices Denton Stein, “Movie Mailbag: ‘Elitist: Did Bogdanovich Go to School?” New York Times, December 26, 1971. See also John Vitale, “Letter to the Editor 6,” New York Times, January 9, 1972. In letters to Jewison, United Artists staff Gabe Sumner (January 6, 1972) and Fred Goldberg (January 7, 1972) admit to having written these. NJP33:3.

  “part of our campaign” Fred Goldberg letter to Jewison, January 14, 1972, NJP33:3.

  “One critic complains” Frances Taylor column, “Fiddler’s Appeal Snares Some Critics,” December 5, 1971, Long Island Press clipping, NJP33:3.

  “a lot of money” Walter Mirisch letter to Jewison, March 28, 1972, NJP33:4.

  To lead off they published Gabe Sumner letter to Jewison, December 7, 1971, NJP33:3.

  “It was a tough night” Jewison, This Terrible Business, 183.

  played onstage for thirty-five million press materials in NJP and quoted, for example, in “Tevye on Film,” Sight and Sound, Hadassah Magazine, December 1971.

  Jewison himself admitted that he had tamped down Jewison quoted in Joyce Haber, “The Genesis of Jewison’s Fiddler on the Roof,” Los Angeles Times, January 9, 1972, VII.

  “resembles a kind of hippie commune” Leonard Frey quoted in Bernard Weinraub, “Tevye’s Suffering Enacted for Movie,” New York Times, January 4, 1971.

  “Ellis Island whiteness” Jacobson, Roots, 7ff.

  “about the rich traditions of their forefathers” Roman Pucinski (D-Ill.) opening speech of the hearing on H.R. 14910: U.S. Congress. House Committee on Education and Labor. Ethnic Heritage Studies Centers: Hearings before the General Subcommittee on Education. 91st Cong., 2nd Sess., February 19, 1970, 1.

  In the meantime Introduction to the 1996 Transaction edition of The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics. See more at: http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2006/08/novak-the-rise-of-unmeltable-e#sthash.iuh44aj8.dpuf.

  “People uncertain of their own identity” Novak, Unmeltable, 271.

  “historical memory, real or imaginary” ibid., 47–48.

  particulary masculinist terms Feminists reached back to recover the histories and creations of the forgotten women, often within their ethnic groups, but early on, the dominant mode of the new ethnicity played as score-settling for dissed manhood. Even as the tribal demagoguery settled down and claims for “heritage” found more genteel forms of expression, it long sustained a male cast. Irving Howe’s 1976 blockbusting book about Yiddish life on the Lower East Side was told, indeed, as a World of Our Fathers.

  “Jewish boys should not be that nice” Jewish Defense League display ad, New York Times, June 24, 1969, 31. For a discussion of JDL, see Michael Staub, Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002; Robert I. Friedman, The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane from FBI Informant to Knesset Member, New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1990. Janet Dolgin, The JDL and Jewish Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977); Meir Kahane, The Story of the Jewish Defense League (Radnor, PA: Chilton, 1975).

  council member Anthony “Tough Tony” Imperiale photographed for and interviewed in “In Politics, It’s the New Populism,” Newsweek, October 6, 1969.

  “nice Jewish bad boys” J. Hoberman, “Flaunting It: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s ‘Nice’ Jewish (Bad) Boys,” in Hoberman and Shandler, Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting, Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, and New York: Jewish Museum, 2005, 220–43.

  “one of the few filmmakers left” “Fiddler on the Screen,” Jerusalem Post Magazine, February 12, 1971, no byline, BSA-TA clippings.

  “symbolic ethnicity,” “symbolic religiosity” Herbert Gans, “Symbolic Ethnicity and Symbolic Religiosity: Towards a Comparison of Ethnic and Religious Acculturation,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 17:4 (1994): 577–92.

  “about the problems of people who have” Drucker and Jacobs, “Antennae on the Roof,” Mad Magazine 1:156, January 1972, 4.

  “But though God’s made imbeciles” Drucker and Jacobs, “Antennae,” 10.

  “God made a modern Camelot” ibid.

  enacting their Jewishness Jeffrey Shandler, Jews, God, and Videotape, esp. 185–229.

  In 2006, Bet Shira Congregation This discussion was first developed for my two-part essay in The Forward: “How Fiddler Became Folklore,” September 1, 2006, and “Tevye, Today and Beyond,” September 8, 2006.

  CHAPTER 9: SKRZYPEK NA DACHU: POLAND

  The director, Magdalena Miklasz, wanted the spectators All quotes and ideas attributed to Miklasz from interviews.

  the designer, Ewa Woźniak, had decided All quotes and ideas attributed to Woźniak from interviews.

  “If people know where Dynów is” Mayor Zygmunt Frańczak interview.

  As early as 1966 letter from Walter Felsenstein to Jerry Robbins, May 4, 1966, JRP5:17.

  Robbins was to have directed Donal Henahan, “Sing Along with Felsenstein?” New York Times, May 30, 1971, D13.

  with just a few adjustments letter from Johannes Felsenstein to Hal Prince, January 2, 1971, HPP111:5.

  audiences booed the Russians “Sholem-aleykhems ‘fidlr afn dakh’ regt on di tshekhn tzum vidershtand kegn der okupatziye,” Haynt, July 24, 1969; Fiddler clippings, BSA-TA.

  interest in presenting Fiddler at the State Yiddish Theater letter from Meir Melman to Ed Khouri, representing Stein at William Morris, March 1, 1966, JSP-NY “Fiddler-foreign-misc.”

  Theater artists simply understood Gruza, Weiss interviews.

  it had been commercially screened United Artists financial statement, November 25, 1978, JRP16:37.

  “staging the play was entirely unthinkable” “Droga Skrzypka do Polski” (“The Fiddler’s Road to Poland”)—Antoni Marianowicz, program note for Gruza’s production, program, Gdynia, 1984; trans. Agnieszka Sablinska. ZRT programs.

  Jerzy Gruza made a trip to New York Gruza interview.

  Robert Darnton “Poland Rewrites History,” New York Review of Books, July 16, 1981.

  “they reminded us” Krajewski interview.

  “As you probably know” letter from Antoni Marianowicz to Joe Stein, April 1, 1981, JRP7:13.

  Robbins would have preferred Robbins note on memo about Marianowicz’s request: “yes—but not for cemeteries but for living people,” April 15, 1981, JRP7:13.

  “If our show can have” Stein letter to Marianowicz, April 15, 1981, JRP7:13.

  “the people who once lived in our land”
Marianowicz, “Droga Skrzypka do Polski.”

  “modern mass Jewish culture” Michael Steinlauf, “Yiddish Theater,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.

  had come to love the music Rajmund Ambroziak (director of the Musical Theater of Łódź) interview for Dziennik Lodzski, April 21, 1983, trans. Agnieszka Sablinska, ZRT clippings.

  and … “made it his point of honor” Marianowicz, “Droga Skrzypka do Polski.”

  “The social task of musical theater” Gruza interviewed by Andrzej Ibis-Wróblewski, Radar 17:484 (1984), trans. Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer, ZRT clippings.

  “The production raised” Gruza interview.

  “the final scenes” Marianowicz, “Droga Skrzypka do Polski.”

  Reviews raved clippings, ZRT; trans. Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer and Agnieszka Sablinska.

  striking twenty-foot by thirty-foot poster Kitlowski interview and images kindly supplied by e-mail.

  He detested its “falsification” Szymon Szurmiej interview.

  screened at private parties Kitliński, Leszkowicz, Haponiuk interviews.

  Lublin’s theater Marian Josicz (actor who played Tevye) interview; and program booklet, Teatr Muzycyny, Lublin, 1994, ZRT programs, trans. Agnieszka Sablinska.

  elaborate program booklet from Lublin: ZRT programs, trans. Agnieszka Sablinska.

  “medicine” Marek Weiss, interview.

  deft, straightforward direction production viewed in Warsaw on June 29, 2008.

  Three-quarters of its voters National Electoral Commission, Republic of Poland, Presidential Election Voting Results, October 23, 2005, http://www.prezydent2005.pkw.gov.pl/PZT/EN/WYN/W/181600.htm.

  felt a little shudder Pinczer interview.

  The group piled into cars descriptions of seeing the film and subsequent descriptions of rehearsals and performances from interviews with cast members.

  Woźniak walked from house to house Woźniak interviews and interviews with neighbors in Dynów.

  Nazi invasion See Krasnopolski and Szajnik, Dynów; Moritz, “Khurban”; Wenig, From Nazi Inferno; Virtual Shtetl, http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/; and Szajnik interview.