Broadway was a springboard to integration for talented Jewish arrivals from Europe, yet their musicals’ immigrant themes are unmistakable

When asked to define modern Jewish identity, Sigmund Freud often responded with a story. A European Jew boards a train. Alone in his compartment, he immediately removes his hat and shoes, loosens his tie, suspenders, and belt, and sprawls across the benches. Suddenly the door opens, and an elegantly dressed passenger enters the car. The Jew snaps to attention and straightens his clothing. The other fellow settles himself in his seat, and the momentary embarrassment passes. Just as the Jew buttons the last of his buttons, his traveling companion asks, “Would you happen to know when Yom Kippur falls this year?” “Oy,” the Jew groans, kicking off his shoes and stretching out again.

Like many of their contemporaries, Jews in the United States at the turn of the 20th century found themselves aboard an immigrant train, destination unknown. They had turned their backs on their eastern European ports of embarkation and stuffed their traditional identities into a suitcase. They were determined to make good, to become more American than the Americans, even if their acquaintance with things American was based largely on hearsay. They straightened their ties, shaved their beards, and tried their best to look as American as possible, with no hint of Jewishness. Fair-skinned and eager to assimilate, they integrated more easily than immigrants from Italy, Puerto Rico, and the cotton fields of the American South. Appearance was a crucial asset; the “show” was the thing. Combining it with another cardinal American value – business initiative – they arrived at the concept of “show business.” With this key to the Pearly Gates of Broadway, Jewish immigrants penetrated and even shaped the very core of popular culture, leaving a legacy that Americans are still humming.

 

Springboard to Respectability

Jews did not invent Broadway. They neither opened New York’s first theater, just off Times Square, nor staged the first musicals. However, like the cinema and comic books – two other entertainment industries launched in the U.S. in the late 19th century and significantly upgraded by Jewish immigrants – the American musical theater owes its international fame to talented Jewish entrepreneurs.

Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., born to a German immigrant father and a mother of Polish origin, was one of the first Jews to create glitzy shows combining vaudeville with spectacular music. His Ziegfeld Follies had no plot, but their spectacular staging imbued the almost random combination of acts – ranging from operatic duet to vulgar skit – with the magic of escapism. The middle classes loved it, and they became Broadway’s most loyal audience.

Following Ziegfeld’s lead, the three Polish-born Shubert brothers identified the enormous commercial potential of the dilapidated theaters on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. They bought and refurbished them, complete with neon signs, and filled them with the finest musical and dramatic talents of the time. An aura of prestige surrounded the glitz and chintz of the theater district throughout the 1920s. The growing ranks of bourgeois Americans were eager for an avenue of cultural escapism that was truly, originally American, something that could define American culture and differentiate it from its European counterpart.

And original it was. In its formative years, Broadway distanced itself from European theatrical and musical traditions. There was no room for Strindberg’s heavy melancholy or Wagner’s operatic opuses. The stage was set and the music playing for America in all its glory. Dancers in top hats and black-faced comedians mocking freed slaves’ thick accents echoed the many voices – and tensions – making up the melting pot of America’s immigrant society. High and low, classic and avant-garde, black and white, slapstick and shmaltz – all met on the boards of the stage, often with amusing consequences. The revue fit its diverse audience like a glove, expressing the conflicted psyche of the Jewish immigrants who had created it.