Casting With More <i> Chutzpah </i> Might Help

The recent airing of Arthur Miller’s “American Clock” on TNT (“Miller’s ‘American Clock’ Ticks on Screen,” Calendar, Aug. 23) is yet another example of “white-washing” the casting of Jewish characters--a common practice of Jewish writers, directors and producers. The family named Baumler was portrayed by Mary McDonnell, Eddie Bracken, Loren Dean and John Randolph.

This is not the first time Miller has written a Jewish play for Gentile actors. “The Price,” another play dealing with a family ripped apart by the Depression (the one before this one), has been performed by Pat Hingle, Arthur Kennedy, Fritz Weaver, Mitchell Ryan, George C. Scott, Hector Elizondo and Joe Spano, and the long-suffering Esther in the same play was acted by Colleen Dewhurst, Kate Reid and, most recently, Debra Moore.

No Jewish actress has ever played Willy Loman’s wife in a major production of “Death of a Salesman.” (Of course, Miller never identifies the families in “The Price” or “Salesman” as Jewish but who is he kidding?)

I’m not saying that Jewish roles can be successfully played only by Jewish actors. Valerie Harper in “Rhoda” and Anjelica Huston in “Enemies: A Love Story” had the looks, speech and ethnicity to be believable. What I am objecting to is a deliberate policy of excluding members of a specific ethnic group from playing their own kind, resulting in stilted, unconvincing performances.

Neil Simon plays the same game of “Gentile-ification,” particularly in the casting of female characters. See one of his plays on Broadway, and you’ll enjoy a wonderfully written piece, full of Jewish Angst and Jewish humor, that looks as if someone hung a sign on the casting session door: “No Jewess Need Apply.”

Who played the mother and daughter in “Lost in Yonkers”? Irene Worth, Rosemary Harris and Mercedes McCambridge, with Mercedes Ruehl, Brooke Adams and Lucie Arnaz. Who played the sisters in “Brighton Beach Memoirs”? Elizabeth Franz, Joyce Van Patten, Kathleen Widdoes and Judith Ivey--not to mention gentle Blyth Danner struggling, in vain, to capture the brusque Jewish mother in the screen version. And Simon’s latest effort should have been titled “Jake and His Non-Jewish Women”!

It’s an epidemic. Take “Driving Miss Daisy.” Jessica Tandy and Dan Aykroyd as a Jewish mother and son? About as believable as Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson as the Jewish couple in “Heartburn.”

More recent offenses include “The Cemetery Club” and “Used People”--two films in which Jewish women were portrayed by Ellen Burstyn, Diane Ladd, Olympia Dukakis, Shirley MacLaine, Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy.

I asked a producer friend (Jewish) why this kind of “ethnic camouflage” is so commonplace and he told me that there’s an old Hollywood saying, “Jews don’t play.” (I guess that’s why Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty’s characters on “The Golden Girls” were supposed to be Italian!)

It’s really weird. Can you imagine any other group discriminating against itself? Would John Singleton write a movie about life in the ‘hood and then cast it with whites in blackface? Would Martin Scorsese people his mean streets with Connecticut Yankees?

It astounds me that Jewish culture- mavens in the audience (and in the actors’ unions) never seem to make an issue of this situation.

As usual, men get a better deal. They can be short and unbeautiful, but Jewish actors often get the part (and the all-American girl)--especially if they write their own material. Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Dustin Hoffman play romantic leads, but how often has a Streisand seduced a Redford? Not nearly as often as Jay Thomas, Paul Reiser and Rob Morrow attract their ethnic opposites (the old Miller-Monroe syndrome).

Jewish producers claim they are concerned that if they’d paint an honest portrait of an urban, Jewish female, they might alienate the non-Jewish audience out there in the Heartland. This makes no sense, though, because when a great Jewish actress manages to break through the ban, the public embraces her--from Fanny Brice and Gertrude Berg to Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler.

Let’s face it: You don’t have to be an ancient Greek from a dysfunctional family to appreciate “Oedipus Rex,” and those viewers out in the boonies are not as shallow as industry execs would have you think. Let us not forget the huge success of an ethnic sitcom called “The Cosby Show.”

Anyway, as far as I and my friends are concerned, if the life of Golda Meir gets remade, we’re going to show a little chutzpah and boycott the box office if she’s played by Meg Ryan!