The Jewish role in musical theater

Working behind the scenes of student productions of classic musicals at Yale University in the 1980s, Andrea Most loved the camaraderie. “The post-performance high was exhilarating,” Most says. “It was all about being part of a group.”

When she went to Brandeis University for postgraduate work in Jewish studies, she became aware that most of the creators of those midcentury musicals were, like her, Jewish. In the introduction to her “Making Americans, Jews and the Broadway Musical,” she lists 25 such Jewish figures, from Irving Berlin to Stephen Sondheim, mentioning only one exception -- Cole Porter.

She began to examine how American Jews used musical comedy to help establish their place in a larger and mostly non-Jewish group -- American society. The subject of her dissertation, it was expanded to become the book.

A century ago, Jews “had to figure out how to be citizens of a Christian country and yet remain Jews,” Most says, and learning how to play different roles in different situations drew them to the stage.

The book analyzes several musicals in detail, including “The Jazz Singer” (1925) and the Rodgers and Hammerstein classics “South Pacific,” “The King and I” and “Oklahoma!”

Jews in “Oklahoma!”? Not literally, but Most contends the character of the peddler, Ali Hakim, was a stand-in for Jews. Most itinerant peddlers in the “Oklahoma!” era were Jewish, she points out.

On the invitation to the first anniversary party for “Oklahoma!,” Hammerstein billed himself as “Mister Ali Hakimstein.” (Hammerstein was Jewish only on his father’s side, which made him non-Jewish in some Jews’ eyes, but he was a fundraiser for the Jewish Federation, Most reports.)

Most conducts incisive surgery on “South Pacific.” Not only does she tag the characters of Luther Billis and Emile DeBecque as the show’s stand-ins for Jews, but she exposes holes in the show’s vaunted liberalism.

She still regards “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific” as “amazing shows,” but her favorites are the pre-’40s musicals. She likes their overt theatricality, the strict division between song and story, the opportunities for self-invention on the part of both the characters and the actors.

The earlier shows, she says, are “light, but even things that are light still have meaning.”

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Excerpts from the book:

“In the musical, [Jewish writers] discovered a theatrical form particularly well suited to representing the complexity of assimilation in America....The Broadway stage was a space where Jews envisioned an ideal America and subtly wrote themselves into that scenario as accepted members of the mainstream American community.”

-- Andrea Most

“You are attempting to put people like us in an intellectual ghetto when you tell us we must think and act your way because we are Jews. I insist on acting and thinking like an American primarily, and a Jew if I want to.”

-- Richard Rodgers,

in a 1948 letter to actress Florence Eldredge, who was critical of his position on the House Un-American Activities Committee

On the character of Sitting Bull in “Annie Get Your Gun”:

“Sitting Bull becomes Annie’s mentor because it is he who understands the wisdom of the Jewish experience in America (and in the theater). ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ is truly an immigrant story, but the American who teaches the new immigrant how to behave in her adopted country is an Indian who acts like a Jew.”

-- Andrea Most