Free Jews on Broadway: An Historical Survey of Performers, Playwrights, Composers, Lyricists and Producers by Stewart F. Lane Page B

Broadway musical, thanks in large part to a hand ful of Jewish composers and lyricists who would later emerge as icons. The son of a cantor, Israel Baline, better know as Irving Berlin, went from dabbling in Yiddish theater to writing for vaudeville. However, it was one breakthrough hit song, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” written in 1911, that launched a remarkable career. Berlin would go on to establish himself as one of America’s foremost songwriters, while penning the music and lyrics for a dozen Broadway shows and revues beginning with Watch Your Step in 1914. And while much of the focus of American entertainment was on Ziegfeld’s Follies, by the late 1920s, Jerome Kern, the son of a furniture and piano salesman, would also establish himself as one of Broadway’s most prolific composers.

By the 1930s, American music, and especially that of the Broadway musical, was the beneficiary of this wealth of great Jewish composers and lyricists. In this chapter, we explore and feature the early musical influ -
    ences and the legacies of Berlin, Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Lorenz Hart as well as the brilliant writing of humorists and playwrights George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.
    Yes, these were the children of the first wave of Jewish immigrants who left their indelible stamp on American musical theater forever. The masters of lyric and melody composed hundreds of hit songs over the span of several decades, but the 1930s were particularly intriguing as a time 47
    Jews on Broadway
    in which they were all part of American music at the same time, combining their talents to build a legacy.
    Life During the Depression
    Before focusing on the composers and lyricists themselves, it’s important to take a look at the atmosphere in which they were living and working. The stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent depression years of the 1930s were felt throughout the entire nation. It was, however, particularly hard on the Jewish people.
    In his articles “America was Different. America Is Different,” Jerry Klinger, president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, points out that “the Bank of the United States was a Jewish bank.
    In fact, almost all of its 400,000 depositors were Jews. This meant that the bank held the assets of 1⁄5 of New York City’s Jewish population and 1⁄10 of all American Jews. The failure of the Bank wiped out most of the assets of the Jewish immigrant generation.”1
    Some of the blame for the depression was pinned on the Jewish people, and as a result anti–Semitism rose significantly during the early 1930s. American anti–Semitism was further fueled by the CBS radio broad casts of Father James Coughlin, who had a huge following. He actu ally blamed the Jews for everything from the depression to the Russian Revolution. His sympathy for the policies of Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini, plus his blatant anti–Semitic messages, were dismissed by many, but still spearheaded the rising wave of anti–Semitism. In fact, when his radio show was cancelled in New York, two thousand of his followers gathered in protest, chanting “Send Jews back where they came from” and “Wait until Hitler comes over here!”2
    Henry Ford was considered to be among the anti–Semitic notables of the time, as were Charles Lindburgh and well-known poet Ezra Pound.
    In fact, during World War I, Ford wrote a series of viciously anti–Semitic articles for The Dearborn Independent . The newspaper proceeded to print such articles for 91 issues, even beyond those written by Ford . In 1942, nearly two decades later, Ford reportedly did apologize in a letter to Sigmund Livingston, then Anti-Defamation League national chairman, writing, “I do not subscribe to or support, directly or indirectly, any agi-48
    3. The Music of Broadway
    tation which would promote antagonism against my Jewish fellow citizens.”3
    Meanwhile, jobs were hard to find, especially for